Redeeming Blood 7 - Robert Godfrey

One of the things that strikes me more and more the longer I live--I know that's getting to be a long time--one of the things that most testifies to me about the reliability of the Bible, the truthfulness of the Bible, the reality that the Bible is God's revelation to us, is its coherence.  It's the way it all fits together, that authors separated by thousands of years of history and remarkably different cultures, are all saying fundamentally the same message.

God alone brings life to people caught up in death, and God alone brings life through a ransom paid, a ransom paid that places death on a substitute so that the one God is bringing to life might live. So the whole Old Testament really is a preparation for us to understand the work of Jesus Christ. 

Israel is God's first born only in a preparatory sense because the true first born of God is Jesus Christ, and Israel's sacrifices are only preparatory sacrifices. The New Testament makes this abundantly clear, doesn't it?  That the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sin, but it was a preparation.  It was getting our minds to understand. 

If there had been no Old Testament and Jesus came into this world, and John the Baptist said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." nobody would have a clue what John was talking about.  They knew what a lamb was.  They knew the function of lambs in the sacrificial system of Israel.  They knew that a lamb slain took away sin.  So when John the Baptist gives this testimony to the Savior, it's like a lightning bolt of clarity. 

What all the Old Testament was about, how it all pointed to Jesus Christ, and He is the Lamb.  He is the substitute.  He is the ransom.  He is the redemption.  That in His blood takes away the sin of the world.  Blood--because the life is in the blood--and when He pours out His blood, He is pouring out His life unto death, that everyone who is found in Him might live.  That's a Promise. 

You see, He is the first born.  Scripture says that over and over again.  Colossians 1:18 says, "He is the head of the body, the church.  He is the beginning, the first born from the dead that in everything He might be preeminent."  or Romans 8:29, "We are predestined to salvation so that Jesus what? might be the first born of many brothers."  That's what the death of Jesus Christ and His glorious resurrection is all about, that He might be the first born of those who are in Him will have life and deliverance.  But God will ransom my soul in the redemption of His Son, in the blood of His, in the death and resurrection of His Son.