There Is Power In The Blood – Part 2
The Perfect Sacrifice
Last week we began our Bible Study of the power of the blood of the Lamb. We started by looking at the questions, just what is it about blood that is so special, and not just any blood, but especially the blood of Jesus Christ? Why do Christians place such emphasis on what we call the blood of the Lamb?
We began laying some groundwork to answer these questions by going back to the very beginning and looking at heaven and what happened there that required blood to be created. Let’s briefly review to refresh you memories and bring those who weren’t with us last week up to speed.
I. Brief Review
By studying three important scriptures: Exodus 25:8-9, Psalm 11:4, and Rev. 11:19, we saw that the tabernacle and later the temples that were built by God’s chosen people, the Jews, as dwelling places on earth for God were actually patterned after the original temple that exists in heaven.
This heavenly temple houses God’s throne. It serves as a place of sanctuary and worship. Today, it is where Jesus Christ, our high priest, is interceding on our behalf to the Father.
Before mankind was created, the angels, led by a special anointed cherub, worshipped God in the heavenly temple. We studied Ezekiel 28:13-18, which gave us a picture of this cherub and a glimpse of the tragedy that happened in this sacred place. The prophet, Ezekiel, tells us how Lucifer, that anointed cherub, was created beautiful and perfect in all his ways until the moment he sinned.
We saw how the first sin ever committed didn’t take place in the Garden of Eden, like many believe. But actually took place in heaven. And not just anywhere in heaven, but in the very temple of God. Lucifer or Satan committed the first sin and as a result two things happened.
One – he was thrown out of heaven. Luke 10:18 “And he (Jesus) said unto them, ‘I beheld Satan as lightening fall from heaven’.”
And two – his sin defiled the very temple of God in heaven and all the articles in it. Therefore, God had to make a way to purge or cleanse the temple, and that way was through the use of blood. Hebrews 9:22, “And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission (of sin).”
Since God is a spirit and does not have blood, and angels are spirit and do not have blood, God created a new creature. A being made with a three-fold nature like Himself. He made man with a body, a spirit, and a soul. And as we read in our main text last week Lev. 17:11, man lives because of a special substance which God placed inside of us – blood.
Blood is a powerful substance, because not only does it give life to our physical bodies, but it also gives eternal life to our souls, because Leviticus said that blood is what gives atonement of sin for the soul.
And last we saw how God uses blood as a weapon to overcome sin and Satan and how powerless Satan truly is against this weapon because as a spirit he has no blood of his own to combat the power of the blood of the Lamb.
That was the gist of what we covered last week. (Copies on the vestibule table). Today we are going to continue our study of the blood of Jesus by looking at the necessity of His virgin birth and how He is the perfect sacrifice.
II. The Need For a Sacrifice
So, let’s take another look at Leviticus 17:11, which is again our main Scripture passage for this week.
Leviticus 17:11, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is blood that maketh atonement for the soul.”
A. Sin-Tainted Blood
In the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve sinned, they inherited something they were never intended to receive. They inherited the process of death. Death was the consequence of sin.
The Bible tells us in Romans 6:23, “For the wages of sin is death…”
And God had warned Adam and Eve in Genesis 2:17 about the consequences of disobeying Him, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
All three parts of man died or began to die at the moment Adam and Eve chose to disobey God. The spirit and soul of man died immediately. Though those two parts of us are eternal – meaning they do not cease to exist once they are created – they died in the manner that they were immediately severed from their connection with God.
That is what sin does. It kills our connection with our Creator. It keeps us from living the kind of life we were meant to live. A life of walking and talking and serving and dwelling with our Father.
The physical body also began to die when sin was chosen over obedience to God’s instructions. Adam and Eve didn’t physically die, immediately. They didn’t just fall over right there on the spot. But their life, which the Bible tells us is in their blood, became tainted or corrupted by sin. And from that moment, their physical bodies began to decline and eventually die.
This is exactly what is still happening to mankind today. Because we are all descendants of Adam, and therefore have all inherited his sin-tainted blood.
Romans 5:12, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.”
B. Life for Life and Blood for Blood
But luckily for us, God wasn’t finished with us yet. He had a plan of redemption. He determined to make things right between His fallen creation and Himself. And that plan had to do with blood.
In order for life to be restored to all three parts of fallen man, a perfect life, one untouched by sin, had to take its place. That makes sense, doesn’t it? If something is broken and unfixable, don’t you buy another just like it, that isn’t broken or in need of repair, to replace it? Especially, if whatever it may be is something which you rely on, or get a lot of use out of.
Well, this is what God decreed was necessary in order for man to once again be in right-standing with Him – sin-free, untainted and alive.
But since the penalty for sin is death, and God is a just God and can’t simply wave away the death penalty as if nothing happened, He declared that in order for life to be given or restored an innocent, untainted, perfect life had to be given in its place. His decree was a life for a life.
And since the Bible says that the life of the flesh is in the blood and it is blood that makes atonement for the soul – in order for the life of the flesh and the soul to be restored, untainted blood had to be given as a replacement for the blood and soul that did not have life in them. Life for life and blood for blood.
