[0:00] I would like us, friends, to turn to our New Testament reading in the letter to the Hebrews in chapter 9. Hebrews chapter 9.
[0:20] I'm reading at verse 19. For when Moses had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood of calves and of goats with water and scarlet and wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you.
[0:46] Moreover, he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels of the ministry, and almost all things are by the law purged with blood.
[1:00] And without the shedding of blood is no remission of sin. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.
[1:15] When we come to a communion season, and especially to the Sabbath morning service, and to participate with all the saints in Christ in that great memorable event, an event into which maybe none of us can really enter fully, by faith we receive what Christ has offered us, by faith we believe, by faith we come before the Lord Jesus Christ at this time, in obedience to his command.
[2:01] And we do what he has called upon us to do in remembrance of him. Now, it may seem almost a silly thing to suggest why we are here this morning.
[2:19] Sometimes it's good for us just to pause for a second or two. We're sitting at a table, as we believe it to be within our denomination, a table that we try to uphold in terms of what the Lord has provided for us.
[2:39] And we come to this table, praying that the Lord Jesus Christ would be with us. We come to this table knowing that in him we live, we move, we have our being.
[2:56] I want us, just for a little time, to contemplate for ourselves as individuals what it means for us.
[3:09] With respect, just hold on. I want us to consider for a little time what we understand by the blood of Christ.
[3:22] We know it from narrative. We know what we read when we read the scriptures of the crucifixion of Christ. We know the theology we have been taught.
[3:34] We've been brought up with the teaching of the word of God in our hands. But I'm thinking really here more of how we appreciate the blood of Christ from day to day.
[3:46] Because you remember, Jesus said, this do in remembrance of me. And I want to come back to that again when we come to the table.
[3:58] But specifically, I want us to ask ourselves the question, what do I understand by the blood of Christ? What does it really mean?
[4:11] From the narrative, as I said, from the historical perspective, from the social situation that existed at the time of the crucifixion, for many, the shedding of the blood of Christ was an act for them of barbarism.
[4:26] It was a barbaric act. It was something that they did to get rid of Christ. And I'm sure that there were many of them at that time, when he was being crucified, delighted in what they were watching.
[4:37] And even as they saw him in his physical agony, though they couldn't, his enemies couldn't understand anything of his spiritual agony, yet the physical agony that Christ was going through, through that very pain of crucifixion, was something that they gloated in.
[4:55] But when you and I think of the blood of Christ, sometimes we just want to shy a little away from it, because we know that it has something to do with us.
[5:09] In fact, it has everything in one sense to do with us, through the judgment of God for sin, the punishment for sin, the redemption and the salvation of those who are in Christ.
[5:25] There is a text that says, what think ye of Christ? I just want to ask you, what do you think of the blood, of the everlasting covenant, the blood of Christ, that was shed for you and for me?
[5:47] What does it do? You will take the cup this morning, a cup of wine, a symbol of the blood of Christ.
[5:57] when you take it, do you think of something mystical? Do you think of something mysterious? What do you think? Or do you just get the taste of wine?
[6:10] I've often asked myself that, when I sit at the table and receive it, what do I really think of this wine? What do I think of the blood that it resembles?
[6:22] The blood of Christ particularly. Well, let me go through one or two things that I think the word of God wants us to draw our attention to when we contemplate and consider what is the blood of Christ.
[6:38] Now, it would be wrong, too, in a way, to do an address on the blood of Christ without considering the body of Christ, the bread that is symbolic of his body.
[6:49] But I don't have time to go into all of that because I just want to see how we understand and consider the blood of Christ as it is related to us in the word of God.
[7:00] I want to go to Corinthians, 1 Corinthians chapter 5. In the writer Paul there in chapter 5, and particularly in verse 7, he says something that again stands out very clearly for all of us who believe in the shed blood for the remission of sin.
[7:19] In 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 7, let me read from verse 6. Your glory is not good. Know you not that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?
[7:31] Purge out therefore the old leaven that ye may be a new lump as you are unleavened. For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us.
[7:42] What is the apostle referring to there? Well, he is referring to Christ and the blood that was shed. Because what does it do? What does the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ do for us?
