In Exodus chapter 12, beginning
with verse 12, the Lord Jesus Christ says, on that same night,
I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn,
both men and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods
of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will
be assigned for you on the houses where you are. And when I see
the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch
you when I strike Egypt. When I was seven years old, we
moved from Springfield, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. to Huntington,
West Virginia, where I spent the rest of my childhood. We
joined a church, Highland Baptist Church, and actually within a
couple of months of our moving there, I made a profession of
faith at seven years old and was baptized in that church on
November 4th, 1962. My mother became a Sunday school
teacher. It was her delight to work with
children and her delight to make known the gospel of the Lord
Jesus Christ. So she began teaching the children.
And my mother understood the gospel better than most people
did, evidently, certainly most people in that church, because
she very plainly told us children about the crucifixion of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And while not being needlessly
gory about it, we were told of the physical sufferings of the
Lord, the crown of thorns, the brutal beating, the nails, the
spear, all which brought forth blood from the Lord Jesus Christ. And they told my mother, you
can't tell children things like that. Children are not prepared
to handle that kind of information. And my mother, ever the practical
theologian that she was, not particularly interested in the
abstract theology that attracts so many, she simply said, without
the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. How shall
they call upon the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation if they
have no concept of how it is that that salvation was obtained?
And we left that church because my mother was not going to be
in a church wherein the blood of Christ was not a welcome thing
even to children. And we went to a church and throughout
my childhood, I was spiritually speaking, bathed in the blood
of the Lord Jesus Christ. I was constantly made aware of
it, for which I give thanks. I'm glad that they told me all
about it. They told me not only about the
physical reality of the sufferings of our Lord and the physical
blood that He shed, but what these things meant. Because you
know, our Lord, I mean, His blood as a physical reality, it could
have splashed all over you and it would have done nothing for
you. I am sure that some of the Roman soldiers got some of His
blood on them, but that didn't save them. When we speak of the
blood of Christ, we're not speaking so much of the physical reality
of it as what it signifies as a testimony of the judgment of
God satisfied. It is written that the life is
in the blood. It is also written that the wages
of sin is death. Therefore, the shedding of blood
is the token of death and thereby the token that the payment of
sin has been made. That's the connection of the
blood of Christ with the salvation of God's people. Now, from early
in Genesis to late in the book of Revelation, there is an unceasing
testimony of blood. Christianity is a bloody religion. I think it's very appropriate,
the Lord's table just before this message, a testimony of
the blood. The Lord Jesus Christ gave only
two ordinances to the church. to celebrate, baptism and the
Lord's table. And both of them point us to
the death, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the first time
there was a promise made of a savior, which is in Genesis chapter three,
it was accompanying by the shedding of blood. For God did something
that had never happened in creation up to that point. And I will
emphasize this, it was God that did it. Adam and Eve were not
called upon to slay animals and make themselves clothes. God
slew animals. He killed animals. And when he
did so, of course, he skinned them. Their blood was everywhere.
Can you imagine what a horror that looked like to the other
animals there in the Garden of Eden? They'd never seen such
a thing. So far as we can tell at that
point, there had been no death of anything which had self-consciousness. And suddenly God, the creator,
the voice of the Lord God who walked in the garden, which is
our Lord Jesus Christ. He took some means by which to
actually brutally kill some of the animals he had created and
skin them and make out of those skins clothes to cover the nakedness
of Adam and Eve. The first testimony of the gospel
is covered in blood. You don't have to go very far.
in the account of scriptures, and you get to Noah and he's
told to bring in the animals two by two. And most people stop
there. And they sing songs about the
animals going in two by two. But the Lord said, enough of
the clean animals, bring in seven. Why? Because we're gonna need
two of them to propagate the world afterward. We're gonna
need the rest for sacrifice. And when Noah got out of that
ark into a new world, A new world in which there were only eight
people and two of most animals. There were seven of some animals.
