I'm assuming I've got this on
all right. If you'll open your Bibles to
Exodus chapter 12. Yes, I live in Iowa. And where
I live in Iowa is as far away as you can get from here and
still be in Iowa. I live up in the northwest corner. But it has been a blessing to
be here. I tell you, I have been so blessed
by the preaching I've heard from the very beginning. And if last
night had been the end of the conference, we would have to
say, this was a great conference. The Lord has blessed us. But
we got two more. And we'll see if the Lord will
continue in his blessing. And we have no reason to think
that he wouldn't. Really. Sometimes we act as though
we wonder whether God would bless us. Well, he sent his son. Why would he withhold anything
else? And I'm wanting to preach the gospel to you. And I think
you're wanting to hear it. Why wouldn't God enable it to
happen? And let me also extend my thanks
to you for inviting me here. I always enjoy coming here. I
always enjoy being among you. And this time was no exception. What is the gospel? When Todd
asked me to preach, he said that was to be our subject. Of course,
my immediate thought was, well, you can go anywhere in the Bible
and do that one, you know, because that's all the Bible's about.
And all the Bible is about that. But what is the gospel? Well,
you can speak of the gospel in historical terms. When the angel
spoke to the shepherds. He said, I bring you good tidings
of great joy. And the word translated good
tidings is the word normally translated gospel. I bring you
the gospel of great joy for unto you is born this day in the city
of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord. And so while Historical
events are not all there is to the gospel. There is no gospel
without the historical events. We read in 1 Corinthians 15 about
some historical events. And so the gospel has an historic
aspect to it. But then there's also what we
might call the theological gospel. And Paul developed that most
clearly. And, uh, we, we think of doctrines. It's the nature of us Gentiles
to like things systematized. And that's why God sent Paul
to us. Cause Paul, though a Jew and
therefore very familiar with all that the old Testament had
to say, he was also, uh, quite Gentile in his education and
in his upbringing. And he understood the Gentile
mind and he spoke in the way that Gentiles think. And so he
gave us, particularly in the book of Romans we see it, this
very finely organized system of theology, which is the gospel.
And Paul is the one who gave us what we might call the legal
or judicial gospel. Now I'm not saying this to the
exclusion of others, it's just Paul was speaking, and at that
time when you said Gentiles, you were essentially saying the
Roman Empire. And that's where Paul went, and Rome was known
for its legal and judicial system, and Paul cast the gospel in those
terms. We might talk about the personal
gospel, and we often say the gospel is not a doctrine, it's
a person. And that's true, we set forth
who Christ is and what he's done. There is the exhortive gospel. I had to make that word up. I
didn't know what else to call this, but it's the gospel in
which we are called upon to believe. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. If you will confess with your
mouth Jesus to be Lord and believe in your heart that God has raised
him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. And then there is,
and we like this term, the sovereign grace gospel. We read in the
book of Romans, how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet
of him who brings good news. There's that word again. In the
Greek, it's the same word normally translated gospel. And if you
go back to the book of Isaiah, chapter 52, verse seven, that's
where that text comes from. And if you read the entire quote
there, it not only talks about people with beautiful feet bringing
good news, it brings good news that publishes salvation that
says to Zion, your God reigns. Brethren, the good news is good
news because it comes from somebody who's in charge. Somebody who
has a right to do what he wants. Chris, right? What he says is, doesn't do us any good to be
saved by somebody who can't take control. We may appreciate their
good intentions, but good intentions don't necessarily accomplish
anything. But no matter how we express
the truth of the gospel, there is a unifying theme in the gospel. no matter how it's expressed,
and you cannot adequately express it without this unifying theme. A concept found in every way
of delivering the gospel, and that concept is very simply this,
blood. Blood. We say this book is a
book of the gospel, and it is from beginning to end, and it
is a book of blood from beginning to end. There is a book written
supposedly as a history of Baptists, and it's not, but they call it
the trail of blood. Well, the real trail of blood
is this book. This book begins with two chapters
that simply set up the scene for the human drama of our history. And the first scene of this human
drama is the fall of man. and the first declaration of
the promise of the gospel. And what happened when God promised
that gospel about the seed of the woman who'd crush the head
of the serpent? God did something that had never
been done to that point. And I don't know how long it
took from the creation of Adam and Eve until they fell. It's
really kind of an insignificant point. But up to then, God did
something that had never happened until that point. He killed an
animal. He shed the blood of animal creatures
and stripped the skin off of them and made clothes for Adam
and Eve. So right at the beginning of
this human drama, we have the shedding of blood. And you get to Noah. And Noah's
told to bring two of every kind of animal. But wait, he's supposed
to bring seven of some kind, the clean kind. And why is that?
