psalm 10

Introduction

I think I’m supposed to be up here. If you’re visiting with us, you may have noticed that today started a new format for our worship services, and so we’re getting used to that as you’re getting used to it as well. But I think so far it’s gone well. It’s downhill from here, I’ll warn you, though. Do you like movies? I think most people probably like movies. Some of you even maybe are movie buffs, but you know, for a Christian, it’s getting harder and harder to be a movie buff, isn’t it? It’s harder to go to the theater or even turn on the TV or the streaming services and find something that’s not filled with sex or gore or just nasty language. Deedra and I had a movie night the other night, and we watched two recent blockbusters called The Ghost and Mr.

Chicken and The Incredible Mr. Limpet, two of Don Knott’s best movies. And we had to go back to the 1960s to find something that we wanted to watch, and it was good enough and clean enough to watch. But do you like movies? We probably all have different types of movies. I have movies that I like. It probably won’t surprise our members here that I like comedies. I like to laugh. I like to make people laugh, and I like to laugh myself, and so I love comedies. By the way, The Incredible Mr. Limpet is one of the best movies ever made. Go and watch it. But I like Westerns. The best movie, and this is not just my opinion, this is fact. The best movie ever made was John Wayne’s The Searchers.

Great movie. There’s movies I don’t like. I don’t like the sappy romantic ones.

I didn’t like notebooks when I was in school, and I still don’t like the notebook. I don’t like musicals. I told my Deedra loves musicals. And I told her, I said, they’re not realistic. Nobody just breaks out into song. And she says, I do. And I said, yes, but the rest of the family doesn’t sing along with you. We don’t know the words. There’s probably movies you like and movies you don’t like. You might not like movies that involve too much blood. Kind of the horror flicks. And there may be reasons not to like those other than the blood. But if the blood bothers you, you may have trouble with the Old Testament. Because in the Old Testament, there’s blood on every page, isn’t there? As our brother David in our Lord’s Supper talk this morning pointed out to us the importance of blood.

And by the way, very good job, David. With a little work, we’ll make a preacher out of you. But there’s blood on every page in the Old Testament, isn’t there? Imagine if it’s even possible to conceive of this scenario. Imagine reading the New Testament for the first time. Just opening up in Genesis chapter 1 and wanting to read all the way to Malachi. A few things would strike you, some themes would occur to you, and one theme that surely would stand out to you would be there’s a lot of bloodshed.

1. Blood on Every Page of the Old Testament

And there’s a reason for that. Because, as we often sing, there’s power in the blood. And there’s a lesson in that repetition and emphasis in blood in the scriptures. And so let’s talk about it this morning and talk about that power in the blood. When we go back to the Old Testament, we remember that the old the Jews in the Old Testament had certain feast days. And I’ve kind of grouped these into two groupings that are kind of calendar groupings. We have the Passover, the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, the feast of first fruits, the feast of weeks that we more commonly know as the Pentecost. And then we have the Feast of Trumpets and the Day of Atonement and the Feast of Booths or the Feast of Tabernacles.

All of these feast days, these Jewish high holidays had to do with mankind’s relationship to God. And they all involve sacrifice. Now they weren’t all bloody sacrifices. Many of them were, as you may remember, but they all involved some form of sacrifice.

And just with sacrifices, not with other violence, but just with sacrifice, to estimate how many gallons of blood was shed in sacrifices in the Old Testament. It would probably shock us. How much blood was shed in these feasts? And it wasn’t just these feasts, they were the daily sacrifices. They were the other special occasion for sacrifices. There’s just blood on every page. And even before we get to the covenant law, there was blood and the shedding of sacrifices. Again, David talked about Abraham. You know, Abraham was a man of sacrifice. When you study the life of Abraham, you study his journeys. Abraham would have been easy to find. Now, if you want to find where I’m going on a journey, take my picture and just ask at the cracker barrels.

You’ll be able to find where my journey. Abraham, you could have traced his journey in just following the altars. Everywhere he stopped, he built an altar and worshiped God. And so there was blood. A lot of blood. And one thing the Old Testament emphasizes is the connection between that shedding of blood, the giving of life, and sin. Let’s just look briefly at two of those feast days. The day of atonement and the Passover. Let’s start with the Passover in Exodus chapter 12. We don’t have time for a detailed reading of Exodus chapter 12. I encourage you to do that though in your daily Bible reading. Just read about this, the day of Passover. The children of Israel have long sojourned and now recently in a difficult sojourn in Egypt, but God is ready to bring them out.

But he has to bring them out. He has to deliver them with blood. Blood is going to be shed. And look and beginning with me in uh Exodus chapter 12. Look in verse 7. And they, the instructions to the children of Israel, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the house where they eat it. Skip down to verse 12. For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. Now the blood, verse 13 emphasizes, 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, and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

Blood gave them deliverance, blood provided life. And this was so important in their history and in their minds that this was to be repeated. The sacrifice, the shedding of blood, was to be repeated every year in that Passover feast, to remind them of the deliverance that was brought about by the shedding of blood. It gets even more personal in the day of atonement. Turn with me to the book of Leviticus, chapter 17. The day of atonement of all of those celebrations and feast days, in my mind, and maybe in yours, the Day of Atonement kind of stands apart because it was, they were all special days, but it was a unique special day. This was the day, the one day that the high priest would go into the temple through the veil into the holiest of holies, into the presence of God to make, as the name of the feast implies, to make atonement for the sins of the people.

