The Ransom

I want to share with you today, friends, a true story of a ransom for a king. Can you imagine a king being kidnapped and then held for ransom? Well, this happened to one of England's kings, King Richard the Lionheart. King Richard was sailing back from the Crusades when bad weather forced him to land at Corfu.

Richard and his men were disguised as Knights Templar while making their way back to Central Europe. But while passing through Vienna, he was identified either by his expensive ring or his insistence on eating roast chicken and was captured by the unfriendly Leopold V, the Duke of Austria. The Duke demanded a ransom of 150,000 marks, which was two to three times the annual revenue of England.

That's equivalent to over three billion dollars today, making it the highest ransom ever paid. The ransom was paid a year later, and the King of England was set free. But do you know what, friends? That three billion dollar ransom was not the highest ransom ever paid.

There is one that completely overshadows it and outdoes it. My message today is about a ransom that was paid, making it the most spectacular ransom in the history of the world. The title of my message is The Ransom, and my text can be found in Mark's Gospel in chapter 10.

You can turn in your Bibles there now, friends. We will be in verse 45, which states, For even the Son of Man came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. There are several aspects I'd like to draw out from our text.

The first of these is his life as a ransom, a redemption in Christ Jesus, who bought us with his blood. In 1 Timothy 2 and verses 5 and 6, we read, For there is one God, and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all. As sinners, we deserve death and judgment, and then hell.

But Christ died for the salvation of sinners. Christ has borne the curse, bought us with a price, and that price was his blood. Jesus was an offering for sin, becoming our sin substitute, the sinless sinner, who fully satisfied the justice of God.

Look at it this way, friends. The ransom that Christ paid is seen in the Greek word for redemption. It's the Greek word agorazo, and in that Greek word, agorazo is the word agora.

I once visited the ancient city of Ephesus, but perhaps some of you have visited those ruins as well. Well, as I toured those excavated ruins, I came across an old agora, which was an ancient outdoor marketplace, kind of like a mall we would have today, where items were bought and sold, and slaves were also bought and sold in the agora. So the word agorazo means redemption, and it implies that Jesus went into the marketplace of sin and bought us by his blood and with his death, becoming a ransom to redeem a poor sinner like me.

Number two. The second aspect of our redemption is this. Jesus not only entered the marketplace of sin to redeem us from the penalty of sin, he also took us out of that marketplace and redeemed us from the power of sin.

This is seen in another Greek word for redemption, which is ek agorazo. You add the little preposition ek in front of the word agorazo, and you have ek agorazo. Ek means to take out of something, to remove something out of.

So in fact, we have a double cure here in this verse. We have a ransom paid, redeemed from sin's penalty, redeemed from sin's power to give his life a ransom for many. Christ on the cross redeems sinners from sin, Satan, and the law, and secures them from the wrath of God and an eternity in hell.

And this Jesus has done by voluntarily laying down his life as the ransom price for them. This is, friends, the most spectacular ransom in the history of the world. Christ Jesus suffered, died, and rose again.

He now sits at the right hand of the Father, and he earned that right by way of a bloody cross. Jesus declared, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man cometh unto the Father but by me.

Come to Christ, friend, and lay your burden down. He invites poor sinners to come to him. The duty required is to come.

He alone is the remedy, refuge, and ransom for sin. And he has a pure gospel promise to all who come. And him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out, but let us pray.