Lesson number one is the message on blood. And really we couldn't have found a more appropriate lesson for a Good Friday service; the day Jesus died then the message in blood the story of His sacrifice. I had some other thoughts in regard to this day and the lesson that I was going to produce. Last night I was thinking of giving you a lesson of the personalities around the cross, faces around the cross. The different individuals that were mentioned and some of the things that happened in their lives some real wonderful truths along that line. I thought of some other things that portrayed the shadow of the cross and the power of the cross, but when I came over this morning it just seemed like God redirected my thinking into something that I have wanted to do for a long time, and that is to begin a series on the blood of Jesus.
I have written out on the backs of some scraps of paper a revelation that God gave me years ago on the power of the blood. So for this week and the next 7 Friday's I'm going to be giving you truths that came not by any type of research but they came right direct from God's heart to me. I wanted to give a little setting included with this lesson. One Saturday night I had gone to sleep before 12 and God began speaking to my heart, I thought I was asleep, maybe it was a dream but it seemed as though I was awake and listening to Him and even conversing with Him.
He spoke to my heart so definitely and asked me "How important the blood of Jesus is to me?" It seemed like the eyes of God were right in my heart and I have preached on the blood and it took normal importance to me, but this question just seemed to be one of a penetrating sort right into my heart. And I told the Lord I know it's important and I have preached on it occasionally. But it didn't really satisfy God. Then He asked me, He said, "If the blood is important to you, let me ask you some questions about this so I can get your feeling on the blood," but of course He knew all the time anyway. But He asked me a question. "What do you consider to be or how great do you consider the power of the blood of Jesus to be. What is the power of the blood, how great is it?"
"Well," I said the power is the greatest, that blood washes away sin, it covers sin, and I started saying a few things. Then the Lord said, "Let Me show you a few things of how important the blood is to Me. He let me see the worth of the blood. And He practically worded it in simple ways. He said the worth of the blood would be determined by the value of the life that that blood flows through. The value of a chicken's blood would be of very little value because it flows through the life of a chicken. The blood of a human being is very, very valuable because it represents, it has the value of the life or the person that it occupies. If it's the president of the United States the value of that blood would be considered a tremendous loss when it was spilled. Then God pointed out, the value of the blood of Jesus is determined by who it flowed through. And then He said that when you think of the value of the blood, when you think of the power of that blood, think of the power and the value of that life. That in Him dwelt all of the fullness of God. You can't go higher than that. That blood then becomes the most valuable ingredient in the whole world because of who it flowed through.
So God emphasized that night when I spoke of the blood to remember that the power of that blood represented all of the power of the universe because the whole Godhead was represented in that blood. Whether you want to say God the Father, God the Son, or God the Holy Spirit, the fullness dwelt in Him so the blood of Jesus that flowed represented the authority and the power of all that there is. And when you think of God taking that blood and giving it to you He's giving you the most valuable thing in the whole universe. And if a person can get excited in their sleep, I was excited when God told me how powerful it was. I had it visualized that it's power was only in the fact that it was something He used to wash away my sins, but I didn't realize how or where it got the ability to wash away my sins and take care of those things. For that entire night God dealt with me and He took me from Genesis to Revelation, asking me questions, giving me Scriptures, two hundred scriptures I had never searched out. And He burned them into my mind. And oh what beautiful truths they were, and I preached on them for months. It seems like I couldn't get away from them. So I wrote out all of these 200 references and do you know that every one of them was just exactly the way God gave them to me.
Many great truths stand out as beacon lights in God's revelation of Himself to man. We see His love, His knowledge, His power; we see His foreknowledge, His grace. But no truth occupies the place of importance in God's heart as does the blood of Jesus. In this study we will follow a crimson trail through the Bible and discover the unique place given the blood from the beginning to the end of God's revelation to Himself to man. Now we have four different sections here as God revealed it to me. Hebrews 11:4, "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice then Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous God testifying of his gifts and by it he being dead yet speaketh."
Abel offered a sacrifice that God had ordained a sacrifice of blood. We learned from this lesson that from the very beginning there can be no approach to God, no fellowship with Him even by faith, no enjoyment of His favor apart from blood. There are people who like to say that their faith takes the place of blood. Your faith can take the place of your own righteousness and good works and these other things and the Bible tells us this and faith replaces that but faith can never take the place of blood. Now God has given us His truth and His grace. And His grace makes a way for us but both truth and grace cannot be brought to us only by blood.