Noah gets off that ark and there's just eight people in the world
in that day. And the first thing Noah does is build an altar and
shed blood. The new world is inaugurated
with shed blood. And you get to Abraham, and he's
climbing that mountain. And his son says to him, I see
you've got some fire, a tinderbox full of coal, so we can get a
fire started. And you put this pile of wood on me. I know what
we're going to do. We're going to worship God. But
where's the lamb for a burnt offering? You say, well, they
don't mention the blood there. Well, there's only one way to
get from a living lamb to a burnt offering, and that's to shed
blood. And when the law was given, we cleanse things too much when
we tell the story. I'll tell you, when they inaugurated
that old covenant, blood everywhere. Blood on every part of the temple,
blood on the priests, blood on the altar. I don't know how many
animals were sacrificed. to put that old covenant in place.
And when it was sort of re-inaugurated at the building of the temple,
thousands upon thousands of animals were sacrificed, blood everywhere. And you get over to Romans chapter
12, verse 11, and we're coming near the end of the Bible there,
and it talks about this wicked spirit, this powerful spirit
called the accuser of the brethren. And there are the people of God.
And we know the people of God in themselves, they are weak,
they are unable to do anything. And yet it says that they overcame
this accuser. This one who would dare to come
into the presence of God and charge them in the presence of
God. Condemn them in the presence
of God. And here's the thing, brothers, he's got a lot to work
with, doesn't he? I mean, he can say a lot. He can bring up
a whole lot of things that you have done and a whole lot of
things you would have done if you thought you could have got
away with it. And yet these weak and insignificant
naturally sinful people cast this wicked spirit out of the
court of heaven, not by power, but by the blood of the Lamb.
And I will say this to you right now, and I know how the devil
works because he works with me quite a bit. He will invade your
conscience. You may be washed in the blood
and thankful of it, But we're still sinning, aren't we? And
He comes and He does the same thing to us that He did to our
Savior when He tempts us. He says, you know, if you're
really a son of God, and He said, would you have done that? He
cast doubt upon our sonship. He cast doubt upon our salvation,
and he does so by bringing up our sin. Now, how are we going
to get rid of that? How are we going to cast this
one out of our conscience? Are we going to do it by, okay,
I'll make a vow. I'm not going to do that again.
Well, it'd be nice if you didn't, but that's still not going to
fix anything about what you've already done. And let me tell
you something, you can make your vow if you want, and all you've
done now is doubled your sin because you're going to break
your vow as well as sin. But not all your determinations in
the world are going to be able to make you stop from sinning
or get rid of the sin behind you. There's only one way you'll
cast that fiend out of your conscience, and that's by the blood of the
Lamb. By the blood of the Lamb. We speak of the doctrines of
the gospel, doctrines like atonement, and redemption, and justification,
and sanctification. Powerful doctrines, aren't they?
Lovely doctrines. And yet we read this in Leviticus
17.11, it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. We read
in Colossians 1.14 that we have redemption through his blood. Romans 5.9 says we're justified
by His blood. And Hebrews 13.12 says that Jesus
has sanctified the people by His blood. You catching on to
a theme here? Blood. We speak of the gospel as a covenant. The new covenant. But on the
night that our Lord was betrayed, He took the cup. And he said,
this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Now, let's talk. I want to draw
a fine point here, because sometimes I think it's important that we
do that. He did not say this is a new covenant in my love.
He did not say this is a new covenant in my righteousness
or my grace or my mercy or. It was blood. I know that without
the love of God, there never would have been any blood. And
I know that without the righteousness of Christ, the blood wouldn't
have made any difference. But brethren, the covenant is in
blood. And that's why this present day
sophisticated gospel is no good, because there's no blood in it.
Men don't like the idea of a bloody God. And so they want to take
the blood out of it. When we moved to Huntington,
West Virginia in 1962, I was seven years old and we started
going to a Baptist church toward the east side of town. And my
mother, as She loved children. She loved teaching them. She
got in the Sunday school department. And my mother figured it was
suitable to tell children the whole story. And so she told
them about the crucifixion. She told them about the Lord
Jesus Christ being nailed to a cross, being whipped until
the blood poured out of His back, and the crown of thorns. And
they came up to her and said, you can't tell children things like
that. You'll scare them. You'll traumatize them. And my
mother, She said, how can we tell these children to seek God's
forgiveness if we don't tell them how that forgiveness is
obtained? Now, she didn't talk that way.
