Nicholson, Boyd: The Precious Blood ~ Hebrews 10:29

Don't they? I went to open up our building one night many years ago and put out the hymn books. That was kind of my job in those days. And, uh, I was just, I was alone in the building, and I was just setting the hymn books out in order when there was a terrific noise down the stairwell, and it sounded like someone had fallen in the doorway. So I opened the outside, the, the hall door, auditorium door, and that's just exactly what had happened. A man so drunk he couldn't even stand up had fallen in the doorway. He was lying in a heap. Filthy, disgusting, drunken human being. I went down and picked him up, and I was kind of disgusted. Trodden underfoot the Son of God, and counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy or a common thing, and have done despite unto the spirit of grace. For we know him that has said, vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord, and again the Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. The Lord will bless to us these verses from the scriptures. Now we know in common language, when we speak of the shedding of blood, we understand that to mean perfectly well of life. If we say a soldier shed his blood on the battlefield, we just a wound that some blood came from and dropped upon the ground. We know that this idiom or form of expression means the giving of the life completely. He shed his blood. We mean to say he gave his life. The soldier does this on the battlefield. The martyrs have done it for a good cause, and friends have laid down their lives for friends. But when we come in our Bibles to the expression, the blood of Christ, we are contemplating something far more wonderful and in something of infinitely more value than the blood of any brave man on a battlefield, or the blood of any noble martyr sealing his faith in crimson courage, or the blood of any friend for his friend, for the blood of Christ speaks better things than the victim of any circumstance. We are speaking and we are understanding by these words, the blood of Christ, all that was involved in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ upon Calvary for your sins and for mine. So when we read about the blood of Christ, we are reading about something of great, of infinite value. Not just his death, but his life given and poured out. And there's a difference between these two. It's a great grief to the Bible student to find some new so-called translations doing away with the expression the blood of Christ and transposing it with some other word, the death of Christ. These are not synonymous, because the doctrine of the blood in the Bible is a very important doctrine, and when this is taken out of the Bible, we suffer a great loss indeed. Now, tonight I want to be as simple and as clear as I can about this most important subject, because there are some who are in this meeting tonight who have availed themselves of the value of the blood of Christ and all that means, and because of that, they are washed from their sins, they are made ready for heaven, and they are as sure of heaven as though they were already there, because God has made a promise. There are others of you in the audience tonight, and this phrase, the blood of Christ, doesn't really mean anything. And in fact, its initial sound might be somewhat repulsive to you. But we must examine it from, from the Bible standpoint to understand what God is really saying. When we discover or examine the doctrine of the blood in the Bible, there are three great truths concerning this doctrine. One is that blood is demanded by God. That's the first thing. Blood is demanded by God. The second thing is, the blood is provided by Christ. And the third thing is, the blood is despised by men. Let's look at these things from the Bible, not just simply as a technical examination of the subject, but how it, what it means to you as an individual. What does the blood of Christ shed on Calvary almost two thousand years ago have to do with you tonight sitting here in Victoria? And what can it do for you? Can it do anything? If it can, what can it do? That's what we must find out. First of all, then, let's look at the demand by God. The blood is demanded by God, and there are three laws that affect us in the spiritual realm in this regard. There is the law of sacrifice for sin. Man is a sinner, and I needn't spend time to prove this on an, in an audience like this. You know that you have sinned, and I know that I have sinned. And sin is primarily, first of all, against the God who says, thou shalt not sin. Sin is secondarily against the individuals affected by my sin, and sin is thirdly against myself, because every sin has an effect upon me as an individual. So sin is a very damaging thing. It is offensive to the holiness of God, and it is destructive to the happiness of man, and we have all sinned. Now, God knows that we have sinned, but God loves us and wants us to be happy. No man can be happy, no woman can be happy with unforgiven sin. And so men