This is New Life Clinic. The study is the power of the blood of Jesus, lesson number four, power to cleanse. The importance of the blood in God's plan of salvation is seen by the more than 700 references to it in His Word. It was never far from His heart and became the key factor in all of His dealings with man. The purpose and power of His blood takes on added meaning by a comparison with human blood. Note these striking characteristics. Early this morning I was thinking of the blood system. And here again is God's design, in God's planning, in all of His dealings in some way He shows us this picture and points to His great wonderful plan of what He is doing. And when I started reading about the power of the blood, and when I started analyzing the purposes and the power of the blood and the human life, I could just see God when He was laying His plans and said, "How shall we make blood? Well let's weave in the blood my story of redemption, let's weave into it the story of the blood of Jesus."
And in this first paragraph we can see the story of the blood of Jesus. It's necessary for life. That blood in your system carries to every cell in your body the nourishment your body needs to live. It carries it. It makes this full circuit, once every 23 seconds. You don't have to have to turn on a switch and say now heart start beating; it's going whether you're awake or whether you're asleep. It just keeps on doing its job, and the blood of Jesus Christ as you put your faith in Him, His blood keeps bringing us life, to every cell in the body of Christ. There's enough of this cleansing life-giving flow for every individual, for every little cell. And it ties us together; it's the blood that ties us together.
We're made of one blood all people, it's the blood of Jesus that ties people together, we're blood brothers in Christ, but that blood going from cell to cell makes a tie. This blood cleanses, carries off wastes and poisons, that blood of Jesus as it flows through your being, those things that may attach themselves to you, that blood just keeps on working, keeps on cleansing, it's a built-in cleansing system that God has made for our bodies. So the body of Christ of which we're all a little part, His blood keeps flowing while we're in fellowship and in harmony with Him. The blood just keeps right on flowing, taking care of those things that would destroy or hurt.
This blood also in you protects you. Did you know that you have within your blood veins a silent army of soldiers ready to attack anything that would bring infection to your body? They're called white corpuscles. When you cut yourself, and infection would begin, immediately the soldiers are summoned to duty and they head down there to protect you and to ward off and to fight off the infection. The blood of Jesus Christ has been given to us to ward off any attack of the enemy. The Lord wrote His story in the natural blood.
Then another thing about the blood is that it will defend against disease. They tell me that you can become immune to certain types of diseases by having a little bit of the blood turned into serum by someone who has been attacked by the disease and have that injected into your veins, and it causes you to be immune. Now here's a striking picture here. Jesus Christ was smitten with a curse of sin. The Word tells us that God made Him to be sin for us and He took the full force of God's judgment. Now His blood injected into us by the hand of God creates an immunity from judgment. Hallelujah. He took the full force of it. You've had an inoculation. They call these anti-bodies, a little substance that provides immunity.
Then I think of the fact that there's a constant cleansing, every 23 seconds going through your system. Every cell in your body is tied together by this life. The importance of cleansing and how it fits into God's plan. Now in justification God covers your life. Now some people have started from the other end, and have thought that God wants us to make ourselves clean, and to lay aside these various things as a starting point and it sounds to easy to say that the sin that may be in a life, while it's still there can be covered so that God can't see it. People for some reason or another like to struggle, and to feel that there's something they're doing that they're accomplishing here, but you're starting at the wrong end. When you start at trying to get rid of, you'll never make yourself good enough for God. So God said that before you can take care of that stuff, you got to be covered.
The first thing that has to happen before we receive anything is to have the wrath of God appeased. So when God sees that blood, His wrath is turned away. But then He said, "I'm not through working with you just justification." Justification is one of the most marvelous messages in the whole Bible. But God isn't through with just justification. He says now that you're all covered the blood that was shed for you is now given to you. It was shed for you in covering your sins, but now He gives it to you and then it starts flowing through you and underneath this covering, those things that have ruined your life, the pollution of sin and these other things the blood of Jesus Christ takes care, cleanses as we walk with Him. So it's not a matter of saying, "oh God, you're simply buying a pack of pollution here if you just cover up a bunch of raw," well God knows what He's doing. He covers that up so that He won't have to look at it while He's operating on you. He can't stand sin, so He covers it, and He says, "Now you're accepted, accepted in the blood of Christ." My wrath is turned away and that blood that was shed for us now is put within us and His blood working through us oh hallelujah. It makes not just a life of misery only made bearable because we know his blood is there, but it even brings metamorphosis to us through and through, Hallelujah. It makes us like Jesus.