But he needed blood. Blood was required to atone for the sins of the people. Blood was required to enter in to the presence of God behind that veil. Look at Leviticus chapter 17, verses 10, 11, and 12. Read that with me. And whatever man of the house of Israel, or even the strangers who sojourn among you, who eats any blood, I will set my face against that person and cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood. And I’ve given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement for your souls. Therefore I said to the children of Israel, no one among you shall eat blood, nor shall any stranger who sojourns among you eat blood.

Blood was important. And blood, there were regulations regarding not just the shedding and sacrificing of blood, but about the prohibition of the intake of blood. Why? Because God was teaching them a lesson about blood and its attachment to sin and particularly the atonement for sin. The Old Testament is teaching us something. It’s telling us something. It’s telling us that there’s a connection, an inseparable connection between sin and the shedding of blood. Now we may have picked up upon that repetition as we read the Old Testament. And maybe, probably not, but maybe we made all the connection. But when we get to the New Testament, the connections are made for us. Remember, Paul tells the Galatians and us that the Old Testament was that schoolmaster or tutor that brought us to Christ.

2. Christ Shed His Blood for Our Sin

So many ways the Old Testament was all about Jesus. Oh, it prophesied of him. But really, more than that. It showed the need for him. Death, the shedding of blood, the lamb that the Lord would again provide. The Old Testament was setting us up and setting the stage for the need for, the requirements of, and the characteristics of the Messiah who would come and shed his blood. And so it comes no surprise to us. Will you turn with me to Hebrews chapter 9? It comes to no surprise to us that in the New Testament, there’s a lot of Old Testament language. And that’s not just because the writers were Jews, and it’s not just because a big chunk of their audience were Jews. It’s because the Old Testament was teaching us something.

Look in Hebrews chapter 9. Begin reading with me in verse 12. Not with the blood. You know this verse, Hebrews 9, verse 12, 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. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, 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 a living God. All of that blood, those hundreds, thousands upon thousands of sacrifices could not take away the sins of man. But one sacrifice, one shedding of blood could.

And so the New Testament and really all of Scripture is about this sentence. Christ shed his blood for our sin. It was all leading up to that. And I know you know this, but it’s good to remind ourselves every once in a while that all of those lambs and bulls and turtle doves and goats that were sacrificed, they were made to be like Christ. Christ wasn’t made to be like them. Christ was first. Oh, in our timeline, he was last of all the sacrifices. But in the mind of God, that was first. Everything else was made to be like him. It’s not like the first century came around and God said, you know, I like that lamb idea. I’m going to call my son the Lamb.

3. Sin Caused a Problem for Us

And all that shedding of blood, I’m going to do that again. That wasn’t the way it worked, was it? Christ was first in the mind of God. Christ was the plan, the culmination of the wisdom, the manifold wisdom, Paul says. And so Christ shed his blood for our sin. And it was necessary. Because sin, you know this, sin caused a problem for all of mankind collective and every man and woman individually caused a problem for us for which we had no solution. Physical death. Adam and Eve were told, if you break the law, you will die. Man has been dying ever since. We try to come up with solutions. The best we’ve done is to be able to postpone it. But man’s going to die. There’s nothing you can do about it.

And as bad and as sad as that is. Far worse is the spiritual death. Look in the New Testament again in the book of Ephesians. Isn’t it interesting? We hear it so much, maybe we don’t think about it, but isn’t it interesting that God uses that language, the language of physical death, to speak of our spiritual situation in sin? And I think there’s far more connections between physical death and spiritual death in Scripture than maybe we’ve even noticed. But notice how Paul describes the man apart from God, the man in sin in Ephesians chapter 2, when he says, and you who were dead in trespasses and sin. If we can do nothing about the physical sentence of death, we surely can do nothing about the spiritual sentence of death.

4. The Justice and the Love of God

What can I do to get closer to God? What can I do to appease the wrath of God? To satisfy his judgment. What can I do? Paul goes on in this chapter to say, nothing. You got nothing. Now God’s got the solution. And if you’ll come to him in faith, he says, in obedience, you can come to him. But on your own, you had no solution to the problems of death. And so sin caused the, is this an understatement? Caused a problem for us, didn’t it? Did sin present a problem for God? Was there some tension? The scriptures tell us about God. Our God is a consuming fire. Well, if that’s all there is to God, there’s no problem, is there? Except for the fact that we’re all going to be lost.

