“Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep” Heb: 13:20
Blood plays a prominent role in the Holy Scriptures.
Blood flows through the pages of the Holy writ. We see it flowing and coursing
through the Word of God from Genesis to Revelation. It is nearly impossible to
separate the blood from the word and in many ways we simply should not even try
to do so.
We see blood at the time of the visitation of divine
plagues upon the nation of Egypt and the very things which the Egyptians
worshipped. It was the blood of the lamb on the door post of the Israeli homes
that preserved the lives the first born of the nation. The Blood stayed the
hand of the Death Angel toward the people of Israel. Ex: 13
The Blood was sprinkled on Israel enacted a National Covenant
Relationship with God. Ex: 24:6-8
The Blood was used and had the power to consecrate the
Priesthood. Ex: 29
The Blood was used in the sacramental tenants of the
Covenant and had the power to “ceremonially”
cover the sins of the people, we can see this all through the Book of Leviticus
which details the Priestly service of the tribe Levi.
After the construction of the Temple at Jerusalem by
King Solomon, the Blood played a vital role in Israel’s relationship with God, with
the Daily sacrifices at the Temple of God.
The
Role of Blood
What about for Christians down through ages, and the New
Covenant inaugurated and given to us by, and through, our Lord Jesus? The
People Israel had only the Blood of Bull’s and Goats, but for we Christians,
and in truth, all humanity, if they will but freely receive it, it is the Blood
of Jesus which has a vital part of our relationship with God.
We can read in the Holy Word of God regarding the blood
that “the life is in the blood”; the
value of the blood is found in the value of the life it sustained.
“For the life of a creature is
in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on
the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life” Lev: 17:11
The blood of Jesus sustained the life of God, the
eternal Son of God incarnate in the flesh, therefore, it is of more value than
the life of all humanity combined.
When our Lord Jesus, on the night of his betrayal and
arrest, took and transposed the symbolic elements of the Old Covenant Passover ,which
recalled the “passing over” of the
Children of Israel by the Destroyer , into the New Covenant’s central sacrament
of the Lord’s Supper or the Communion.
Jesus takes the bread and wine and elevates their symbolic meaning, from the
Paschal lamb of the Exodus and assigns the symbolic meaning to himself as the
sinless “Lamb of God”, who, as John
the Baptist declared “takes away the sin
of the world”.
We are told to ceremonially, or symbolically, to “drink all” of the Blood of his
sacrifice, his life is still in the Blood.
Israel could not even symbolically drink the blood of
animals, because there was no permanent life there in, but, the Blood of Christ
has the power to bring Eternal life and transform our lives.
The giving of the life of our Lord Jesus that is the
sheading of his blood ‘brings us into a Covenant Relationship with God. In the
ancient world Covenants were entered into through the sheading of blood. The blood of Jesus also brings all believers
into the sanctified Royal Priesthood of God under Jesus our great High Priest
What self-inherent property does the blood possess
which gives it the power that Scripture attributes to it, what empowers it?
Simply, the blood’s power and saving properties arise out of the life of God,
the Eternal Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, in the “flesh”; the humanity of Christ.
St. John, writing with great insight into the person of
Jesus, tells us about the Word becoming flesh through the incarnation, in his
Gospel.
“The Word became flesh” John: 1:14
Jesus lived as one of us, he lived through all the
common experiences that we each and all have, so that he might die for all of
us. Jesus sacrificed his life that means his whole being was given completely
and perfectly over to the service of his Father.
The sacrifice of Jesus however, was not just one day
there upon Celery but rather Jesus offered up his whole life his whole life,
all his life all his life. Jesus offered his whole life as a total sacrifice to
God both in life and in death.
“His whole life,
All His life” this is what our Lord has done even now in eternity continues
to do for us.
St. Paul tell us that Jesus gave himself, that is, he
conformed himself to fulfilling the will of God and bring to humanity the
salvation which God, the Holy Trinity purposed in the eternity past.
“and walk in the
way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant
offering and sacrifice to God.” Eph:
5:2
All His life…All His life” Jesus gave himself for us
completely without reservation, nothing was held back all so that we might know
our God.
Jesus fulfilled the righteous requirements of the Law
of God, as well as it’s demand for payment. Jesus bore our sins in payment for
the unplayable debt which would have been held against all humanity there by redeeming
us, this is what St. Paul described again.
“having canceled
the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us;
he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.” Col: 2:14
Jesus paid with his blood what we could never had paid
with our own. The blood of Jesus ever points us to the divine nature of our
Lord and the power which he has in
accomplishing our salvation completely apart from any action of our’s
and or in spite of us.
