Turn with me if you would now
to Jeremiah chapter 31. The book of Jeremiah chapter 31. I have an exhortation for us
tonight. I have a real exhortation. I
don't have a story and I don't have and outline really what
I have is a very serious exhortation for all believers everywhere,
but especially for this congregation right here, right now. Three things are laid on my heart
to stress to us. I want to very deeply stress
these three things. Really, they're the same thing.
These are all three the same thing, but I wanna break it down
into three exhortations to emphasize the importance of it. This is
so, so important. Ask the Lord to help you. I've
been asking the Lord to help me to enter into this as I preach
it. Ask the Lord to help you as you
hear it. I'm going to go ahead and tell you that all of these
things pertain to the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. All of
these things. And I don't, I'll say again,
I don't just have an outline on the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ. I have something to stress to
us. I mean, deeply stressed to us.
Give me just a minute to set this up. And then I'll tell you
what it is, all right? We quoted this in the message
this morning. If you look with me here at Jeremiah
31, verse 31 says, behold, the days come, saith
the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel
and with the house of Judah. not according to the covenant
that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by
the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, which my covenant
they break, although I was in husband unto them, saith the
Lord. But this shall be the covenant
that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith
the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write
it in their hearts, and will be their God, and they shall
be my people. And they shall teach no more
every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know
the Lord, for they shall all know me. From the least of them
unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord. For I will forgive
their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." The Lord
said, I'm going to make a new covenant with my people, all
of my people. I'm going to make a new covenant
with them because they broke the first one. They broke the
first covenant. God told Adam and Eve, he said,
you can eat of any tree in this garden. You, you can eat the
fruit from any tree in this garden, but in the day that you eat of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He said, you're
gonna surely die. That's my promise to you. That's
my covenant. What did Adam and Eve do? They
broke it. They broke it. So has every sinner
that has come from them. Every sinner. God gave Moses
the law. He said, you tell them, tell
my people, do this and they'll live. Keep this and you'll live. That's my covenant with you.
What did the people do? They broke it. So have we. All right. So have we. So have
our families. So have our friends. So have
our children. Because of that, this is what
God said in his goodness. This God is so kind. This God
is so merciful. He said, because of that, I'm
going to make a new covenant with my people. I'm going to
make a new one not concerning them. First one, he said, Adam and
Eve, this is on you. God gave the law to Moses. You
tell them. He said, okay, I'm making a new covenant, not concerning
them, not concerning their works, not concerning their obedience,
but concerning myself and concerning my works and concerning my obedience. I'm going to make a covenant
with them that they cannot break. This is what I'm going to do.
I'm going to make a covenant that they cannot break because
it's not dependent on them. It's dependent on me. It's a covenant that involves
a work that I will perform that will cause me after I perform
it, it will cause me to forgive their iniquity and to remember
their sin no more. Wonderful covenant. Our Lord
Jesus Christ put away the old and established the new. Now we could go anywhere in this
book to see the covenant. It's everywhere. For tonight's
message, I want to go to Exodus 12. Turn with me over, if you
would, to Exodus chapter 12. Exodus 12, verse 1 says, And the Lord spake
unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month
shall be unto you the beginning of months. It shall be the first
month of the year to you. Speak ye unto all the congregation
of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall
take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their
fathers, a lamb for an house. And if the household be too little
for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next unto his house
take it according to the number of the souls, Every man according
to his eating shall make your count for the lamb. Your lamb
shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You shall
take it out from the sheep or from the goats and you shall
keep it up until the 14th day of the same month And the whole
assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the
evening. It shall die because of them. The lamb's death shall be at
the hands of, because of my very own people. Verse seven. And they shall take of the blood
and strike it on the two side post and on the upper door post
of the houses wherein they shall eat it. And they shall eat the
flesh in that night, roast with fire and unleavened bread, and
with bitter herbs shall they eat it. Eat not of it raw nor
sodden at all with water, but roast with fire, his head with
his legs and with the pertinence thereof. And you shall let nothing
of it remain until the morning, and that which remaineth of it
until the morning you shall burn with fire. And thus shall you
eat it, with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and
your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it in haste. It
is the Lord's Passover. For I will pass through the land
