Power In The Blood
Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 32:16
0 ratings
· 15 viewsFiles
Notes
Transcript
Intro
Intro
I understand we are a couple of days away from December.
Which is the month about the birth of Jesus,
and not the month where people talk about
his death, burial, and resurrection.
However, Paul once said
that he didn’t come with enticing words of man’s wisdom,
but he just came to preach Christ Crucified
That’s what I came to do tonight.
Every sermon we read in the book of Acts
talks about the gospel,
which is the death burial, and resurrection.
I don’t think we need to wait until Spring
to tell the greatest story ever told.
Text
Text
28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.”
29 A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth.
30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
IN this passage, John brings us face to face with two things about Jesus.
(1) He brings us face to face with his human suffering;
when Jesus was on the cross,
he knew the agony of thirst.
When John was writing his gospel,
round about AD 100,
a certain tendency had arisen in religious and philosophical thought, called Gnosticism.
One of their main beliefs was
that spirit was altogether good
and matter was altogether evil.
Certain conclusions naturally followed
this line of reasoning.
One was that God, who was pure spirit,
could never take upon himself a body,
because that was matter,
and matter was evil.
God could never have blood
or shed blood
Because blood was matter
and matter was evil.
They therefore taught that Jesus never had a real body.
They said that he was only a phantom.
A hologram if you will.
They said, for instance, that when Jesus walked,
his feet left no footprints on the ground,
because he was pure spirit in a phantom body.
The Gnostics went on to argue
that God could never really suffer,
and that therefore Jesus never really suffered
but went through the whole experience of the cross
without any real pain.
When the Gnostics thought like that,
they believed they were honouring God
and honouring Jesus;
but they were really destroying the work of Jesus.
If he was ever to redeem humanity,
he must become human.
He had to have real human blood
and He had to shed that blood.
Jesus had to become what we are
in order to make us what he is.
That is why John stresses the fact that Jesus felt thirst;
Even on the cross.
Right up to the moment of death…
Jesus a thirsty human being.
John wanted to show that Jesus was really human
and he really underwent the full agony of the cross.
John goes out of his way to stress the real humanity
and the real suffering of Jesus.
The blood that was shed on the cross was real
And it was really the blood of God…
28 Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.
So, first of all,
John wants us to see that Jesus was a human being.
Who really suffered
and Who shed real human blood.
The Triumph
The Triumph
(Secondly) and, equally as important,
John brings us face to face with the triumph of Jesus.
When we compare the four gospels,
we find a most profound thing.
The other three do not tell us that Jesus said:
‘It is finished.’
But they do tell us that he died with a great shout
Or a loud cry.
On the other hand,
John does not speak of the great cry,
but does say that Jesus’ last words were:
‘It is finished.’
The only explanation then is that the great shout
and the words ‘It is finished’
are one and the same thing.
‘It is finished’ is one word in Greek
and Jesus died with a shout of triumph on his lips.
He did not say ‘It is finished’ in weary defeat;
He didn’t barely get the words out…
he said IT IT FINISHED as one who shouts for joy
because the victory is won.
He seemed to be broken on the cross,
but he still knew that his victory was won.
30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
The last sentence of this passage
makes the point even clearer.
John says that Jesus bowed his head
and gave up his spirit.
John uses a Greek word here
which might be used for settling back upon a pillow.
Because For Jesus, the strife was over
and the battle was won;
and even on the cross,
he knew the joy of victory
and the rest of a man who had completed his task
and can lean back,
content and at peace.
28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.”
Two further things we must notice in this passage.
First, John traces back Jesus’ cry, ‘I thirst,’
to the fulfilment of a verse in the Old Testament.
He is thinking of Psalm 69:21
21 They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink.
The second thing is another of John’s hidden references.
He tells us that it was on a hyssop reed
that they put the sponge containing the vinegar.
Now when we go centuries back
All the way to the first Passover
when the children of Israel left their slavery in Egypt,
we remember how the angel of death
was to slay every first-born son.
We remember how the Israelites were to prepare the Passover lamb
and were to smear the doorposts of their houses
with its blood
so that the avenging angel of death would PASS OVER
their houses.
And the instructions were:
22 Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning.
So, It was the blood of the Passover lamb
on a bunch of hyssop
which saved the people of God;
And it was the blood of Jesus
which was to save the world from sin.
The very mention of hyssop in these last moments of life
would take the thoughts of any Jew
all the way back to the saving blood of the Passover lamb;
and this was John’s way of saying
that Jesus was the great Passover Lamb of God
whose blood was meant to save the whole world from sin.
And right after the hyssop is mentioned
Jesus says in a loud triumphal cry:
IT IS FINISHED
30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
The questions remains…
What is finished?
What is finished?
To answer this question,
we need to go back to the beginning,
and talk about what was started.
In Genesis, which means beginning,
we find in the 3rd chapter
That mankind had lost 3 things
as a result of sin.
When Sin entered the world.
The man, woman, serpent,
and the Earth were all cursed.
And 3 things were lost.
And the solution has always been the shedding of Blood.
11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.
This is one of many places that mentions that life is in the Blood.
Why is life in the Blood?
Why is life in the Blood?
7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.
Here we find that life is in the breath, and to be sure, we must breath to live.
