Hi, this is Dave Olson. I'm the senior leader of
Heartland Church located in Ankeny, IA.
I hope the following message challenges and courages and
ultimately changes you. Thanks for joining us.
If you on your way in, hopefully you grabbed some communion
elements here. If you did not we will have some
some ushers here before the end of the service go around and and
a hand some other. You could just step out one of
these side doors. There's some at the welcome desk
and right in the back there in front of the offering box back
there. But So what I want to do is I
want to teach on this concept to communion.
So what what I want to do over the next few months is we take
receive communion once a month. I want to, I want to begin to
teach on this because we can just go through this formality
and the danger is, is that we don't really get what we need to
get out of the Lord's Supper. And I have been guilty of not
not serving the Lord's Supper, not not serving Communion
enough, precisely because I don't want people to take it for
granted, which means that we need to teach on it more.
And so usually what I want to do is I want to teach on it when we
do it. And there's always other things
we want to teach on. So we're going to be making some
deposits over the next few months about the Lord's Supper.
This is such a crucial thing. And So what I really want to
focus on this morning is the cup.
I want to focus on the blood of Jesus and what that means to us.
If we don't understand the blood, we will.
We're forced to come down to a lower level in our Christian
life. The blood of Jesus will
actually, when you understand the significance of the blood,
it'll provide stability and a foundation in your life to go
deeper in the things of God. It'll enable you to stand in the
onslaught of the enemy. So what we're going to look at,
we're going to look at the blood of Jesus.
There is an application for heaven, earth, and how there's
an application where we offer it to God.
There's an application where we apply it to our own hearts, and
there's an application when we use it against the enemy and
when we really understand. Those are progressive if you
don't understand the significance of the blood before
the Father. You'll never be able to use it
in your own heart. And then it's interesting if you
get into the New Testament. There is a even in the Old
Testament, but it it comes in the New Testament.
We begin to see this very, very clearly.
There's a difference between the shed blood and the sprinkled
blood. Same blood but different
utilization of the blood. The shed blood is for the
Father. We offer the shed blood of
Christ to the Father. But we sprinkle the blood of
Christ on our hearts, and, and this is the phrase, it's in the
New Testament. In the book of Hebrews, we we
cleanse our hearts of a guilty, or a ESV even calls it an evil
conscience. We cleanse our hearts of an evil
conscience by the blood. But if you don't understand why
it's significant to the Father, if you don't have a grid work
for that, you're not going to be able to use it in your own
heart. And if you can't use it in your
own heart, you are susceptible to the primary weapon of the
enemy. The enemy is known as the
accuser of the brethren, and the accusation of the enemy were
made susceptible to accusation. If we don't understand how to
apply the blood to our heart, and we don't understand how to
apply the blood to our heart unless we understand why it's
valuable to the Father. So there's a progression.
We first understand why heaven values it, then we can.
Apply it to our own hearts, and then we can stand against the
enemy. Makes sense.
All right. So, Father, we thank you for
your word this morning. And, Lord, I ask that your
teaching would fall like rain. Lord, I'm asking God that the
very heir would be pregnant with Revelation this morning.
Lord, that you, the great Teacher, would enter the room by
your spirit, the Spirit of truth, the Spirit of wisdom and
revelation. And Lord, that you would
permeate the atmosphere, and Lord, that people would catch
things. I'm not saying.
Lord that they would. They would catch what you're
saying this morning and I would simply be an aid in that
endeavor. In Jesus name.
Amen. I really do believe that there's
a place in God, a place where there's a spirit of wisdom and
revelation that can permeate the atmosphere.
I've been in meetings where there's been people that that
carry that on their life and I would be taking notes on the
next thing they were going to say.
And it's not because I'm a smart guy, but it's because there was
such a spirit of wisdom and revelation.
They were just giving words to what was already in the air.
And I would write things down and then they would say him and
it freaked me out. But it's it's a matter of a
spirit of wisdom and revelation. So that's why John says you have
not need of a teacher. Do you know that?
Because there's an anointing within you that teaches you.
Now I'm here to give words to what God is saying, but every
one of us can tap into what the Spirit is saying.
So let he who has ears hear what the Spirit would say to the
church. The church is.
And so, oh man, I just pulled up some notes about something else
I want to teach you on some day. Oh man, I've been.
I've been. I got immersed in this study the
last few days, and I'm going to move it aside.
Okay. In handling the word, we want to
be able to think Biblically. It's not just that we compare it
what the Bible says. I remember when I was in Bible
school, there'd be guys that memorized toll passages, and
there's some real value to that, but they would say.
