The Sanctity of Life

The Sanctity of Life
By Rev. Robert P. Elkins
All Scripture verse taken from the NIV Bible unless otherwise noted
(John 10:9-10) “I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

I would like to address a topic we don’t hear about to often any longer. There was a time when the church addressed this topic from the pulpit on a regular basis but that is a day gone by. I’d like to address the “Sanctity of Life”. When talking about the sanctity of life we have to ask the question, “What is Sanctity, just what does that strange word mean? What does this seldom used word imply?” The word “Sanctity” means “Anything held sacred” it means that sanctity is anything we look at or consider to be sacred with synonyms being “Holiness, Sacredness or Purity”. Were we to be talking about the sanctity of God we would talk about his “Purity”, how God is pure and perfect, his purity is total, he’s complete, there is nothing that could be added to him or taken away from him, God is without flaw or defect of any kind. Sometimes we talk about a really good chocolate candy as being pure chocolate. The better chocolates are made with purer chocolate and milks and not much filler, the poor grade chocolates use wax as a filler ingredient, editable wax of course and still okay, it will not harm you, I can attest to that. It is the only kind of candy I had as a child. I didn’t know good chocolate until after I get married and my wife introduced me to it. Now we are very good friends, both my wife and the chocolate. If I were to talk to someone about pure chocolate they would instantly understand that I was talking about a chocolate item that contained nothing but chocolate and their mind’s eye would picture a piece of delicious chocolate of perfect taste and color. I think that gives us a good mental picture of the point I’m trying to make.

Were we to be talking about the sanctity of God we would talking about his Holiness, God is Holy, God is spiritually perfect or pure, he’s untainted by evil or sin, he’s sinless and worthy of all reverence and adoration, God is to receive our deepest respect as we stand in awe before him. But this is only one half of our selected topic for today, “Sanctity” is the first part, but “Life” is the second part.

Most of us know or have a good understanding of what “Life” is and the implications of what the word means. But how often do we think of life as something sacred? For the most part, societies in the world today look at life as something to be highly guarded and cherished, most societies want to protect life and the lives of the people that make up that society. Mind you, not all societies have this thought pattern, there are some radical followers of a twisted and demented mind set that have no regard for life and take the lives of others, and even offer their own life thinking that they can become gods and heroes through their acts of violence and destruction. Although their perverted actions cause tremendous devastation and heart ache, we should consider it a blessing that this little segment of demented people make up only a small part of the total population of the world. With the hatred they carry in their deceived hearts and the perverted propensity for cruelty and violence they possess, the number of innocent people killed and mutilated each year would be far higher were this group to be larger than it is.

For the vast majority of people in the world today the concept of life being something that is to be protected and cherished remains intact. And how ironic it is that even though for many, who are not of the Christian belief, they still share in the benefit of life and the mindset of sustaining life with this mindset being rooted in Jesus Christ whether they want to acknowledge this fact or not. It is the teachings of Jesus Christ, the teachings of Christianity, which says life is to be cherished and protected. The reason we Americans love and cherish life so much is because we were brought up under the banner of Jesus Christ, he being our Lord and Savior. And as we look at Jesus as being God, one of His names is “Jehovah Nissi” meaning “The Lord is our Banner”. The Nay Sayers may not like this but America was founded as a Christian nation and it was intended to be a Christian nation, that was the intent of our Founding Fathers, and it is part of the Christian’s belief and teachings that we hold life to be very dear. My friends, I say to you that it is high time we announce to the world and in particular the Nay Sayers of America, and our elected politicians that our faith and belief lie in the One Eternal God and Lord of All Creation! It’s high time … no it’s well past the time when we, the family of Christian believers let everyone know that we are the majority and the anti-Christ is the minority and always will be to the praise and glory of God, Amen.

In the news media of recent times there has been much said about life and if we’ve followed the news much we’ve read or heard about man’s attempt to assist God in creating life through the morally reprehensible practice of cloning human life. If we’ve been in church where they should be talking about this, or have done any reading on our own from the Christian perspective on the subjects of cloning, which is trying to create life outside of God’s ordained order, or the sustaining of human life through the use of artificial means. If we have been a party of either of these two avenues of enrichment we would have seen or heard that there are many people who have and are searching the scriptures trying to see what the Bible says about life and the heroic efforts of modern medicine and science in their combined efforts to sustain life at all costs. Our court system has been overwhelmed with lawsuits and appeals pertaining to the sustaining or ending of life dependent upon whom has filed the suit. We have seen one such case in recent times where the courts battled for years over one young woman, Terry Schrivo, she was living in a comatose state with her husband and her parents arguing over whether to allow the her to die of starvation by stopping her feeding through the artificial means of a feeding tube due to her inability to eat on her own. Although the woman needed no assistance in breathing, her inability to eat or perform the other body functions we all take for granted, things such as walking or talking or making any kind of movement on her own was not possible. In the end it was the courts decision to allow the removal of her feeding tube and over a series of days the world watched as her body withered away, each internal organ shutting down until at last her spirit returned to her Lord from whence it came.

