I think I'll start a minute early. He won't land. I think I did. I don't know. I may have gotten him.
I don't know. I don't see him down there. All
right. Sorry, brother. All right. Let's get the spasm
out. Alright, be turning to John chapter
7, that's where our text is found in verse 7. And, when our Lord
came in the flesh to fulfill the will and purpose of the Father,
every word that He spoke, And every deed that he performed
manifested in his hearers, in the men, which saw him and witnessed
him, it manifested whose seed they are. And the world, which
is the seed of the serpent, in them was manifested hatred for
Christ. They hated Christ. They were
offended by his words. They were offended by the things
he did, and they would go away. They were angry. They even wanted
to murder him and destroy his life. Turn over to John 8. John
8, verse 40. It's a little lengthy, but it'll
help us in our study here. John 8.40 Our Lord said, But
now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth,
which I have heard of God. This did not Abraham, the boast
of the Jews being in Abraham as their father, And the Lord
says in verse 41, ye do the deeds of your father. And they said
to him, we be not born of fornication. We have one father, even God. And Jesus said unto them, if
God were your father, ye would love me. He would love me. If God is your father, you will
love his Christ. You will love his salvation.
If God is not your father, you will hate his Christ. You will
hate the Christ. You will hate his salvation.
He says, you would love me for I proceeded forth and came from
God. Neither came I of myself, but
he sent me. Why do you not understand my
speech? even because ye cannot hear my
word. Why can't they hear? Whose seed
are they? Ye are of your father the devil,
and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer
from the beginning, an abode not in the truth, because there
is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh
of his own. For he is a liar, and the father
of it. And because I tell you the truth,
ye believe me not." A man or a woman should be very
concerned when they are offended by the truth of Christ. They should be very concerned
for their soul when they're offended by the truth of Christ and turn
away from hearing Him. Man's excuse when they hear the
truth of God is, I don't like what I heard. It's truth, but
if they don't like it, then they're offended and they turn away from
it. And they justify themselves saying,
well, that can't be the spirit of God because I don't like it. It's like the men said in John
6, who said, this is a hard saying. Who can hear it? I can't hear
it. No one can. I have the spirit
of God. And if I can't hear it, then
no one can. But the Lord tells us that the
truth is that they cannot hear his word. They cannot hear his
truth and abide in it and are offended and forsake the hearing
of the Lord. But the seed of Christ, Christ's
seed, was manifested, and then he came to redeem. His people
will love him, and his people cannot leave him or abandon him. He came to save a people, and
they shall hear and be fed and taught of the Lord. When Peter
answered the Lord, when our Lord asked him, but who do you say
I, the Son of Man, am? And Peter answered, saying, thou
art the Christ, the Son of the living God. And the Lord said to Peter, Jesus
answered him and said, blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah. for
flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which
is in heaven." So Christ revealed that when we know a thing, our
love for Christ is because God has revealed that to us. We have
nothing to boast in of our flesh, of ourselves, of our works. It's
by the grace and mercy of God that we hear His Son and believe
Him. And if you understand who makes
the difference in men, those that believe as opposed to those
that do not believe, then you can understand why our Lord said
to his unbelieving family members in John 7, verse 7, he said,
the world cannot hate you. He's saying, you're of this world,
you're like this world, you're of the same seed as they of this
world. But me, it hateth. because I
testify of it that the works thereof are evil." When I was
preparing this, I I remembered that many years ago, decades
ago now, I was at a job and I had, you know the people at work that
you work with and they're your acquaintances, and I had a friend
there, someone that would talk to me, an acquaintance, she was
a friend, and we were talking one day and I said to her, I'm
a Christian. I remember I just said, I'm a
Christian, and her face contorted and she got red and angry and
began to argue with me just because I was a Christian, because I
said the name of Christ. And it confirms to us what the
Lord said in Luke 21 verse 17, and ye shall be hated of all
men for my name's sake. Everything was fine before. We
could talk fine. But as soon as I said I was a