And the first thing that Noah did was build an altar and kill
some of those animals and shed their blood in the new world. And when God spoke to his national
people from Mount Sinai, and set up for them the pattern of
worship they were to follow. Every vessel, every aspect of
that tabernacle, every little part that was going to be used
in the worship of God was sanctified by blood, and that included the
priest himself. Blood everywhere. And as they
began to follow that form of worship, If there was nothing
else characteristic of that worship, it was the shedding of blood.
We know that. Because everyone brought their
lambs or their bullocks or their pigeons, whatever it was that
was required for any particular sacrifice. And these things were
not offered simply as food, though the priests did live off portions
of these sacrifices, but that's not why they were brought there.
They were brought there to be brutally slaughtered, their blood
poured out upon the altar in order to make a covering and
atonement for sin. Blood everywhere. When Christ was first identified
to the world by the forerunner, John the Baptist, how was he
identified? Behold, the lamb of God that
takes away the sin of the world. And friend, it was not merely
a sweet, innocent lamb which would bear sin away by walking
it away. This was in reference to a statement
that Abraham had made a couple of thousand years before as he
and his son walked to the top of the mountain. And his son,
understanding the way you approach the Lord is through a bloody
sacrifice. And he says to his father, I've
got the wood. You've got the fire. Probably
a tinderbox full of coals or some way to get a fire started.
Probably had a knife, though I don't think Isaac mentioned
it. But Isaac did notice something missing. Where is the lamb for
the burnt offering? Now, Abraham did not say to Isaac,
well, it's you, son. Abraham understood something
about God. And he said, my son, God will
provide for himself a lamb for the offering. And Jesus Christ
is that lamb. Now I know on that day on Mount
Moriah, God provided a ram caught in the thicket. And it certainly
was a picture of the salvation of sinners for Isaac was substituted
for by that ram. But that was only a symbol. He
was pointing to Christ, the Lamb of God, the Lamb provided by
God. And we read there from the book
of Revelation, and it speaks of the line of the
tribe of Judah, who was worthy to take the scroll from the hand
of him who sits upon the throne and loose its seven seals. But
when John turned to look at this line of the tribe of Judah, what
did he see? A lamb looking as if it had been
slain. And those gathered around the
throne, which I take to be the entire people of God, from every
kindred, tongue, tribe, and nation, from every age, from every generation,
beginning at least as far back as Abel, who by faith offered
a sacrifice of blood. all the way to the last believer
is all symbolized in that 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands and
thousands and all those gathered around the throne. And here is
their testimony in the presence of God, worthy is the lamb that
was slain. Worthy art thou for you have
redeemed us by your blood. And we find further in the book
of Revelation, as the saints are persecuted and troubled,
that he who is called the accuser of the brethren, the devil himself. And you may think that the devil
is always trying to drag us into sin. What the devil's trying
to drag us into is guilt. And he, among the people of God,
he will invade their conscience. And he will say to them, you're
a sinner. And their conscience is gonna
have to own up to that. I mean, if you think you are
a righteous person, that is, if you think this morning that
you have never done anything which God could look upon with
favor, you are sadly mistaken. And so when the devil invades
our conscience and brings to bear on us the law of God to
testify to our sinfulness, what are we to do? How can we deal
with that? Because we must have to say. You're right, devil. I'm a sinner. I am worthy of everlasting condemnation
because of the things I have done. And yet the testimony is
this of the accuser of the brethren. It says he has been cast out
of heaven, meaning heaven, the place of judgment, he's been
kicked out of court. And here is why, because they,
the people of God overcame him not by their strength, not by
their righteousness, not by their faith. So as such per se, rather
it says they overcame him by the word of the test, their testimony.
And what was the word of their testimony? the gospel of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And they overcame him by the
word of their testimony and by the blood of the Lamb. There
is only one way to overcome the devil in his condemning testimony
to your conscience. And that is to confront him with
the blood. For the blood is a sure and certain rebuke of Satan to
which he cannot stand up. And he is kicked out of heaven.
He's kicked out of court. You know, we talk in our courts
about people having standing. You know, some people bring lawsuits.
