Nothing but the Blood of 3 Grace Emmanuel Church 06/17/18 ______I want to show you some explosive truths today… that I simply had never quite put together in my mind until this week. I’ve been in this calling for a very long time… But I’ve never presented what I’m going to say today… and it is literally the under-pinnings of the whole unfolding Bible!!…

Our subject (to the recoiling of some) is the blood…“the shed blood of Jesus!”

Ephesians 1:7 He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins.

We know that blood fills the pages of the Bible, the word is used more than 300 times…we just don’t want to think about it, hear sermons about it, sing songs about it. Several of you told me you grew up singing about “the blood that Jesus shed” and you were not only comfortable with the songs but were deeply blessed by them…But, as we said, in many modern church songbooks, those songs have been stripped out… because they make people feel uneasy. Spilled blood is disgusting…. and we want to make sure that when people come to church they can simply “revel in the grace and love of God.” ______But in the Bible…

Reveling in the grace and love of God involves the poured out blood of Jesus cleansing us from all sin.

Have you sinned?… Have you walked counter to God’s holy standard for your life? Yes, very much so! Are we all then by definition, sinners? Of course! So how do we have that sin forgiven and begin to walk in clear fellowship with our Heavenly Father? We can’t fix our own sinfulness… “The wages of sin is death”… We all deserved eternal separation from God! We couldn’t pay our own sin penalty… so God did it for us through the death of Jesus Christ our Lord…taking each of our sin punishment on himself…offering us in exchange… eternal life

** That’s the Good News of the Gospel message!…see there we can say all that without ever bringing up the distasteful, uncomfortable subject of the blood…

1 ______Except that the Bible says the shed blood was the very conduit through which God passed on to us… his forgiveness and cleansing

1 Peter 1:18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life (sin) you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. 19 It was paid with the precious blood of Jesus Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. 20 God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake.

Revelation 1:5 …He (Jesus Christ) is the faithful witness to these things, the first to rise from the dead, and the ruler of all the kings of the world. All glory to him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by shedding his blood for us.

1 John 1:7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. ______At he risk of sounding like I’m up on a soapbox… I need to warn us:

This underlying truth of the Gospel…this river that runs under your salvation… the salvation of everybody in this world… is not being taught many places. It has been exchanged for “Jesus has a wonderful plan for your life…accept him and he will fill your life with earthly blessings!

That’s a radically different message than: come to him in your sinfulness, repent of your sins, and allow Jesus, washing, cleansing blood…. and his infilling Holy Spirit… to radically transform you from your old sinful self… into a brand new righteous living…. follower of Jesus. (That’s what the Bible actually says!!) ______

Jeremy Myers – (author, blogger) “I know that there are several verses in the Bible that some use to argue for the idea that Jesus had to shed His blood to purchase forgiveness of sins from God, but when carefully studied in their contexts, none of these Bible passages are teaching this idea. God has always forgiven all people of all their sins simply because this is who God is. He did not need to be paid off or bought before He could forgive us.

1 Peter 1:18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life (sin) you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with

2 mere gold or silver, which lose their value. 19 It was paid with the precious blood of Jesus Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. 20 God chose him as your ransom long before the world began…. ______These people are basically suggesting: Whatever, the Bible seemed to be saying, whatever Jesus, and Paul, and Peter, and John seemed to be saying in their “inspired” words.

Whatever the Early Church was built on… and the truths that were the built into the foundation of Jesus building his church…. for the last 2000 years into every corner of the world… those truths are not actually what God meant to say… He didn’t really mean that God paid a ransom to save you… and the ransom he paid was the precious blood of Jesus…the sinless spotless Lamb of God. ______Here’s the distortion… It’s like… our life is the centerpiece… the universe revolves around us… but we have decided to allow God to come in and be a part of our life. We may even say he is the light in a very dark life. We can even claim his light inside us as we go right on living a very dark life…

The Bible unfolds real exactly opposite of that. Jesus is the centerpiece. It isn’t about us inviting Jesus to become part of our lives…it’s about us becoming part of his!