Christian, she hated me and never spoke to me again, in part because
within a week or two, she became ill and had to take a leave of
absence for a year. And then when the year came up,
she never returned, and they terminated her. But we see there
that there's a hatred in those of this world for Jesus Christ. Why does the world hate Christ? He tells us in verse 7, Me it
hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are
evil. And the easiest way that you
can remember, if you're wondering, why does the world hate Christ? An easy way to remember why the
world hates Christ is because his coming into the world was
to redeem a people. He came to redeem a people. And the hatred of this world
is all around that truth, that Christ came into the world to
redeem a people. So another way of saying it is,
Christ came into the world to redeem a people, and that fact
testifies that this world's works are evil. They're evil. And therefore, the world hates
Christ. It hateth Christ. And so that's
our focus for the message today, is Christ came into the world
to redeem his people. To redeem his people. I've titled
the message, To Redeem a People. But we're going to first look
at the enmity that must be removed from His people. When Christ
came, He came to remove the enmity that's in his people, to give
them light and life in himself. And we have to go back to creation
to see where this enmity came from. How did we, the seed of
Christ, we that believe on him, how did we get this enmity in
us? Where did this come from? Well,
we're gonna look at the fall of man, and we find that there,
when we rightly understand the fall of man, then we can rightly
understand truth, because all of the truth of our salvation
is founded upon what we learn of the fall of man in sin. If we don't rightly understand
what sin is, and how it's corrupted man, it's defiled him, ruined
him, and made him unable to know the true and living God by any
work or thought in himself of the Lord. We need a salvation
and a Savior. God has provided salvation in
the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not by our works, it's not
by our knowledge, it's not by the things that we do, it's by
the grace of God. And so we're gonna look at this
fall here. And when Christ came in the flesh, when our Lord came
to this world in the flesh, it confirmed everything that God
had declared there in the garden. It confirms for us the truth
that we did fall in Adam. and we need a savior. This testimony
of God is that man is fallen in sin and he's ruined by the
fall. Paul said that we, all of us,
come forth dead in trespasses and sins, dead. And that means
that we cannot do anything for ourselves. We don't look to a
corpse to do anything. And neither does the Lord look
to us who are dead to do anything to save ourselves. Christ said,
the world hates me because I testify of it that the works thereof
are evil. And this world's works are evil
ever since man fell in the garden where the Lord God who created
him put him. He put him in the garden and
that's where he fell. What's amazing is that it's been
thousands of years since man fell and all of the rebellion,
all of the rebellion and the warring and fighting and enmity
against the true and living God, all it's done is served to glorify. our God. It glorifies God and
it proves the truth of His Word. It proves the necessity of His
Word, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's because everything
God said to man in the garden is testified as truth in the
Lord Jesus Christ. When He came there in the flesh
to redeem a people, It's all testified and verifying exactly
what the Lord said would happen. It would come to pass, and it's
the only way of salvation that God has appointed for men. When
God made man, he was sinless. He was made holy, sinless, without
sin, not corrupted. And God put one restriction upon
man's liberty, one restriction upon man's liberty, and it concerns
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And he said at
the end of, well, Genesis 2, at the end of verse 16, going
into verse 17, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely
eat. But of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day
that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. Prior to man's fall, there was
no need of redemption. Prior to his fall and sin, he
didn't need to be redeemed. He had fellowship with God. But
man rebelled against God, and we're told in Romans 5.12 that
sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed
upon all men, for that all have sinned. so that when Adam fell,
his perfect state was ruined. He was immediately corrupted
by sin and he died spiritually, meaning that fellowship and that
friendship that he had with God was lost. And in his heart, enmity
was formed. Enmity for God, hatred for God,
hatred for the true and living God who created him. We are told
