Redemptive history finds its focal point in the person and work of Jesus Christ, as demonstrated in Galatians 4:4. The sermon traces God's faithfulness in keeping His promises from Genesis 3:15, where the seed of the woman is prophesied to crush the serpent's head, through the anticipation of Christ's coming in the Old Testament, to His ultimate fulfillment of all God's promises. This redemptive work, culminating in Christ's atoning sacrifice, signifies the total defeat of Satan and presents the church as God's ultimate display of grace. The sermon concludes by emphasizing that God always keeps His word, providing believers with confidence and assurance, and urges attention to His spoken word through Christ.
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And that is we're honoring graduates tonight. And it's another thing that you do that. And our prayers and our blessings upon those who have made it thus far in the educational process. It's a great thing to graduate and to learn. God has wondrously blessed us. Tonight you have a long-winded preacher. And I've been warned that if I don't quit at a good time, I'm going to lose you anyway.
So I'm going to try to behave myself tonight, but I'll be here again next Sunday night and we'll have the same subject. because this is simply the first in a series on the great subject of the highlights of redemptive history. And redemptive history is a glorious subject, at least it is to me. And I trust that we can make it not as we consider it together. So I invite you to the book of Galatians tonight, chapter four.
Galatians chapter four. and we shall begin our reading at verse four the focus of redemptive history is the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ and therefore we have in verse four of Galatians four but 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 you are sons, God has set forth the spirit of his son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Now let's look to the Lord in prayer. Our Father, in the precious name of the Lord Jesus, we want to thank you that you have made provision by your mercy and your grace to redeem a people a people whom you call your sheep. And we thank you that in the redemptive process you have given us much to study, wherein we can learn of these, and we learn that you're the God who is honest, and the God who is faithful, the God who keeps his word.
We thank you that you have kept your word to your dear Son, and you have kept your word to those to whom the promises were given, and we will rejoice together tonight in the revelation you've given us concerning your person and your work in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Tonight we begin our studies in the redemptive history and we see God announcing his purpose and then how God keeps his word. We begin tonight with how God keeps his word and then we shall look at the announcement of his redemptive purposes.
So when you come to verses like we read from Galatians chapter four, it deals with how God has kept his word. This is most important. And when we grasp this through the reading of Scripture, we don't want to drift because there has been many drifts in church history, not in redemptive history, but in church history, in this matter of examining how God has kept His Word. And I'm thinking of the...
of that heretic Marcion of the second century of church history. During that second century of Christianity, in Asia Minor, Marcion, who was quite powerful, he arose, and he purported his heresy And the distinctive heresy of Marcion lingered for a number of centuries in church history. And what Marcion taught was a discontinuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament.
What he simply taught was that the God of the New Testament could not be the God of the Old Testament. and the God of the Old Testament couldn't be the God of the New Testament. He believed and he taught a total discontinuity between the two and a total incompatibility between the two. And his discontinuity theory was indeed radical. Now, he was put out of the ministry, but he had made a Bible for himself and his followers.
There was no Old Testament to his Bible. And the New Testament was hacked up. It only contained one Gospel account. That was a hacked up version of the Gospel by Luke. and he had only ten epistles, and none of the pastoral epistles appeared in the Bible that Marcion had. But the trouble is the heresy of Marcion didn't really die, for in the nineteenth and twentieth century it has been revived.
in what we know of as a rise of liberalism. When liberalism arose in the church, they also wished to separate what they considered the primitive and the crude of the Old Testament from that which is revealed in the new. Schleiermacher, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he's the father of liberalism. and many have followed his heresy to this day. So when we begin our study in the highlights of redemptive history, we start at the beginning.
We start with Genesis three-fifteen, where God says that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. In other words, that From that moment on, in the history of mankind, we have the working out by God of his promise that he made to the serpent in the Garden of Eden. All of history, whether it's church history or whether it's profane history, it all has to do with the working out, whether it's understood by historians or not.
It is still the outworking of the program and the purposes of God. For the God we serve causes all things to work together for good, to them that love Him, and to them who are the called according to His purpose. I had a funeral here one afternoon with Brother McNeil. the husband of Mrs. Little died, I think I have the name correct at the time, and I spoke on the subject, what is God doing?
