James Richards

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Sunday Morning Service

Jeremy Richards

Copalis Community Church

14 June 2026

Bible References

• Hebrews 2:15-18

Audio MP3 PDF

Hebrews 2 and we're going to be in 14 and 15. Hebrews 2. 14 and 15. And this has been churning in my heart all week. I am thrilled about these scriptures and I pray, pray with me that these could be the benefit that I believe that they are intended to be to us today.

So chapter two of Hebrews 14 and 15 it says, inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, he himself wise likewise shared in the same, that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Subject to bondage. Here we see, we've been looking at the nature of Jesus Christ, that as the son of God he has distinct characteristics, that he is equal to God in every aspect. He deserves worship of angels and of people. He is the creator of all things.

But we begun to look who he is as the Son of man. That as a human being he has distinct position to fulfill. For you and I, his brethren, we see that he is the captain of our salvation. He is the individual that is capable of, of bringing you and I through the storm of God's wrath safely to that place of fellowship with God. He is the individual that allows us to come into a place of worship of God, to trust God, to be a child of God.

All this is through that nature and work of Jesus Christ as a son of man. But we see in verse 14 that he also has place a position, excuse me, that he fulfills in combating the work of the devil. Combating the work of the devil. There is something available to the Christian, to the believer, to the individual who boards that boat of salvation which Jesus offers to you and I, that they have available to them that, that people outside the boat do not have in regarding the enemy of their souls.

That's important. That's very important. We're seeing that this is a very specific work. It is not just, you know, a harem scarum thing that someone should go out. Everyone knows that the best battle plans are well laid plans.

I have heard though I've never been in the army and never even gotten a fist fight in my life. I have heard that good wherefore good warfare happens when you think about what you're going to do before you do it, that you're planning not just for the first step, but the goal is to plan for the next step and the next step. Down to like five steps so you know what to do before your enemy has a chance to Respond, you know what you're going to do. And here in this great battle between the Son of God and the devil, Jesus had a plan. And so we're going to look at that in verse 14.

Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared in the same. There was some, something necessary that he had to accomplish in order to defeat the wiles of the devil. Number one, we need to look about where the problem came in in the first place. There is an original problem. You and I are cursed with something as a result of our ancestors before us, some of us, that hits pretty close to home, right?

There's a part of you that you don't really like and you're just like, you know, this is my parents fault. It has nothing to do with me. It's all them, you know, whether a physical attribute or a habit or whichever, like this is all their fault. Well, it is true in some ways that our ancestor Adam and Eve committed something to which we have directly inherited. We have inherited it, yes, but we've also subscribed to the same weakness that Adam and Eve had.

We have chosen by nature to continue in that habit that they gave to us. And that is sin. Adam and Eve were given an opportunity to walk with God and they chose to sin against God as a result of that sin, as a result of that disobedience, death came into the world. Death is the result of sin. You and I inherited the propensity to sin against God from childhood.

I would say from birth we inherited this desire. We love children and I love babies a lot. But it isn't hard to see that if they were £300 they would not be very cute and we would have to have special prisons for 300 pound babies that we kept these people in. They are the most selfish, greedy, manipulative, harmful individuals. This little child that got run over by a tractor, his first words to the nurse was, I want to shoot you.

That's what children would do if they were big enough and knew how to handle guns at birth, there wouldn't be any parent left, right? This sinful nature we seem to have come up with, children aren't innocent. If you don't believe me, I just want to give you an opportunity. Have 10 of them. You will, you will be a believer soon, right?

This propensity is followed up by a choice that you and I make. We choose to sin. We make a choice to act upon a propensity to sin and so find ourselves guilty of, of the same Death that our Father, Adam and Eve, our parents, Adam and Eve inherited. This was a real problem. Death spread to all men.

According to Galatians, it had spread because all sinned. Was there anybody who resisted the urge to sin? No. It said it spread to all men. Well, this problem had to be dealt with.