And the lawsuit may be thrown out of court simply because the
person who brought it has no standing on that issue. And by
the blood of Jesus Christ, the devil has been rendered without
standing in the presence of God. He cannot bring an accusation
against God's people. The Scriptures say, who is he
that condemns? It's Christ that died. The blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is that which casts away even
Satan. We tremble when we hear, according
to modern popular theology, about the mark of the beast. Everybody's trying to find out
who the beast is and figure out what the mark is and all that.
You know what the scriptures say about the mark of the beast?
It says that those who are found written in the Book of Life of
the Lamb don't have it. We don't have to go looking for
the mark. We look for the blood. Yet for all of this, for all
the testimony of the blood of Jesus Christ in the Scriptures,
its importance from beginning to end and all the places in
between. Yet for all that, much which passes for Christianity
in our day, seems to be intent on eliminating the need for or
the sufficiency of the blood of Christ. They'll preach about anything
else. They'll preach about law keeping. They'll preach about
baptism, about making decisions. There are churches devoted to
developing strong families, churches devoted to changing the world
and making it a better place to live. There are some churches
which are given over to achieving financial success, or to achieving
victory over this sin or that sin, or somehow obtaining happiness. You know something? There's nothing
wrong with any of those things. Not a thing. But it is not what
the gospel is about. The gospel is about the blood
and what the blood means. Let's take a few minutes to learn
about the blood and its meaning and its significance as it's
taught to us through this story of Passover. Now you're probably
all familiar with the story of Passover, but let's go over it
for a minute in our minds. was an event, it was the last
of 10 plagues, which God visited upon Pharaoh and all the gods
of Egypt because Pharaoh dared to say, who is Jehovah, that
I listen to him, that I must listen to him. And God said,
let me show you who I am. And God, by a series of plagues,
did things that Pharaoh could not undo. And by these plagues,
as I understand it, what I've been taught, he was actually
pointing out his power over all the gods that Egypt worshipped.
The Nile was one of the gods that Egypt worshipped. Consequently,
God turned the Nile into blood. They worshipped flies. and frogs,
and all that sort of thing. And God made a mockery of every
one of the gods of Egypt. And when it would get bad enough,
Pharaoh would say, okay, I'll let the people go. Just tell
your God to get rid of these things. And then God would get
rid of them. And then Pharaoh would harden
his heart. And it's even written that the Lord hardened his heart
because God was determined to show his power through Pharaoh
by knocking him down. He set Pharaoh up precisely for
the purpose of knocking him down. But finally came this one plague
which God would visit, the plague on the firstborn. And here's
what God said. He said, I'm coming through Egypt.
Now, it's very important that you understand this small distinction. He did not say, I'm coming after
the Egyptians. He says, I'm coming through Egypt.
Egypt is a picture of the world, the whole world. And God says,
I'm coming through Egypt, and I am going to kill the firstborn
in every household. He did not say, I'm going to
kill the firstborn in every Egyptian household. He said, I'm going
to kill the firstborn in every household. That included every
Jewish household. You see, judgment's coming on
this world. And judgment's been pronounced on all men. And God's
going to come through this world. And one way or another, He's
going to kill everybody. And I don't mean just with the
death of the body, that everyone, some way or another, and you'll
see what I mean by that, everyone, some way or another, is going
to experience everlasting death. But the Lord told something to
the Jewish people that he did not reveal to the Egyptians.