in Romans 8 that the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it
is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. And
when they sinned, when Adam sinned, the eyes of them both were open. They saw things that they hadn't
seen before. And instead of life and liberty,
they now felt guilt. They saw they were naked, exposed
to the living God, and they were ashamed of it. They were ashamed
of it, and they felt for the first time sorrow, And they were
in bondage. They came into bondage. They
were corrupted. Their eyes were open, but not
to do good, but to see and to hear and to behold evil and to
be corrupted in their heart and to experience enmity against
God, their creator. And they even physically began
to die. They began to deteriorate and
break down and waste away to the time appointed when they
should give up the ghost. And so the truth of this is revealed
to us. We see it. We know the truth
that man has fallen, that man is a sinner. Universally, everyone
you know is a sinner. Everyone we know. is sinful. There's not a single person we
know that is without sin. Even that that fellow that would
say, well, not my mother or not my grandmother. No, that man's
a liar. He's the one that's lying. God
tells the truth. We've all fallen in sin. There's
none righteous. No, not one. We all have come
short of the glory of God. Universally, we see that all
are sinners. And that's what the word tells
us. Universally, we see that all come into sickness and sorrow. Our bodies break down and we
experience diseases and sicknesses and loss and sorrow and pain
and suffering. That's universal to every one
of us. And then we see the universality
of death. everyone we know eventually dies. We too shall die. This body shall
go back to the dust, just as the Lord said. In spite of everything
that man is trying to do to extend his life and to spare his life
and never die, the Lord tells him, you shall surely die and
stand before the Lord God in judgment. And so our sin in us
and what we see made evident and plain to us in the world,
and everyone that we know, including ourselves, it comes down to this
fact that we all descended from Adam. And Adam fell in sin, and
we were in Adam, and we sinned in Adam, and we come forth and
we commit sin and rebellion against the true and living God because
we're born of Adam's sin-corrupted seed. We're born of his sin-corrupted
seed, and so the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to redeem a
people testifies to us that the Lord God has a people whom he
loves, whom he will be gracious to. He didn't destroy us because
he has a people that he chose for himself for his son to be
his bride and committed our care and our well-being and our salvation
to the Lord Jesus Christ. Because we cannot save ourselves,
but he is able and has accomplished the salvation of his people. He is the successful savior. And the hatred for Christ that
this fallen world has testifies that there's a people who are
not his. And they will not hear what he says. And it testifies
why they hate him. Because he came to redeem a people,
and it testifies that our works are wicked. And that brings us
to the next point where we see that man cannot save himself. Our God, in his word, he testifies
that we died spiritually, that we lost that fellowship with
our God. We lost the friendship of God
and the light of his knowledge and understanding of him. We
must be born again. But this truth that man is spiritually
dead has not stopped him from being religious. We know religion
abounds in this world. There's many religions right
here in Springfield, Missouri area. There's many religions,
and there's many religions throughout the world. And Christ, Christ
coming in the flesh testifies that all those religions are
of man. They're of the flesh, and they
cannot save. Had Christ not come, we might
think that perhaps there's something there in one of them where we
can be restored to that fellowship with God. But the coming of Christ
declares, We cannot save ourselves. He alone is the salvation that
God has appointed, just as he said, back in the garden. So our Lord said, this world
hates me because I testify of it that the works thereof are
evil. And that means that all the works
in the religion of men, those works are evil. God is not pleased
with man's attempt at righteousness. You know, Satan, he doesn't care
if you're religious or you're moral and you appear to be good
before men. The one thing he blinds men from
is the blood of Christ. He blinds men from seeing their
need of Christ and the sufficiency of Christ and that in him alone
is life and redemption and reconciliation with the Father. You could be
as religious as you want to be in Satan's kingdom. He could
care less. The sins that we commit come
out of our hearts because they're defiled and corrupt and wicked.
