Everybody's so quiet. I may as
well just start. If you would, open your Bibles
with me to 1 Samuel chapter 20. Since you're here, I'll tell
you this now. I'm going to send out a text for everyone later. But Janie informs me that the
forecast for Sunday afternoon is sunny and 97 degrees. Neither one of us are fans of
heat like that, so we have decided to postpone the picnic till fall. There's cooler temperatures. Sean and Julie, the family, are
going to be out of town, I told Lyle and Emmy this Sunday. I
hated they were going to be out of town, so I'm going to show
you all my volleyball skills and tricks. I told them it won't
take very long, but Maybe you'll still have, you know, take two
seconds to show you my skills at a later date when it's a little
cooler. This passage I want to read in 1 Samuel chapter 20 is
a very good picture of the subject that I want to look at this evening,
God's covenant. I want to begin reading in verse
11, 1 Samuel chapter 20. And Jonathan said unto David,
come and let us go out into the field. And they went out, both
of them, into the field. And Jonathan said unto David,
O Lord God of Israel, what I have sounded my father about, tomorrow,
any time, or the third day, and behold, if there be good toward
David, and I then sin not unto thee, and show it thee, the Lord
do so, and much more to Jonathan. But if it please my father to
do thee evil, then I will show it thee, and send thee away,
that thou mayest go in peace. And the Lord be with thee, as
he hath been with my father, And thou shalt not only, while
yet I live, show me the kindness of the Lord, that I die not,
but also thou shalt not cut off thy kindness from my house forever. No, not when the Lord hath cut
off the enemies of David, every one from the face of the earth.
So Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David, saying, let
the Lord even require it at the hand of David's enemies. And
Jonathan caused David to swear again. Our translation says,
because he loved him, but the translation is, made him swear
by his love toward him, for he loved him as his own soul. That's
why they entered into a covenant with one another, and you know
the end of that story. That's what I, that covenant's what
I hope to look at this evening. So all right, Shawn, you come
lead us in our singing, if you will. Okay, if you would, turn in your
hymnals to song number 205, and we'll sing Once For All. Free from the law, O happy condition,
Jesus hath bled, and there is remission. Cursed by the law
and bruised by the fall, grace hath redeemed us once for all. Once for all, O sinner. receive it. Once for all, O brother, believe
it. Cling to the cross, the burden
will fall. Christ hath redeemed us once
for all. Now are we free, there's no condemnation. Jesus provides a perfect salvation. Come unto me, oh hear His sweet
call. Come and he saves us once for
all. Once for all, O sinner receive
it. Once for all, O brother believe
it. it. Cling to the cross, the burden
will fall. Christ hath redeemed us once
for all. Children of God, O glorious calling,
Surely his grace will keep us from falling. Passing from death to life at
his call. Blessed salvation once for all. Once for all. Okay, if you would now turn to
song number 212, Nothing But the Blood. What can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. What can make me whole again? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. O precious is the flow that makes
me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing
but the blood of Jesus. For my pardon, this I see, Nothing
but the blood of Jesus. For my cleansing, this my plea,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus. O precious is the flow that makes
me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing
but the blood of Jesus. Nothing can for sin atone, Nothing
but the blood of Jesus, Not of good that I have known, Nothing
but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that
makes me white as snow. No other fount I know Nothing
but the blood of Jesus. This is all my hope and peace. Nothing but the blood of Jesus. This is all my righteousness,
nothing but the blood of Jesus. Oh, precious is the flow that
makes me white as snow. No other fount I know, nothing
but the blood of Jesus. If I didn't know better, I would
think that Sean read through my notes this evening before
he picked those psalms. Encourages me maybe the Lord's
leading him made the same way if you would open your Bibles
with me to Exodus chapter 24 Exodus chapter 24 will begin our reading in verse
5 and And he sent young men of the
children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings and sacrificed
peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord. And Moses took half
of the blood and put it in basins. And half of the blood he sprinkled
on the altar. And he took the book of the covenant
and read in the audience of the people. And they said, all that
the Lord has said will we do and be obedient. And Moses took
the blood and sprinkled it on the people and said, behold,
the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning
all these words. We'll end our reading there.
