on Sunday we looked at Colossians
29 verses in chapter 1 of Colossians and 29 mentions of our God and
I would just like us to look as you can see in your notes
here at Hebrews chapter 9 and I was really just wanting to
to look more closely at verse 14 And in the context he talks
about the blood of bulls and calves and the blood of bulls
and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean. That's
cleaning those who have been defiled by death. You can read
about it more clearly in Numbers 19. And it sanctifies to the
purifying of the flesh. But I love these words. John's
just been speaking about it a bit, hasn't he? Amazed by grace. How much more shall the blood
of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without
spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the
living God? Hebrews is a great, great book.
If ever your heart needs refreshing, dip into Hebrews, and it's just,
I just love it. It's wonderful the way it starts,
isn't it? In chapter one, God, who at sundry times and in diverse
manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophet, hath
in these last days spoken unto us by, notice that word his is
in italics. He has spoken to us by son. God's word, God's first word,
God's last word, God's final word to this creation is Son,
Jesus Christ, whom he has appointed heir of all things, by whom also
he made the world, who being the brightness of his glory and
the express image of his person and upholding all things by the
word of his power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat
down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." What a remarkable
opening. And that book starts, doesn't
it, with a declaration of who the Lord Jesus is. A declaration
of who He is and what He has done and what He is doing now. And then in Hebrews, 13, it says
in verse 20 at the close of the book, 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 for ever and ever. It begins with Him as a sovereign
God, having purged our sins, sitting on a throne. It finishes
with Him as the God of peace. God of peace. Peace with God. What a remarkable thing. And
that's why I love verse 14 of chapter nine. How much more shall
the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself
without spot to God, purge your conscience, cleanse your conscience
from dead works. What a remarkable thing it is,
isn't it? This promise of a conscience cleansed. One of the things that
is difficult for us and I think extraordinarily helpful for us
is that as a small flock we are continually in a situation where
we are forced by the circumstances of the world that we live in
and the religious world that we live in We are forced to keep
assessing ourselves. Have we got it right? Are we
faithful? Is God amongst us and carrying
us and guarding us and protecting us and shielding us? Thus far he has been faithful. I can't think of one circumstance,
one scripture that causes me to waver from that unshakable
conviction. that the Gospel is a declaration
of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And any wavering and any movement
away from a declaration of a perfectly finished and perfectly accomplished
work on the cross for those He intended to save is nothing but
a blasphemy to His name and profoundly unhelpful to all who hear it
and damning to those who preach it against the warnings of Scripture. They cannot all claim ignorance. May the Lord have mercy on them
and may He continue to guide us and strengthen us. That's
what our church wants to say, isn't it? Behold the Lamb of
God who takes away the sin of the world. And our Lord came
into this world to save sinners. And what's our warrant? What
do we need to come into the presence of God? We come just as sinners. Nothing but sinners. Sinners needing a Savior. Hebrews talks about the sprinkling
of this blood. And there was no sprinkling of
the blood in our Old Testament except in the case of sin, and
that those who came to be sprinkled by the blood of Christ must learn
and must have it laid to their hearts, the reality of their
sin, the filth and the defilement. God hides from us most of what
our sin is. But it's not just a It's not
a sense of sin that keeps sinners from being washed in this blood
that cleanses consciences. It's actually the problem that
we encounter again and again. It's people's sense of their
worthiness. They have something that they're
holding onto that they're not prepared to let go of. They hold onto it to their eternal
destruction. Sinners. Firstly, we must own
that sin is what we are. We sinned in Adam, and we sin
in every deed that we have ever done, and we are sinners right
now. Sin is right there with me all
the time. But secondly, we must be persuaded
that nothing cleanses from sin but the sprinkled blood of the
Lord Jesus. And we must be persuaded, as
the scriptures declare again and again, that this precious
sprinkled blood can do it effectively. So what's your reaction? If it's
like mine, Whenever we see the stain of our sins, our sins of
commission and our sins of omission on our consciences, if you're
like me, I instantly look for something to do to make up for
it, to balance the books, as it were, with God somehow. I keep thinking when I'm languishing
if I actually just could spend more hours reading the Bible
or spend more hours praying or spend more hours doing this.
then things would be right with God. And they're good things. Praying and reading the scriptures
and attending church are good things. They're all good. But if any of those good things
are put in the place or even alongside, in some way, the blood
of the Lord Jesus, They are not just not acceptable, they are
an abomination. Hebrews, as the rest of the scriptures
say, that we come with nothing but the blood, nothing but that
blood of our precious Saviour, effectual, efficacious, that
blood that perfectly cleanses. What does John say? The blood
of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us. It means that it cleanses
and it cleanses and it cleanses and it's cleansing right now. It cleanses us from all sin. What a remarkable declaration. So we must own that we are sinners.