Colossians 3: 1 Since you have been raised to new life with Christ, set your sights on the realities of … 2 Think about the things of heaven, not the things of earth. 3 For you died to this life, and your real life is hidden with Christ in God. 5 So put to death the sinful, earthly things lurking within you... 10 Put on your new nature, and be renewed as you learn to know your Creator and become like him…

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______I need you all to really go deep with me here for the next few minutes…

Hebrews 10:19 And so, dear brothers and sisters, we can boldly enter heaven’s Most Holy Place because of the blood of Jesus….22 let us go right into the presence of God with sincere hearts fully trusting him. For our guilty consciences have been sprinkled with Christ’s blood to make us clean, and our bodies have been washed with pure water… 29 Just think how much worse the punishment will be for those who have trampled on the Son of God, and have treated the blood of the covenant, which made us holy, as if it were common and unholy, and have insulted and disdained the Holy Spirit who brings God’s mercy to us.

______Let me take you clear back to the beginning. Adam and Eve were created in God’s image. The were created to commune and fellowship with their loving Creator…but they sinned…they shattered their one of a kind relationship with God… The phrase in Genesis 3:10 that they were hiding from God because “they were naked” obviously means more than it normally does to us… God had seen them naked… he formed their bodies…. and there sure wasn’t anybody else standing around staring at them.

What comes next is something we tend to pass over. God kills at least two of the animals that they had been caring for… strips off their skins (in front of them, I have no doubt…because God is going to emphasize the costliness of sin) and He makes clothes for them with the hide of an animal… that they had deeply cared for.

They had never seen a dead animal before…they had probably never seen blood before. It had to be a huge deal that their “sin was being covered by the death of an animal!…Unbelievable to them! And …we have no reason to believe that God had ever taken a life before. He was the author of life…not the author of death. ______This is a massive moment in time that will culminate in Jesus shedding his blood for all of humanity… and then you sitting here, even, today deciding whether that shed blood is presently cleansing you from all sin…

But for so many…it all sounds so stupid. Why would the shed blood of an animal have done anything at all for Adam and Eve’s sin? Did God do it out of anger. “I’ll teach you both lesson…you are going to be forced to wear the bloody skin of an animal you loved to teach you to mess with me!?” The very next story in the Bible is Cain killing Abel…and the motive behind the killing had to do with Able bringing animal parts as his gift to God and God being pleased with his offering,

4 Is there more going on here than what we tend to think? People who don’t get it at all, like John Adams, our second President, just see this and the rest of the Bible up until Jesus sacrifice and just so much useless bloodiness…

Is it?

Even we as Christians teach our children that starting here with Adam and Eve, the blood of animals had to be spilled to atone (cover) the many sins of humanity… and it was all pointing to a time when the final sin sacrifice, Jesus, would be killed. (That’s true) but if Johnny then asks, by why in the world would God want to kill so many nice innocent animals… to pay for the sins of so many not-so-nice guilty humans…our response is something like… That is just the way God decided to do it, son, go eat your Cheerios! ______

What is the point? And if God really needed a final sacrifice for sin…why wait 4000 years between the fall of Adam… and the arrival of Jesus? ( Our canned, memorized answers don’t address that… do they?)

Once Adam and Eve sinned… why isn’t the next story in the Bible the arrival of Jesus? Why do we need a Noah, and then an Abraham, and then a Moses, and then a David, and an Esther and a Nehemiah? And why wait for all those people to sin and sin and sin and meanwhile thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent animals are giving their innocent life blood to atone for the sins of guilty humans. ______There has to be some element in here than is bigger than what we see on the surface, yes?

Yes…and you pick it up in glaring high definition when you get to the story of Noah! It’s so important to preface the story of Noah with this stunning statement:

Genesis 6:5 The LORD saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. (In 1700 years Adams rebellion had led to this) ( You can get as ticked off as you want about God wiping out all life and starting over…but what he does next is so significant to you as you sit in that chair today)

Genesis 8:18 So Noah, his wife, and his sons and their wives left the boat. 19 And all of the large and small animals and birds came out of the boat, pair by pair. 20 Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and there he sacrificed as burnt offerings the animals and birds that had been approved for that purpose. 21 And the LORD was pleased with the aroma of the sacrifice and said to himself, “I will never again curse the ground because of the human

5 race, even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood. I will never again destroy all living things.