We have, as we are told in the witness of Scripture,
been redeemed through the blood, and this redemption not only speaks of the
future but also brings it’s redemptive power into our past and through the
mystery of God’s power even redeems our past for his divine purpose for our
lives.
The
Accomplishments of the Blood
The Blood of Jesus carries so much power that it can
reach in to the past and provide forgiveness even to those who lived before it
was shed, based on their belief that it would be shed at some point in the
future.
“For you know that
it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed
from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but
with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”1Pet:1:18-19
So powerful is the redemptive power of the blood of
Jesus that it had power even before it became an established realty in the
stream of human history that it had power to reaches into the ages which
precede it and bring redemption into the lives of the Patriachical servants of
our Lord who lived before the incarnation of Jesus.
We see the Patriarch Job professing that he knew that
is sins were dealt with and that they had no eternal hold upon him.
“Surely then you will count my steps
but not keep track of my sin.
My offenses will be sealed up in a bag;
you will cover over my sin.” Job: 14:17-18
The blood of Jesus even has the power to even open the
grave starting even with his own which is the great precursor of eternal life
for all humanity who will be freely receive it.
“Now may the God
of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the
dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep” Heb: 13:20
This could not be so if Jesus was only a man, this
recognition that death could not keep it’s grip upon him and that the grave
could hold him is only further witness of his divinity and the revelation of
his godhead.
The blood of Jesus in concert with his resurrection now
has the power to impart life unto any who will revive it for without the
resurrection the blood would have no meaning.
“Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and
drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and
drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For
my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh
and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them. Just as the living
Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me
will live because of me”John:6:53-56
It is as though, that through the “drinking his blood” that his life is being
taken into our own imparting to us the life eternal that Jesus came to bring
us.
Each and all who will but receive it can experiences the
atonement wrought for us even a great atonement toward our God and even among
humanity for we cannot truly be atoned with one another if we are not
experiencing the atonement with our very Creator.
“This is love: not
that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning
sacrifice for our sins.” 1John:4:10
The blood of Jesus reflects the complete realty of forgiveness,
which our Lord offers for us to experience. This forgiveness is not a partial
forgiveness which only deals with our past, but rather it is a complete
forgiveness of all sin, past, present and future. In truth it is not just
forgiveness of our sinful acts or words or thoughts but it is a complete forgiveness
of who and what we are.
We are forgiven of our inability to keep the very
essence and intent of the Holy Law of God.
This perfect and complete forgiveness need no other
additions to it, which is it is fully ours through God’s merciful grace of which
nothing need to be added.
“for all
have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified
freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God
presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement through the shedding of his
blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness,
because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand
unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present
time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” Rom: 3:23-26
This is true due to the sacred truth of Jesus’ divine
identity as the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity who
in the incarnation has taken unto himself our complete humanity and brought us
complete salvation, as the ancient Theologian of Athanasius of Alexandria said, speaking of the
incarnation of the Son of God, “that which is not assumed is not redeemed”.
Jesus has
washed away all human sin with absolutely now limitations imposed upon us and
we can experience this truth if we only will but believe.
“And you, who had
died by your sins and by the uncircumcision in your flesh, he has given you
life with him and has forgiven us all our sins.” Col: 2:13
Through the blood of our Lord we are as it were washed
clean of all our sins and the defilement which they brought upon us. St. John
in his first general epistle writing to counter the gnostic theology which had
found lodgment in the minds of some early Christians wrote of the cleansing of
the blood of Jesus in dealing with sins
.
“and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleans us from all
sin”.1John:1:7c
The power if the blood of our Lord is able to wash away
even who we were before we came to believe, what this means is, that we, before
our acceptance of the truth about Jesus, were living in who we thought we were
in Adam and we lived in that way.
Now in Jesus, we are able to enter into the fullness of
that new self in Jesus, which is, the new life which Jesus has made possible
for us all. The blood washes way our old self and brings us into that
sanctified life which Jesus’ blood provides for us.
“For them I sanctify myself,
that they too may be truly sanctified” John:
17:19
This
sanctification is only ours because of who Jesus is and what he has done.
The anonymous author of Hebrews Epistle tells us of the
sanctifying properties of the blood of Jesus to the Jewish Christian community.
This would have been a segment of the Primitive Apostolic Church which had been
raised all or most of their lives living under the Old Covenant.
