THE ALMIGHTY BLOOD

Series: The Almighty BloodLesson #2

Heb. 9:19 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 wool, and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book, and all the people,

Heb. 9:20 Saying, This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you.

Heb. 9:21 Moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle, and all the vessels of the ministry.

Heb. 9:22 And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission.

Rom. 5:9 Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

1Cor. 11:25 After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me.

Eph. 1:7 In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;

1Pet. 1:19 But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:

I. The Holiness Of The Blood.

1. We are familiar with the injunction concerning the spotlessness of the Old Testament offerings.

2. The discovery of a blemish in a sacrifice meant its immediate rejection.

3. Such likewise then was the blood and this is the testimony of the holiness of the life of the Lord Jesus Christ and the nature of that divine deposit within the born again child of God.

4. We are not perfect, but the life of Jesus that is in us is perfect.

5. We have the earnest of perfection. The precious blood does cleanse us and it is cleansing us at all times. As we walk in the light, as He is in the light, then the blood of Jesus Christ is continually washing and cleansing us (1Jn. 1:7).

6. When you read the sacrifices in the book of Leviticus, you have the burnt offering, you have the sin offering, you have all of these offerings and they search sin out to its hidden lair, even to the unconscious state.

7. When you come to the New Testament, the Lord Jesus Christ comprehends all of that. His blood searches out all sin to its hidden lair, all unconscious sin, and washes it away and keeps us in fellowship with God until we grow to the place that God can reveal this to us, and thus deliver us. So we see the holiness of the blood.

II. Then We Want To Look At The Shedding And Sprinkling Of The Blood.

1. First of all the shedding of the blood relates to the whole question of sin, of guilt, of death and judgement.

2. By the shedding of blood there is remission, and the whole ground of salvation is secured.

3. It is not of works of righteousness that I have done, but by His mercy that He has begotten me into this lively hope. I am born again today. I am a Christian today; I’m accepted in Christ today because of the blood of Jesus Christ.

4. He, who knew no sin, took my sin that I might become the righteousness of God. Therefore God, through the blood, justifies the ungodly.

I was born again in 1949 in a little Assembly of God church in Alice, Texas. That night the man of God preached. I had never heard the gospel that way before, but I believed it. Only two of us were saved that night, myself (27 years old) and a lad of 7. We knelt together in that altar. That lad didn’t know what sin was, I knew nothing but sin. When we arose, I was as clean as the lad because the blood of Jesus Christ cleansed me from 27 years of sin. It was as if I had never sinned. That is the work of the shedding of blood.

5. The sprinkling of the blood is that by which we are brought into living, vocational fellowship with God.

6. The tabernacle and priesthood of the Old Testament represented not only Israel’s salvation, but also Israel’s priestly ministry to the nations.

7. Although the tabernacle was perfect as a structure, and the priesthood was complete in number and adornment, nothing or no one could function until every part - altar, laver, table, curtains, candlesticks, golden altar, mercy seat, vessels, instruments, ear, thumb, and toe had been sprinkled with the blood.

III. Nothing Lives In The Service And Ministry Of God, Save In Virtue Of Sprinkled Blood.

1. The most perfect structure, the extensive organization, the most devout purpose will fail to function in the interests of the eternal God apart from the precious blood of Jesus Christ.

2. The Holy Ghost is the fire of God. It is absolutely essential to spiritual life and energy.

3. The Holy Ghost only comes where that blood has been sprinkled. He is the fire, He is the refiner, but He will not come except where that blood has been sprinkled. The unsaved cannot receive Him.

4. The Unitarian Pentecostal are wrong, dead wrong, when they tell you you’re not saved until you’re baptized in the Holy Spirit. The blood must be applied, and when that blood is applied, then the sin question has been dealt with.

5. It is an affront to the blood of Jesus for a man to add anything to that. It is the blood that cleanses and the Holy Spirit only comes where the blood has been applied.

6. The blood and the Spirit are one, and always go together.

7. One works as the preparation, that is the blood. The other as the attestation, that is the Holy Spirit.

8. When He fills us with His Spirit, it is the testimony of the fact that the blood has cleansed this temple.

9. Calvary precedes Pentecost. The cross is the way to glorification.

10. To be crucified with Christ is to have put away that “flesh” upon which the Holy Oil will not come.

11. In the Old Testament you have the perfect type in the oil of the Apothecary. If a fly got in it, it was to be poured out. It was a type of the Holy Spirit and it was never to be put upon the unsaved. It was never to be put upon the flesh.

12. God will never quicken what He has rejected. Neither will He glorify and use in His service that which is of man. Never! We have to know that.

