Good morning. It is glad to be
here. I got a little tour when I got up here, and so much has
changed. It was just almost shocking to
see what had happened. I'm glad no one was hurt. Glad
no one was hurt. And somebody told me that I needed
to say this upon pain of death. Happy Mother's Day. Make sure
I didn't miss that one. If you would, turn in your Bible
to the book of Numbers, chapter 35. Numbers 35. And before we begin reading,
let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, we ask that
today, when your word is preached, that people do not hear the voice
of the preacher, but your voice. Because that is the only voice
that can effectually call and take man's stony heart and replace
it with a heart of flesh, a living heart. Lord, wherever your name
be preached, may it also be glorified that your children may also fellowship
and praise your name and rest in your faithfulness and your
unchanging mercy. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Numbers 35, starting in verse
30. It says, whoever kills a person,
the murderer shall be put to death on the testimony of witnesses,
but one witness is not sufficient testimony against a person for
the death penalty. Moreover, you shall take no ransom
for the life of a murderer who is guilty of death, but he shall
surely be put to death. And you shall take no ransom
for him who has fled to his city of refuge, that he may return
to dwell in the land before the death of the priest. So you shall
not pollute the land where you are. For blood defiles the land,
and no atonement can be made for the land for the blood that
is shed on it, except by the blood of him who shed it. Therefore
do not defile the land which you inhabit in the midst of the
in the midst of which I dwell For I the Lord dwell among the
children of Israel Now there are many things characteristics
that God is He is merciful and he is gracious he is compassionate
faithful mighty He's jealous. He's protective. He is wise. He is holy. He is righteous. And that last one, righteous,
means to be in accordance with divine or moral law. In our case, it'll be divine
law. But it means to be sinless. Sinless. God can't sin. He won't think on it. He won't
act on it. Sin is any act or thought that
goes against God's will and his decree. God can't do that. He
can't go against himself. He created all things in perfection
from the stars down to the sand, from the rocks to living creatures.
They were all untouched by sin in the beginning. And remember,
God is righteous. He can't create anything that
is sinful. Yet the world today has fallen
under judgment for its sins. And this sin causes all kinds
of wickedness. There's little white lies, all
the way to genocide, if that's your scale. And man has yet to
produce a cure. Man has yet to produce a cure. It's not as if we haven't tried. Inner peace has been popular
in my generation, or finding religion. Just find one, doesn't
really matter. Some people try to make up for
their bad deeds by doing good ones, kind of balance the scale
out. Some go into seminary thinking
that their degree or their position of preacher absolves them of
the guilt of the sin. But sin cannot be taken away
in part, in degrees, or even in whole by these acts. Man's condition is far worse
than they know. Sin is in the blood. Sin is in the blood. Now people
keep wondering these days, why are people so bad? Like, what happened to the world?
Where did these evil people come from? What made them act this way?
And they spend massive amounts of time studying human psychology,
or the way people were raised, their environment. They study
the minds of criminals. But I tell you, the answer's
been given to us. It's our DNA, it's our, sorry,
genealogy. Adam and Eve begot sinful children. And just as two owls will always
beget another owl, they'll never beget a lion, so the children
of Adam and Eve will always beget more sinful children. They will never beget a righteous
person. All they can do is transfer,
and we can only transfer our sinful condition to our children. Therefore, we are all sinners.
You know, if mankind were part of a story, they would be the
bad guys. They would be the ones doing
the scheming and the bullying and the killing. God alone would
be the good guy. Yet in our man's telling of history,
there have been a lot of good guys. A lot. And they fight the
bad guys because the good guys, they always win. That's just
the way we tell our stories. And with that way, you'd think
never before in history was such an evil man as a Hitler or something
like that. Never before. Evilest man alive.