“And by that will we have been
sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” .Heb:10:10
This sanctification is in our experiences is
progressive. It is experienced in one sense upon belief in Jesus, then over
times we grow into it. This sanctification is not limited to the areas of life which
we might think of religious, that is, attending
Church, worship, prayer, and Bible study, no this sanctification shows us that
our whole life is to be given over to the province of God, in all that we do.
This means that there is no real boundary between the sacred and secular in the
way in which we normally would think, all things in life given over to and for
the uses of God.
St. Paul writes to the young pastor St. Timothy of this
sanctification in his pastoral epistle about the life of a Christian is to be used
by God in all things at all times.
“Those who cleanse
themselves from the latter will be instruments for special purposes, made holy,
useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work” 2Tim:2:21
We are called to as our Lord was, and is, complete
given over to the will of his Father, his self completely submerged to
accomplishing the divine purpose of the Great God. Jesus did this his whole
life, his whole life, all his life, all his life.
The blood of our Lord is effectual in binding together
the members of his body, which is the Church. His blood life the life blood of
our own bodies courses through our vines bring everything need for our living
each and every day.
Jesus’ blood unites us all as one in him regardless of
our background or nations from which we come. We are one in Jesus. We are his
holy brethren.
“Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made
holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and
sisters. He says,
“I will declare your name to my brothers and sisters;
in the assembly I will sing your praises.” Heb: 2:11
The very simple, yet profound sacrament of the Eucharist,
the Communion or Lord’s Supper declares this very truth on our unity in Jesus.
“Is not the cup of
thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?
And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?
Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the
one loaf.” 1Cor:10:16-17
Our Lord prayed in his High Priestly prayer for all believers
throughout the ages that we all can be one, his blood is effectual to that very
end.
“I
pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all
of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they
also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have
given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I
in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the
world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
John: 17:21b-23
The blood of Jesus has brought us each and all victory,
this victory is his very own which he so graciously and lovingly shares with
us. This victory could never have been secured through our own efforts or by some
pious virtue found within us, no it ours’ because of him and his victory over
all which would keep us from having a relationship with the great God.
Jesus speaking to his Disciples two thousand years ago
and to all believers throughout the ages that we should not be in fear for he
is victorious.
“do not be afraid
for I have defeated the world” John:16:33
This victory is even extended to the unseen world which
spawns world system in which we currently live, as well as all that is birth to,
suffering of every sort and even death.
This victory which our Lord gives us brings us victory
over the power of the “god of this world” Satan.
“They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb” Rev: 12:11a
Blood of Jesus even brings us shared victory over even
death, for as the grip of death and the grave could not hold our Lord, nor will
it hold us in it’s dark and cold grasp.
“When the
perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with
immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been
swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death
is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives
us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”1Cor: 15:54-57
The power found in the blood of Jesus cannot be overstated.
The very power of the blood is derived for the divine person Jesus, the very eternal
Son of God sustained in his incarnate life by his own blood.
So great is the power of Jesus’ blood that even the angelic
host and all humanity who will but believe will sing praises throughout eternity
in an eternal hymn of all that is accomplished on our behalf through his blood.
“Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it
had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four
living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which
are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and
took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And
when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell
down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls
full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people. And they sang a
new song, saying:
“You are worthy to take the scroll
and to open its seals,
because you were slain,
and with your blood you purchased for God
people from every tribe and language and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”
Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels,
numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled
the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they
were saying:
“Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and praise!”
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and
under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”
The four living creatures said, “Amen,” and the elders fell down
and worshiped.” Rev: 5:9-14
We should, each and all give honor and glory and
worship to God and Jesus Christ and for the blood of his Holy Son who has redeemed
us through his blood and given us Eternal Life through his blood.
Benediction: May
we each and all ever join in the chorus of praise to and for our Lord Jesus and
his blood which has been effectual for us all, today, tomorrow and forevermore.
Amen.
Rev. Todd Crouch, Pastor
The Fountain of life Church a Congregation of Grace Communion 2101 Old National Pike,
Washington, Pennsylvania, 15301 www.gcfountainoflife.org
The Fountain of Life is heard on the RKP Radio Network 1710 and 1670 AM in Washington and North Franklin ,and 1790 AM in the Arden Fair Grounds area of Washington Pennsylvania, and on 1710 AM in Bentleyville and Monongahela, Pennsylvania. And online around the world at www.rkpradio.com
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"If It Is Not About Jesus, It Is Not About Anything"
Rev. Todd Crouch, Pastor
