The Precious Blood

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Transcript:

If you’ll turn with me there to 1 Peter chapter 1 this morning. And I want to talk to you about something that the Word of God says is precious, and honestly that we need to remember how precious it is and treat it as such. When I think about something being precious, I think about my children.

They are precious to me, but that’s not where I’m going. My son is four years old, and he has a stuffed Garfield, which is actually an understatement. He has 13 stuffed Garfields.

We bought him one. Different people from our church, our pastor in Arkansas, bought him some. We came back to Oklahoma.

My cousin cleaned out her closet and gave him nine more. And what do you know, we have 13. He can tell the difference between them, though.

He has one that he just loves and calls Kitty Jr. And sometimes Kitty Jr. goes everywhere.

Kitty Jr. goes with us to eat. Kitty Jr.

goes with us to the pool. Kitty Jr. goes with us to the grocery store.

Kitty Jr. goes with us to church. Sometimes Kitty Jr.

is no longer orange. He’s just brown. And we try to swap him out with another one of the ones that look just like it.

So we can wash him. I mean, just every once in a while, just run that thing through the washing machine. He will not have it.

Because he can tell the difference. And once just recently, my mother tried to switch him out when he was going down for his nap. And said, here’s Kitty Jr.

He told her, that’s not Kitty Jr. She said, well, how do you know that’s not Kitty Jr. ?

He said, just look at his eyes. I mean, he has studied. And sure enough, he could tell.

We put him in a lineup, and he could tell which one was Kitty Jr. I don’t understand that by looking in the eyes. But that tells me he has spent some time studying this stuffed cat.

And as I said, this Kitty Jr. goes with us everywhere. And if he was presented with the choice, would you rather have Kitty Jr.

or would you rather have ice cream? There’s very little doubt in my mind that he’d pick Kitty Jr. As a matter of fact, would you rather have Kitty Jr.

and starve to death or have food? I’m reasonably certain that he’d pick Kitty Jr. He just loves this thing.

It is his most precious possession. He has some idea of what money is. I could offer him paper money.

He doesn’t know the denominations. He just knows paper money is more valuable than coins. I could offer him money.

He would not give me Kitty Jr. Because this thing is so precious to him. He holds it close.

If somebody tries to take it, he is not letting go of that thing. He’s not leaving the house without it. I have to negotiate and sometimes whip him to get him to leave it in the car.

You know, you can’t take it into Sunday school. But it’s precious to him. He is not willing to let it go.

it has incredible value to him. And folks, we live in a society where a lot of times we don’t treat anything as though it has real value to us. Now, I’m part of this culture myself, disposable razors, disposable cameras.

So I guess I’m part of the problem. But it bothers me sometimes that we just throw things away so easily so quickly. I inherited a little bit of my grandfather’s personality.

He goes so far as he will wash out cups and styrofoam things from Brahms. I don’t go that far. But I inherited a little bit of his personality where I will clean out spaghetti sauce jars or yogurt tubs and use them for leftovers and drive the women in my family crazy. Because it bothers me sometimes that we don’t make use of the things that we have.

We don’t treat anything as though it has value, even valuable things. We live in a world where people are treated as though they have no value. We live in a world where people get married and divorced in the space of 72 days, some of these celebrities.

We live in a society where if you don’t like your family, just cut them off. Just, I’m done with you. I’m not talking to you anymore.

We live in a society where folks, not to get political on you, but in the last couple weeks, it’s been all over the news. that’s been all over the TV that there are organizations selling parts of babies, treating people like a commodity. Nothing, nothing apparently is precious to us anymore.

It’s hard for us. I think we grow up and we get jaded by this world and we forget what it means for something to be precious. And I really love watching my son with this cat because it reminds me of what it means to treat something as though it’s precious.

If you haven’t turned there with me already, turn with me to 1 Peter chapter 1. We’re going to start in verse 13 and look at something that the word of God calls precious, something that we need to treat as an incredibly valuable thing. It says in verse 13, wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts of your ignorance, but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation.