[7:56] When I sit at the table of the Lord, when you sit at the table of the Lord, what am I thinking? When I take the bread and I take the wine, what do I contemplate in that?
[8:08] There's one thing that I think it does. It averts something. It averts, yes, the judgment of God against sin.
[8:20] We have not received the punishment that is our deserving for sin, have we? We sit at the table, thankful to God that we can sit there.
[8:31] But when we think about it, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, what does it do? It averts the judgment of God away from us. We who are held deserving sinners are brought nigh by the blood of Christ.
[8:46] And as the Apostle says in this letter, his epistle to the Romans, he says, there is now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.
[9:03] When you sit and you take the cup of blessing, when you eat the bread, you realize and you remember surely, you remember what the Lord had done, and in doing what he had done, he averted the judgment of God away from you and from me.
[9:21] No longer are we in condemnation. I've maybe referred to this before in the hearing of some of you, maybe somewhere else on the island. But I often think of those words in John's Gospel, in chapter 3, verse 16, the familiar words of that great Gospel, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.
[9:51] But don't stop there. Because what the Word says, it says, for God sent not his Son into this world to condemn the world. We know why that is, of course.
[10:04] we were all under condemnation. Christ didn't come into this world to condemn. He came into this world to save. And when you and I take those words of John 3, 16, and we apply them by faith to ourselves, what are we saying?
[10:22] The blood of Jesus Christ, what I believe in by faith, has averted the judgment of God that I was deserving of, and Christ has experienced it. We cannot really enter in, can we, to the judgment of God?
[10:40] Oh, there are those who will experience the divine judgment. God forbid that anyone in this building should experience the divine judgment.
[10:52] But maybe at this moment in time you're sitting in that position, not because you're sitting away from the communion table, but your relationship to God is that in which it is said.
[11:04] The divine judgment has not yet been averted from you. It has not been diverted away from you. It has not been put on Christ. At least, your profession says it is not.
[11:18] It averts the judgment of God as the blood of the Paschal Lamb. Yes, what did it do? On the night of the Passover, it diverted or averted the judgment of God.
[11:36] Those who believed in what they were doing, in obedience to the will and the command of God, when they put the blood on the doorposts and the lintel, what did it do?
[11:48] It averted the judgment of God, the angel of death, upon the Egyptians and upon any of those who were part of Israel who would not exercise that obedience to God.
[12:02] And if that is your station today, my friend, you who may be sitting out there, I'm not making the judgment. God is making the judgment. If you are without Christ, then the blood of Jesus Christ has nothing for you and you're in no way under its protection.
[12:24] Oh, to be in the home of the children of Israel in that land before they escaped from that situation, to be in a home in Israel with the blood over the doorposts was to be in security.
[12:39] It is the same for the believer today in Christ, the new covenant. What a blessing that we can participate in this very feast, a reminder to us of what Christ has done by diverting the judgment of God away from us and upon himself.
[13:01] But also in the book of Revelation, and there is a parallel kind of passage too in Leviticus chapter 14, verse 14, in which it speaks there of what the blood does by way of conversion.
[13:15] there is a spiritual activity. It converts the one who believes in the substitute, even as the blood of the cleansing changed the position and condition of a cleansed leper.
[13:31] Spiritually speaking, outside of Christ, we were all lepers. We were all filthy. But the blood of Jesus Christ, what does it do?
[13:42] It cleanses us, makes us clean. Amazing, isn't it? The world, as far as we know it and understand it, looks upon our faith and our beliefs.
[14:00] A secularized, heathen world believes that what we do is wrong, socially unacceptable. to believe in the blood of somebody that was shed many years ago under a crucifixion.
[14:16] They would think it is inhuman. But for you and I, it's different, isn't it? Because what the blood of Christ has done, what nothing else could ever have done for you and for me, it has cleansed me.
[14:32] It has changed me. It has brought about a monumental change in such a way that no longer am I classified as unclean.
[14:46] The world doesn't see it. Maybe. But should it? Should the world see that you and I are clean every whit?
