The Voice of Jesus Blood — A.W. Tozer

Beginning With God as the Foundation of Theology

We'll begin tonight with God, where all true theology begins, and all sermons ought to begin. I remember an old Irish preacher that I knew, dear old Brother Cunningham. He said to me one time, when he was very old, he never told how old he was, he always said with a sly smile he was between 25 and 80.

But he was quite along in years when he told me this. He said, I have been charged in my preaching with praying too much. He said, if I never get charged with anything any more serious than praying too much, I won't worry too much about it.

And I suppose, maybe, that there will be some, or maybe not here, but somewhere, who would shrug their shoulders and go out and say, that man is talking about God all the time. And if that's the only charge anybody can properly bring against me, I'll be quite a happy man.

I do talk about God a lot, the Triune God, because I too believe in God the Father Almighty, and in his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, and also in the Holy Ghost the Comforter. And so I begin with God here, in talking about the voice of Jesus' blood.

I begin where all theology begins, and where all sermons ought to begin, and where all prayer should begin, and where all truth does begin. Now, God is the one true absolute reality, I repeat, back of, and underneath, and supporting all things.

And he guards the universe, and holds it up, and guides it, and it's the only explanation for the universe, and it's the only explanation of human life. And he gives to human life its meaning, and its significance.

He is the secret meaning that gives validity to all meanings. And if we exclude God from our thinking, then we have no moral values left, and we have no right and wrong. Good is the same as evil, and evil is the same as good, and the lie is truth, and truth is a lie.

And it can't be proved that love is any better than hate, if you exclude God from your thinking. If you exclude God from your thinking, it can't be proved that life is any better than death, and it can't be proved that anything is anything, if we exclude God.

God's Life as the Source of All Life

So, we go back and we begin with God, for God is life, and all life there is is God's life. And to living things, God has given life, and he lends life without giving it up. If you lend anything, you have to give it up for the time that it's away from you.

But God lends without giving a thing up. God gives you life, but he is still the life he gives you, and so he doesn't lose anything by giving it to you, and so with everything else. God gives power, but he doesn't give his power away.

He gives wisdom, but he doesn't give his wisdom away. He gives grace, but he doesn't part with his grace. He keeps it while he gives it, because it is himself, and he gives himself to you and still has what he gives, and yet you also have it.

And so with everything, wisdom and being and power and holiness and every quality that God bestows upon men, God gives it to men because God is life. Now, God is life, and the scripture says that life is in the blood, and now we're back around to our text.

That life is in the blood. Blood is a symbol of life. Somebody, I don't know who the gentleman is, he's in this city and he's writing a book or a booklet or some sort of literary production on blood transfusion, and he called me up to inquire about the blood in the Old Testament and so on.

And I was happy to be able to tell him what the Bible teaches, because the Bible is here and anybody can read it about the blood. And it says that the blood is a symbol of life. The life is in the blood, as spoken more than once in the Old Testament.

And life is sacred because it's a gift from God. You see, God gives everything but doesn't give it away, and when God gives life to you, God doesn't give that life away and cut it off, but God still retains it, and so eternal life is having God in my soul, the life of God in the soul of a man.

Scruple, the old Puritan said, was Christianity, and so life is of God, and the blood is the symbol of the life. And life is sacred because it's a loan from God. For that reason, the shedding of blood is one of the gravest and most destructive sins that you may find anywhere in the Scripture.

Cain, Abel, and the Cry of Blood Guilt

Remember that Cain's brother's blood cried unto the ground against Cain. Cain took his brother out, and I don't know how he killed him, but killed him in a bloody way, so that his blood ran down onto the leaves and down into the soil.

But when that blood congealed there, it was not forgotten of God. Then God said to the murderer of Abel, I think I've said Cain's blood, but I've been meaning Abel's blood because it was Cain who was the murderer, of course.

But when Abel's blood went down into the soil and congealed there, it became eloquent and spoke loudly, Thy brother's blood crieth unto the ground. Now, when David later on, many centuries later on, had been guilty of a great number of sins, he'd been guilty of deception and deceit and disloyalty, and he had been guilty of adultery, and finally guilty of murder.

