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The Blood
by Dwight L. Moody
Some inquirers come to me over and over again, and never seem to get on, but go round and round like a horse in a mill. They don't rest where God rests - in the blood of Christ. Blood runs throughout the whole Bible.
Turn with me to Gen_3:21. No sooner had Adam fallen, and death entered, than God interposed, and made coats of skins and clothed them. God then must have been the first to shed blood; God covered sin; God dealt in love with Adam, in justice with Christ, when the blood of those victims slain came between Adam and his sin.
Turn again to Gen_4:4. Abel brought blood. Cain's offering was more beautiful - the fruit of the ground. You may say blood is repulsive, hateful; some women faint at the sight of blood, but by blood was the way God marked out for coming to Him, from the very first, and Abel came by that way, and was accepted. Any religion that is not founded on `the blood,' comes from the pit of hell. There is no other foundation, any other is not God's way. The world is full of Cainites. All who think they do not need the blood of Christ are Cainites.
Gen_8:20 - Gen_8:21. Sixteen hundred years passed away. God saved Noah by the ark, and when he left it he offered the blood of every clean beast and fowl on the altar. The second dispensation was founded on blood; it came between Noah and his sin. The world was set up afresh under Noah, but it began from the blood.
Gen_23:13. Abraham saw Christ's day, and was glad. God opened his eyes probably on that very Mount Moriah, after the sacrifice of the ram was over; and he saw down the stream of time the great Atonement, likely the identical spot, for Mount Calvary was near Mount Moriah, where Christ was to be offered. God so loved Abraham that He spared him his son; but He so loved you that He gave His for you. John said, `Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.' Abraham was glad when he saw the substitutionary offering of Christ. All went in all ages by the royal highway of the blood.
Exo_12:13. `When I see the blood I will pass over you.' He does not say, When I see the live lamb tied up to the door-post, I will pass over you. No more does He say, When I see the living Christ in all His moral glory and loveliness, scattering blessings all around His path, I will pass over you; but when I see the blood, `for without shedding of blood is no remission. ' Sinner, Christ has shed His blood for you. You will have peace looking to His blood; you will be safe there, or you will be exposed to the wrath of God without it.
When you go to the station, and take a ticket for London, and seat yourself in the train, the guard will come to look at your ticket; and it matters not to him whether you are black or white, rich or poor, so long as you have got a ticket. He looks at that, not you. The blood is God's ticket. God says, Have you got your ticket or `token?' If you are behind the blood, you are as safe as on the golden pavement of heaven. A little sparrow was as safe in the ark as the great elephant. If you are behind the blood you are safe, though you die to-night.
Exo_12:11. They were to eat the lamb, as well as be sheltered by its blood. You should not be satisfied with being safe. You should eat the lamb. God's elect fed on the lamb. The more you feed on Him the stronger you will become. Feed on His Word; feed on Himself.
Exo_12:2 `This shall be the beginning of months to you.' Everything dates from the blood; 1873 counts back to Calvary, and begins from the blood. Even infidels date from the blood. Israel's story, for four hundred years of slavery, is wiped out. You may say you are seventy-five years old, but you didn't live till you came to Christ. I was born twice, once in '37; once again in '55; so I am only eighteen years old. Some there are here also, who are only twenty-four hours old to-night.
"Exo_29:16. I was brought up to think that there was no need for the blood of Jesus, and when I knew better I went back to my native town and preached on the atonement, and after I was finished the minister of the place was very angry, and said to me that there was no more efficacy in the blood of Jesus Christ than in that of a chicken. That is Unitarianism. That doctrine is damnable. If, in prayer, you don't come to God through the Lord Jesus Christ, you may as well talk to a post. Call it prayer! It ain't. If you cut the crimson thread that binds the Bible, it falls to pieces.
Exo_30:10. The sacrifice of atonement was kept up year after year till Christ came. The work was never done. The priest in Israel never sat down. Christ was offered once, and His sacrifice was forever, thank God. Adam and Eve were in God's favor, but the devil tripped them up, and the precious blood of Jesus reconciles us to God. We are `justified by His blood.'