God is saying: No matter how sinful humans get…from this point on… (and they are going to get very sinful)…I’m going to start something new here that is going to last into eternity…

Our minds tell us that the significance of the Noah story is God telling Noah he will not flood the whole earth again and putting a rainbow in the sky as proof! (That is not the significance of the Noah story!)

Noah climbs down the ramp of the ark, builds and altar and offers sacrifices. God is pleased with the aroma…and everything that follows is built on that!

Genesis 9:1 Then God blessed Noah and his sons and told them, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth.

That’s the part we remember…but that like the introduction to what God actually said: ______

1) God gives Noah a blessing… 2) God gives Noah marching orders, (Be fruitful and multiply fill the earth… 3) God gives Noah specific guidelines to follow as they fill the earth. a) I have placed animals in your power. b) I have given them to you for food c) Just as I have given you grain and vegetables d) You must never eat any meat that still has the lifeblood in it e) I will require the blood of anyone who takes another person’s life f) For God made human beings in his own image! g) Now be fruitful and multiply, and repopulate the earth.”

What is this…what is going on? I’m telling you that that conversation that day affects you sitting in your seat today… Not because you don’t have to expect a flood.. Not because you get to look at pretty rainbows in the sky. Not because you get to eat a juicy steak.

1) Clearly God’s “be fruitful and multiply” marching orders must mean a final sacrifice for sins… is probably not going to arrive for a while. Why?

2) Why bring a bunch more generations of people onto the earth, who will be born in sin, and need a whole bunch more innocent animals to atone for their guilt?

6 ______The big thing God did that day…we tend to skim right over… but it’s right here…He tells Noah exactly what he is up to.

Genesis 9:8 Then God told Noah and his sons, 9 “I hereby confirm my covenant with you and your descendants. 11 Yes, I am confirming my covenant with you. Never again will floodwaters kill all living creatures; never again will a flood destroy the earth.” 12 Then God said, “I am giving you a sign of my covenant with you and with all living creatures, for all generations to come. 13 I have placed my rainbow in the clouds. It is the sign of my covenant with you and with all the earth.

We go all google-eyed over a pretty rainbow and miss the fact completely that the rainbow is God shouting. Hey…it’s just a sign…it’s a sign that I am in a covenant relationship with you. It isn’t really about the pretty colors…it’s about the voice of God. Millions/billions of people look up at a rainbow and think how nice it looks and never hear the first word of what a loving God is trying to say.

God is saying: You made-in-my-image humans are a rebellious sinful people…. but I made you to pour out my love on… and from this point (Noah) on… I will never stop pursing you. I will pour grace in your direction until the day you die…emploring you to turn from your sinfulness… and run into my arms. ______That’s a really different picture than how most people look at God! The whole rest of the Bible is God establishing a covenant relationship with human beings.

That’s literally the sub-title of the whole Bible. The Old Testament is the Old Covenant…the New Testament is the New Covenant. But you can’t say the word “covenant” without understanding that the very word is about a deep enduring growing relationship between two people….In this case the Creator God of heaven… and us… his beloved created children.

God didn’t call the Old Testament… the Old “I’ll hunt you Jews down and beat you with a stick section”. He didn’t call the New Testament… the “you Jews and Gentiles both better accept my Savior or I’ll send you to section.”

7 ______If only George Carlin could have grasp, for five minutes, that the God of the Bible from Noah’s time on… is presented as lovingly, graciously pursing a covenant relationship his children… trying to woo them back from the consequences of their willful sins…Trying to get them to walk full face into his promised blessing… rather than stubbornly walking back into the effects of the curse.

How can anybody who believes… that God loved us so much that he left heaven… incarnated himself in a human body… to die for our sins… pay our sin penalty… How could anybody still see a God who is malicious …and angry… and revengeful?

If you were a sheep or a goat in the OT…you may have had a bad view of God’s plan of atonement…but if you were a human you shouldn’t have.

That said…every covenant in the Bible (Adam’s.. Noah’s, then the big one with Abraham (which we haven’t looked at yet) it mushrooms into a huge covenant with all of the Jewish people… finally the New Covenant offered to everybody in the room…every single covenant in the Bible has the exact same characteristics. ( because they were all designed by the same architect – God)

1) Every single covenant in the Bible was about moving people away from their sin into the grace of their Heavenly Father!

