THE BLOOD OF JESUS
David C Brown
John 19: 33-35
When we preach the gospel we do so on the basis of the blood of Jesus. We had a brother in the city who used to always adjure those younger when they were asked to preach: “Preach the blood”. Why? Because it is an answer; there is in the blood the answer to the divine requirements, and the answer to the need of men. The scope and the effects and the power of the blood are very extensive. You will find it throughout the Scriptures, directly throughout the New Testament, in many different ways, the preciousness and the wonder and the effectiveness of the blood of Jesus. It was looked forward to in the Old Testament; think of how many sacrifices there were, none having any direct efficacy themselves, but each one looking forward to One whose precious blood would be sufficient that by it you and I should be saved. The scope of that is wonderful. I picked up a book by Mr G V Wigram and he suggested twenty eight different ways in which Scripture looks at the blood of Jesus; how extensive, how blessed it is that that precious blood should be so precious and wonderful in the sight of God.
I suppose the first thing that comes to mind, and it was mentioned in our hymn (No 145), is that a lamb was slain. When we speak about the lamb that was slain, the passover lamb, do you know the effectiveness of what the blood meant? God said, “when I see the blood, I will pass over”, Exod 12: 13. There were persons, Egyptians, whose doorways did not have the mark of the blood upon them. The destroyer came in; the judgment of God came in. The judgment of God is due, pending upon the world; there are some harbingers of it we would say in the present time, but the judgment is due. Are you one who is sheltered by the precious blood? Do you know the power in the blood to protect you? Why is it effective? Because it satisfies God! That was the first word, “when I see the blood, I will pass over”; the judgment will not come in because of the preciousness and the virtue and value of the blood of the lamb in the sight of God. But as we have said there were houses in Egypt that were not marked by the blood; and there were houses in Egypt that were. What was the difference? The difference was that there were those that had taken to themselves the lamb, who appreciated the lamb; and not only had they slain the lamb but they had taken its blood and put it with the hyssop on the doorpost and the lintel. That is what you need to do, to lay hold by faith on the blood of Jesus.
You see how John in writing of this presents the blood and then he says, “he knows that he says true that ye also may believe”, John 19: 35. How necessary and vital that the blood should be applied, the blood should be upon you, so that God in looking towards you would see the blood; and that you are covered and you are sheltered by the precious blood of Jesus.
Of course, there is another side to that related to what we have been speaking about. Outwardly, there were these houses on which there was the blood, and God was satisfied; and God is so satisfied by the work of Jesus in the type that He could pass over people, and not bring in the judgment. But inside the house, what were they doing? Feeding on the lamb! Beloved, have you fed on the Lamb? Perhaps you do know that the blood is there, you have faith in that blood, you know it; but you are not just to be sheltering under the blood, you are to feed on the Lamb. You are to have Christ before you as the Food of life, as the energy to go forward, and as the One who will bring you in power and energy through the wilderness, as there are needs there.
What a wonderful scene in these houses; everyone valued that lamb, they appreciated it, they had had it in the house from the tenth day to the fourteenth; how wonderful that they had had it in their houses: they had valued it and they saw what it was, they were affected by it. We think of the way in which this apostle John is an example of one who from the beginning had seen Jesus and heard that word, “Behold the Lamb of God”, John 1: 37. And he had watched and watched through these periods the perfect walk and pathway of the Lord Jesus in this scene. He had valued Him, valued that Man, valued Him in His walk. Of course John was a failing man, he was a sinner such as you and me, but he valued the Lord Jesus, he followed Him, he kept close by Him. And it came to the point where the blessed sacrificial Lamb was there upon the cross and the soldier came and pierced the side of a dead Saviour: Someone who had died already, whose work was completed in that sense. And now there is a witness, the witness in its fulness that God is satisfied with the work of Jesus, because the precious blood has flowed forth. John saw it! He can witness to it, he can tell you of it, and he can tell you, ‘Here is something precious: believe, have faith in that precious blood’.
Romans brings in the blood on two occasions, and we see the blessedness of them. In Romans 3 it is spoken of, “Christ Jesus; whom God has set forth a mercy-seat, through faith in his blood”, v 24-25. How necessary it is that there should be the faith in that blood, the blood that satisfies the heart of God, the blood by which we have this righteousness; “being justified freely by his grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God has set forth a mercy-seat, through faith in his blood”. That looks back to another scene in the old dispensation, the great day of atonement (Lev 16); how wonderful a day it was!. The blood of these wonderful offerings that looked forward to Christ’s work was taken and it was put on the mercy-seat; that is it was brought right into the divine presence. There was only one day in a year as things worked out that the priest could go into the holy of holies, and he did not come without the blood, the blood that was to be put on the mercy-seat; and God sets Christ forth as a mercy-seat, so that His heart is known, His speaking is known. He is going to speak from off the mercy-seat, but it is a mercy-seat that has the blood upon it; God is satisfied. The cherubim were the symbol of the divine rights, and they looked down on the blood that was on the mercy-seat; how wonderful to see that. It was sprinkled before the mercy-seat too, seven times before the mercy-seat; how wonderful that God would give you full reassurance. What is your need? The value of the blood is expansive, it is great, and it can reach everyone, as the fulness that the seven would suggest.