seek to get rid of the load of sin by various ways. They seek to confess sins to men, but men have no authority to forgive sins. Since all sin is against God, what right has a man to forgive sin that is against God? If I sin against you, what would be the point in me going to your neighbor and asking your neighbor to forgive me? That has no relevance in the matter whatever. All sin is primarily against God, and he is the offended party, and he must be met on this matter of sin. God knows that we have sinned, yet God loves us, and God hates our sin. Now, here's a great problem, at least using human terms. God has no problems. God has no difficulties. He is God. But from a human standpoint, this presents a problem, doesn't it? God loves your soul, but he hates your sin. He wants you to be with him in heaven because he loves you, but he can't bring your sin into heaven. Therefore, the sin must be put away. If the individual wants to hang on to those sins, then the person will have to be put away with the sins. But if that person is willing and obedient to the gospel, God has devised a wonderful way whereby your sins can be removed from you, and you can be made clean and pure and brought into the presence of God forever. That's the first law God has set down, and he is God. There's no use us asking why God demands blood. He is God, he is sovereign, and he has the right to make any demand he wishes to do. God demands for sin, blood must be shed, life must be given. That's the first law of sacrifice. God demands it, and there is no other way. Hebrews nine twenty two puts it this way, without shedding of blood, there is no remission. Now that's a flat statement by God. There are no ifs, ands, and buts about it. It doesn't say if you're a very good person, then we'll do away with the blood. It doesn't say if you pay a little money to the church, then we'll do away with the blood of Christ. You won't need to, to use that method. God has only one way of dealing with sin, and that is by sacrifice. Without shedding of blood, there is no remission. Now, this presents us with a problem now, doesn't it? Does that mean that I must offer to God a sacrifice where the life is given and the blood is shed? All right, what sacrifice will we bring? Looking into the Old Testament, there were sacrifices of bullocks, of bulls and of goats, of, uh, sheep, of kids, of lambs, of turtle doves. All of these could be taken and killed and their blood shed for the sins of the people involved. Well, can we do this? If God demands blood should be shed, are we missing the boat somehow? Should we not have an animal that we can sacrifice? But when we open the Bible to Hebrews chapter ten, we read these words. The blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of an heifer, these things cannot put away sin. You see, this is our problem. It's not just covering sin over. Now, that's what happened in the Old Testament. When all these animals were slain in the Old Testament days, God agreed, covenanted is the Old Testament word, God covenanted or agreed with the people that if they would obey him and slay those animals and pour out their blood, he would cover their sin over for a time and not punish them, as the law demanded. And so, so long as men offered the sacrifice and shed the blood, God covered over their sin, but the sin was never put away. It was never taken away, for we read that the blood of bulls and of goats cannot possibly take sins away. Well now, what other blood then? If this is not going to take our sins away, what other blood can we offer? We can't use the blood of animals. Well, what about the blood of children? Why, such a thing is un- unthinkable to us, but it has been done in days gone by when men and women, anxious to appease their gods, have taken even their own children and offered them for sacrifice. Is such a sacrifice acceptable by God? No, absolutely not. Well then, does it mean that I have to shed my own blood? But this will never do, because you see, there's another principle. Another principle that's very important, and that is that the sacrifice must be sinless if it's going to stand for the sins of another. That's quite understandable, isn't it? The sacrifice must be sinless. Well, the blood of a lamb or a goat or a cow or a bullock, I should say, was sinless, those animals don't commit sins. There's no moral obligation on animals such as there are on humans. So they were sinless, but there's one thing that was not with an animal, and the sacrifice must be voluntary. No animal ever volunteered itself as a sacrifice. And if this sacrifice is going to be adequate for all human beings, then it has to be infinite in value. So right away we see three great requisites for the sacrifice that God needs or demands for the cleansing of our sin. It must be sinless, it must be voluntary, and it must be of infinite value. But God has set down this law, the law of substitution. We cannot provide the sacrifice because we are sinful, and we are not infinite, and I doubt if we would even be