Blood is the one ingredient that follows through on God's demands, His conditional promises and also His grace. So we have nothing to offer, to earn anything from God, still what God makes real to us even His free gifts come to us by the blood of Jesus. Then at Mount Ariat when a new beginning started, when judgment had fallen in a flood, that new beginning in order to start with fellowship began with blood. Just like that dispensation when they were banished from the Garden of Eden it started with blood. In Gen. the 9th chapter, the first thing that Noah did was sacrifice. And Noah took every clean beast and offered it a burnt offering on the altar and the Lord said it smells good. And He accepted him see, it was favorable to Him and God gave a covenant then because of a sacrifice that was given. Now at Mount Mariah we see that trail of blood again on these mountain peaks of the Old Testament where Isaac's life was spared a nation was formed. But the Word tells us not without blood and you read this over in Hebrews the 11th chapter about verse 23.
Then in Egypt when the children of Israel went down into the land of Egypt and a new day another new beginning was about to happen as the children of Egypt were going to be evacuated out of the land of Egypt. Three million people were delivered by blood. God spoke to Moses and (Ex. 12:13) said, "The blood shall be to you as a token upon the houses where you are, and when I see the blood I will pass over you." So blood became another significant thing in the beginning of a whole new day. So every new life, when a person comes to the Lord and new life begins for them, it comes because of the blood.
Great fear has come into many people's hearts because of a misunderstanding of communion thinking that they'll take it the wrong way and drink the cup of damnation. But Jesus Himself told a bunch of people many who didn't even know God at all and He said, "If you don't eat of this you aren't going to have any life in you if you don't eat of Me and drink of Me." And when He spoke of eating and drinking unworthily He wasn't speaking about eating and drinking unworthily by just in partaking of that, He said, "you're doing it unworthily when you're putting your faith in anything else outside of this blood," when you're saying it's because I'm so good, now I've examined myself I haven't done anything bad here and if I had done something bad here I have asked the Lord to forgive it and I guess everything's clear it looks like I'm not as other people I can partake but I sure hope sister so and so doesn't take because she's got some things that maybe the Lord doesn't know about there she better not partake.
This feeling of spiritual achievement that people have had down the years that people have told them that it's by their own efforts by it's what you have done and making yourself ready to have communion. That has denied God's blessing and God's smile for hundreds of people down through the years. And I'm so glad and thankful that God let this truth as one of the truths that surfaced that the blood of Jesus Christ is more available or at least more needed to the one that doesn't know Jesus then the one that does. So that's the reason why I tell people if you will put your faith in what Jesus has done and take the cup and by that act of taking that cup you are saying something to God that you haven't been able to say in any other way. God I'm putting my faith in what this cup symbolizes the blood of Jesus. This is your source of life.
Turn over to second Chronicles chapter 30. God burned these verses on my mind during a communion service in my office one day. God let these people know that He's a lot more concerned about people then He is procedure. And He said these people are coming, that's the reason I had this procedure to get them here, and here they're coming without it. And I'll take them. Verse 17, there were many in the congregation that were not sanctified, therefore the Levites that had charge of the killing of the Passover that were not cleansed to sanctify them unto the Lord, for the multitude of the people had not cleansed themselves, yet they did eat of the Passover. But Hezekiah prayed for them saying, "The Good Lord pardon everyone that prepares his heart to seek God even though he is not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary, he's prepared his heart even though he hasn't prepared some other things."
And the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah and He healed the people. And He gave them such a revival, there was tremendous gladness. They even defied the tradition; instead of 7 days of feasting they said we can't stop this revival. We got to go another week, they said the gladness increased, the joy increased, because God had hearkened and He had forgiven the people even bypassing what looked like His own regulations in doing it. This lets us know that the glory of God that is coming today to the world is full of grace and truth. The truth says, "This is how it is and reveals to man God's way and reveals to man God's condition."
But so few can actually meet God's way and His condition God says they got to have help in other ways so the glory cloud has another segment in it and that is grace, it's a free gift that comes. God says this tells you how a situation is but my grace shows you the way out. So wherever you see God moving by His Spirit people are finding God, not on the basis of their works, not the basis of their goodness, but on the basis that God's grace is sufficient. Hallelujah.
The second most important truth to me is the grace of God, blood on top then grace. Praise God. When God's covenant came, His agreement, He said it would only be effective through blood. God said "Take the blood and sprinkle the altar" which signified God's connection with them, sprinkle God's side. Now He said, "Take half of it, half of it is for God's side. Now take the other half and sprinkle the people and God said this blood is the one thing that mankind and God have in common. They divided; half of the blood was to take care of the wrath of God. His wrath is turned away from us. At the cross this happened, the wrath of God smoked Jesus; the wrath of God was turned away from us onto Jesus.
