A few years ago, 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 empty 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 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 Gen. 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, which is perhaps the oldest book in the Bible.
The penitent sinner in Job 33 is delivered “from going down to the pit,” because God there declares, “I have found a ransom” (vs. 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, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace” (Eph. 1:77In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace; (Ephesians 1:7)).
In Psa. 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, who, having died under the believer’s sins and been buried, was after three days and three nights in the grave (the “horrible pit”) raised again to the glory of God the Father.
As one having been raised together with Christ (Eph. 2:66And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: (Ephesians 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 on a rock....He hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God” (Psa. 40:2-32He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. 3And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord. (Psalm 40:2‑3)).
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?