That's why Paul could say God's ultimate plan was that Jesus was made sin for us, sin clear through. He was made sin for us that we might be made not just covered with righteousness that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. That's because of His blood flowing through. You see the blood of Jesus, the blood of Adam flowing through us had the seeds of death in it. It's corruptible. But thank God that the blood of Jesus has the seeds of life that destroys the seeds of death. This is why we can say when you accept Jesus Christ you have eternal life; it doesn't mean that you won't have a time of transition period from one area of life to another. God doesn't consider the cessation of breathing and the activities of this life an end at all. Life to Him is on both sides of the river. Jesus Himself said, "God isn't the God of the dead, He's the God of the Living." He's the God of Abraham and Abraham's alive. He's the God of Jacob and Isaac, and they're still alive, they're just on the other side of the river. And those loved ones of yours that are gone, they're not dead. He's their God and He said, "I'm not the God of the dead but of the Living." We're rejoicing here. I believe those loved ones over there have a pretty good idea of what you're doing over here, because the Spirit can carry them the word and the message. The reason why I believe this is, is because there are a couple portions of scripture that talk about examples of this. God doesn't want us probing to deep in this area otherwise He would of put more of it in the Bible, but He gave us just enough.
In reconciliation the barrier was destroyed, God's wrath was appeased. In justification the records were destroyed and in cleansing the pollution or the seeds of sin and death are destroyed. Praise God. In justification God hides sin from His sight, in cleansing He takes it away. 1 John 1:1-9. In fitting in to God's plan and making it work, I like that verse over in Isaiah 1:18. "Come now let us reason together says the Lord, let's talk about this thing. Though your sins are as scarlet they shall be white as snow." This is God's plan, this is His call. And so people may wonder those who are weighted down with sin; I've talked with many of them. Down inside they hunger, their hearts desire is "how in the world can I be free from this thing that is dragging me down?"
Christians who are failing to live victorious lives have the same thing. I would say probably more than any other request is, "I want to be free from this thing that seems to be hurting me and dragging me down." God gives us the first of the way here. He says "come. You can come now, my wrath is turned away now you can come and talk to Me about it. Come now and let us reason together, I'll take care of all that." He does it by the cleansing blood. He takes care of it. Then living in fellowship. Let's take a look at verse 9. If we confess our sins so through confession now you can have this fellowship. If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, that's justification and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, that's the cleansing within us. In 1 John 1:7 it speaks about living in fellowship with the Lord. In all evangelical schools and from the pulpits of many evangelical churches and many others it is preached that your relationship to God hinges on the amount of light that He has given you. So this statement is made, "that person isn't walking in the light that they have and here's a person that has all kinds of light and knows all kinds of things about the Bible, so he has a lot more to walk in."
That night when God dealt with me, He put his thumb right on that in a blazing magnification on this verse. He said, "what do you believe, how do you interpret this verse, how have you been preaching it?" I explained to the Lord that in all the other commentaries that's how it is said. Much evangelical teaching is not based on revelation from God or from enlightenment from His Word, but it's on a lack of definite direction from God and they've tried to do what they could. When I said it's walking in all the light of knowledge that you have, then the Lord said, "Do you walk in all of the light that you have?" I said, "No God I've really missed the boat an awful lot." Then He said "If your cleansing is dependent on your walking in the light and you're not walking in all the light how can you expect to have any cleansing?" Funny I didn't think of it, and the person in front of me didn't think of it or the person behind them didn't think of it either. And if you can't have no cleansing He also asked me, "If you do walk in the light, do you walk in it like Jesus walked in it?" And I said no, you know I don't. And He said "do you know anybody that does?" I said no, I never met anybody who did. And He said, "Then nobody is going to be saved, nobody is going to receive any cleansing."
Do you know what the Lord did then? He lifted my eyes and He said "let Me show you what light is. It's not knowledge; if it was based on knowledge then you would be earning your cleansing. You'd be earning your fellowship, but this is something you can't earn. It's by grace that you've been saved." And I could see it blazing then in verse five, "this then is the message that God is light. He lights every man that comes into the world. And that light is life, God is light." And then he goes on to say because God is light, He's shining out and lighting people and as long as you walk in this fellowship with Him, walk close enough so you can say, "hi God," and know that He's there, have that fellowship, he said "the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses," it flows just as far as His light does. The blood flows as far as His fellowship. It flows as far as His light comes in His fellowship. And the blood flows the same distance.
