The one grand theme, the central, all-pervading subject of the
Bible, from beginning to end, is redemption by the blood of Christ.
It matters not who held the pen, whether Moses in the land of
Midian, or David in the mountains of Israel, or Daniel in the court
of Babylon, Paul, a prisoner at Rome, or John amid the bleak rocks
of the Isle of Patmos,--one golden thread runs through all their
records.
Just as in an orchestra the various notes and chords of the
musicians' instruments express the one central idea of the
composition they are rendering, so whatever chords are touched by
the hands of the holy writers in God's Book, one keynote vibrates,
that is, _salvation through the blood of the Lamb_.
"The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin,"
is the testimony of St. John. "Ye know that ye were redeemed by the
precious blood of Christ," is the plea of Saint Peter. "Justified
by His blood," is the Gospel of St. Paul. And the voices of heaven
blend with those of earth, for thus is the saints' eternal song:
"Worthy is the Lamb that was slain and hath redeemed us to God
by His blood." And this is the Church's theme on this particular
Sunday, as it reads in the Epistle: "Christ by His blood hath
obtained eternal redemption for us." The past Sundays in Lent have
we been seeking to learn what sin is and what sin does; how could we
more appropriately spend this service than to consider how we may be
saved from sin, and in that may the Scripture selected profitably
aid us.
Eight times had Pharaoh's hardened heart brought sorrow upon the
people of Egypt. As one calamity after another was fulfilled, he
seemed softened for a while and willing to comply with God's command
to let His people Israel go, but no sooner was the pressing plague
removed than he again defied the Lord of heaven. And now the tenth,
the last and most dreadful and desolating of visitations, was to be
sent. The king and his people are informed that, if Israel were not
allowed straightway to depart, the first-born in every home shall,
at one and the same hour, be slain.
But before the destroying angel started on his sorrowful mission,
the Israelites were directed to kill a lamb, to take its blood and
besprinkle therewith the headpiece and the two sideposts of their
dwellings. This was God's sacred mark. Wherever that crimson sign
would appear, the messenger of judgment was to pass over and spare.
It was as told. At the hour of midnight the avenging angel swept
over the land. All the first-born were slain. Not a house where
there was not one dead. In Pharaoh's palace and in the pauper's
hovel, stricken hearts bewailed the countenance of their eldest
suddenly darkened by death. Only in the houses of the Hebrews there
was security and peace, because the blood was on their doors. Such
is the simple historical event connected with our text, designed by
God to foreshadow a far greater and more important event, an event
that was to bear upon the whole race of man wherever, whenever, and
however found.
Three leading thoughts are suggested thereby: _I. All men, like the
inhabitants of Egypt, are exposed to the destruction and penalty
of death._ _II. A means of escape has been supplied._ _III. One
condition that connects with that escape._ And may God's Holy Spirit
work enlightenment and conviction!
That man, to take up the first point, is exposed to destruction
and death, is the clear and abundant testimony of Scripture, and
it tells why. "All have sinned," it says, and, "The wages of sin
is _death_." "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." And is there a
single heart among the sons and daughters of Adam that dare offer
remonstrance?
Since the time that the first human pair, smitten by the sense
of guilt, hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among
the trees of the garden, and their first-born son, with his hands
reddened by a brother's blood, declared that his punishment was
greater than he could bear, down to the ignoble disciple who,
after selling the life of his Master for filthy lucre, unable to
bear the upbraidings of conscience, went and hanged himself, the
consciousness of having broken God's Law and exposed one's self to
the righteous displeasure of the great Lawgiver, has haunted and
pained man everywhere and at all times, and filled him with a fear
which all his own efforts and every human appliance is powerless to
remove. Why go farther than our own selves? Is there a person here
who can declare that never for a moment has his soul's surface been
disturbed by feelings of regret, who can truthfully affirm that
he has never known what it means to experience remorse for duty
neglected, for wrong spoken or done? We have sought on previous
Sundays to drive home to your conscience the terrors of the law on
matters of the Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Commandments; and do you
mean to say that in a review of your past life you have no slightest
pain of self-reproach along these lines? If not, then your spirit
has been cast in a different mold from all others, or your memory
and conscience are both fast asleep. I take it that all are ready
to acknowledge not only that there is a law, a law written in God's
Word, as well as in your own hearts, but that we have also broken
that law time and again, and thereby--to quote the familiar words
of our Catechism--"have we exposed ourselves to God's wrath and
displeasure, temporal death, and eternal damnation."
