FBC Daily Devotional – April 22, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

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Well, a good Thursday to you. Week is getting by and we're coming rapidly to the end of yet another week.

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Well, let me share with you an experience I had many, many, many years ago now. I was a high school kid working at a

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Ponderosa Steakhouse and worked my way up to being a cook, you know, grilling the steaks.

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And there was a guy in our church that would come in every,

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I think it was every Sunday, just about every Sunday, and he always ordered the same steak.

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He always ordered the same thing. It was the Ponderosa Sirloin Steak.

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Well, I shouldn't say it was the same thing. It could have been one of two steaks. Either the sirloin steak, it was like a New York strip steak, or a ribeye.

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And by the way, when I started working there, you could get one of those ribeye dinners for a $1 .89.

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$1 .89. That tells you a couple things. One, it tells you about how long ago it was. The other thing it tells you is something about the quality of the meat.

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Anyway, so he always insisted that, you know, he said put the steak on the grill, count 15 seconds, flip it, count 15 seconds, and put it on the plate and hand it over.

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And I'm like, you've got to be kidding. I have never in my life been interested in eating a rare steak.

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I have no care for it whatsoever. If it's bloody, I don't want it.

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I can take pink, but I don't want it red. I do not want it red. Well, it's not against the law if you eat red meat and raw or rare, a rare steak or anything like that.

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But in the Old Testament, it was prohibited to eat any kind of meat if there was still blood in it, and there was good reason for that.

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And Leviticus 17, verses 11 and 12, give us an understanding of what that reason was.

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The blood contains the life -giving properties that the body needs. Now, in verse 12, here's the prohibition.

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It says, I've said to the children of Israel, no one among you shall eat blood, nor any stranger who dwells among you eat blood.

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That wasn't just the idea of taking a chalice and drinking, you know, not that.

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But eating meat where the blood was still in it. It had all to be drained out, and it had to be cooked well enough that there was no blood left.

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And verse 11 explains why. Why? Why this prohibition against eating any blood?

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Well, verse 11 says, the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar.

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I've given the blood to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul.

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There's the reason why eating of blood was prohibited in this Old Testament sacrificial system.

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The life of the flesh is in the blood. The blood makes atonement for the sins of the people.

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Now, that all gives us a gives us a pretty good insight into why the blood of Christ is so so precious and so priceless.

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In fact, in the New Testament, in the book of Hebrews, we get some insight into the importance of the blood of Christ in sacrifice, in the sacrifice for our sins.

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And that reminds me, by the way, at one time I taught a

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Bible class in a Christian school, and we're coming up on a chapter that dealt with the death of Christ and the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

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And so, just as kind of a teaser, I asked the question of the class,

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I said, would we be saved by the death of Christ if he died by hanging, you know, with a noose around his neck?

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And you could see some of the kids, you know, kind of puzzling over that one and thinking about that one. I said, I suppose,

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I mean, because he died, he died for our sins. And then we went to the book of Hebrews, and in Hebrews 9, listen to what we read.

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It says, but Christ became a high priest of the good things to come with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands.

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That is not a discreation. He went into that tabernacle not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood he entered the most holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

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For the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean sanctifies to the purifying of the flesh.

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How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living

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God? And verse 22, it says, and according to the law almost all things are purified with blood and without shedding of blood there is no remission.

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So, no class. Christ dying by hanging on a rope from a rope would not have atoned for our sins.

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It required the shedding of blood. And why? Why? Because, remember, because it required it required the blood, the life, the life to sacrifice for another life, and the life of the flesh is in the blood.

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It is the life of the sacrifice that atones for the sins of the living believer or sacrificer.

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Hebrews 9 verses 24 through 28 says, for Christ has not entered the holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true, but into heaven itself now to appear in the presence of God for us.

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Not that he should offer himself often as the high priest enters the most holy place every year with the blood of another.

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He then would have had to suffer often since the foundation of the world. But now once, once at the end of the ages, he has appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.

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And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment. So Christ was offered to bear the sins of many.

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To those who eagerly wait for him, he will appear the second time apart from sin for salvation.

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Oh, my friend, listen, realize that Christ in his work on the cross was a work that whereby he shed his precious life blood to atone for your sins.

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What a, what a priceless sacrifice. How, how immensely valuable is the precious blood of the

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Lord Jesus. Our Father and our God, we thank you today that the

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Lord Jesus gave himself to be a sacrifice in our place.

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Not just any kind of a sacrifice, but a blood sacrifice. Shedding his blood that our sins might be remitted.

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We thank you for this gracious gift. Thank you for his immensely precious and valuable offering in our behalf.

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We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. All right, well,