When he got down on his knees to pray, it all summed up in one thing, and he said, deliver me from blood guiltiness, O God. What hurt David and brought him to his knees was that he had been guilty of violating the sacred precincts of life, and turning that life out.

Blood guiltiness, he called it, and wherever there's unavenged blood guiltiness anywhere in the world, you may be sure that that society is in trouble. Always that society is in trouble. Now, I wouldn't by any means at all, I wouldn't enter into the argument about whether I believe in capital punishment or not.

I would simply say I believe the Bible, and whatever the Bible teaches, I believe. And the Bible teaches that if man sheds another man's blood, the only way society can balance the scales is by shedding that man's blood and thus avenging the man who was slain.

That's what the Bible teaches. Now, I know that there are ten thousand old maids, and dear blessed old maids, male and female, who are so soft and so spongy-headed that a man can murder his mother-in-law and beat up his wife and drown his son and kill four or five other people and go to jail, and they'll send him flowers and mash notes and say, poor fellow, society did that to you.

Society's got you in jail, poor fellow, and they'll turn him loose in order that he might kill a few more before he gets too old. Well, the scripture says that the only way to handle blood guiltiness is to avenge it, and the blood of Abel cried to the ground against the man who had shed that blood.

And God wrote into the law, the old law, before Moses' law, God wrote into the law the old patriarchs that if a man shed blood he shall die for the shedding. Because, you see, what he's done is he has entered into the sacred precincts of life, and God being life, he has sneaked in, as it were, and intruded obscenely into the very presence of God, and has taken that which no man has any right to take except by the command of God.

Bloodshed, Human Dignity, and Judgment on Society

In honor of his blood guiltiness, I say, we'll ruin his society, for the voice of blood is the voice of life, and the voice of shed blood is the voice of violated life. When I think of the country to the south of us, I was born and grew up and lived most of my life.

I'm afraid. When I think of how many murders there are walking about, when I think of, say, a man like Al Capone. I've gone down by the building where Al Capone used to have his headquarters, the Metropole Hotel down on Michigan Avenue.

I suppose it's been sold, and it may be a respectable hotel now, but he did hang around there. And when I was in Florida, somebody took me out and showed me Al Capone's star island that they'd made out in the Gulf.

And Al Capone, everybody's heard about him, and they say that he was personally, personally responsible for the bloodletting of 50 men. That is, he himself killed 50 men, according to the reports that the police have on the man.

And yet, when it came time to want to try to get him out of circulation, you know what they did? They said, you bad boy, you didn't pay your income tax. So they threw him in jail for not paying his income tax, and he went in there with the red blood of 50 men on his hands, and they threw him into jail, and he had him sentenced to stay in there 11 years, they said, because he didn't pay your income tax.

So instead of avenging the blood of 50 men, why, they took a man on a technicality and put him out of circulation for a little while. I tell you, when you consider that I don't have the statistics in my hands and I couldn't remember them for long enough, unless I read them, to repeat them, but when I consider how many murders there are committed on this continent in the course of a year, and how few are ever avenged, I wonder whether we're not piling up, I wonder whether everywhere throughout our whole continent there isn't a voice, the eloquent voice of bloodshed blood, crying to God Almighty.

Here was a man, just the papers had it here recently in this, was it in this city or nearby? He killed his wife and drowned his two little boys, and then shot himself. They couldn't get to that man, but there's unavenged blood.

And wherever there is blood that cries from the ground, the human race crying from the ground against the innocent, crying against the guilty, and where law takes no account of it, and where the authorities pay no attention to it, but we let sentiment and silly romanticism take over for committing grave sins, because life is in the blood, and God gave life to the world, and the nearest thing to God is life, and the nearest thing to life is blood, and therefore the nearest thing to the killing of God is the killing of a man made in God's image, and turn against other men made in God's image with hate and malice, or with gossip that injures, with impurity practiced upon them, or any other evil thing, you can be sure that it raises an eloquent voice prophesying judgment.