And he says, you are to take a lamb, and you are to cut its
throat. and you are to collect that blood
in a basin, and you are to take some hyssop, and you are to dip
it in that blood, and you are to put some on the cross beam
over your doors and on each side. You know, crucifixion had not
even yet been invented, but God knew what he would do in about
1,500 years. And he had them draw out what
would happen for the redemption of God's spiritual people. The
crown of thorns, blood. Hands, blood. But while you and
I from this perspective can see that particular picture, the
point was the blood. And he said, you put that blood
on the door and then you go inside that house and don't you come
out. And you eat that lamb, roasted with fire, not boiled, fire representing
the wrath of God. And that lamb stood as a substitute
for the firstborn in that house. And the Lord says, when I come
through Egypt, bent on vengeance, when I see the blood, I'll pass
over you. Now that blood, What does that
blood on the door tell us about God? You know, we cannot worship
God aright if we don't know what he's like. And I suppose that's
what counts for much, so much merely sentimental worship. You know what that blood on the
door says? It says that God is not the nice, doting, grandfather-like
God that pervades most worship. He is a God of wrath and vengeance. We've become so accepting in
our country, and I say we, I don't mean us personally, but as a
nation, we have almost declared nothing to be sinful. And we
have a God to go with that. Because we have a God that's
not upset by anything. And that He's doing anything
and everything He can to get some people to follow Him so
He can take them to heaven. That is not the God of the Scriptures.
The God of the Scriptures. Now I want you to listen to this.
If you think God is really nice and sweet and easy to get along
with, why in the world did He condemn our entire race to death,
condemnation, eternal death, because one man ate the wrong
fruit. Now you think of that. One man
ate the wrong fruit and the entire human race was brought into condemnation. What kind of God is that? A holy,
just, righteous God. He says he's angry with the wicked
all the day long. He says, of those that work iniquity,
he says, my soul hates them. You know, I don't wanna diminish
the testimony of the love of God at all. In fact, by preaching
this, I won't, once you hear the whole message. But we've
been telling people God loves them for so long, they don't
realize God hates them in their sin. God will not send anybody
he loves to hell. God has such a fierce, violent
hatred for sin that he has condemned everlasting torment anyone who
comes in his presence with sin upon him. Is that too tough? You say, well, I don't like to
think of God that way. That doesn't matter. It doesn't
matter how you want to think of God. We're not going to deal
with God how we want Him to be. We're going to have to deal with
God as He actually is. You might like to think that
2 and 2 equals 5, because that way you can go down to the bank,
give them $2, give them 2 more, and they've got to hand you a
$5 bill back. You might like to think that,
but it does not change the fact that 2 plus 2 equals 4, does
it? And you may say to yourself,
I don't like to think of God as a God of vengeance. It doesn't
matter that you don't like to think about that. The Lord himself
says, vengeance is mine, I will repay. He said to Moses, when Moses
said, show me your glory, among other things that God mentioned,
he says, I will by no means clear the guilt. And if that tells
us nothing else, it tells us this, if we come before Him guilty,
God will not clear us. He will visit us with a proper
divine response for sin. People want to be at peace about
eternity. Who wouldn't? I want to. Within
the heart of every man is the understanding that it's appointed
unto man once to die and after that the judgment. They may do
all they can to claim that they don't believe in God at all,
or they claim to believe that God is not a God of vengeance
and judgment, but everyone knows deep within his heart that he
will not live forever, he will die, and when he dies, he goes
to face God. And that's why people are scared
to death of death. People say, I fear death. It's
not death they fear. It's facing God they fear. And
well, they should. Well, we should. Let's quit talking
about they and start talking about us, right? I don't want
to preach a message about people that aren't here. The point of the man wants to
die. And after that, face God. The question is, not how can
I avoid death? That's not going to happen. The
question is, how can I face God and not die? That's the issue. The blood tells us that God is
unwaveringly just, absolutely strict. He will not bend. But the blood also testifies
to us that God is gracious beyond imagining. I claim to be a preacher
of grace, but I'm quite sure that I do not understand even
one ten millionth of what the grace of God actually is. But let me describe it in this
way. God is so just that he demands
blood in response to sin. But he is so gracious that he
has provided the blood he demands. and has accepted the blood he
demands. And the only thing he's looking
for is the blood that he has demanded and provided. That's
why it is written, when I come through Egypt, when and where
I see the blood, I'll pass over. God will provide himself a land
In this picture of Passover night, it is important that we notice
that the person who is saved by the blood is not the person
who applied the blood. I remember hearing the story
of Passover. People say, now you've got to
apply the blood to the door of your heart. Nothing doing. First
of all, your heart is not the house in which you're hiding.
