Word of Salvation – Vol. 31 No. 18 – May 1986

 

Why The Son Of God Appeared

 

Sermon by Rev. A. J. De Bruyn on 1John 3:8

Reading: 1John 2:28-3:15

 

“He who does what is sinful is of the devil because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.  The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.”

We are concentrating on the latter part of that verse today.  Today we want to talk about the antithesis – that means that there are two complete opposites.  We see that distinction when we look at the descendants of Seth and the descendants of Cain.  The antithesis, that strong drawn distinction between the children of God and the children of Satan is still with us today.  Ultimately there are only two kinds of people – there are those that belong to God and those who are children of the Devil.

Any church is made up of those two kinds of people.  Let us not fool ourselves that every time we meet we are 100% all born-again believers.  The church is made up also of that antithesis – there are those who are born of Christ and those that are of Satan.  That sounds terribly harsh doesn’t it?

But we find that is the case right through Scripture.  As we trace through Scripture we see that already in the beginning there is that strong dividing line.  God calls Abraham and he is told to go to a land of promise.  And you’d think: there is a new start – there we have people who really belong to the Lord.  But alas we only have to go down one two generations to Jacob and Esau – of which God himself says “Jacob I love but Esau I hated.”  And Esau was not the child of promise.  Maybe when God took Israel out of Egypt there’s a new start.  There is a true church.  But we read through the books of Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus and Deuteronomy and we see that it wasn’t the perfect church either.  There is still that antithesis, there are still those who belong to God and those who are deceived of Satan.  And so it has continued through the centuries.  And here now in our text we see that the Lord Jesus Christ came for what?  He came for a specific purpose!  The Lord Jesus Christ did not come as some accident in history.  No we see that the reason the Son of God appeared was to “destroy the works of the Devil.”

We can look at four different things this morning.  First of all we must come to an understanding of what the works of the Devil are.  What is the devil’s work?  Is he about; is he with us here?  Is he present with us in our homes?  Is he in our church?  Or maybe is he just working in the town somewhere?  Is it some dark, dingy place, some nightclub or disco to which we just wouldn’t go because it is the Devil’s domain?  If we think like that maybe it is true but then we are also in some awful danger of letting the works of the devil come right into our homes without us being aware of it.  The work of the devil is sin, lawlessness, doing that which is contrary to God’s will.  The Bible tells us that he is the father of lies.  He cannot speak the truth, he will twist and change ever so subtly so people will think that they are not sinning so much – just a little change, just a small area.  The works of the devil.  The passage in which read verse 10 says, “This is how we know the children of God.  Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God neither is anyone who does not love his brother”.  These are the words of John who is so gentle, kind and patient.  Who had been changed by the Lord Jesus from being called a Son of Thunder because of his nature.  Later in life John is reported to have become a very kind, patient and gentle man.  Yet these are strong words.  These are words that draw strong lines.  We need to understand what the works of the devil are.  Now we must not go and look for it elsewhere.  Let’s not go and look for it down town somewhere, where the flashing neon lights are.  Let’s not look for the workshop of the devil at the bottom of a bottle, in the front bar of some pub but let’s look for the works of the devil in our hearts and lives.  Because that is what John is drawing our attention to.  If Jesus Christ came to expose, bring out, show these works of the devil he must have wanted to destroy them.  We need to be carefully aware that we have some knowledge of ourselves.  John shows that the works of the devil are indeed close to our hearts and lives.  The apostle Paul speaks of that contrast in Galatians when he speaks about the fruit of the sinful nature and the fruit of the spirit he is so clear about it.  The work of the devil are sin, lawlessness, and are contrary to what God has required of us.  The works of the devil are untruth, twisting the truth, changing the truth.  The works of the devil is to obscure that distinction, don’t take it so personal, after all, can’t we have somewhere some middle ground?  On the one hand you can have those people who are so religious and those who aren’t quite there yet.  Let’s provide for some neutral area.  But this is not what the Word of God tells us at all.  The word of God draws the line very strongly and sharply.

Then it says in our text, “The purpose of God”.  That means God’s intent.  And what is God’s purpose and plan?  The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work!  The reason.  What is meant by this reason?  Was it some plan that God put into action, some program that God instigated?  Scripture says here that Jesus Christ came for a reason, a purpose, a design that God had.  God looked out from heaven and He saw a needy world and His loving Father heart overwhelmed and He put his hands around us and said, “I’m going to save you from that misery into which you have plunged yourself.”  And God’s loving Father heart was so great that He sent His Son to do it.  There’s a purpose, a reason Christ came, the apostle says.  The purpose which the Father had in sending His Son.  God is genuine and that is why God sent His Son – that’s the Gospel.  That’s the reason – because God could not stand to see his creation, (the creation of which he said “It is good”, and when all the angels sang there in creation when they saw what God had made and they were so happy, rejoicing.  And they looked at God’s power, His holiness, His glory and they shouted God’s praises).  The Lord could not stand to see that defaced, he could not stand to see the sin in our lives, or the broken hearts, homes and lives.  So God had a reason when He sent His Son.  There would be a recreation a new world, and new people new hearts and new attitudes and spirits.  There would be a church that would belong to the Lord Jesus, bought by His blood, paid for on the cross.  That’s God’s purpose.

