Christian Life

This Blood is Always Speaking

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, repentance, salvation, Sovereignty of God, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. – Hebrews 12:24

The text says not “the blood of sprinkling that spoke,” but “that speaks.” It is always speaking; it always remains a plea with God and a testimony to men. It never will be silenced, either one way or the other. In the intercession of our risen and ascended Lord His sacrifice ever speaks to the Most High. By the teaching of the Holy Spirit the atonement will always speak in edification to believers yet upon the earth. It is the blood that speaks. According to our text, this is the only speech which this dispensation yields us. Shall that speech ever be still? Shall we decline to hear it? Shall we refuse to echo it? God forbid. By day, by night, the great sacrifice continues to cry to the sons of men, “Turn from your sins, for they cost your Savior dearly. The time of your ignorance God winked at, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, since He is able to forgive and yet be just. Your offended God has Himself provided a sacrifice; come and be sprinkled with its blood and be reconciled once and for all.” The voice of this blood speaks wherever there is a guilty conscience, wherever there is an anxious heart, wherever there is a seeking sinner, wherever there is a believing mind. It speaks with a sweet, familiar, tender, inviting voice. There is no music like it to the sinner’s ear, it charms away his fears. It shall never cease its speaking so long as there is a sinner yet out of Christ, no, so long as there is one on earth who still needs its cleansing power because of fresh backslidings. Oh, hear its voice! Incline your ears and receive its blessed accents. It says, “Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord; though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1888.cfm

Do Not Mute the Gospel

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. – Hebrews 12:25

Do you not hear it? If you take away the blood of sprinkling from the gospel, you have silenced it. It has no voice if this is gone. “Oh,” they say, “the gospel has lost its power!” What wonder when they have made it a mute gospel! How can it have power when they take away that which is its life and speech? Unless the preacher is evermore preaching this blood, and sprinkling it by the doctrine of faith, his teaching has no voice either to awaken the careless or to cheer the anxious. If ever there should come a wretched day when all our pulpits shall be full of modern thought, and the old doctrine of a substitutionary sacrifice shall be exploded, then will there remain no word of comfort for the guilty or hope for the despairing. Hushed forever will be those silver notes which now console the living, and cheer the dying, a mute spirit will possess this sullen world, and no voice of joy will break the blank silence of despair.

What a voice there is in the blood of sprinkling, since indeed it is the voice of the eternal Son of God, who both makes and destroys! Would you have me silence the doctrine of the blood of sprinkling? Would any one of you attempt so horrible a deed? Shall we be censured if we continually proclaim the heaven-sent message of the blood of Jesus? Shall we speak with bated breath because some affected person shudders at the sound of the word “blood?” or some “cultured” individual rebels at the old-fashioned thought of sacrifice? No, verily, we will sooner have our tongue cut out than cease to speak of the precious blood of Jesus Christ. For me there is nothing worth thinking of or preaching about but this grand truth, which is the beginning and the end of the whole Christian system, namely, that God gave His Son to die that sinners might live. This is not the voice of the blood only, but the voice of our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. So says the text, and who can contradict it? ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1888.cfm

The Covenant of Promise

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, Sovereignty of God Leave a comment

And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. – Hebrews 12:24

Observe that this “blood of sprinkling” is put in close contact with “the new covenant.” I do not wonder that those who are lax in their views of the atonement have nothing honorable to say concerning the covenants, old or new. The doctrine of the covenants is the marrow of divinity, but these vain-glorious spirits tend to despise it. This is natural, since they speak slightingly of the atonement. What covenant is there without blood? If it is not ratified, if there is no sacrifice to make it sure, then is it no covenant in the sight of God or of enlightened men. But, O beloved, you who know your Lord, and follow on to know Him yet better, to you the covenant of promise is a heritage of joy, and His atonement is most precious as the confirmation of it. To us the sacrificial death of our Lord is not a doctrine, but the doctrine, not an outgrowth of Christian teaching, but the essence and marrow of it. To us Jesus in His atonement, is Alpha and Omega, in Him the covenant begins and ends. You see how it was confirmed by blood. If it is a man’s covenant, if it is confirmed, it stands, but this is God’s covenant, confirmed with promises, oaths and blood, and it stands fast forever and ever. Every believer is as much interested in that covenant as was Abraham the father of believers, for the covenant was made with Abraham and his spiritual seed, and in Christ it is confirmed to all that seed forever by His most precious blood. That, also, is evident enough in the text; fail not to consider it well. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1888.cfm

Out of Love to the Father and to Men

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And being found in human form He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. – Philippians 2:8

Out of supreme love to us, that man might be forgiven without the violation of divine rectitude, the Son of God assumed human flesh, and became in very deed a man, in order that He might be able to offer in man’s place a full vindication to the righteous and unchangeable law of God. These were voluntarily undertaken by Himself out of pure love to us, and in order that we might thereby be justly saved from deserved punishment. There was no natural reason on His own account why He should suffer, bleed, and die. Far from it— “He only has immortality.” Being God, He thus showed forth the wondrous love of God to man by being willing to suffer personally rather than the redeemed should die as the just result of their sin. The matchless majesty of His divine person lent supreme efficacy to His sufferings. It was a man that died, but He was also God, and the death of incarnate God reflects more glory upon law than the deaths of myriads of condemned creatures could have done. See the yearning of the great God for perfect righteousness; He had sooner die than stain His justice even to indulge His mercy. Jesus the Lord, out of love to the Father and to men, undertook willingly and cheerfully for our sakes to magnify the law, and bring in perfect righteousness. This work was so carried out to the utmost, that not a jot of the suffering was mitigated, nor a particle of the obedience foregone, “He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Now He has finished transgression, made an end of sin, and brought in everlasting righteousness, for He has offered such expiation that God is just, and the justifier of him that believes. God is at once the righteous Judge, and the infinitely loving Father, through what Jesus has suffered. “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1888.cfm