voluntary in offering our own bodies for our own sin. So that we are ruled out, the animals are ruled out. Where then can we find a sacrifice that is absolutely adequate and able to cleanse our sins and meets the claims of a holy God? Well, it's not to be found among the human race that has sinned. So God puts in this other law, the law of substitution. That is, God agrees that he will accept a substitute instead of you. Since we cannot provide the sacrifice, he says, all right, I will take someone else instead of you, someone else's life that can stand for yours, I will accept that. So first of all, there is the law of sacrifice. Blood must be shed. Since we cannot produce sinless blood, God says, well, I'll accept a substitute for that sacrifice. God allows a substitute, someone to take my place and someone to take your place. Isaiah fifty three and six, well-known verse, tells us this. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned everyone to our own way, and the Lord hath laid on him, his son, the Lord Jesus, the iniquity of us, all of us. You see what God has devised, a wonderful plan here, hasn't he? You're a sinner, and there is nothing you can do to remove that sin. Not a thing can you do to remove one tiniest blot upon your character, one stain upon your soul, but God says, I demand a sacrifice. But, oh God, I can't give you a sacrifice. I can't find one. So God has done a very wonderful thing. He has said, I will provide the sacrifice. And he so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. God sent his only son into the world to be your substitute sacrifice. He's the only one who was ever born to die. Every other human being was born to live, but he's the only one that was ever born with this one great purpose, to die, and to die for every sinner that has ever lived. Here is a sacrifice. Here is a voluntary sacrifice. Here is an infinite sacrifice. You see, the Lord Jesus' death on the cross is a very important thing for you, because as far as God is concerned, you should have died on the cross, and I should have died on the cross. We should have died for our own sins and been punished through a long eternity. But God, in love to our souls, says, I have given you a substitute, and he has sacrificed his life. He has shed his blood. But there's another law. It's the law of selection by the sinner. In other words, God will not force a man or a woman to accept that substitute of his providing. If you do not want God's substitute, God will leave you to your choice. He permits you the decision whether you will take God's son as your sacrifice or whether you will not. If you receive him and the value of his death upon the cross for your sins, you will be saved, you will be cleansed, and you will be brought into blessings of eternal magnitude. If you refuse the sacrifice and reject the substitute, you will perish and be shut out from God forever. But man has the choice. In this meeting tonight, you have a choice before you walk out of that double door to do one of two things. To accept God's lovely son as a living savior and the value of his death upon the cross for your sins, you have that choice, or you can trample underfoot the blood of Christ and count it as a common ordinary thing and reject it. That's your choice. But the Bible ends, uh, the reading ends with these words. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. That's the blood demanded. But the blood has been provided by Christ. It's called in First Peter one, the precious blood of Christ. I love that expression. The precious blood of Christ, exceedingly precious. You know, in the Swahili language, I was in Africa, it was my privilege to have a little to do with this. They do not have a word in the Swahili language for precious in the same way that we use it. So in the Swahili language, that verse is translated this way: the blood of bloods. The blood of bloods. They just don't have any way of saying the precious blood, but they say of all the blood that was ever shed, there is one blood that stands out unique, and that's the blood of God's lovely Son. Ya damu, ya damu ya Kristo. The blood, the blood of Christ. It's beautiful. First Peter calls it the precious blood of Christ. Now, why is the blood of Christ so precious? It's precious to God because it's the blood of his son. It's precious to the saints because it's the blood that cleanses them. It's the blood of which they shall sing in the glory. And it ought to be precious to you tonight if you're not saved, because it is your only hope. Mark that. It is your only hope of escaping a lost eternity. Without shedding of blood, no remission. It's precious because it is the blood of God's Son. um First John one seven, the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin. Oh, I love that verse. The cleansing power of the blood of Christ. There is not a stain upon the soul of a human being, not a sin that has ever been committed, that the precious blood of Christ cannot cleanse and remove every trace upon the soul of the individual, so