Will you turn to the epistle to the
Hebrews, chapter 9.
The epistle to the Hebrews, chapter 9, verses
11 to 14.
We have to break into the sentence and
sequence.
It's all part of an ongoing argument, but
we cannot but break in.
We'll break in at verse 11.
But Christ being come and high priest of
good things to come, by a greater and
more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands that
are to say not of this building, neither
by the blood of goats and calves, but
by his own blood, he entered in once,
that means once for all, into the holy
place.
Having obtained eternal redemption for us.
For if the blood of bulls and of
goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling
the unclean, sanctify to the purifying of the
flesh, as it did under the old mosaic
ritual, how much more shall the blood of
Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself
without spot to God, purge your conscience from
dead works to serve the living God.
The word purge, in the authorized version, is
really a word that sounds too strong.
Purge, scrubbing, using detergents.
No, the Greek word is simply the same
word, translated in many other places, cleanse.
How much more then, shall the blood of
Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself
without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from
dead works to serve the living God.
We come now to another of the great
words of the gospel.
Yesterday we were thinking of that great miracle
of grace, God's forgiveness of the sinner.
Now we come to this second linked thing
that he does.
He cleanses the conscience from dead works that
we might serve the living God.
Our subject then is cleansing.
Now there is one verse in which, if
not more, but certainly one great well-known
verse, in which both forgiveness and cleansing are
put together.
That is of course 1 John 1 verse
9.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful
and just to forgive us our sins, that
is what we considered yesterday, and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness, that is what we
want to consider this morning.
Just because these two things are put together
in the same verse, and just because the
one condition, the confession of sin, secures both,
we are inclined to think that they are
virtually the same thing, which as we shall
see is not so at all.
Yesterday we saw that forgiveness is that act
of God whereby he releases us from the
obligation to make reparation for the vast loss
that God has sustained by our sin.
And we saw that it was quite impossible
for us to make any reparation for that
great loss that he has sustained.
Could my tears forever flow?
Could my zeal no respite know?
All, all for sin could not atone.
But grace does what we just have no
right to expect.
Referring to a parable in Luke 7, when
they had nothing to pay, he frankly, freely
forgave them both.
And he released them from that impossible debt.
Remission, sent it away, that's forgiveness.
And therefore quite obviously it has this sense
of debt, of indebtedness, of guilt.
That is forgiveness.
Now cleansing on the other hand is something
quite different.
Cleansing is being washed from the hangover of
sin which is defilement.
Sin leaves a hangover.
It leaves what the hymns call stain.
It brings to the heart inner defilement, which
in practice so often works out as self
-recrimination.
You go on blaming yourself.
And it also works out as shame.
Shame.
You feel you don't stand, look God in
the face.
And you feel you can't look your brothers
in the face.
And cleansing deals with this inner thing.
And God not only in his grace forgives
us our sins, but cleanses us from the
defilement of them, the self-recrimination of them,
the shame of them, the pollution of them.
Do you see the difference?
One is objective.
Forgiveness.
A debt.
It isn't inside, it's there against me, which
God prevents.
But cleansing isn't objective at all.
It's subjective.
It's something that happens in there, and which
needs to happen.
Now I believe, I speak for us in
our own personal fellowship here in this conference,
we've become a bit loose in our terminology
when we testify or speak of these things.
I think we often use cleansing.
I've been cleansed, when you ought to say
a deeper thing.
You've been forgiven.
For I find it much harder to seek
to be forgiven of that thing that stands
before me, before God, than to be cleansed.
Because that's something on the inside.
And I think perhaps we do become a
little loose.
Cleansing, cleansing, cleansing, cleansing.
Wait a minute.
The first thing is forgiveness.
And I would say that's the basic thing.
The bigger thing, and the far more humbling
thing, I think it's possible.
I can only speak for myself.
When you're talking about cleansing, I'm using an
easier word and sidestepping a little bit of
humbling.
On the other hand, it is possible for
us to talk about forgiveness when what we
actually need on that occasion is cleansing.
Anyway, let's hope that this is going to
be helpful, this distinction.
I thought of David in Psalm 51.
And when he prayed that great psalm of
penitence, we were thinking about it yesterday, in
the evening.
His first prayer was not wash me.
He didn't say, oh wash me and I
shall be whiter than snow to begin with.
