Galatians 3:13, 14 - "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree: that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ; that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith."
Thank God for Jesus Christ. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us because cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree. And that is so the blessing of Abraham might come on us through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. Take a look at this scripture line by line.
Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law. That means we are going to have to go back into the Old Covenant of the Law of Moses and find out from what we are redeemed.
Christ was made a curse for us because cursed is everyone that hangs from a tree. So our Lord Jesus Christ was made a curse for us. That means he substituted himself for us and was actually made a curse because he hung on a tree when he died on the cross for us.
And all this was done for us so that the blessing of Abraham might come upon us. It is so that we might receive the promise of the Holy Spirit and all the blessings of God and to receive them by faith.
Now this last point is important to understand because of what was previously mentioned in Galatians 3:5 - "He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?"
We not only receive the Holy Spirit and the blessings from God through Jesus Christ by faith, it is by faith that God ministers to us and works miracles for us by the Holy Spirit by that same faith through Jesus Christ.
Doesn't it sound exciting? Let's find out what we are redeemed from in that curse.
Deuteronomy 28:15-68
"But if you refuse to listen to the LORD your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you."
We know why we need the Holy Spirit and why we need faith and why it all comes to pass from God through Jesus Christ. When Adam sinned he chose to not believe the Word of God which was, if you eat of the fruit in the middle of the garden you will surely die. His wife was deceived by that old serpent called the Devil, but Adam was not deceived. He acted on the Devil's lie instead of the Word of God. God had told Adam to dress and keep the garden which was in Eden. God had given it to Adam and his wife as their home. It had the best of everything. Man was to bless it which means he had to work and cultivate it and cause it to prosper. And man had to keep the garden which means he had to put a hedge about it and protect it. And because man had not fallen yet through sin he had to believe God and act on his faith in what God had said to him. By sinning, Adam broke faith because whatever is not of faith is sin. And Remember, it is sin to know what you ought to do and then not do it. That is why Jesus is called the second Adam and is the author and perfecter of our faith as well as the Apostle and High Priest of our confession. Jesus Christ fixed faith. Man thought he could be like God and do what God did without the presence of God in his life. Wrong! You need the presence of God first and foremost because without Christ you can do nothing. And we get the presence of Christ through the person and work of the Holy Spirit living in us. You can do faith and various works but it will never be profitable to you without God in you through Jesus Christ by the Holy Spirit. God is love and we read in 1 Corinthians chapter thirteen that faith is not profitable without love.
Jesus made a statement concerning asking, seeking, and knocking in the gospels. Asking has to do with speech and is directly connected to the realm of the spirit. Seeking has to do with the realm of the soul and how things can be imagined in the mind and fueled by emotion and where ideas can be formed. Knocking is connected with the physical or natural realm where action takes place in order to accomplish something in the three dimensional realm. This is a spiritual principal of how faith works. This principal works whether a person is a Christian or not. If you keep saying something over and over again by an act of your own will, you will start imagining things to be just as you are saying they are. And if you keep saying things over and over and imagining things along the same lines as to what you are saying, doors of opportunities will begin to open (hence knocking) that will provide you with situations to act on. It is like the woman I heard about who kept saying that she was coming down with cancer. She kept saying it and imagined herself coming down with cancer. She acted on what she said and thought about it for ten years. And she always went to the doctor to check and see if she had cancer. Ten years went by and she died of cancer. My own grandmother would keep saying she was losing her mind when she forgot something. She never considered that she might be doing too many things at once and had to slow down a bit. I was very young, but I remember her doing that. Years and years later she died as a result of losing her mind and Alzheimer's. Watch what you say. Speech is a spiritual thing. Only say what the Word of God says about who you are and what you have in Christ. Keep your words lined up with God's word. Then those words will produce faith and will renew your mind. And then your situation will change by Holy Ghost power. The Holy Spirit will hear what you are saying and cause your mind to be renewed to God's Word. He will make your emotions be filled with the joy of the Lord. He will instill the peace of God into your soul. And he will change your circumstances to line up with God's Word so that God's Word does not return to him void. You are not bossing the Holy Spirit around. God is ministering his Spirit and working miracles on your behalf by the hearing of faith which comes from you confessing who you are and what you have in Christ Jesus.