We must be persuaded that there is nothing that we can do except
look to the sprint of blood and we must look to that blood as
an effective atonement. And thirdly, to be saved, we
must put all the weight of our eternal destiny upon this one,
final, perfect, complete act of the Lord Jesus Christ. His
sacrifice, not ours. His righteousness, not ours. His blood, our only plea for
all our acceptance and all of our justification being justified
by His blood. We've got to keep remembering
the context of Hebrews. There was this temple, and there
were these sacrifices, and there was this priesthood, and there
was this torn curtain which no doubt they had stitched up to
hide the fact that there was nothing in behind it. And there
they were doing all of these things and they had this book.
And they said you can have Jesus plus these activities, these
sacrifices, nothing. Nothing but the blood of Jesus
is what Hebrews is saying, isn't it? Again and again it starts
with the blood, it finishes with the blood, and all the way through
it's He is better, He is better, He is better, He is more complete,
He is perfect. He is the one alone to look to,
as Hebrews 12 says. Fix your eyes on Him. And here's
the one that describes, in chapter 10, verse 5, his sacrifice. He
says, sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body
hast thou prepared for me. His body, that glorious body,
was prepared for him by His Father, sacrifice and offering Thou wouldest
not, but a body Thou prepared for me, only a miracle of grace. imparted. The miracle of grace
implanted by the Holy Spirit can lead that conscience burdened
sinner to believe that that bloodshed 2,000 years ago outside Jerusalem
is able to take away our sins perfectly and acceptably. God will accept no other offering
How foolish to attempt to bring one of our own making. Burnt
offerings and sacrifices of the law, the father would take none
of those. He prepared this body. The father took his sweet life
of his precious son. He took that heart blood. a blood
that was shed for the expiation of the sins of his people. I
remember being with Isabel as she was in those last months
down there one day we talked about the fact that if we'd been
there 2,000 years ago We could have walked with Him
and talked with Him. We could have seen all these
things that He did, heard all those words that He said, declaring
Himself plainly and clearly to be God, to be the Anointed One. Our faith is based on a historic
reality and it comes down to a historic reality ultimately
about that one particular event by that one man on that cross
outside of Jerusalem. Ultimately it comes down to that
man saying that one Greek word, tetelestai, it is finished. You go to that place and flesh
out according to the scriptures what that means. You'll have
the heart and soul of the gospel. But Hebrews 9 goes further, doesn't
it? It says, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through
the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your
conscience? To know that we are sinners,
to know that there is no cleansing, to know that this cleansing is
perfectly effective, To know that this cleansing, this shed
blood, this one sacrifice can bear all the weight of my sins. To know that this one perfect
acceptable sacrifice is pleasing and acceptable to God the Father. It's all very well for that to
be the case. But the scriptures want these
things for God's children to be personal. And that's what
I love about this verse. It actually is applied to your
conscience. It's applied by God personally. It's applied by God privately
in the hearts of his people. We have no other plea. We have no other place to go. That shed blood covers this book
from Genesis to Revelation. It's all of what the scriptures
are about. And where therefore when we pray,
we come to God Because of this blood shed, we come with boldness. We have access to the throne,
but that access is through his shed blood. When we seek communion
with God, it is again by the merits and virtue of this blood. If we are brought near to him,
As God's children long to be, as we've seen in Solomon, to
be out of communion is to be out of sorts. It's not there
all the time, but we've experienced enough of it to hunger and thirst
after more of it. brought near, it is by the blood
of Jesus that we are brought near. But now, says Ephesians
2.13, but now in Christ Jesus, you who sometimes were far off,
I love what he says, he says, are made near, made near by the
blood of Christ. All the blessings, all the blessings
of salvation that we enjoy and we stand in, and need, now and
eternally, are all the fruit of His blood. In Hebrews 9, we've
seen in those verses prior to it, he talks about, in verse
11, but Christ came, being come, and high priest of good things
to come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made
with hands, that is to say, not of this building, This is a tabernacle
that's in heaven, isn't it? neither by the blood of goats
and calves, but by His own blood, He entered in once into the holy
