Blood Of The Covenant Series

ESSENTIAL KING JESUS: BLOOD OF THE COVENANT

MARK 14:24

#kingjesus

USE AUDIO BIBLE: Mark Chapter 14:1-72 [10:08]

https://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/esv/Mark.12

INTRODUCTION STORY (p)

A man once had a dream where he died. In his dream, this man stood in front of the throne of God and it was Judgement Day. All people from all tongues and tribes and nations were being judged at this time. He wasn’t sure how long he stood there because it is hard to tell time in eternity. As the man stood there, all sorts of books were opened before him. Angels were flipping pages to places in the books where it mentioned his life. Some had small entries. Some had entries about him that went from page to page to page. Gabriel, the messenger of God was also there.

Once all the books were opened, Satan the Accuser arrived on the scene. In his dream, Satan did not look like he expected with hooves and such, but looked like a red dragon in a very nice three-piece pin stripe suit. He looked very dapper and was smoking a very large cigar which smelled horrible. It smelled like death.

Satan the Accuser began to accuse the man for misdeeds, sins, errors, mistakes, omissions, offenses, and everything that had been wrong in his life. The man wanted to refute the charges, but each of them was absolutely true and were confirmed in the books laid out before him.

“Most High God,” Satan began, “The sins of this man, if I were to list them all, would take an eternity to recount. So, if you don’t mind, I will just hit the highlights and allow him to answer?”

Satan the Accuser looked up at God for an affirmation that the highlights would be good enough. He could not process unless permission was given. Satan wasn’t in charge. Satan is never in charge.

God nodded. Permission was given.

The man hung his head in shame as Satan the Accuser spouted off the secret things of his life along with the public things of his life that were mistakes.

“When this man was a teenager and even far into his adulthood,” Satan said at one point, “he liked to talk about himself often. When social media came along, those computer applications did nothing but feed his ego. Life was all about him. Every post about him. Every picture about him. Every decision this man made, even though he had a wife and children, was always about him.” Then Satan looked straight at the man and said, “Do you deny this?”

The man shook his head no. He did not deny it.

Then, Satan the Accuser asked a very important question of the man: “How will this sin be paid for?”

The man thought back on his brief life of around 60 years and came up with an idea. He spoke up and told Satan the Accuser, Gabriel, God, and all beings that could hear him about the time that he emptied his closet of all the clothes that did not fit him and gave the clothes to a thrift store. He did not even ask for a tax-deductible receipt. Some of them even had the price tags on them. Boom. Sacrifice. Come to think of it, he did this several times in his life and never once ran out of clothes. Surely this good deed gets him some amount of forgiveness.

Satan the Accuser looked at the man with a large smile and at God and asked, “Does giving clothes away as a good deed, or for that matter any amount of good deeds make up for the sin of self-absorption? Does any good deed or any amount of good deeds pay for sin?”

Gabriel, whose job it is to be God’s messenger, spoke for God, “No. No forgiveness.”

The man hung his head again in shame as Satan the Accuser spouted off more shameful highlights in his life:

“When this man was alive, he made having money his top priority. He skipped giving tips at restaurants. He padded his expense account at work to get a little more money. He took half of the birthday money sent to his kids from relatives and spent it on himself. Once he saw a guy drop his wallet right in front of him, took the money out of it, and then caught up to the man and acted like a hero giving him back his wallet. One time he used the business credit card for something personal. Oh wait, it was way more than once. And not to bring up too much, but when he was 10, he stole candy bars from a store by his house every week for two months.” Then Satan looked straight at the man and said, “Do you deny this?”