Now here's a sermon illustration if I ever saw one

One the train we were looking fro streets, I mean seats, & we ended up sitting next to, what looked like, a mother & a daughter. The ticket man was asking for tickets, as they do, & the daughter asked for an adult & a child to Meadowhall single. She had a £10 note and was ready to pay. Unfortunately the vendor said "That's £13.60 please". She looked shocked, and I was in the middle of this. She looked like she was going to cry (she didn't, that would have been much worse), but she asked for returns instead, which was £14.70. That made her turn a funny green colour & she stared in disbelief at him. Then...out of the, supposed, blue...he found a cheaper return for £13.75 and she agreed to that, looking a bit hurt, swapped the £10 for a £20 and paid.

All this time I was watching, thinking 'I want to help, but I don't have any change, I don't have £4, I spent that on 2 teas'. What an idiot. I couldn't pay half, or even a third of the price, all I had was a debit card, and more plastic in the form of student ID's and that, than you could shake a stick at. Therefore not worth trying to exchange for money. It dawned on me that, perhaps, it was what God would have me do. 'You can't pay a bit of it, but you can pay it all.' What would have happened if I'd done that? Intervening to "That's ok I'll pay"

What did Jesus do? He knew paying for sins through sacrifice of lambs wasn't enough, it didn't do enough. So He paid it all...