When Adam disobeyed God he sinned and death entered this world and into the human race by sin. Man lost his ability to keep his tongue or speech in check. He was then made a slave to whatever Satan would plant in his head for thoughts and imaginations. So man would say and think about whatever Satan desired instead what God had for him. Because man was spiritually dead by being separated from God through sin, he would act on his sinful thoughts and imaginations. If you are willing to accept it, Adam and is wife, by sinning, committed spiritual suicide before dying physically many years later. By sinning, they essentially killed themselves because they were initially made by God to live forever. So in a sense they committed suicide and through Adam's sin, they caused every one of us to be killed off spiritually and then physically. That is murder by being self-murder for Adam and his wife first and then mass murder for all of us who are humans and descended from that first man and woman. That is why Jesus calls Satan a murderer from the beginning. Satan brought death, but God through Jesus Christ brought life. Satan caused the murder of us all. But Jesus Christ defeated Satan and death and brought us eternal life. It is written in Hebrews 2:14, 15 - "Because God's children are human beings, made of flesh and blood; the Son also became flesh and blood. For only as a human being could he die, and only by dying could he break the power of the Devil, who had the power of death. And deliver them who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery."
Adam did not dress or keep the garden. And I submit to you that it was because he did not spend time with God the way he was meant to. We know that Jesus spent all kinds of time with his Father in heaven. And much of that time was in the early morning hours which are generally the coolest part of the day. God had made everything and had pronounced it good and very good. But then we find that God said something was not good. Now why would God say everything that was made was good and very good and then turn around and say that something was not good. God said that it was not good for man to be alone. Now we know that God brought all the animals to Adam to see what he would name them. And whatever Adam named them that is what they were called. And then God caused Adam to be in a deep sleep and during sleep God took one of his ribs, closed up the flesh, and fashioned a woman from the rib and brought her to Adam. Adam's marriage vows were unique because he said a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife and the two shall be one flesh. The man and the woman were naked and were not ashamed which means they consummated their marriage. Adam was made from scratch and God breathed life into him. Woman came from his side and thus was equal to the man but did not have the same function as the man. She was to be his help meet or helper or aid.
We know that the Holy Spirit is our Helper and Comforter. Jesus said so. So I submit to you that Adam was not fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit and not communing with God the way Jesus did. Man needed a helper who would be more spiritually sensitive. His helper could help him stay in touch with God on a daily basis. Did you ever notice how women can be more sensitive to spiritual things than men? And yet women need men to be their spiritual protection because women have the potential to be deceived. That is why Paul talked about women in the church. It was not to put women as a door mat under men to be stepped on. It was not to keep women from ministering. It was so that the woman, who is under a man's authority, could be protected by the man. Man should be on the lookout for renegade spirits from Satan who will try to sneak in and deceive the woman and then use her as an opportunity for destruction. Ever hear of the Jezebel spirit? That is what Satan did in the garden. He deceived the woman and man did not protect her. He let her eat of that fruit when he knew what would happen. He was not deceived. And then after he sinned he blamed the woman by blaming the Lord for giving him the woman.
It all started because Adam had not been spending time with God that he should have been having. The Lord looked for Adam and his wife in the cool of the day after they had sinned. Sin separates you from God. But the Lord was right there in the cool of the day to spend time with his children. God wants fellowship with you. If you sin he wants that fellowship restored. If you confess your sins he is faithful to forgive you and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Adam did not do that. He blamed his wife. His wife blamed the serpent. A curse came on the man and his wife and judgment on the serpent. But in Adam's vows to his wife he had already pronounced the gospel in a form of a mystery or riddle. He said that a man will leave his father and mother and will cleave to his wife and the two shall be one flesh. Paul said this also in regard to Christ and the church. When a person leaves the world and their sinful life by receiving Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior they become one spirit with the Lord and become a child of God. When a man and a woman become one flesh a new creation that never existed before is born and that new creation is a child with a new spirit from God the Father of spirits. That is why we believe that God raised Jesus from the dead for righteousness.
