The Power of the Blood - Sermon 4 of 5 - the Sprinkling of the Blood — Roy Hession

The Sprinkling of Christ’s Blood Unto Obedience

Will you turn to the first epistle of Peter, chapter one, the first epistle of Peter, chapter one. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia.

Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. All the other processes of our salvation are to that end.

Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father. And that, through the working of the Holy Spirit, through sanctification of the Spirit, you didn't take a step toward Jesus, but that the Holy Spirit provoked it and drew you.

And it was unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. That's how it is in the authorised version. And as so often, there's one thing about that translation, it is word for word. Nicer English might be achieved by adding a little extra, but it's nice to know that if there's a word in the English, in the authorised, you can find that word in your young's analytical concordance.

Perhaps you don't know that great book, but there it is. And the words I especially want to underline for you is, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Our subject this morning is the sprinkled blood.

The Old Testament Pattern of Sprinkled Blood

Not merely the shed blood, but the sprinkled blood. In other words, the blood applied. And I said to Pam as we were coming down, I believe our subject this morning is the most important of all that we've taken so far.

In the Old Testament, and under the Mosaic Law, much is said about the blood being shed by the sacrificial victims. But just as much is the blood being sprinkled, as spoken of in the Old Testament. I turned to my concordance and I counted up no less than 41 times when it talks about the sprinkling of the blood, not the shedding of the blood here, but the sprinkling of the blood.

Moses sprinkled the blood, or got the people so to do, on the doorposts of their houses on the Passover night. When the tabernacle was erected and all its various bits of furniture, the mercy seat, all was sprinkled with atoning blood.

When the priests and the high priests were put in their office and had their special robes put upon them, they were sprinkled with the blood. And the unclean, the ceremonially unclean, either become unclean because they had been lepers, or they had had contact with death, which always rendered a man ceremonially unclean, upon them was the same sprinkling of the blood, or that which pictured the blood.

And in the New Testament, when they recount some of these incidents, they're always very careful to add about the sprinkling, the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean. Yes, that is there in Numbers 19, but it's specially spoken of.

When it's quoted in the New Testament, the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean. When in Hebrews 9, the writer is talking about the Old Covenant and its giving, he tells us that Moses sprinkled with blood both the book and the people.

And when he refers to the Passover in Hebrews 9, once again that is spoken of by faith. Moses kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, lest he destroy the firstborn and touch them. And so there is this aspect, the sprinkling of the blood.

The Blood Applied to Salvation

Now, when applied to our salvation, what does the sprinkling of the blood that took place so frequently mean for us? It simply means the blood that has been shed being applied to the man in question, or anything else.

And so the sprinkled blood means the blood applied. Unless that precious blood is applied to situations, to your heart, to all sorts of things that need cleansing, Jesus died in vain. And that's why our subject this morning is so important.

The sprinkled blood, the blood applied. There are three verses in the New Testament where the sprinkled blood applied to us is quoted. Of course, when the New Testament refers to an incident in the Old Testament where the blood was sprinkled, as some of the cases I've mentioned to you, it's there.

But that's, of course, only recounting an Old Testament happening. But there are three places where this phrase is applied to us and how important they are. The first is in Hebrews 12, 24. It's breaking into a glorious passage and it says, We come to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel.

And the hymn writer in that old, ancient and modern hymn. And I tell you, there are still some glorious gems in that old, ancient and modern. The trouble is they never seem to choose them. They always have the dirgy hymns.

And one common meter tune has to do duty for any old hymn. It isn't the hymn books that are at fault. It's the use we make of them. I could tell you, we could confine ourselves, if you like, to the ancient and modern and you would take off a hymn.

So great and glorious they are. And there is that one, which we have already sung once. Glory be to Jesus, who in bitter pains poured for us his lifeblood from his sacred veins. And that verse has, aft as it is sprinkled on our guilty hearts, Satan in confusion, terror struck, depart.

The Blood That Speaks Better Things Than Abel’s Blood

The sprinkling of the blood. And that verse I've quoted is based on this thing. I think it's marvellous English. So terse. Not a word too many. And every word an Anglo-Saxon word. Spurgeon said, I've tried to use as few Latin words as possible.