2) Every single covenant in the Bible required the shedding of innocent blood. (without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins!! Hebrews 9:22) (You say I don’t like the way God planned that…)

* I told you last week that I had pulled every reference in the Bible to the word…and have since been digging though them to find out what the Bible actually says…and to figure out how word unfolds with the unfolding revelation of the Bible. (I had never done that- 17 ss pages!))

* I began to notice that the word covenant repeated showed up alongside the shedding of blood…so I did something else this week that I had never done before…I pulled every reference in the Bible to covenant. (20 single- spaced pages) (stunning – I will give you a lot of that WED evening)

* When you meld them together…they slip together like two sides of one coin.

8 3) Every single covenant had two sides! We’re not even just talking here now about the Covenants between God and humans now. Because God started this with Noah and everybody descended from Noah… This became the norm or society. We read in Scripture about humans making covenants with other humans. Interestingly, even the pagans spilled the blood of an animal… to ratify their covenant with another person.

And every covenant was fashioned after the way God set it up with Noah. In OT times…. the words came together in a single phrase. The “blood covenant.” There was no daylight between them. People making a covenant together would take an animal split it in two…and the two agreeing parties would walk between the two halves of the sacrifice making a “blood covenant” with each other!

______Do you remember when God called Abraham:

Genesis 12:1 The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. 2 “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Genesis 15:6 …Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. 7 He also said to him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.” 8 But Abram said, “Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” 9 So the LORD said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”

10 Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other…. 12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him…. 17 When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. 18 On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land… (Euphrates) ______Well that is the oddest thing I ever heard of… Don’t mock it as an insignificant OT ritual. I preached a series a couple years ago on “Living under the blessing of God.” A whole lot of the spiritual blessings you enjoy today are a result of that odd little ritual 4000 years ago. Paul in Galatians says that that infilling Holy Spirit in the life of the NT

9 Believer is a direct extension of God promising his eternal presence to Abraham. I believe the New Jerusalem in Revelation described in Revelation 20,21 is a final fulfillment of God’s land promise to Abraham. They certainly have never realized that promise up to this point and the 1400 mile by 1400 mile New Jerusalem fit nicely onto that size of real estate. ______The point is…what may seem like a silly ritual to us…was a really big deal to God.

1) He had Moses build what he called the Tabernacle of the Covenant 2) God gave Ten Commandments called the terms of God’s covenant 3) He put them in a specially built box called the Ark of the Covenant 4) He gave Israel circumcision as a sign of their (rainbow) covenant 5) He reminds Israel constantly that they were in Covenant relationship with him 6) When Israel began to stray he warned them they were breaking their covenant 7) When the started worshipping idols, he compared them to an unfaithful spouse 9) More than once God said; “I hate your sacrifices!” ( What he really hated was them coming with their sacrifice which was supposed to be a symbol of their eternal covenant with him…but after offering their lamb on an altar they would go back home…get out their little wood and stone idols and bow down to them too… There has to be a modern day lesson there!!)

8) God constantly says: You have abandoned me…but I won’t leave you! 9) You will suffer the consequences of your unfaithfulness but I’ll be waiting ______When it seems like they couldn’t possibly do anything else… to sever their covenant relationship with their loving waiting God… When God should have simply rejected them all… and sent them into eternal punishment…God says…

Jeremiah 31:31“The day is coming,” says the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and Judah. 32 This covenant will not be like the one I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant, though I loved them as a husband loves his wife,” says the LORD.

33 “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the LORD. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 And they will not need to teach their neighbors, nor will they need to teach their relatives, saying, ‘You should know the LORD.’ For everyone, from the least to the greatest, will know me already,” says the LORD. “And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.”

10 This is not a God who is malicious …and angry… and revengeful? This is a God who is pursuing us with grace and mercy. If God didn’t passionately love us he…he could have stopped the experiment with Noah… never gone on to make an eternal covenant with humanity…but not what he did… He came to this earth and shed his own blood to ratify and eternal covenant with you and me… He still waits for each of us to turn from our sins and run into his waiting arms…

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