You know, they would paired out these verses and I'd say what
does that mean? And they just requote it.
But what does that mean? They'd requote it.
They had no idea what it said, what it meant.
They just knew what it said. And hey, you got to know what it
says before you know what it meant.
But we don't want to stop there. We want to drill down and
there's there's some grid work or some maybe you could say
lenses or paradigms through which we need to to look at the
word. And one of them is this that.
In order to really understand any subject in scripture, you
need to understand it through three, if not four lenses.
Okay any subject matter. You've got to look at it through
three and even 4 lenses. What I mean by that is it's the
first lenses. What was God's original
intention? You want to start with where God
started? I was asking my my 17 year old
on the way to church more. I said what does this mean?
Nathaniel Origin determines destiny and he was giving me his
He had some good stuff. Origin determines destiny.
And what I was talking to him about is this principle that
your where you begin will determine where you end.
You where if you are an atheist and you begin as a biological
accident, the trajectory of your life will crash very early.
Where you will end is you will be a biological accident.
But if you began in the heart of God as a Creator who created you
with great purpose, all of a sudden, that changes your
destination. Too much of theology, too much
of our cosmology and our theology and our view of
everything starts with the fall A lot of people start their
theological thinking. From the perspective of the
Fall, and if you start with the Fall, then the ultimate
destination is salvation and God is exalted primarily as the
Savior. And although those are great
things, you better get that one down and none of the others
matter. There's something greater than
knowing him as Savior and simply breaking into the new birth and
being saved. And so origins determine
destiny. So we want to, we want to go
back. You could say, oh, let's start
back in the garden, Okay, Let's start with God as creator.
And then the trajectory becomes this, the the reconciliation of
all things, that God's going to reconcile all things to himself.
That's a grand theme. That's an amazing theme.
But there's something greater than that.
What we want to do is we want to start way back.
And the eternal heart of God that had a dream for many sons.
Scripture says that God wanted many sons and daughters.
And so that was his original dream.
And he put it this way. He said let us make man in our
own image. God dreamt of a human creation,
someone he would make that would represent him well.
And if we don't understand that if we reduce everything to
salvation, as if the Great Commission is go out and make
converts, it's not what it says. It says go out and make
disciples. We want to raise up people that
look like him, that act like him and think like him and operate
like him. So that if people wonder what is
God like, you can say, hey, just go check out his children.
They're a lot like him. They'll they'll be a great
representation, a great representation of who he is.
And so any study that we study, anything that we try to grasp,
we want to start with original intention.
The second lens through which we need to study any subject we
really want to know from a biblical perspective is not just
what it got originally intend, but how did sin affected?
How did the fall reshape that subject?
That's where a lot of people start.
We want to start with the original intention, but we've
got to take into consideration how did the fall affected then
third, how does the cross affect it?
What does redemption do to that? What does the redemption of
original intention look like? And the 4th lens, I I alluded to
a possible 4th lens and that is the process of redemption
because there is the the event and then there's the process of
redemption. And when we really want to
understand the subject, we want to begin to think through all
three to four of those those elements what what was God's
original intention for mankind? Because unless we understand
that, we're never really going to understand redemption and
we're never going to really understand where this thing is
going. And I would propose to you, out
of that understanding comes a clear understanding of the value
of the blood of Jesus. When we don't deal with things
at that level, we we end up with a very shallow theology and we
don't understand the value of the blood.
The reason the blood is valuable to the Father was because of his
original intention for man. God says my word will not return
void and when God said let us make man in our own image.
And the image of God, He created him, male and female.
He created them. When he said that, I would
propose that that image was potential and that making was a
process. What do I mean by that?
Adam and Eve in the garden were not the finished product.
That wasn't the ultimate gods at home.
Now we've reached the ultimate goal.
Adam and Eve in the garden. No.
What God was going to do is he stamped his image on these human
beings he created. And then through testing and
through opportunity, they would unfold the image of God within
them and they would become mature.
The New Testament calls that discipleship or maturity or
moving towards holiness or perfection.
Even that word sums up that idea.
Perfection is not being flawless, but it's being
complete in the New Testament. And so all of these these ideas
have to do with what was God's original intention.
Jesus becoming a man. Jesus taking on human flesh was
God stubbornly pursuing that original word.
God bound himself to that thing and he said I will have a man in
my own image. He created Adam and Eve and they
derailed this thing. So what did God do?
He said I'm going to have to take it over and do it myself.
And Jesus put on an earth suit, stepped into human history.
And fulfilled his own plan to have a man in his own image.