During the same time frame we watched as the Roman Catholic Pope, the late Pope John Paul, his life also coming to an end, his life sustained by the same method of feeding as Terry Schrivo’s, his life sustained by the feeding tube she was denied. I personally found it to be of great interest that the Roman Catholic Pope had just one year earlier issued a “Papal Bull” or official statement endorsing the use of the feeding tube if nourishment was not obtainable through the normal method of consumption. The Pope’s statement was issued a full year before the story of the woman gripped the world’s media, and little did Pope John Paul know that he would be the recipient of this same means of nourishment to sustain his life for a time until his life ended.
I would imagine that just about everyone has at one time or another made the statement about himself or herself, or about someone else, that they “ need to get a life”. Of course that is using the word “Life” out of context, it’s not saying that the subject of the statement, the person the statement was directed at, doesn’t have God given or blessed life in them, it’s not saying that they don’t have “Life”, that they don’t have life as in the opposite, that they are dead. It’s just saying that while they do have life, the life they do have needs an injection of something to make that life a little more fulfilling, more vibrant. Most often when we say, “They need a life” the implication is that the person needs something added to their life to fill up the gaps of free time they seem to have so much of, and so much of that free time is spent with their nose meddling in our affairs, often they are deeply embedded in our life.

A major part of the American culture and concept of life is found in our Declaration of Independence, which talks of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. This wonderful document states in part; “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”. Although we could designate an entire teaching to the beauty and connection to God of this special document written so long ago by the Founding Fathers. That isn’t the intent of this teaching so we won’t further address that topic. If they, the Founding Fathers, were alive today they would be in the forefront leading a revolt against our government and what this country has become in it’s denial and rejection of God and his precepts. The Founding Fathers felt that it was “self-evident” that we were created by God. “Self-evident”, this simple little word consisting of eleven letters means, “You don’t have to spend a lot of time and millions of dollars in legal fees and court costs.” Self-evident means; “There is no discussion needed, God is God, God created us and that’s the end of the story!”

Sorry, got a little side tracked there, time to return to the sanctity of life. As a people why should we fell that life is sacred? Why should we feel that life is something to be held up or elevated as holy or pure? Well to start with, all life originates in and through the will of God. If we were to read the “Genesis” account of creation we would see that everything we see and know of is from and through the will of God, God willed everything into being and existence. Everything! I don’t care what it is, where its at or how long its been here, if its here it’s here because God willed it to be here, if its here it is because it was in the will of God to have made it. If we can taste it, touch it, smell it, look at it or even think of it, God created it, it originated in the will of God. God created everything from nothing and there is nothing we can think of or comprehend in our minds that didn’t have its origin in God’s creation.

You may have heard the little story about the time when God and a group of scientists were debating about God being the creator of everything; the scientists insisted that they could create a person outside of the will of God using all of their skills and knowledge of science. They insisted that God allow them to show him just how they could do this and finally God agreed, telling them to go ahead and create a person without his assistance. The first thing the scientist did was to gather a small amount of dirt because in that dirt was found all the same elements that compose man and God had to stop them for a little instruction. “No, no boys, you can’t use my dirt, use your own.” The point is that there isn’t a thing we’ve made that doesn’t have its origin rooted in something that God created. Man has never “created” anything out of nothing, he’s made things using what was already here, and he’s just rearranged the order of that thing to make what we call “Something New”. If we take a tree and turn it into paper is it something new or just a tree now in a different shape? God created the tree, he created the water we use to soften the tree, and he created the chemicals we use to alter the wood fiber. If I give you a cake and you cut out little circles and decorate them and call them cupcakes is this something new made from nothing or isn’t it still just the original cake altered by someone else’s intervention?

Now, although we have to accept that God created everything, we don’t have to accept or consider all things sacred. Pantheism looks at all things as sacred, the Pantheist says that God is in everything and thusly; everything is to be considered sacred and worshiped as such. This friend is not true; this concept has no scriptural basis. In all of God’s creation there is only one thing we will find as something to be considered sacred, in all of God’s creation, water and land, plants and animals, the sky and stars, in all of it there is only one thing that is considered sacred, man and woman, human life. When we read the creation account as found in the Bible we see that God created all things, we read that God spoke them into existence and that it was good. But that’s all it says, that it was good. But when we get to the creation of man and woman, then the account goes into far more detail. Once we reach the portion of the creation story telling us how God made man we get a description of not only how he made us, again by speaking us into existence, but also what he made us from, dirt, and how life was instilled in us. (Genesis 2:7) “The Lord God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.” The apostle Luke tells of how the apostle Paul restates this in the book of Acts. “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.” (Acts 17:24-25)

God took the dust of the earth, he gently and lovingly formed it into just what he wanted, the shape of man, and then he took his breath, his Holy Breath, the very essence of God, and he breathed it into the man. And so man, formed from the elements of the earth, shaped by God, and in God’s image, is filled with God’s own breath and with that Holy Breath comes life, now the life in man is sacred because God is sacred. When God first made man, man was pure, there was no sin in him, no flaws, no personal agenda, no lust, greed, no nothing other than the pure ingredients God used including his own Holy breath.

Plants have life, are not plants a living thing? They grow and they die, they contain life, but plants aren’t sacred. Likewise animals, they too have life, they live, and they breathe and eat and reproduce. If anyone knows me at all they can attest that I am a real animal lover, right now I have two dogs and four cats, I’ve had just about every kind of domestic animal a person can have and a few that were not domestic, and shouldn’t have been in my care or home, I’d have a few less scars on my body if I had left them alone. The point I’m trying to make is that although animals are cute and playful they are still just pets, they are not sacred. Each pet has its own personality and is uniquely individual but this doesn’t make them sacred, whether it’s Fluffy the cat or Bessie the cow, dependent upon the culture in which you live, they are both eatable. In Iceland, they have a far different view of horses than we do in America, in Iceland horses are raised as a food item; they aren’t viewed as pets; they are viewed as the “Main Course” at dinnertime. There was a time when horse meat was offered in America not so long ago, I think it was back in the 70’s when this occurred, when there was a strong drive to mass produce horse meat for consumption. But the American public couldn’t get over the concept of eating the family pet. What sets man and animals apart is the breath of God. When God breathed life into man he also breathed into him his soul. It’s the having a soul that makes us special over plants and animals. In the grand scheme of things there isn’t a big difference between a cow and a carrot, they are both a source of food for man, neither has a soul, neither has a spirit part on life. Man is different, man is composed of the same elements as the cow, we are both made of the same organic materials just arranged differently, but we have been filled with Holy Breath, its that Holy Breath, God’s Ruah, the breath of God, this is what makes us special and sacred. This is why cannibalism is considered so vile and repulsive to most societies. And even in the society of those practicing cannibalism they don’t look at eating human flesh as a source of food, it’s to instill fear in their enemies, it’s to show or establish territory lines, it’s saying “You don’t want to enter our area, keep out”. Or it’s part of a demented religious practice, but the consumption of human flesh isn’t looked upon as a source of food.