And in the course of that brief time I had at that funeral, I pointed out something that thrilled me. If you can be thrilled in the middle of a hurricane, then It must be something concerning the greatness of our God. Our hurricane was coming in on Wilmington, North Carolina, a number of years ago. And it was about seventy-five, I think, nineteen seventy-five. But instead of coming ashore, it went up the coast. And as it came up, the coast of New Jersey.
I saw this on television. I saw the Statue of Liberty being refurbished. It showed the Statue of Liberty there in the midst of the hurricane with all the scaffolding around it. Boy, it was scaffolded from the base all the way to the top. For men were working refurbishing the Statue of Liberty. My heart leaped for joy. For this reason. Everything that goes on in the world today is scaffolding.
That's what it is. It's scaffolding. The day came in... When Ronald Reagan, President, said, Turn on the lights, and there stood the Statue of Liberty, no scaffolding, refurbished in all the beauty of the Statue of Liberty. Everything that's taking place in the world is scaffolding to do one thing. present the church of Jesus Christ, the redeemed people of God to himself.
There's a day coming when to all the intelligences of the universe, God is going to magnify His great work in what He has done in taking on a people for His name in the fulfillment. of the promise he made to Satan when sin entered the human family in the Garden of Eden. Now you may think that they're making big decisions in Washington and in the Kremlin and in India and Pakistan or wherever or in Jerusalem.
But I'll tell you one thing, their decisions they're making are only scaffolding to show forth the glory and the grace of our God in the redemption of a people whom he's going to put on display as his own. And he'll be able to say, Behold, I and the children which God has given me, they're all here. There isn't a one missing. And that, beloved, will happen there won't be one who is missing therefore we come to Galatians chapter four verse four where we read but when the fullness of the time was come God sent forth his son made of a woman made under law to redeem them that were under law that we might receive the adoption of sons now when you read that what do those words mean to you Well, when I read when the fullness of the time was come, I notice, first
of all, it speaks of a time when God's dear Son, or Lord Jesus Christ, arrived on planet Earth. Furthermore, to use that expression when the fullness of time was come, it implied a period of preparation for that time. Who determined when the fullness of time was? God did. Therefore, there was preparation on the part of God for it. Furthermore, when we read when the fullness of that time was come, we find that previous to that was an era of anticipation.
When the coming of Christ was anticipated and by the law emphasis of the Old Testament it led to and it demonstrated a need for the coming of Christ. There was a genuine need for it. And you know that fits in well with what is revealed in Scripture up to this very point when the fullness of time has come. History had been running toward that very goal. Remember when our Lord Jesus as a baby was presented in the temple?
There was a woman there by the name of Anna. She was a widow. She was over eighty years of age. She spoke to all those who looked for redemption in Israel. There was an anticipation of his coming on the part of a remnant. In the last book of the Old Testament, the prophecy of Malachi, in chapter three and verse sixteen, we read, Then they that loved the Lord spake often one to another. And a book of remembrance was written concerning them that loved the Lord and that taught upon his name.
And the Lord harkened and heard it. So we read, and a book of remembrance was written concerning them of the Lord, and the thought upon his name. Therefore, when we read, when the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his son, made of a woman. Up to this point, history had been running toward that very thing. However, when I read Second Corinthians, chapter two, or chapter one in verse twenty I find that all the promises of God are yea and in him amen that verse tells me that all the promises of God in the Old Testament find their final consummation and fulfillment in the person of God's dear son it was Augustine who coined the phrase The old is in the new revealed, and the new is in the old concealed.
Now, when we come to the gospel accounts wherein we have the birth and the life of our blessed Lord, we find that he had quite a bit to say concerning himself in relation to the promises in the Old Testament. So you begin with Matthew chapter five, verse seventeen, where he says, Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill. In other words, the Old Testament law finds its fulfillment. It is filled to the full in the person of Christ.
But I'd like you to return with me to a few scriptures. Look at Luke in the gospel by Luke. Luke chapter ten and we want to read verses twenty three and twenty four Luke ten verse twenty three where we read and he turned him unto his disciples and said privately blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see For I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see, and have not seen them, and to hear those things which ye hear, and have not heard them.