Wash me throughly for my iniquity.
David, what about the great loss you've inflicted
on God?
Oh, he said, I confess it.
I confess it.
What I've done there.
And his first prayer was, according to the
multitude of your loving kindness, can you please
see your way to relieve me of the
obligation with regard to that terrible loss I've
inflicted on thee.
His first prayer was, blot out my iniquities.
Only then did he say, wash me on
the inside throughly from my iniquity.
Alright, there are the two things.
The one objective, the other subjective.
And though forgiveness is so, obviously the first
and the most humbling thing, you won't be
able to get on in the Christian life
unless you know also what it is meant
to be cleansed from all unrighteousness.
So, as David said, you are, in your
consciousness and before God, whiter than snow.
I don't know any detergent advertiser that dares
to say that his detergent will make things
whiter than snow.
Snow is the whitest thing we know.
But David saw grace could do something further
him than that.
If we were to be restored to be
made as white as snow, that would be
to be restored to that state of innocence
from which Adam fell, white as snow.
But grace does something better for you.
Whiter than snow.
The man so stained, he's brought to a
richer place, a deeper place.
And the only phrase that the Bible can
use is whiter than snow.
Now, this verse, 1 John 1, 9, offers
one condition for us to fulfill, and both
blessings are made available to us as a
result.
If we confess our sins, he forgives us
our sins and cleanses us from that which
our sins left behind, all unrighteousness stands.
But although both are promised on the one
condition of confession, our faith must encompass both.
Otherwise, it is possible, though never intended, that
we could experience one without the other.
It is possible to confess your sin and
accept God's forgiveness for your sin, but still
go around with a sense of being dirty
on the inside, a sense of shame and
disgrace.
But our faith needs to encompass not only
the forgiveness of our sins, but cleansing from
all unrighteousness.
My dear friend Peter Elford, who sometimes comes
to this conference, his son Paul brings with
him, you will remember, a week or two
ago, his great double bass.
Well, I remember hearing my friend Peter Elford
giving his testimony.
He was in Bath, in the war, I
think, in the Admiralty or something, and he
was in the church, but he took the
very liberal view with regard to the Bible,
and he wasn't born again at all, though
quite religious.
And when the Admiralty moved down to Bath,
lots of Christians came with him, and they
started a Christian union.
He got sort of caught up a little
bit in it, but he couldn't stomach what
they were saying.
He had many an argument with them, and
as for this talk about the blood of
Jesus Christ, ah, it was hopeless.
He had no place in his thinking or
his theology.
Oh, yes, forgiveness, and he trusted he was
forgiven, but the blood, and cleansing by the
blood, and then something happened.
He never told us what it was, and
it's of no consequence, but there was a
grievous moral fault occurred in his life, and
he sought forgiveness, but he couldn't shake off
the sense of shame, and disgrace, and self
-recrimination, and I remember him saying that if
I was allowed to go to heaven, I
wouldn't want to go there.
I'd get right out, though I might be
forgiven.
I had this awful sense of shame still
hanging over me, and then it was he
saw the meaning, power, and purpose of the
blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses a man
from all sin on the inside, as well
as secures his forgiveness objectively before God.
All right, then, there is something of a
difference between forgiveness of our sins and being
cleansed from all unrighteousness.
Now we come back to this very important
verse in Hebrews 9, which is the great
classic on cleansing from sin.
Hebrews 9, we'd better read it again, because
we want to look at it in some
detail.
Verse 13, If the blood of bulls and
of goats and the ashes of an heifer
sprinkling the unclean sanctify to the purifying of
the flesh, how much more shall the blood
of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered
himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience
from dead works to serve the living God?
This verse speaks, first of all, of the
defiled conscience.
Inasmuch as it speaks about the conscience being
cleansed, it implies there are sometimes when it
isn't cleansed and when it is defiled.
It's not talking about defiled thoughts, nor a
defiled heart with its affections twisted.
It's not talking about a defiled memory, even.
But it is talking about a defiled conscience,
that most inexorable faculty within us.
And when it is aroused, nothing seems to
pacify it.
The passage of time certainly does not.
For long after a sin has passed from
the thoughts and ceased to grip the affections
of the heart and has almost passed from
the memory, it's still there.
Years afterwards, defiling the conscience, giving a man
a sense of shame.