That was kind of a preacher way of saying those things, but that's
what she meant by what she said. And we went to a different church
where it was all right to talk about the blood. The blood is of immense power. We read, if we confess our sins,
he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins. And interestingly
enough, people think that confession has great power. It has no power
at all. If you came before the judge
charged with murder and you said to the judge, I confess, I did
it. Do you think that clear you? And even if the judge were to
say, okay, you can go. Well, you still haven't been
cleared. You've been unjustly let go. The next verse says,
the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin. The Lord God said in Isaiah,
though your sins be like scarlet, though they be red like crimson,
I'm going to make them like snow, I'm going to make them like wool.
And I'm assuming he used crimson and scarlet because that signifies
blood guilt, blood stains. And here's the miracle of God.
He washes out blood stains with blood. The blood of Christ has the power
to cleanse you from sin. It does. The lack of blood puts an utter
stop to the whole engine of salvation. For it is written, without the
shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. I mean no insult
to our God in this. In fact, it will be to his glory
if you understand it. But not all the attributes of
God joined together and energized by his infinite power could save
one sinner apart from blood. And that's because God's the
way he is. That's why I say it's not an insult to God. All our fine theology and all
our carefully engineered, as we engineered and organized it
into a beautiful religion, are worthless without blood. A year and a half ago, I bought
myself a car. It's my favorite car of all the
cars I've had. 2014 Buick Regal, red. I'll admit, I drove by the GM
dealer in our town, and I coveted that car for months while it
sat there. And it was to my blessing that my other car finally broke
down enough that I could justify buying a new car, and the Buick
was still sitting there. But I went there, and there was
that car, and I got it. And it is, in my mind, a beautiful
car. It's comfortable. It's got heated
seats. And it's just got all the bells and whistles I like.
And I bought it and it was already two and a half years old or so
when I got it. And I can only imagine how beautiful that car
was when it came off the assembly line. But you know something,
when that Buick came off the assembly line, it was as useless
as the most rusted out derelict in the junkyard until someone
put gas in it. And brethren, the finest system
of theology is utterly useless until someone puts blood in it. There must be blood. Christ is able to save to the
uttermost them that come to God by him, for he ever lives to
make intercession for them. Say, well, there's a gospel without
blood. I beg your pardon. Because it goes on to say that
he's there to make intercession because as a priest, he offered
himself to God as a sacrifice. Without the blood, he could sit
there all he want, but he'd had nothing to intercede with. So we may safely say this, where
there is no blood, there is no gospel. No gospel. Now looking in Exodus
chapter 12, I want to look at one story in the Bible about
the blood. And I want to look at it, and
this is the title, The Testimony of the Blood. I've made a big
deal out of the blood. Well, the blood speaks. The blood
has something to say. It's got something to say to
you and me. And here's a good way. or a good place to find
out what it's got to say. It says, beginning with verse 12, it's the story
of Passover, and I imagine most of you are quite familiar with
it. And it says, 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 Jehovah. 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. Now, the people of God were in
cruel bondage. They had been in Egypt for about
400 years. And while they went there as a favored people, in
time they became the most disfavored people in all the land of Egypt.
And they were in a cruel bondage, which every attempt on their
part to lighten their burden resulted only in heavier burdens. And brethren, if you try to lighten
your burden, that's all you're going to get for it is a heavier
burden. But the Lord had determined to
redeem his people from the house of bondage, and he sent a message
to Pharaoh by the mouth of Moses, let my people go. And Pharaoh
said, who is Jehovah that I should listen to him? And our God Jehovah
said, well, let me show you who I am. And with nine plagues,
he struck every god in Egypt. and made a mockery of all the
gods in Egypt. And time after time, and all
those nine times, Pharaoh said, okay, okay, I'll let y'all go.