Now that’s the reason why the works of the devil are exposed, brought to nought.  We have here the manifestation of the word of God, the revelation of Jesus Christ.  We have that in His life, His death and His resurrection and His glorification.  And we will see it when the Lord Jesus comes to gather His church unto Himself.  For this reason the Son of God appeared.  And the Son of God did appear!  He was born there in Bethlehem.  He grew up there in Nazareth.  He taught, preached, guided, healed, restored, comforted.  He had time to speak to those who were the outcasts of society.  He came to bring them back to God.  But then the scripture says that the Son of God came to destroy the devil’s works.  Not just to show them up, to bring them into relief, to highlight them so we could see what they were.  No, Jesus came to destroy, to bring to nought.  And then we have to ask some personal questions of ourselves.  If the Lord Jesus Christ came to destroy the devil’s works what then of the devil’s works in us; in our hearts and lives?  When the Apostle Paul writes to the church of Galatia in the passage to which I alluded before, he talks about the deeds of the flesh which are evident.  What of us?  What is this devil’s work in the heart of man?  What’s happened there in the heart of Adam and Eve in paradise?  Well it says that they were changed – they lost something – they died.  Scripture says that God warned them that if they ate of the fruit they would die.  On the day they ate thereof they would die.  Well you can say that they didn’t die as such, but they did.  The Hebrew says “dying you shall die” and they did they were dead people the moment they partook of that fruit – absolutely dead, spiritually, stone-cold dead.  No longer people who could have any kind of fellowship with God.  And scripture tells us that the natural man is at enmity with God.  The natural man, he is an enemy of God – he is at warfare with God.  So I say, we have two kinds of people even here.  There are those who belong to God and those who are Satan’s.  There are those who are at enmity – enemies of God and the Religion doesn’t save you.  Being religious doesn’t save you; coming to church doesn’t save you; putting up a nice pious front doesn’t save you.  The Pharisees tried very hard, studying the law in order to do all the things that God had commanded because that’s how they thought they were going to get to heaven.  The natural man, Paul says, is an enemy of God.  The natural man thinks if only we keep all the commandments we will be OK.

We can remember the story of the rich young ruler who came to Jesus and said, “Master, how may I have eternal life?”  Jesus said, “It’s easy, just keep all the commandments and you will have it.” It was a very tongue in cheek answer that the Lord Jesus gave because the Lord Jesus knew that there was no way in the world that he could keep all the commandments.  He had transgressed them over and over again.  But the self-righteous attitude of the young ruler was that he had kept them all.  Self-righteous pride.  “O”, said the Lord Jesus, “O really?  In that case, sell everything you have and follow me.”  Too often the emphasis has been on that passage that the man had to sell everything.  But he couldn’t be another Christ!  He couldn’t do what the Lord Jesus was sent to do.  The man meant well but he was mistaken in his self-righteous attitude.

The natural man leads a life of unbelief, his eyes are closed, shut to the truth of the Word of God.  The Apostle Paul says in Romans 10, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God”.  You cannot have faith without the word of God, you cannot believe in God without the word of God.  You may believe in some kind of an idea, some kind of attitude.  You may have belief in some kind of a supernatural being.  The scripture says that even the devils believe and they tremble.  They are terribly afraid because they know that God exists.  But saving faith comes from hearing the word of God.  The word of God works faith in the heart of a believer by the work of the Holy Spirit.  The natural man gets angry when he hears these things, he doesn’t like them, they put him off.  He doesn’t want to hear them, they run him down.  Not interested in that!  The natural man’s eyes are closed, blinded to the truth of God.  He doesn’t want to hear any of this, doesn’t want to see it, doesn’t want to understand it.  It’s foreign to him.  The Scriptures are a closed book until the Spirit of God touches us.  When He does, hard hearts are broken and prisoners of sin are set free.  Christ came for this reason – he was revealed, demonstrated, manifested to set sinners free from sin and Satan.  For this reason Christ is preached.  That’s a valid application of the text.  For this reason Christ is preached from the Word of God to destroy the works of the Devil.  Are your hearts, your lives, home, work, church, of the Lord Jesus Christ?  Do you belong to Christ?  Let’s ask ourselves a question now, a serious question.  Is Christ being revealed to us?  Does God the Holy Spirit take hold of us and has he focussed our eyes on the cross?  Do we see the Lord Jesus Christ hanging on the cross of Calvary, blood dripping down his face, his hands, his feet?  The bubbles of spittle running down.  When you see the agony, the pain that he is suffering, remember this, that Christ has been revealed that the works of the devil might be destroyed.

And when we move from the cross to the garden, to the grave of Joseph of Arimathea, and we think that all of history has come to end and ask, what was the point.  They hear the good news!  The works of the devil have been destroyed for the grave is opened.  On the stone are two angels and they say to the woman, “What do you seek here?  Do you seek the living among the dead?  Christ is risen.”  The works of Satan have been destroyed.  That’s good news.  In the living CHRIST we are free to live for GOD!

AMEN.