of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the
land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt,
I will execute judgment, I am the Lord. And the blood shall
be to you for a token upon the houses where you are. And when
I see the blood, I will pass over you. And the plague shall
not be upon you to destroy you when I smite the land of Egypt. Jesus Christ is God's lamb, who
God's vengeance came down on to pay the price of the sin of
his people. God said, this is the new covenant
of forgiveness. This is the covenant I'm gonna
make for you. I'm gonna slay my lamb because of your sin. And I'm gonna put the blood of
my Lamb on the doorposts of your soul. And when I see the blood, when I see His blood, I'll know
that vengeance has already come to you in Him, on Him, through
Him. When I see His blood, you'll
live. When I see His blood, you'll
live. Now, let me give us three strong
exhortations. Our Lord said in verse 11, when
you eat this, eat it with your loins girded, your shoes on your
feet, your staff in your hand, and you eat it as fast as you
can. This is 2022. How long did it
take to go through 2021? Guess how long it's going to
take for 2023 to get here. The end is coming so fast. It's coming so, so fast. Honestly,
it is coming so fast. And. I don't only want us to enter
a new year with this, I want us to. Go through the rest of
life on this earth. Fervently clinging to this three
things, this however you want to look at it. Number one. May
God never let us forget the blood. This hasn't changed. He said, when I see the blood,
I'll pass over you. Everything is in the blood. Everything is in the blood. It's not something that you hear
a lot of. It's almost like an old fashioned
thing. I'm telling you, this is salvation
and life. May God never let us forget the
blood. We're going to need this. We're
going to stand before God. And there's only one thing we
want to be standing in, and that's the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. robed in the righteousness of
Christ, covered in the blood. Let's not ever forget the blood. Lord, please allow us, cause
us to never forget the blood. Let's not let our children grow
up not hearing about the necessity of the blood. Well, that's a gory doctrine.
That's a gory message that death and let's not let our children
grow up. Not hearing and understanding
the absolute necessity of the covenant of the blood covenant
of the blood. Look right here in Exodus 12
at verse 26. And it shall come to pass when
your children shall say unto you, what mean ye by this service,
that you shall say, it is the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover. who passed over the houses of
the children of Israel in Egypt when he smoked the Egyptians
and delivered our houses. The people bowed the heads and
worshiped. He said, do not fail to tell your children about this
new covenant of forgiveness through God's own blood. May God never let us forget the
blood. Now you'll see why I'm saying
that these are all really the same thing. But again, to emphasize
this number two. May we never stop preaching the
blood. May we never stop preaching the
blood. Every now and then, I just get
a small glimpse of how unimportant life on this earth is. This is
nothing. This is nothing. You know, Isaiah
40 says that our God has weighed all, we have this globe and it
has all these islands on it. All the islands are weighed in
the balances of the scale and they're less than the dust left
over. Nothing. Time is nothing. Man is nothing. What is man? May God never let us forget the
blood. May our message never veer from
the blood. We have to have it. We have to
have it. It's not a theory. It's not a
doctrine. We have to have it. This needs
to be a prayer request of ours to God. May he cause this to
be so Lord, please cause this to be so may our message never
veer away from the blood. Never. That's my prayer. That's
my prayer for whoever needs that message. Come one, come all.
If not, there are other things out there to be had. But my prayer
request to God is as long as there is preaching in this place,
may it be the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. May God never let
us forget the blood. May our message never veer from
the blood. And number three, may we never. for the rest of our days cling
to anything for our salvation, but the blood of God's sacrifice. The lamb he provided, this precious
new covenant that he made for us, the Lord Jesus Christ. It
is him and it's him alone. Listen carefully to this. Not because it's coming from
me, but because it's coming from God. It is the blood of Jesus Christ
alone. It's the blood alone. It has
to be His blood alone. It has to be. Some may say, some
people may say, they may get to thinking about this and thinking
about all these different forms of religions and doctrines and,
you know, come on now. Some people may say, does it
really matter? Really? I mean, can't we just. I mean, do you have to be so you
have to draw that line, really? Some may say this, does it really
matter whether men and women cling to the blood of Christ
alone? I want to emphasize the word
alone. I need to emphasize alone. It has to be alone because many people mentioned
the blood. Many people mentioned the blood. Nobody, nobody would
go meet God without the blood. Nobody. Is it really that bad
if man tries to add his own work to it? Is it really that bad? Is it really that harmful? Ask
Adam and Eve. God said, do not lay your hand
to the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You
know what that is? That's the law. The knowledge
of good and evil. That's the law. Do not lay your
hand for life to the law. He said, lay your hand to the
fruit of the law and you'll die. And it only took one piece of
fruit. Look at all this death. Look
at all this condemnation. It came from one piece of fruit. Some will say, yeah, but that
was done in rebellion. They were trying to be like God.