The Blood of Sprinkling

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, The Father Leave a comment

But ye are come unto mount Sion…and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling… – Hebrews 12:22,24

What is this “blood of sprinkling?” In a few words, “the blood of sprinkling” represents the pains, the sufferings, the humiliation, and the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, which He endured on the behalf of guilty man. When we speak of the blood, we wish not to be understood as referring solely or mainly to the literal material blood which flowed from the wounds of Jesus. We believe in the literal fact of His shedding His blood, but when we speak of His cross and blood we mean those sufferings and that death of our Lord Jesus Christ by which He magnified the law of God; we mean what Isaiah intended when he said, “He shall make His soul an offering for sin;” we mean all the griefs which Jesus vicariously endured on our behalf at Gethsemane, and Gabbatha, and Golgotha, and especially His yielding up His life upon the tree of scorn and doom. “The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed.” “Without shedding of blood there is no remission;” and the shedding of blood intended is the death of Jesus, the Son of God.

Remember that His sufferings and death were not apparent only, but true and real, and that they involved an incalculable degree of pain and anguish. To redeem our souls cost our Lord an exceedingly sorrowfulness “even unto death;” it cost Him the bloody sweat, the heart broken with reproach, and especially the agony of being forsaken of His Father till He cried, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Our Mediator endured death under the worst possible aspects, bereft of those supports which are in all other cases of godly men afforded by the goodness and faithfulness of God. His was not merely a natural death, but a death aggravated by supernatural circumstance, which infinitely intensified its woe. This is what we mean by the blood of Christ, His sufferings, and His death. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1888.cfm

Covenanted Fellowship

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, The Father Leave a comment

But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel. – Hebrews 12:22-24

Brethren, our fellowship is with the Father, our God. To Him we have come through our Lord Jesus Christ. Moreover, in the power of the Spirit of God we realize the oneness of the Church both in heaven and earth, and the spirits of just men made perfect are in union with us. No gulf divides the militant from the triumphant; we are one army of the living God. We sometimes speak of the holy dead, but there are none such, they live unto God, they are perfected as to their spirits even now, and they are waiting for the moment when their bodies also shall be raised from the tomb to be again inhabited by their immortal souls. We no longer shudder at the sepulcher but sing of resurrection. Our condition of heart, from day to day, is that of men who are in fellowship with God, fellowship with angels, fellowship with perfect spirits.

We have come to Jesus, our Savior, who is all and in all. In Him we live, we are joined unto Him in one spirit; He is the Bridegroom of our souls, the delight of our hearts. We are come to Him as the Mediator of the new covenant. What a blessed thing it is to know that covenant of which He is the Mediator! Some in these days despise the covenant, but saints delight in it. To them the everlasting covenant, “ordered in all things, and sure,” is all their salvation and all their desire. We are covenanted ones through our Lord Jesus. God has pledged Himself to bless us. By two immutable things wherein it is impossible for Him to lie, He has given us strong consolation, and good hope through grace, even to all of us who have fled for refuge to the Lord Jesus. We are happy to live under the covenant of grace, the covenant of promise, the covenant symbolized by Jerusalem above, which is free, and the mother of us all. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1888.cfm

From Mount Sinai to Mount Sion

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, The Father, The Holy Spirit Leave a comment

For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest…But ye are come unto mount Sion… – Hebrews 12:18, 22

We are joyfully reminded by the apostle that we have not come to Mount Sinai and its overwhelming manifestations…We have not come to the dread and terror of the old covenant, of which our apostle says in another place, “The covenant from the Mount Sinai genders to bondage” (Galatians 4:24). Upon the believer’s spirit there rests not the slavish fear, the abject terror, the fainting alarm, which swayed the tribes of Israel, for the manifestation of God which he beholds, though not less majestic, is far fuller of hope and joy. Over us there rests not the impenetrable cloud of apprehension, we are not buried in a present darkness of despair, we are not tossed about with a tempest of horror, and therefore, we do not exceedingly fear and quake. How thankful we should be for this! We are come to a more joyous sight than Sinai, and the mountain burning with fire…The believer in the Lord Jesus Christ lives in quite another atmosphere. He has not come to a barren crag, but to an inhabited city, Jerusalem above, the metropolis of God. He has left the wilderness for the land which flows with milk and honey, and the material mount which might be touched for the spiritual and heavenly Jerusalem. He has entered into fellowship with an innumerable company of angels, who are to him, not cherubim with flaming swords to keep men back from the tree of life, but ministering spirits sent forth to minister to the heirs of salvation. He is come to the joyous assembly of all pure intelligences who have met, not in trembling, but in joyous liberty, to keep the feast with their great Lord and King. He thinks of all who love God throughout all worlds, and he feels that he is one of them, for he has come to “the general assembly and Church of the first-born, which are written in heaven.” God is not to them a dreadful person who speaks from a distance, but He is their Father and their Friend, in whom they delight themselves, in whose presence there is fullness of joy for them. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1888.cfm