Let's turn to Hebrews chapter 2, Hebrews chapter two.
Really the book of Hebrews itself is the book to study if
you want to understand the blood and Hebrews chapter 2.
Provides the foundation, really the theological foundation of
those lenses we want to look at. Look at Hebrews chapter 2, Lego
verse 5. For it was not to angels that
God subjected the world to come of which we are speaking.
It has been testified somewhere. What is man that you are mindful
of him or the Son of man that you care for him?
So the Psalmist is he's quoting Psalm Chapter 8, and he's he's
asking God, what's the deal with humankind?
What is your obsession with us? We're so puny down here.
We're we're these weak, puny, you know, making these puny
attempts at serving you, and yet you're obsessed with us.
You, you're, you're fixated on humanity.
What's the deal with that? You made him a a little for a
little while lower than the angels and have crowned him with
glory and honor, putting everything under his feet.
What he's dealing with here is original intention.
Psalm Chapter 8 frames that first scenario, that first lens.
He's saying what's man? What is man?
That you are mindful of him that that you would visit him.
You made him a little lower the angels and put everything under
his feet. You gave him dominion over over
the earth. That's original intention.
And then he veers off of the text in Psalm chapter 8 and he
introduces the second lens. He says, now putting everything
subject to him. He left nothing outside of his
control. Halfway.
Right at the end of verse eight, he introduces the second one.
At present we do not see everything subject to him.
Why? Because he's now introducing the
effects of the fall. God delegated the earth to man.
And man abdicated that delegation.
Man abdicated that God-given authority and gave it to the
enemy through his disobedience to whom you obey.
To him you were a slave. And man essentially gave the
deed to the enemy, and he became a slave of the enemy.
So it goes on, he says. Verse 9.
Now he's going to introduce the third lens, that of redemption.
But we see him who was for a little while made lower than the
angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of
the suffering of death. So by the grace of God he might
taste death for everyone. So God delegated the earth to
man, put everything under his feet.
Man abdicated that through sin became a prisoner in his own
house. And then Jesus took on human
flesh to seize control back and to win back that authority.
Now this passage, we we've looked at this passage in years
past as a outline to understand prayer.
And I'm telling you this. You cannot understand the
subject of prayer without looking through these lenses.
The authority that you have as a believer, the authority that you
have as a human being. The warfare that goes on in the
heavenlies and the necessity of us having to pray, not just
understanding why we pray, but why we have to continue to pray.
All is within this, this little outline that the writer of
Hebrews gives to us. But it also gives us insight
into why the blood of Jesus is valuable.
God's dream was to have a man made in his own image.
That's what God longed for. He had He was a father with an
only begotten son, but he wanted many begottens.
You cannot understand God without understanding his
fatherhood. The lens of fatherhood is the
ultimate lens to understand who he is.
It is the essence of his nature. The Triune God is a father and a
son and a spirit. Who have a relationship within
the Godhead and it's the pattern by which God operates and he
wants to bring many sons to glory, Romans 8 says.
And so you can't understand God. And like we were talking a few
weeks ago, if you have father issues that make you stumble
over interacting with God as a father, you need to deal with
that because that will keep you from your destiny because your
ultimate identity is as a son and a daughter.
It's not apostleship. It's not a bunch of other ships.
It's son ship. Your ultimate identity is.
It's not. It's not your assignment or your
fivefold title or whatever. It's not whether you're an elder
or you're a teacher or whatever, your ultimate identity is being
a son and a daughter of God. But if we can't relate with him
as father, we're kept from our. Identity and therefore our
destiny. And if we don't understand that
God is ultimate, he's, it's not just that he's savior.
He became savior out of necessity because of our the
Fall. But he was originally a father
wanting many sons and we need to get back to the beginning and
see that the hit him being savior was a necessity.
But his identity is he's a father and so the father wanted
many sons. But Adam and Eve, So what?
You can put it this way, what God's desire was, is he was
going to call out the image, the potential within them.
God breathed into Adam and Eve the breath.
The Hebrew is the breath of lives, plural.
There was the natural life, the souke, the soul, and then there
was the higher life that the. The life of the spirit, that
breath of life. So they became living souls,
with living spirits that could interact with their Creator,
their Father. When God told them the day that
you eat of that fruit, you shall surely die, there was a twofold
death that came. There was.
Their physical death, this slow expiration that began to set in.
But there was the immediate death of their spirit.
Their spirit died. And they they were cut off from
that communication and that relationship with God and got
what God's plan was. And in this passage in Hebrews,
it says, well, well, let's read it here, see, look at look at
verse 10. For it was fitting that he for
whom and through whom everything exists.
