The wounds, the wounds that speak. We began our service by looking
at Hebrews chapter 12 and Hebrews 12 speaks of this blood. Jesus
the mediator of the new covenant and the blood of sprinkling that
speaketh better things than that of Abel. And last week we looked
at the wounds of the Lord Jesus Christ and how they bring peace,
but I want us to look at the fact that these wounds and this
blood is still speaking to us again and again and again. Leviticus chapter 17 speaks of
that sprinkled blood, but also in Leviticus 17 it says the life
is in the blood. The life is in the blood. But
also it goes on to say the life of the soul is in the blood. And our lives, the lives of all
of God's children are bound up as one with the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why Zechariah 13, we read
it last week, and if you go there with me, you'll see that Thomas'
words are just prophecy fulfilled. And we know in verse 6 it says,
what are these wounds? What are these wounds in thy
hands? And he shall answer, those with
which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Then in verse
17, we hear the wounding. The deepest wounding of the Lord
Jesus Christ was him bearing the infinite wrath of a holy
God against all the sins that were united to him because of
his union with his bride. God the Father says, Awake, O
sword, against my shepherd, against the man that is my fellow, saith
the Lord of hosts. and the sheep shall be scattered. And I will turn my hand, my hand
of love and mercy and grace upon the little ones. And it shall
come to pass that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts
therein shall be cut off and die, and a third shall be left
therein. It was just a remnant of him,
his own, left. And I will bring the third part
through the fire, and I will refine them as silver is refined. It's never a pleasant task. God
will not turn away from refining his little ones. And I will try
them as gold is tried. Then, or they shall, call upon
my name, and I will hear them I will say, don't you love the
I wills of God? Man's I wills are not worth the
breath that comes with them. God's I wills are just so wonderfully
powerful, aren't they? I will hear them, I will say,
it is my people. That's exactly what he said when
he came to his own, doesn't he? And they shall say, like Thomas,
the Lord is my God. My God. These wounds are the
beauty and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. My Beloved is white and ruddy,
white in all of his holiness, in all of his purity, in all
of his perfection, and he's ruddy red in his bloody sacrifice. He's white and ruddy. He comes to his own, he comes
in the midst of his own, and he did it twice in John chapter
20. And where things are repeated
in the scriptures, there's a repeated, a repetition for emphasis. And so where the Lord comes with
his own, comes to his own, and gathers his own together, how
did they get to be in that room? A sovereign God put them in that
room. That's how they got to be in
that room. And he comes in their midst. And when he comes in their
midst, he's going to show his wounds. He's going to speak words
that the wounds have hurt for all of his people. Where is the
peace? The peace is in his blood. These
wounds are the wounds of beauty and his glory. These wounds,
like his blood, they speak of his obedience. You know those
famous verses in Philippians chapter 2. that he came as a
man and he humbled himself as a man and became obedient, obedient
even to death, the death of the cross. His words speak of his
obedience. Someone had to obey God. Someone
had to obey God's law perfectly. Someone had to love God with
his heart and his soul and his mind. Someone had to love his
neighbour as himself. Otherwise the laws of God are
meaningless. Our God, our God and Saviour
obeyed God perfectly. obedient he made himself of no
reputation and took on him the form of a servant and was made
in likeness of men the likeness of men and being found in fashion
as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even
the death of the cross wherefore God hath also highly exalted
him and given him a name which is above They were in the presence of
God Almighty. God's people gathered where his
wounds are shown and where those wounds speak peace. We're in
the presence of God Almighty. It's remarkable, isn't it? The wounds speak of his love
to his father. that he would love his father's
glory, he would love his father's name, his father's reputation,
he would love his father's holiness. The words speak of all of the
character of God. That's why it's so significant.