place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. For if the
blood of bulls and of goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling
the unclean, sanctifying to the purifying of the flesh, how much
more He's talking about blood being sprinkled, the blood of
these sprinkled animals. Then what then, what does it
mean for us to be sprinkled by the blood of the Lord Jesus? It is nothing less than the spiritual
applying of its power and its worth and its application in
the courts of heaven right now, applied to our hearts. There was much of our Lord Jesus'
physical blood that was sprinkled on those who beat him and crucified
him, and it was no benefit whatsoever. There's lots of people who write
and know lots about it from the scriptures. but unless this blood
is applied spiritually to our conscience, it has no benefit. I love what he says, how much
more, much more, much more. So where do we see this sprinkled? Where do we look through the
eyes of faith to see this blood sprinkled? According to this
chapter of the scriptures, we see it sprinkled on the altar
of justice. Its power and its worth, its
virtue, this precious blood, as Peter keeps saying, made satisfaction
to the justice of God for sin. Both justice and the law are
satisfied. justice and the law of God. They slew the Lord Jesus and
both are satisfied. Look down there at verse 26.
He put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. He put it away. Justice is perfectly satisfied. The law is perfectly fulfilled. Sacrifice, according to Ephesians
5, was that sweet-smelling savour unto God. That savour of that
sacrifice went up to God in heaven and it smelt beautiful. He was offered, verse 28, to
bear the sins of many. And look what it says at the
end of the verse. And unto them that look for him, he shall appear
a second time. without sin unto salvation. All of our sins that were put
on Him are gone and they are gone and put away perfectly and
completely and forever. And the law says enough. The law says satisfied. The law says There is now no
condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not
after the flesh but after the Spirit. Romans 8.1 For the law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free. from the law of sin and death. I love these next verses. For
what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the
flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh,
and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. Condemned my sin. in His flesh that the righteousness
of the law might be fulfilled in us, not fulfilled by us, fulfilled in us who walk not after the
flesh but after the Spirit. He's borne the sins of many.
He's put away their sins. Law and justice, the altar of
justice, is sprinkled by that blood. And this blood reaches
into heaven that wonderful verse 9 Hebrews 9 12 we just read it
a while ago but by his own blood he entered in once into the holy
place having obtained having got in his hands eternal redemption
for us having obtained it for us verse 24 For Christ is not
entered into the holy places made with hands, which are figures
of the true, but into heaven itself to now appear in the presence
of God for us. So often we overlook those little
words in the scriptures. What a precious little word that
word is. The word for us, that Greek word means to stand over
stand over as one who would shield and defend. He enters into heaven
for us, as it were, spreading out his arms and standing over
us and gathering his chickens under his wings for us, shielding
them, defending them, carrying them, His blood is sprinkled on the
altar of justice. His blood allows entrance into
heaven. And that blood, as he said at
that last supper, this cup is the new testament, the new covenant
in my blood. We read it there in Hebrews 9, isn't
it? 9.15, for this cause. See, what's
the cause? The cause is the purging of your
conscience to serve the living God, to purge your conscience
from dead works. He is the mediator of the New
Testament, the New Covenant, that by means of death, for the
redemption of the transgressions that were under the First Testament,
they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance. See, He sprinkled that New Covenant
with His blood. He sprinkled it to seal it. He sprinkled it to guarantee
that all the spiritual blessings, how much more, much more, how
much more we can let our minds run like Ephesians 1 does, doesn't
it? We are blessed with how many
spiritual blessings? All spiritual blessings. in heavenly
places, in Christ. Every blessing we ever had are
now. Every blessing we receive right
now, every blessing we will ever receive has the blood of the
Lord Jesus upon it, promised. Promised in that shed blood to
purchase all those blessings to seal them to us and to seal
them for us, to guarantee them as a surety, to secure the fulfillment
of them, to secure the performance of them. What remarkable promises
we have in the scriptures. Every time we read that word
will from God, we have a promise. and all of them are signed and
sealed and secured to all of his people by the Lord Jesus.
