Excellent, thank you for that. Let's go back to 1 John chapter
1. And I want to direct your attention
to just one statement at the end of verse 7. Indeed, the whole
portion of Scripture is worthy to be expounded upon. But I just
want to focus on these words at the end of verse 7, where
John writes, by the power of the Spirit of God, the leadership
of the Spirit, he says, in the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son,
cleanseth us from all sin. My subject this morning is blood
that cleanses. Blood that cleanses. This book,
The Word of God, the Bible, is a bloody book. From Genesis through the book
of Revelation, there is a trail of blood. The blood is first manifested
in Genesis chapter 3, our fallen parents standing guilty before
God, stripped of that righteousness that God gave to Adam in his
creative wonder. They both stood naked before
God. They tried to clothe themselves
with fig leaf aprons, and that's typical of man, trying to hide
his shame. from God by the things that he
does, by his own efforts, by his own works. But that wouldn't
do. And so our Lord, he killed animals,
he skinned them, and he robed Adam and Eve with those skins. And in order to kill those animals
and then skin those animals, He had to shed blood. In Genesis chapter 4, Abel offered
to God a more excellent sacrifice. That's the bloody sacrifice of
the firstling of his flock. And he'd go all the way through
the Old Testament. There's just, like I say, a river
of blood that will go from Genesis through the book of Malachi,
then we get to Matthew, and from Matthew through the book of Revelation
once again, the river of blood continues. And when we get to
the end of the book of Revelation, we again are confronted with
the blood. We find that the saints in heaven
are singing about the blood of the Son of God, they were redeemed. That is, all of the people of
God were redeemed by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. You
see, the Lord said through Moses way back in the book of Leviticus,
for the life of the flesh is in the blood. And he says further, and I have
given it to you upon the altar. to make atonement for your souls. For it is the blood that maketh
an atonement or a reconciliation for the soul. By our sin we were
alienated from God, cut off from God. Our sin caused justice to
lock the gates of paradise. They're barred from anyone entering
in who is defiled by sin. You will not enter into heaven's
glory if you have even one sin on you. And we're a massive sin, right? You would agree with that. We're
a massive sin. And yet the justice of God says,
if you die and you have your sins on you, you will not enter
into the kingdom of God. Nothing filth is going to enter
into that fair and holy city. We are polluted offenders of
God's justice and God's law. And therefore we can have no
fellowship with God. In the context here, we've read,
you read silently as our brother read to us out loud, of the fellowship
that people have with God. The word fellowship, it certainly
does imply nearness, closeness, communion, conversation. All of these things are kind
of by implication included in the word fellowship. There's
worship of God on our part, communion with God, fellowship
with God, conversation with God. That's all part of the fellowship.
And we can have fellowship with God as we walk in the light. You see, fellowship is walking
with God. You go all the way back to the
book of Genesis again, and you'll remember reading about a man
by the name of Enoch. And the Scripture says, Enoch
walked with God. What does that mean? He had fellowship
with God. He had communion with God. He
had conversation with God. He spent time in the presence
of God. And God spent time with Enoch.
Enoch walked with God and then he was not, for God took him. God just took him on to glory.
Not because he was better than any other man who lived, but
because he was one who was saved by the grace of God, a vessel
of mercy. And Enoch, therefore, it's obvious
he believed in salvation by the shedding of the blood of an animal,
of a sacrifice. And all through the Old Testament,
multitudes of animals were offered, no doubt thousands upon thousands
of them offered on Jewish altars, on the brazen altar. And all
of them were killed with the blood having been shed and caught
in a basin. Because the law says, without
the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins. I know
there are a lot of people who look at the law of God in the
Old Testament and the gospel of God in the New Testament,
and they conclude this, well, you know, in the Old Testament,
God was much harsher. And He required death for sin. Let me tell you something. The
gospel, though it is a message of good news, it's just as harsh
in this sense. It also demands death for sin. There isn't any difference there.
