Blood Must Be Shed

Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, �But we did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel would remain with you.

In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn�t for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we�re called by the Divine Trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.

Here�s our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry. My name is Mike Abendroth, and we are embarking on a study today about a very important topic. If you had to summarize Christianity with one word, could you summarize Christianity?

Now, I guess you could say Christ, Jesus, God. I guess you could do that, but I�m looking for something different, and since this is my radio show and my game and my rules, then we go according to how I feel and how I experience things.

Just kidding. What would that word be? Well, if you had to describe it within a couple words, maybe you could say �substitutionary atonement. Maybe it would be �atonement. The word that I�m looking for today is similar to that, but it needs some fleshing out.

It needs to have a little bit more said about it. But the word we�re looking at today that summarizes Christianity in some ways, in a lot of ways. Maybe not �the� summary, but maybe it�s just �a� summary.

So see, now I�m backtracking. I�m already compromising. Compromise on no compromise. Of course, though, that I am a compromiser, I will admit. That�s why this show regularly and often tries to push you toward thinking about the one who never compromised.

This song is about Jesus Christ. This show is, too. I used to be a punk rock disc jockey at KZUM in Lincoln, Nebraska, a small station. I think it was 89 .5. I had a show. I want to guess it was on Tuesday nights, but it might have been on Thursday nights.

I took too many drugs to remember the day, and I think it was two or three hours, and I would play songs with a guy named Bill Stoughton. Bill Stoughton and I had a show, and it was called Aural Delights, A-U-R-A-L Delights.

And so that was very interesting, and it was probably a complete catastrophe, a disaster. And here I am now. Let�s see, that was 1982. So now 20, 30, 28 years later, I�m on the radio again. Isn�t that amazing, kind of just the karma, the circle of life, how things come around, go around, how the circle of life moves?

History is cyclical. Okay. Sorry. Just digressing. Today we�re going to talk about one word that summarizes Christianity, blood. People say Christianity is a bloody religion. Well, the answer to that is, yes, it is, although most people take that for there are a lot of wars committed in the name of Jesus, and that is true.

But when I say the word blood, it has to do with atonement. It has to do with substitution. It has to do everything with how does a just God, who is infinitely holy, forgive sins? And so let�s start off by talking about that very issue.

How does God, in fact, forgive? How does He forgive sins? Do you ever wonder about that? How does God just let a sin go? Does He drift off a little bit? He�s too busy thinking about all kinds of other things?

When it comes to your sin, maybe He forgets about it, because after all, it�s a pretty hard job running the universe and knowing what every person is thinking, what they will think, what they have thought.

All the other people that have died and now are in heaven, there�s a lot of things to think about it. And if you take the viewpoint from ourselves and how we deal with sin, you might think that�s how God deals with sin, too.

When other people sin against you, are you sinning against them? You just simply ask, �Would you please forgive me And that transaction takes place. But with God, that�s different. There is a difference, a key difference, an important difference, a transcendent difference.

Lloyd-Jones says, David Martin Lloyd-Jones, �God the Father is no indulgent father who just says, �All right, my child, come back, all is well That�s not who God is. And for those of you old enough to remember George Burns in the movie, he�s not the �Oh, God some grandfatherly kind of man who just lets the grandkids do whatever.

That�s not the picture of God. �Oh, let bygones be bygones. Hardly with God. �Oh, it�s not that big a deal. Never with God. When I was a kid, I remember going to Grandma and Grandpa�s house, and we called them Grandma and Grandpa Up the Hill.

My mother and father both worked when I was young, and so we�d take turns Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Grandma and Grandpa Up the Hill, Tuesday, Thursday, the other grandparents. And so Grandma and Grandpa Anderson lived up this hill, and Grandma was the enforcer.

Grandpa was too drunk and too sick and couldn�t hold down a job, so I don�t know really what Grandpa did. He�d let me do whatever I wanted, though. Paint the table? Sure. Go ahead and paint the table.

And his name was Carl Anderson, Carl Otto Anderson. And so I loved him for many reasons. A, he was my grandfather, and B, he�d let me do what I want. What�s not to love, right? He died in 1972. But my grandmother pretty much ran the show, and her name was Nona, Nona Anderson.

And I was a rambunctious boy. I think boys sometimes are rambunctious, and I�m sure that if it would have been back in the day, they would have diagnosed me with ADD and ADHD and would have put me on all kinds of silly drugs.