Repentance and Revival for the Continent

To repeat, my dear people, what I have said, I think before, that I haven't any fear whatsoever these two nations that lie north of the Rio Grande. I believe that no nation, no combination of nations, would be able in a thousand years to come in by military conquest and bring down these two nations which, if war should come, would be instantly at each other's sides, shoulder to shoulder.

Spitballs they throw across the board at each other would all be forgotten, as we'd realize that we're one, and we'd fight together, and when we do, I believe that there's grace enough, and grit enough, and power enough, and wisdom enough, and ability enough, and money enough that we could crush any nation or combination of nations that could rise against us.

So, I have no fear of any military conquest, but here's what I do fear. I fear that we shall sin, and continue to sin, and not do anything about it, and continue to sin, and never clean up the mess, and never repent, and never go to God in sorrow.

That we'll continue to play and repent no more, or repent not at all, and the voice of blood will get so eloquent that God Almighty will have to hear it from his throne above, and that instead of a combination of nations rising to destroy us, that God Almighty will himself speak the words that will bring us down.

I fear this. I fear when God becomes angry with nations. I fear in that terrible day when the cup of iniquity gets filled, and God from his heaven above looks down and says there's blood on their soil, and blood on the rocks, and blood on the highway, and blood in the hidden places, and blood everywhere, and he will send his judgment upon man.

This I fear. I tell you frankly, I fear it. Though I don't fear any military conquest, but I fear this. I only pray, O God, send a revival that will begin at Hudson Bay and sweep through the Rio Grande, or begin at Florida Keys and sweep through Vancouver and Whitehorse and Alaska, that this continent might be saved from destruction, not by the dew line and not by her atom bombs, but by repentance and the fear of God.

For now, God heard and hears the eloquence of blood, the eloquence of violated life. But remember that God always acts like himself. If you never remember anything else that I've told you in these sermons, always remember that I have said God acts like himself, and he never acts any other way.

So God became flesh and dwelt among us. God said, What will I do with these blood-stained people? What will I do with the blood-stained world? What will I do with the people who have entered into the holy place and have shed blood of men made in my image, and have sinned against each other, and by malice and gossip and evil tongues and knives and guns they have committed mayhem and murder upon human reputations and upon human bodies?

God says, What shall I do? And then God says, I know what I'll do. I'll go myself and become one of them. I'll go myself and I'll take upon me the form of a man, and I will have blood running in my veins, too.

It will not be the tainted blood of Adam, but it will be pure blood, three times holy. And so he came and was born of the Virgin Mary. Why do we wait till Christmas time to celebrate the coming of Jesus, to be born of the Virgin Mary?

I think there isn't a day of my life that goes by that I don't hum over in my soul or openly thank God with my voice that his son Jesus came to die and was made flesh to dwell among us. So God said, I will come down and I will become man.

And so he came to his own, and his own received him not. But he was here, and in his veins I say, there ran the untainted thrice holy blood of a holy, sinless man. And then into that holy body, and circulating through those holy veins, there went, for all the moral pollution of the world was on that holy body, and in that holy soul.

Christ's Holy Blood as the Sacrifice for Sin

For he made his soul a sacrifice for sin, the scripture says. He offered him not only his body, but his soul for mankind. And into all the offenses of the human race against God and against each other, and the blood, the offense of Cain against his brother Abel, and the offense of Esau against his brother Jacob, and the offense of David against whose wife he stole, and the offense of Judas when he betrayed his Lord, and the offense of all of those who killed the martyrs down the years, and the offense and corruption of all the Alcapones, and all the Adolf Hitlers, and all the Adolf Eichmann, and his whole brother and sister.

I don't think we half believe this. I think if we even half believed this, it would transform us. I think it would get into us so that we couldn't talk normally about things, or our minds would run to this wonder, so we'd be absent-minded about worldly affairs.

And we would think about this, that there ran in his holy blood, and upon his holy body, all the offenses, all the pollutions of mankind. And I have proved my own remaining traces of Phariseeism tonight, when I have named Cain, and Esau, and Hitler, and Eichmann.

I should rename them as being any worse than we are. Yet here the great German poet said, I have never heard of a sin being committed that I did not know that I had the seeds of it in me. And I don't think that Adolf Eichmann ever committed a sin, that the seed of that sin is not in men, cultured men, educated men, kindly men, but the seed of it is there.