Let's bow together. Our father, we've gathered here
in this place this evening in the name of your dear son. And
we've gathered here together this evening, father, pleading
with you that this evening we would hear a word from thee and
by your spirit, being able to worship you from the heart, to
worship in spirit and in truth. And father, we're so thankful
that you've given us this opportunity to meet together with our brothers
and our sisters, to sing the songs of praise, to open your
word, the very word of God, to read it, to study it, to hear
Christ preach from it. Father, how we thank you. I ask
that you would not allow us to take this blessing for granted,
that you not let it just slip through our fingers, but Father,
that you bless it to our hearts. Father, we're so thankful. How
can we even begin to thank you for everything that you've done
for your people and the person of your son? Father, we're so
thankful. You blessed us physically, You've
blessed us materially. You blessed us beyond measure,
but much more than that, how you blessed us with your mercy
and your grace. And father, we're thankful and
we beg your forgiveness for the times of this pain and doubt
and fears of the flesh causes us to, to not trust you as we
should not to, to doubt your precious promises after all that
you've done for us. Father, we ask that you would
see us and hear us only in our Lord Jesus Christ, always and
only for his sake and his sake alone. And Father, what we pray
for ourselves, we pray for your people wherever they're meeting
together this evening all across the world. Father, we pray you'd
bless them. We pray that you would bless
them for your great namesake, for the good of your people that
in this difficult, day in which we live, that you might show
us your glory. And Lord, while your spiritual
blessings, your kingdom, your spiritual kingdom is preeminent
in our minds and our hearts, we also pray about the goings
on of this world, that you'd be with our leaders and leaders
in other places, that you would direct their hearts to wisdom,
that you would move them to do good and right and to preserve
the peace of your people. Father, we ask you to forgive
us of our many sins. Hear us for Christ's sake. Forgive
us for Christ's sake, we pray. For it's in his precious name
we pray and give thanks. Amen. I took my title from verse
eight when Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people
and said, behold the blood of the covenant. I've titled the
message, The Blood of the Covenant. There's always a real, I don't
know if dread is the right word, fear. Whatever you call that
emotion that makes you feel sick at your stomach and your heart
rate and your palms go up and your palms be sweaty. In preparing to preach the gospel,
to preach, open God's word and preach it to God's people. There's
a fear, I guess, is the best way I can think of to describe
it. But with that fear and that feeling of the awesomeness of
the occasion, I've been looking forward to our service tonight
and looking forward to this message. Because I really do believe it'll
be a help to you and encouragement to you. And if God let us see
his glory, in his covenant that was sealed by the blood of his
son. Every one of us will leave here tonight resting in Christ
and believing on him. This covenant that Moses is talking
about here when he says the blood of the covenant, what he's talking
about here is God's eternal covenant of grace. Now you know what a
covenant is. A covenant is a contract just
like the covenant between Jonathan and David. I'll do this and you
do this. We both agree to do something
and fulfill this covenant. It's like a contract. But a covenant
is also a promise. The word covenant that Moses
uses here, the Hebrew word for it is a pledge or a promise. A covenant is a promise. And
that's God's covenant. His covenant of grace is a promise
of salvation by grace. It's a promise that God made.
Moses here has to be talking about the covenant of grace.
I read some writers that say, well, he's talking about this
covenant of the law. God just gave them, the people,
the law, and the people said, we'll do it, and they're making
it out like this covenant is, well, God gave the law, you obey
it, and you'll be righteous, you'll be saved, God will accept
you. That cannot be what Moses is talking about here, because
if that's what he was talking about, there'd be no need for
blood, would there? The covenant of the law offers no hope of
forgiveness, offers no mercy, but God's covenant of grace promises
grace and mercy and forgiveness of sin in the blood of Christ. This eternal covenant of God's
grace is a covenant between God and God. It's not a covenant
between God and man. It's a covenant between the Godhead.
