Ransom


Jesus Christ, the One Who Ransoms and Redeems

By Pastor Dan Kennedy
© April 3, 2011
www.pastorkennedy.com
(On the website above, click the link to “recent message notes” to view this message online.)


Penalties of Laws from which mankind must be ransomed.

  There are frivolous laws and there are real laws.
  There are earthly laws and there are eternal laws.
  There are man’s laws and there are God’s Laws.

What happens when we break man’s laws?
What happens when we break God’s laws?

	What did God say would happen to Adam and Eve if they were to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil?   _______________

	What did the serpent say would happen if Adam and Eve ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil?  ___________________

	Did they die physically right away?  _______  Did they die later?  

What happened to them spiritually immediately after they disobeyed God?  

1.  Adam and Eve immediately died spiritually…suddenly realizing that they had changed – something about them had become uncovered and they were ashamed and needed to physically clothe themselves.  Disobedience to God had irreparably damaged their previously pure and fulfilling relationship with God.  God still talked with them, but now they were on “different” terms relationally.   We can comprehend this because breakdowns in family relationships happen every day in this present fallen world.  

2.  Adam and Eve not only died spiritually, they plunged their children and their children’s children…throughout the generations of the human race, into what we call “depravity”:  spiritual separation from God with a “genetic” predisposition to sin – generations after generations continuing to choose to “naturally” disobey God, their Creator.

3.  Instead of birthing their children into a sin-free world, dads and moms now bore children who chose greed, jealously, pride, lust, and murder, as their “default setting” over obedience to God.  (Can you imagine Eve’s crushing sorrow when she learned of Cain, her firstborn son’s murder of her second born son Abel?)

4.  Everyone in the human race, including Adam and Eve began to die physically and continued to die.  Everyone.  Generation after generation.  The authentication of God’s penalty for Adam and Eve’s disobedience was completely vindicated – as it is to this day.  Everyone begins life dead spiritually.  Everyone ends life dead physically.

Depravity and Death have become so terribly “normal” that, although we cringe and tremble when the cold hand of death takes someone we know, we have become desensitized to the fact that death is normal.

