Some may not know just what this means.  It means that Jesus was nailed to two pieces of wood one across the other; his hands were nailed to the crosspiece above, and his feet to the high post that was fastened by its lower end in the ground.  Thus he hung in agony till he was dead.  This was the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  It was done through the envy, malice and hatred of the Jews.  It shows how very wicked they were.  Some good men who had not consented to the death of Jesus took his body down from the cross and placed it in a sepulchre or vault cut out of solid rock.  This vault had been cut out of the rock some time before and belonged to a man of the name of Joseph.  This Joseph assisted in placing the body of Jesus in his new vault or tomb, and then they placed a large stone at the mouth of the tomb, and the body of Jesus was buried.  As the pall of that night’s darkness gently settled on the grave of the crucified Jesus, the Jews felt relieved that they had now, as they thought, put their enemy out of sight.  But on the morning of the third day after this some women came to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus, and, behold! it was not there; but a bright and shining angel of glory was there, who said to those good women:  “He is not here; he is risen from the dead.”  They could hardly believe for joy.  Soon, however, they, with many others, saw the risen Lord for themselves, with their own eyes, and never doubted any more.

All that I have said so far is intended as an introduction to my text.  My text says:  “We were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ.”  The Lord told his disciples, who were his loving friends, the reason why he suffered the Jews to put him to death.  It was, he told them, that all the things written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms concerning him might be fulfilled.  He also said to two of them as they journeyed to Emmaus:  “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” The blood he shed on the cross was necessary to his glorification.  Without it he could not have been glorified.  The blood of Christ is called the blood of the covenant.  Now what is a covenant?  A covenant is a union of one mind and heart with another.  It is literally a going together, as a man and woman join heart and hand in the covenant of marriage.  When God and man enter into a covenant they unite and become as one.  In this union God loves man with unspeakable love, and man loves the Lord his God with all his heart.  Love is what unites.  Love unites a husband and wife.  When this union is perfect, what the one loves the other likewise loves; and when we are in covenant union with our glorified Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, what he loves we love, and what he hates we also hate.  As man enters into a covenant with the Lord he enters a state of salvation from sin, death and hell.  But all covenants between God and men must be sealed or made with blood:  and whereas a covenant with the Lord Jesus Christ redeems and saves man from death and hell, therefore the blood of Christ redeems and saves man because it is the blood of the covenant between him and God.