In this covenant, the father, he elected a people. a sinful
people to save out of Adam's fallen race, and he promised
that he would accept them in the person and the work of his
son. He promised that the doing and
the dying of his son would make those people accepted in his
presence, and he would bring them to glory. That's what the
father promised. The son promised he would be
made flesh. You know, we talk about this
so often. I hope we never lose Is mystery the right word? The
mystery of this. God was made flesh. Almighty
God was born as a baby. He was conceived by the Holy
Ghost in the womb of a virgin and he was born as a baby, just
like all of us were born. He was a man who was made under
the law so that he could obey it perfectly as the seminal head
of his people. His obedience would give his
people a righteousness that they could not earn on their own because
they were in him when he obeyed the law. And when they're born
again, they're born again with a righteous nature. They're born
with a nature just like our representative, just like our seminal head. The
son promised to be made flesh, to live a life of perfect obedience
to his father. And then he promised when his
hour came that he would be made sin for his people. that he would
take the sin of his people, and he would make it his own. Even
though he never committed a sin, he made it his. He felt everything
associated with our sin, with the exception of the commission
of it. He felt the shame of it, where he couldn't look up to
his father. He felt the guilt of it. He called out, my God,
my God, why has thou forsaken me? He wasn't talking to the
father then. He was talking to the judge, the father, because
he was guilty. He was made guilty of the sin
of his people and by his blood, he put that sin away. He paid
the debt for it and washed it away. When he died as a substitute
for his people to make them righteous, the son promised that he would
do that. And then the Holy Spirit promised that he would come and
give all those that the father chose to save. All of God's elect,
he promised that he would give them life, spiritual life. He'd
give them faith in Christ He promised, I'll draw all those
people that you gave, that you chose, that the son died for,
I'll draw all of them to Christ by the preaching of the gospel.
And the Godhead shook hands, as it were. And when they did,
the covenant was complete. It was complete. It has to be
complete because the purpose of God, the promise of God, remember
that's what this covenant means. It's a promise. It's a pledge
of God. The promise of God is just as
sure as something God's already done. God can't change. God can't
lie. He's gonna do what he promised
that he would do. See, this covenant was made between God and God. 15 times in the Bible, it's called
the everlasting covenant. Everlasting. That means this
covenant is not made between God and men. Men aren't everlasting. Men aren't eternal. God is. This
is a covenant made between God and God. Do you know even the
death of Christ on the cross did not change God in any way? The death of Christ on the cross
did not change God's attitude toward his people. He was mad
at them, but after Christ died, now he loves them. No, sir. You
know why Christ died for his people? because the Father already
loved them. The Son already loved them. The
Holy Spirit already loved them. A covenant, this covenant, everlasting
covenant, eternal covenant of grace. This is the only hope
of salvation that a sinner has. It's the only hope. You don't
have to turn to this if you don't want to. You know it, but 2 Samuel
chapter 23. This was David's hope. David spoke for every believer
here. He said, although my house be
not so with God, yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant. It's ordered in all things, and
it's sure. This is all my salvation, and
it's all my desire, although he make it not to grow. This
eternal covenant, this is a good hope, a good hope for sinners. It's a covenant between God and
God, but it concerns me. It concerns the salvation of
God's people, and it tells us how it is God's gonna save his
people from their sin, how he's gonna make them righteous, how
it is that he can justify the ungodly, make them just and righteous. And like I said earlier, this
everlasting covenant, God's always seen it as ratified. I mean,
there's never a question in his mind, and you know how he saw
it ratified? In the blood. the blood of the
covenant. It's the blood of the lamb slain
from the foundation of the world. Christ promised he would do that,
didn't he? But now that's what he promised he'd do. But it came
time, he actually had to come. He actually had to shed his blood
to ratify this covenant and actually do what he promised to do. Put
away the sin of his people and make them righteous. And I want
to tell you, he did it perfectly. He did it perfectly. He got the
job done. Everyone for whom Christ died
is completely justified. Completely accepted with the
Father. Completely. Now the blood of
this covenant is mentioned four times in scripture and I want
us to look at these things and see the glory of Christ and see
the wisdom of God and how this blood of the covenant is gonna
seal his covenant and save all of his people from their sin.