But it had to be dealt with in a legal way. It had to be dealt with in a way that satisfied the nature of God. So many times you and I are of the position that we blame God for this problem. Well, if God were kind, if he were good like he says he is, why can't he just solve this problem and not allow any sin to happen? Well, there's a problem with those kinds of ideas.

Number one, they are fleshly. They originate from a mind that is debil, weak, faultful, right, decrepit, broken. We justify our own mind thinking, hey, this is really smart. If only God thought the way I did, there wouldn't be any problems in the world. I'd have this place sorted out in no time.

Well, let me just take a break for a second. Let's use enough humility to recognize that you can't solve your own problems. Do you really want the problems of the world?

Use some maturity here. That he really does have a way of wisdom about him. And number one, part of his nature is, is he won't force his will on anyone in overriding their choice. He in his solution to the problem. It is not the answer to force everyone to do what he says.

Everyone tracking. He could override and make it so that no evil happened ever. But do you know what that would do to you and I? It would remove our ability to think, to have a will. If he imposed his nature on us instead, he gives us the opportunity to continue in selfish, sinful ways.

But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a plan. He had to reverse in some way that decision which our ancestor made without overriding our will. He had to come up with a solution. That doesn't make you and I a robot. He had to do something.

It says that he put on flesh and blood. He put on a nature similar, or, excuse me, not similar, the same as you and I possess. In order to reverse that which our ancestors lost and we continued in through sin. He said, I am going to make a solution to this dilemma. But by putting on flesh and blood, I am going to come in the likeness of men.

I am going to suffer in the same way that everyone else was. I'm going to be born as a baby and go through everything you go through, every temptation which you have experienced, I am going to do it in order to accomplish something to defeat this curse of death. I am going to do this by putting on flesh and blood. Legally, I can do this by offering myself. It's not going to be overriding their wills.

It is going to be doing something as a man in order to redeem that which the first man lost. It says then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, he likewise shared in the same he shared in everything you do. There is no temptation, there is no scores. There's no hurt that he didn't feel near to his heart that you experience. But there was a goal.

He didn't just became a man for no reason. He had a purpose behind says in the next part of verse 14 that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil. Our ancestors lost something, passed on a sinful nature, the curse and ultimate death to you and I. Jesus intended to come as a man to reverse that which which you inherited from your fathers. I'm just going to read just a little bit. We read about this a couple weeks ago, but I'm going to bring it up again a little bit in chapter five of Romans to give you an idea.

What I want to try to pass on is that just as you inherited death from our ancestors, so also you inherit the free gift because of Jesus Christ. And I'm just going to read chapter five, verse 15. But the free gift is not like the offense. For if by one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ abounded to many.

Verse 16. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation. But the free gift, which comes from many offenses, resulted in justification. For if by one man's offense death reigned through the 1.

Much more those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. Here we see that one man's offense resulted in death, death at work in your members, a corrupting influence, the bad germs getting into your food, burbling and gurgling, and creating ugliness in your life, all as a result of one man's sin. So also one man's righteousness infecting, as it were, kind of a loose term. I don't exactly like that. But coming into a person's life, so also gurgles and bubbles and springs and brings forth life coming into a person's life.

He came to destroy the one work that he might give another. This had to come about. The only way he could accomplish that is through death. In order for him to bring a reversal of the curse, this one had to die. It says that through death he was.

His death presented something to you and I. That was that, let's see. Presented an opportunity to you and I that would never be available to you through any other means. No amount of works could do it. No amount of counting beads could do it.

No amount of prayers offered could do it. No amount of nice things, nothing could do this work that a sinless person could do through his death. But there had to be someone sinless. So Jesus came and lived a life without sin. And he presented himself as a physical offering for sin.

It was through his death that reversed the course of the infection that came to us through Adam. An individual have to come and say, you know what? I would rather die than sin. I want life so much. I value your commandment so much that even if I were tempted by the devil himself after having suffered for 40 days, I want to do your will so bad that I will not sin.

So there had to be found one person willing to make to give this life an entrance. Everyone else had failed. And so Jesus came. Even the death of the cross was not enough to turn him Aside from that position of bringing an opportunity of redemption to humankind, you had already failed yourself. You couldn't rely on your good deeds.