God said we have one mutual interest, when you say, "God I'm putting my faith in the blood, you're putting your faith in something that I have confidence in, you become partners with me, you become part owners with me in covenant. The death of Jesus Christ was not only for man it was for God. There was wrath in God's heart toward man and that wrath had to be appeased because God was displeased and so the blood of Jesus Christ turned away the wrath of God on that side. So that's why God allowed for this beautiful picture, this beautiful symbol. Sprinkle half of it God's way and half of it man's way so that we will have a common meeting ground.
And so at the cross Jesus reached up into heaven with one hand and He reached down into the earth with another that is the joining link right there, the blood is the joining link between God and man. We see in worship, even the golden throne of God, the altar the mercy seat in the holy place had to be sprinkled with blood. Not without blood could anyone approach the mercy seat. The mercy seat underneath that golden lid there was a box called the ark of the covenant and inside of that ark, God said mankind has broken the laws of God and every law God saw and He said, "Moses, take the broken laws of God and put them in that ark. Put this golden lid over the top of this box so that I can't see the broken laws. Now take the blood of the sacrifice and sprinkle it over the top of the mercy seat so that now when someone comes to me asking for mercy I look down and I cannot see their sins because they're hidden under the blood. And every person who comes to me by the way of the blood has identified themselves with the sacrifice that has already been made."
God said that judgment has already been meted out to this person because there's the blood. When you come God cannot see one solitary thing. Jesus Christ is the golden covering. His blood and His sacrifice covers every sin that we ever had or will ever make. There isn't going to be another sacrifice. The weakness of confession is that if it's based on the completeness of our confession some might miss things because there might be something that we forget. But sin as a principle, there may be 100 sins but it's still sin. As a principle, anything that will hide fellowship with God, that thing needs to come and say, "God I need you, there's something in between," and God will wipe it out. But basically, to the person that belongs to Jesus, you don't have to come to God and confess a whole lot of things because of your desire to please Him as you walk with God. Twenty four hours a day that blood keeps on flowing. This is the life of the blood that we are going to have in another lesson. It just keeps on cleansing even if you don't even know about it.
You don't have to keep coming to God and say, "God I did this thing will you forgive me. God sees the needs of human life and there would be nothing more insecure in the whole world then salvation if every time something attached itself to us we had to find out about it and run to God for help. We'd be so insecure, 9 hours out of every 10 we'd be out of fellowship. We'd be lost 9 hours out of 10. But when you put yourself in God's hands and you walk with Him, God says when you walk in the light as He is in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ God's Son, we have fellowship with one another, Him and us, and the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. Well, some people say when you're walking in the light you don't have any sin. Well then why did He say that He cleanses us from sin if there wouldn't be any sin there? And if He's cleansed us as we walk with Him, why would we need a further cleansing from sin if when we're walking in the light there's no chance for sin?
What's He's telling us is that you're going to have things attach themselves to you but there's a constant cleansing. No life without the blood. When John saw him, John recognized Him and said, "This is the Lamb of God." No covenant without the blood, but the new covenant begins with blood. Jesus said, "This is my blood of that new covenant." God's new agreement is your sins and iniquities I will remember no more forever. Your faith in His blood is the activating principle, that's what turns the switch on. We're not only freed from the guilt of sin in this life but we're freed from the punishment for sin. The blood that is shed for us is now given to us. That death was for every person, but until they avail themselves and take what God is offering them they're not availing themselves for what God is offering them.
It's already been done for them, every sin of the world has already been atoned for through the blood of Jesus but as we take the blood that blood is given to us. Jesus took that cup and He gave it to them. And every time we have communion, Jesus is giving us the blood that was shed for us, that life that is greater than all the forces of the universe. The power of the whole Godhead is now taken and given for us. It's a celebration of life because of the power of God, the blood of Christ that is given to us. There's nothing in the whole Bible, and nothing that God does for us that is not tied with the blood of Jesus.
Because of the blood you can suddenly be bold and enter into the throne room, then sanctification, resurrection life. God asked me what was the power that raised Jesus from the dead, and I told God it was the power of the Holy Spirit. But He told me that it was the power of the blood. So God let me see three keys, He said, "this blood brings you three keys that will open three barred doors." There's nothing in the whole universe that could open these three barred doors. The first door was the grace, then the 2nd door was the door to heaven, then the 3rd key is to God's own heart.
The blood of Jesus opens God's heart for us. When you put your faith in that blood three doors are opened to us. Always be content with what God has provided for you. When He gives that "Be perfect as I am perfect," He's talking about sharing in His nature and life. He doesn't want us the smartest people in the universe but people that are like Him in nature. After this earth is done, the blood occupies a tremendous place in God's heart in heaven, and so from the closing of the gates of Eden to opening of the gates of heaven, the crimson stream flows. All of the wonders of grace are focused here; His love, righteousness, justification, life, fellowship, joy, and atonement are all but rays of light reflected upon us from the blood of Jesus.
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