There are certain things in his life about
which nobody must ask him any awkward question.
And it comes between himself and God.
If he is unfit for fellowship with God.
And it comes between him and his others.
He's not free with his brothers.
He never dared talk very intimately about himself
because as of now, he's got a conscience
which is defiled.
Let's suppose that one evening you go home
and you have a cup of coffee before
you go to bed.
You're too tired to wash the cup and
so you say, that's all right, it'll be
okay by the morning.
But in the morning, yes, the coffee has
certainly gone, but the stain remains.
Or when you say, it's quite simple, we
leave that a day or two.
But in a day or two, the stain's
still there.
Leave it a week, the stain's still there.
Leave it a year.
And the passage of time has done nothing
to remain, to remove the stain, the defilement
in that cup.
So it is as I say, the passage
of time does nothing to remove the defilement
of sin, the accusations on the inside and
the sense of shame.
And God knows sometimes how to awake memory
and bring it back so that it becomes
more conscious than at other times.
Although you've begun the story of it to
grow deep, it's still there.
Secondly, this verse tells us that the great
hindrance to our serving, that such a defiled
conscience is the great hindrance to our serving
the living God.
In as much as it says that when
the conscience is cleansed from dead works, we
are able to serve the living God, it
implies that when the conscience is not cleansed,
we are not able to serve the living
God.
I've certainly found that.
Paul talks in 2 Timothy 1.3 about
God whom I serve from my forefathers with
pure conscience.
Ah, when the conscience is pure, then we're
free to serve him.
And what a delight his service is.
But oh, when the conscience is accusing, when
the conscience is defiled, we are so much
less able to serve the living God.
Indeed, if we try.
With the conscience defiled, you find there's a
little demon from hell on your shoulder.
And even if you're trying to speak or
trying to take that class, that demon is
saying, hypocrite, hypocrite.
And as you're asked to lead the prayer
meeting, you try to do it, that little
demon is saying, you hypocrite, you hypocrite.
And I've known sometimes that demon while I've
been preaching, saying all the time, hypocrite, I
don't get on very well, I tell you.
When my conscience is defiled and when Satan
is calling me hypocrite, hypocrite, the words don't
come and I would do anything rather than
engage in whatever service may be ahead of
me.
The old wheels go very slowly when the
conscience is defiled.
Years ago I heard Eric Roberts give this
beautiful illustration of a great liner just completed.
There it is on the stocks and you
can see it's half clear and clean and
beautifully shaped and covered with new paint.
The ceremony is performed and down the slipway
that great liner goes into the river.
It remains there for some months, perhaps a
year while all the internal fittings are done
and so on and at last it is
ready for its maiden voyage.
And every bit of power generated by those
mighty engines is transformed into speed as it
cuts a clear, clean way through the waves.
But it is known that after time, how
long I don't know, it isn't making the
same speed.
It's lost some of its rapidity.
You might think what it needs is a
new engine or a refit but they know
what's wrong.
Do you know what they do?
They put it into dry dock.
What's happened is this.
Beneath the waterline where other people can't see
it, after a time thousands of barnacles have
affixed themselves.
And it isn't the engine which is wrong.
Nothing wrong with that engine at all.
It is simply barnacles below the waterline.
And so they put it into the dry
dock and hundreds of men get to work
chipping off those barnacles.
And when they've done it, they give it
another coat of paint and back into the
water it goes just as speedy as it
ever was.
And you know, there are so often things
that have affixed themselves to our consciences below
the waterline.
Others don't know about them.
We sometimes don't always see them very clearly
but there they are, things that have happened,
attitudes which have been adopted, things that haven't
been straight, things that haven't been loving, things
that haven't been pure, things where the flesh
has expressed itself and we haven't called them
sin.
And there they are, a great accumulation of
barnacles, some going back quite a long way,
some quite recently affixed.
I need the power of the Holy Ghost,
you see, that's what I need, I'm so
needy.
And that I believe perhaps is at the
moment part of the great hunger for the
Holy Spirit's operation, it isn't solely that, but
it could be people are conscious of lack.
Therefore fill me, baptise me with the Holy
Spirit.
But wait a minute, friend, what's caused the
lack?
Jesus never intended you and me to have
lack.
He that cometh to me shall never hunger.
He that believeth shall never thirst.
