July 29, 2007
Just a brief thought—turn to Proverbs 31:21: “She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet.” I was reading some ministry on this verse and it said that this scarlet colour is often found in oriental countries. It comes from a dye that is made by crushing a worm. I bring this up because in what we read earlier, the Lord said, “I am a worm.” He was crushed, and “forthwith came there out blood and water.” We are now clothed with the garments of salvation; but in that day of manifestation, we will be clothed with His glory—all because He was that worm that was crushed.
EG Hymn 151 — “No condemnation,”—precious word!
Prayer
Last time we talked about “God is trustworthy.” Today, I want to continue on our theme and talk about “God is a forgiver.” What does it mean to forgive? Read Luke 7:41–43. The creditor in this story forgave his debtors; he cancelled their debt. If you are saved, God has forgiven you; your sins are cancelled.
To help me talk about God’s forgiveness, I want to use two diagrams.
Because of our sins, there is a barrier between us and God. Even though God loves us, He cannot have a relationship with us; He is holy and cannot tolerate sin.
Now let’s read I John 1:17. If we are saved, our life looks like this.
Now, because of the blood of Christ, we can have a relationship with God. He is our Father; we are His children. We can talk to Him through prayer and listen to Him through his Word. Read I John 2:12. Our sins are all forgiven; they are gone. But there is one more thing even more precious. Read Hebrews 8:12. Imagine that! Not only are our sins forgiven, they are forgotten.
There is one more thing I want to mention. Read Revelation 20:11-12. This is talking about those who are still in their sins; they will go to the Great White Throne when they die. They will be judged out of the books, and ultimately condemned.
Those who are forgiven will go to the Judgement seat of Christ, Romans 14:10. Will we be judged for our sins? No; we will be judged for what we did with our Christian life. Our sins are gone. How thankful we should be that God is a forgiver!
I Peter 1:18–20
Last week, we looked at v. 18; we have seen a big difference between the Old Testament and New Testament way of atonement. Israel had atonement money: “silver.” That money was used to make the sockets of silver under the boards in the tabernacle. The boards are a picture of Christians, all part of the house of God; the sockets are our redemption; what does it mean to redeem? To redeem is to buy back, to pay a ransom for. We see this in Exodus when Israel was redeemed from Egypt. The Jews Peter was writing to would have known all this. But now their source of redemption had changed; it is now something that—in God’s eyes—is not corruptible, as silver and gold. This is something more valuable: “the precious blood of Christ.” God doesn’t use adjectives very often, so when He does, we should stop and think about it. Peter uses the word precious a number of times in His epistle. What’s precious about precious is that it tells us what God values. Read Jeremiah 15:19. It’s a sad thing when God’s people can’t divide the precious from the vile. But realize that God is not saying that something that is not vile is precious; the blood is something that is supremely important to God. God wanted to have a people, not only for earth (Israel), but for Heaven as well. So He sent His Son to shed His blood, the blood that redeemed us—precious! God has always valued blood, but it was not until blood flowed at Calvary that God could say, “That blood is precious.” Then he had a righteous ground on which He could forgive sins. Just as Aaron entered the Holy of Holies with blood, so the Lord entered Heaven with His own blood. We can’t fully realize what that blood means to God, but we can see a number of types in the Old Testament that show us something of why it is so precious. In Exodus 12:5, we read that the lamb used for the Passover was to be “without blemish, a male of the first year.” In Exodus 19:2, we find that they brought a red heifer, “without spot, wherein is no blemish, and upon which never came yoke.” Back in I Peter 1:19, it says that the Lord was “a lamb without blemish and without spot.” The animal would be disqualified if it had any blemish or spot, or had been yoked. What is the difference between a blemish and a spot? You could think about it as a piece of fabric: fabric can have blemishes; they are part of the fabric, in it from the beginning. It might also have a spot, something that has stained the fabric, but wasn’t there originally. We are born with a sin nature; it is in us from the very beginning. And because of it, we are spotted with sins. What about the yoke? Since we have a sin nature, we are yoked for Satan until we are saved, when we can take the Lord’s yoke. The Lord didn’t have a sin nature, He didn’t sin, and was never under Satan’s yoke. His life was precious, holy; He was Light and Love. He lived in complete obedience to His Father, always according to truth. All this is worthy of our meditation. Because of this He was able to pay the ransom, to redeem us and forgive us. How precious is that blood! In this verse, God is giving us inklings of what is so valuable to Him; it should be valuable to us as well.
There is one more thing we should look at. Read Ephesians 5:25–27. Who is without spot, blemish, or wrinkle in these verses? This is you and me, what we are made because He loved us. And even though it doesn’t say it, doesn’t this mean that we are precious to Him? Just as the acceptance of an Old Testament lamb was transferred to its offerer, the preciousness of the Lord has been transferred to us.
EG Hymn 31 — Precious, precious blood of Jesus,
Prayer