[14:57] Should it recognize by some means or another that we have been changed, that there is a difference? Well, it should. The world should see that, yes, we have been with Christ.
[15:09] The change has taken place. Conversional. New life. You can use all the adjectives that Scripture uses to describe the relationship between God and his children.
[15:25] What the blood of the everlasting covenant has done, it converts. It changes. It cleans. And you know, it's done something else too, I think.
[15:39] What's your relationship with the world this morning? What do you want it to be? What is there in this world that really is attractive to you?
[15:51] But all has changed, has it? Has the blood of Jesus Christ changed your mind, your thinking, but everything that you say and everything you do and everything you believe?
[16:03] It is the blood of Christ that has made the difference for your life? Nothing has entered upon your experience like the knowledge that the Lord Jesus Christ and the shedding of blood has made such a difference and such a change in my life.
[16:18] it inverts a position that you and I once held. From living in dependence upon a world that lies in wickedness and sin, living in a world that was only desirous to serve the ego, but no longer that, the blood of Christ has made a difference.
[16:40] the relationship between you and God is completely different. Remember what God said to the Pharaoh in Egypt. He says, I put something between you and my people.
[16:57] It's not my people that have done it, it is I that have done it. God says, I have put a redemption between you and my people.
[17:08] and that redemption is manifested greatly in the person and the blood of Christ. What God has done in the sending of his son, in the shedding of his blood for the remission of sin, he has put a redemption between us and everything that else existed that we were dependent upon in this world.
[17:33] I will put a redemption between thy people and my people. There is a separation here. It's evident in this building itself.
[17:46] There are those who are the recipients of that separation. There are those who are sitting out from the table. Again, whether they are God's chosen, I don't know, but they are not sitting at the table.
[18:08] But in a real sense, God has already done it. Through the blood of his own son, what he has done, he has created a separation between his people and the rest of the world.
[18:22] Let me go back to Romans chapter 8 again. There is now therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit.
[18:35] This world will walk after the flesh. But the Christian, the believer, because of the blood of Christ, doesn't. It's not that we have entered upon that road in our own strength.
[18:49] Not at all. It is what has been applied to us. It is the atoning blood of Christ.
[18:59] I love what the blood of Christ asserts. Now, I don't think it's good for any one of us to be proud and boastful and arrogant.
[19:13] These characteristics ought not to be in us when we leave the world and when, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, we have been made changed, we are different, we are no longer what we once were.
[19:26] But I love what it asserts. It's that kind of thing that Paul speaks of when he talks about the boldness that he has. Not an ego. It's not a self-boldness.
[19:37] It is a boldness that he has through the power of the blood of Jesus Christ as it is effective in his own life. Ephesians chapter 1. What does it do?
[19:49] Well, for the apostle Paul in that very chapter of Ephesians, this is what he says and just let me quote it for you for a moment. Ephesians chapter 1 and he says this.
[20:03] Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us acceptable in the beloved.
[20:22] Pardon. Pardon. Pardon. Pardon. Pardon in the blood of Christ. Pardon through the blood of the everlasting covenant. Imagine it.
[20:34] Once held deserving, once condemned, but now made free. When you sip the wine, think of the word pardon.
[20:47] Think of the word freedom. Think of the word deliverance. All of these things are part and partial of your new life in Christ Jesus. And what a difference it is.
[21:01] Okay. There are occasions after you have expressed and professed your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, when like maybe many of the children of Israel, you begin to doubt and you have fears and the devil enters in and he seeks to maybe draw attention away from the centrality of your new life in Christ.
[21:22] That may be the case. But the Lord doesn't leave us there, does he? A time like this. It's a time when we can come aside from the world and we can experience once again the reality of pardon.
[21:40] Not that it's a new pardon, but sometimes when we come to the table of the Lord, when you take the bread and you take the wine, it does remind you, does it not, that you are a pardoned sinner.
[21:57] God, be merciful to me, a sinner, as you take the wine today. Think of that. And there's more, isn't there?
[22:09] I could spend all day here talking about those things that really matter most through the giving of the cup and the bread that Christ has given to us to receive.
[22:24] Do you feel at peace this morning? Is there a peace, an overwhelming peace? Not a peace that comes as a result of reading some secular novel.