What if, you know, people have good intentions? Is it really
that bad? Honestly, is it really that detrimental if man tries
to add his work to Christ, if he has good intentions in it,
if he's just trying to help him? Ask a man named Uzzah. He was walking next to the Ark
of the Covenant. They were moving the Ark of God's
Covenant. All right? The Ark of God's Covenant. He was being carried by an ox
and the ox stumbled and Uzzah thought the Ark of God's Covenant
was gonna fall. You see the spiritual picture
here? He thought God's Covenant was
gonna fall. So he put his hand on it to steady
it and to help it out. God slew him right there. He
had good intentions. He had very good intentions.
Our hope is built on Christ's blood and righteousness alone,
alone, alone. It has to be alone. without the help of man. Alone
has to be alone. This is why the Lord said in
the giving of His Passover ordinance, we read it just a minute ago,
He said, don't add any leaven to this. Don't add any leaven
to this. Leaven represents the puffed
up self-righteous work of man. Leaven represents anything that
man can say Well, at least I did this. My hope of salvation is secure
because I did this. Whatever you fill in that blank
with is leaven. The apostle Paul told the Corinthians
in 1 Corinthians 5, he said, get rid of your leaven. Get rid
of your leaven. He said, Christ was sacrificed
for us. that old leaven, Christ was sacrificed
for us. And what he was saying was, get
rid of the works of your flesh. Don't look to what you see in
yourself at all. Your religious sincerity, your
religious obedience, your faithfulness to the scripture, your faithfulness
to worship, Let me back up. Don't look to
yourself at all. You know, well, there wasn't a service, I wasn't
in that pew. Well, don't look to yourself at all. Men and women
spend their lives looking to things like that. And then they
leave this world with no hope before God. And the reason is
because they weren't clinging to the blood alone. That's why. It has to be the
blood alone. Don't lay hold of the law, lay
hold of the Lamb. The Lamb alone, the Lord Jesus
Christ alone. It's Him alone. A sinner will
never be able to lay hold of Christ alone. Until God causes
that center to realize that Christ is all he or she has never be
able to, until God reveals that to a person, if we belong to
him, he will reveal to us that Christ is all we have. He will. Christ is all we have. He will. He will, if we belong to Him,
we can count on it. He will strip away from us everything
that we have that we think might be a righteousness before Him.
Everything that we think might be a goodness before Him, where
when He looks at us, He's happy with what He sees. He'll strip
every bit of that away. If we belong to Him, He'll convince
us Christ is all we have. He'll strip everything else away
and he'll convince us Christ is all we have. He's all our
righteousness before God. He's all our goodness before
God and his blood is our only hope. It is all that we have. And when God convinces us of
that, as he calls us by his spirit, as he converts us, quickens us
one by one at His appointed time from whenever that is at that
moment on. May we never forget the blood. May our message never veer from
the blood. And may we never again cling
to anything else for our salvation but the blood of the Lord Jesus
Christ alone. The blood of the covenant that
God made for His people alone. Our Lord said, when you take
this table, do this in remembrance of Me. And it is. That's what it is. It's in remembrance.
This is in remembrance of God's covenant promise that through
the death of his son, our iniquities are forgiven, and our sins will
never be remembered again. Never again. They're all put
away in him. They're all put away in him.
And may the Lord help us, honestly, as we go through, this is gonna
be a big year. And I pray it's a, I pray it's
big years. Let's ask the Lord to keep us
in the blood. Honestly, let's ask, let's ask
the Lord to this do in remembrance of him. Let's realize that what
he did to secure for us, it is secure. And our, our laying hold
of that is coming quickly. And may the Lord settle our hearts,
just confirm us, this is all, this is all, this is what is
everything, what is life? It's the blood of Christ. It's
the message of Christ. It's the clinging to Him for
everything. May the Lord keep us, help us,
cause us to do that. Now, in obedience to Him, let's
remember Him together. Brother.