And if you would like to talk to me someday about those silly drugs, first thing I�d like you to do is to look up the DSM -4 and look up some of the drugs, Prozac and Ritalin, and see how long they�re tested in young people.

And I think you won�t find very long. I think your kid�s probably already been on them longer than they�ve been tested for. And while I�m not a doctor and while I can�t tell you to stop taking drugs or anything like that, I sure can tell you that ADD, ADHD can be solved in a different way than medication.

That�s a different show. I think one guy, that was one of the probably the sternest letters that I�ve received that they didn�t like what I said, and that was when it comes to medication in Christianity to change behavior, stick to what I�m good at.

That is the Bible. And they didn�t like it that I was not very keen. At least I�m not as keen as pretty much everybody else is for the use of drugs to change behavior. But again, that�s a different topic.

And so my grandmother back up the hill, up this hill, she told me that I better obey or else I was going to get that yardstick. Remember in the old days, maybe even today, you go to a smaller hardware store and you can get a yardstick that says Aubuchon Hardware or Jacks Hardware or something like that, True Value, Ace Hardware.

And so she said, �There�s the yardstick, and if you don�t stop disobeying, you�re going to get that on your bottom. Except she always said that. So I knew it wasn�t true. So she said it one more time.

I walked over, grabbed the yardstick, broke it over my knee, and handed it to her and said, �Go for it. I can�t remember my exact words, but it was something to that effect. That was probably pre-go-for-it terminology slang, but that was the deal.

And you know what the interesting thing was? She still didn�t spank me. She should have spanked me for that, but she did not. Is that how God just does things? You know, we sin against God and God just forgets about it?

God just lets it go? Today on No Compromise Radio, my name is Mike Abendroth, and we�re talking about blood, sacrificial blood. How does God forgive? Why doesn�t He just say, �Let men be forgiven by fiat, divine fiat, like in creation.

Just let them be forgiven. Let there be light. There was light. Let there be forgiveness. And then there�s forgiveness. Well what we forget, if we use that paradigm, is that God is holy, God is righteous, God is just, and He is immutably holy, He is immutably righteous, and immutably just.

He never changes and all that. If He was holy almost all the time, but just once in a while wasn�t, maybe we�d have a window of opportunity to deal with sin. But He is always holy, and He is different than we are.

He manifests His holiness in such a way that even perfect, sinless, created beings like Seraphim veil their faces. A man like Abraham says, �I am but dust and ashes�, Genesis 18. Because of the holiness of God, Job said, �I abhor myself.

Isaiah, �Woe is me! I am undone, for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Daniel, the righteous man, says, �There remain no strength in me. Why? Because God�s eyes are too pure to approve evil, and He can�t even look upon wickedness with favor.

It seems rudimentary, it seems simple and introductory, but it is essential that God�s holiness requires the sinning party to get forgiveness through blood atonement. That is how God, in the universe, it�s no different than the law of gravity.

The law of forgiveness is that the person who sins must have blood atonement. You can either supply your own blood, because the wages of sin is death, Leviticus 17, there�s life in the blood. You can either supply that blood yourself and be killed, a sacrificial death you will die, or you can have a sacrifice in your place, in your stead, on your behalf.

The law of God, the way God�s economy works, and He, in all of His wisdom and all of His knowledge, has determined this is the way it goes. For there to be forgiveness, there has to be blood shed through a sacrifice.

Someone has to pay. Therefore God�s just law is held up. Therefore God�s holiness exists. Therefore God still does the right thing. Now, God in His sovereign mercy and grace gives us a way to have our sins forgiven.

And so you need to think, in the Old Testament, what about blood? What about blood substitution? What about blood sacrifice? And let�s look at three just briefly. How does God forgive sins? It starts early on in the Old Testament when something has to die in the place of a human being.

And that something is usually an animal. And so, well, in the Old Testament it is an animal. Let�s see, Genesis 2, verse 17,. �But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day you eat it you shall surely die.

And so then what happened to Adam and Eve? They ate it, and someone had to die. Now, did they die spiritually? Yes. But something died in their place. Now, what do they do first of all? They realize this is the invention of religion.

This is the first case of religion coming into play, where instead of dealing with God on His terms, His special revelation, His specific instructions on how to deal with sin, people make up their own.