The first one is here in our text, Exodus 24 verse eight. And Moses took the blood and
sprinkled it on the people. He said, behold the blood of
the covenant, which the Lord hath made with you concerning
all these words. Here the blood of the covenant
speaks of forgiveness. The forgiveness of sin. The sin
of God's elect is forgiven one way. It's in the blood of the
covenant. In the blood of Christ. Now think
about this situation here. Moses had just gone up and the
Lord gave him pages and pages of commandments of the law. And
Moses wrote them all down. He read them to all the people.
All these commandments of God he read to the people. And the
people said, we're gonna obey that law. We're gonna do it.
I mean, that's just a great big old lie. Have you ever heard
a bigger lie than that? I'm gonna obey God's law. And as soon as
they said that, you know what Moses did? He threw blood on
them. It says here he sprinkled them
and he may have used hyssop or something. Hyssop is typically
in scripture how blood was sprinkled. But that word sprinkled there
means threw. They said, we're gonna obey God's
law. It's like Moses says, no, you won't either. And he threw
blood on them. He showed us we're gonna violate
God's law. We don't have the ability to
keep God's law. The only way your sin can be
forgiven is in the blood of Christ. And years later, Paul wrote about
in Ephesians 1 verse 7, in whom we have redemption through his
blood, the forgiveness of sins. It's the forgiveness of sins.
It's through the riches of God's grace, but it comes through the
blood of Christ. See, sin can only be forgiven
by blood, because the only thing God will accept as payment for
sin is pure, perfect blood. It can't be animal blood. Animal
blood was used for 2,000 years as a picture of the blood of
Christ, but the writer of Hebrews told us it never put away sin.
God demands perfect, pure blood. And that's what the Son promised
to do. He promised he would come and
shed his pure, perfect blood so that his blood would make
that sin, the sin of God's elect, to not exist. See, God forgives
sin, not by overlooking it. If somebody does something wrong
to us and we forgive them, why, we've just got to overlook the
fact they did us wrong, right? That's not the way God forgives
sin. When God forgives sin, He removes it. So there's no sin
to bring up God's wrath. The blood of Christ made the
sin of God's elect to not exist. So of course the Father forgives
them. See, this is the blood of the
covenant. It's the blood that the Son promised He'd shed. It's the blood that the Father
said He'd accept. And it's the blood that the Holy
Spirit promised He'd apply to the hearts of His people. And
in that sin, in that blood, sin's forgiven. All right, now look
at Zechariah chapter nine. Here's the second time. Next to last book in the Old
Testament, Zechariah chapter nine. Beginning in verse nine. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of
Zion, Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem, behold, thy king cometh unto
thee. He's just and having salvation, lowly and riding upon an ass,
and upon a colt, the foal of an ass. And I will cut off the
chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the
battle bow shall be broken off, and he shall speak peace unto
the heathen. And his dominion shall be from
sea even to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the
earth. As for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant, I have
sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein there is no
water. Now here the blood of the covenant
speaks of freedom. All of God's elect have freedom
because of the blood of the covenant, because of the blood of Christ.
Here God promises every enemy of his people will be defeated
by the blood. Everybody knows who Zechariah
is writing here of in chapter 9. Rejoice greatly, O daughter
of Zion. Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, thy king cometh
unto thee. He's just and having salvation,
lowly and riding upon an ass and upon the colt, the foal of
an ass. Our Lord Jesus very famously
and openly fulfilled that scripture when he rode into Jerusalem just
the week before he would be crucified. Here, this is speaking of, and
the blood has to be His blood. God's elect are set free from
bondage to sin by the blood of Christ. You know, I know people don't
want to think that they're in bondage to sin because we've
been fooled into thinking somehow we can sin less. And certainly,
you know, we might be able to control some of our outward,
you know, actions. But brethren, we're in bondage
to sin. We have a nature that can't not
sin. It must sin. That's all it can
do. And you know, the preeminent
evidence that we're in bondage to sin is this. We hear the gospel
of God's grace in Christ Jesus, and we don't believe it. We may
even think, I want to believe it. And I can't, I can't make
myself believe it. You know why? We're in bondage
to sin. We're in bondage to a sin nature
that's stopping us from believing on Christ. But the blood of Christ
sets his people free. Now we believe. Now we still
have that old flesh. It can't believe. It can never
love God. It can never believe Christ.