But again it is presented here in Romans as a matter of faith “whom God has set forth a mercy-seat through faith in his blood”. It is remarkable that this should come in. I think it is the only time in scripture that faith is connected with something other than a divine Person personally. You read of faith in God, or faith in Jesus, but here you have faith in His blood. There is something that has power in it, that has effectiveness that is going to affect your soul and your heart, and it is the eternal witness to the righteousness of God, to the completion of the work, to the grace of God, to the heart of God towards you, to the blessing that is available to you through the glad tidings. How wonderful it is, the precious blood! You have to lay hold of it by faith: “by faith in his blood”.
And then later on it speaks in this epistle of the power that is in it; “Much rather therefore, having been now justified in the power of his blood”, chap 5: 9. Think of the power of that blood; “we shall be saved by him from wrath”. There is power in that blood. Why is there power in it? There is beauty and the glory and perfection in the Man who walked in this pathway according to the divine will and pleasure, who did everything that was according to the divine mind; and the blood of that One is witness that He has died: there is satisfaction for God’s heart in Him and His completed work. There is power in it so that you should come into blessing, power that you should be justified. That depends of course on the fact that it is a witness of a completed work, because on the cross the Lord Jesus suffered for sins; He bore sins there, so that the efficacy of the blood of Jesus should rest upon everyone who comes and trusts and believes. What effect there is! It is available to everyone. He bore the sins of everyone who trusts in Him, how full and great that is. I have trusted Him; I know that every one of my sins has been dealt with on the cross; how wonderful that is!
What liberty is brought in, because the covenant brings in liberty; since the covenant is the new covenant in His blood, and that blood has the effect of liberty in the presence of God. How wonderful that you can know that because of the effectiveness and the power of the blood of Jesus; you are “justified in the power of his blood”. Do you know what it is to come before God as justified? Sometimes there is a question as to what it means to be justified, and it is said, ‘Just as if you never sinned at all’. In one way that goes too far, because your history is there; but God has worked things out in your history, and He has dealt with your history, dealt with it in the work of Christ. And in a way it does not go far enough because you are not just in the sight of God as someone whose sins are removed, but you are there as someone who is set up for God in the power of the life of the Lord Jesus, the Man who has laid down His life and has risen again and is triumphantly seated now on the Father’s throne awaiting the day when He takes up His own rights. It is wonderful to have such a Person!
And the blood is the purchase price. Think of that! That God has desired to redeem, there is a redemption that comes in through the work of Christ; I think that is set out in Ephesians. It speaks there about the redemption; the redemption through whose blood? “The Beloved”! It says, “taken us into favour in the Beloved: in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of offences”, chap 1: 6, 7. Your offences, your sins: they are the matter, the issue between you and God, and here God says “redemption through his blood”; no other way, no other virtue, no other power, but how blessed it is that we have “redemption through his blood”, the blood of the One who is so charming to the heart of God, the One who is “the Beloved”, we are “taken us into favour in the Beloved”. If you look at that second paragraph in Ephesians 1, and you think of the great and wonderful and marvellous things that God has in mind, they are “every spiritual blessing”, and then you find what is the fundamental matter of it all; “in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of offences, according to the riches of his grace”. His grace has reached to you; His grace is available to you in the gospel and all depending on the fact that the Lord Jesus there upon the cross shed His precious blood. How blessed that is; how full that is; how great it is that you can be there in the sight of God, in the favour of the Beloved because of the completeness and the worthiness of the “redemption through his blood”.
And the blood is cleansing. The sins are something that are upon you, and John says in Revelation, “To him who loves us …”; that is the present position: there is a Man who loves us, and everything that would make things a problem is dealt with because He “has washed us from our sins in his blood”, chap 1: 5. Think of what it was to be in the sight of God as filthy, in filthy rags, the filthiness of the flesh, the filth of what belongs to the position you have as a sinner if you have not trusted the Saviour. And here there is a power to cleanse you; you can come before God in purity, come before God as conscious of the cleansing power, and you can say as that hymn writer did -
We, too, the cleansing power have known
Of Christ’s atoning blood.
It is wonderful to have the blood to cleanse, so that you can thus approach God. For that is what it brings in in Hebrews, that there is approach to God. And what is the approach to God? Well, the approach to God is because of the power of the blood; it is because of the cleansing of the blood. Hebrews 10 speaks about the way you can approach God: “Having therefore, brethren, boldness for entering into the holy of holies by the blood of Jesus”, v 19. We mentioned that in the old dispensation the holy of holies could be entered once a year by one man with the blood of other creatures; and you can go into the holy of holies as you wish, as you desire, “by the blood of Jesus, the new and living way which he has dedicated for us though the veil, that is, his flesh”. Once, only the priest; now you as a priest may enter into the presence of God, and you will find the One who presides there, a great Priest over the house of God, Jesus. But your entrance depends on the liberty you have by the blood of Jesus. What excellence and what sufficiency there is in the blood of Jesus.