When Jesus left heaven to be born of a virgin he became a man, a human being. Jesus became flesh. You will notice that this is what the spirit of the antichrist will not admit to, that God became flesh. Jesus left everything that was God behind when he became a human. He lived a sinless life. His blood was pure. His blood had the life of a man in it because the life is in the blood. His blood had the eternal life of God in it because he never sinned and the righteousness of God that was through the law (if anyone could keep the law but no one ever could except Jesus Christ) was in the blood of Jesus. So the eternal life of God which is through his righteousness was fused and made one with the life of a man through that man's blood and that man was Jesus Christ. That is why Jesus shed his blood and that is how God raised him from the dead through the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus' righteous blood has the eternal life of God in it as well as the life of a man in it and is one blood of a new creation. When God raised Jesus from the dead Jesus was the first begotten from the dead through regeneration by the power of the Holy Ghost and was proclaimed God as he sat down on the right hand of God. We are seated with him in heavenly places. As he is so are we in this world.
Through one man Adam, man sinned and death entered into this world by sin. But through one man Jesus Christ, man died and became sin so that we might be the righteousness of God in him.
When God raised Jesus from the dead man could become a child of God and become God and man at the same time. That is the new creation in Christ Jesus. That is why Jesus is called the everlasting father in the Old Testament. He is the seed of God. He is the Word of God that when planted in a human spirit through the preaching of the gospel, man believes and confesses Jesus as Lord and man becomes a new creation. Man becomes a child of God because man and God have been made into one new creation through Christ Jesus. That is why Jesus is the mediator between God and man. He is 100% God and 100% man at the same time and death cannot touch him anymore. The two shall become one flesh. God and man have become one flesh in the body of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus was born again when he was raised from the dead after he had died spiritually on the cross. He was separated from God which is spiritual death. He became sin. He cried, "My God My God why have you forsaken me?" After he was raised from the dead, he was proclaimed to be God after he had purged our sins with his own blood and sat down on the right hand of God. He now waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. That is our job as the body of Christ because we are filled with faith and the Holy Ghost.
This is why Peter wrote about Paul in that there are some things hard to understand which Paul had written. And this is what the spirit of antichrist fights so hard against especially in religious circles often calling it blaspheming. It is not blaspheming. God and man became a new creation combined into one through Jesus Christ when God raised him from the dead. And when you confess Jesus as Lord you become one spirit with him and your spirit is born again by the Holy Spirit. You then spend time in the Word and in prayer renewing your mind so that you have the mind of Christ and become transformed in your thinking. As you then speak faith by confessing who you are and what you have in Christ Jesus your mind turns from the world and starts thinking about things above and not beneath. You imagine yourself just like the Word says you are. And then you create doors of opportunity to tell others the good news about Christ and what God has done through him. You operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and free others from the oppression of the Devil. You bear fruit unto God. And you walk with God on a daily basis by faith in love. Now when the entire body of Christ is speaking faith of who and what they are in Christ Jesus and are also seeing themselves as being just like Jesus and are also acting on their faith in love, they will find that the glory of God will literally shine through them like it did when Jesus was on the mount with Peter, James, and John. And when that happens we will find ourselves as the body of Christ in the position like Enoch was in when he walked with God and was not because God took him. The body of Christ will walk with God just like Enoch did in this last hour before Christ returns and in an instant we won't be here anymore because God will take us in a twinkling of an eye to be with him forever. We call this the rapture of the church.
God wanted children. Adam had a chance to keep the garden and to keep all enemies away and to cast them into Hell. Jesus said that he had the keys to death and Hell in the book of Revelation. He took those keys from Satan when God raised him from the dead. Satan got them from Adam because Adam was told to have dominion and to be blessed and to multiply. Adam could have obeyed God and cast Satan and every one of his fallen angels into Hell because Hell was made for the Devil and his angels. Adam did not spend the time with God that he was supposed to and was given a helper to help him do so. This is also why women can get into worshipping God faster than men. Man did not fellowship with God as he was supposed to. And when you do not spend time with God on a daily basis in the Word and in prayer and in praying and singing in tongues and interpretation of tongues you can end up missing God and going off track too. You have to stay close to God. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. And then when you resist the Devil he will flee from you. The Devil did not flee from Adam because Adam had not drawn himself near to God and therefore God could not draw near to Adam. God is a gentleman. He wants to be with you and to fellowship with you more than you could ever ask or think. But he will not overstep your will. You have to make God your first priority and continuously spend time with him in order to see him draw near to you. It will never be, "I will try this once or from time to time in order to see if it works and then if it doesn't work, oh well!?"