In bringing many sons to glory, that's what we're talking about.
Let me read it again, verse 10. For it was fitting that he
Speaking of Jesus, for whom and by whom everything exists in
bringing many sons to glory should make the founder of their
salvation perfect through suffering.
That word founder is an interesting word.
It's translated captain of their salvation.
The author of their salvation, the Nas, that New American
Standard Translation translates that word, The pioneer of their
salvation. That's the one I prefer.
I like the picture of that because what God did is God
created them with potential. The image of God was stamped
upon their nature, but Adam and Eve were not the finished
product. So how was God going to draw
this nature out of them and unfold them so they could become
all that God intended? He was going to do it through
choices. That's why he put the forbidden
fruit that hung on the tree in the middle of the garden.
He didn't put it on the edge of the garden.
He didn't put it where it was inaccessible.
He didn't put razor wire around it.
And you know, angels with AK-40 sevens, He put it right smack
dab in the middle of the garden so that they could access it.
And he said don't eat of it. You're going to have to trust
me. Because only by trusting him,
only through testing can you grow.
I know this is not a good news sermon, yet it's going to get
good, OK? The reason the author says it
was fitting that he, for whom and through whom everything
exists should be made perfect through suffering.
The reason it was fitting that he is made perfect through
suffering because that's how you're going to be perfected.
So what he's saying. I mean it's all over the word
Romans chapter 5. Suffering produces perseverance
and perseverance. Character and that passage is
framed as character. James chapter one.
Think it not strange my brothers, when you go through
trials of many kind, for if you patiently endure you will become
mature, not lacking anything. And where Roman says character,
James says maturity. Hebrews chapter 12.
Think it not strange, brother. When you go through trials, the
Lord disciplines those He loves and disciplines everybody he
treats as a son endure hardship as discipline.
Therefore you may be sharers in His Holiness.
Do you see an equation here? You see a pattern throughout
Scripture. Romans 5 Suffering character.
James Trials, Maturity, Hebrews 12.
Hardship, holiness. They're saying the same thing,
different terminology. I know there's there's no
shouting going on in here this morning, but what we need to do
is we need to have a lens for this because what God is doing
is he's inviting us to come higher.
He's saying I've got so much more for you.
You don't realize what I put in you as potential that I want to
bring out of you as character, holiness and maturity.
And so if we begin to understand that, then when we go through
these trials, we cooperate with him.
This is, this is not. It's not that God is the
killjoy. He's not saying what if you're
going to. A lot of us see God as this
demented little boy up. You know, we're like an insect,
and he's pulling our wings off. I wonder if they can fly without
this one. Now try.
You know? And there people have that view
of God. That's not God.
He's a good father. He's got good things for you.
But because he's a good father, he will not allow you to step
into things before you can handle him.
The enemy is just the opposite. He loves to get you promoted
beyond your maturity and watch you crash and burn.
He loves to give you under knowledge of things that you
can't yet handle. You think about how the the
world operates, trying to expose children to things they don't
have the capacity, emotional capacity to handle and it
shipwrecks them. But a good father says no, not
my children, not on my watch. I'm going to protect my God's
the same way I was talking to a an old friend that got got it.
Guy reached out to me, hadn't talked to him in years.
Good friend of mine from Teen Challenge, and we just were
visiting on the phone and got to talking about this principle.
I remember sitting with some guys in Teen Challenge one time
and I was telling them that principle, no pain, no gain.
We just saw it in scripture. That's scriptural.
No pain, no gain. But as I'm telling him that the
Lord spoke to me and he told me to tell him this, there's a flip
side that's just as true. No gain, no pain.
God is a good father. He is only he is only willing to
introduce you to the pain the Max the the, the minimum pain
necessary to get you where you need to go.
Now, that's not to say we can't bring it on ourself.
Believe me, I've been through enough trials.
I've been through hardship, trials and you know, the
hardship, those those kind of things in my life that I brought
on myself, had nothing to do with God.
Now, God's very practical. He'll still use that.
He'll redeem it. Thank you Jesus, but God will
only allow the suffering that is absolutely necessary to get you
where you need to go. Kathy and I have a daughter, 31,
she mouthed it. 31 year old daughter and Lisa's had a lot of
surgeries and there have been surgeries we put off until the
pain of not having it outweighed the pain of having it because we
love our daughter. God loves us so far beyond our
human capacity to love our own children.
And so he's going to guard you and you can trust him.