Since all mankind, both men and women, are made in the image of God, all life is sacred and all life is precious. And it seems as if mankind has a hard time accepting this principle. Man places so much importance on his wealth, there is almost nothing men or women won’t do or try in an effort to increase their wealth. So often men and women do things to gain or obtain wealth that places their life in jeopardy, physical danger, mental stress far beyond what is needed, poor eating habits or poor and improper rest all done to increase that almighty bottom line. And regardless of how much a man or woman accumulates in the end it’s all for naught. As we start to come close to the end of our lives and we can see what damage our labors have done to us. We would do anything to reverse the effects of our lifestyle but by then it’s too late for most. Look at how many people are willing to spend every cent they have for just one more year of life, one more month or even a few more days. No matter how we make our living or what we do to gain our livelihood, we need to realize that sustaining life is of far more value than possession of a house or car; of far more value than any article of clothing or the number of toys we have in the end. I’ve seen two bumper stickers that pertain to this; the one said “He with the most toys in the end wins” and the other said, “He with the most toys is still dead in the end”. I personally think the second one is the real truth.

King Solomon realized this and he wrote about it in his book “Ecclesiastes” which is found in the Old Testament. Here are Solomon’s thoughts on working and trying to accumulate wealth taken from the second chapter; “I hated all the things I had toiled for under the sun, because I must leave them to the one who comes after me. And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. This toll is meaningless. So my heart began to despair over all my toilsome labor under the sun. For a man may do his work with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then he must leave all he owns to someone who has not worked for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; ever at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless”. All of it is meaningless, what is having a great number of possessions going to do for us if we loose our life trying to gain them? Life is sacred, possessions are not.

Please don’t take this in a wrong way; I’m not advocating that we need to live a pauper’s life or to not have anything in our homes. That is not my intent, but we need to be able to keep things in perspective, we need to know and differentiate between what we need and separate that from what we want. Our needs are just that, needs, our wants on the other hand can lead us to ruin, and this is what I am advocating we guard against. If our “Wants” are leading us to an early grave then they just aren’t worth it, there is nothing more sacred than life other than God himself. God has preordained for each of us just how many days we are to have on this planet (Psalm 139:16b “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”) but we can alter this number by poor choices and poor habits, God gave us free will, and although God preordained our number of days in his love for us, by giving us free will he also opened a door that allows us to exercise that free will and we can prematurely bring about the end of our life. This isn’t to say that we have a will stronger than God’s, we don’t. The same God that preordained the number of days we will have is the same God that preordained what is going to happen when we make poor choices. God has given us the options, but he’s also laid out the consequences for those options. The same God that says, “If you live by my rules and under my guidance you will have a long and prosperous life” is the same God that says, “If you violate my rules and live outside of my guidance you are seeking an early ruin and death.” Again looking to the Wisdom of Solomon in his writing as found in Ecclesiastes 11 and 12 “Light is sweet, and it pleases the eyes to see the sun. However many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all. But let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything to come is meaningless. Be happy, young man, while you are young, and let your heart give you joy in the days of your youth. Follow the ways of your heart and whatever your eyes see, but know that for all these things God will bring you to judgment. So then, banish anxiety from your heart and cast off the troubles of your body, for youth and vigor are meaningless. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, "I find no pleasure in them"- before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain; when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim; when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when men rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint; when men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags himself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets. Remember him—before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well, and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it”. Oh how true this is, life is precious and sacred, remember God in all of life and enjoy life to the fullest. Our Lord wants us to enjoy life and the blessings he’s given us. If we have family, enjoy that family! If we have friends, then by all means enjoy those friends. Seek out and enjoy all of God’s blessings, but do so wisely, in activities that will add to our number of days not subtract from them.

To fully enjoy life we need to have a spiritual life in conjunction with our physical life. To fully enjoy life men and women need to have a covenant relationship with their God. By covenant I mean we need to have an agreement, a promise, a pledge with God that isn’t broken but remains intact and viable. But how do we open the door to this spiritual life? Man can only have spiritual life through faith in the redeeming work of Jesus Christ on the cross under the ever-watchful eye of Father God. It is through the work of Jesus at the cross, his death and his resurrection from death that allows us to partake in a true spiritual life. There are many false or imitation spiritual lives to be lead, the spirit of deception calls to us offering a deceptive alternative life, but the true life is found only through Jesus Christ.

