A Ransom for Many: The Ultimate Purpose of Jesus’ Birth

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Welcome to this weekend’s In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. Prepare your heart to celebrate the birth of Jesus by discovering how God’s perfect plan unfolded. The child laid in a manger was more than just a baby. He was the Savior who came to fulfill His purpose. Join us today for this powerful message on the ransom for many.

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This is the second in a series of messages on why Jesus came. And if you’ll turn to Matthew chapter 20, I want us to read two verses. And we will depart from these two verses and start in Genesis and show you one of the most important reasons Jesus came. In fact, of all the reasons, it is the ultimate reason for which he came. So in this particular passage, Jesus is talking to his disciples about a request that one of their mothers had made. And she wanted their sons to be able to sit on his right hand in the kingdom. And so this brought up the subject of having a servant spirit. And so he says in verse 27 of Matthew 20, And whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant. Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister and to give his life a ransom for many. A ransom is a substitute for something else. And what he’s saying is that he came as a substitute for many. Not to preach, not to teach, not to heal, although those things were a part of his ministry. He came to die. For you and for me. And to begin, let’s go all the way back to Genesis chapter 3, if you will. And if you’ll just turn with me to these passages and get your pencil and paper and jot down these verses, it’ll be far more meaningful to you to do that than simply to listen without doing so. Let’s begin where the problem started. God’s perfect creation, the problem developed in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 6 when the Bible says that Eve took the fruit thereof of the tree, ate and gave it to her husband and he ate. The result of that was, of course… that sin entered the world and sin separated God from man. Immediately in verse 15, God came to Adam and Eve and offered to them a word of promise, though he gave this word of promise to them, but he spoke it in a word to Satan when he said, verse 15, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed, woman doesn’t have a seed, it shall bruise thy head and thou shall bruise his heel. And that is, here is the first implication here of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Then if you’ll notice in verse 23, here is the result of their sin. Verse 21 says, Did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothe them? Who made the coats of skin? God did it. Now, with that in mind, I want you to see that in the very beginning when man sinned the first time, God assumed the responsibility for the covering of man’s sin. And he killed some animal in the garden in order to make skins for Adam and Eve. Well, you go on through Genesis and you’ll recall that when Abraham was to offer Isaac on Mount Moriah, Isaac asked him the question. He says, we have the wood, but where is the lamb? And you’ll recall what Abraham said. Abraham said, my son, God will provide the lamb. Now if you’ll turn to Exodus chapter 12 and let me give you a description of something here because all of this is very essential to fully understanding what happened the night Jesus Christ was born and why things are and were as they were. In the 12th chapter of Exodus, you’ll recall the nation of Israel, then the tribe of Jacob, the family of Jacob, having grown from 70 to somewhere between a million and a half and possibly three million people. Here they are in Egyptian bondage now, about to be released, and God says to them, choose a spotless, blemishless lamb, and you’re to kill it and sacrifice it. It is the blood that will be your protection and your salvation. in this night of judgment and your symbol of deliverance out of egyptian bondage into a life of freedom on your way to the promised land so that in the old testament those old testament saints knew the meaning of a covenant and they knew the meaning of sacrifice and they knew the meaning of the blood and god said to them in every generation hereafter you ought to practice this because this was the passover As they shed the blood and the death angel passed over, all those who were in the house of a blood-touched lentil were saved. Now with that in mind and the people of God knowing that, move on up, if you will, to Isaiah chapter 53. And you’ll recall in this chapter that here is a picture that God gave to Isaiah of the Messiah. He says in verse 3, He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid as it were our faces from him. He was despised and we esteemed him not. Then if you’ll recall in verse 4 what he says, surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted, but he was wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquity. The chastisement of our peace was upon him and with his stripes we are healed. Then if you’ll notice in verse 7, he was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. Now, if you recall for just a moment how Jesus stood before Pilate, and in the days of his trial, he never defended himself. He said he was smitten, and they hit him with a rod, they spit in his face, they crowned him with