A New Heart, A New Love, A New Desire

Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. – Hebrews 9:12

This precious blood has this property about it, that, if the peace which it first causes should become a little dim, you have only to go to the precious blood to have that peace once more restored to you…That blood gives the pardoned sinner access with boldness to God Himself. That blood, having taken away the guilt of sin, operates in a sanctifying manner, and takes away the power of sin, and the pardoned man does not live as he lived before he was pardoned. He loves God, who has forgiven him so much, and that love makes him enquire, “What shall I do for God, who has done so much for me” Then he begins to purge himself of his old habits. He finds that the pleasures that once were sweet to him are sweet no more. “Away ye go,” he says to his old companions; “but I cannot go with you to hell.” Having a new heart, a new love, a new desire, he begins to mix with God’s people. He searches God’s Word. He makes haste to keep God’s commandments. His desires are holy and heavenly, and he pants for the time when he shall get rid of all sin, shall be quite like Christ, and shall be taken away to dwell for ever where Jesus is. Oh! the blood of Christ is a blessed sin-killer. They say that St. Patrick drove all the snakes out of Ireland. Ah! but Christ drives all the serpents out of the human heart when He once gets in. If He does but sprinkle His blood upon our hearts, we become new men, such new men as all the rules of morality could not have made us, such new men as they are who, robed in white, day without night, sing Jehovah’s praise before His throne. – C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3293.cfm

In An Instant, Comes Peace to the Soul

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. – Mark 16:16

Whenever Jesus Christ’s blood comes upon a man, the instantaneous effect is something more than miraculous. Before the application of Christ’s blood, the man was distracted. His guilt, and its consequent punishment, weighed heavily upon him. “Alas!” said he, “I shall soon die, and then hell will be my lot!” Oh! some of us will never forget when we were in that miserable, burdened state! I protest before you all that, when I felt the weight of my sin, I wished that I had never been born; and I envied frogs, and toads, and the most loathsome creatures, and thought that they were so much better off than I, because they had never broken the law of God, which I had so wickedly and so wilfully done. If I went to my bed, I started with the fear that I should wake up in hell; and by day the same dread thought distracted me, that I was cast off by God, and must perish. But the moment that I looked to Christ, do not mistake me, the very self-same moment that I put my trust in Christ, I rose from the depths of despair to the utmost heights of joy. It was not a process of reasoning; it was not a matter which took hours and days; it was all done in an instant. I understood that God had punished Christ instead of me, and I saw that, therefore, I could not be punished any more; that I never could be, if Christ died for me, and I was assured that He did, if I did but trust Him. So I did trust Him; with my whole weight I threw myself into His arms, and thought at the time that He had never had such a load to carry before… Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. I am a sinner, and my soul rests alone on Him; and how can He cast me away, since His own promise is, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.”

O dear friends, there are hundreds here who have passed through the same blessed experience, and they can tell you that the blood of Jesus in an instant speaks peace to the soul.~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3293.cfm

The Only Hope of Sinners

…and sprinkled both the book, and all the people… – Hebrews 9:19

Have you had sprinkling with the precious blood, my hearer? If you have, you shall live for ever; but if you have not, the wrath of God abideth on you. Do you ask how you can have the blood of Christ sprinkled upon you? It cannot be done literally, but faith does it. Faith is the bunch of hyssop which we dip into the basin, and it sprinkles man’s conscience from bad works. You say you have been christened, confirmed, baptized; but, all these things together would not save one soul, much less all the multitudes who trust in them. They are not sufficient for the taking away of a single sin. But you always say your prayers, and you have family prayers, and you are honest, and so on. I know all this; but all these things you ought to have done, and they will not make amends for what you have not done. All the debt that you have paid will not discharge those that are still due. Know you not that saying of the Scriptures, “by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin” You may work your fingers to the bone, but you can never weave a righteousness that shall cover your nakedness before God. The only hope of the sinner is to come and cast himself upon what Jesus Christ has done for him, depending upon the groans, and agonies, and death of the martyred Saviour, who stood for us and suffered in our stead, that we might escape the wrath of God.

Trust Christ, and you shall live. The bloody sacrifice of Calvary is the only hope of sinners. Look there, and you shall find the Star of peace guiding you to the everlasting day; but turn your backs upon Christ, and you have turned your back upon heaven, you have courted destruction, you have sealed your doom. It is by the sprinkling of the blood, then, that we are saved. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3293.cfm

The Blood Covenant

This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you. – Hebrews 9:20

The blood of Jesus is the blood of the covenent. Long before this round world was made, or stars began to shine, God forsaw that He would make man. He also foresaw that man would fall into sin. Out of that fall of man His distinguishing grace and infinite sovereignty selected a multitude that no man can number to be His. But, seeing that they had offended against Him, it was necesary, in order that they might be saved, that a great scheme or plan should be devised, by which the justice of God should be fully satisfied, and yet the mercy of God should have full play. A covenant was therefore arranged between the persons of the blessed Trinity. It was agreed and solemnly pledged by the oath of the eternal Father that He would give unto the Son a multitude whom no man could number who should be His, His spouse, the members of His mystical body, His sheep, His precious jewels. These the Saviour accepted as His own, and then on His part, He undertook for them that He would keep the divine law that He would suffer all the penalties due on their behalf for offences against the law, and that He would keep and preserve every one of them until the day of His appearing. Thus stood the covenant, and on that covenant the salvation of every saved man and woman hangs…In that covenant, made between Himself and His Son, there was not a word said about our actions having any merit in them. We were regarded as though we were not, except that we stood in Christ, and we were only so far parties to the covenant as we were in the loins of Christ on that august day. We were considered to be the seed of the Lord Jesus Christ, the children of His care, the members of His own body. “According as He hath chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world.” Oh, what grace it was that put your name and mine in the eternal roll, and provided for our salvation, provided for it by a covenant, by a sacred compact between the Father and His eternal Son, that we should belong to Him in the day when He should make up His jewels!~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3293.cfm