In this plane, walking in this light, it's impossible to sin according to some because of sanctification, you may make some mistakes but you don't sin, but that isn't what God said. God said that while you're walking in this light, there's going to be some sin that will overtake you and some of you are going to sin. I don't want you to, but you can sin and still be in this plane." The reason why, and He had this verse, that blood is flowing there so that sin may overtake you or blight your life, but the blood keeps on flowing and keeps on washing it away. That word cleanses in John is present tense. The blood of Jesus Christ God's Son cleanses us from all sin. You walk in fellowship with Jesus and you don't have to walk around with your head bowed down in fear wondering whether or not you're going to make it when Jesus comes, you stay in fellowship with Him and all of hell can't take you away because God has a built in cleansing agent there. It's all mixed in with His light, and with His fellowship. Hallelujah. There may be some thoughts that come into your mind that you know displease God, but the blood just keeps on cleansing. You may lift your voice and get mad at someone but the blood just keeps on cleansing. "This then is the message that we've heard from Him, that God is light," God is cleansing, God is our fellowship. We have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous, if we sin, and he said that He has become the propitiation. That's a person becoming a propitiation. That word propitiation is the same word as translated as mercy seat. So when you read about the mercy seat that God has put there in the throne of grace, in the tabernacle of worship, it's a golden lid something of tremendous value. Underneath the mercy seat is the ark of the covenant inside of the ark of the covenant are all of the broken laws of God signifying all of the sins and the guilt and the transgression put under the propitiation, this golden covering. Then God said, "Now take the blood just to make this true picture. Take two goats, kill one of them and take the blood of one of these goats and sprinkle it over the top of this mercy seat. You want to come and make contact with Me. There's only one place in the whole universe that I'll meet with you, only one place, and that's the door that the blood has opened." That's the power of this cleansing blood. God said when you come now to this mercy seat and you identify yourself with that, God said there will I meet with thee and I'll talk with you over the cherubim's. So there is a spot where the sin is covered.
Now the beautiful picture of this is, God said not only am I the propitiation and covering for your sin but underneath, the blood of Jesus is doing a continual constant cleansing work also. This mercy seat has the covering for the sin and God accepts the sinner. That's the covering that we talked about over the top. Picture that blood covering over you in the Spirit right now. Be free. But inside of the ark there's still the remains of the broken laws, so now God says take this other goat, it took two animals to fully make God's picture. He said "take the believer and put his hands on this goat so that he could be identified with this goat and pronounce the sins of this person upon this goat. Then take this goat way out in the wilderness into a place where he could never be found." When you have put your faith in the blood and it's covered and God said, "now that it's covered then we'll take it all away. He's working right underneath that covering and He's removing the sins far away where it could never be found again.
When God took sin away He really took it away. Reading in 1 Peter, "For as much as you know you were not redeemed with corruptible things but with the precious blood of Christ. As of a Lamb without blemish or without spot. The incorruptible blood of Jesus. You weren't saved with corruptible things, but you were saved with incorruptible." That word incorruptible means it can never pass away, it could never lose its power, and it could never be destroyed. The blood that flowed from Jesus' back, that blood that was shed did not stay in the ground and become corruptible and become mixed with the corruption with this earth. That blood is incorruptible; every drop of that blood was saved and taken to heaven. That blood is still there. So when Paul had a glimpse of heaven, there was God the Father of all, there was Jesus, there was the spirits of just men made perfect, and there was an innumerable company of angels. And he said "by the way there's the blood, it's still there." He let John have a look in Revelation. And he said there's the blood, it's still there. As the animal in the Old Testament was slain, every drop of blood had to be caught, not one drop was allowed to be lost, and God was giving them a picture here that with Jesus, His blood, these were just types of His blood. God says it's got to be so exact because not one drop is going to be wasted. It's incorruptible, it can't be destroyed and it avails for sin forever.
There's plenty of cleansing for everybody. There's enough immunity in the blood that God applies to your life to ward off spiritual sickness. There's enough to warm your life, there's enough to feed you, to protect you. The blood has never lost its power. And in that injection, the corruptible is injected with the incorruptible, the seeds of death have been destroyed with the seeds of life. Hallelujah. How could a person get so excited over a few words of print like this? You know why because it's His living Word, it's life.
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