So Peter starts out writing to the believers in various churches that are scattered as he’s writing to them and tells them, he tells them that they need to be sober-minded. This idea of girding up the loins, they wore robes in that day. You may be familiar with the picture that he’s painting here, but they would wear robes and I’ve never tried to run in a robe or a dress or anything.

I’ve never worn a dress, but I would imagine it could be tricky. Any of you ladies have any experience in that trying to run in a dress? I have enough trouble running without something tangled around my feet.

So they would wear these robes and when they would go to run a race, they’re told to gird up their loins. They would take the they would take the the robe and they would gather it up in the middle and they would tuck it into the belt where it would be like shorts and their legs were unencumbered to run. And so he’s saying, gird up the loins of your mind.

He’s saying, get your minds on straight. Get rid of the things that are going to distract your mind, he said, and be sober and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. That word hope is not just wishful thinking in scripture. It’s an assurance that comes from God.

It’s a looking with expectation. He says, get your minds on straight, think clearly, and pay attention, look ahead with expectation to this hope, this grace that is going to appear with our Lord and Savior. He says, do this in verse 14, as obedient children.

This is what God expects from all of his children. If we want to obey God, this is what we need to do. Get our minds on straight and look to Jesus Christ as we run forward.

Not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance. Now, everybody has a past. Some people’s pasts are more wild than others. As a matter of fact, I’ve always felt kind of left out, and I don’t think I should feel this way, but I felt kind of left out when people give their testimonies of what God saved them out of.

I was saved at five years old, and I knew I was a sinner, but I mean, come on, how much trouble could I get into by the age of five? And I was scared of my parents. So I didn’t live a wild life.

I haven’t lived a wild life. But we all have some kind of past where before we came to Jesus Christ, I don’t care if we were out murdering Christians like the Apostle Paul, or it was, I didn’t listen to my mom when I was five. We all have a past where before we came to Christ, before he renewed our minds, we lived in sin and we liked it.

And we thought that that was the way we ought to live. We thought that was the best we could possibly hope for. He says, don’t pattern yourselves after the former way when you were blinded and ignorant and driven by your lust, by your desires.

He says, instead, behave as obedient children. But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation. He said, strive to be holy the way God is holy.

Now, folks, that is not an attainable goal. I hate to break it to you. I hate to break it to myself. But we will never be as holy as God.

We will never in this lifetime achieve perfection. I preach that, and even as I preach that, I hate it. I don’t know if you, I don’t know if I’m the only one who feels this way, but where you sin and you know as soon as you did it that you sinned and you feel, I mean you feel it down in the core of your being that you have disappointed God.

I hate that feeling. I’m ready for that feeling to go away and the only way that feeling is going to go away is to knock off the sin. And yet we struggle with it as Christians, we struggle with it as believers, and God by his Holy Spirit gives us the ability to withstand temptation, to stay away from sin, and yet we in our weakness still succumb and we still fall to it.

And we will never, folks, we will never be as holy as God, but that does not give us an excuse to stop trying, to stop trying to live in a way that pleases Him. Sorry, if the illustrations from my children bother you, it’s going to be a rough day because that’s most of what I talk about. My children love to get out and play in the dirt and grass, and I don’t even know what sometimes they come in the house covered in.

They love it. And I don’t mind getting out and getting dirty too, but I want to get cleaned up. They’re okay if they don’t get cleaned up.

Whine and cry. Why do you have to give me a shower? Why do you have to wash my hair?

Because you’re covered in mud and I don’t want to know what else. I bathe my children when they get dirty. I know, there is not a doubt in my mind that they’re going to go right out and get dirty again.

Should that stop me from cleaning them up? Should that stop me from trying to keep them presentable? I don’t think any of us would say that.