I tell you what the cause is, barnacles.
And we could be begging the issue by
wanting a mighty new power when the Holy
Spirit himself wants you to see the barnacles.
And what he wants to do is to
put us into dry dock so that the
barnacles that have been there can be seen
and acknowledged.
And then Jesus, in his wonderful way, takes
off the barnacles and back you go into
the service with the old joy as never
before, the old freedom, of course you're filled
with the Spirit.
Oh my dear friends, of course we believe
and want to be filled with the Spirit
all the time.
But that will not be so if the
real trouble with us is when all is
said and done is barnacles.
Attitudes, wrongs, troubles in which you've pointed at
the other person.
And remember those three fingers we were thinking
about last night that are really pointing back
at us.
Oh, these are the barnacles.
And so what a terrible hindrance such a
defiled conscience is to serving the living God.
Now this verse goes on to tell us
further however, the real burden that's upon the
conscience is not, it doesn't say it's sin,
but what it calls dead works where the
conscience is to be cleansed from dead works.
Now in the New Testament there are three
thoughts of works mentioned.
There are wicked works, pretty obvious what they
are, straight down the line sin.
Then opposite to wicked works there are good
works.
And they're not random acts of good work,
of good that we might do.
Ephesians 2 talks about good works which God
hath before ordained that we should walk in
them.
That path of loving service, that path of
devoted love to others in this and that
sphere which God has appointed for us.
But in between wicked works and good works
you've got this thing called, these things called
dead works.
They're not called wicked works and they're certainly
not called good works because they have not
been foreordained that we should walk in them.
They are called dead works.
They are works which are bereft of the
life of the Spirit.
Now, I can only tell you what I
understand to be meant by this phrase dead
works.
It occurs elsewhere in the New Testament in
one place at least.
I would define dead works as the things
we feel we ought to do to be
better Christians and to be more used of
God but which things we've never managed quite
to do.
It would be most interesting if you pass
around a sheet of paper, sheets of paper,
and everybody put down the things they feel
they ought to do if they were to
be better Christians, more pleasing to God and
more used of Him.
And we could collect them up and have
a look through.
The things you feel you ought to do.
Well, I imagine much more prayer would be
high on the list because we just know
that our prayer life is so utterly deficient.
Sometimes we have no time in a busy
day to pray at all.
When the end of the day comes we're
dog-tired, oh, to be a man of
prayer.
Put that down.
Then a man of the word.
Just little snippets from Daily Light.
Is that enough to feed the soul?
Sometimes not that.
Oh, to be a man who gets down
to God's word.
I'd really have something for some people.
So we put that down.
Then there'd be various standards of humility and
love for other people that we must attain.
And then, of course, we should be overflowing
witnesses with always tracts on hand to pass
out to people.
Always ready to testify.
This is obviously the thing.
If I was that sort of person I
would really be pleasing to God and God
would use me.
And so we could go on and on.
I haven't mentioned all the things.
Some of them are quite subtle, quite extraordinary.
Only the Lord can show you what are
one of these things which he calls dead
works.
But the trouble with these things is this.
Because we feel these are the sort of
things we ought to do to be better
Christians, we are burdened by them.
For the fact of the matter is we
never quite succeed in doing them.
It's that whole conscience again.
You say, well, I'm going to spend a
quarter of an hour in my quiet time.
You've got it going at a quarter of
an hour.
But conscience says, you know, it ought to
be a half an hour.
Oh well, alright half an hour.
And you've managed to extend it to a
half an hour and then, bless my soul,
you meet somebody, he says he spends an
hour.
I say, I can't wait.
You never quite succeed in attaining those standards
and keeping those promises and being the sort
of person that pleases God.
And the result of the attempt to do
those things is simply to burden your poor
old heart as it wasn't burdened before.
There are many dear children of God and
we're going about burdened with the standards we've
not attained and the promises we've not kept
and the souls we've not witnessed to and
the prayers we've not prayed and a whole
lot of other things we've done and the
net result is to burden our poor old
soul.
I believe that man at the pool of
Bethesda began to hate that pool because although
it seemed to offer him life, he could
never get into it in time.
And I believe for him it would be
better for him not to have a pool
at all than having one never being able
to get.
It might be better for us not to
have made these promises but having made them
and knowing they ought to be done, never
really fulfilling them and I'm sorry to tell
you you aren't going to fulfill them.
