You can't save yourself. I know that's a blow. That is a bitter blow, because many of us have been doing all we can to save ourselves for many years. Saving yourself is called control. It's called control; controlling your world, controlling your emotions, controlling your inner life, controlling every kind of aspect of your life. That's what's saving yourself. It's because underneath, you believe it's unsafe out there. The only one to be trusted is me - so I will save myself the very best I can. It's okay to do that, until you've found that there's a saviour. In Matthew 1 it says, you shall call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.
So we need to be redeemed. We need a redeemer. You cannot save yourself. You cannot do enough good works to go into heaven. You actually have to have someone help you out. Isn't it a terrible thing to feel you're that lost? I hope it's sinking in, that we're that lost, that there is such no hope to deal with the issue of sin. Our communities have been trying for years to make it a better place. It isn't getting better. There's no hope with all the programmes.
The core issue is not dealt with, which is sin, and there's only one remedy for sin and fortunately - I'm glad you asked what it was because Jesus tells us. Let's have a look in the Bible, Leviticus, Chapter 17. So God who set the laws about sin, set the laws about how to deal with it as well. Isn't that nice that He did that? He laid it out, Leviticus 17, Verse 11. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given the blood of an animal on the altar, or I've given it, or the blood, to make atonement for yourself, for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. Now that word atonement, well there's another funny word. Any of you see the movie Atonement? Girl did this terrible lie, and wrecked someone's life, and spent all her life in guilt trying to find a way to atone for what she had done, but she never was able to, and in the story, she was starting to get Alzheimer's, and she tried to write her story out, but she changed the story to try and make it have a happy ending. Actually she couldn't atone for her sin, because the people had died, and she couldn't get free of the guilt.
So atonement means to make two at one, that weren't one before - at one - it means an at-one-ment. So what it means, when you atone something, is that you pay the price to get the relationship come back together, so the two people are one again, so redemption and atonement are very similar things. Redemption, you pay the price to get someone out of someone's captivity, and atonement is you pay the price to make two people one, so it's all together; redemption, atonement, similar things - a price is paid, that enables a person to get totally out of a snare, and become one with the person they're separated from.
So whenever you hear the word redemption, that's what it means; someone's paying a price. He is my redeemer! That means He pays the price. He has the chequebook. He pays the price every time. Every time! Every time! Every time He pays the price.
Okay then, so God set the law up. He set the law up that if you sin, you die. He also set the law up, if you've sinned, this is how you get free - you need blood. And this is another gory thing about Christianity. It's a blood religion. It is a blood religion. In other words, you can't buy your way into heaven. You can't work your way into heaven. You just need blood, the way God said. That's humbling because surely there must be something I can do to help out in this thing. I've got to submit to God's way, and God's way is the blood. He said atonement's in the blood. Notice that we read in Exodus, Chapter 12, where the people of God were coming out of captivity, and the angel of death was bringing judgement on the Egyptians, and He said Verse 22 take a bunch of hyssop, dip it in the blood in the basin, strike the lintel, strike the two doorposts with the blood, and don't go out. Stay under the blood. Stay in it. You've got to realise what's happening now is, there's an angel of death. That means you're going to die if you go outside the house, you're going to die if you haven't got a remedy. Now that's a scary place to be. Imagine in a nation, and you're all going to die unless someone finds an antidote.