Lev_8:23. The ear, sheltered behind the blood, heard the voice of God, and the hand, behind the blood, did what was pleasing to God. The unredeemed may give money and build churches, thinking that they will please God, but it is a delusion. Till they get behind the blood their offerings are an abomination to God. Blood upon the great toe denoted walking with God.
God often visited men, as Adam and Abraham and others, but He never dwelt and walked with His people till blood was shed and redemption accomplished, and then the Red Sea fled as He walked with them; angels' food came to them; the rock burst with water which followed them. No man could resist them when God walked with them.
And we will always be in trouble about government till Christ comes back again to reign, and then men will have a government that will suit them. He will be back again one day and set up His kingdom, but it will be founded on the blood. Your life hangs on this word. Wake up; for you'll never get to the kingdom of heaven unless you are floated thither on the crimson tide of Christ's precious blood.
Lev_17:11 - Lev_17:14. Some people say they hate this subject of blood. I hated it once. I would have walked out of such a meeting if so much had been said about it as is now said. I used to say that a God who demanded blood is a tyrant. But God could not save without it. This is three times repeated. Why? God is very merciful, but He is just too.
If the queen [Victoria] was so kind-hearted as not to punish any one, and insisted on pardoning every murderer, and setting free every prisoner, she would not be queen twenty-four hours. Every woman here would rise up and demand that she should not be queen.
If you get God's mercy you get. His justice too: they go together. He rides in a chariot with two wheels rolling side by side -justice and mercy. God said to Adam, `On the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.' Adam sinned and he died. Jesus was man's substitute, and He died for man, for God's justice demanded man's life, or a substitute for him. If you take out the blood from my Bible you may have all the rest.
1Pe_2:24. Who is a substitute for you? Adam sold out cheap in Eden; don't God say ye shall be redeemed without money (1Pe_1:18, 1Pe_1:19). If gold could have redeemed the world, God would have created a thousand worlds rather than take the brightest jewel in the diadem of heaven, but God demanded life alone, and gave His Son. Consider that God gave the blood of His Son, and you don't care for it, hate it! If you are behind the blood it cries for pardon and gives peace - if you are not, it cries for damnation! `Let His blood be on us and on our children,' cried the murderers of Christ. Oh! if they had added `to save us,' but no, it was to condemn, for, they cried, Crucify Him, Crucify Him, ....
There will be a sad prayer-meeting one day and those who would not have the blood to cover their sins, will have to call on the rocks to fall on them and cover them! Get sheltered now by the blood, if you would escape in the days of His wrath.
He'll prevail by-and-by. The spear forced by the Roman soldier into the side of Christ was the crowning act of sin, yet blood flowed over the spear and covered it, the crowning `act of love.' Without shedding of blood is no remission. You may say prayers, and build churches, but without the blood it is all useless. Let us look now at -
Heb_10:28. Died without mercy. Listen; no mercy! What will you do with the blood of God's own Son? When Jesus left this earth He took away with Him His flesh and bones, but left His blood drained out for you. What are you to do with it? The key to heaven is not prayer, as the little hymn says, but blood.
A soldier in America was dying in the time of the war, and he was heard to say, `Blood, blood, blood.' A clergyman, thinking that the scenes of bloodshed on the battle-field which he had recently witnessed were troubling his mind, went to him to lead his thoughts to brighter themes. `I wasn't thinking of the battle-field,' said he, `but of the blood of Jesus, which has covered all my sins.'
Some make light of that blood, and have no faith in it, the only thing that would be a shelter and safety for them. The dying saint of whom brother Sankey sang, left his wife and child joyfully, and went `sweeping through the gates into the kingdom, washed in the blood of the Lamb.' That was a victor's shout.
How different such a departure from the coach-driver in California, who, feeling with his foot said, `I'm on the down grade, and cannot reach the brake,' and died. Oh! shelter yourselves behind the blood of Christ Jesus, He will save every one who believes in Him.
Sermon delivered by Dwight L. Moody in the Free Church Assembly Hall, Edinburgh, Scotland, 9th December, 1873.
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