In other words, those prophets and kings who understood the promises of God, they looked, and they wanted to see them. But of this person, the one of whom he could say, I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. You have revealed these things to babies. He said, Your eyes are blessed that see them. For here is the one who is the focal point of the redemptive program of God, saying, You've seen it.
You see these things. What did they see? Ah, beloved, they saw the miracles. They heard the words. They were blessed indeed. For they saw the kingdom in power. For that's what he told John the Baptist's disciples when they sent him, when John sent them to the Lord. But notice Luke chapter twenty-four. Go over to Luke twenty-four for a moment. There are a few verses here that are so important. Luke twenty four. Notice verse twenty seven.
Our Lord is speaking to the two on the road to Emmaus as he walked with them on resurrection night. And we read, And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself look at verse forty six or take verse forty five with it then opened he their understanding that they might understand the scriptures and said unto them thus it is written and thus it behooved to Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day In other words, he is telling the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, this is the focal point.
I am the focal point of redemptive history. It behooved me. It had to be done to fulfill the promises of God. Look over at John chapter five. The Gospel by John chapter five. And verse thirty nine. A verse that I often think of where it says, Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of me. All the promises of God in Christ are yea and in him.
Amen. Notice verse forty six. He says to those people, Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words? In other words, a person cannot hold the heresy of a Sharmacher or a Martian. and be a believer you can't do it if you believe Moses then you'll believe me if you don't believe Moses you won't believe me either in other words the God of the New Testament is the God of the Old Testament the God of the Old Testament is the God of the New Testament now there are many today who say we should study the Old Testament on its own terms.
But friends, if you leave out the Christological focus, all you have left is a historical grammatical. And we must read and study the Old Testament better than that. For the Old Testament speaks of Christ. So we see the Fulfillment of God's promises in Galatians four, verse four. When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth his son. But let's look at the promise itself. Genesis chapter three and verse fifteen. This is such a familiar passage.
We hardly should spend time with it, but we have to look at it to see what it really says. And it's so important. Genesis three, verse fifteen. And remember, this is spoken at the dawn of history, as it were. Immediately after man sinned, God came down and he asked questions. And to the serpent, he said in verse fifteen, and I will put enmity between thee and the woman. and between thy seed and her seed he shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel.
I want you to notice a number of things. This is a statement that he's made to the serpent, the devil, and it's very full of meaning. And if we fail to study this passage, this passage is a seed plot of the Bible. Everything that takes place from that point in human history to the culmination of human history finds its beginnings here. This is the seed plot of Holy Scripture. Now if we fail to study it, I want you to know something.
Rest assured of this. The devil has. The devil has studied this passage. It was spoken to him and he knows it real well. What have we learned from this? Number one, that the deliverer will be one of humanity. He's the seed of the woman. he will be a human being so therefore when you go through the Old Testament especially when you come down to the time of the flood we see how Satan he studied that passage and he tried to corrupt what the human family and he had managed to do it except for one man Noah Now there's something else here.
He not only will be one of humanity, but he's going to be a male descendant. Now when we had our children, when our first born came, I didn't know and my wife didn't know whether it was going to be a boy or a girl. All we could do was guess. All we could do is guess because it was going to be one or the other. So it was either going to be a boy or a girl. But God says the deliverer is going to be a boy. It's going to be a man. He shall crush the head of the serpent. The deliverer will be a man.
Furthermore, our passage says that the defeat of Satan will be total. He will crush the head of the serpent. Now, it is Christ Himself who identifies Himself as the deliverer and as the one who will bring this deliverance. And He makes use of this passage. In John chapter twelve and verse thirty-one, He says, Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out and then he tells us how he will do it how he will accomplish this defeat he said and I if I be lifted up I will draw all unto me that's how he's going to accomplish it somehow in that passage of our Lord in John twelve immediately before the cross Our Lord says how
he's going to defeat the tempter and somehow he's going to do it by dying. If I be lifted up, I will draw all unto me. Now the Apostle Paul, he refers to this promise in Romans chapter sixteen and verse twenty where he says, and I love this verse, Romans sixteen, verse twenty, has been a thrill to me. It says, And the God of peace shall bruise Satan shortly under your feet. When you think that through, where was Satan defeated?