You see, he's the prophet, isn't he? He came to reveal his salvation
and to wrap up all of that prophecy just in one man, one life, one
death, one moment in history. He's the prophet, as one says.
He is the Word of God. He reveals His salvation and
He reveals God. He's the priest. He earned our
salvation and He is the sacrifice. He offers it up to God. And not only is he the prophet
and the priest, he's the king. And he ever lives and reigns
to see that its effects are accomplished in all he's redeemed. They are one with him. The covenant
is made on their behalf and for them. You see, we have that word
testament. When we sign our last will and
testament, it's enacted upon a death. But these days, you
can sign your last will and testament and your family or all sorts
of other people can take it to court as they do so often and
challenge it. You see, he makes the will. He
signs the covenant. And then he dies. to bring the
covenant into force. But he's a king. He now lives,
not like us. He lives to make sure that all
of what he has planned, all of what he has promised, all of
the blessings that his death brings, he lives as a reigning
king. He's sitting, as Hebrews begins,
sitting at the right hand of God. But lastly, to go back to our
verse, His blood is sprinkled in the New Covenant, it's sprinkled
on the altar, it reaches into heaven, but here we have that
it's sprinkled on our consciences. See, it reaches to the inmost
being of who we are. It cleanses us on the inside. See, faith sees the blood of
Christ satisfying the justice of God. Faith sees the blood
of Christ reaching into heaven where he makes intercession for
us. Faith sees the blood sealing and guaranteeing all the new
covenant blessings. But the cleansing of our consciences
is a promised activity of God. It touches the very core of what
we are and who we are. It reaches to that part of us
which is hidden from all the world, hidden from those who
are closest to us so often. But it reaches to that part where
He sees. See, known are all things that
come into your mind, every one of them. Known to Him are all
the things, all those little thoughts that float in and out
of our bodies, out of our minds. Known to Him are all the things
that come into your mind, every one of them. All things are naked
and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do Hebrews 4. See, there is a cleansing, isn't
there? There's a cleansing that has to go deep. There's a cleansing
that has to reach. Now, under Paul says this love
of God is high and it's deep and unfathomable, unsearchable
riches. It's got to purge our consciences
while we're dreaming. It's got to purge our consciences
when we're doing our best deeds. Purge us when we're doing our
worst. See, the blood of bulls and goats,
according to this chapter, did have an effect, didn't they?
It says they had an effect to the purifying of the flesh. That's what religion, and as
far as religion can go, it deals with the outside. But here we
have how much more? How much more? It's a great question,
isn't it? God asks the question, Hebrews
gives the answer. There is no limit to how much
more. We can't fathom the depths of
the cleansing of God in our consciences. How much more shall the blood
of Christ have its spiritual? How much more shall it have its
saving? How much more shall it have its
cleansing effects on us? Purging, it means to cleanse. To sprinkle the conscience is
to cleanse us. The law opposes us and opposes
you and I. And justice agrees and our consciences
so often stand guilty. We haven't got one deed that
we've ever done, one thought that we have ever thought that's
acceptable to God outside of the blood of the cleansing of
the Lord Jesus. And we stand before God as those
who have began and we say, yes, I am like that publican at the
temple. I am the sinner. And the wages
of sin is death. But then the blood of the Lord
Jesus says, a substitute has died. A substitute has died. That blood has been shed. Sins
are gone. He's acceptable in heaven, unacceptable
in heaven. A guilty sinner. A guilty sinner, but free. What did the Lord say in Exodus
at the Passover? He said, when I see the blood,
when God the Father sees the blood of His Son, He says to
guilty sinners, you go free. You're accepted in the Beloved. You know what that word accepted
means in Ephesians 1.6? It means more than just accepted,
it means highly favoured. It's the same word that's used
of Mary by the angel. When I see the blood, I will
pass over. May grace and peace be multiplied
to us. Let's finish with those words
in Hebrews 13, 20. Begins with him purging our sins,
it finishes Now the God of peace that brought again from the dead
our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep. What a shepherd
he is, not one missing, not one being neglected in any way, shape
or form. That great shepherd through the
blood of the everlasting covenant make you perfect. A remarkable
statement from God. Through the blood of the everlasting
covenant makes 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. 15. By him, therefore, let us offer
the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit
of our lips giving thanks to his name.