thorns, they beat upon him, and finally they crucified him. He was a man smitten, bearing our transgressions and our iniquities, and if you’ll notice what he says, that he was led as a lamb… Here’s what I want you to see. The lamb was the picture of sacrifice all through the Old Testament. When Isaiah prophesying, God giving him the vision of the Christ of the Messiah, how did he picture him? Not as those in the days in which Jesus Christ came pictured the Messiah. He’s not pictured here as some commanding general with this tremendous army behind him. He’s not considered some military genius or some military strategist. He’s pictured not as a king, not as a warrior. not as the great leader of mankind, but he’s pictured as a lamb as brought before its shearers and as a sheep before her shearers, a lamb before the slaughter, so will come the one who will bear your transgressions so you will not have to bear them. One who will bear your iniquities so you will not have to bear them. One who will carry your guilt. Who will provide for your pardon. Who will pay the penalty. Who will be the ransom and the substitute for your sin. He is a lamb slain before the shearers and before the slaughterers. Now when you look at that passage and you begin to see that all through the Old Testament, over and over and over again, you remember the times and how often God spoke to them very precisely about the sacrificial offering. Because you see, God intended to portray and to picture and to describe to the nation of Israel from the very beginning that their Messiah would come in a form and a fashion that they wouldn’t look for Him. And when He came, you’ll recall when He began to talk about The way he would accomplish God’s will, they could not accept it. Well, if you’ll turn on over to John chapter 1 for just a moment, and you’ll recall when Jesus shows up, having been born of Mary, not of Joseph, but of Mary, when he comes upon the scene in the 29th verse of John chapter 1, you’ll notice in this particular passage, in verse 29, how John the Baptist, who was his cousin, identifies Jesus when he shows up on the scene at the River Jordan. The next day, John sees Jesus coming unto him and says, Behold, listen. Now listen, John the Baptist is the last of the Old Testament prophets. The first of the New Testament prophets. Jesus Christ was his cousin. Listen to what John said. The next day he says, Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man who is preferred before me. For listen, listen, he was before me. John the Baptist, the first of the New Testament prophets, the last of the Old Testament prophets, God gave him the understanding that Jesus, his cousin, was not just his cousin. That Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was God’s foreordained, predestined Lamb to be slain before the world because of the sins of mankind. And therefore, when he saw him that day, he didn’t say, here comes your king, though he knew he would be a king. He didn’t say, here comes your prince, though he knew he would be a prince. He didn’t simply say, here comes your savior, though he knew he would be their savior. He didn’t say, behold the deliverer of Israel. He said, behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. Because John the Baptist knew that the Messiah… was to be in the form of a lamb. And through God’s great wisdom, he would confound the wisdom of the mighty. He would confound the wisdom of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. And even though they understood much of the scriptures of the Old Testament, they could not understand how the Christ could at the same time be a dying Messiah. It didn’t all fit. So Jesus is beginning to break the news to them. He says, I’m going to be a substitute. Watch this. I’m going to be a substitute in order that you will not have to die in your sins. I’m going to take your iniquities, your transgressions, your burdens and your griefs upon me. If you recall in Luke chapter 19, a little passage here that most of us learned as kids, we didn’t understand the meaning of it, but we understood about Zacchaeus, who was a short little fellow who couldn’t see Jesus when the big crowd came along. So he climbed up in a sycamore tree and Jesus came by. And he says, when Jesus looked up in verse five, he said to make haste. And come down, for today I must abide at thy house. And verse 10 says, Jesus saying to him, The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost. And then back, if you will, to 1 Timothy. What Paul is saying to Timothy here, reminding him of this, he says in verse 15, This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation. He said, this saying is worthy of the acceptance of every man, everywhere, under every condition, that Christ Jesus came into the world for the purpose of saving sinners of whom he says, I am chief. Not only is the whole Old Testament the prophecy of the coming of the Messiah, who is the Lamb? But likewise, Jesus said, I am come to give my life a ransom for many. I’ve come to seek and to save that which is lost. Jesus Christ came in the form of a gentle lamb in order to lay down his life for you and me that our sins might be forgiven. We may be pardoned of all our iniquity. We may understand what it means to be in Christ Jesus, clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ and becoming joint heirs with him for all eternity. Now with that in