I want to use Anglo-Saxon words, that the man of the street shall understand what I say. Aft as it is sprinkled, Abel's blood for vengeance, pleaded to the skies, but the blood of Jesus for our pardon, Christ.

I call that English. I call that quality. You know, we are a well-educated people, we Christians. We are absorbing English at its best. We are occupying ourselves with divine truth, eternal wisdom, and none better expressed than in the words of our hymns next to our Bibles, our hymn books.

Abel's blood for vengeance, the voice of thy brother's blood, cries unto the ground. Abel's blood for vengeance, pleaded to the skies, hallelujah, but the blood of Jesus. Hallelujah. For my pardon, Christ.

And it's more powerful than the blood of Abel. It's more powerful than the cry of my sins. And it always gets heard. So here's this phrase, the blood of sprinkling. This is the first of the three verses.

The blood of sprinkling. Now tell me what you think that that means. I can only tell you what I assume it means. It's the blood for sprinkling. Precious blood has been shed that you might apply it to your own guilty heart.

To your own troubled situation. The sprinkling of the blood, applying it. The blood of Jesus is for your use. Unless you and I learn to apply the blood, to sprinkle the blood, it is shed in vain and it brings no blessing to our hearts.

So there's that first phrase, the blood of sprinkling, that speaks better things than that of Abel. Blood for sprinkling. There's another wonderful hymn, we'll sing it tomorrow, I think, the chorus of which says, Precious, precious blood of Jesus, ever flowing free.

Oh, believe it! Oh, receive it! It is to thee thou must sprinkle it, dear friend. You must apply it to situations you're in, to a troubled heart, to a disturbed conscience, for your peace, for your joy, for your victory.

It's blood for sprinkling. And then there's a second place, when the word sprinkled is applied to our salvation, and this too is in Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 19. We shall look at this in greater detail tomorrow.

The peak of the great epistle, having therefore breathed in boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. I'm slipping a verse. And having an high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience.

The Blood Applied to the Guilty Conscience

And this tells us on what the precious blood of Jesus is to be applied. Is to be applied to the conscience. That's the most sensitive faculty in your make-up. It's inexorable. There are times when it seems nothing pacifies it.

The more sensitive a person, the more they're tormented with conscience. The sin in question may not be very big, but the trouble of heart can be very big, because the conscience is not pacified. But here is that which does pacify the guilty conscience.

Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain in Old Testament times could give the guilty conscience peace or take away its stain. It could only point forward to the reality which is now ours. But Christ, the heavenly Lamb, takes all our sins away, a sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they.

And here, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience. Yes, the whole context is sprinkled with the blood of Jesus, applied. And that to which the blood of Jesus needs to be applied is the conscience.

The conscience is at the heart of the heart. And if the conscience isn't pacified, neither is the heart. But there's nothing which is more completely satisfactory to God than the blood of Jesus. The most sensitive conscience in the world cannot demand or require more for its pacification than that which God has already given.

The blood, the wrath of a sin-hating God, with me can have nothing to do. My Saviour's obedience to death hides all my transgressions from view. The blood shall be to you for a token. A token of what?

Judgment met. Or you say, what do my sins deserve? What do I deserve? It's already been meted out on your behalf by the Lord Jesus, who said about it, it is finished. And as a final confirmation that it's enough for God, he raised our Lord Jesus from the dead.

As another old hymn says, if Jesus had not paid the debt, he ne 'er had been at freedom set. But the fact that he has paid the debt and has been raised from the dead is your proof that all is well. And you can have a conscience void of accusation.

The heart then no longer condemns you. If God's satisfied with what Jesus gave on your behalf and raised him from the dead as a proof that he was satisfied, why can't you be? Why must you go on with a stick to yourself?

Why must you always go about feeling, I'm not good enough, I'm not like the others? If the blood of Christ is enough for God, it's surely enough, sufficient for us. Now this is what is meant in Revelation 12 .11 when it says, they overcame him, that's the devil, by the blood of the Lamb.