And instead of standing back at a respectable and safe distance from the Hitlers and Caligulas of the world, why shall we not frankly say, oh God, I'm as bad as any of them. I didn't get it committed, I didn't get it done, but I had the seeds of it in me.

And if all of my sins were known, and all the sins I wanted to commit and didn't, and all the sins I did commit and didn't, nobody knew it. If they were all known, I couldn't raise my head in the presence of a holy God.

So the voice of Jesus is now pleading for us, because the voice of Jesus is not the blood of a murdered man. Let's keep that in mind. Ye by wicked hands have crucified and slain him, said the Holy Ghost.

But it was not a murder that was committed, though they meant it to be so, but it was a sacrifice offered. And God turned a cross into an altar, and they put a criminal out there, a criminal by their own statement.

They put a criminal out there on the cross, and God turned the cross into an altar, and turned the criminal into a lamb. And it was a lamb offering himself on an altar, not a man dying on a cross for his sins.

For he had no sins of which to die. He shed his blood for violated blood. And now I said I feared for our continent, I fear for the human race, because I'm afraid we'll pile up blood on blood and blood on blood.

I'm afraid we'll pile it up till the holy God can no longer withhold just judgment. But now I find hope coming to my heart, too, because I remember that in the blood of Christ the blood of the world was shed.

We sing sometimes, bread of the world in mercy broken, wine of the soul in mercy shed, by whom the words of life were spoken, and in whose death our sins are dead. And Paul says, for the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus believe that if one died for all, then are all dead.

And they that should live no longer unto themselves, but unto him who loved them and gave himself for them. So, Christ's blood was our blood. He shed, he died, and when he died, we died. This is the theology of New Testament victory.

Union With Christ in His Death and Resurrection

This is the theology of our friends at Plymouth Red, and always. This is the theology of the Keswick people. This is the theology that I knew as a boy in the Alliance. The theology that Christ and I are united so that when he died, I died, and when he rose, I rose.

This is the doctrine of victory, and you can't get victory anywhere else. We can get victory only by knowing that we died. I've got to die, I've got to die. God can't transfer and say, well, I'll let this man die in your stead, and you're just free and all out of it.

He didn't do like that quite. What he did was to join me to that man, Jesus Christ, by the wonder and mystery of incarnation on his part and regeneration in us. He joined us to that man so that when he died, we died.

It was not only a transfer, it was not only a vicarious, but it is an actuality. And every Christian, the scripture says, may consider himself to have died in Christ. Read the 6th chapter of Romans, read the 8th chapter of Romans, read the 5th chapter of 2nd Corinthians, and see for yourself that this is the doctrine of the Bible, that Christ, when he became humanity, made it possible for us to get up into Deity, not to become Deity, but to be united with Deity, so that God counts Christ's death to be my death, and he counts the sacrifice Christ laid down to be mine.

I repeat, for the love of Christ constrained us, because we thus judge that if one died for all in our all dead, they that live shall not live again unto themselves. No man, no man has any right to sin again now.

The Blood of Jesus and the Christian Life

The voice of Jesus' blood is eloquent, one of the most eloquent sounds in the human mind. Wherever the church is, wherever her songs are raised, wherever the prayers of her saints rise, you may hear the voice of Jesus' blood pleading eloquently, and saying that in the blood of Christ the sins of the world died, they'll only believe it, and saying that no man has any right to sin again.

Every sin is a moral incongruity now, for you and I are supposed to have died, with Jesus Christ our Lord, and when we joined, we were joined to him in the new birth, we were joined to his death, and when we were joined to him, we were joined to his rising again.

So that now, sin is a moral incongruity in the life of a Christian. A sinner sins because he's out there in the world, and he's never died. He's waiting to die, and he'll die once, and then later he'll die the second death.

But a Christian dies once, and that's all the dying he does. A Christian dies with Christ, and dies in Christ, and dies along with Christ, and then when he lays his body down down here, the scripture says he shall not see death.

God Almighty covers the eyes of all Christians when they die. They never see death. They stop breathing, and they bury them, but they haven't died. They died long ago. They died in Christ when Christ died, and they rose with Christ when Christ died.