At the cross. He was thoroughly defeated at the cross. And the Apostle John tells us, In this the Son of God was manifested that he might disintegrate, that he might destroy the works of the devil. However, God in his infinite purposes, while he totally defeated Satan at the cross, he's waiting, he's waiting to execute the sentence of judgment upon him. And he's going to do it under our feet.
I don't know if that's real to you or not. But such a relationship we have with a redeemer that it's going to take place in that way. Now, here's the future hope that is expressed by Paul. And he's looking forward to it. And this fits well with Revelation chapter twenty. It just fits with Revelation chapter twenty, where we have the final doom of Satan and he's being cast into hell. God will crush Satan. The God of peace will crush Satan shortly under your feet.
What can we conclude from this passage? we conclude that Satan's defeat was accomplished at the cross and will be brought to fruition at the coming again of our Lord Jesus Christ. Beloved, the coming of the Lord is the blessed hope of his people. Prophecy. Oh, we get all excited about prophecy. Prophecy does not point to a single act, but to a person who will bring it about in a succession of acts.
What he accomplished in his first Advent, our Blessed Lord, waits the final fulfillment when he returns in his glory and the saints of God are going to return with him and Satan will then be crushed under our feet. Well, since we have that social time tonight, I just want to make two quick applications. Now, you have to be careful with preachers.
because we follow apostolic order when Paul when Paul said finally he usually had two more pages to go in your Bible read the book of Ephesians and you'll find that to be true so you can't tell how long I'm going to take yet but application number one God keeps his word God keeps his word, beloved. This is a challenge to the man on the street. The man on the street doesn't really believe that God keeps his word. But he does.
And God may let two thousand years pass between Satan's defeat and the final crushing of his head but he keeps his word God promises and he keeps his word to everyone who trusts Christ that he'll receive eternal life God keeps his word but God promises judgment an eternal hell to everyone who bypasses the sayer.
Now that's a challenge to the man on the street. God keeps his word. What does that do for the child of God? That gives him two things. It gives him confidence. Boy, I have confidence in this book. I have confidence in this book. But it also gives me something else. It gives me assurance. Not only confidence, but also assurance. God keeps his word. But it gives me something else. If I keep going on these something elsees, it'll take quite a while.
I have a long fight on it. God not only gives confidence and assurance, but it teaches me that God is in full control of all the events in the universe. I have a God who is able. That's what I read in Philippians chapter three. In Philippians three it says, He is able. I'm trying to think of the verse. It's verse ten. He is able to subdue all things unto himself.
He's able. A lady in one of my Bible classes gave me a Christmas gift a few years ago. I think it was, it looked like a pocket watch. But it wasn't. It was cross stitch. And she had written some words, three words. He is able. Oh, friends, she couldn't have given me anything better. He is able. To be reminded day by day, our God is able. He's able. Application number two. God does not speak in vain.
God does not speak in vain. Hebrews chapter two and verse three says, How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Redemptive history culminates in the person of God's dear son. And the word in Hebrews chapter two is, Don't let it slip. to use the language that Hebrews two is based upon from the book of Proverbs. Don't let it pass by in front of your eyes without paying attention to it. You know how you can do. You can just ignore it. Just bad cough.
You can just ignore it, you see. Don't let it slip by in front of your eyes. Hebrews chapter twelve verse twenty five says see that ye refuse not him that speaketh God has spoken beloved Hebrews one says God has spoken in his son and that's final have you paid attention to what he said to use our brother Stephen Orford's message at Gene Phillips' funeral, now is the day of salvation.
It's now. It's not tomorrow. Now is the accepted time. God doesn't speak in vain. See that he refused, not him who has spoken from heaven. Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank you for the privilege tonight to open your word and to rejoice together with the people of God as one who finds great spoil. And we thank you for the focal point of redemptive history, even thy dear son. Now we want to thank you for those who are being honored tonight, who have passed through twelve years of school.
We thank you for them. We ask you to give them wisdom in the coming years, in the coming days. Help them to realize that determining priorities is most important. And your great priority for your people is seek ye first. That's priority. The kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Father, we thank you for the saints here who do this, who provide, who encourage, and who bless their young people.
And we pray that we may ever rejoice in the confidence and assurance that we have in thy dear son, that you don't speak in vain, you keep your word, and our joy shall be in him who gives us this assurance. In his worthy name we give you thanks. Amen.