But God could not allow one human being to be offered up for another human being’s sin. This sacrifice would be unacceptable. Besides, if all it took to redeem mankind was the death and shedding of a righteous man’s blood, then Abel’s death at the hand of his brother should have taken care of sin from the very first generation.
But, God refused to allow one human being’s blood to act as atonement for another human being’s sin, because everyone has the same kind of blood. Not blood type – but blood. We are all descendants of Adam, so we all have blood tainted or corrupted by sin.
Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.”
Everyone is under the death penalty of sin. Whether you like it or not you are a descendant of Adam and carry the inherited sin nature from Him. No matter how good we are, we will never be good enough to cover our own sin or anyone else’s.
C. A Temporary Sacrifice
So God decided to allow a temporary substitute to be sacrifices to cover man’s sin. That temporary substitute was animals. Remember, animals are all flesh, and the life of the flesh is in the blood. So the blood of animals were used to atone for, or cover the transgressions of man.
Animals, like every other part of creation were affected by sin and the fall of man. It became harder for them to survive, they became affected by sickness and disease, etc. But they do not have souls like man does, in which to choose to sin and rebel against their Creator or not. Therefore, the blood of animals would not be considered to be tainted by sin. Likewise, animals are not descendants of Adam and are not born with a sin-tainted blood. Therefore, the blood of animals was accepted as atonement for the souls of man.
God started this practice in the Garden of Eden when He killed the animals to provide coverings for Adam and Eve’s shame. He was showing us that in order for our sins to be covered or atoned for, innocent blood had to be shed as a replacement. And this practice of animal sacrifice went on for thousands of years.
However, God really did not want the blood of animals. This was only a temporary sacrifice at best. For every time a person sinned, they would then have to offer up an animal sacrifice in order to cover that sin and be returned to right-standing with God. For the atonement of sin to be completely acceptable and permanent, there had to be a human replacement. Like for like. The perfect sacrifice would be a man untainted by sin that could act as a sacrifice for sin once and for all.
The key to this plan is to find a sacrifice with pure blood, so favored of God that when that person is sacrificed it is enough to take care of all the sins of past, all of the sins of the present, and all of the sins of the future.
But where was God going to find someone that fit that description? All of mankind is descended from Adam, and all of our blood, or life has been corrupted by sin.
Well, God of course had a plan all laid out before He even laid down the foundation of the world. And it can be explained by looking at how the first and last Adams came into existence.
III. How the First and Last Adams Came To Be
A. The First Adam
When Adam, the first man in Genesis, was created, he began life with an adult body. He was not born like you and me. He did not come through the seed of a human being. God formed him first. He first made a physical body for Adam, and when it was fully made, God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the body began to live, speak, and walk.
We see this in Genesis 2:7, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into this nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.”
We can again see that man is made up of more than one part. Here we have the making of the physical body, the outer shell, from the dust of the ground and then we see God placing the eternal part of man inside it by breathing into his nostrils.
The word translated as ‘soul’ in this verse, is the Hebrew word “nephesh.” This is the same word that is translated as ‘life’ in Lev. 17:11 where is says the life of the flesh is in the blood. The Bible is saying that the life, nephesh or soul, of man is found in the blood. God placed blood directly into Adam’s body. In the Garden of Eden, God breathed blood into Adam – sinless, perfect blood. But when Adam sinned, his blood because corrupt, and he was then able to die.
B. The Last Adam
Jesus is called the last Adam in scripture, and He was not born like you and me either. Jesus, like Adam, didn’t have an earthly father. His mother Mary, was a virgin, she had never known a man. Joseph was not the biological father of Jesus. The heavenly Father, God, was His Father, and the Holy Ghost conceived or brought His physical body to life within Mary.
Hebrews 10:5 tells us, “Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he (Jesus) saith, ‘Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body thou prepared Me.’”
A physical body had been prepared for the Lord just as one had been formed for Adam. So when Jesus was conceived, His flesh was already formed or prepared for Him in Mary.
Luke 1:35, “And the angel answered and said unto her (Mary), ‘The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.’”
When the Holy Ghost overshadowed Mary, the same thing happened as when God placed the life force, or soul and spirit, into Adam’s body. The Holy Spirit put the blood and soul and spirit of our Savior into the body prepared for Him, and it was the same type of blood that was originally placed in Adam. It was perfect, incorruptible, pure blood that had not been corrupted by sin.
This is why Jesus had to be born of a virgin. In order to have incorruptible blood, He had to get His blood from His true Father, God. If Joseph, had conceived Him, then He would have inherited the tainted blood of all mankind. Because the Bible teaches that just as blessings are inherited through the generations from the father, so are curses inherited through the father. And sin is a curse, which is inherited by all mankind.
So, with the birth of Jesus, now God has the perfect sacrifice. A man not an animal, with a physical body, not just a spirit, containing blood, which was untainted by sin and could act as the replacement or substitute for all of mankind’s corrupted blood.
God also now has the perfect blood He needed to cleanse the temple in heaven, which had been defiled by the sin of Lucifer.
We’re going to end it on that thought and continue with this topic next week.
