Get ready! Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, is coming. This day will be the best shopping day of the year! If you are willing to face jam-packed parking lots, jostling crowds, and rubbing elbows with frenetic shoppers — assuming the stores are even open — you may be rewarded with terrific savings. However, be prepared to move fast. Many items will disappear off the shelves if you don’t hurry.
Do you feel the urgency to get out there and shop? What if I told you that you didn’t have to wait for Black Friday to get the best offer ever made? What if I told you this offer covers the most urgent need you have?
It’s true. On a Black Friday 2,000 years ago, a Man hung on the cross so this offer might be made to you. Although He did no evil, He was taken like a common criminal and nailed to two pieces of intersecting wood and left to die. What a black, black Friday that was! It was so black that for three hours while He hung on the cross a supernatural darkness hovered over the land. In all the history of the world, no day was blacker than this. Men meant this act for evil, but God overruled it for good. By this terrible act of injustice, God has brought about the means of bringing the greatest blessing man could ever receive. So much blessing has come into the world through the death of God’s Son that the day on which He died has come to be referred to by some as “Good Friday.”
Because Christ died for sinners, God can justly offer to every man, woman and child the gift of eternal life. This is a gift you urgently need, because without it you are on the way to a lost eternity. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 3:2323For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; (Romans 3:23)).
COSTLY FREE OFFER
What does this offer cost? Hundreds, millions, billions? No, it cost far more than all the combined wealth in this world. It cost the precious blood of Christ. When we sinned, it was as if we dragged an ink dripping rag across our hearts, which left a terrible stain. Only the blood of Christ can wash away the stain of sin. The price to ransom sinners was the lifeblood of the Savior. “Even as the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:2828Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:28)).
Every second a person remains apart from Christ, he runs the risk of losing his never-dying soul. Time like a rushing river is swiftly flowing by. Do you know the hour of your death so that you can prepare to meet your God? No, of course, you don’t. But every passing moment brings you closer to the time when you must pass out of this world and enter into judgment for your sins. “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:2727And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: (Hebrews 9:27)). Therefore the sensible thing to do is to come to Christ right now. “Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). Right now is the time God wants you to repent of your sins, believe on the Lord Jesus, and receive His offer of eternal life.
Shoppers on Black Friday might find a lot of good deals and save a lot of money, but the greatest saving doesn’t involve money. The greatest saving takes place when a sinner turns away from their sins, comes to the Lord Jesus Christ by faith, and then is brought home to heaven. This salvation, offered free to all, is by far the greatest blessing any man, woman or child may ever receive. Receive it and thanksgiving will surely follow.
The day you find the greatest saving will not be on any day you go shopping, but it will be when you come to Christ. The need is urgent. What is holding you back?