Those same scriptures also say God is love. If that’s all there was to God, then there would probably be no tension because he would just overlook. By the way, a lot of people are banking on that solution. But there was the justice and the love of God. In Romans chapter 3, if there, if we can describe it as tension between those characteristics of God, it is beautifully solved for us in Romans chapter 3. Again, you know these passages. Romans chapter 3, verse 21. But now the righteousness of God, apart from the law, is revealed, being witnessed by the law and the prophets, even the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ to all and on all who believe. But there’s no difference. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

But being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation by his blood through faith to listen to this to demonstrate his righteousness. God is a consuming fire. Sin needs to be punished. His justice, his righteousness, and his holiness demanded it. And so to demonstrate his righteousness, because in the forbearance, his forbearance, God had passed over the sins that were previously committed. And to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. He demonstrated his righteousness that he might be just, that the price would be paid, that judgment and vengeance would be exacted, that blood would be shed, but also to demonstrate that he was the justifier of those who have faith in him.

5. Why Did God Set the Price So High?

And so if there was a dilemma, there ever was a tension in the qualities and in the heart of God, it is solved in the person of Jesus Christ and the shedding of his blood. And praise be to God, there was a solution outside of ourselves that God solved our problems. But why that solution? We talk about the high price of sin. We talk about God satisfying the justice and the righteousness. But why that high price? Sometimes we talk about it and maybe even think about it as if something or somebody outside of God set the price and God had to meet the price. But God set the price himself. Why did he set it so high? That’s not the way we function. You need a new car.

You go to the dealership, they’re having a sale of all sales. You set the price. Where are you going to set the price? Sticker price? Above sticker price? No, you’re not. You’re going to have the cheapest car you ever bought if you get to set them. That’s the way we work, isn’t it? So why? Why that high? We understand that high price was paid. We understand the Old Testament was building to that, teaching us that, showing the necessity of that. And we understand that Christ did that. He paid that high, exorbitant price for our sins. But why did God set it so high to begin with? I don’t know that I have all the answers. But let me suggest three.

Romans chapter 3 says, to demonstrate something. To demonstrate, to show something, to show his love.

A low price wouldn’t have demonstrated that, would it? The contrast that David showed us between the requirements of Abraham, where Abraham’s hand was stopped, and God did not stop his own hand. Demonstrated his love. As Paul pointed out, it demonstrates his righteousness. That God does not take sin lightly. Small price might have conveyed that. We try to do that as parents, don’t we? Not all punishments are the same. You might just simply get a.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Maybe the price was set so high to demonstrate his love, to demonstrate his justice or his righteousness, and also to bring him glory. We failed to bring him glory. Because we sinned and we fell short of that. The ideal of what God had intended for man. But nothing. Not the sacrifices of even Abraham in the Old Testament brought God glory like the cross. Not even, dare I say, not even the creative works of God. Bring him glory. Like the cross. Look in the Old Testament in Isaiah chapter 43. Why does God do what he does? In Isaiah chapter 43, we’re not talking about the cross. We’re talking about redemption in Isaiah 43, but maybe in a foreshadowing way, but not in a direct way.

He’s not talking about the redemption that’s found in the cross. He’s talking about the redemption of Israel, of God, yes, punishing Israel. We think about the prophets of lowering the boom. God’s going to get you for what you did. And that’s that’s in the prophets. But what’s also in the prophets is but God loves you. And he’s gonna bring you back. And notice in Isaiah 43, in that bring you back passage of what is stated, verse 1, beginning. But now, thus says the Lord, who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel, fear not. For I have redeemed you, I’ve called you by your name. You are mine. When you pass through the waters, I’ll be with you. And through the rivers, they shall not overflow you.

When you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned, nor shall the flame scorch you. For I am the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel, your Savior. I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba in your place, since you are precious in my sight. You have been honored, and I have loved you. Therefore I will give men for you and people for your life. Fear not, I am with you. I will bring your descendants from the east and gather you from the west. I will say to the north, give them up. And to the south, do not keep them back. Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth. Everyone who is called by my name, whom I have created for my glory.

I have formed him, yes, I have made him. God’s telling us two things, maybe a lot more than two, but two things we want to talk about this morning. Number one is he says, I created you for my glory. And that’s why I’m bringing you back. Not because they had learned their lesson in captivity. Maybe they had. Not because that was enough. Punishment’s over. All of those may be reasons why God brought them back. Because they started calling out to him like they would in that judge’s cycle. And so God by his love brought.

That we might be cleansed. That we might be new creatures, equipped to live good, godly lives. Praising Him and bringing Him the glory. And the cross does that.

Conclusion

And maybe, just maybe, that’s why God said the price has to be that. I set the price to demonstrate my love, to demonstrate my righteousness, and to bring me glory. Two lessons as we close. Number one is in the Passover, the blood has to be applied. The blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin. Even a casual reading of the New Testament says, then you need to get attached to the blood of Christ. You need to apply the blood of Christ. Through faith, repentance, confession, and being baptized into his death. We come in contact with the blood of Christ. But the other lesson is that when we fall away, when we sin, when we fail to do what God has called us back to do, we don’t bring him glory.

But it’s equally important to recognize that when we sin, we’re not fulfilling the purposes for which he created us and the purposes for which he brought us back. And that’s to bring him glory. Would you bring God the glory today? By your faith, by your obedience, by coming back to him. He’s calling you out of your bondage to sin. Because he created you not for that. But he created you to bring him glory. May God be glorified in your life and in your obedience this morning. Would you come as together we stand and as we sing.