that there is no record in heaven, in earth, or in hell of the sin that was once committed. Oh, that's wonderful tonight. If you have sins, oh, I know you've sins. But if you feel that those sins are a burden to you, I am offering you on behalf of my blessed Savior tonight, absolute total forgiveness, pardon, cleansing, and you can be made as though you had never ever sinned at all. That's why it's precious. Precious, precious blood of Jesus, shed on Calvary, shed for rebels, shed for sinners, shed for me. Have you been cleansed by virtue of that precious blood? It is called the blood of Jesus in Hebrews chapter ten verse nineteen. The blood of Jesus. That speaks to me of the incarnation. That's why God, now think about these words, that is why God was manifest in human flesh. He came into the human race so that he could die. God cannot die. But he took upon him a human form and was made in the likeness of men that he may lay down that body in death and shed his blood as the infinite, voluntary, complete, and perfect sacrifice for the sins of the human race. It is called the blood of his cross. That makes me think of pain. That makes me think of anguish. That makes me think of darkness, of sorrow, of grief. The blood of his cross. Oh, cross. What a, what a word that is in the... Cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. For there he hung in anguish, abandoned by God and forsaken by his own. And the Bible says in the prophecy of Zechariah what happened in the darkness when man had done his very worst, had nailed that precious body to the cross, had given him vinegar to drink after having beaten him and crowned him with thorns, and nailing him to that cross, they left him to die, and to the shame of the human race, it is written, sitting down, they watched him there. I ask you, would you sit on the side of the road and watch a dog die in the street? Would you do it? But to the shame of the human race, we sat, our representatives sat and watched the dying, writhing agonies of the tender man of Calvary. Oh, the depravity of the human heart. When the darkness came down, man's view was forever sealed from what went on. We have to go back into the book of Zechariah to hear what really happened. Praying ordinary Victoria people, going to church, singing the hymns, and living a good, clean life, being baptized, maybe, I don't know what, but if you've never had dealings with God about your sins and received his son and his finished work upon the cross, his death for your sins, you have never received the pardon. Those sins are still charged against you, and you will meet them again at the great white throne judgment. That's very solemn, isn't it? And more than that, the great sin that you are committing is the despising of the blood of Christ. There are three ways in which the blood of Christ may be despised. Verse twenty nine says to count it a common ordinary thing. That's what the word unholy means there. Hath counted the blood of the covenant an unholy thing. That means common or ordinary, having no special value as far as you're concerned. Now, let me ask you, does the blood of Christ have a special value to you tonight? Does it? Does it mean something to you? Are you depending on that alone? I remember once I was lying in the hospital, and I thought I was dying. And I tell you, there's not a lot of fancy sermons go out the window then. There was only one verse that I really could get my two feet right on, and I was glad for that verse. The blood of Jesus Christ, his son, cleanseth us from all sin. I tell you, that's a great thing. Can you say that tonight, that you're cleansed by virtue of the blood of Christ? Have you received him as your savior? If not, it will not matter what other religious notions you may have, what other religious exercises you perform. If you have not received that great value for your personal sins, God's son, his sacrifice will have no value for you at all. A pardon is of no value until it is received. The blood may be despised by considering it to be of no special value. The blood may be despised by considering it to be of no personal value. See, that's what God wants to do tonight. He wants to come down to the seat you're sitting in. He's not speaking to crowds, he's speaking to individuals, teenagers sitting over there, and men and women in the center and over on the side. Are you sure? Do you know on the authority of this book, your sins are all forgiven by God on the basis of the death of Christ? If you are not sure of that, don't leave the building without it. The pardon is offered to you. You may take it as freely as God can give it to you. He is ready, he is willing, he is able, and he is longing that you receive the pardon. But you may despise it by considering it to be of no personal value and think this is only good for those people or those people or some other worse sinner than I am, but not for me. That's despising the blood of Christ. And it may be despised by considering it to be of no vital importance. Someday, maybe I'll