There is nothing for us this way but
self reproach and a poor old heart and
conscience tag us under a bigger load than
ever before.
In any case these dead works make Christ
of none effect as Paul says in Galatians.
For he says if righteousness, being right with
God, comes by the works of the law
and at bottom that is what these things
are, Christ died in vain.
He said I thought all was going to
come to you by my cross but apparently
you've got another way of pleasing God.
And I'm making him of none effect.
And the actual doing of them is so
dead.
Oh we do do them.
We do manage to do some of them
but when they're done from the motive of
by these means being more pleasing to God
then the life of the slave of him
is all so heavy going.
And if the truth were known I'm not
getting nearer to grace but obviously further from
grace for grace is offering me for nothing
what I'm trying to get by my effort
to be a better Christian.
Worst of all these works, these dead dead
works do not deal with barnacles.
You can do all these things and be
utterly blind to the real trouble of barnacles.
Sins are problems.
Bible reading doesn't take away sin.
Prayer doesn't take away sin.
And all these things, these great activities are
passing by the deepest need of our heart.
Alright then this verse goes on to tell
us that which does cleanse the heart, the
conscience, from dead works.
And that is the blood of Christ.
How much more shall the blood of Christ
cleanse our consciences from dead works.
And then it refers us here to an
Old Testament ritual.
One of the most interesting ones in the
Old Testament.
I've hardly ever heard it preached upon.
And there's only one book on my shelves
that really sets out to expound it.
Though of course a general commentary would.
But there's no book that makes much of
it.
And yet, here it is right in this
verse.
And it gives us the most beautiful picture
of what is meant by the blood of
Christ which cleanses the conscience from dead works.
You see it's only too possible for the
phrase the blood of Christ and the blood
of the Lamb to be little more than
a cliché to us.
In fact, because it's thought to be a
cliché, you will find that even in evangelical
groups each new hymn book drops out just
so many more hymns about the blood of
Christ.
Because after all it's only a cliché, belongs
largely to mission halls and so on.
But where God works in revival, the blood
of Christ is all I see.
In East Africa, if there's one chorus which
is sung more than another, and celebrates the
victory of the Lamb, it is that chorus
in Luganda in English, glory glory hallelujah.
Glory glory to the Lamb, oh the cleansing
blood has reached me.
Glory glory to the Lamb.
Well, if it is regarded as a cliché,
it may be our fault in not explaining
what we see that blood to mean.
And here we have in this verse one
of the most beautiful Old Testament pictures of
what the blood of Christ means.
It talks about the ashes of an heifer
sprinkling the unclean, and by so doing sanctifying
to the purifying of the flesh.
And this is a reference to Numbers 19.
You can turn to it, we're not going
to go through it verse by verse, but
it's a tremendous theme.
I'd love to take it just as one
study, but we won't be able to in
this series.
In short, this was the thing.
God created, as I said yesterday, an artificial
uncleanness, a ceremonial uncleanness.
There was nothing actually defiling in the thing,
but God decided we're going to regard it
as ceremonially defiling, an artificial uncleanness.
And it was this, that if a man
touched a dead body in one way or
another, even just passing by and making some
contact with it, or even a bone in
a field, he was regarded as ceremonially defiled.
And can you believe it?
Until he was cleansed from this ceremonial defilement,
he was excluded from the camp.
And perhaps more important than all, he was
excluded from the ministrations of the tabernacle and
from worship.
And in as much as in those 40
years in the wilderness, a whole generation was
dying out, it is reckoned that a hundred
people a day die in the wilderness.
A hundred funerals a day, a hundred sick
people being tended, people were all the time
being defiled by contact with death, and therefore
excluded from their religious privileges.
And thus it was God provided a way
of cleansing from the ceremonial defilement which would
be as readily available as the defilement was
contracted.
It was an artificial uncleanness, and of course
the cleansing, the remedy, was an artificial one.
But though in themselves they were only ceremonial,
what I call artificial, using Basil Atkinson's phrase,
they nonetheless were used and created in order
to point to a real uncleanness, and a
real cleansing.
This was how God was educating his people
to understand the gospel when it should be
revealed with the coming of the Lord Jesus.
And some time ago, God lit up to
me that phrase, the ashes of a heifer.
