It was a hard and marvellous thing to find that ransom, something so precious and so vast that it should outweigh in God's balances the sin and the condemnation of the whole world.
Looking at that ransom, we see:
I. What a hateful thing sin is sin, that needed such cancelling; sin, that murdered that ransom! You will never see sin as it really is till you look at it from the foot of the Cross.
II. Of what value must your soul be to God if that was expended upon it! See your dignity and your preciousness.
The higher the rank of the captive in war, the larger is the ransom demanded for his release. Of a thing so bought, the use, the purpose, the capability, the destiny, must be eternally immense.
III. What we buy at a great cost we watchfully keep and dearly love. And will not God be sure to take care of you and keep you safe and near Him, if only for this, that He has ransomed you with that which is above all gold and precious stones?
IV. Plead everything by the greatness of the ransom. Measure everything in your demands of Him by that. What a background is the Cross to prayer and confidence! "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"
J. Vaughan, Sermons,15th series, p. 101.
References: Job 33:25. J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year: Christmas and Epiphany,p. 59; H. Macmillan, The Olive Leaf,p. 185.