They had already failed. But there came one who said, yes, even if it means death, I will bring that opportunity to my brethren. I will give it as a gift to them. This work. It says that through death he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil.

One of my favorite scriptures is in, I believe, Matthew 12. Turn there and read it. Regarding Jesus, work over the devil. And Jesus had been accused of casting out demons by the prince of demons. And in verse 27 we pick up in chapter 12 it says, and if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out?

Jesus was a caster, out of demons. He had power over them. It's astonishing. He says in verse 28, but if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. Or how can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man and then he plunders his house.

Jesus came as a stronger man with the intention of plundering the house of the individual who had plundered his brethren. Up until that point, he had a motive. I am going to go and release my brethren from the authority that Satan once exercised over them. The death that he ensured was their constant companion. I am going to do a work through death that releases them from that slavery.

I think we should be grateful. People have done nice things for us before. Right? They're kind people. Right.

And they do good things for us and we don't deserve them. But Jesus has done something willing to destroy the work of the devil through his death. It says, destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil. Now, I woke up with a word in my mind the other day, and it turns out this word I just lost the English word, but in Greek is destroy him. Destroy him who had the power of death.

This does not necessarily mean to kill him. This is a legal term which reverses the legal ability that a law had over your life. Up until that point. Jesus came to legally reverse that ability which Satan had in our lives to produce death. He's going to produce a different work that absolves us from that law that used to reign over us.

There used to be something that reigned over us, the power of death that the devil exercised over us. You and I, through our ancestors. Adam were intended to walk in fellowship with God, in communion with him. But something happened upon the devil's temptation of Adam and Eve that turned the normal or the spiritual course of events which God intended and gave Satan access to something which he had not had before sin.

He now exercised an ability in the lives of people, a legal responsibility that not was not granted to him by God or encouraged by God that he now possessed. He became the accuser of the brethren. Now that men had chosen a path, had had decided to sin, had walked outside of the fellowship that they had with God, they by default entered a relationship with the devil. They gave him the opportunity to exercise something in their lives. That we have fallen under the curse of the devil.

That the law has given him power to produce condemnation in our life, that we fall short, humans fall short of God's righteous commandments. And Satan brings their guilt to them and condemns them. That guilt is the result of it. It is a position that you and I are born into, continue in by a choice of our sin that we come into this power that the devil exercises in the lives of people. But Jesus came to Catarego to do away with that legal right which Satan has exercised in the lives of Everyone up until that moment, he became to turn it and put in a new law that was superior to that one which Satan exercised in your life.

Guilt and condemnation and shame are no longer able to be a part. This, in verse 15 we're going to continue this idea, this work which Jesus came to do, came as a man to do, to turn that legal responsibility we had to the devil and to introduce something new into our lives, a new gift. This is what we see in verse 15 and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Jesus goal as our kinsman Redeemer and is to release Ticatargo, to put into law something new in the lives of people. To release those people who had been under the legal responsibility of the devil up until that moment.

Satan comes to steal, kill and destroy. Some of us had begun to experience what that looks like. And we're like, you know, I want a new kingdom to live into. I want a new master. He came to release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

This work that Jesus came to do was to release you from the authority that Satan had over you legally. And let's see how he effectuates that slavery that some of us have begun to recognize. It says to release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Here we see that Satan's goal is to bring people into bondage, to chain them, to enslave them. It says that the whole world is under the sway of the devil.

That as the ruler of the principalities and powers, he exercises that control over those who he has a legal ability to do so because of their disobedience. This bondage is enforced through the fear of death. Fear of death. The fear of death in the lives of people.

Keep them chained in bondage. Some of us would say, you know, I don't fear death, I don't fear death. I'm not afraid of dying. Until last minute we went and saw my grandma. She's not my real grandma, but she was married to my grandpa and she is dying and she is 101 years old.

And we went to her. We didn't know. I mean, we knew she was old but didn't know she was dying. Stacey had been calling her phone and nothing, nothing. Finally a friend found her phone and called us and says, yes, your grandma is dying.