13. You are going to leave out of this school to either revive the church you came from, or restore it to the vehicle and the vessel that we spoke of in the series on the Person of Christ. If you are going to be used there, you must understand the truth that we are bringing.

14. God will never glorify that which He has rejected. He will never use in His service that which is of the flesh.

IV. The Next Factor In The Blood As The Life Is Its Incorruptibility And Indestructibility.

1. What is incorruptible is indestructible. If you cannot corrupt a thing, you cannot destroy it. If Adam had not sinned, Adam would have lived forever. He could have partaken of that tree of life, and lived forever.

2. This is a life over which death has no power, this life of the blood of Jesus.

3. Hell has been entered and plundered in the power of this life. Satan and his entire kingdom have been broken by the power of this life.

4. Jesus in His death went down into Hades. It is a lie that tells you He burned there. He didn’t go down and submit Himself to the devil. He fulfilled the justice of and the commands of the law at Calvary.

5. Death had passed upon all of us, because all of us were sinners. But He, who knew no sin, took that sin, died our death, and then went into the darkness of hell and took the keys of death, hell and the grave.

6. He plundered hell for you and I, and stood in the garden the day of His resurrection and said, “I…have the keys of hell, death, and the grave” (Rev. 1:18), and “because I live,” said Jesus, “ye shall live also” (Jn. 14:19). This life that He has given us can never die.

7. He who was and is now lives forevermore, as the testimony of the universal triumph of His own blood over every force that stood in the way of God’s end.

8. We must believe in this blood. It must be restored to the church. You must preach it, and preach it until the heart is impacted that this blood, this precious blood, is the answer to everything.

V. By His Indestructible Life, Jesus Perfected Salvation.

1. Nothing before was ever perfect because the mediators constantly changed by death.

2. But this High Priest perfects forever because He lives after the power of an endless life.

3. It was the blood, the blood of Jesus that made it possible for you to be what you are today. It is the blood of Jesus that makes it possible for you to continue to be what you are today.

4. By His endless life He has bound us to Himself. We share His life by the new birth. We shall never die.

5. Death is not a cessation of being, it is something spiritual.

6. Life triumphant over death is spiritual and means victory over sin, self, and Satan.

7. Death to the Christian is not death at all. This Lord, by whose blood we have access into the very holy of holies, has secured for you and I a life that is indestructible. It cannot be corrupted.

8. Death ruled through the first Adam. By one man’s sin, all men were made sinners. Death passed upon all of us. Jesus came and met death once. Again death is not a cessation of being, death is spiritual.

9. Jesus met death once, for three days and three nights and the world thought death was the victor. On that third day He came forth from the grave with the keys of death, hell and the grave. He had conquered death.

10. When you and I die we don’t die, we just change our address from somewhere on this earth, to forever being with the Lord.

VI. By This Indestructible Life The Lord Jesus Has Inaugurated A Ministry And A Work Which Will Continue To Its Ultimate Conclusion In Spite Of Every Force Of Earth And Hell Hurled Against It.

1. Empires have been brought to ruins in setting themselves against that which He said He would build.

2. The gates of hell have not and will not prevail against His church.

3. It is a blessed thing to be in, and to be a part of that work secured by the blood that will last forever.

It is a sad thing to me as I look at the country that I call my home, where I was birthed, and see it ultimately being destroyed. The America I knew as a boy has been changed. It is a violent world. It is a world of socialism. It is a world of welfare. It is a world where the free are not nearly as free as they were. It is a passing thing. Hence, I tell you it is with great hope that I can say, “I am a part of that which will never be destroyed and will never change.” This message must be proclaimed, and it must be proclaimed that the Almighty Blood of Jesus Christ has secured this.

4. For a man’s work to fall apart when he is withdrawn from it, simply means the work was of man and not of God.

5. The testimony to which God is reacting relates to a work that stands and persists when every destructive force has spent itself. When Exxon, AT&T, IBM, Mobil, and the other great corporations have been in hell a billion years, there will still be a church purchased by the blood of Jesus Christ. When every weapon the enemy has, has been thrown against it, the church will still be the church.

VII. There Are All Kinds Of Alarms Today Because Of Rapid And Drastic Changes.

1. Organized Christianity is in trouble today.

2. The maintenance of the religious system is demanding all resource, acumen (insight), wit, schemes, and cunning of men.

3. There has never been so many attractions, schemes, methods, etc. to keep up the church.

4. Have you ever seen such that is being brought into the pulpit? Power teams breaking blocks with their heads, blowing up hot water bottles. We have clowns in the pulpits, stand-up comics all of them coming in what they call the name of Christ.