But the body comes dragging along behind, of course, and so it'll come later. So that's why sin is a moral incongruity. That's why, brothers and sisters, I can't stand this boutonniere of Christianity.

You know what I mean by that? I mean Christianity as a button, a flower stuck on your lapel like you stick a badge on, or something. I believe that the gospel of Christ saves men completely through and through, and that they ought to be totally committed, dedicated men, joined to Christ so completely that what he is, they are.

Where he is, they be. What he does, they do. Sin now is a brazen outrage against holy blood. Sin now is to crucify the Son of God afresh. Sin now is to belittle the blood of atonement. Sin now, for a Christian, is to insult the holy life laid down.

I hope no Christian wants to do it. I don't think any Christian wants to sin, but that's for another matter and another sermon. I must go on to say that all offenses against God will either be forgiven or avenged.

The Blood of Abel and the Better Blood of Jesus

Now we can take our choice. All offenses against God, against ourselves, against humanity, against human life, all offenses will either be forgiven or avenged. And there are two voices, one pleading for vengeance and the other pleading for mercy.

The blood of Abel is the old blood of murdered men, and it's pleading for vengeance. The blood of thy brother pleads to me and cries from the ground. Hear now the voice of Jesus' blood making another plea.

It is the voice pleading for mercy, says here, speaks better things than that of Abel. It is Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, whose blood speaks better things than that of Abel. So the voice of the blood of Jesus is pleading tonight.

The Father's House and the Christian's Future

Who has it said here tonight that I have no words in effect, I have no worries about the future, my future's planned? Ah, I believe it, sir, I believe it. What a terrible thing it is to get old and have no plans laid for the future at all, not know where you're going, waiting around.

What a terrible thing it is! But how beautiful, how beautiful to come up like a ripe shock of corn and know that the Father's house is open and his doors are not shut, and he's waiting to receive his ransomed children, one at a time, into the Father's house.

The native Christian, I believe from either Vietnam or Thailand, I've forgotten which, testified once or gave a talk in my hearing, and he spoke reasonably good English, and he's telling about the missionaries that had won him and the missionaries that he knew, the lance missionaries that he knew back in his native land.

He referred to one and described that one and said, but he is in the Father's house now, and he talked about another one and said, but she's in the Father's house now, and that from a Christian that just a generation ago was pagan, worshiping idols.

Now he talks about the Father's house is open just across the street and up the lawn a little way. This I believe in, that the Father's house is waiting for his children. God isn't mad at his people, he isn't mad at us, but because Jesus died for us and because the blood of Jesus speaketh better things than the blood of Abel, because the mercy of God speaks louder than the voice of justice, all of the Lord's people can, when the time comes, lie down quietly and say, Father, I'm coming home.

The Cleansing and Victory of Christ's Blood

But I don't want to preach a funeral sermon. I want to tell you that there is a voice I hear, and it's the voice of Jesus, blood pleading for mercy over the people. We ought to make more of the blood of the Lamb, you know it.

We ought to make more of the blood of the Lamb, because it's by the blood we are saved, it's by the blood the atonement was made, it's by his blood that victory is given, it's by his holy blood. And it is by his holy blood that I can enter into the presence of God.

I never, never could enter the presence of God except by that holy blood. You know, we used to sing a song, I don't know whether you ever heard it or not, but if you didn't, it would be well worth your singing and hearing.

It is not a great hymn, it is what we call a camp meeting song. I like camp meeting songs, the old-fashioned songs about the blood and the new birth and the fullness of the Holy Ghost. It doesn't have the dignity and restraint of the great hymns, it has the little of the bounce of the gospel song, but it's more restrained and more theological.

Listen to the theology of this wonderful camp meeting song. It goes like this, written by a Methodist preacher a generation ago. It says, The cross, the cross, the blood-stained cross, the hallowed cross I see, reminding me of precious blood that once was shed for me.

A thousand, thousand fountains spring up from the throne of God, but none to me such blessings bring as Jesus' precious blood. That priceless blood my ransom paid when I in bondage stood. On Jesus all my sins were laid, he saved me with his blood.