It doesn't talk about overcoming sin by the blood of the Lamb, but overcoming the devil, that is the one who takes occasion of our sin to accuse us. I don't know whether it's having a bad conscience that gives him his chance to accuse us or whether his accusations of us produce the bad conscience.

Sometimes it's one, sometimes it's the other, sometimes a mixture of the two, but the fact is you have an evil conscience and the answer is the same, the blood of Jesus. Be thou my shield and hiding place, says John Newton, that sheltered in thy side, I may my fierce accuser face and tell him thou hast died and God satisfied with it.

And I lose my evil conscience. I lost it on Calvary's hill. It tumbled and tumbled until it rolled out of sight. I was happy that night. I lost it on Calvary's hill. And you overcome. Him who takes advantage of your sin to accuse you by the blood of the Lamb.

And that precious blood is to be applied to the conscience. I don't know we've always made that clear, but that's what it says. Having our hearts sprinkled, what from? An evil conscience. And Hebrews 9, which perhaps we've already quoted, how much more shall the blood of Christ cleanse your what?

Conscience. You're dogged with a sense you aren't good enough. You're dogged with the prayers you haven't prayed, the witnesses you haven't given, the service you haven't done, the tracts you haven't given out.

You've only got to hear some people speak about their service and what great things they do, and you feel so bad. They don't help us, they just oppress us. These success stories that some people give.

Repentance and Agreement With God

It's the conscience. But oh, hallelujah, God really deals with the heart of the matter. And he washes that conscience whiter than snow, on condition that you admit it. Agree with thine adversary quickly.

Say, Mr. Devil, I don't argue that I'm right. Actually, you haven't said enough as to where I'm wrong. It fits me to argue that on this particular point I happen to be okay. It's a fluke that I do happen to be okay.

But we make a lot of that fluke. Normally you're not okay. Well, admit it. And the blood of Jesus has finished it for you. Finished it! To the satisfaction of God. And oft as it is sprinkled on that guilty heart.

Oft, not once. Oft, as often as necessary. Satan, in confusion, terror-struck departs. What a beautiful expression of it. It's almost equal to our Bible. These wonderful hymns. Amen and amen. I feel if I can quote something like that to a point, I've settled it.

Strangely, you can quarrel with even the Bible, but no one seems to quarrel with a hymn. Amen. Well, let's use them to our own blessing. Let's learn to preach the gospel to our own hearts. Do you know everyone here is a preacher?

You're preaching every day to your own heart, if to nothing else. And sometimes you give yourself the wrong message. Learn to preach good news for bad people to your own dear heart. And enjoy the good news that comes to you by the blood of Jesus.

Yes, the blood applied to the conscience is what is meant in Colossians when it says, having made peace through the blood of the cross. The blood of His cross. Peace! Peace of conscience. That's what it means.

A Personal Testimony of Applying the Blood

It's a real glorious living experience. I remember some years ago, Peter James and I were talking in his vicarage way back in the country where he used to live. I used to say he was the secretary of the uninhabited lands mission way out there in the eastern counties.

And I remember him saying to me, he said, you know Roy, I thought this year at Clevedon there was too much talk about money. I wasn't going to have that. It wasn't true. And I was about to argue how wrong he was and how right I was when the prayer meeting had to start.

And I had to go to the prayer meeting with that imputation unanswered. But of course the first few moments of the prayer meeting, as far as I was concerned, I was engaged in arguing with my brother Peter and what I'd said, how wrong he was.

But then I had no chance to do that. I had to face God. And God said, is there nothing in what he said? No, no, nothing at all. Are you quite sure there was nothing? Well, yes. There was some over-anxiety on that side of things in my mind in that year's conference.

Do you know what I did? I said, yes, Lord, and then I sprinkled the blood on that thing. I applied the blood. I said, yes, Lord, you're right and I'm wrong. And he was right and I'm wrong. And as I did so I knew the blood had answered and I had peace through the blood of his cross.

Did you know you can only have peace with God as a sinner? I said that yesterday. Find that somewhere, for goodness sake, where you're the sinner, then you get peace. And I agreed with God. And after it was over, I went up to Peter.

I said, brother, you were right in what you said. God showed it to me. I'm sorry. And all he did was to squeeze my hand and say hallelujah. We would have had an argument for a full hour and we would have both ended up without any peace at all.