He raised the bar on what it means to be evil. He's the worst
that humankind has ever produced. Well, I have some news for you,
if that's what you think. He's not the worst sinner since
humans started to defile the land. We're all equal sinners
in the blood. In God's eyes, Hitler's no worse
than anyone else born of Adam. We're equally unrighteous. Unrighteous. We all defile the
land in which we inhabit. And yes, in our eyes, evil has
degrees. There's a scale from mischief
to murder. But from God's holy throne, we are all sinners. And
in our text, blood from death, blood from murder, defiles the
land. The same way sin defiles the
heart. The heart. When you hear the
word land, that's your heart. God says no atonement can be
made for the land except by the blood of the one guilty of shedding
that blood a man or a woman guilty of murder Is guilty until they
die or are put to death And do you want to know how exacting
God's justice is just look at verse 30 where it says the murderer
is to be put to death That's it There's not unless or if the
murderer is to be put to death. Now, our translators did a very
good job with this verse. But unless you knew Hebrew, there's
something very interesting in here. The word for murderer and
what's translated be put to death, they're the same Hebrew word.
They're the same Hebrew word. It could very well read, The
murderer shall himself be murdered, or the slayer shall be slain,
or the causer of death shall also have his death caused. It
means equal punishment for the sin committed. In other words, only blood can
pay for blood. Only the blood of one who sinned
can make atonement for the blood that fell to the ground because
of that sin. God won't accept anything else. Least of all, money. It says the ransom price is blood. There's not a fine that can be
paid to make it go away. It says, moreover, you shall
take no ransom for the life of a murderer who is guilty of,
what, nonpayment? death, who is guilty of death, but he
shall surely be put to death. As you can see, God only takes
payment in blood. And that won't stop us, it hasn't
stopped us, from trying to find a loophole or alternative methods. Turn to Deuteronomy chapter 21. What if the land is defiled by
a murderer, yet no one saw it happen or knows who did it? Would God curse the land on which
these innocent people toil for sustenance? Well, starting in
verse one of Deuteronomy 21, it says, if anyone is found slain,
lying in the field in the land which the Lord your God is giving
you to possess, and it is not known who killed him. Then your
elders and your judges shall go out and measure the distance
from the slain man to the surrounding cities. And it shall be that
the elders of the city nearest to the slain man will take a
heifer, which has not been worked, and which has not pulled with
a yoke. And the elders of that city shall
bring the heifer down to a valley with flowing water, which is
neither plowed nor sown. And they shall break the heifer's
neck there in the valley. Then the priests and the sons
of Levi shall come near, for the Lord your God has chosen
them to minister to him and to bless in the name of the Lord
by their word. Every controversy and every assault
shall be settled. And all the elders of that city
nearest to the slain man shall wash their hands over the heifer
whose neck was broken in the valley. Then they shall answer
and say, our hands have not shed this blood. nor have our eyes
seen it. Provide atonement, O Lord, for
your people Israel, whom you have redeemed. And do not lay
innocent blood to the charge of your people Israel. And atonement
shall be provided on their behalf for the blood. So you shall put away the guilt
of innocent blood from among you when you do what is right
in the sight of the Lord. If the land is defiled by blood,
no matter if the murderer is known or unknown, the only payment
that God will still accept is blood. either by the one who
committed the murder or by an innocent substitute. Do you recall the conversation
God had with Adam in the garden? He told Adam, of every tree of
the garden you may eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil you shall not eat, for on that day you shall surely
die. And before Eve was tempted by
Satan or while She told him you or we may eat of the fruit of
the trees of the garden But of the fruit of the tree which is
in the midst of the garden God has said you shall not eat it Nor shall you touch it lest you
die Now before Eve ate that fruit I There were four people who
knew, at least four, who knew what would happen if Adam and
Eve ate that fruit. Those four people were Adam,
Eve, God, and Satan. They all knew that fruit would
result in death. But that's not what Satan told
Eve. He told her the opposite. He told her, you will not surely
die Well, she ate that fruit, and then Adam ate that fruit,
and just as God said, they surely died. They died spiritually. They were
cut off from communion with God. Nonetheless, a death had just