And in the Bible which I was using
when I first saw it, I underlined it.
The ashes of a heifer.
Well I must tell you what the cleansing
was, before we come to that.
The priest was told to take a red
heifer, a red cow, absolutely red, take it
into a valley, slay it, take its blood
and sprinkle it before the tabernacle, and then
go back and put a great bonfire under
the carcass, and burn and burn and burn
until every last bit of that carcass was
reduced to ashes.
Then another man would gather up those ashes.
Perhaps there would be several barrels full of
them.
And they would keep it in a special
place because this was to be the cleansing
medium.
And whenever a man knew he'd touched death
and therefore was regarded as unclean, he could
go to one who was clean and ask
him to do this service for him.
And the one who was clean would go
to one of those barrels and take a
little bit of those ashes, he would mingle
it in running water, and on the third
day he would sprinkle upon his friend the
ashes of the heifer mingled with water.
Then he would do it again on the
seventh day.
The ashes of the heifer mingled with water.
And then on washing his clothes he was
regarded as clean and could return to the
camp and certainly to his religious privileges.
And as I say, that word ashes came
home to me, because those ashes are a
picture to us of the blood of Jesus
Christ.
Ashes!
The ashes of a heifer!
You can't burn ashes.
They are what is left when the fire
has done its work and gone out.
They are a testimony of a fire that's
finished its work.
And that, dear friends, is a picture of
the real meaning of the blood of Jesus
Christ.
That blood speaks of the judgment of God
against him having been burnt out in the
bosom and breast of our Saviour as he
hung upon the cross.
As he wailed my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?
The fire was burning.
The fire of God's anger against sin was
burning.
It's still burning.
But wait a minute.
I hear a word.
It is finished.
The flames go out.
And then a Roman spears to his side
and the blood came.
When the flame went out, the anger of
God against sin was exhausted.
And the blood is like those ashes.
It's a token of the fact that judgment
has been met.
That the work has been finished.
It has been exhausted.
And all that is left of that great
judgment bearing of Jesus on the cross is
the ashes.
The blood.
It's a token of a work that's been
done that's enough to cleanse the conscience and
put every last one of us in the
perfect relationship with God without us having to
add anything that we do to make it
efficacious.
We all know daily light.
And one day, well I know you know
daily, you know about daily light.
To me the most extraordinary thing about this
collection of daily scriptures to be read each
morning, each evening, and you can get the
book in the bookstore, is the wonderful juxtaposition
of texts.
When the Baxter family, a generation or more
ago, compiled it, they were a grown family
and father would tell them the leading text
for the next morning.
And all the family would return to their,
go to their bedroom, and in their own
morning devotions the next morning would seek other
linked texts from other parts bearing on the
leading text.
And so they put them together and they
stored them up before the Lord and revised
them.
And we have bequeathed with this beautiful book
Daily Light on the Daily Path.
And one of the most unique things is
the extraordinary juxtaposition of these texts.
And sometimes the juxtaposition is too powerful for
words and hardly needs a word of explanation.
Very often God's given me messages from others
just by seeing on that page one verse
put against another.
One morning or evening the verse at the
top of the page was, Who knoweth the
power of thine anger?
From Psalm 90.
There's a question.
Who knows the full blast and power of
the holy hatred of God against sin?
Next verse.
And about the night power.
Jesus cried with a loud voice, Lama, Lama
you know the word, perhaps you don't, which
being by interpreted means, My God, my God,
why?
Just the two together.
I saw that only one had ever known
the full power of the anger of God
against sin.
No human has known it.
But Jesus did as he hung on the
cross.
But he not only knew the full power,
he exhausted it.
Nothing is left but the ashes, the blood.
A token of something done.
A victory won on behalf of the feeblest
saint that puts him right with God.
That's the reason why so often hymns about
the blood have got a lilt about them.
Rather rhythmic.
Some people think they're irreverent.
Would you be free from your burden of
sin?
There's power in the blood.
But it's right.
Hymns about the cross, the Good Friday hymns
are solemn.
But hymns about the blood have the note
of victory.
It's finished.
It's done.
Satan has lost his mortal power.
It's swallowed up in victory.
For the blood has never lost its power.
Now this is that which applied to that
burdened conscience sets him free.
It is that which is the answer to
the sin, the barnacles first of all.