Secondly, you're on the inside. You can't apply anything to the
outside. But also looking at the Jewish economy and the way
they did things, fathers stood as the representatives of their
families before God, a priest. They were the ones who offered
sacrifices. Now, who was in danger on that
night? The firstborn son. That's the one that's in danger.
The daughters weren't in danger, and second, third, fourth, and
whatever son. There was no danger on them. There was no danger
to the parents except whatever sorrow they may experience at
the loss of the firstborn. The one whose life was at stake
was the firstborn, but he's not the one that put the blood on
the door. The father did. The scriptures say to us quite
plainly, of God are you in Christ Jesus. You can't put yourself
in Christ. And by the way, that's what the
house represents. It's Christ. The blood on the door is Christ
and Him crucified. And it is by our connection to
the Father that we're in there. And it's by the Father's will
and the Father's work that that blood is applied to the door. And the same Father who put it
there. knows where it is, sees where it is, and passes over
everyone on whom that blood is found. And thirdly, this blood shows
what regard God has for the blood of His Son. He says, when I see
that blood, I will pass over you. He did not say as to those
Jews who already had some things they were supposed to be doing.
Most of them weren't, but they were supposed to be doing. He
did not say to them, when I come through Egypt, when I see your
faith, I will pass over you. He didn't say that. He didn't
say, when I see your circumcision. He did not say, when I see your
connection to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He did not say, when
I see your faithfulness to a covenant. He didn't say anything like that.
He didn't say anything about seeing anything about them at
all. The only thing God was going
to look for when he came through Egypt was blood and where there
was blood, no more wrath would come because the blood was a
token that blood had already, or excuse me, judgment had already
passed this way. And God will not judge twice
in the same place. He is a just God. He will judge
all sin, but he'll never judge the same sin twice. The fellow
who wrote Rock of Ages cleft for me also wrote a hymn in which
it said, justice will not payment twice demand, first at my bleeding
surety's hand and then again at mine. I remember sitting in church
and like we often do, or like I often do, my mind wanders so
badly. Maybe that's why God made me
a preacher. It keeps me on focus while I'm preaching. Because
otherwise I'm wandering around, you know, looking at the golf
pretty good. But I was sitting there and I believe it was a
spring morning. This is back when I was living in Ashland,
Kentucky, and my mind was wandering. And then the preacher made this
statement and it hit me like a bolt of lightning. If Christ
paid my debt, I don't owe it. Now most often the death of Jesus
Christ is presented as though by his death, he earned value,
which value we can take and present to the Lord in payment of our
sin. But that's not how the Bible expresses it. By his life, Christ
earned the value necessary to pay for our sins. By his death,
he paid for them. And everyone represented by Jesus
Christ on the cross, everyone for whom His blood was shed,
they have no sin before God, because their sin went before
God as put upon the Son. And the Son bled for them and
paid for them, and they are gone. Thus the Lord could say on the
night that He was betrayed, this cup is the new covenant in My
blood. The old covenant had blood, but
it had blood that couldn't take away sin. It had blood that all it did
was make a mess of things that you had to clean up afterwards.
Why? It was just symbolic. The blood of all those bulls
and goats could no more take away sin than the water of baptism
can wash it away. Symbols don't accomplish anything. The blood of Christ accomplished
everything. When the Lord God sees the blood,
he passes over and he's not looking for anything else. What's the
blood say about us? Very simply this, what awful
sinners we are, that nothing less than the slaughter of God's
own son was necessary to save us. Once in a while on Facebook,
I see someone put a meme up there, you know, one of those little
posters, and said, I'm proud to be a Christian. If you are
too, share this. And I keep wanting to respond,
and maybe I have at some time, but anyway, I'd say, being a
Christian's nothing to be proud of. You say, why not? Because
being a Christian is an admission that you are so evil that the
only way God could have anything to do with you was to slaughter
his son in your place. Now, how much pride can there
be in that? Brethren, I am not ashamed of the gospel. I'm not
ashamed of my Savior. I'm horribly ashamed of me. When
I look at the cross, I don't say to myself, what a good man
I am that I trust the man on the cross. I say, oh, what a wretched man
that I am. that it took that to save me. If you go to the doctor and you
say, I got a headache, and he looks you over, he said, take
some aspirin. You'll be all right. You figure
there's nothing much going on. But if he said, we better take
an x-ray, and they take an x-ray. And he says, we're going to have
to open up your head. There's something in there we've
got to cut out. And even when we're done with that, we've got to
hit you with some radiation. Then we've got to pump you full
of some chemicals that are poisonous. They'll very nearly kill you.