So when it comes to our lives, we know we’re never going to be perfect. We know we’re not going to stay clean. Does that give us an excuse not to clean up and not to shoot for holiness, not to aim for holiness?

It doesn’t give us an excuse. And he says in verse 16, because it is written, be ye holy as I am holy. So we have our marching orders.

And he says in verse 17, If you call on the Father who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. He says, if you call on the Father, and he’s obviously writing to believers, and so it’s sort of a rhetorical statement. He knows that they call on the Father.

He knows they believe in God, that they call out to him. But he says, if you are among those who call out to God, If you worship God, if you seek his will, and he says, by the way, this God who without respect of persons judges according to every man’s work. He says, if you worship this God who judges every man by his work without respect of persons, he says, then pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.

I heard preachers say for a lot of years that when the Bible talks about the fear of the Lord, it just really means a healthy respect. And I think there’s some truth to that. We don’t need to view God as some kind of tyrant in the heavens who just wants to snuff us out any chance he gets.

And so I understand the viewpoint over here that it means a healthy respect. But as I read the scriptures too, there should be an element where fear means fear. Read Isaiah.

Read his vision. He got a vision of God in his holiness and he trembled. You read the book of Nahum, and it talks about how God responds to sin and sometimes his anger and his judgment.

And folks, I believe that the God the Bible teaches, the God we serve, is big enough to encompass both love and judgment in his character. It’s in his nature. And so sometimes I believe when the Bible says fear, there needs to be an element of fear.

Just like with my parents. I’ve already mentioned I was scared of them growing up. I’m almost 30, and I’m still a little scared of my parents.

And you should be. I love them, and I know they love me, and I know they’d do anything for me, but there’s still that element of fear that goes along with the respect, and it should be that way. Well, the same is true of God, even more true with God.

There’s a loving relationship there, but there should be some fear. And he says, looking to the God who judges according to their works, that’s exactly why there should be an element of fear that, not just fear that leads us to tremble and cower and be scared, but fear that leads us to do the right thing because we know who He is. We know what He expects.

We know what He’s capable of. And the Bible says that He judges us without respect of persons according to our works. God looks at the works that we work throughout our lives.

God looks at the way we live. God looks at the, this is scary, God looks at the condition of our hearts. I think more than anything, God looks at the condition of our hearts.

And he judges that, judges us based on that. He sees everything. There’s no excuse when it comes to God because he knows.

He knows where our hearts stand. He knows what lurks inside of there, and it’s not. He knows better than we do, and he knows what’s in our hearts even when we’re not quite so lovable.

And so there should be an element of fear and trembling as we go on this journey, knowing that God is going to judge that without respect to persons. And what that means is looks at us and finds sin in our hearts. When God looks at all of us in our works, there’s sin there.

Right? I’m not the only one. God looks on our hearts, he looks on our works, and there’s sin.

And God judges that and hands down the penalty without being a respecter of persons. God is not extra special impressed by me because I’m a pastor. I don’t get extra credit for being a pastor.

As a matter of fact, I may be judged more harshly. The Bible says, desire not many to be teachers, for ours is the greater condemnation. We’re held more accountable for the way we live and the things that we say and do and teach.

But I don’t get extra credit for being a preacher. You don’t get extra credit for being a preacher’s kid or for being a deacon or my mom taught Sunday school or I’m rich or I’m this or that. We don’t get extra credit in God’s economy for who we are.

God doesn’t look at us and say, well, you were very special, so you’re off the hook for this. No, God’s not a respecter persons. He sees sin and he judges it.

And so it says in verse 18, for as much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers. He says here, and there was nothing, because you know there was nothing that you have or possess or have inherited that is able to save you. There’s nothing in this world that was able to redeem you.

Now, he was speaking to a largely Jewish background audience and speaking of the traditions of their fathers. They really believed that because they were descended, because they were genetically related to Abraham, that they had some kind of special relationship with God when it came to redemption. The nation of Israel does and did have a special relationship with God, but nobody was saved by carrying Abraham’s genes.

