Welcome to this weekend’s InTouch 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.

>> 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 and she wanted their sons to be able to sit on uh his right hand in the kingdom. And so this brought up the subject of being 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 of 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 uh 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 therefore the Lord God sent them forth from the Garden of Eden to till the