But that evil one spends his time creating religion and making
people religious and keeping them happy in their morality.
because they're still corrupt and defiled and have no life
before God. And so Christ coming to redeem
a people means that man cannot save himself. His works gain
no merit with the Father and give him no life and no standing
before God. And so man's religious works
and his attempts to please God and impress God with what he
does and the sacrifices he makes, in God's sight, in God's eyes,
in God's sight, his works are evil. They're evil. And that's what Christ testifies
of after God cursed the serpent. It was after he cursed the serpent
that he then preached the gospel. He declared the gospel. And in
the audience, which heard him speak, were two guilty, helpless
sinners. I say this because that's what
we are. Guilty, helpless sinners. Every one of us. Hear what the
Lord says. There stood two guilty, helpless
sinners who had just offended holy God. They just broke his
law. They just did what he said not
to do. Right after that, the Lord preached
the gospel to them. He preached the gospel of salvation,
the gospel of grace to them. They had lost everything and
they had no means of life and no means of gaining acceptance
with God. They had no ability to restore
life and liberty. They were dead. but God did a
gracious thing in declaring by his word redemption by the blood
of Christ." Redemption by the blood of Christ. And he says
to them, he says, there's going to be conflict, there's going
to be war, there's going to be enmity between the seed of the
serpent and the seed of the woman. There's going to be war and conflict
and enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed, singular,
Jesus Christ, the seed of woman, so that God, through sovereign
election, divides between the sons and the daughters of Adam
and Eve, and he predestinates them, God making a distinction
between the seed of the serpent and the seed of Christ. Our God did that, and he preached
that and declared it. Listen to Genesis 3.15. He says, I will put enmity between
thee, speaking of the serpent, and the woman, and between thy
seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel. And so Christ came to redeem
a people, and him doing that declares what God declared in
the garden some 6,000 plus years ago. And it declares to us that
God is true, and every man is a liar, but God is true, and
what he declared is necessary for our salvation, that God would
provide the land. otherwise we cannot be saved. If we're to be given life and
light and to have this salvation, this fellowship with our God
restored, that we're to be reconciled to the Holy God, we must be redeemed. We must come under the blood
of Christ and be washed by his blood. He must wash us, put away
our sins. And the way he did that is coming
and taking the place of his people. And in their room instead, he
died under the wrath of God, having fulfilled all the law
of God perfectly, having fulfilled all righteousness. And we in
him fulfill all righteousness. We died in him. We were buried
in him. And we were raised again to newness
of life in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He's everything
to the believer. He is all our salvation, all
sufficient, all we need to stand before holy God. And in Him,
even now, we that believe Him and hear His word and look to
Him having no other righteousness, no other hope of salvation, even
now you have life. and the light of God, and have
fellowship with God, and know Him. God is your Father, and
the Lord Jesus Christ." Here's the testimony of the Gospel revealed
in Christ's coming. He says in Galatians 4, verse
4, Galatians 4, verse 4 through
6, that when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth
his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them
that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption
of sons. And because ye are sons, God
hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying,
Abba, Father. You believe because of the grace
of God in giving you faith, in turning you from trusting your
own works and your own thoughts and the dead religion of men. God has given you hope and faith
in the Lord Jesus Christ. The light of God in the face
of Jesus Christ has shined into our dark hearts. and we've been
called out by him into the light and life and fellowship with
our God. And the apostles confirm it in Acts 4.12, saying, neither
is there salvation in any other, for there is none other name
under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. There's no other religion or
morality that we can flee to. to be reconciled to God and to
have hope and life of our Father. It's in Christ alone. And so
all the religion of men is vanity, it's vain, it's corrupt, it's
rebellion against God. Christ came to redeem a people,
condemns unbelieving man. It condemns man who is religious
and whose religion cannot save them. because it denies the truth
of God. It says, Lord, you're lying.
That's not the only way of salvation. And any time we try to add to
the work of God, thinking that he needs us to do something more
to be justified and to just make sure that God will really be
okay with us, that's not trusting the blood of Christ alone. That's
seeking to add something to it. We do walk in good works. We
do bear fruits of righteousness in love, in joy, in thankfulness,
in peace, trusting that Christ has already accomplished our
salvation. Because man refuses to hear God
and believe his word of promise made to his people and fulfilled
in the Lord Jesus Christ, we see the Lord tells us that he's
condemned. John 3, 19 and 20 says, this
is the condemnation. Light is coming to the world.