And what is the nature of this spiritual life? To start with, it is a new life, something that is vastly different than the life we live without Jesus living in us. It’s life that is completely surrendered to God and in total rejection of our old life. (1st Peter 1:3 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”. Our new spiritual life is a new hope, a new birth, and it’s glorious beyond compare. Our new spiritual life is true life; this isn’t something that is artificial. (1st Timothy 6:19) “In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of life that is truly life.” You see, life without God isn’t really life at all, it is only partial life, and a major segment of life is missing if we don’t have God living in us. For men and women, life without God is like wandering from false hope to false hope, from false promise to false promise, always seeking a sure place to drop anchor and being able to harbor in calm and warm waters. But all we ever found was turbulence and icy cold water, never a place to harbor or drop anchor because the conditions were always stormy. Friend, we can find safe harbor in Jesus Christ, in Jesus Christ there is safety from the storms of life, there is shelter from the winds and waves, there is protection and truth as we find safe harbor in the shadow of the cross.

Another nature of our spiritual life is that it offers the believer eternal life. (Romans 5:21) “So that, just as sin reined in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” When our spiritual life was non-existent or fragmented, we walked in sin and darkness; the just reward for a sinful life is death eternal. But by grace, grace being “unmerited favor”, or “something we did not deserve or were not entitled to” because no one deserves salvation from sin based upon his or her own merit. But by this grace, which only comes through Jesus Christ, we can walk and live in light, the light of God rather than walking and living in the darkness of the sin nature and obtain eternal life. The mind of man has a hard time formulating a concept of eternal life; we can understand the concept of “Now” and “Tomorrow” and of our “Past”. But the concept of “Eternal” is beyond our ability to fully grasp. We can talk to our parents or our grandparents and ask of our family history; this we can grasp, we can understand the past. We can grasp the concept of a few hundred years with little or no trouble, we call it our family tree and it’s something we can look at, many families have one in a large family Bible. We can understand the present, its where we are at now, we may not be able to understand the world in which we find ourselves with all of the uncertainty and chaos going on around us, but we can understand that we are alive and living right now. And we can understand something about our future, not all of it but to some degree we can understand the concept of our future, our immediate future. Depending upon what age we are right now we can think of the future as a very limited number of years. To a person of twelve or thirteen years of age or younger, thinking about the future means thinking about what is going to happen tomorrow or next week or even next month, but anything beyond that is usually to much to comprehend. To a person in their late teens to late thirties we tend to think more along the lines of looking foreword in segments of twenty or so years at a time, we start thinking about future employment, having a family, marriage, college for the children. Then we get to the forties and beyond and we start thinking of the future as hopefully another forty years or more, retirement, grandchildren, enjoying what we’ve worked for, and yes; even death. But man has a hard time thinking beyond death, we have a hard time thinking of the “Eternal”. But “Eternal” is what Jesus gives us, “Eternal” is glory; “Eternal” is living in the very presence of God Almighty in His heavenly domain. Think of the blessing that will be! Friend, there is only one source for the eternal life we’ve just talked about, and that source is Jesus Christ and Christ alone. One of the scriptures that states this best and in it’s simplest form is (1st John 5:11-12); “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” If we have the Son of God we have the life, if we don’t have the Son we have no life, it can’t be stated any simpler than that! This passage can’t be twisted or manipulated to say anything other than what is plainly says, there is one way, one path, one road and any other path takes us nowhere.

The last point to be brought foreword is found rooted in (Psalm 16:11). “You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at you right hand.” Found sheltered in our spiritual life is an abundant life today. The psalmist said: “You fill me with joy in your presence”. Notice this is in the present tense; this is for now, today. God isn’t saying that this filling is something that will happen in the future, it’s not something that is going to take place after we’ve been called to glory, this is something we can have right now. Knowing the path of life brings filling right now, and what is the path of life? It’s Jesus Christ and walking out a life in accordance to the scriptures of God. The psalmist said “You fill me with joy”, what can be more abundant or copious than being filled? The farmer who is looking at his barns filled to bursting with the fruits of his labors says that he has an abundant crop. The store merchant who has just had a great string of holiday sales says the purchases were abundant for the season. (John 10:10) says, “The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows).” {The Amplified Bible}

Having life more abundantly through Jesus Christ is capable of possessing a dual meaning or purpose, and the result of both meanings is a sacred life. The first meaning is life more abundantly, right here and now. When we have Jesus in our life we have more color, more radiance, we feel more vitality and find more meaning in life. Not only do the big things of life bring us joy, but the little things as well bring us wonderful joy and that joy has a longer shelf life, it doesn’t fade as quickly as it did before we met Jesus. We find that our laughter originates more from the heart and its of a purer nature, our joys are no longer simply on the surface to be blown away by the winds of the world, they have a deep root to our inner being and stem from God’s love that is alive inside of us. When we have life in Jesus we have the ability to look at obstacles that once appeared as solid concrete walls of great height and length and suddenly we see that although there may still be some walls out there in our path, what was once thought to be impossible to pass through, around or over now has little cracks that allows God’s light to filter through and shed light in what was once a place of darkness. The things we once looked at as impossible to overcome are now looked at as stepping-stones we can use as we work our way through the hills and valleys of life. When Jesus said that he came that we may have life and more abundantly he was saying that he wants us to have a fuller life, a richer life until he calls us to glory.

The second half of this dualism is found in the ultimate future. Jesus wants us to have a more abundant life in the heavens; he wants us to have a richer life as his bride in glory. The scriptures tell us that Jesus is going to be the groom in this heavenly divine wedding to which we are all invited as his bride. Being the bride of Jesus will be the ultimate in sacred life, it will be far more abundant and fulfilling that we can ever imagine.

