When I was seven years old, my
family moved to Huntington, West Virginia, and we began attending
a Baptist church in that city. My mother quickly became involved
in the children's Sunday school department. My mother did not
believe in holding back any of the truth from children, so she
told them plainly of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. She was not
needlessly gory, but she made it clear what a horrific thing
it was. It was not long before she was
told that she must no longer teach like that for fear it would
upset the children. Her response was, as always,
scriptural. Without the shedding of blood,
there is no remission of sins. How can we tell these children
to seek forgiveness if we do not tell them how that forgiveness
is obtained? We quickly changed churches to
one that was not afraid to talk about the blood of Jesus Christ
shed for sinners. So, spiritually speaking, I grew
up bathed in the truth of the blood of Christ. The idea of
a bloodless gospel never entered my mind. In all the theological
education and corrections and changes I have gone through since
my early childhood, this has never changed—redemption by the
blood of Christ Jesus. Blood is one of the most common
themes of the Scriptures. At the very first promise of
the Gospel in Genesis 3, there is bloodshed as God makes coverings
for Adam and Eve to hide their nakedness. The reason that Abel's
offering was accepted and Cain's was not is that Abel, by faith,
offered the sacrifice of blood, while Cain, who was an unbeliever,
offered a bloodless sacrifice. When God told Noah to build an
ark and gather two of every kind of animal, He was instructed
to gather seven of the clean animals. Why was that? Well,
so that there would be sufficient animals for sacrifice once the
flood was passed. And indeed, One of the first
things Noah did when he left the ark was to build an altar
and worship God by means of a bloody sacrifice. When God entered into
covenant with the nation of Israel and established the worship of
the tabernacle, every piece of that tabernacle and the people
who would serve in it were installed in their places by the application
of blood. When Christ was first introduced
to the world by his forerunner, John the Baptist, John called
him the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world. Nearly
2,000 years previous, Abraham and Isaac had climbed the mountain
for worship. Isaac noted that they had wood
and fire, but asked, where is the Lamb for the burnt offering?
Isaac knew that God could not be approached apart from the
shedding of blood. Abraham answered that God would
provide for himself a Lamb for the offering. John the Baptist
was telling his hearers that Jesus Christ is that provided
Lamb and would take away the sin of the world by the shedding
of His own blood. John wrote that the blood of
Christ was able to cleanse us from all sin. Paul said he boasted
in nothing other than the cross of Christ, the symbol of Christ's
shed blood. The book of Revelation tells
us of the mark of the beast, and many tremble at the thought
of it. But neither the beast nor his mark is any danger to
those whose names have been written in the book of life of the Lamb
slain from the foundation of the earth. And in the same book,
when Satan, that accuser of the brethren, is cast out of heaven,
it is because of the blood of the Lamb. With so much scriptural
space devoted to the blood, and such great things accomplished
by the blood, it only makes sense that we take note of it. One
of the more prominent stories about the shedding of blood is
the story of Passover. After about 400 years in Egypt,
the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were in a cruel bondage
in the land of Egypt. God sent Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh
with a demand to let God's people go. Pharaoh's response was, who
is Jehovah that I should let his people go? God's response
was ten plagues by which he humiliated the gods of Egypt. The last of
these plagues was the plague on the firstborn, in which God
declared that He was going to go through Egypt and destroy
the firstborn in every house in Egypt. However, God told the
Jews something He did not tell the Egyptians. Each household
was to take a lamb, kill it, and put its blood on the door
and wait inside their homes. In Exodus 12, verses 12 and 13,
God said, I will pass through the land
of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn of Egypt,
both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute
judgments. I am Jehovah. The blood shall
be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see
the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you
to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt." And that
is just what happened. God passed through Egypt and
killed the firstborn in every house in Egypt, except those
houses on which He saw the blood of the Passover lamb. We know
this Passover blood is an illustration of the blood of Christ, for Paul
wrote, For Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. Now
let's answer several important questions about the blood, the
blood of Passover. What does the blood tell us about
God? Well, it tells us that God is not the doting, grandfather-like
softy of 21st century Christianity. He is a God of wrath and vengeance. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.
I will repay. He is even-handed in his justice,
sparing no one. Note that the blood was to be
found on the doors of the Jewish houses. Why is that? The blood was on their houses
to protect them from the wrath of God. For God, the just, had
pronounced judgment on the land of Egypt, not on the people of
Egypt. It mattered not whether you were
Egyptian or Jewish. God was coming to Egypt to kill
the firstborn in every household in the land. The Jews were the
descendants of faithful Abraham. They were the chosen people,
and he had purposed to enter into covenant with them, and
there were some of them who had been faithful to him all their
lives. Yet, none of that could save them from God's righteous
judgment. The wrath of God answers only
to the blood. Men attempt to find peace about
eternity by believing that God is such a God of love, He would
never really punish people with everlasting torment. The blood
gives a different testimony. If the blood of Christ tells
us nothing else, it tells us that God is unwaveringly just,
for on Calvary, He poured out the fullness of His wrath on
His beloved Son, even though the sins He bore were not of
His own doing. Neither God's love for His Son,
nor the fact that Christ Himself did not sin, nor was any deceit
found in His mouth. None of these things moved God
to withhold the least amount of wrath due unto the sins Christ
bore. The blood of Christ our Passover
testifies to us that God is absolutely just. and he is bent on vengeance
against all sin to its full measure wherever he finds it. The blood
of Passover tells us that God is unimaginably gracious. The
blood of Egypt's dead firstborn says much about the justice and
judgment of God, but it says nothing of the grace of God.
