I want you to think tonight about a question that has been going round in my head for the last few weeks – Why did Jesus have to be our sacrifice? Why did it have to be Him?
I will share a few thoughts that have come to me. This is not intended to be a comprehensive answer to my question: I am hoping that you will come up with other answers. I have asked the Holy Spirit to help us in how we think about it.
I do not mean, what was the sacrifice for? You are all believers, you know what it was for. But, why did it have to be Him? Why could it not be something else or someone else. Why did it have to be Jesus? That is what I want you to think about tonight.
I sometimes find a helpful place to start is to look in the Bible and see what was prophesied and what has been promised. Why was the sacrifice Jesus and not something or someone else? Well, if you look in the Old Testament you will find that is because God promised it would be Jesus and He delivers on His promises.

I would like to say something tonight to believers. I say that because what I want to say is something that I would not tell you in the gospel. If you are not a believer in Christ, if you do not know Jesus as your Saviour, you are very welcome, and I hope you will hear something that is useful to you – but what I want to say is for believers.
Part of the reason for that is that I need you to think back to the time when you first believed. Each of us has come a different way to the Saviour. I first heard the gospel when I was too small to remember it now, and I heard it week by week for many years. I knew I was saved when I was about nineteen. That is a lot of preachings that I had heard. Before I was about twelve, I must have prayed a lot of times and asked God to forgive me my sins. When I was in my mid-teens, I hardly prayed at all. The only time I read my bible was probably when I was in a meeting.
Then, when I was in my late teens, I started to pray again. I cannot really tell you why. Eventually I knew that Jesus was alive. I knew that my sins were forgiven. I have talked to other Christians, and I know other people that have come to Christ like that.