And there she was. We walked into the room and she is dying. She is almost nothing. She can't, she can't. Maybe she can see a little bit.

Maybe she can hear a little bit. She kind of groaned and maybe reached out her hand like she wanted it held. But she is dying. Death, physical death, has absolute grips on her. She's going to die.

Not today, maybe tomorrow. And one day you and I are going to be confronted with death. We don't think that we're afraid of death. You know, I always find it funny. I don't think that I'm afraid of police either.

I'm not even afraid. I just hit on the gas and I'm just cruising through and I like, I'm not even afraid of the police until I pass one. And then all of a sudden my heart starts pounding. I hit the brakes and I'm just. I get nervous, I start sweating.

I realize, well, maybe I was afraid of police. I just didn't realize it. The truth is, is you do have a fear of death. You only don't recognize it. Satan keeps us in bondage through the fear of death.

Let's see where I'm in.

I'm going to hold that. This fear of death that he exercises over us back in Hebrews 14.

Keeps us in bondage. Now, that fear of death is one that he hides. In some ways it is not one that is blatantly apparent to us. If death's fear were so apparent, it might be that you and I would be induced to leave his kingdom. He hides the fear of death in us to keep us in bondage.

His goal, the goal of the devil, is to steal, kill and destroy that which you possess to bring you into his kingdom by which you operate in bondage.

The correct viewpoint in establishing whether or not you have a fear of death and operate within the kingdom of death is not whether you feel fear at this present moment, but whether you operate or live in bondage. Being in bondage proves that you are operating within the kingdom of the devil. It's not whether you're traveling at 75 through a school zone and you feel no remorse.

This is the first Sunday that we didn't light a fire in the. In the church in a long, long time. This happens once or twice in Kapellus a year. Right? Everyone tracking with me.

Sometimes we depend upon our feelings to determine what kingdom are in. Rather than dependent upon our feelings. We need to determine whether or not we are being held in bondage or not in the kingdom of death. This bondage is held upon our lives in a certain way. So Satan keeps us in bondage based on the power of the law in our life.

That he exercises this death by Keeping us in a place of depending upon the commandments. This looks a certain way. An individual who is in this bondage is shifted back and forth from a feeling of guilt to a feeling of accomplishment. At one point feeling like they deserve all that they have, and at another recognizing the shame of their sin upon their lives. Satan keeps us in that bondage.

This tends for the short term to allay the fear of death in our lives. He keeps us deceived by feeling that our own works can deliver us from the fear that we may experience over time, but it does not actually transfer us from the kingdom of death into the kingdom of life. The great goal and tactics of the devil is to keep you in a position of being robbed, killed, destroyed, and never moving a muscle to go to the individual who can deliver you. We're like that proverbial frog that his goal is not to get you to jump out of the pot because he turns up the heat so quick, but rather to introduce sin in your life in such a gradual way that you won't become alarmed enough to get out of the pot and seek to escape to a different kingdom. That is an individual who is in bondage.

Don't wait for for your feelings to tell you that you need to make a move. Don't wait for the hot water to start scalding. You look to whether or not you exist in a state of bondage. And if that is true, then it is time to move.

Read this one more time to finish. It says and release those who through the fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to the bondage. Jesus offers us a place of escape. It says in Revelation, they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, by the power of their testimony, and they did not love their lives unto death. That there is an open door to presented to you and I to escape the kingdom of death, where Satan is the legal operator of he dominates, destroys and influences the lives of all who are under this kingdom.

But Jesus has come to offer entrance into another kingdom by which life is the result where healing and peace are the norm, that a person can escape there and reside in the kingdom of Jesus Christ. So my hope for us today that if you're in the kingdom of darkness, if you're in bondage, that you would look to escape, that you'd flee that kingdom, flee the devil. Satan is a roaring lion and he tries to corner us into a place of destruction. But there is one stronger than he that has taken and grabbed him and put him in his possession. Through Jesus life there is an opportunity for escape for you and I.

And he will in no wise reject any who come to him.

Let's pray together.