One Saturday in September, 1975, two teenage college girls were kidnapped and forced into a pit, dug beneath a garage floor in Vancouver, B.C. The pit was then covered with cement, in which a small hole was left for air.
Five days later the police searched the unused garage, broke through the concrete slab and released the two terrified girls.
The million dollar ransom demanded for them was not paid; and the kidnapper was arrested a short time later.
The foul act of stealing and kidnapping people and hiding them in pits is one of the oldest of crimes. Joseph suffered such a fate, as recorded in Genesis 37, nearly 4000 years ago.
The practice of paying ransoms is also very ancient. It is referred to more than once in the book of Job, perhaps the oldest book in the Bible.
The penitent sinner in Job chapter 33 is delivered "from going down to the pit," because God there declares, "I have found a ransom." v. 24.
"No man can give to God a ransom for his brother," but God can, and has, provided a ransom Himself.
That stupendous ransom price was the lifeblood of His only Son "in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace." Eph. 1:7.
In Psalm 40 we read of "a horrible pit," filled with "miry clay," out of which One was lifted by God; and His "feet set upon a rock." Prophetically, this refers to the Lord Jesus, He having died under the believer's sins, and buried, was after three days and three nights in the grave ("the horrible pit") raised again by the glory of the Father.
As one having been raised together with Christ, (Eph. 2:6) the believer can now sing with Him the new song!
"He brought me up also out of a horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock.... He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God." Psalm 40:2, 3.
The two kidnap victims in Vancouver were rescued without ransom. But in the case of sinners held in their sins, this can never be. For "without shedding of blood is no remission." Hebrews 9:22. But believers are "redeemed... with the precious blood of Christ." 1 Peter 1:18, 19.
Do you know for yourself the value of the death of Christ? Have you been delivered from going down into the pit... and saved from a lost eternity?
A busy business man was offered a tract. He replied, "I have no time to think of such things."
"Then God will give you eternity in which to think about them," was the crushing reply. We can either think on these things now, or "remember" (Luke 16:25) in eternity.
In the historic Mohawk Valley there is a sign which reads:
Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life."
Without the Way there is no going.
Without the Truth there is no knowing.
Without the Life there is no living.