It'll never bow. But that new man, he believes. He believes Christ. He trusts
Christ. He wants no other hope. but Christ, and he won't have
one. That man's free. And the old
man can never make him not believe on Christ. We're free by the
blood of Christ. And Zachariah tells us something
about how disgusting our condition by nature is. He said, I'm going
to send forth your prisoners out of the pit wherein is no
water. This is a picture of us being
born in the prison house of God's justice. Isn't that where guilty
sinners belong? They belong in a prison house,
don't they? That's where we belong and that's where we're born.
And Zachariah here describes it as a pit. Now all he says
is it's a pit wherein is no water. But this is what they used for
prisons at that time. They'd just dig a deep hole in
the ground and they'd throw a fella down in it and they'd roll a
stone over the top of it and he can't get out. Now you think
after somebody, a group of men have been in that pit for a while,
you think how disgusting it is. They use the bathroom. I mean, it's just as gross as
can be. They stand and it just builds up to this muck and the
stench and the pollution of it. Just builds up and builds up
and they stand in it, they sit in it, they sleep in it, they
smell it all the day long. They're in a pit and there's
no water. There's nothing to cleanse themselves, there's nothing
to quench their thirst. I mean, you just think about
that for a while, how disgusting that is. That doesn't scratch
the surface of how disgusting. We are in our sin by nature.
And God says, by the blood of the covenant, I'm gonna set those
prisoners free. See, God doesn't set his people
free because of a technicality. Don't you hate reading in the
paper or seeing on the news somebody that's just as guilty as can
be, but because of some technicality in the trial, somebody messed
up, the person, now they're guilty, everybody knows it, but they
go free because of a technicality. God doesn't do that. God doesn't
set his people free and parole them because of good behavior.
We don't have any good behaviors. We can't be paroled for that
reason. And we're not set free by just
a prison break, escaping and going off into the wilderness
and being free. It's impossible for anyone to escape the justice
of God. God sets his people free by the
blood, by the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ, as I said
earlier, took the sin of his people away. When sin's gone,
what are you? Not guilty. Righteous, not guilty. So the same justice of God that
demands your death, that demands your condemnation because of
your sin, if the blood of Christ took your sin away, the very
justice of God demands you go free. And God sets his people
free in justice. That's how effectual, how powerful,
how precious the blood of Christ is. Nothing else could pay the
price, but the blood of Christ and his blood set his people
free. All right, now look at Hebrews
chapter 13. Here's the third one. Hebrews 13. In verse 20, now the God of peace that brought
again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of
the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working
in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ,
to whom be glory forever and ever, amen. Now here the blood
of the everlasting covenant is talking about peace, peace that
God made. We're the ones, this is something,
it has to be repeated all the time, to understand the grace
of God, the goodness of God, the wisdom of God. You and I
are the ones who declared war on God. I mean, we got this war,
we got this lack of peace because of our rebellion, because of
our refusal to submit, because of our refusal to surrender,
and God made peace. He's the offended party, but
he made peace. And he did it by the blood of
his son, the blood of the cross of his son. Now Christ died for
sin, didn't he? The sin of his people charged
him. That's what demanded his death. He died for the sin of
his people. And we boldly and apologetically
preach that the blood of Christ justified his people. made them
without sin. Even though when I look at me
and you look at me, all you see is sin, don't you? Even though
that's what we see with these eyes, here's what we believe.