In closing, have you ever wondered about the wording used in the Bible when it says that we are to be the bride of the Lamb? Ponder this thought for a moment. At a wedding the bride is always beautiful, always radiant and lovely. The bride is always filled with laughter and joy, it’s her special day and she is the center of attention, not only in the eyes of the guests; but she is the total center of attention to her husband. The husband is completely focused on her and no one else. The wedding day is a day of laughter and dancing. It’s a day of feasting on the best of delicacies, the choicest of foods and the finest of wines, it’s a day we would like to last forever, never ending. This is what we are offered by Jesus, this is what he would like for each of us to experience. Jesus wants each of us to be his bride, he wants each of us to feel his love and know that we are in the center of his attention, that we can be his bride and that for every day throughout all eternity each day will be special, new and exciting, basking in the love of God the Father and worshiping God forever. And that my friend is a sacred life, when we stand as the bride beside Jesus our groom and are forever surrounded in love. Amen.
Grace & peace

Jesus Christ Our Kinsman-Redeemer

Jesus Christ
Our Kinsman-Redeemer
By Rev. Robert P. Elkins
All Scripture verse taken from the NIV Bible unless otherwise noted

If you are a follower of “Up from the Ashes” on-line sermons you know that I usually start each teaching or sermon with a Bible verse that relates to the title and topic. Not so this week because there is not verse in the Bible that uses the word kinsman-redeemer, it’s not in there. But you can rest assured in knowing that I would be able to show you the relevance of the term and tie it into the scriptures with little trouble because the concept is right there for the asking and I pray that I’m being led by the Holy Spirit.

Just in the title of this sermon we have already established who our Kinsman-Redeemer is and you may be thinking; “well that’s a good thing to know”. But then again there may be some hearing this for the first time and are asking themselves, “What is a kinsman-redeemer?” By a simple observation of the word we can get a sense of what a kinsman-redeemer is. The first part of the word should be fairly clear in its meaning, it tells us that the person is a kin, a relative, a member of the same family, clan or tribe. One who is related to us, someone who is a member of the same clan as we are. The name we use to describe our family tree will be different dependent upon the area we live in. Here in the northeastern section of America our structure and labeling of family seldom uses the terms kin or clan or tribe, we use family or relatives to describe the people in the family tree. Now in other areas of America the term kin is used quite a bit, in particular in the southern states, mostly from West Virginia down through Florida. Through these regions should you use the word “Kin” when talking to someone about your family relations they would instantly associate with what we were talking about. “We have kin-folk in the area don’t you know.” Whether it is kin, family, tribe or clan there are a few common denominators to be looked at. Most are of the same bloodline, they are blood relatives, but that doesn’t have to be so just to be a relative. There can be kin that are of the “married into” variety as well, when someone marries a blood relative of a certain clam or family they then become kin through their association with the blood relative, they are then taken into the group as a member and offered the same hospitality as everyone else. Or at least that’s the way it is supposed to go, that’s not to say that there isn’t a few in the group that won’t accept the new member as an equal. I’m sure that most of us knows how that goes don’t we? The “married into” group may be kin, but if we are going to be talking about kin in the strict definitions of the dictionary, “Kin” is a blood relative.

With the term “Kin” established and defined, we now move along to a part of the word that takes us to a higher or more specific level. “Kinsman”, although I could find no biblical reference restricting or stating that the kinsman had to be a male, or that the kinsman could not be a female, there is some indictors as to what gender is required. There are two words found in the Scriptures that denotes kinsman, “Sungenes” and “Sungenis”. Both of these words are in the Greek, “Sungenes” refers to everyone, the entire tribe or clan and “Sungenis” is the feminine gender derived from the masculine or general tense. Although Sungenis, or the word for “kin” in its feminine tense is used in Scripture such as found in Luke 1:36, where it is talking about Mary going to see her cousin Elizabeth, to inform her of the child she will be having after being impregnated by the Holy Spirit. The KJV says “And behold they cousin Elisabeth”, while the NIV says “Even Elizabeth your relative”. Thus we see the word “Sungenis” in use in the Scriptures. There is however no use of the word in its feminine tense when spoken of in regards to the kinsman-redeemer, each time kinsman is used it’s in the general or masculine tense. That of course is when it’s found in the Greek writings.

In the Hebrew writings the word used is pronounced “Ga-al”, the same word used whenever it is in reference to God and God is talked of as being the redeemer of his people, this is used in Exodus 6:6, four times in Isaiah, many times in the Psalms and the in book of Job in the 19th chapter in the 25th verse.

In today’s society we have become so paranoid about making sure that we are “politically correct” so as not to offend anyone that we have become afraid to even make mention of a male or female role of anything, I’m sure there are a few that would, and most likely have insisted that the term be changed from “kinsman” to “kinsperson” but I for one won’t be doing that and if that offends anyone you can take it up with God because he wrote his Bible the way he wanted it and he’s the one that through the inspiration of his Holy Spirit selected the wording to be used in naming this person.

So there may be male kin, female kin and kin in general, but it’s the male or masculine kin we are talking about here. Look at (Leviticus 25:47). “ If an alien or a temporary resident among you becomes rich and one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells himself to the alien living among you or to a member of the alien's clan, he retains the right of redemption after he has sold himself. One of his relatives may redeem him: An uncle or a cousin or any blood relative in his clan may redeem him. Or if he prospers, he may redeem himself. He and his buyer are to count the time from the year he sold himself up to the Year of Jubilee. The price for his release is to be based on the rate paid to a hired man for that number of years. If many years remain, he must pay for his redemption a larger share of the price paid for him. If only a few years remain until the Year of Jubilee, he is to compute that and pay for his redemption accordingly. He is to be treated as a man hired from year to year; you must see to it that his owner does not rule over him ruthlessly”. What this pericope is saying is that in the event someone sold himself or herself into slavery a kinsman could redeem them or in other words, they could pay a price to rescue them from the bonds of slavery.