What would you say then? I've got a serious problem. Serious medicine reveals a serious
disease. And when we look at the cross
of the Lord Jesus Christ and see that that's what it took
to save us, it convinces us in a way that even the law cannot
convince us, that we are sinners. Men read the law and they can
say, yes, I'm a transgressor. But you know what men, people
normally do when they read the law and find out they're a transgressor?
They say, I'll do better next time. You look at the cross and
see what it costs to save a sinner like you, and you realize you
can't do any better. You can't. What does the blood say about
the Lord Jesus Christ, the blood on the door? What a man he was and is, that
his blood can satisfy the justice of God. Do you know why hell
goes on forever? Because the death of a sinful
man never satisfies God. They're never done dying. They
die forever, and they're never finished. The Lord Jesus Christ poured
out his soul unto death, and then he said, it is finished.
The Lord Jesus is the only one who's ever actually completely
died. That word finished means to perfect,
to bring to its end. Jesus Christ bore within himself
everything God would do to a sinner apart from Christ. Every judgment rightly laid to
my charge was visited on Christ. And if you're in Christ, the
same thing's true of you. God didn't hold back. Now all
we could see with the eyes was the crucifixion. That's brutal
enough. What you and I could not see and what nobody else
there saw except one thief to the right of him. What nobody
else there could understand that God was pouring out His wrath
upon His Son there, right there on Mount Calvary. And Jesus Christ
was bearing things in His soul that you and I know nothing about.
He said, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And you
know what? We go through our lives most
of our lives, not even caring one way or another whether we're
with God. For a lot of us, if God were
to remove himself from our presence, we wouldn't even notice. Thank
God he never does. But we have so little connection
to him, such a weak understanding of him, so little true communion
with him. If he just stepped out of the
picture, we wouldn't notice. Not so with the Lord Jesus Christ.
God forsook him not only in withdrawing his presence from him, but withdrawing
every bit of fatherly goodness which might come towards the
Lord Jesus Christ. You'll notice in all the utterances
of our Lord on the cross, it was father this, father that,
but not now. My God, why have you forsaken
me? He who is the only begotten son
of God was stripped of his sonship and had to face the judge of
all the earth as one who is simply a criminal in his kingdom. And
there was no loving eye of a father looking on him, but the severest
eye of a judge. who poured out everlasting wrath
upon the Lord Jesus Christ and all how great Christ was that
within a period of three hours, he could absorb the fullness
of divine wrath and bear it. And he could say, it's done,
it's finished. And when our Lord died, He did
not go as something to hell and there to suffer some more. He
bowed his head, gave up the ghost and entered his rest. Why? He was done. He's the only man
ever to be done with anything. We wash the dishes and we say
we're done. No, you're not. More dirty dishes are coming.
We come to the end of our workday and we say, we're done. No, you're
not. Because tomorrow another workday is coming. Jesus Christ
came with a work to do. He got it done. And there will
never dawn a day when the Lord Jesus Christ must go to his labors
again. They are done. They are perfected.
Death has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Some observations. about what
the Lord said. He said, the blood will be a
token for you upon the doors, and when I see the blood, I'll
pass over you. Our safety does not come from
our ability to see the blood. It comes from God seeing the
blood. Jesus Christ did not offer himself to us. I hear people
say, well, you must receive Christ, you must accept Christ. You can't,
why? He was never offered to you.