It was by carrying Abraham’s faith. And they never quite got that. And some of them had been trusting in, this is our descent, this is our genealogy, our pedigree, it makes us special, God’s going to overlook things.

And he says, that was not enough to redeem you. He said, you were not redeemed by corruptible things, even like gold and silver. Now, one of the great things about gold, the reason we use it for so many things is because it’s not reactive.

It’s pretty stable as far as elements go. It doesn’t react with things. It doesn’t corrode.

It doesn’t really change much over time or fluctuate in value. And for God to call really the most precious, tangible thing we have here on earth, to call it corruptible, tells us something about the holiness of God and what he views as precious. Because I don’t think there’s anybody in here who would refuse gold if it were offered to us, no strings attached.

I mean, that’s a pretty important asset. And he says, even your gold and silver. Your corruptible things like gold and silver.

Your trash like gold and silver were not able to redeem you. An idea of redemption means to be bought back. We are born enslaved to sin and God comes and redeems us.

It means he purchases us back. How does he do that? It’s by the blood.

He says, it’s not by your corruptible things such as silver and gold or your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers. He says in verse 19, but with the precious Blood of Christ. That’s where he uses the word precious. Your gold, your silver, all your traditions, he says it’s garbage.

But the blood of Christ is what really has value. But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and spot. They would have understood what that meant.

Now we don’t really have a history of blood sacrifice in our culture, thank goodness. But they would have understood because for thousands of years they’d had to go make sacrifices as a temporary offering for sin. now and I’ve taught before I believe the Bible teaches the only reason that was effective was because of the faith behind it they’re looking forward to Jesus Christ and the offering he would make but folks they would have to go in every so often they would have to offer an animal the innocent to die for the guilty to shed its blood but it wasn’t just any animal it had to be an animal without spot without imperfection without flaw and so when he says it was the blood of Christ the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot he’s saying he’s telling them in language that they would understand.

His blood was shed for you as a sacrifice, as a spotless sacrifice acceptable to God. Jesus Christ was the only one who could make such a sacrifice because he was the only one born among man without sin. The Bible says that God made him who knew no sin to become sin for us.

He took our sins on himself just as they sort of symbolically did with the lambs. He took our sins on himself, having none of his own, no blemish or flaw of his own, and he shed his blood and he died as a sacrifice to pay for my sins, to pay for what I could not pay for myself. He says, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in these last times for you.

I love this thought. This tells us that Jesus dying on the cross was not God’s plan B. God was not taken by surprise in the Garden of Eden.

Do you realize that? We could read the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden and think, God’s thinking, okay, what do I do now? And it took him 4,000 years to come up with the answer.

Folks, before God created us, before God created us, he knew that we were going to sin, and he knew that he would sacrifice his son out of love and mercy for us so that his blood could purchase our forgiveness. He said that it It was God’s plan before the foundation of the world, but it was made manifest in these last times for you. It’s been God’s plan from before creation ever happened, and now he says you got to see the fulfillment of it.

After all these millennia, you got to see the fulfillment of it. That’s incredible. Folks, that’s not just written to them in their time.

In our time, we don’t have to look ahead to the sacrifice and hope God figures out how to deal with the problem of sin. He’s already done it, and we have the luxury of being able to look back in faith. I honestly think it took more faith for them to have to look forward to what God was going to do.

Who by him do believe in God, verse 21, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit, unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart, fervently, being born again, not of incorruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. So just like with many passages that talk about salvation, people sometimes argue with it what it means.

I look at these and see that God has said, this is how you’re saved. Now here’s what you go do with it. You belong to me.

You’re saved. Now act like it. A lot of what the Bible teaches, we argue, churches argue back and forth.

Do you have to do that to be saved? Is that part of salvation? No, it’s just very clear.

You’re saved. Now act like it. God changes you.