Let y'all go, just tell God to lighten up on us. And then God
would remove the plague, and Pharaoh's heart would be hardened,
and he'd say, I'm not gonna let you go after all. And so God
came to Moses, he said, okay, I got one more now. Now it's
not like God's running out of ideas. This was his plan all
along. were to get to all the gods and
humiliate them all and prove what a hard-hearted man Pharaoh
was. And he said, now, for the coup
de grace, he says, I'm going to come through
Egypt, and I'm going to kill the firstborn in every household
in Egypt. I want, again, to make a very
important point, I think, or clarification here. God did not
say, I'm going to kill the firstborn of every Egyptian. If that's all he was going to
do, there would have been no need for the Passover blood,
because the Jews weren't Egyptians. He said, I'm coming through the
land of Egypt. And I am going to kill the firstborn
in every household, in every barn, in every stable. And it
doesn't matter if it's an Egyptian household, or a Jewish household,
or any of the other aliens that may have been living there in
Egypt. Every household in Egypt came
under the judgment of God. And Paul stood in Athens many
years later and showed us the reality that that only pictures.
He says God has appointed a day in which He will judge the world
in righteousness by Jesus Christ. And He didn't say He was going
to come and judge unbelievers. He said He's going to judge the
world. That means He's going to judge you and me. Because
we're part of the world. Judgment has passed upon all.
and judgment will be executed upon all. There is no escaping
this judgment. Period. But while God pronounced
this judgment upon all of Egypt, and by telling Pharaoh about it, through the
mouth of Moses. He told the whole world, represented
by Egypt, about his judgment. But there's something he told
the Jews that he didn't tell anybody else. Because he told
Moses, he said, now you tell the Jews, you get a lamb, and
you kill it. And you pour its blood out in
a basin. And you get you some hyssop,
and you dab that on one side of the door and on the other,
and then they're going to crossbeam. And then you get inside that
house and you just stay there. You just stay there. And when
I come through Egypt, when I pass through Egypt and
I see the blood, I will pass over you. Let's look at two important points
here. In our Lord's words, who was
it that was put in danger by the judgment of God? The firstborn
of every household. Who was it put the blood on the
door? Well, we don't have a word of
scripture on it specifically, just the general understanding
that fathers acted as the priests in their home. And the father would be the one
to kill the lamb. and shed his blood and put it on the door
in behalf of his son. And then they all went inside.
And the point I want to make is this. The one who is saved
by the blood is not the one who shed the blood or applied the
blood. I have heard it said, apply the blood to the door of
your hearts. The house is not a picture of
your heart. The house is a picture of Christ.
And the blood on the outside makes it Christ and Him crucified. And everybody in Christ was safe. You see that picture? Now there
were some people in houses. But they were in houses without
blood. And there are a lot of people in Christianity, but it's
a Christianity without blood. It didn't do any good. God did
not say, when I see you in the house, I will pass over you. Well, they'd have passed over
everybody in Egypt. He didn't say, when I see the sincerity
of your faith, I will pass over you. Well, the Egyptians had
faith. It was a wrong faith, but it
was a faith. None of those things, God wasn't
looking for any of that stuff. He was looking for one thing,
blood. Blood. Here we have the scene. Judgment
pronounced. Lamb slain. Blood on the door.
And people inside the house. And then a wondrous thing happens.
God, the merciless avenger. And I want you to notice the
title I gave him. The merciless avenger. Passed
through Egypt. And there went up a whale. I've never lost a child. And I hope that all three of
my kids bury me. I do not want to bury any of
them. And while I realize that Egypt
stands as a symbol of godless people, yet my heart goes out. How many thousands or millions
of firstborn sons died that night? How many broken hearted mothers
and fathers? And yet it was our God did that.
And yet there was a section of Egypt from which no sound came. Not even the barking of a dog.
And you know how dogs are at night. Anything happens and they
set up a howl. There was an area where upon
every door was found blood. And therefore there was no wail
coming up from those houses. There was no dogs barking because
they heard something. And the only difference between
the houses of wailing and the houses of silence was the blood. The only difference. Behold the power of the blood,
that when the merciless avenger sees it, he moves on. He goes elsewhere. What powerful
blood, but its power lays in its testimony. The blood had
something to say. Let's hear what it says. And
having set this all up, it won't take long to go through what
I believe it is the blood says to you and me. First of all,
the blood has something to say about God. It says that God is
not the softy that most people think He is. I'll tell you, not
one mother or father in Egypt or of the Egyptians thought God
was very nice. Many of you are familiar with
the Chronicles of Narnia. And there is a character in there,
a lion named Aslan. And he's a picture of Christ,
and a rather good one, actually. And one of the children in Narnia,
when he was in Narnia, was talking to one of the characters from
Narnia. I think he was named Tumnus. But they're looking at
Aslan. In Narnia, there were safe animals
and unsafe animals. And the child asks Tumnus, he
says, well, Aslan, is he safe? And Tumnus says, oh no, he's
not safe, but he's good. We don't worship a safe God.