Jesus Christ offered himself without spot to God. God's the
one who's in a position to reject or accept Christ. And you know
what? He accepted him. He did. And the testimony of
that acceptance is, three days later, he said, you know, you're
a righteous man. You have no business being in
the tomb. The tombs for sinful men, come out of there. And he
came out. Furthermore, he said to his son,
sit here at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool
for your feet. And the Lord Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, left
this world and he took his place at the right hand of the father. Our safety comes from God seeing
the blood. Not us. Our comfort comes from
our knowledge that the blood's out there. Imagine yourself there
on Passover night, and you're the firstborn son. And you've
heard. And midnight's coming. Now, maybe at noon the previous
day, you were all full of confidence. Midnight's coming. You know,
it's so easy in youth to be confident. I believe Jesus Christ, and when
I die, everything's gonna be okay. And then you get to be
80 and 85 and 90, and it's getting closer to your midnight. And
you begin to think, will this really hold? It's easy to be bold when you
do not believe that danger's at hand. Imagine that firstborn
is midnight's coming. He says, Dad, I'm scared. I do believe God's coming. I
do believe the curse on the firstborn, and that's me. In all honesty,
Dad, I got to tell you, if God killed me, he'd be right. I can't
argue against him. I can't argue my goodness. I
don't have any. And the father says, son, the
blood's out there. It's the blood that makes atonement
for the soul. Our God, who in justice passed
death upon you, is also just enough to have regard to the
blood. And where he sees the blood,
he's going moving right on somewhere else. Justice has already been
passed on this house. I'm going elsewhere. So our comfort
comes from knowing the blood is there. And then one last point,
as powerful as the blood of Jesus Christ is, it is rendered utterly
useless when we try to add anything to it. The book of Galatians,
one of the most important, I hate to say the most important book
in the Bible, there are no books that aren't important, but I
suppose most applicable to the problems that has faced the church
in all the centuries. Those in Galatia, the heretics
of Galatia, were not saying that Christ was not necessary. They
were saying that Christ was not enough. Now, the particular thing
they had to add was circumcision. I mean, these Jews have been
raised Circumcision is what brought them into a covenant relationship
with God, and they couldn't understand how such a relationship could
happen apart from circumcision. And they could easily understand
then how a Jewish man could simply believe the gospel and be saved,
but those Gentiles, they had to be elevated to a certain position,
become like a Jew through the rite of circumcision, then they
could simply believe. In other words, they believed
that salvation by grace through faith in the blood of Christ
was enough only for those who had been circumcised. And Christ
says in Galatians, well, Christ would be good enough, but it
was Paul who actually wrote it. He said, I say to you, if you be
circumcised, not simply the act of it, but if that's where any
of your confidence is, if you are circumcised, and he's telling
this to the Gentile church believers, he's saying if you fall for this,
this heresy, and in fear that you'll come under judgment without
circumcision, and you go out and get circumcised, he said
the moment you do, Christ is absolutely useless to you. And
why is that? Because God only has two ways
to come before him. through Christ alone or all on
your own. Jesus Christ has never engaged
in a joint effort with anybody. Jesus Christ is a solo act. And if your faith is in something
else, whether it be circumcision, whether it be baptism, whether
it be anything else you might come up with or other churches
come with, and I'll tell you, there's lots of it out there.
And it may seem good, it may seem wise, it may seem proper.
Well, you gotta have good works. Well, good luck with that. We don't have any, but if we
think we do, and we think it's gained us a little bit of extra
favor from God, what it's done is render even the blood of Christ
as useless and worthless. So what is it with you? Like
I said, I don't want to preach to people that aren't here. I
don't want to talk about folks that aren't here. What is it
with you? Is it all Christ? Well, you got a little something
else in there. You know something? God's not looking for anything
but Christ. Don't bother offering anything else but Christ. Because
if he finds anything else but Christ, he won't find Christ. And you will be on your own in
the presence of God. and He has made it plain, He
will under no circumstances clear the guilty. And if you're without
Christ, you are guilty. Thank God for the blood. Thank
God for the symbol of death, which answers the demand of divine
justice for sin.