[22:35] Not a peace through a realization that something that you hoped wouldn't happen didn't happen. but an overwhelming peace that comes through the fact and the knowledge that you have that Christ shed his blood for you.
[22:54] Colossians chapter 1 verse 20 I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and who gave himself for me.
[23:07] I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me I know that as a reference to what I was saying last night and I don't mind repeating it. I live by the faith of the Son of God I live knowing that yes my soul my life my whole being in Christ is at peace.
[23:26] The battle the warfare of the past oh I'm not saying there is no battle but the warfare of the past is no longer there because Christ has triumphed victorious for me through the shedding of his own blood.
[23:43] There is pardon there is peace and there is power is there not? Do you think yourself a weakling?
[23:56] You're nothing at all? Yes in yourself you are nothing. Paul says that I am less than the least of all I am nothing but that's not all is it?
[24:10] Without Christ without the shedding of the blood of Christ without that applied to your heart and to your soul to mine where would we be in this world?
[24:27] It's those who are in Christ it is those who are live through faith in the Son of God. I have witnessed with some people a great concern at the end of their life.
[24:47] People who have exercised faith in the Lord Jesus and there are occasions when an overwhelming fear comes upon them. Death is nearer than it was twenty years ago.
[25:04] It's getting much nearer and you begin to ask yourself what is before me? The devil wants to take it away from you.
[25:20] The devil wants to say to you where now is your God when you're heading for the last strains of the life that you live in this world? the last enemy may be facing you and you think will God leave me now?
[25:39] No he won't. Why? Because the blood of Jesus Christ is not something that is wishy-washy.
[25:51] It's not some dilution of some social order of the past. The blood of Jesus Christ is a reality and the blood of Christ has challenged every enemy of your soul and mine.
[26:05] When the blood of Jesus Christ was shed for the remission of sin it wasn't just that was it? It wasn't just the fact that you and I can be sit here this morning and say assuredly that he loved me he gave himself for me his blood was shed for me no that great enemy and the thing that frightens so often the heart and soul of many of his people is hell itself.
[26:33] Now I'm not wanting to put a doubt and a fear in anybody but I want you to take this reality with you that when you drink the wine a symbol of the blood of Christ think of this the blood of Christ not only cleanses you from all your sin but it subverts the power of hell the great enemy the last source of great evil you remember there is a passage in the Old Testament in Sam with regard to Samuel and remember even when he sacrificed the lamb it was offered by Samuel and the Lord discomforted the Philistines in consequence when Jesus blood was shed for you and for me he did to hell which no man could ever do he subverted its power and it is no more activity in your heart and soul the blood of
[27:46] Jesus Christ has dealt a thunderous blow to that chasm for the want of a better expression so I ask you this morning as you come to sit at the table of the Lord and partake of the bread and the wine think of what Jesus has done in the shedding of his blood for the remission of your sin and mine everything is changed they talk about a new testament and that is true the blood of the new testament but it's the blood that created a new life in you and in me the arresting power of the blood of Christ isn't it beautiful as the apostle Paul says you who were once sometimes afar off are made nigh by the blood of
[28:47] Christ and that's what it should be for each one of us this morning the attracting power of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ may God grant unto each one of us as we sit at this table that assurance that in the blood there is pardon there is forgiveness there is assurance there is everything that you and I need for time for eternity shall we pray oh gracious and ever blessed God we are privileged indeed that the gospel of thy grace speaks to us so clearly of the things that have come our way through the sacrifice of the son of thy love yet oh
[29:49] Lord we pray that we would not take these things lightly and that we would not presume anything on them but that by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and his finished work and what he has done and slain down his life for ransom for his people that as we remember these things we may do so convinced and convicted that there is none like unto thee no not one thou art the altogether lovely one and the prince of peace we recognize as the prophet said of old that yes we esteemed him stricken of God and smitten but we do thank thee for the deliverance that enable us to say I know that my redeemer liveth continue with us then O Lord we pray thee and undertake for us in all that we do in the remainder of the service and all we ask is in the redeemer's name
[30:54] Amen Amen Amen