God's people have been justified. They're without sin. That's the
only way verse 21 can be true. Make you perfect in every good
work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing
in his sight through Jesus Christ, The only way that can be true
is the blood of Christ justified you. And we also boldly preach
that the blood of Christ made the sin of his people to not
exist. God describes it as casting the
sin of his people behind his back. Now God's everywhere. He's everywhere at once, so where's
his back? God's just using that as a term,
something we can understand, God didn't, sin just doesn't
exist and it's not in a place that God can't see it. The blood
of Christ made the sin of God's elect to not exist. Christ died
for sin. We understand that as the sin
of his people demanded his death. Well, three days later, why did
he rise again from the dead? Because where there is no sin,
there can't be any death. He had to rise again because
his sacrifice put away all the sin of all of his people. And
when Christ arose from the dead, all of his people arose in him. They're all justified too. And
they can never be condemned. They can never be condemned.
If Christ took your sin away from you, you can never be condemned. And there's no reason that you
would ever fear facing God in judgment because you're at peace. You're at peace. If Christ died
for you, let me tell you something. God's not out to get you. I mean,
sometimes he sends us trials and it feels that way, doesn't
it? But he's not out to get you. His justice is not seeking you.
He's not beating you because of your sin. Your sins are already
being punished in the person of your substitute. God's at
peace with his people. Now you don't need to fear him.
You come to him. You come to him. He's at peace
with his people and it's because of the blood of his son. All
right, here's the fourth one. If you look, if you got the same
version of the scriptures I do, look back just one page, Hebrews
chapter 12, verse 24. And to Jesus, the mediator of
the new covenant and to the blood of sprinkling that speak of better
things than that of Abel. Now here, this blood of sprinkling
speaks of the new birth. This is what the Holy Spirit
and this eternal, everlasting covenant of grace promised to
do. The Holy Spirit promised, I'm gonna take the blood and
I'm gonna apply it to the hearts of your people. I'm gonna sprinkle
the blood on them and they'll be clean. I tell you this frequently,
the blood must be shed. The blood had to be shed. God's
justice demanded it. But if you and I are gonna have
life, that blood must be applied to. And that's what the Holy
Spirit does when he applies the blood of Christ to the hearts
of his people. Now we're the ones who are at peace. God's
at peace because the sacrifice offered to him. When the blood
of Christ is applied to our hearts, we've been born again. We've
been born again with a new nature that loves Christ, that believes
Christ, a nature just like Christ our head. We're made partakers
of the divine nature. And when the blood of Christ
is applied to the hearts of God's people, they're cleansed. They're washed from all of their
sin. That's the new man, the new nature,
whatever you want to call it, who's born in every believer.
That nature is cleansed from all sin. He can't sin. He's got a new nature, a nature
that's holy and righteous. It's that new man that fusses
and fights with the old man, and the old man fusses and fights
with him. But the new man's going to win out. He's going to win
out. I know it doesn't feel like it
oftentimes, but here's how you know it's going to win out. Every
one of God's elect is going to endure to the end. They're going
to keep believing to the end because that new man can't do
anything else. Now, if I've just turned over
a new leaf and I start acting better, you know what's going
to happen? I'm gonna get that side of the
leaf dirty, too. I'm gonna mess it up. If I save myself, if I
cause myself to be born again, it's not gonna do me any good,
because all that is is very similar to being born, like I was the
first time, from sinful seed. But I'm telling you, if God the
Holy Spirit has applied the blood of Christ to your hearts so that
you believe, so that you've been born again, you will endure to
the end. You will. Isn't that amazing
that the grace and mercy and power of God, his people through
the blood of Christ, and this thing of the new birth, oh, it's joyous. It's joyous. I know folks who I have no doubt
don't know Christ, don't trust him, have not yet been born again,
and my constant prayer for them every single day in my study
is that God would save them, that God would cause them to
be born again. That's a good prayer. I mean,
it's the best thing you can pray for anyone who's lost. But I'm telling you what, the
very moment a sinner is born again, they got trouble. And
it's not that they will eventually have trouble out there in the
world from people used to know them. You know, you hear it all
the time. People say, well, I liked you better, you know, when you
were a sinner. I liked you better before, you know. You know where
the real trouble's gonna come from? I mean, immediately. The
old man. And that warfare between the
old man and the new man will make you so miserable. I mean,
you, Apostle Paul described it in Romans 7, didn't he? What
I want to do, I can't do. And what I don't want to do,
I mean, with all my heart, I do not want to do that, and that's
what I do. I mean, just the misery of that. So that Paul cried out,
who's gonna deliver me from the body of this death? I mean, it
makes you miserable. But that new man, who's been
made just like Christ, one day, and Joyce and I were talking
about this before the service, she said, it may be sooner what
we think. One day, both body and soul are gonna be just like
that new man. And it's because of the blood
of Christ. That new man, the moment this flesh dies, goes
straight into the presence of God. Doesn't need a probationary
period, doesn't need to have anything else done to it. The
blood of Christ already made him perfect and accepted in the
Father's sight. See, the blood of Christ sprinkled.