If we worshiped a safe God, we wouldn't need a place of refuge. God is a merciless avenger against
sin. He said, vengeance is mine, I
will repay. Now that doesn't sound like a
softy to me. He says, I will by no means clear
the guilty. And that blood on the door says
so. God is just and righteous and
holy. He is a consuming fire. And if
you get in His way, He'll burn you up. Is that too hard? Too hard or
not, that's what the Bible says. Whether or not you like that
God is irrelevant. I hear people say, I like to
think of God as such. It doesn't matter what you like
to think of God is. I would like to think that two
and two equals five because I can go to the bank and give them
two dollar bills and two more and get five back. But it doesn't
make it so, does it? God is who He is. He's not what
we want Him to be. He's who He is. And the blood
says that's who He is. But you know what else the blood
says? The blood says that God is incomprehensibly gracious. Now wait a minute, that doesn't
make sense. On the one hand, you say that the blood says God is
without mercy, and now you're saying He's incomprehensibly
gracious. You know why? Whose blood is that on the door?
It's not the blood of the firstborn in the house. It's not the blood
of the father in the house or the mother. It's the blood of
a lamb representing God's own Son. Yea, representing God Himself,
the very blood that God demands, God provides for His people.
And the blood that He provides, He respects. You know, one reason that I delight
so much and hold so strongly to that doctrine we call limited
atonement is because the idea of general atonement is a huge
disrespect to the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. And it means
that God Himself, God His Father, didn't even respect His blood. Rather, our God has respect to
the blood because it's his blood. But if he doesn't find his blood,
he's coming after yours. The cross, I hear people say,
you know, well, we send them to the law to learn their sin
and send them to the cross to learn about grace. Brethren,
the thing about the law, yes, it should teach us about our
sin, but we are so hopelessly self-righteous. We look at the
law and we'll find some way to find some righteousness for ourself
in the law, but you can't go to Calvary and find room for
your righteousness there. If you're so good, why did it
take that to save you? There at Calvary, in the blood
of the Lamb, we find that dual testimony of a merciless avenger
and an unimaginably gracious God, all in one scene. That's the testimony of the blood
about God. Here's the testimony of the blood
about the people inside the house. They're sinners. He said, well,
no, these were the Jews. Have you ever read what the Jews
were like? We have this image that the Jews were these God-fearing
people. No, they weren't. Joshua, when
he finally gets them in the land, he says, okay, you choose this
day which God you'll serve. The days once you worship back
in Egypt? He said, you mean the Jews weren't
worshiping Jehovah? Some of them were, but not all
of them. Many of them joined on with Egypt,
worshiping their gods. They weren't good people. Even
when God brought them out and got them through the Red Sea,
they complained from one end of that wilderness to the other. The blood on the door says there's
sinners inside that need the blood or they'll die. And brethren, if the blood of
Christ doesn't say anything else about you, it says this, you
are a sinner. You are a sinner so sinful that
nothing less than the merciless slaughter of Jesus Christ could
save you. I hear people say, I'm proud
I'm a Christian. Why? Now, I'm proud of Christ. I'm proud of my Savior. But being a Christian means that
you're admitting you were willing for someone else to take your
blame. That's really not a very nice
thing to do. Not a thing to boast in, is it? I'm not ashamed that
I'm a Christian. That is, I'm not ashamed to confess
that I am one. But that's because I'm very proud
of my Savior. Are you? And then thirdly, the
blood tells us something about Christ. Oh, what a man he must
be. that one man dying could put
away the sin of a multitude that nobody can number. Even if you were without sin,
you could only die for one other person, man for man, Jesus Christ,
the God-man. could die a single person and
by his death actually put away the sins of thousands and thousands
and 10,000 times 10,000. Put it away in such a way that
ain't never coming back. It says that those sacrifices,
their blood was shed and they were burnt to ashes. And you
can look at those ashes, you're never going to find a sacrifice
in there. It's just a pile of ashes. But as the sacrifice was
burnt to ashes, so were all the sins that have been laid upon
that sacrifice. They're gone. Brethren, if you
are in Christ, your sins are not hidden. Your sins are gone. In the sight of God, they don't
exist. That's good news. That's good
news. And therefore we say with that
multitude, worthy art thou, for thou hast redeemed us by thy
blood. The Lord add his blessing. As soon as you started preaching,
Joe, talking about the blood in that matter, the first