But oh, what a lovely thing it is to know how to apply the blood. By repentance and faith. To sprinkle the blood. The blood is there. The sprinkling. But you've got to be the wrong one to have it sprinkled.

It's there only for sin. I'm sorry. You'll have to take that place, the sinner's place, as we were hearing last night, if you're going to know what the sprinkling of the blood is, applying it. So first, the first verse tells us it's the blood of sprinkling, the blood for sprinkling.

Obediently Applying the Blood

The second one tells us on what it is to be sprinkled. On that which is accusing you. Agree. Agree with God. And you can even agree with the devil because although sometimes he does exaggerate, there are lots of things he doesn't mention that you could add if you wanted to.

So it ill befits you to make too much of your fancied innocence. It's so much easier to take the place of the wrong one. It's all provided for. You would think that there wasn't, by the way in which we fight against taking the sinner's place.

And then there's a third verse where this word, the sprinkling of the blood, comes as applied to our salvation and it's in that passage in Peter which we read to begin with. Please turn the cassette over now.

Do not fast wind it in either direction. And it's in that passage in Peter which we read to begin with. The first epistle of Peter, chapter one, verse two. Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father through sanctification of the Spirit unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.

I don't know what the other version says but I like it like that. Unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. And I believe the construction of that sentence is meant to convey unto obedient sprinkling of the blood of Jesus.

The deepest element of obedience is to do what God tells you, sprinkle the blood of Jesus. We are often told, and rightly so, that obedience is the essence of the victorious life. I don't quite know what is always meant by obedience.

Do I make a blanket promise that's supposed to cover every possible situation in the future? Or if there's an issue I haven't been unwilling, I go and do it? Well, that certainly would be obedience. But I believe that so often the most essential obedience we can give to God is to obey him over that matter and sprinkle the blood.

When in that prayer meeting I said, yes, Lord, that was the obedient sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. Now, obedience isn't always of that order. There are occasions when you've got your checkbook out, you're looking at things, paying a few bills, and a little voice says, send a gift to that missionary.

Or a gift to that brother indeed. And you obey. And you're happy to do it. There are times when you're going to do something and a little voice says, don't. You say, all right, Lord. Thank you for showing me.

But very often, perhaps more often, it's about what you've already done. You've got to be obedient. You've already done something. Well, what can I do now I've done it? Sprinkle the blood. Which is really rather humbling because you've got to admit you were wrong.

The obedient sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. I tell you, he is an obedient Christian who at the first hint of conviction sprinkles the blood. True obedience. And this helps me on this question of obedience and also what to make of the moral injunctions with which the New Testament abounds both in the Gospels and in the Epistles and, of course, the Ten Commandments.

I've often said, well, how does that square with the message of grace? This is how it squares. When a moral injunction, a command from Scripture comes to me with force, it's so often because I haven't done it.

Maybe I haven't been quite honest about something that really isn't mine. And I read the Scripture and feel uncomfortable. Let him that stole steal no more. Now, what is the step of obedience? The first step of obedience to agree that you've done the wrong thing and that it needs precious blood and you apply to Jesus for it.

So often, that's what the Scriptures are for. I don't know that moral injunctions help me very much unless I'm in a situation to which they apply. Unless, of course, I've actually transgressed. Then they do apply.

But not to condemn you merely, but to get you to be obedient. And the obedience you can do, give. It's a sprinkle of the blood. Sometimes, there's no chance to sort of obey in the orthodox sense of the word.

Immediate Temptation and the Repentance That Follows

We've got the idea that temptation is one thing and then there's a time lag when you decide am I going to yield to it or not? And then I do it or I don't do it. But very often, there's no such time lag.

Take the question of jealousy. You're ready to hear another person praised and appreciated by everybody without mentioning you. And you've got jealous feelings which sometimes are expressed in jealous words.

You say, I've never had a chance, Lord. It happened before I had... There's no question of choosing. It just happened immediately. And the Lord says, your chance comes afterwards. Nevertheless, afterward, he repented.

Remember that. Of course, we'd always like to do it right the first time. But we don't always. There's always the afterward.