mind, I want us to go to the Bethlehem scene for just a moment. Here is the Lord Jesus Christ who has been born, not of Joseph, the Bible says, but of Mary. Now let me show you why. Because here in the Bethlehem scene, we see this little babe cuddled up in the arms of Mary and lying in the manger. But I want you to see something. If we understand the scene as it really is, I want you to see how perfectly, precisely, exactly God does everything. And the reason I want you to see that is because not only will He do exactly and precisely in the things that He does in the Bible, He wants to do the very same thing with you. And I mentioned last Sunday about what he says in Galatians chapter 4. In the fullness of God’s time, he sent forth his only begotten son, born of woman, born under the law. God set history in motion. Politics, the social life, the religious life, the men in places of authority, the languages, everything fit into a perfect groove to fit God’s perfect timing for the coming of Jesus Christ. Well, we talk and we make a very sentimentality out of the birth of Jesus Christ that Mary and Joseph came to the inn and knocked on the inn door. And you and I know the response, sorry, no room. And so we know the story that they went out in the cave somewhere where the cows and the sheep and everything else was there, whatever was there. Anyway, it certainly wasn’t a place to be born. That is, unless you were born a lamb. And if you were born a lamb, you wouldn’t be born in a motel. You’d be born in a stable somewhere. Amen? So you see, God didn’t make any mistakes. When Jesus Christ was born that night in Bethlehem, shepherds, Mary, Joseph, but what is that she held in her arms? She held a lamb. She held the Lamb of God in her arms. A tiny, precious little baby, silken-like skin, who said, I’m sure, in his first words in Hebrew, Dada and Mama. I don’t know what that’d be in Hebrew, but that night couldn’t say a word because that night a little lamb was born to a mother and to a father. God said to Moses hundreds of years before, a little lamb without spot and without blemish has to be perfect. You’re to cut his throat, shed the blood, place the blood on the doorpost of Gentiles. That’ll be your salvation. That’ll be your deliverance. That’ll be your exodus. That’ll be your freedom. That’s the door to freedom when you walk through two walls of blood covered on the top of the blood of the lamb. God, precisely and exactly, minutely, in perfect detail, has governed and guided and controlled every single facet of the redemption plan whereby you and I, 2,000 years later, can be saved by His grace. So what happened there at the manger scene, Mary gave birth to a little lamb that was conceived by the Holy Spirit of the living God. Listen, the same Holy Spirit who with Jesus and the Father… created this world and made man so that what happened that night was that the lamb of god which take it the way the sin of the world was born in a stable where lambs ought to be born well when you think about all of that and realize that when you look at that say let me just say this thing i don’t know how to say this but just out of my heart I believe the time has come for God’s people to start thinking about Christmas the way it ought to be thought about. This is the Jesus time. This is the birthday of the Messiah. This is the birthday of Christ. This is the birthday of the Son of God. That night a little lamb, predestined before the first lamb was ever even made, Before the first lamb was ever even named. Before the first square inch of this earth was ever thought into being. And before this globe was hung in space. God foreordained that night that a little lamb would be born. And that lamb would be the pivotal point of all of history. And the point of worship for all mankind. God walking in the flesh on this earth. And he came, my friend, to die for you. The Lamb came and died so that you wouldn’t have to die in your sin, but rather that the gift of everlasting life might be yours the moment you accept Jesus Christ as your Savior by personal faith in him. Let me ask you a question. If the sovereign omniscient all-knowing God exercised his omnipotence over ages of time, controlling men who did not even know he existed, controlling languages and nations, controlling every facet of human life in order to bring Jesus to the very year prophesied hundreds of years before by the prophet Daniel, to come to the cross and die for your sins. And if he himself said, I’m the ransom that’s come to take your place, the only substitute acceptable before God. Would you not agree, my friend, that for you one day to stand before God and tell him that you want to be accepted on the basis of how good you’ve been, wouldn’t you agree that is the epitome of pride and arrogance? You see, Christmas is about a lamb coming upon which the sins of mankind was placed. And at Calvary… He became your ransom and mine, that you and I may be freed and delivered for eternity. And I want to ask you, my friend, if you’ve never accepted Jesus Christ, listen, there’s only one way, and that’s why we read, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, the Lamb, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

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Thank you for listening to A Ransom for Many. If you’d like to know about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.