We can’t last very long without breath in our lungs,
When it comes to essentials, breath is right up there at the top.
They say you can last up to a week without food
and you can make it 3 days without water
but without oxygen
you will have brain damage occur in just 4 minutes.
So, Breath is pretty important,
However, the breath without the blood is useless.
Breath comes into our lungs when we inhale,
but that’s as far as it would go without blood.
It is the blood circulating throughout our bodies
that puts oxygen into every square inch of our flesh.
That’s why the Bible says
that the blood is the life of the flesh.
So, when God put the breath of life into us,
and we became a living soul,
it was the blood that carried that breath
from our lungs into all of our body.
You can’t get very far without blood.
Because the life is in the blood.
The wages of Sin
The wages of Sin
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If the wages of sin is death,
and the life is in the blood,
then it stands to reason that the payment for sin is blood.
That’s why blood is required for atonement.
Atonement means the payment that is made,
or “reparations” that are paid to correct a wrong.
If you get a parking ticket,
the $25 you paid is your atonement.
If you sin, the only payment that can be accepted
is blood.
Blood is required for atonement
This has been the standard since the garden.
The first payment for sin was made
when God killed animals
to make Adam and Eve coats.
That was the start of it.
That’s is where blood started being accepted
for payments for sin.
The human race has been making payments
since that day.
One drop of blood at a time.
When Cain and able brought their sacrifices to God,
one was accepted and one was not.
Why?
One was blood and one was not.
The blood is the only form of currency accepted
by God for Sin.
When mankind sinned,
they had no way out of it alive.
The punishment was death,
and the life is in the blood.
Therefore, the blood had to be paid.
If not my blood, then it must be some substitute,
and for generations,
the substitute was the blood of bulls and goats.
BUT
4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
This blood made payments, but it didn’t take away sins.
So much Blood
So much Blood
There is no book of the Bible
that uses the word “blood”
more than the book of Leviticus.
Of the 447 times that the word blood appears in the bible,
88 of them are found in Leviticus.
That book is a bloody book.
It has all the details and exact specifications
of how to make payments toward the wages of sin.
The process is spelled out so that there was no confusion.
If you sinned, you paid in blood.
Once a year you had to bring a spotless lamp
to be sacrificed
to cover all the sins of your house
for a whole year.
This blood payment was taken by the High Priest
and credited to your bill.
The bill was death, and blood was the payment.
You couldn’t get around it,
you could not delay payment,
and your debt couldn’t be erased.
Once a year, you brought a lamb,
and blood was shed, and payment was made.
The next year, you brought a lamb,
blood was shed, and payment was made,
Year after year, after year, after year.
There was power in the blood of those lambs,
power to push your payment forward
one more year.
But there wasn’t enough power to pay the bill off.
there wasn’t enough power in the blood of those lambs
to make the full atonement.
It was always meant to be temporary from the start.
It was never meant to “finish”
what was started in the Garden of Eden.
3 But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year.
4 For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
But, down in verse 14,
it says…
14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
The word “perfected”
comes from the same root word
as the word “finished” which Jesus said on the Cross.
This is what he was talking about being finished or perfected
The payment for our sins.
The payment the the blood of bulls and goats
could never fully pay off…
was finished on the cross.
3 Things that were lost in the Garden
3 Things that were lost in the Garden
Earlier, I mentioned that there were 3 things lost
in the Garden of Eden
When Adam and Eve sinned
and brought the curse of Sin to the Earth.
They lost their
innocence,
immortality,
and relationship with God.
How do we know this?
1. Innocence – They knew they were naked.
2. Immortality – They no longer lived forever.
3. Their relationship with God – They had to leave the garden, and the presence of God.
The Blood of Jesus got all of that back,
All three things that were lost at the start
and that is why Jesus said:
IT IS FINISHED
The blood made a final atonment for our sins,
and gained us back our innocence.
1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Number 2: The Blood bought us back our immortality,
by giving us eternal life
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Number 3: The blood purchased our right
to enter back into a relationship with God,
by giving us access to the Spirit of Adoption.
15 For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”
16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,
So, we are now children of God
That means we are family
And family is the strongest relationship there is
We have that relationship that Adam lost
because of the blood of Jesus Christ
The blood also gave us access to God’s healing power
until we receive our glorified bodies in Heaven,
Where there will be no more sickness
and no more pain
We can experience healing here on earth
because of the blood of Jesus.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
I think Andre Crouch said it best:
I think Andre Crouch said it best:
The blood that Jesus shed for me
Way back on Calvary
The blood that gives me strength
From day to day
It will never lose its power
It reaches to the highest mountain
It flows to the lowest valley
O The blood that gives me strength
From day to day
It will never lose its power
It soothes my doubts and calms my fears
And it dries all my tears
The blood that gives me strength
From day to day
It will never lose its power
It reaches to the highest mountain
It flows to the lowest valley
The blood that gives me strength
From day to day
It will never lose its power
If you’re here tonight
And you’re wondering how to get your innocence back.
The blood of Jesus bought it back.
If you’re wondering how to overcome death
The blood of Jesus bought you eternal life.
If you’re wondering how to become a child of God
The blood of Jesus made a way
when it seemed like there was not way.
If you need healing in your body
The blood of Jesus can provide that healing
Is anyone thankful for the blood?