That's Jesus Christ. And men love darkness rather
than light because their deeds are evil. For everyone that doeth
evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his
deeds should be reproved. And so Christ Jesus is the light
of God. And that light reproves the works
of men. It testifies everything you're
doing over here is evil. It cannot save. It cannot work
a salvation for you. It will not earn the favor of
God. But all that come to me, shall have rest and peace in
your souls because God has sent the Christ, the Lord Jesus Christ,
for this very purpose. put away our sins, to reconcile
us to God, to do that which none of our works could ever do between
us and God. Christ has restored that which
is lost. Christ has gone out seeking his
lost sheep and has brought them into the fold. And all who hear
his word and hear that he is the Savior, and they that believe
on Him and look to Him and trust Him, they have everlasting life
and forgiveness with God. And so Christ, those that don't
want to hear it, they're reproved and they're angered and they're
frustrated and defended by these truths. That is, that's how we
all are until the Lord regenerates us, gives us a new birth, born
of his seed, because that seed of Adam is corrupt and defiled
and unable to believe. But the new man, born of the
seed of Christ, can only believe and cannot sin, can't do anything
but believe the true and living God. Now in closing, let me just
say, Adam and Eve, when their eyes were open, they knew they
were naked. And they ran into the woods and
they sewed aprons to cover their nakedness, made of fig leaves.
made of fig leaves, and they did it to cover their shame and
nakedness. And yet, when they heard the voice of God walking
in the garden, it didn't take away their fear. They were still
afraid. But man in his religion today is still trying to cover
his nakedness with his works. He's still, by religion, by morality,
by doing a good thing or a good work, he's trying to sew together
a covering for his nakedness, just like the fig leaf covering
that Adam and Eve made. And Christ's coming declares
to us, even now, that all that is evil. It cannot save it. God will not receive us. The way I know that is when Adam
and Eve, having made those aprons, when they stood there in their
apron coverings that they had made for themselves, God cursed
them. God cursed Eve and God cursed,
He cursed the woman and He cursed man while they were standing
there in their fig leaf covering. And that tells us that anything
we do of this flesh and religion trying to earn a salvation does
not cover nakedness. God sees right through it. He's
not satisfied with it. But he tells us that there is
one whose covering is sufficient to cover all our nakedness and
all our shame, to put away our sin. That's the blood righteousness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's the one in whom the Father
delights and he sent him into the world to save his people.
Look to the Lord Jesus Christ. There is no salvation in any
other but him. And the Lord gives us a picture
of that. After he declared the gospel, we're told that the Lord
went and slew a lamb. It doesn't say a lamb, but I
know it is. It's lambs. He slew a lamb for Adam and Eve,
and he covered them with coats of skin as a picture where they
were looking to the promise of the seed of woman that the Lord
had promised should come, that the Lamb of God, the Lord Jesus
Christ, would come and He would lay down His life, a sacrifice
for us, and shed His blood to put away our sin. And so, When Christ came in the
flesh to fulfill the will and purpose of the Father, every
word he spoke, every deed he performed, it manifests in us
whose seed we are. And we need not wonder who they
are, because Christ says in John 3.36, and I'll close with this.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life. And he that believeth not the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. I pray the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Spirit of God, reveal in your hearts the Lord Jesus Christ
and give you faith to look to him and believe him alone. God bless you. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, Lord, we
thank you for your mercy. We thank you for your grace in
the Lord Jesus Christ. Lord, we thank you for your gospel
and for the hope that you give to fallen men that hear that
we are sinners and cannot save ourselves. Lord, thank you for
providing a salvation in your son, Lord, fill our hearts with
hope and faith in him and let us look nowhere else for righteousness,
but to your righteousness and your salvation alone. It's in
the Lord Jesus Christ that we pray this, amen. All right, brethren. So we'll
start just a couple of minutes after 11.