Don't think that the God of the New Testament is softer, a more
gentler God, than the God of the Old Testament. As the law
demanded death for sin, so the gospel demands death for sin,
but it was the death of a suitable victim appointed by and approved
by God Himself. That is, the victim was the Lord
Jesus Christ. But it's always been death. Death is the punishment for sin. We find in the book of Hebrews
that having therefore brethren to enter into the holiest by
the blood of Jesus. I tell you that the scriptures
just stress over and over again the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. In Acts chapter 20, it's the
blood of the incarnate God. God purchased the church with
his own blood. In the book of Romans chapter
5, we're justified, verse 9, Romans 5, 9, we're justified
by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And John tells us here
in 1 John 1.7 that the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth
us from all sin. Every blessing of the covenant
of grace that comes to us, comes to us right through the blood
of our Lord Jesus Christ. In this house of worship, as
has been done ever since this church was founded, There has
been the insistence upon the preaching of the sacrifice of
our Lord Jesus Christ by which He sent forth the gospel or the
glory, the salvation of God by the shedding of His blood to
His death. And our sins are paid for, washed
away in that bloody death. And the Spirit of God takes the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ and he purges our consciences. So that we don't feel guilty
anymore as we see the blood of Christ being shed to pay for
our sins. And the blood in the book of
Revelation is the key to triumph over our enemies. in Revelation
chapter 12 and verse 11. And they overcame the serpent,
the old serpent, the devil, Satan. They overcame him by the blood
of the Lamb. Say, Jim, here I'm getting ready
to begin a new year. How shall I live this new year? How shall I walk every day? Walk
looking to the sacrifice, the bloody death of our Lord Jesus
Christ. And if you keep Him on your mind,
keep His sacrifice on your heart, you won't go far wrong. And someday the saints of God
will stand before God in the beauties of the Savior, having
been washed in His blood and robed in His righteousness. I
tell you, nothing is more practical, nothing is more useful, nothing
is more delightful to the people of God than this very precious,
effectual, cleansing, redeeming, blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. We say, what can wash away my
sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus. Do you ever get tired of hearing
of the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ? Do you ever get tired
of singing these songs? There's a fountain filled with
blood. We sing of the blood, we preach
of the blood, and when we get to glory, we'll still be singing
of the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, let me raise four
questions, and I'll give you the answers to them in this message,
the cleansing blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. That's our theme.
Number one, why is the blood necessary? Look at that very last word of
verse seven. Just a little bitty word, it's
sin. I tell you, as you look at that
word, that's a painful word staring back at you. That's your problem,
right there. They say, well, it's my environment.
A lot of people want to blame everything on their environment
they grew up in. It's not your environment. It's
not the people you hang around with. It's your sin. And that's what
you are. And that's what I am. This is
our problem. Don't try to blame it on somebody
else. This is our difficulty is sin. Our sin. Your sin. My sin. This is the problem. And we will
only appreciate the necessity of the blood of our Lord Jesus
Christ to cleanse us continually from all of our sins if we have
an awareness of and a knowledge of two things. Two things. And I'll tell you, you'll get
interested in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ when the Spirit
of God teaches you something about these two tremendous truths. Number one, the character of
God. He is absolutely holy. Look back
at verse 5. This then is the message which
we have heard of Him and declare unto you that God is light, and
in Him is no darkness at all. And to rephrase that and make
it applicable to us, man is darkness. And in us is no light at all. You see the contrast there? God is light, God is holy. We're in the dark, we're unholy. How can the two ever come together? That's the issue. Consider the character of God.
Holiness, it's the most sparkling jewel in the crown of our sovereign
God, His holiness. In fact, it's more than an attribute. You know what the attributes
of God are? The characteristics of God. But
it's more than an attribute. It's His nature. Holiness sets
forth His very being. His angels are holy. This is
a holy Bible. His Spirit is the Holy Spirit. His people are made holy recipients
of His grace. He is light and in Him is no
darkness whatsoever. God cannot be contaminated with
darkness or with evil. The holiness of God is His magnificence. It's His majesty. It's His name. Holy and reverent is His name. Don't call me reverent. Don't
call any man on this earth reverend. Holy and reverend is our God's
name. The arm of the Lord, you know
what that sets forth? That sets forth His power. The
eyes of the Lord, that sets forth His knowledge, His omniscience,
that He knows all things. We read of the bowels of the
Lord. What does that indicate? His
mercies and His compassion. When it talks about the duration
of God, that's His eternality. Well then, what is His holiness? What's that? That's the beauty
of the Lord. That's what holiness is. The
beauty of the Lord. Now consider our character. We're set forth as being in darkness,
walking in darkness. The Bible speaks of the sinfulness
of sin, the ruin of our souls, the filth of our souls. Sin is
our darkness. Darkness can't dwell with light. And God is light. Sin is the
pollution of our hearts. Sin is the corruption within
us. You don't take corruption in.