But the blood of Passover tells us that God is just and He is
gracious. There is blood to be sure. but
it is His blood. In justice, God demanded blood. In grace, He provides His own
blood in satisfaction of His demand. Paul told the elders
of Ephesus, take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the
flock over which the Holy Ghost has made you overseers to feed
the church of God, which He has purchased with His own blood. God in heaven can't bleed, but
God in human flesh can. On the one hand, we may say that
the blood of our Passover is the blood of God's Son. However,
seeing that God's Son is simply God in human flesh, the blood
of our Passover is the blood of God. In unwavering justice,
God demanded blood. In unspeakable grace, He provided
His own blood to fulfill that demand. The blood shows what
regard God has for the work of His Son. God says, when I see
the blood, I will pass over you. He did not say, when I see your
faith, or when I see your fear, or when I see how carefully you
applied the blood, or even when I see with what zeal you observe
the Passover, I will pass over you. The only thing God was looking
for when he passed through Egypt that night was blood. Where there
was blood, there was no further punishment. Where there was no
blood, punishment fell in full force. God's acceptance and regard
for the blood further demonstrates His justice, for wherever the
blood is found, no judgment falls. What does the blood say about
us? The blood testifies of our great
sinfulness, for it says that nothing less than the merciless
slaughter of the Lord Jesus Christ could serve to put away our sin.
This is one reason that people hate the gospel of Christ. It
tells them how horrible they are. The seriousness of a disease
may be determined by the strength of the medicine needed to cure
it. What a great disease we must have, that such a powerful medicine
as the blood of Christ is necessary to remedy it. What does the blood
of Passover say about Christ? What manner of man He is, that
His blood could satisfy the demands of a just God against the sin
of a multitude which no man can number. Even if we had no sin,
the most we could do is stand in for one other sinner. But
such was the worth of Christ's person that His singular death
satisfied the wrath of God for millions. You are worthy, they
say in heaven, for you have redeemed us by your blood. None but a
worthy one could have accomplished what He did by the shedding of
His own blood. Now let us make a few observations.
First, our safety does not come from our seeing the blood, but
from God's seeing the blood. It is not, when you see the blood,
I will pass over you. It is, when I see the blood,
I will pass over you. We who believe are on the inside
of the house. The blood is on the outside.
On Passover night, each of the Jewish houses was a representation
of Christ. So the Jews were pictured as
in Christ. and we who are in Christ have
never seen His blood poured out in the presence of God. We have
heard about it, but we have never seen it. Some might say, well,
surely the Jews saw the blood when they applied it to the door,
and we see the blood of Christ when by faith we apply it to
the doors of our hearts. But it is not our hearts to which
the Passover blood is applied, nor are we the ones to apply
it. The ones saved by the Passover blood were not the ones who applied
fathers were the ones who carried out the religious business of
the home, but it was the firstborn son who was saved by that action. In truth, it is not as though
the blood was applied as some magic potion to ward off death.
It symbolized the Lamb slain. It was the father who killed
the Son of God. It was the judge of all the earth
who killed our substitute. God provided the substitute,
killed the substitute, and has honored the blood of the substitute
by justifying everyone for whom that blood was shed. We can imagine
some firstborn in the house as midnight draws near. Father,
I'm afraid. Don't worry, son. The blood is
on the door. Well, Dad, how do you know it's
there? And the father answers, I know
it's there. because I put it there. And so
our Heavenly Father assures us of safety in the day of judgment
by His testimony of His Son, whom He set forth as a sacrifice
to satisfy wrath. However, while our safety comes
from God seeing the blood, our comfort arises from our hearing
about the blood. As the Scriptures say, the blood
shall be a token for you upon the doors. We are in Christ But
it is not just being in Christ that saves us, it is being in
Christ the crucified substitute. Our soul's comfort comes from
constant testimonies of the blood through the preaching of the
gospel. If we are not diligent to hear the gospel, we should
not be surprised to find our confidence waver. Here at Grace
Community Church, we sing this song from time to time. under
the blood of Jesus, safe in the shepherd's fold, under the blood
of Jesus, safe while the ages roll, safe though the worlds
may crumble, safe though the stars grow dim, under the blood
of Jesus, I am secure in Him. May God give each of us His testimony
of the blood of His Son, and may each of us find shelter and
safety and comfort under the blood of Jesus.