For if we walk in the light that
is willing for God to show us those
barnacles, the blood of Jesus will cleanse us
from all sin.
But not only does the blood of Jesus
cleanse us from sin, but it cleanses us
from all the burden and accusation of the
futility of our efforts to overcome the deadness
caused by our sin.
It cleanses us from dead works.
For if I come to Jesus for the
cleansing power and where I am, and what
a bad time I've had, I find at
the foot of the cross, without any effort
of my own, taking the place of a
sinner, the back door, the beggar's door, as
we've sometimes said, I'm brought into the banqueting
house.
And I get for nothing through the blood
of Jesus what I was vainly trying to
get by my efforts.
The result is I don't need to go
on that weary treadmill any longer.
I've got my blessing, my fullness of the
Spirit, by another way, by the blood of
Jesus.
And I'm relieved of all those things that
were only accusing me and burdening me.
Supposing you'd lost 50p, and you were looking
everywhere for that 50p, and you pulled the
tea out and the chair out and so
on.
Everything you were doing and making an awful
fuss about that precious 50p.
What would be the first thing you would
do when you found it?
You'd stop looking for it.
Ah, what relief!
And if I'm looking for peace, but in
the way of dead works, what a burden!
I'm pulling away the furniture, but if at
the foot of the cross I find through
the blood of Jesus what I'm looking for,
I'm relieved of that painful burden of my
dead works.
But of course, the blood of Jesus has
to be applied.
Though the ashes of the heifer had to
be sprinkled on the person, they had to
be mingled with water.
I think you can if you like.
I think sometimes it's right in typology, water
is sometimes a picture of repentance.
John baptized with water unto repentance.
If that's the right interpretation of the water,
this is applied when I call sin sin.
Not when I ask to be cleansed, but
when I confess sin as sin, then automatically
the blood of Jesus is applied to my
guilty conscience, after it is sprinkled on my
guilty heart.
Satan in confusion, terror strike, departs.
But more usually, perhaps in typology, water is
a picture of the Holy Spirit, and that's
true too.
But I shall see the blood and see
its application to me, save as the Spirit
opens my eyes.
Charles Wesley's great hymn on the Holy Spirit
says, of the Holy Spirit, to the Holy
Spirit, to thine the blood to apply.
And give us eyes to see that he
who did for sinners die has surely died
for me.
There you are struggling and striving, and sometimes
the dear Holy Spirit comes and he gives
you eyes to see.
It's been done!
If you call sin sin, then you needn't
start laboring away and making promises.
You're as clean as the blood can make
you.
You cannot be any whiter to the eye
of God than what that blood makes you
when you and I call sin sin.
And the wonderful thing is the precious blood
of Jesus Christ is ever available.
Ever available!
They always put those ashes of a heifer
in a place where it was easy to
get to.
So there was no great long journey.
And those ashes of a heifer lasted a
long time.
Jewish tradition says they only had, only needed
to slay six red heifers in the whole
of their history.
Picture of a much more glorious fact, that
the blood of Jesus is ever available.
It isn't just once, and that's it.
If further defilement comes, then it's again, these
Israelites, I guess, were getting defiled again and
again.
But no problem, no problem, there was the
ashes of a heifer.
They didn't have to go mourning.
And they could have them sprinkled upon them.
Ever available.
As the Miss Havagal's hymn says, precious, precious
blood of Jesus ever flowing free.
Some people have taken objection to the thought
of the blood of Jesus ever flowing.
And they've changed the words there.
But I like it.
It gives me the idea of something that's
available, right my way.
I know I do get defiled.
I do get a guilty conscience.
And then I struggle and I feel worse
after struggling.
But no problem.
I needn't be down for any longer than
it takes me to get to the foot
of the glass cross and confess sin.
No, not take me to get to the
foot of the cross and ask to be
cleansed.
Don't ask to be cleansed.
Confess the thing that's wrong.
Confess the state of mind.
Confess how you've been struggling.
And the promises will not only be forgiven
our sins but cleansed from all unrighteousness.
In other words, I know I'm saying things
that many of you know and have lived
by for years.
This is not new.
But it is to some.
May I say something that meant so much
to so many of us.
The blood of Jesus Christ is the standing
provision for the constant cleansing of the believer
so he needn't go on with any hangover
of guilt, any self-incrimination.