Hebrews speaks of it again as the blood of the eternal covenant: “But the God of peace, who brought again from among the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, in the power of the blood of the eternal covenant”, chap 13: 20. Think of that! God brought Him “from among the dead in the power of the blood of the eternal covenant”. The blood of Jesus was a witness before God of the righteousness of everything accomplished, and God could therefore righteously raise that glorious One from the dead; “raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father”, (Rom 6: 4), raised by God Himself. The God of peace has done it, so that you can have peace, the God of peace has raised this wonderful One from the dead “in the power of the blood of the eternal covenant”.
The covenant is a matter of liberty; in one way you could say it is liberty on God’s side: God’s heart is free, He can come out towards you, come out to you to bring you into the enjoyment of His presence, enjoyment of liberty before Him, and you can take it up. You are free, as you have trusted in the Saviour, to be there in the enjoyment of what there is that is established because of the work of the covenant. That is brought before you as you gather to remember the Lord Jesus at the Supper: “the new covenant in my blood”, Luke 22: 20. What privilege there is! What blessing and benefit there is that we know as we gather at the Supper and what flows from it. Why? It is because of the blood of the covenant. The blood, of course, has dealt with the matter of your forgiveness as you have trusted in Him, as your faith is in the blood, but the blood also is that ground of liberty before God. When the first covenant came out there were creatures that were slaughtered and the blood was put into basons (Exod 24); that is a suggestion of just how copious, how full, the blood of Jesus is. And it was sprinkled on the book, and it was sprinkled on the people (Heb 9: 19): everyone had the mark that the covenant blood was upon them, so that God was in a new relationship, a covenant relationship, with His people. That is all superseded - that was fine, so far as it went it, but it is superseded by the blood of this precious Lamb of God, by the blood of Jesus, and you can have the liberty in that relationship before God, to be in His presence. Again we have to emphasise it is “through faith in his blood”. How wonderful that there is this opportunity to enter into these things by faith in His blood.
I want to speak briefly too of the fact that there was not only blood but there was water, and I feel tested to say very much about that. But God has provided not only the blood but the water; there is only one hymn in our hymn book that makes reference to that:
Let the water and the blood,
From Thy riven side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure,
Cleansing from its guilt and power.
(Hymn 396)
The blood would deal with your guilt and it does so completely; it would cleanse you in the sight of God. And then you have to live in the sight of God, and you have to live in the sight of God in the light and the power of the water; the water came from the side of Jesus so that you may be clear from day to day. It is available for your cleansing when you fall into what is inappropriate.
In the Old Testament too there is the great type of the red heifer separate from the other offerings, a distinctive creature, a distinct offering; it is the only one whose colour is set out, and it is one of the few that is a female offering, Num 19. There is something of divine feelings about that, the distinctiveness that was seen in Christ in His perfection and subjection, and that creature was burned and the water of purification came from the ashes of that creature. It is because of Christ going into death that you can have cleansing for today, that you can have cleansing for the pathway, cleansing for the wilderness. If someone touched a dead bone in the wilderness they were unclean, and there was a supply in this water of purification. If you touch what is unclean in the world, and in some degree perhaps you cannot avoid that, while in some degree it is what may be because of your own failures, there is sufficiency in the work of Jesus for that. You do not exactly go back to the blood again; it has dealt with the matter, and the water allows you to be before God in communion with Him. The water allows you to be before God without what might mar your liberty with Him.
So that where we referred to in Hebrews 10 it speaks not only of the fact that you are there because of the blood, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness for entering into the holy of holies by the blood of Jesus”, but at the end of that section it says, “and washed as to our body with pure water”, v 22. That is not simply a physical matter as to how we would come as washed, but that we are washed since there is a power to wash you so that you should come in suitability. It goes back to the glory of the fact that Christ has been in death, He has taken all these charges and liabilities, but it is available to wash you so that you can have the liberty of the place that belongs to you. It is an integral part of being one who has “boldness for entering into the holy of holies”. A sober matter was that if someone touched a dead bone and ignored the water, it became a sin, Num 19: 20. It was not a sin to touch a dead bone, which may have been an accident in the wilderness, or have been necessary, but the Israelite had to avail himself of that water; the water is there for you, and how important it is that you should avail yourself of that cleansing power that there is in the water that came from the side of the Lord Jesus.
I commend these things to you. How full and great the power that is in that blood. Let it be something that is constantly before our hearts, the wonderful fact that we have redemption through His blood. And at what might be regarded as the highest level, in Ephesians 1, we have, “in the Beloved: in whom we have redemption in his blood”. What liberty we can have with God because of the fulness and the blessedness of what He has provided in the work of the Lord Jesus.
May the Lord bless the word.
Loanhead
27 December 2020