God’s penalty for breaking His Laws is death.

~~~~

Let’s talk about “laws” a little bit more.

We continually live within the dimension of life’s laws.

  We have social laws.

o  Family “expectations for manners, leadership hierarchy, etc….
o  Friends “social awareness and expectations”
o  Organizations of which we are members: “club rules”, “educational standards”, and “social expectations”.
o  All sports have “rules” which are suppose to keep the playing field even.

  We have natural laws.

Natural life is saturated with laws, which allow all life to function normally!

The Design of Nature’s Laws and the Power to Create and Implement such number and diversity of these Laws, point to the existence of a Creator God.  God’s natural laws hold together and allow the function of our life, planet and universe.

o  These Laws are often identified and known to us by the names of those who “discovered” their existence (these obviously could not “create” the laws!), or by the name being associated with their general function, such as…


•  Boyle’s law:  which stipulates that, given constant temperature, the product of the volume and pressure of a fixed quantity of an ideal gas is constant.

•  Newton’s first law of motion: which states that an object at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force; an object in motion will remain in motion unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force.

•  The Law of the conservation of energy: which declares that the total amount of energy in an isolated system remains constant.

The periodic table of the known 117 natural elements is a useful framework for chemists, physicists, biologists and other scientists to classify, systematize, and compare all of the many different forms of chemical behavior.  An element evidences itself through consistency to specific “requirements” (types of atoms) attributed to each element…like H2O.

o  Paul Davies, thought to be one of the most influential contemporary expositors of modern science wrote, “Science is based on the assumption that the universe is thoroughly rational and logical at all levels.  Atheists claim that the laws [of nature] exist reasonlessly and that the universe is ultimately absurd.  As a scientist, I find this hard to accept.  There must be an unchanging rational ground in which the logical, orderly nature of the universe is rooted.”  (Anthony Flew, There is No A God, p. 111)

  We have legal laws.

o  Traffic Laws:  “Rules of the Road” (Who has the “right of way” on a “round-a-bout”?)
o  Local laws:  building codes and restrictions, etc.
o  National laws:  Educational, Taxes, etc., etc.

  We have God’s Laws.

o  In relationship to God – 
First Commandment:  “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength!”

1.  “You shall have no other gods before me”
2.  “You shall not make for yourself a carved image”
3.  “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain”
4.  “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” (Salvation Rest – Hebrews 4:9-10)


o  In relationship to our fellow man – 
Second Commandment:  “Love your neighbor as yourself!”

5.  “Honor your father and your mother”
6.  “You shall not murder”
7.  “You shall not commit adultery”
8.  “You shall not steal”
9.  “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor”
10. “You shall not covet”

How binding are those laws?

  Social Laws
  Natural Laws
  Legal Laws
  God’s Laws

	We may have an External Motivation to Obey Laws

1.  It depends on the creator of the law and how much punishment is due, if one breaks the law.

a.  If dad or mom makes the law.
b.  If a government makes a law.
c.  If God makes the law.

2.  It depends on how the law is enforced.

(In politics or in any form of government – from the family to the national government, laws can be made, but the law becomes ineffective if it is not enforced.  If a local or national governing body withdraws funding of the enforcement of the law, it may look good on the books, but it becomes valueless.)

An individual’s law becomes irrelevant if a higher law supersedes it, or if we do not enforce our own law.

Illustration: the parent who keeps saying, “don’t do this and don’t do that”, but he or she doesn’t enforce their verbal command.

God wants His Children to have an Internal Motivation to Obey His Laws

It depends on the motivation to keep the law

a.  A motivation of fear as to what the penalty is, or might be, when the law is broken. (We see that today in those who are rising up for “democracy” against ruthless dictators.  In this case the motivation to stay in submission to the dictator is to not be slaughtered.)

b.  A motivation of love toward the one making the law.

c.  A motivation of loyalty toward the one making the law.

Problems that people have in keeping God’s Laws:

•  If we have laws from a God who we cannot see, and
•  If we have strong internal and external motivations (called “depravity”) for not keeping God’s laws, and
•  We do not see immediate negative repercussions from not keeping God’s Laws,
•  Then our natural inclination, most likely, is to secretly cheat on not keeping the laws, or brazenly not keep them at all.

Just as Adam and Eve did not see or comprehend enough what would happen if they disobeyed God, so human beings today seem rather ambivalent and uncaring as to what the outcome of God’s laws might be.

What has God given to us as His Children to empower us to obey His Laws?

1.  Christ’s blood has provided a ransom for those who trust in Him (Rev. 5:9).
2.  A Transformed life, through the power of His Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5,6; 2 Cor. 5:17; John 3:3; Col. 1:27).
3.  The conviction of the Holy Spirit:  about sin, righteousness, judgment, and things to come (John 16:8, 13).
4.  The confession of our sins (1 John 1:9).
5.  The realization that keeping God’s Laws are better for us anyway.
6.  We want to love and please God from our hearts, and not sin against Him.

What happens if God’s Laws are broken?

There must be One who pays our Ransom and Redeems us from the consequences of breaking God’s Laws, or we will suffer the full condemnation for our sin.

Is there any human being who is not subject to the penalty of breaking God’s Laws?

We are in desperate need of someone who is capable of ransoming us from the penalty of the horrors of spiritual death and eternal separation from God!

Passover demonstrates a Ransom Paid

Passover is but one more reminder of the revelation of God’s love, the Suffering Messiah (Isaiah 53), and supreme sacrifice that He paid for our Ransom.  “When I see the Blood, I will pass over you.”

The following are references to how sin has been atoned for throughout Scripture:

•  The Blood of an animal’s life was shed to clothe Adam and Eve when they left, sinful and ashamed, from the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:21).

 The Sacrificial Blood of the firstborn of Abel’s flock was shed as an acceptable offering to God. (Genesis 4:3-5).

•  The Sacrificial Blood of clean animals was shed in Noah’s offering to the Lord following he and his families’ deliverance from the Great Flood (Genesis 8:20).

•  The Sacrificial Blood of lambs and of the flock and herd was symbolically offered by the Patriarchs of those who had faith in God, from Abraham until their families were brought to Egypt (Genesis 22:2,13; 31:54; 46:1; Job 1:5)

•  The Sacrificial Blood of a Lamb was established at the Passover, when Israel’s bondage was unshackled from Egypt and they were established as a nation (Exodus 12).

•  The Sacrificial Blood of lambs and of the flock and herd was ceremonially established through Mosaic Law, for the symbolic atonement of sins both of individuals and for the nation (Lev. 1:1-7:38; Heb. 10:1-3).

•  All these Blood Sacrifices were a picture of the Redemption from sins that He who was to come, would do, to give His life to reconcile sinful mankind to God.

•  The Sacrificial Blood of Jesus Christ is the final Atonement for the sins of mankind (1Cor. 5:7; Eph. 5:2; Heb. 10:1,11,12).

John 1
29 The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30 This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’

1 Corinthians 5
7 Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.

Hebrews 9:12–14 
12 he (Christ) entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. 

Hebrews 9:26–28 
26 … But as it is, he (Christ) has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. 

Jesus Christ, as our Passover Lamb, has Ransomed and Redeemed us through His Precious Blood!

Revelation 5:9–10 
9 And they sang a new song, saying, 
		“Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, 
	10 and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, 
and they shall reign on the earth.” 

1 Timothy 2:3-6 
3 This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4 who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. 5 For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, 6 who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time. 


Conclusion

Are the keeping of God’s Laws meaningful to us?

If we are His Children, does God want us to obey Him legalistically or from our heart?

What is the outcome for those who flaunt God’s Laws? 

What has God given to us as His Children to empower us to obey His Laws?

1.  Christ’s blood has provided a ransom for those who trust in Him (Rev. 5:9).
2.  A Transformed life, through the power of His Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5,6; 2 Cor. 5:17; John 3:3; Col. 1:27).
3.  The conviction of the Holy Spirit:  about sin, righteousness, judgment, and things to come (John 16:8, 13).
4.  The confession of our sins (1 John 1:9).
5.  The realization that keeping God’s Laws are better for us anyway.
6.  We want to love and please God from our hearts, and not sin against Him.








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