A Blood Donor Saved My Life Series

The American Red Cross in Oklahoma had this interesting poster sent to churches: "I gave my blood. Christ gave his. I gave a pint. He gave all. The needle is small, sharp. The nails were large, dull. The table - soft, restful. The cross - rough, painful. The nurses - kind, gentle. The soldiers - cruel, mean. The crowd applauds my sacrifice. “They that passed by Him reviled Him.” Mine is for O Positive. His for positively all. Mine, at best, will prolong a Life for a while. His, without doubt, can save all forever."

Down thru the years, I’ve answered the call from the Red Cross to give blood. And I suspect many of you have done the same. But I kind of doubt that any of us have donated as much as one man I read about. According to Reader’s Digest there was a 67-year-old man named Bill who had donated over 100 pints of blood in his lifetime. THAT’S A LOT OF BLOOD. And, no doubt many people owe their lives to this man’s kindness. Someone once asked him what he thought about his accomplishment, and he answered: “When that final whistle blows, and St. Peter asks, ‘What did you do?’ And I’ll just say, ‘I gave 100 pints of blood,’” THEN he laughed and said: “That ought to get me in.”

I hope he was joking. Because, if he was serious - if he truly believed that his good deeds (like giving his blood) would get him into heaven - then Bill was counting on the wrong blood. His donation of HIS OWN BLOOD may have saved people from a physical death. But only the blood of Jesus can save ALL people from eternity in hell.

Our sermon series is focused on the colored Beads found on “witness bracelets” like this one. The black bead stands for sin; The red bead for the blood of Jesus; The white stands for purity; blue for the waters of baptism; The green for our growth in our faith; and the yellow or gold for our home in heaven.

Last week we spoke of the deep darkness (blackness) of sin, and the power that sin has - to damage and destroy our lives. But the dark power of sin is no match for the RED red blood of Christ.

Someone said it this way: "Life is short, death is sure; Sin the cause, but Christ the cure." The Bible tells me that the power of Christ over sin is found in His blood.

Now I Peter 1:18 tells us that you and I were "ransomed". Several times in Scripture that word is “ransomed” is also translated as “redeemed”. And in fact, you may have heard a song that rejoiced in being redeemed: "Redeemed how I love to proclaim it; Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb; Redeemed by his infinite mercy; His child forever I am."

You have been redeemed, ransomed, and purchased by God. But now… what does that mean?

ILLUS: Well, if I want to know what a word means in Scripture I’ll often look it up in something called the Strong’s Concordance. Over a hundred scholars worked for 35 years to compile all the English words in the Bible and then trace the meaning of the Greek and Hebrew words that they were translated from. So I looked up this word for “redeemed” or “ransomed” in Strong’s Concordance. And there was this PHRASE that described how that word was used in the ancient world. “Redeemed: “To be released from bondage or imprisonment.” The idea in Scripture - is that sin had gotten hold of us - it put us in BONDAGE and imprisoned us. SIN literally owned us.

But now, of course the Bible also tells us that God MADE us. We were His creation. So technically we’re HIS, but our sin stole us away from Him.

ILLUS: I recently had a conversation with someone I know. He’s a nice enough guy, but he’s got moral problems

and he’s definitely not a Christian. He wanted to talk with me about the assassination of Charlie Kirk. His opinion was that this (murdering Kirk) was the worst thing anyone could do, and that the guy who killed Kirk definitely wouldn’t go to heaven. As far as he was concerned, murder was the worst sin he could think of. And he was right - this assassin was vile and evil and destroyed the life of a man who'd done nothing but engage people in a discussion about God, morals and righteousness.

But I explained that God can even forgive murderers – he’d done it with Paul who claimed that (because he’d had people killed) he himself was the worst of all sinners, but God forgave him (basically) to prove it could be done.