The things that you do that are wrong, the words that you speak
that are improper, the thoughts that you have that you ought
not have, the motives that you have that are not for the glory
of God, all of that is because of sin and sin is within you. Sin is what you are. That's what
I am. You see, while God is light and
in Him is no darkness at all, we're darkness and in us is no
light at all. So then how can God, who is holy
and righteous and pure and majestic and magnificent, how can God
have anything to do with us because we're darkness? How can there
be any fellowship? How can there be any communion? How can there be any conversation? And the answer is given. And
here's the necessity of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because
that's how we have fellowship with God. You see, through sin we lost
the image of God. We lost God's presence. We lost
God's fellowship. Sin has brought in wrath, brought
in God's disfavor. Sin has gained God's curse. God's justice is incensed against
sin. It cries out against us. Here's
what sin has done. It has shut, as a result of our
sin, the gates of heaven are shut tight, and the jaws of hell
are yawning open to receive us. That's what sin has done to us. That's why the blood's necessary,
to bring us together with God. Second question, well, what is
meant by the blood? Well, by the blood of our Lord
Jesus Christ is meant His sufferings and His brutal death, and not
only the physical agonies of His body, but the soul suffering
that He experienced. I know our Lord's life was filled
with tragedies, but this is the final one, the
death blow. His blood was the ransom for
our souls, the price of our redemption. Learn this word, the expiation
of our sin. You know what the word expiation
means? Look it up in the dictionary sometime. Expiate really means
to remove something. That's what expiate means. It's
to remove something. And then the Bible, the expiation
of sins is to remove sin so that it never makes an appearance
ever again. That's expiation. And that's
the reason Christ died. That's what's meant by the blood.
Therein is the expiation of sin. It's the complete removal of
sin. Something happened when Jesus
died. What happened? Expiation. He removed sin. You see, all
the sins of all of His people were laid on the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if they were laid on Him,
if my sins and your sins and your sins and your sins, I'd
go all the way around the room, and if I knew all of the elect
in the world, I'd go call on, refer to everybody. All of our
sins were put on Christ Jesus. Do you know what that means?
We don't have many more. They can't be in two places at
one time. Make sense? They were put on Him. And then
he died, suffering the vengeance of God. This is what is meant
by his bloody death, his sacrifice, his agonies in his soul and in
his body, by which he endured the wrath of God and so washed
our sins away. And when he washed them away,
He was buried and when he came out of the tomb, our sins had
been buried in that tomb never to be raised again. Does Christ
bear our sins? No. Do we bear our sins? No. Where are our sins? In the land of forgetfulness.
And the Lord says, your sins and iniquities will I remember
no more. That's what's meant by the blood. You see, when you think of blood, your mind ought to go back to
a subject we're gonna be studying Wednesday night in our Wednesday
night Bible study in the book of Exodus, the Passover lamb.
Lord said, take a lamb without spot, without blemish, and you
kill that lamb. You shed its blood. That wasn't
for the weak or the schemish. If you're of a tender nature,
you can't stand the sight of blood, that wasn't for you. Because
as a bloody, throughout the land of Goshen, as a bloody place,
wasn't it? Can you imagine all those lambs?