And so what did Adam and Eve do? They sewed fig leaves together and made for themselves loincloths. I like S. Lewis Johnson, and S. Lewis Johnson calls this the denomination of the fig leaf. People say, �Well, I�m really religious.

People don�t say that that much these days, but they�ll say something like this. One of my most disgusting things to hear, but I smile when I hear it anyway just because I don�t want to be mean all the time, when they�ll say, �I�m really spiritual.

I�m a spiritual person. Well, �spiritual person� basically means, �God, You forgive through blood atonement. But I want to do my own thing. I don�t care what you say in your Bible. I don�t care what you do.

I could care less about your way of atonement. I�ll figure out my own way, and I�ve got fig leaves that I�ll put together from my own loincloth, and it�s being spiritual. What is being spiritual? I�ll find my way to atone for my own sins and be one with God, without a high priest, without a ransom, without a mediator.

I�ll do things on my own. Thank you very much. But see, God in His generous, sovereign grace had an animal killed in the place of Adam and Eve. Genesis 3, verse 21,. �And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them.

For Adam, for his wife. Atonement, a substitute, a sacrifice, which included blood. Instead of Adam and Eve immediately dying, something else died. Here we have to have the sin dealt with, and so Adam and Eve�s sin had to be dealt with, and it was dealt with by some animal being killed.

Garments of skins. Maybe it was one animal, maybe it was two, but they died, the animals. So Adam and Eve did not die physically, right away, spiritually. You can extrapolate that as you like, but here�s what my point is.

Blood sacrifice because of sin. Now there�s another case here in the Old Testament, so we can think properly, and that is the sacrificial system steeped in blood called the Passover. Exodus 12, 5,. �Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old.

You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight.

Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. Now, of course, we think doors symbolize entrance and exits, that�s what they symbolize, but you have to remember the Jewish people, and even the people back in the day during the Bible times, thought the entrance, the door rather, was the place of security.

Arabs would oftentimes place images on the thresholds of their home right there for protection. And so here is where the blood must go. Verse 12, �For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments.

I am the Lord. There�s a passing over which is merciful and gracious when the blood is seen, and there�s a passing through. You don�t want a pass through. You don�t want the angel of death passing through, because then it�s going to be killing the firstborn and striking and smiting the gods of Egypt, and they will receive judgments.

Verse 13, �The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No longer a pass through, but a pass over. �And no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

Sacrifice, substitute, instead of. You have a bloody, vicious, vicarious sacrifice, so those people, although they deserved to die, they didn�t. Something died in their place. Can you see where all this is going on No Compromise Radio when it comes to blood?

We�re not talking biochemistry, as Barnhouse would say. The atonement is a matter of biochemistry. This is not a matter of if you have some blood put on you, that�s going to be enough, or if you cut yourself and do a little bloodletting, go down to the old barber in medieval times and let some blood, that will be the issue.

But we�re talking blood sacrifice. We�re talking blood, vicious death. Bloody death is what we�re talking about, and the third illustration in the Old Testament that helps us think of this on No Compromise Radio, info at nocompromiseradio .com, you can write us, is the Day of Atonement, the Day, Yom Kippur.

Leviticus 16, and he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the front of the mercy seat on the east side, and in front of the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times.

Then he shall kill the goat of the sin offering that is for the people and bring its blood inside the veil and do with its blood as he did with the blood of the bull, sprinkling it over the mercy seat and in front of the mercy seat.

Then verse 18 says, he shall go out to the altar that is before the Lord and make atonement for it, and shall take some of the blood of the bull and some of the blood of the goat and put it on the horns of the altar all around.

So you�ve got blood here instead of, in place of, blood covering the mercy seat. So the picture is God looks down and doesn�t see the broken law that�s inside the Ark of the Covenant, he sees the blood on top of the mercy seat and he sees that there has been atonement made.

So all this blood sacrifice, year after year after year on the Day of Atonement, Passover, year after year after year, is seen in its culmination, in its fulfillment, through in Jesus Christ dying. Everything leads towards this.

To use D .A. Carson�s word, the trajectory now lands at Calvary. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way, Isaiah 53, but the Lord has caused the iniquity of us to fall on him.

Substitutionary atonement, wages of sin is death, someone has to die, God in his mercy and his love and his compassion has provided the sacrifice. Lloyd-Jones says, �Sin is so terrible, so foul and so vile that nothing could deal with it but the blood of Christ.