think about it. Uh, maybe later on, maybe when I get a little older, maybe next week, maybe Sunday night. And by putting this matter off into the future, we're actually saying to God, we don't think it's important. The death of your son is not important to me tonight, and I just as soon live without him for a little while longer. That is to despise the blood of Christ and to trample underfoot the Son of God. That's a very solemn thing. God raises a warning note at the end to the blood despisers, and he says, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. Well, you say that God is a God of love. Yes, he surely is. He loves his holiness, and he loves his righteousness, and he loves his justice just as much as he loves his creatures. And God will be righteous, and God will be just. And tonight, in love, he is offering you a free pardon, no strings attached, only this, that you obey him and receive his son to be your personal savior. Others have fallen into the hands of the living God. The world of Noah's day was destroyed by his judgment. Individuals have known it. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, because they despised the authority of God. God opened the ground beneath their feet, and they dropped quick into the pit. Others have fallen into the hands of the living God. The cities of the plains who lived licentious lives, forgetting God, they fell into the hands of the living God and were destroyed. Oh, dear man or woman tonight, please don't argue with God. I appeal to you for your own safety. Don't argue with God's word. Just simply take this wonderful provision, the provision of his love for you. He loves you, man. He loves you, woman. He gave his son to die, providing the sacrifice that his righteousness demands. What we could not provide, he says, I provide it for you. I demand it, but I provide it. And if you will receive my son to be your savior, his precious blood for the cleansing of your sin, instantaneously, I will pardon them all. I will put your sins out of my memory, and I will one day take you into heaven to sing the song of the redeemed, unto him that loved us and loosed us from our sins in his own blood. That's the song of the redeemed in heaven, and if you do not accept the value of the blood on earth, you will never sing of the blood in heaven. What will you do tonight? Oh, I tremble for you, my friend, I tremble for you, lest you should rise to your feet and go out of the building, trampling underneath your unyielding feet the Son of God and despising the precious, precious blood of God's lovely Son. I appeal to you tonight, come to my Savior. He loves you and has died for you, and he wants to meet your every need in him, to satisfy you now, cleanse you, remove the obstacles between you and God to walk in happy fellowship with the God of heaven until he takes you into his glad presence. May you be wise tonight and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved. Let us pray. Oh Father, we thank thee for devising such a wonderful plan. That thou couldst be a God to us and be the God thou art. Is darkness to our intellect, but sunshine to our hearts. Oh, we thank thee for the Lord Jesus. Some of us can honestly say from our hearts tonight, Lord Jesus, we love thee. We love thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow. It is thou who art worthy, Lord Jesus, it is thou. Why didst thou ever die for such as we are? Poor, unworthy, Gentile dogs. Oh, what mercy. We thank thee, Lord Jesus, that thou art willing to lay down thy life to save us from our sins and penalty and a lost eternity. We thank thee for opening our eyes to these blessed truths, that we might receive thee into our heart and lives and be cleansed of our sins. But for our friends, we pray, our fellow men, travelers together along the road of life, and they are not ready to meet thee. They have never applied themselves to this great truth. They have never received the pardon. We pray for that dear woman and that dear man, that dear young person sitting there. Oh, that thou has helped them to see the joy, the blessedness of the man whose transgressions are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Bless thy word tonight, Father, above any human endeavor. By thy Holy Spirit, move in and show these our friends the great danger of trampling under feet the Son of God and despising his precious blood. These things we praise. We commit the meeting to thee now in the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen. Let's sing a verse together of that old well-known hymn. Just as I am without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me. That's it, isn't it? Is to recognize that that blood was really shed for you as an individual, and that thou bidst me come to thee, O Lamb of God, I come. Now, this is a prayer, isn't it really, set to music. If you really mean those words, don't sing them out into the air. Address these words to the Lord Jesus from your heart, really do it. Just come by faith, and he will receive you. Four seventy three.