That's why in the preaching of the gospel, gospel preachers
are always declaring the character of God. They're declaring the
name of God because if you're going to be saved, you're going
to call upon the name of God. And to call upon the name of
God is to call upon him in all of the glory of all of his attributes
as revealed in the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified. But
these words speak. They speak of his faithfulness. I love what Job said. The Lord Jesus Christ, faithful,
even in all of the darkness, in all of the trials of the cross,
the Lord Jesus Christ was perfectly faithful, even in the abandonment
of God in those three hours of darkness. He was perfectly faithful. The words speak of his power,
the power to completely eradicate, to completely eliminate, to completely
put away all of the sins of all of God's elect, all of the sins
of all of the body of the Lord Jesus Christ are put away and
gone forever. Romans 8 says it beautifully,
doesn't it? He that spared not his own son but delivered him
up for us all. And Paul makes you to have no
doubt about the us that he's speaking of. All that he foreknew,
all that he did predestinate to be conformed. What's the end
result of this? To conform to the image of his
son. delivered him up for us all how
shall he not with him also freely give us all things what's missing
absolutely nothing you have the Lord Jesus Christ You have everything. Thomas' sins were put away, as
were the sins of the other 11, as were the sins of Mary, as
were the sins of Peter, as were the sins of those men on the
road to Emmaus. The Lord Jesus Christ appeared to all of his
own. And sin, the sin of God's people, is cancelled sin. It's justified sin. It's sin
that's gone. And these words that he showed
his disciples and the words that we declare in the preaching of
the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, they declare that he's an advocate. He's our great high priest forever. This Hebrews 7.24 says, This
man, because he continueth forever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Don't you love the fact that
it's unchangeable? It's not changed by my sin. It's not changed by
the good things I do. It's not changed by the bad things
I do. It's not changed by my wicked unbelief. It's not changed. Wherefore, he is able to save
them to the uttermost. by him, that's how we get to
God, by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such an high priest became
us who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sin, and made higher And that throne is won as if
he was a lamb slain. The words speak of judgment. Men will be judged by this man
bearing these words. And what's the great sin of humanity? The great sin of humanity And the moment we think, when
we look back on Behold, he cometh with the clouds,
Revelation 1-7, and every eye shall see him, and also they
which pierced him, and all the kindreds of the earth shall wail
because of him. These worms will either be your
greatest terror or your greatest comfort. For those who get to heaven,
those worms The only memory, if there is
such a thing, of sin will be their words. And the only reason
we will be in heaven is it will look at me and say, that's what
he did for me, he did it all, he did it all. He took all of
my sins, the sins I committed in Adam, the sins I came forth,
my mother's words speaking lies. We're accustomed, Jeremiah says,
we're accustomed to doing evil. He took all of our sins in one
horrible mass, were laid on the Lord Jesus Christ. What a remarkable
event the cross was. I'm having a discussion with
a fellow and I'm trying to sort of get through the whole business
of the modern notion that God has ambiguous loves and ambiguous
desires. But I'm trying to actually get
to the point where we can actually say this is who God is and define
his character. The one place to define the character
of God is the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I can't get
him to talk about the cross. I'm hoping this next letter of
mine will cause him to talk about the cross. There he is, talking
about all these Christian activities that are being done, and yet
we can't get to talk about the cross. If the blood has been
sprinkled upon you, and sprinkled upon your conscience, and purged
your conscience from all works. Don't you love what Hebrews 9.14
says? How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through
the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, listen to
this, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living
God. If that sprinkling had come upon
you, And you would be talking about
the cross. And you would be going back there
again and again, rather than wanting to say that John 3.16
says that God loves everyone and the proof of his love for
everyone is that Jesus died for everyone. If the Lord Jesus Christ,
this Jesus Christ that we are talking about here in these gospel
accounts and throughout these scriptures, if he died for you,
you are saved. You might know now. You might
be living in the same rebellion as Thomas. If the Lord Jesus
Christ died for you, God would be unjust and unholy
if he sent you to hell and punished you again. He cannot punish the
same sin twice. He cannot punish that sin in
his son and then turn around and punish that sin again. It's
impossible. It denies every attribute of
God, his justice, his holiness, his faithfulness. It denies every
word that's in here. The blood, we began, the blood
speaks. The blood speaks, in Hebrews
12, it speaks of a mediator, one that stands between us and bears the infinite sins of
all the people he represented. He stands there as a mediator.