Now lets look at the remainder of our word, “Redeemer”. This of course goes hand in hand with what we just saw, someone or something being redeemed, to redeem is to buy back, to exchange for a price, to recover something or someone in some type of exchange. Does anyone remember when you used to get the S&H Green Stamps when you bought something? There were various stores and even gas stations that would give you Green Stamps when you made a purchase and you’d stick them in a little book, much like the little bank book they used to issue. When you had enough books or enough stamps you would go to a redemption center and trade them in for whatever it was that you selected from their catalog of items. I think you can still do this with the Betty Crocker products, I think they still have a little numerical value thing on some of their products. I also think that is about to come to an end if it hasn’t already. By now you have a clear picture of what I’m trying to show you, the concept of redeeming one thing in exchange for another.

If we were to look in a dictionary we’d see that the word “Redeem” has more than one meaning or definition. Redeem can also mean; “A) to make amends for, to atone for something or to make right a wrong”. B) To set free by paying a ransom, to deliver from sin and its penalties as by a sacrifice made for a sinner”.

Now if we collect all these random thoughts together and get them in a nice straight line it will give us a clear picture that the biblical Kinsman-Redeemer was a male relative who was going to buy back or make atonement for a person of like clan or tribe, who is unable to obtain or redeem his or her self and gain their freedom from slavery. The kinsman-redeemer was also responsible for buying back land that was sold outside of the clan or tribe to a foreigner or foreigners, to buy back a woman that was sold into slavery in order to pay off a debt. And at times it was the kinsman-redeemer who was responsible to avenge a death or murder of a fellow tribe or clan member. They were also to provide an heir in order to keep a family name and bloodline from ending and to look after a family business. As we can see there was a lot of responsibility in being a kinsman-redeemer, God was really interested in establishing the family unit and developing strong family ties. Everyone was to be looking out for the well being of the others in the tribe, clan or family; everyone was to be looking out for the other kinfolk. Reflect now on how the family unit has been attacked by the devil in today’s society, we will be looking at this topic a little more later in this sermon, but I won’t be going into it in any amount of detail, not in this sermon, that would be another complete topic to be addressed, but not today. But just give this attack and destruction of the family unit some thought when you have a little time.
This concept of the kinsman-redeemer comes directly from God; it’s in his directions to the people of Israel. The first verse we will look at is found in the book of Leviticus, in the 25th chapter in the 25th verse. Here God is talking about the redemption of land. “If one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells some of his property, his nearest relative is to come and redeem what his countryman has sold”. His nearest relative doesn’t mean uncle Felix who only lives three houses away, God isn’t talking about someone who lives in close proximity to someone else in the same tribe or clan, God isn’t talking about a physical distance, he’s talking about a bloodline relative. It was usually a brother, if there were no brothers, then an uncle and then a cousin, and so on moving down the bloodline. When I first started to look into this I found it strange that it didn’t start with a father or a grandfather, to me that would be the nearest relative in the family if we were looking to the men of that family. And then it dawned on me that in most cases, the person didn’t have any land until the father was dead, the dads didn’t often give away any land or possessions until they had at least one foot in the grave or were getting real close to death and then knew it.

To the Jews, having property was very important, it still is. If we were to remember the promises that God made to Abraham, the first was many descendents and the second was land. To this very day the significance of having land is of utmost importance to the Jew. Look at the never-ending battles that are going on over the little strip of land known as the “Holy Lands”. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to look over that area of land you might say “what in the world are they fighting over, it’s all rocks and sand, there isn’t any oil there or any gold or diamonds, it is all kind of like a great big rock pile where you can grow some crops but you really have to work at it”. But you see the Jew doesn’t think like that, they see the land as what God promised to them and no matter what, they are going to defend that land even if it means giving everything they have including their very life. When the Lord gave the Holy Land to his people it was divided into parcels, and these parcels were given to the various tribes. Each tribe was allotted so much property with clear divisions being made. The only ones who didn’t get a piece of the pie was the Levites, the priests, they were to be provided for from the blessing the tribes with land had, they didn’t need land to work since they got the tithe. Of course many of the priests did get land, but not through a way that was approved by God. Having property was very important and retaining that land was a must. Retaining that land was retaining the promise of God and who here wants to give away or loose what God has promised them? I know I don’t, I want to keep in my possession whatever my God has promised me. If you became poor and had to sell your property the nearest relative, not uncle Felix mind you, had the responsibility or was obligated, to buy back your land to keep it in the tribe or clan. And of course that person was your kinsman-redeemer.

There was more to this directive of God than just redeeming land; it also included people, it included the kin. We looked at this before but we need to read it again. (Leviticus 25:47)“If an alien or a temporary resident among you becomes rich and one of your countrymen becomes poor and sells himself to the alien living among you or to a member of the alien's clan, he retains the right of redemption after he has sold himself. One of his relatives may redeem him.” Remember I talked about this before, if we think about this verse for a moment, we can see how strongly God places value on the family unit. This is an object lesson we can all learn from. If at that time and that location, a family member fell upon hard times and had to sell his or herself into slavery to pay off a debt, it was the obligation of another family member to redeem them. God is saying; “At all costs, keep the family together! Hold on to dearly what I’ve given you and don’t loose it”, we are going to look at the importance of this later, that holding on to what God’s given us.