This means good things, doesn't it? You know, the writer says
here, it says better things than what the blood of Abel said.
Abel's blood called out to God for vengeance, didn't it? Called
out for justice. But the blood of Christ calls
out to the Father for forgiveness, for peace, for acceptance. And that's the blood we preach.
That's the blood that we trust has made us accepted in the Father's
sight. The Father, the Son, the Holy
Spirit, they've all fulfilled their promise to each other in
the eternal covenant of grace, haven't they? But this world
keeps spinning around. You know why? There's one thing
left that the Son promised the Father that He would do. He promised
the Father that at the time of the Father's appointing, when
He ends this world, Christ is going to take everyone the Father
gave Him, All of God's elect, everyone He died for, not one
of them will be missing. And He's gonna come and present
them to the Father, and He'll say, Father, here am I. And all
the children, they're all here. That is what the Lord's doing
right now. He's just waiting, calling out
His people, calling them to faith in Christ. And I hope the Lord
does that for you and me tonight. All right, let's bow together
in prayer. Our Father, how we thank you
for the blood of the everlasting covenant. Our words can't even express
our thanksgiving that you would look to the blood of Christ and
not to us to satisfy your law and justice. but you'd send your
son to be the sacrifice for our sin and his blood would wash
us clean, would make us exactly what you would accept into your
thrice holy presence. Father, how thankful we are.
What wisdom you've displayed in your salvation to be both
just and justifier and what mercy and grace. that you would reach
way down to the bottom of the pit and take sinful men and women
like we are and wash us clean and white in the blood of your
son. Father, how we thank you. And Father, I pray that you would
take your word as it's been preached, that you by your spirit would
take the blood of the covenant and apply it to each heart here
this evening. And let us leave here this evening trusting in
and resting in Christ our Savior. It's in his precious name, for
his glory and his sake we pray, amen. All right, Shawn. I did not originally pick this
one, but I think it's a good way for us to close out our service. Turn to page, song number 210,
Saved by the Blood. Stand, please. Saved by the blood of the crucified
one, now ransomed from sin and a new work begun. Sing praise to the Father and
praise to the Son. Saved by the blood of the crucified
one. Saved. Saved. My sins are all pardoned. My guilt is all gone. Saved. Saved, I'm saved by the blood
of the crucified one. Saved by the blood of the crucified
one. The angels rejoicing because
it is done. A child of the Father, join e'er
with the Son, Saved by the blood of the crucified one, Saved Saved! My sins are all pardoned. My guilt is all gone. Saved! Saved, I'm saved by the blood
of the crucified one. Saved by the blood of the crucified
one. The Father, He spake, and His
will it was done. Great price of my pardon, His
own precious Son, Saved by the blood of the crucified One. Saved. Saved. My sins are all pardoned. My guilt is all gone. Saved. Saved, I'm saved by the blood
of the crucified one. Saved by the blood of the crucified
one. All hail to the Father. All hail to the Son. All hail to the Spirit, the great
three-in-one, Saved by the blood of the crucified one. Saved Saved, my sins are all
pardoned, my guilt is all gone. Saved, saved, I'm saved by the
blood of the crucified one.