Thank God there's a mediator. He's the mediator of a new covenant. He's not the mediator of the
old covenant. He fulfilled the old covenant.
He was born of a woman. He was born under the law. Christ
is the end of the law for righteousness to all who believe. He's the
mediator I love thinking about the New
Covenant. I love talking about the New Covenant. The New Covenant's
the New Covenant in His blood. And the New Covenant is the covenant
in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, Isaiah 42 and Isaiah
49. He is the covenant personally. And in the New Covenant, Hebrews
7 says he's the surety of that covenant. He's made the surety
of it. Which means in that covenant
that was made before the foundation of the world, the Lord Jesus
Christ was given a people, and in that covenant, he took responsibility
for them. He took absolute full responsibility
before a holy God for all of their righteousness, for all
of their holiness, for all of their obedience to the law, and
he took full responsibility for all their sins, and he said,
I'll bring them back to you, and I'm going to present them.
I'm going to present them in glory, holy, Unblameable and
unapprovable and I'm going to present them in your sight. And the shout of the king will
be there. The shout of the king will be
there. Hallelujah. What a saviour. I just wanted
to very briefly go through a list which is no doubt on our website
and other places, but I want us to just think a little bit
about the blood. The blood of the covenant. It's
the blood of sprinkling. I love the fact of sprinkling,
isn't it? The book was sprinkled and all
the instruments of the tabernacle were sprinkled and all the people
were sprinkled. You can read about it in Hebrews
9. They were all sprinkled. And all of God's, it's a great
picture, isn't it? That that blood of the Lord Jesus Christ
is applied by God the Holy Spirit to the hearts of his people.
So I just want to go through this list. There's only about
10 or 15 of them, but I just want us to understand how significant
in the Scriptures the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is. It's
the blood of that lamb, the lamb that was slain in Eden's garden
to cover the shame and the nakedness and the wickedness and the evil
of Adam and Eve. The first death in all of the
Bible is the death of that lamb in the garden. He made skins
of them. But as we said, the blood of
the Lamb contains the good news and it speaks of better things
than the blood of ables. It speaks of grace and not wrath.
It speaks of mercy and not vengeance. It speaks of peace. Peace returning
and peace be unto you, not peace departing. It's the good news. The blood
of the lamb is the purchase price of the church. Acts 20, 28. He bought the church with his
own blood. How precious is the church to
him? How sanctified is the church to him? She's bought with a price
you're not your own. You've been bought with a price
you belong to God. The blood of the lamb is atonement. The blood of the lamb is the
atonement. Aaron shall make atonement upon
the horns of the altar with the blood of the sin offering. The blood makes atonement for
your soul. The blood of the lamb is redemption. The blood of the Lamb brings
us near. It's one of my favorite verses
in the Bible, in Ephesians 2 verse 13. We were far off. How far? Verse 12 says, Ephesians 2, 12. If you go back to the beginning
of Ephesians chapter 2, it says that we're actually captive to
Satan. That's pretty far off. And we were in this world doing
His will. That's a long way off. And verse 12 of Ephesians chapter
2, at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise,
having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ
Jesus, you who sometimes were far off. Do you remember how
far off you were? I remember how far off I was. everything that I could possibly
imagine about God. Faroq are made nigh, made near
by the blood of Christ. It brings us near, brings us
near to him and if you're brought near to him and I'm brought near
to him, we're brought near to each other. We have fellowship
with him in being brought near. The blood of the Lamb Revelation 1.5 says the blood
of the Lamb washes us clean. This is what the Lord Jesus Christ
was saying when He brought, when He came into the presence of
His people and then came and He showed them His hands and
His eyes. He was saying all of these things, all of what I'm
reading here is now The blood of the lamb contains
peace. We have peace through the blood
of the cross. As we read, if we go on in Ephesians
chapter two, verse 14, he is our peace. He is our peace. He is our peace. Because of his
blood, he is our peace. The blood of the Lamb contains
pardon. Without the shedding of blood
there is no remission of sins. The blood of the Lamb contains
justification. We're justified by His blood. Revelation 8.14 says, The blood
of the Lamb makes us white. They have washed their robes
and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. is the word that's used to describe
the Lord Jesus Christ on the Mount of Transfiguration. That's
how white we are. Made white. It's made white. The blood of the Lamb is that
which sanctifies. He that might sanctify the people
by his own blood. His own blood sets them apart.