This is the A B C of Christianity. And is there a way of escape, as
in the case of Egypt's death and destruction? no possibility of its
being said: "I will pass over you"? Ah, it is here that we come to
the heart and center of our holy religion, its pith and core, its
Holiest of Holy. Sprinkled upon the headpieces and the two posts of
their doors was the blood, God's own sacred mark. A lamb, none over
a year old, none with the slightest taint or blemish upon it, was
made to yield up its life in sacrifice to secure that blood. Need
I inform you what that typified, of whom that lamb was a type and
shadow? That unblemished lamb of sacrifice referred to Christ, "the
Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." That innocent
blood which turned aside the angel of death foreshowed the blood of
Christ, who through the Spirit offered Himself without spot to God.
Yonder upon that post with its two beams, reddened by crimson drops,
is the fulfillment, the realization, of it all. Simple, is it not?
God, by the application of a coat of blood upon its homes, could
redeem Israel from the avenging stroke. It was not for any among
them to speculate about it, to doubt and refuse it. To do so would
have meant disaster. Only in that blood was security, safety, and
deliverance.
There are many these days who are offended at the blood doctrine
of the cross; they will have none of it; it's puerile to them.
They know not whereof they speak. It reflects Heaven's profoundest
wisdom; it was thus, and only thus, that the authority and dignity
of God's Law could be maintained, and yet the transgressor pass
unpunished.
The supreme, the perfect and sinless Lawgiver Himself, even the
eternal Son, bearing the penalty in the room of those by whom it
had been incurred, and on whom it must otherwise and most justly
have fallen,--this is the only way in which peace could have been
reinstated between God and man, deliverance made possible. And this,
even this, is the great burden of the Gospel message, the only balm
of peace to the troubled soul, the only solid ground of hope for
another life,--without which all in this world would be darkness,
disorder, and despair. Imagine a prisoner under sentence of death
in his lonely cell; the last morning sun he ever expects to gaze on
streaming through his grated window, and the sound of busy hammers
erecting his gallows ringing in his ears, and, then, unbar the
bolts of his prison, and instead of leading him out to execution,
put into his hands the Governor's pardon, and bid him go forth and
enjoy till life's latest time the best and sweetest it can offer.
Or think of a crew of voyagers on a dark and stormy sea, a fearful
hurricane above, all around perilous rocks and quicksand, and the
vessel threatening every moment to part asunder below,--think of
them wafted all at once into a peaceful harbor and landed on a
hospitable shore. Figure yourselves placed in such and kindred
perilous circumstances, and followed by a like happy deliverance,
and you will still have only a dim shadow of the glorious and
blessed reality to which our text points. Far more terrible than
bodily bondage, more appalling than death of the body, is the terror
and the doom that attends a soul exposed to the extent of God's
wrath and destruction, and from that--deliverance, safety, and
escape through the blood of the Lamb.
There is, however, one point still that practically and to each of
us is the most important of all. It is not said simply: "I will
pass over you," but, "When I see the blood, I will pass over you."
It was not enough that the paschal lamb had been slain. Nor was it
sufficient that the Most High Lamb merely purpose to spare them as
His chosen people. If they would escape the calamity that was to
fall upon their heathen oppressors, they must sprinkle the blood
of that lamb openly on the posts of their doors. And even so it is
not enough that God will have all men to be saved and come unto
the knowledge of the truth; not enough that the Lamb of God was
slain to take away the sins of a guilty world, unless that blood is
sprinkled by faith on the heart, unless, in other words, Christ is
taken by each separately and individually as his or her Savior. It
is faith which forms the grand connecting link between the priceless
blessings of redemption and the perishing sinner's soul. What avails
it to the wretch who is being borne down by a rapid current nearer
and nearer to the fatal cataract to throw him a rope if he will not
grasp it? Or what to him whose dwelling is in flames, to place a
ladder for his rescue, if he will not so much as step upon it? Even
so, what will it serve any of us, but only fearfully to heighten
our condemnation, to be told of the great salvation, and have that
salvation pressed on us in almost every form of persuasive appeal,
as the only means of escape from death and destruction, if we still
refuse to it the homage of our hearts, and deem ourselves perfectly
safe without, and treat it as an idle tale?
Christ's blood has been shed, but before it can work its wonders,
can stay the arm of divine Justice uplifted to smite, that blood
must be sprinkled, too; and the reason why it is not sprinkled on
some, why it is not sprinkled on all who have heard of it, why all
such do not feel in their hearts and display in their lives its
cleansing, sanctifying power, is, and can only be, their willful,
stubborn unbelief. How it is with you whom I am now addressing it is
not for me to say.
Those only who are thus marked have any right to count themselves
to the Lord's people, and to set themselves at the Savior's table.
Let us hold, not as a dry doctrine, but as a blessed truth, that
apart from Christ's blood there is no salvation. Let us fix our
hearts with deeper and more prayerful love on Him; let it be ours
with a glow of spiritual fervor, a joy with which nothing else will
compare, to confess:
My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness.
Amen.