And that is what happened on the cross. It is not a patching over, a covering over of sin, it is not God saying, �Do not worry, all is well. It is God showing us sin as it is, really bringing it out to the light and then dealing with it.

So on No Compromise Radio today, we're talking about blood. We're talking about the blood sacrifice. And you ought to read Hebrews, especially chapters 9 and 10, to see how many times the word �blood� is used.

Blood is used all kinds of places. Sometimes about blood and goats, goats and calves, sometimes about the Son and his blood. Do you ever wonder why Jesus had to cloak himself with humanity, where the eternal Son of God, the eternal second person of the Trinity, added human nature?

Because there had to be bloodshed, and there had to be a bloodshed, the kind that could be shed once and for all that would have eternal redemption accomplished. And the only way you could do that is if you had an infinite valued sacrifice, and that sacrifice still would have to have blood.

God had to have blood. Now if God is a spirit, God is invisible, there's no blood, no hemoglobin, no anything else. How could you have God die? How could there be a vicious, vicarious death? So God in his wisdom isn't this amazing?

God in the eternal foundations of time came up with a great plan to rescue sinners. And Jesus Christ, the Son, the second person of the Trinity, agreed within the councils, the pact, the agreement, the covenant of redemption to go rescue people.

And he would add human flesh to do that, because he had to be identified with us. He had to become one of us. He had to come in the likeness of sinful flesh, even though he never was sinful, he was in the likeness of.

He was pure, he was holy, he was unblemished. He could be the one who, when he died, wouldn't have to pay for his own sins, but could pay for the sins of others, and then God would raise him from the dead.

And so there's all kinds of blood everywhere. God had to have blood. How does God have blood? God has to add human nature, Jesus Christ, fully God and fully man. Not 50 -50, 100%, 100%. Hebrews 9 .12, he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

Once for all, eternal redemption. Not year by year by year by year by year by year by year. No, blood of bulls and goats and calves would not do it. 9 .14 of Hebrews, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

Jesus Christ's death seen as a sacrifice. Jesus Christ's death, unlike the animals, was voluntary. Animals involuntary. God, the Son, voluntary. That's why it's so much greater, and he doesn't have to be slain year by year by year by year.

You say, well, who would ever do that? Well, go to some Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday morning mass, and you'll see it right before your very eyes. Jesus, the best, our pure representative without defect of any kind, is slain on our behalf a blood sacrifice, substitutory atonement.

What was the price of the redemption to buy us out of the slave pit of sin? The ransom price was Jesus Christ himself. He was the high priest. He was the sacrifice. Just as the Son of Man, Matthew 20 says, did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

So today on No Compromise Radio, we're talking about blood, blood sacrifice. When you sing the song, Nothing But the Blood of Jesus, you're not talking about blood that got splattered from his face onto some Roman soldiers when they were beating his face up, and then they got blood atonement, and they were forgiven.

No, we're talking about a vicious death, death and violent, blood of sacrifices. That's 203 times that meaning of blood out of the 362 times used in the Old Testament according to Leon Morris in his great article about blood in Evangelical Dictionary or his book Apostolic Preaching of the Cross.

The New Testament as well, the majority of the times that blood is used, it's blood used to mean death by violence. That is the issue. Are you washed in the blood, the precious blood in the Lamb? Is there power in the blood?

What does the hymn writer mean? That there is forgiveness, saving, efficacious forgiveness based on a bloody, vicious atonement, and even though Jesus never deserved it, and we did, he dies in our place on our behalf.

That is the issue. Without shedding a blood, there is no forgiveness. God doesn't have any blood. Jesus adds on human flesh. We now have blood. We now have death in our place, and Jesus can cleanse us.

Jesus can forgive us because of his sacrificial substitutionary death. You aren't saved by strangulation. You aren't saved by electrocution. You are saved only by blood that shed, and if you have been saved by that, you'll realize how great God is, how much he loves you, and how much he cares for you, how wonderful he is, and you should be praising him, knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver and gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood as a Lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.

Today we've talked to the costly salvation to God, free to us, Christ Jesus, our self-sacrificial substitute, high priest, and ransom prize, both, the risen King Jesus Christ. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text. Please come and join us.

Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400. The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.