I told you all of this up front in order to tell you that the first part of being redeemed from the curse has to do with being redeemed from spiritual death which was caused when Adam sinned. The first thing that Christ did when he redeemed us was to redeem us from spiritual death. He made it so that our sins could be forgiven and we could be made children of God through him. But Christ also redeemed us from other stuff too.
Deuteronomy 28:15-68
He redeemed us from being cursed wherever we are at the moment. We are redeemed from going hungry. We are redeemed from being childless. We are redeemed from poverty. We are redeemed from failure. We are redeemed from mistakes. We are forgiven our sins if we confess our sins. We are redeemed and protected from whatever nature can throw our direction. We are redeemed from all sickness and disease listed in the book of the law as well as everything not listed in there. We are redeemed from untimely or premature death. We are redeemed from not being able to be in the presence of God or from not having his presence with us for all eternity. We can come boldly to his throne of grace. We are redeemed from failure in our occupations or whatever we set our hand unto. We are redeemed from all enemies whether spiritual or of men or of things that resulted from the curse. We have victory through Jesus Christ and are more than conquerors. We have the peace of God that passes all understanding and are redeemed from chaos and instability. We are redeemed from bad things in our relationships and our marriages and our families. Our children are redeemed from falling away and being taken captive by Satan or by having our children succumbed and taken in by the world. We are redeemed from destruction and afflictions. We are redeemed from failure and loss in everything we put our hand unto. We are redeemed from the false gods or idols or other things we have served and which have brought us no value or salvation. The Lord becomes our Shepherd. And we are redeemed from so much more. And each redemption area can be included in the areas of financial, relationships, spiritual, soul (mind, will, and emotions), physical, and purpose and which includes protection and direction from God through Christ Jesus our Lord. We are redeemed from sin and spiritual death followed by financial poverty, broken hearts, eternal damnation, demonic oppression, physical infirmities, personal failures, and worldwide chaos and catastrophe. I encourage you to read the whole twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy to find out the length of what we are redeemed from. Simply put, we are redeemed from sin, spiritual death, poverty, and sickness. But Look at all we can have from God through Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit through faith (which starts with eternal life through Christ) Deuteronomy 28:1-14
"If you fully obey the LORD your God and carefully follow all his commands I give you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations on earth. All these blessings will come on you and accompany you if you obey the LORD your God: You will be blessed in the city and blessed in the country. The fruit of your womb will be blessed, and the crops of your land and the young of your livestock-the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks. Your basket and your kneading trough will be blessed. You will be blessed when you come in and blessed when you go out. The LORD will grant that the enemies who rise up against you will be defeated before you. They will come at you from one direction but flee from you in seven. The LORD will send a blessing on your barns and on everything you put your hand to. The LORD your God will bless you in the land he is giving you. The LORD will establish you as his holy people, as he promised you on oath, if you keep the commands of the LORD your God and walk in obedience to him. Then all the peoples on earth will see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they will fear you. The LORD will grant you abundant prosperity-in the fruit of your womb, the young of your livestock and the crops of your ground-in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you. The LORD will open the heavens, the storehouse of his bounty, to send rain on your land in season and to bless all the work of your hands. You will lend to many nations but will borrow from none. The LORD will make you the head, not the tail. If you pay attention to the commands of the LORD your God that I give you this day and carefully follow them, you will always be at the top, never at the bottom. Do not turn aside from any of the commands I give you today, to the right or to the left, following other gods and serving them."
It pays to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. Godliness is very profitable. It is time for the body of Christ to be profitable in godliness before the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord is calling us unto godliness in this last hour. We are to be like him because as he is so are we in this world.
An ordained preacher and evangelist since 1996, Evangelist Gregory Whitaker aka The Gospel Van Man, travels the highways and byways and from city to city teaching faith and preaching Christ with all signs, wonders, and miracles following. For more information on how to receive miracles by faith check out my YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVxmTVR0GiFIcmuJACqOWqg
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