The Just for the Unjust

And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission. – Hebrews 9:22

Yes, blood is always a ghastly and a terrible thing. It is so, I suppose, because we recognize in it the destruction of life. Is it not so, also, though we may not be able to define the emotion because we are compelled, in our consciences, to admit the effect of sin, and we are staggered as we see what our sin has done All through the great school of the Jewish law, blood was constantly used to instruct the Israelite in the guilt of sin, and in the greatness of the atonement necessary for putting it away… I do not think anyone ever knows the preciousness of the blood of Christ, till he has had a full sight and sense of his sin, his uncleanness, and his ill-desert. Is there, any such thing as truly coming to the cross of Christ until you first of all have seen what your sin really deserves A little light into that dark cellar, sir; a little light into that hole within the soul, a little light cast into that infernal den of your humanity, and you will soon discern what sin is, and, seeing it, you would discover that there was no hope of being washed from it except by a sacrifice far greater than you could ever render. Then the atonement of Christ would become fair and lustrous in your eyes, and you would rejoice with joy unspeakable in that boundless love which led the Saviour to give Himself a ransom for us, “the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.”

May the Lord teach us, thundering at us, if need be, what sin means. May He teach it to us so that the lesson shall be burned into our souls, and we shall never forget it! I could fain wish that you were all burden-carriers till you grew weary. I could fain wish that you all laboured after eternal life until your strength failed, and that you might then rejoice in Him who has finished the work, and who promises to be to you All-in-all when you believe in Him, and trust in Him with your whole heart. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3293.cfm

A Horrible Thing

“This is the blood of the testament which God hath enjoined unto you.”  -Hebrews 9:20

Blood is always a terrible thing. It makes a sensitive mind shudder even to pronounce the word; but, to look upon the thing itself causes a thrill of horror… What exquisite pain it must be caused our first parent how keenly it must have touched the fine sensibilities of their nature to have had to offer sacrifice! Probably they had never seen death until they brought their first victim to the altar of God. Blood! Ah! how they must have shuddered as they saw the warm life-fluid flowing forth from the innocent victim. It must have seemed to them to be a very horrible thing, and very properly so, for God intended them to feel outraged. He meant them to take to heart the anguish of the victim, and learn, with many a shudder, what a destructive and killing thing sin was… It was the great lesson which He meant to be taught to the Jewish people, that sin was a loathsome and a detestable thing, and that it could only be put away by the sacrifice of a great life, such a life as had not then been lived,-the life of the Coming One, the life of the eternal Son of God, who must Himself become man, that He might offer His own, immaculate life upon the altar of God to expiate the guilt, and put away the filth and the loathsomeness of human transgression.

Oh, I would that your sins would sicken you! I would to God that you had some sense of what a horrible thing it is to rebel against the Most High, to pervert the laws of right, to overthrow the rules of virtue, and to run into the ways of transgression and iniquity, for if blood be sickening to you, sin is infinitely more detestable to God; and if you find that being washed in blood seems awful to you, the great bath which was filled from Christ’s veins, in which men are washed and made clean, is a thing of greater and deeper solemnity to God than any tongue shall ever be able to express. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/3293.cfm

No Greater Joy

And there was great joy in that city. – Acts 8:8

Depend upon it there shall come a great blessing to any of you who feel the soul travail that brings souls to God. Your own heart will be watered. You know the old illustration, so often used that it is now almost hackneyed, of the two travelers, who passed a man frozen in the snow, and thought to be dead; and the one said, “I have enough to do to keep myself alive, I will hasten on;” but the other said, “I cannot pass a fellow-creature while there is the least breath in him.” He stooped down and began to warm the frozen man by rubbing him with great vigor; and at last the poor fellow opened his eyes, came back to life and animation, and walked along with the man who had restored him to life; and what think you was one of the fist sights they saw? It was the man who so selfishly took care of himself frozen to death. The good Samaritan had preserved his own life by rubbing the other man; the friction he had given had caused the action of his own blood, and kept him in vigor. You will bless yourselves if you bless others.

Moreover, will it not be a joy to feel that you have done what you could? …If men are lost, it is some satisfaction to us that they were not lost because we failed to tell them the way of salvation. But what a comfort it will be to you supposing you should be successful in bringing some to Christ. Why it will set all the bells of your soul ringing. There is no greater joy except the joy of our own communion with Christ, than this of bringing others to trust the Saviour. Oh seek this joy and pant after it. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1009.cfm