The concept of the family unit isn’t a New Testament revelation; we’ve seen that in this study so far. Its foundation can be seen laced throughout the entire Bible. Granted the present day church family can trace its roots back to the book of Acts, but this original concept goes back to the book of Genesis and is found in some form or fashion in every book between Genesis to Revelation. Think back to Genesis and Noah and his little family. The Bible tells us that Noah was a man of righteousness, that he was blameless and that he walked with God. Now Noah was righteous and blameless and walked with God, but it doesn’t say his sons were, his wife was or his daughter-in-laws either. And yet when God decided to flood the earth he maintained this family together, why? Because God loves the family unit! If family didn’t mean all that much to God he could have just as well killed off everyone and let Noah start over with a new group of people. Don’t laugh at that thought, God did just this very thing once before. Remember Job, God allowed his entire family to be killed off with the exception of his wife, and I think God let her live just because he wanted someone to use in his plans to show Satan that he, God, was in control of things because Mrs. Job sure wasn’t much of a moral support for her husband. Her words of wisdom to her husband, “Just curse God and die!” But God did give Job a whole new family when it was all said and done.

The concept of the kinsmen redeemer also applied to making sure a bloodline or a clan or tribe continued from generation to generation. If a man was wed and had produced no heirs and then that man died, it was the obligation of a kinsmen redeemer, a brother, to take the dead mans wife as his own and have children with her, the first child of that union to carry the name of the departed brother, thus continuing his line. Another obligation of the kinsmen redeemer was to be the avenger of a wrongful death. This can be found in the book of Numbers in the 35th chapter.
So now we’ve looked at what a kinsmen redeemer is, what the kinsmen redeemer was to do, what his duties were to his tribe or clan. We looked at how the kinsmen redeemer held the obligation to restore or preserve the full community rights of a disadvantaged family member, and now we’ll look at how, from this concept of the kinsmen redeemer, in regards to the family member, arises the covenant between God and Israel and subsequently how it all ties into the redemption of all humanity. How it applied to both Jew and Gentile, through Jesus Christ and his redemptive work on the cross.

I’ll start where God started, in the Old Testament. First we’ll look at God’s covenant with Israel and how it progressed to include all mankind. In the book of Exodus, chapter 6, verses 6 and 7, we see God addressing his people through his servant Moses. “Therefore say to the Israelites: “I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from bring slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.”
I think it’s safe to say that in the world today, for many people, they are still under the yoke of slavery or bondage to a Pharaoh, to a typology or a foreshadow of another, and that can be equated to being under the yoke of Satan. Their yoke of bondage may be addiction to drugs, or alcohol. It may be addiction to cigarettes or even a food addiction. People can be addicted to sex or work, or gambling. Addictions come in many strange packages; any unbalanced desires for something may be looked at as a form of addiction if that unbalanced desire is a controlling factor in our life. Addictions even play a role in our Christian life showing up in worldly desires for a certain title or position, seeking to control or hold power over someone or something in the operation of the church. Often the people don’t even realize that they are working out of an addiction, they think they are working out of the right motives when in reality they are seeking salvation by works instead of salvation by faith and belief in Jesus Christ. But God is saying; “I will free you from bring slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God”. What God is saying is; “I will free you from this yoke, and from this bondage that has held you down and oppressed you for so long. Through my strength and through my power I will make you free”.
The metaphor of an outstretched arm is symbolic of God’s power. Picture if you will, a mighty arm with bulging muscle, flexed and lifting off the heavy weight of bondage, lifting off the heavy yoke of whatever it is that is holding us down, be it any form of addiction, any form of pride, any form of anything that causes us to be separated from our God. This is what one of the passages of scripture states “Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit saith the Lord”(KJV). God is saying that it doesn’t matter what Pharaoh we are under at this time, He is bigger, He is stronger and He will lift the yoke of that Pharaoh off of us and set us free.

You may be thinking, “That’s fine for the masses of people back then, that’s fine for the people of Israel so long ago. And it may even be working for a certain church or a certain denomination today, but what about just little old me, right now, right here now? What about me as a person, as an individual out there on my own, can I still experience this in my life, now, today”?
Lets bring this down to our own personal level then, let’s carry this theme down to a finer degree and make it a little more personal. Isaiah 43 says; “Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze”. The scriptures of yesterday still apply to us today, what promises God made before to a generation or one hundred generations ago still apply to us today. God’s word doesn’t change, it doesn’t end either, and it has no expiration date it is good forever and always redeemable when needed.

Although there are several more Scriptures that say basically the same thing but for the sake of time restraint we will stay with this one since it can’t be said in any plainer language. In this passage we can see that God is deeply concerned for us and that he is in fact our redeemer. What beautiful wording, what wonderful promises! When we have to walk through the deep waters of life, they are not going to rush over us and carry us away; the fires of life won’t consume us in their flames. We have a kinsman redeemer who is there for us to stop the destruction of life in a fallen world. But how do we come to know him, God the Son as a kinsmen redeemer and how do we place Jesus Christ in this role?