5. All of this speaks of failure and defeat.

6. Behind all the religious burlesque and fraud God has a church over which hell cannot prevail.

7. Contending for the faith once delivered to the saints is more than to contend for orthodoxy of doctrine, or to champion an evangelical creed. It is more than to be a fundamentalist.

8. It is to recognize and earnestly seek that upon which God’s heart is set, namely a people of the altar, the cross, and the blood.

a. A people who have been crucified with Christ, and whose life is a testimony to Calvary’s victory over every foe of Christ within and without.

b. A people through which God by His Spirit can give Himself.

9. That is what you and I have to produce. That is the reason I tell you in this School of Christ, we are brought into that union, so we can go from this place to proclaim this truth as it is in Christ.

VIII.The Church Has Been Victimized By Satan Because Of Her Failure To Recognize Fully The Virtue Of The Precious Blood And The Worth Of Him Who Shed That Blood.

1. “Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift,” cried the Apostle Paul (2Cor. 9:15). In saying this, I want to call attention to the offerings of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.

2. A close study of these offerings reveals two things:

a. God has searched out sin and traced it to its most hidden and secret lair, even to the place of unconsciousness.

b. The accidental, the unwitting, and the unsuspected are all taken into consideration in these offerings.

3. God regards sin now as a state, and not merely as a deliberate act. This comes out very clearly in a careful reading of Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers.

4. Second, having traced sin to its remotest haunt, God has made provision for dealing with it to the very last suggestion.

a. The whole burnt offering signifies that the believer might stand accepted and perfect in relation to all the will of God. You find that in the New Testament in Colossians 4:12, and Hebrews 10. In the Old Testament it is in Leviticus 1.

b. Then you have the meat offering that he may be able to come into moral perfection, not his own, but presented by faith. (You can read this in Leviticus chapter 2). But then again in Romans 12:1, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable.” Then in Hebrews 10:10 and 13:21, all of this is the implication of the meal offering.

c. Then there is a peace offering that there may be not only access and standing, but fellowship and oneness with God. (Leviticus 3, Colossians 1:20, Romans 5:10).

d. Then you have the sin offering, that sin in its more positive aspect, and sin in ignorance and without consciousness, may not interfere with living fellowship by bringing in spiritual death either through our own failure or through the contamination of contact. (Leviticus 4:5).

IX. All Of This Shows That The Primary Thing In A Living Testimony Of The Complete Overthrow Of Satan Is An Adequate Apprehension And Appreciation Of The Lord Jesus Christ In The Value Of His Blood.

1. There is something almighty in the death of Jesus Christ.

2. Many people fail to recognize the important distinction between crucifixion and His death.

a. The crucifixion is man’s side. Man crucified the Lord of glory.

b. The death is His own.

3. All the crosses ever made and all the men who ever concocted them and built them could never have brought about the death of the Lord Jesus Christ without His consent.

4. “I lay down My life...no man taketh it from Me...” (Jn. 10:17-18).

5. The preaching of Christ crucified is not the preaching of merely of what men did to Him, but of what He allowed men to do, and what He did through what they did.

6. The death of Christ is not man’s act nor is it the Devil’s act. Satan and man had tried many times to kill Him, but His hour had not yet come.

7. He fixes the time for what He will do. The rulers said, “Not on the feast day,” but Jesus took it out of their hands, out of the hands of Judas, He precipitated it and on that day in the upper room, He set the date.

8. He so headed it up that Judas was one under authority: “That thou doest, do quickly” (Jn. 13:27).

X. When Jesus Lays Down His Life That He May Take It Up There Is Infinitude In The Deliberate Act, And It Relates To Universal Sovereignty.

1. Sin as the principle, the old creation as the sphere, Satan as the ruler in that realm, death as the consequence, and judgement as the inevitable prospect and reality. All are involved in the death of Christ.

2. All of the above were dealt with, and that regime brought to an end in His death.

3. The whole thing centers in the person of Christ.

a. The same person must be able to both act as representative of man rejected of God because of sin, and as representative to receive all the judgement of God upon man for sin.

b. And yet at the same time, because sin is not inherent in Him as He is utterly sinless, He renders death and hell incapable of holding Him.

4. There never was such a person other than the Lord Jesus, Son of Man, Son of God.

XI. The Pouring Out Of His Blood.

1. The pouring out of His blood was on the one side as He voluntary yielded to wrath and destruction from the face of God as man, for man.

2. On the other side He was saying in effect to death, hell and the grave, “I concede all your claims to the last atom. I exhaust all your claims in being made a curse for sin, but there is another side in Me over which you have no power or rights, because you have no ground in Me.

3. Like Haman, the gallows you have built for Me will prove your end. Henceforth Satan, I am your Lord. I will plunder your domain, and rob you of your spoils.”