We’re born again. He changes us from the inside out and says, act like it. Act like I’ve done something in your life.

Live like it. But this whole thing was really about they were supposed to live in a certain way, supposed to live in as holy a way as they could by the aid of the Holy Spirit, knowing that they were going to fall. But still he reminds them that it was not anything that they did that could save them.

I find it interesting that most religions in the world today, Really, when you boil them down to one basic doctrine, they teach the same thing, that you have to do something in order to earn salvation or forgiveness or heaven or paradise or nirvana or whatever they call it in their religion. You know what? Some churches that have the word Christian or the idea of Christian on their sign teach this idea this morning.

All the false teachings of the world stand up against what the Bible teaches. They all say, you’ve got to do this, and God says, it’s already been done. It’s already been accomplished through the blood of Christ. And there’s nothing you can do.

There’s nothing you can do for yourself to earn it. Jesus has already done all of it. Folks, it doesn’t matter, excuse me, it doesn’t matter ultimately what we get right or wrong when it comes to other doctrines if we have this one wrong.

This is where everything has to be focused on this blood. If we get wrong what the blood was for, if we get wrong the idea and think that we can add something to the blood and maybe we’ve got to, through effort, save ourselves, then we’ve missed out on everything. It doesn’t matter what else we’ve got in mind.

And he says this blood is precious. This blood is a thing of true value. It’s not something to just, I thought about it once when I came to Christ and now I don’t think about it anymore.

You know what? If we think about what he sacrificed, if we think about the blood through our daily lives, I think it’ll be easier to be holy as he is holy. There are three things that I want to share with you just briefly about this, now that we’ve gone through the passage, share with you about the precious blood and then we’ll be dismissed for the morning.

First of all, the blood of Christ is more precious, folks, than all of our good works. It’s more precious than all of our good works. He talks about God judging according to our works right before he gets into talking about the blood and says that God will judge according to our good works.

You know what we get if we stand before God and say, here’s the reason for me to get into heaven, my works. God says all of our righteousness is as filthy rags. It’s worthless to God.

Jesus talked about those who would do miracles and cast out demons in his name, and he would have to tell them, Depart from me, you who work iniquity. I never knew you. It’s a scary, it’s a sobering thought to realize that a lot of people, a lot of very good people, are going to stand before God one day thinking that they’re in because they bring to God this life of good works, and that’s their offering, and they say, This is why you should let me into heaven.

And God says, That’s garbage. It’s worthless. I’m not telling you not to live a life of good works, but I’m telling you good works come afterwards.

They’re an outgrowth of salvation, not the cause of it. But this morning, if your idea is, well, I’ll live a good life, and God will love me, God will accept me, you’re planning to stand before God with a handful of good works that He says are worthless. Because you see, there’s still sin in our hearts.

I give the example all the time from the pulpit. that imagine if I were to kill somebody. I have not, but imagine I were to kill somebody.

And I were to stand before the judge and he says, what do you have to say for yourself? And I said, well, look at all the other people I haven’t killed. Do I get extra credit for that?

I’m just doing what the law requires. If I stand before God and I’ve broken his law, I’ve sinned over here, and I stand before him and say, well, yeah, there’s that, but look at all the other stuff I’ve done right. Folks, I’m just doing what he requires.

That problem of sin has not been dealt with. And yet God says that this blood that Christ shed is much more precious than all the good works that we could ever accumulate. Second of all, the blood of Christ is more precious than the things we hold most dear.

You go ahead and name something that you hold dear in this world, and I can guarantee you that it’s nowhere near as precious as the blood of Christ. I can guarantee you that whatever you hold dear today is not as precious as the blood that Christ shed for you and really as the one who shed it. And I know something about trying to hold things dear and even good things and trying to hold on to them as opposed to hold on to Christ and what He wants for you. But folks, we put a lot of love and a lot of time and a lot of our hearts into things that don’t last. We put all this time and effort.