Before we can look at Christ as our kinsmen redeemer we need to look at how he came to be our “kin” at all. Jesus is God and we are human and the two just aren’t mutually acceptable to each other. First of all Christ had to come to earth as man, we all know of his birth through the woman, Mary. How he entered this world as a human child, a theophany if you will, the visual appearance of God in the form of man. This is known as the “Hypostatic Union”; Christ was fully God and fully man. This fact we cannot doubt. Another fact we cannot doubt, Jesus Christ was fully Jewish. He was as Jewish as Jewish can be. And it is only through the grace of God that we as Gentiles have redemption from sin and salvation, it is only through the grace of God that we as Gentiles have any hope at all, without God’s grace; we as Gentiles would have no hope of anything at all except the fires of hell for all eternity. Although God chose the Jewish people as his own, it was from the start in God’s plan to offer to us, the Gentiles, God’s plan of salvation. The Apostle Paul tells us of this in his letter to the Ephesians in the first chapter, verses 3 through 10. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding. And he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.”
God knew before he even created any of this we see around us that he would be offering redemption from sin to the Gentile as well as the Jews through his love and grace. The Jews as his chosen people and the Gentiles, you and I, as his adopted sons and daughters. In the first chapter of the Gospel of John we read; “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God __children not born of natural decent, nor of human decision or a husbands will, but born of God.”
God chose us, God has grafted us into the Jewish vine, he’s adopted us as his very own sons and daughters and by doing so he has given us the right of a natural born child. You see as an adopted child we have and can expect all of the rights and privileges of a natural born child. Romans 8:16 says “The Spirit (that’s God’s Spirit) himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children, now if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ” (emphasis mine). Can you see the connection starting to develop here church? Once we become co-heirs with Christ through our adoption, which is approved and allowed by grace and rooted in faith by belief in the name of Jesus Christ as Lord of all, Jesus became our kin and we became his. We, at that point of adoption have and should expect all the rights and privileges of a kin, and that includes the rescue of a fellow kin or a kinsmen redeemer. And that kinsmen redeemer is the one who fulfills all of God’s requirements in his law. Once we are adopted sons and daughters of God the Father, Jesus then becomes our brother, and remember with Jesus being the Son of God we also are sons and daughters of Father God as well. As sons and daughters of God we have every right and expectation to claim the rights of Jesus as our kinsmen redeemer and we can expect him to fulfill his duties as laid out in the Father’s law. With Jesus as a brother and thus our kinsmen he then has the burden or the obligation under the Fathers law to redeem us at the predetermined price, which the Father has declared. When Jesus became flesh and blood and took on the body of man he forever linked himself to us as kin and he too was then subject to the law of Father God in all it says. We; the sold into slavery relatives, we the fallen into sin relatives; can now cry out to Jesus our kin and say “Save us oh Lord, save us because we are brothers and sisters according to the law and principles of our legal adoption that are now in force as the Father declares it be done in written word”. And Jesus in his love did just that, Jesus in his love and knowledge of the obligation he was under had to pay the price for our redemption and he did so when he went to the cross and shed his Royal Blood. The Father said that the only acceptable price for redeeming us and removing the yoke of slavery and bondage to sin was a blood offering and Jesus made that offering on our behalf with his own blood, given freely for our sins while he was sin free himself. The blood offering that God required had to be pure blood, untainted blood, free from all imperfection or contaminations because of sin, and it was found in Christ alone. Jesus knew that the obligation for him to be our kinsmen redeemer was placed upon him and him alone and he fulfilled every requirement of the law in regards to paying the price for the redemption of us, a fellow kin.

The full power and impact of having Jesus Christ as our kinsmen redeemer can be seen in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Paul addresses this in both the 3rd and 4th chapters. In chapter 3, verse 13; Paul says “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written; “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree”. He redeemed us in order that the blessings given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit”. And in chapter 4 Paul says; “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law that we might receive the full rights of sons (and daughters). Because you are sons (and daughters) God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, Abba Father. So you are no longer a slave, but a son (or daughter), and since you are a son (or daughter), God has made you also an heir” (emphasis mine).
Think back to the start of today’s teaching. We saw that a kinsmen redeemer was one who bought back or made atonement for a kin. This friend is what Jesus had done for each of us hearing or seeing these words. The law required that a sacrifice must be made, that blood must be shed for the atonement of sin and in God’s love and grace, in God’s mercy and compassion he sent his very own Son to be that pure and perfect sacrifice. Father God knew that we, on our own, could never live up to or ever meet the requirements of the law, and since Father God is and must be unchangeable in all he is and does, since God must always be the same today and in all the tomorrows as he was in all the yesterdays; he sent his Son to fulfill his holy law and bring us salvation by redeeming us from the Pharaohs of life. God, through the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, redeemed us from the grasp of sin and death and all the requirements demanded justly so by our sinful lifestyle. Jesus our kinsmen redeemer paid the price, he called us back, he redeemed us, and he’s snatched us from the doors of hell and has allowed us to enjoy the benefits of adopted heirs and co-heirs with himself the Son. Because Jesus is our kinsmen redeemer we have access to God’s Holy Spirit and the gifts he brings. Because Jesus is our kinsmen redeemer we have access to the Father through the Son who is now our intercessor and we are assured that our prayers are heard and answered. And because Jesus is our kinsmen redeemer we have full expectation of experiencing the glory of heaven when Jesus returns to gather his church. I must mention here that what I just said id the gospel truth, God the Father does hear and answer every prayer. But know yea will, friend that he doesn’t always say “Yes” to our every request. “No” is as much an answer to prayer as is “Yes”. Just know that God’s answer is always fair and just, always right and in our best interest.

Beloved it is good to have friends in high places. It is good to have a kinsmen redeemer who has fulfilled every obligation placed upon him by the law and it is good to know that our kinsmen redeemer will always be there for us regardless of what we do because his love for us is so great that he was willing to suffer the pains of death and his strength is so mighty that he is able to conquer every obstacle we could ever encounter, he is strong enough to remove every yoke ever placed on us and his Spirit is there to guide us through all the paths our life will ever take. Amen.
Grace and peace