occurred, and the land was now defiled by it. The murderers
of Adam and Eve must pay the ransom. Justice now demands blood, and
not just anyone's blood. It demands the blood of the murderers. So who knows what happened? Who
did it? Who did it? Adam and Eve did it. They murdered themselves. Only their blood can take away
the guilt of the land. And if God had followed through
with his righteous judgment apart from mercy and grace, just righteous
judgment, unfortunately, Adam and Eve would have to die. But
at least there would be justice. God could start over with a new
people. Unless, unless like it said in Deuteronomy, a ransom
can be paid by an innocent substitute. One who has not murdered, one
whose blood is not defiled by sin. And thanks be to God that
he graciously chose that option. God provided the substitute himself. He had a son named Jesus. It
was God's only son. The father of Jesus was not Joseph,
was not Mary's husband. It was God himself. And therefore, the sin of Adam
wasn't transferred to him. How do we know Jesus's true lineage? God says of him, you are my son. Today, I have begotten you. I
have begotten you. Adam did not beget Jesus. God
did. And therefore, the sin of Adam's
race was not upon him. Yet at the appointed time, it
says in 2 Corinthians 5, God made him who knew no sin to be
sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Why did Jesus have to die? To be our substitute and to pay
the blood ransom. We defiled the land, our hearts. We did it. We defiled it with
murder. Yet it was God's own son who
took the burden of death upon himself because of his great
love with which he loved us. And God, through the word, declared
this would happen well before it happened. I don't often go to Job unless
I'm going to the first two or three chapters of the last one.
I really love those chapters. But in the book of Job in chapter
33, there is Elihu. And he says to Job and his three
friends, yes, his soul draws near the pit, that is, a person
draws close to death, and his life to the executioners. And what does that mean? It means
justice is about to be satisfied by the by the blood of someone
who has shed blood, or, in other words, one who sinned, justice
is about to be satisfied. It means we are born with one
destiny. We're born with one destiny,
and that is death, because the wages of sin is death. Elihu then reveals this prophecy,
Turn to the book of Job chapter 33 Job chapter 33 Starting in verse 23 If there
is a messenger for him a mediator one among a thousand to show
man his uprightness, then he is gracious to him and says,
deliver him from going down to the pit. I have found a ransom. I have found a ransom. Skipping down to verse 26, he
shall pray to God and he, in these, the he's are capitalized,
And he will delight in him, he shall see his face with joy,
for he restores to a man his righteousness. Then he looks at men and says,
I have sinned and perverted what was right, and it did not profit
me. He will redeem his soul from
going down to the pit, and his life shall see the light. We didn't find the ransom. God
found the ransom. We didn't go to God. He had to
come to us. Didn't ask the Messiah to die
for us the Messiah died for us while we were still sinners Now is that okay with you Or
is that reprehensible Does that great on you That God had to send his only
son to die in the place of his people and And he had to do that because
you, me, could not, could not become righteous by ourselves,
and we would not, would not seek his face. Or, is that your peace? Is that your rest? Let me ask you this instead.
When justice comes, do you want to pay for the blood you spilled? the blood you spilled on God's
land, do you want to pay for it with your own blood, or will
you plead the blood of Jesus Christ, the perfect substitute? I know whose blood I want covering
not just my hands, all of me, when I am brought before the
throne. And don't be worried if you feel like you're too late.
to call on the Savior, who is passing by this moment, as the
song says, your needs to supply. He stopped for a blind beggar.
He stopped for Rahab the harlot. He stopped for Moses. He stopped
for every one of his sheep. And I say stopped as if he was
on his way to do something else. That's what he does. You're not beyond the power of
his saving grace, and he cannot be used up by too much asking. His blood flows as if from a
fountain that will not run dry, so if you hear his voice today,
plead his blood. Plead that blood. There is enough
of his blood to cover not only your hands, but your entire sinful
soul. My sin had left a crimson stain,
he washed it white as snow. And I'll leave you with this
verse from Ed Hale's hymn. It says, I'm not ashamed of all
thy grace when thou came and took my place. Blessed Lord,
how merciful thou was to me. And when this world ceases to
be, This is the next line. Eternal blood, not eternal works,
not anything like that. Eternal blood will speak for
me. Blessed Lord, how merciful thou
was to me. May the Lord bless his word.
Thank you.