We almost worship money and stuff and jobs and relationships. And those aren’t bad things in and of themselves until we cling to them and we think, that’s who I am. And maybe God’s going to let me into heaven because I’m rich.

Maybe God’s going to let me into heaven because I’ve got this, I’ve got that. whether it’s a possession, whether it’s a relationship, whether it’s some kind of social standing, we hold these things dear. In many cases, we put them ahead of God, and we think, well, God’s going to be just as impressed by that as I am.

Folks, God isn’t impressed by our stuff, by who we think we are. I love the story. I know it’s not true, but I love the story that I heard from a preacher years ago about a man making a deal with St.

Peter about being able to bring one suitcase of his possessions with him to heaven. Now folks, this is not how it works. It’s just one of those preacher stories.

But making a deal with St. Peter that he could bring, because you know you can’t take it with you, made a deal with St. Peter to be able to bring one suitcase full of whatever he wanted to heaven, but he could only bring one suitcase.

And he brought a suitcase full of gold, got up there and opened it, and St. Peter said, why did you bring a suitcase full of pavement? I love that story.

I know it’s not true, but I love that story because it illustrates when we get to heaven, when we stand before God, all of the things that we hold most dear and most precious, God is not impressed by. What’s valuable to God is the precious blood of Christ. All of our money, all of our fame and fortune, if we have it, all of our connections won’t save us, but the precious blood of Christ saves us. Third of all this morning, The blood of Christ is more precious than any sacrifice we could make.

It’s more precious than any sacrifice we could make because it was made once for all. And the book of Hebrews does teach that his sacrifice was made once for all. It was made by a lamb without blemish or spot, as it says here in the passage we’ve looked at today.

It’s more valuable than any sacrifice we could make. Well, I’ll give up this and God will love me. I’ll give up drinking.

I’ll give up swearing. Whatever it is. Whatever you think stands between you and God, I’ll just give up that habit.

I’ll give up all my money. I’ll give up, folks, whatever sacrifice we think we could make. It may be a huge sacrifice, but God looks at it and says, it is nowhere near as valuable as the blood of Christ. It doesn’t deal with the problem of sin.

And what I’ve laid out for you here, what I see in 1 Peter 1, these three points that I’ve mentioned this morning, all really summarize some of the ways that people think they’re getting into heaven. I told the story before of doing evangelism explosion training with First Southern Baptist Church in Dell City when I was a teenager. And we’d go out and knock doors.

And the idea was training and learning how to talk to people about Jesus Christ. And we’d go, as part of the program, you go and ask people two questions. And the idea with these two questions is you get as close to being able to tell, I think, as you can, without really knowing somebody else’s heart, where they are spiritually. And you’d ask, if you were to die today, God forbid, do you know where you would spend eternity?

Where would you go? And some people would say heaven, some people would say I don’t know. If they’re really honest, sometimes people would say I’m probably going to hell.

The second question you ask, the second question you ask, I think is even more telling about where they are spiritually. If you were to stand before God and have him ask you, why should I let you into my heaven, what would you tell him? And folks, some of the answers would be funny if they weren’t so sad.

Some of the answers that you get from just regular people on the street would be funny if they weren’t so sad. Well, I’ve lived a good life, the good works. Well, I’m a nice person.

I do this, I do that. Okay, so that identity or whatever you hold dear, you think God’s going to be impressed by that. Or, well, I don’t know what I’d tell him, but I plan to give up this sin, this vice.

Maybe if I sacrifice this for him. These are really answers that people give. Probably the most unusual answer I ever received was from a Buddhist lady who told me, because I am God.

I’m very rarely speechless. I’m very rarely at a loss for words, but in that case I was. Folks, all of these, all of these things that I’ve laid out for you, these things that are not as valuable as the blood of Christ, are things that people really today are trusting in for their eternal future, for their eternal salvation.

You leave off these grounds this morning, any direction you go, 

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