And I'll tell you when the dad of the house, when he took a
knife and he stabbed that lamb and slit its throat, and those
lambs are bleating in agony, probably the kid said, I can't
stand the thought of that, dad. That blood was necessary. for
the firstborn of that household to be saved, right? Because without the shedding
of blood, there is no remission of sin. And that's why Christ
died. This is what is meant by His
blood. The blood impresses us with the magnificent, holy character
of God. Almost all things are by the
law purged with blood. And all of our sins were purged
with blood by the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. See, the justice
of God demanded that the penalty for sin be a horrible, excruciating,
agonizing, almost unbearable, painful death. That's the death
of the cross. How in the world could Christ,
the Son of God, bear the fullness of the vengeance and wrath of
God? Because He's God. Because He's
God. Which brings me to my third question.
Whose blood cleanseth us? We can't have any fellowship
with God, no communion with God, no communication with God, apart
from the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ." Whose blood? Well, he's identified here in
the blood of Jesus. What does that mean? Savior? Jehovah who saves? The blood
of Jesus, then he says, Christ. He's the anointed one. He's the
anointed prophet, he's the anointed priest, he's the anointed king. And the blood of Jesus Christ. He's prophet, priest, and king.
He's the anointed one of God. Who is this? He's God's Son. This uniquely qualifies Him to
do the job of cleansing us of our sins because He is God Himself. The blood He shed was human blood,
but it is also divine blood. And by His death, He put our
sins away. He's the Christ. He's the Messiah,
the anointing of God, and He's God's Son. Therefore, his bloody death was
acceptable to the lawgiver. To the lawgiver. No wonder there's power in this
blood to satisfy justice and put away our sins because of
whose blood it was. And number four, what does the
blood do? Well, it cleanseth. If you have
a new King James, version, some of you may use a new King James
version, it will say cleanses. But I do like that ETH suffix,
that ending, ETH, because it presents the idea of a purging
or a cleansing that never ends. That's the meaning of the ETH.
As there is a continual pollution of sin always flowing out of
us, the blood of Jesus Christ is there to always cleanse it
away. It's continual, it's perpetual
cleansing. You'll notice that John doesn't
say, the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all
sin if we believe. Because it doesn't add faith
to it. You see, the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ stands
alone. It's not your faith. It's not
His blood in your faith. It's not His blood in your repentance. It's not His blood in your baptism. It's not His blood in your works.
It's His blood alone that cleanseth us, that goes on cleansing us,
purging us of our sins. In Hebrews chapter 1, the writer
of the book of Hebrews begins by telling us of the Lord Jesus
Christ, that One who is equal with God. who by the shedding
of His blood purged us of our sins. And it's a continual purging. And therefore, He sat down at
the right hand of God on the high. His blood goes on cleansing. This is the effect of it. Are
you still a sinner? Yes, you are. Do you still sin? Yes, you do. Not to worry though,
and though we hate our sin, don't worry. That blood that our Lord
Jesus Christ shed 2,000 years ago, that satisfied divine justice
will never lose its power. And we sing that song, the blood
will never lose its power till all the ransomed church of God
be saved to do what? To sin no more. Be saved to sin
no more. It'll never lose its power. The
blood that Jesus shed for me is my Redeemer upon the tree. The blood that sets the guilty
free will never lose its power. We sing there's power in the
blood. And it will always be powerful.
And that blood is so powerful, it takes us to glory. And that blood has opened up
the way for us to have fellowship with God. And the Spirit of God
comes to us and convinces us of the holy character of God
and our own sinfulness, that we can't come to God as we are
and God can't come to us as we are. And the Word of God and
the Gospel introduces us to a glorious person, the Son of God, Jesus
Christ, God's Son, His blood cleanseth us from all sins, and
it keeps on cleansing. I say to you what John says in
the next, in the first and second verses of the second chapter
of this epistle, my little children, sin not. Don't sin. I don't want
to sin. Do you want to sin? I don't want
to sin. But we do. But guess what? That blood goes
on cleansing. Your sins do not interrupt anything
between you and God. The sin's gone. Who did it? Christ did it. How'd he do it?
By his cleansing blood. And that, my friend, is the gospel. The gospel. And we're going to
partake of the Lord's Supper. This is for the children of God,
for those who believe the gospel. And the men will serve you the
bread, and then they'll serve you the wine. That wine pictures
the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ that goes on cleansing us from
all sin. If you're a believer, this is
for you. Okay, men, serve the bread first, and then I'll pray
and we'll partake.