Redeeming Blood 9 - Robert Godfrey

You cannot defeat the Savior by your sinning if you'll come to Him and plead for mercy.  So, the Word of the Prophet Ezekiel (33:11) cries out to every one of us here, "Turn, turn, why will you perish, says the Lord.  There is abundance of mercy and compassion in Jesus Christ.   There's an abundance of life in Jesus Christ."   Why would you choose death?  Why would you follow the shepherd death into Sheol where there is only darkness and gnashing of teeth?  When the Lord of Life comes to you in His Word and says, "I will ransom you.  My blood will redeem you.  Come.  Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest," says the Lord. 

It's not an Armenian message.  It's the message of grace.  There's hope.  There's mercy.  There's life in Jesus Christ.  Many commentators believe that to some extent the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 echoes themes found in Psalm 49.  The rich man is in Sheol.  He had not read Psalm 49 or had not taken it to heart, and he's now separated from God and from His mercy, and he's in agony, and he pleads for just a little water to mitigate his suffering, and there is no water.  Then he pleads, "Send back Lazarus to warn my brothers. Surely," he says, "They will listen if a man rises from the dead."  What remarkable words. 

I think of what R.C. Sproul was saying about this and the atheist saying, at the last day and I stand before God, I'll ask Him, why didn't you tell us?  He has in every way conceivable.  He has in the order of the universe that He's made.  He has in the dead coming back to life.  God did bring Jesus back to life to testify to life, to preach about life, to establish a people of life to go into the world preaching the gift of life in the blood of Jesus Christ.  But who has believed our report? 

Now the word comes from Abraham, we don't really need a man come back from the dead because they have Moses in the Scriptures.  Let them listen to him.  Let them listen to him.  It's almost as if they're saying, let them listen to Psalm 49.  Psalm 49 won't let us get away from the reality of death as the universal human experience, and the only hope, the only antidote, the only deliverance is to be found in God, and the God who ransoms us by costly blood of His own well beloved Son.

God has left a testimony to Himself in the world that He made. God has left a testimony clear and shining in the Word that He inspired. God has left a testimony in the Son that He raised from the dead. God has raised a testimony to His church to people who have been brought from death to life.  What more exactly could he do?