as he is in this world. In Revelation 12 they overcame
him, they overcame the evil one. People do all and say all sorts
of nonsensical things about doing battle with Satan. The scriptures
make it really clear, isn't it? Revelation 12 verse 11, They
overcame him by the blood of the land and by the word of their
testimony, and they loved not their lives unto death. He's cast down to this earth. and they overcome him. The blood of the Lamb is our
entrance into the holiest of holies. He entered in with his
own blood just once, and where the head goes, the body goes
also. The blood of the Lamb is the
seal of the covenant. That's what we do when we participate
in the Lord's Cup. This is a New Testament in my
blood. The blood seals the covenant.
All of the promises of God are signed and sealed in the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's an everlasting covenant.
It's a covenant of peace. It is the New Covenant. The New
Covenant's much, much older than the Old Covenant. The New Covenant
is the Eternal Covenant. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ
is true drink for the soul. My blood, John 6, 65, my blood
is the true drink for the soul. The blood of the Lamb is life. And that's what John said. that you might have life. You
might have life. You believe to have life. Unless
you eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man, you
have no life in you. The blood is life. The blood
of the Lamb is our protection. When God passed through Egypt,
what was He looking for? obedience. I can often think
of what it would have been like to have been there on that day.
Imagine if you were an Israelite and you'd done something particularly
horrible that day. If you'd been a child or a parent
and you'd done something particularly horrible that day. And you were there, in the house,
with the blood over the door, knowing that the avenging angel
was coming through. Would you have been quivering
in your boots, saying, this is it for me? What was God looking
for, Exodus 12? What was God looking for? When I see the blood of the Lamb,
I will pass over you. This blood separates the children
of God from the people of this world. In the eyes of God, not
necessarily in our eyes, but God sets his people apart by
the blood. Hebrews 13. And let's finish by reading these
verses that I just love so much in Hebrews 13, 12. Verse 20, now the God of peace. Don't you love the fact that
his first words, three times in John 20 when he makes his
apostles. He says peace. The first words that come out
of his mouth are peace. The God of peace, now the God
of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus,
the great shepherd, that great shepherd of the sheep, who through
the blood of the everlasting covenant made you perfect. that which is well-pleasing in
his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and
ever. Amen. May the Lord send a sprinkling
of his blood upon us as we go out into this world. A sprinkling
that washes deep down in our souls and washes us clean in
his blood. It's one thing for the blood
to be shed 2,000 years ago. It's a completely different and
wonderful matter for and as we go into this world,
let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank
you for all that your dear and precious Son. We thank you that
he was a lamb slain from the foundation of the world. We thank
you, Heavenly Father, that he's pictured throughout the Old Testament
Scriptures as that lamb, as that sacrifice, as that meeting place
between God and man. We praise you, Heavenly Father,
that the resurrected Christ, when he gathers with his iron,
the very first word that comes out of his mouth is peace. And
I pray, Heavenly Father, that you might send the blessed Holy
Spirit to give us a peace, a peace that passes understanding, a
peace that comes through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We do pray, Heavenly Father, that you'd continue to raise
up places throughout this world and continue your work amongst
us, that there would be a place where we can come again and again
and again and hear about your dear and precious Son, to see
those wounds, to know that love was spilt and not a single drop
could ever be wasted. Heavenly Father, your servant
Peter declared it to be precious blood and precious blood and
precious blood. You alone can make it precious
and make him precious to us, our Father. We commit ourselves
into your hands in the name of your dear and precious Son. Cause us to go out into this
world rejoicing and standing in Him, and with Him, and for
Him. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
I was going to read, Jude, you can read along with me, it's
right at the end, it's in your hymn books, or it's in your Bibles,
Jude 24 and 25. Now, don't you love that word
now? Now unto Him that is able to
keep you from falling, before the presence of his glory
with exceeding joy. To the only wise God, our Saviour,
be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and ever.