By faith that blood now sweeps away my sins as like a flood, nor lets one guilty blemish stay to Jesus' blood. This wondrous theme will best employ my heart before my God, and make all heaven resound with joy for Jesus' cleansing blood.

Ever hear that song? Wonderful, and it has a chorus which I skipped, but I'll read now. Oh, the blood, the precious blood that Jesus shed for me upon the cross in crimson flood, just now by faith I see.

Christ's Wounded Hands Pleading for Mercy

I tell you that blood from the altar is pleading eloquently for you. Years ago, in a sermon by a Canadian preacher, it might have been the Canadian army that was told in the States, and it could have been an American army.

But there was, in the service, he was a bit of a roughneck, and he never do well. He had come into the service more or less recently in wartime, and his older brother had been in the service for some years, and had risen in the ranks and had become quite a well-known and celebrated soldier with some authority.

But when his younger brother came in, he sort of leaned on the older man, drank and broke rules, and went absent without leave and all the rest. They'd catch him, put him in the jug for a while, and then the older brother would come and plead with the commanding officer, and they'd let him go.

So one day, the commander in charge said, Now I've had it. For your sake, for your sake, let your brother off too often. And he's taken advantage of it. The next time, nothing you can say. So there was a next time, the young fellow got drunk again, something else.

He lined the men up, and he said, step, and the young fellow stepped forward and picked his heels and started attention. And he told the great, I'm trying to think of the name of the, I'll call it a company, although it was more than a company, and he said to the company, Now this man is one of you.

He's broken our rules. He's bad for morale. He's helping the enemy by his conduct. Anyone here who can speak a word in his favor, step forward. But uttered not one word. He raised his hand, had been mangled in the fight.

The old general shook his head and said, You can go this one more time. One more time for the sake of the bloody hand, for the sake of the mangled hand. But he celebrated, and does he have a name that's above every name.

For his sake, our father has been putting up with an awful lot from us, brothers and sisters. You know that? We're carnal, we're gossipy, we're stingy, temper, jealousy. He's been putting up with a lot.

He's doing it for the sake of his holy son. Jesus Christ, our Lord, doesn't have to stand and pray at the right hand of God. He makes intercession, but I doubt whether it's the voice of continual talk.

His intercession lies in his two wounded hands. When the children of God violate the covenant, God hears the voice of the wounded hand and forgives. But is that the reason why we should be careless and go on and take advantage, never, never, while the world stands?

Brothers and sisters, we ought to be the cleanest, purest, most righteous, the holiest people in all. For the blood of Jesus Christ can sweep away our sins as like a flood, nor let one guilty blemish.

They all praise the Jesus blood. Let us pray. Now, I want to pray with some direction, if I can. And I would ask those present who would say, Mr. Torger, I want to be converted. I want to know Christ as my Savior and Lord.

Prayer for Conversion and Dedication

And then there are those who want to say, pray for me, because while I agree with the theology of this, my life hasn't been an example of it quite as it should have been. I want you to pray for me, that I be a dedicated, committed, God-enamored, blood-cleansed, spirit-filled person.

I want to live that way, Mr. Torger. That's in my heart. I want to be that kind of Christian. You'll put your hand up and we'll pray. Raise the hand, please. Yes, yes. Who else? Yes, yes. Others? Raise the hand.

Up in the balcony. Down here, anybody else? Raise the hand. Let's pray. Father, we pray for these who raise the hand. We have no way of knowing what the need might be. Thou knowest about it. But the great thing is that the heart is determined and the will is set that they'll hear this voice of the blood of Jesus speaking and pleading like a lawyer before a court, pleading for his client.

Advocate above, Savior by the throne of love pleads, and we pray that they may hear that voice. May quietly tonight turn away from everything, everything that could possibly slow them down, put away every weight and everything that could keep them from being the kind of Christians they ought to be.

And we pray for any who may not be Christians or who may be on the border, not sure, God in Christ's name, we pray that they may turn to thee with all their hearts. For if ye call upon me with all your heart, ye shall most surely find me.

Help us now, Lord, as we wait a little further and sing thy praise in Christ's name.