He can look God in the eye and
his brothers and he can share his testimony.
That's the way you break the devil's spell
when you're prepared to give a new, up
-to-date testimony to a friend as you
walk along.
To the power of the blood to put
you so completely at ease and at rest
with God.
You really are.
We have boldness to enter, not only cleansing
here, but to enter the holy of holies
of God's sanctity, the most intimate place.
How?
By our victorious life.
I don't know mine's victorious or not.
Far from it.
I get in if I get in at
all by the blood.
And how does the blood apply?
Well, I admit I'm not victorious.
If you're all that victorious, don't you need
the blood and you won't get in.
But if you're prepared to say, I'm not
all that victorious.
In fact, it's been the very opposite lately.
Just fine.
The blood of Jesus is your way.
Anticipating all that need.
It's lovely when it works out with your
husband or wife.
My wife beats me to the cross usually.
She gets there first and leaves me standing.
And I say, well I was wrong too.
It's lovely when it works out that way.
You say, you know, we're a wonderful couple.
We have never had any problem.
Nothing comes between us.
Glory to God.
If because you're so perfectly compatible, you don't
have any problem.
But if you see a beautiful union, the
real thing, they'll tell you not because we're
all that compatible.
Not because things don't go wrong.
What you see in our home.
And the warmth of which you feel which
helping you has come from the cross.
We've been to Jesus for the cleansing power.
I remember years ago turning on the car
radio in America and hearing a negro spiritual
singing, I've just come from the fountain.
My heart is so clean.
And where the blood of Jesus is applied,
then God is pleased to give all those
other qualities of love and forbearance which we've
just been confessing at his feet, we lack.
Ever available.
Precious, precious blood of Jesus.
My last word is simply this.
This verse not only talks about the defiled
conscience.
Not only about the hindrance it is to
the living works.
The service for God.
Not only the dead works are the real
burden.
Not only about the blood of Christ.
But it goes and ends by saying this.
That when the conscience is cleansed from dead
works by the blood of Christ, we are
able to do what we weren't able to
do before.
Serve the living God.
We're not now doing it in the oldness
of the letter.
But the newness of the spirit.
We're not doing it in order to get
blessed and be more you.
Making these promises to that end.
But because of the foot of the cross
we've got what we needed.
And now we're serving out of love and
not out of duty.
You can't hold some people back.
They're so free.
They're available for any old thing.
In the house party or back home.
It's because they know this wonderful liberty and
they're serving now.
In the newness of the spirit and not
in the oldness of the letter.
Wesley Nelson's book and by the way that's
a book that I personally owe a lot
to.
It's in the book store.
I meant to tell you about it.
Wesley Nelson, a dear brother in America, great
friend of Pam and mine.
Captivated by Christ.
And he says in that book, you don't
go, the sheep doesn't go to the still
waters to find the shepherd.
It's the shepherd who finds the sheep out
in the wilderness and having found him then
leads him to the still waters.
You don't have to make up your mind
to have special forms of devotion to find
your shepherd.
You're out in the wilderness.
That shepherd is going to hear your cry.
He's going to find you and then he's
going to lead you to the still waters.
To those things, devotions and activities and service
which are exactly appropriate for you.
In other words, the means of grace are
not ways to Christ.
Oh no, they're not.
Bible, prayer, etc.
Ways to Christ?
No, no.
But those things are ways.
Christ rather is the way to those things.
When he's found me afresh, my Bible is.
When he's found me afresh and cleansed me,
I can pray as I couldn't pray before.
When he finds me afresh, I'll start witnessing.
So the witnessing and the praying is not
the way to Christ, but Christ found where
I am or him finding me where I
am leads me to these things.
And I'm under grace and I'm living and
serving the living God in spontaneous joy.
Amen and amen.
Praise the Lord.
Let's bow our heads in prayer.
Thank you Lord for bearing shame and scoffing
rude and thank you for the extraordinary power
there is in that blood, not only to
cleanse from sin, but to cleanse from the
burden of the futile attempts to overcome the
effects of our sin, the deadness in ourselves
and bring us into peace.
May some of us this morning, as the
old hymn says, cast our deadly doing down,
down at Jesus' feet and stand in him,
in him alone gloriously complete.
Interpret these things to each one of us,
we pray thee.
Amen.