So when you're going through things you need to look at every
heart what it what is, Hebrews say it said consider hardship,
discipline, endure hardship as discipline you going through a
hard time consider it's discipline from the Lord.
And the discipline of the Lord, we think a discipline from a
parental perspective that we're going to discipline our kids
when they do wrong. No, it's more of the the
military mindset. The military doesn't put their
soldiers under discipline because they've been bad.
They put them under discipline precisely because they see more
good in them than that soldier season himself.
And so they know the only way to draw that man or that woman out
of herself is to brick create a discipline environment to call
that greatness out. And that's the type that's the
idea behind the discipline of the Lord.
So if you're going through a hard time, don't waste your
sorrows. Milk it, grab the udders and
milk it. Get it all.
You can get a bucket full. If you're going to go through
it, get something out of it and surrender to the Lord and say
God, Lord, help me to learn something by this.
Lord, I want to know you better through this hardship, Lord,
this deprivation. I'm going through this, this
heartbreak, I'm going through this hardship, whatever it is,
Lord, I want to see you through this and teach me and milk it
for all it's worth. Don't waste your sorrows.
So God took Adam and Eve, and he formed them in his image, and
they were full of potential. And then he allowed their will
to be confronted. Because you cannot grow morally.
You can never grow in character without being faced with moral
choices. You've got to be able to choose,
and we've got to choose. The higher good.
And that's what creates character.
And our human nature wants to take the easy route.
I want. I want the goods now and I'll
pay later. That's why in scripture, again
and again, sin is framed as debt, because debt is.
I want the enjoyment of the purchase now and I'll pay later.
And you know what? You always pay more than you
intended to pay. But in Scripture, God, God
doesn't seduce you by some pleasure.
And then there's paid a Later on, God comes to you and says,
count the cost. Here's the contract.
Read through, understand, Don't sign, don't commit until you've
counted the cost. And we surrendered him out of
trust and God grows us up into him.
That that was the plan. That's why it was fitting that
God for whom and through whom everything exists.
Jesus, for whom and through whom everything exists, should be
made perfect to suffer, because that's how we're going to be
made perfect. So what happened?
Adam and Eve. They blew it and they derailed
the plan of God. So what did Jesus do?
He came on, and he was the first Adam derailed the plan, the last
Adam got it back on track. He came in and as the pioneer of
our salvation, forged away back for humanity.
But even Jesus in the Manger was not the finished product.
You understand that. It says in Hebrews chapter 2.
It says once made perfect he became the source of eternal
salvation. I used to read that thing.
What does that mean? That Jesus wasn't born perfect?
Hebrews 5 says that Jesus was perfected.
By the things he suffered, I, I, I.
What does that mean? Years ago I picked up a book by
Oswald Chambers. He's the one that wrote my
utmost for his highest great, great author.
He had some tremendous revelation, and he talked about
this principle. And he he said something to this
effect. The innocence of Jesus was not
the innocence of our order of things.
He said our innocence. He went on to say this.
He said innocence is nothing to be bragged about.
It's never been confronted with an opportunity.
I mean, it's something to be guarded when it when a child
doesn't have the capacity to deal with the choice.
But innocence is not something to be bragged about, he said.
Purity. Innocence has never been
confronted with the opportunity. It's it's just been shielded.
But Purity has been confronted, gone through the fire of
temptation and coming out the other side, holding to its
integrity. It did the right thing.
That's what God is after in our lives, Purity.
He's not just meaning to keep us innocent, He wants to make us
pure. And so when he allowed the
enemy. To to come and confront Adam and
Eve. And they made the wrong choice.
They fell. So what did God do?
Did he say I wash my hands of humanity?
He said no, I will have a man in my own image.
And he sent Jesus. But Jesus came as an innocent
child. He wasn't born perfect.
In other words, he wasn't born completed.
He had to. What did he say to his cousin
John the Southern baptizer? He said I must fulfill all of
righteousness. Why?
Because that was God's plan. God had a plan for man.
His heart had a dream. I want to see a man that will go
through everything and out of trust for me will unfold that
character I put within him. So I can say, if you want to
know what I'm like, look at my son.
And that's what how Jesus lived. So Jesus fulfilled all of
righteousness every time he was confronted with the temptation
he chose, right? It wouldn't have been good
enough had. Remember when Herod tried to
have Jesus killed while he was in the Manger?
It would not. He could not have purchased OK,
Theologically he may have been able to purchase part of your
salvation, but not the fullness. One of the things we need to
understand is that what we needed for salvation is not just
a sinless life. I mean that.
We must have said God. But God desired more than
innocence, sinlessness. He wanted perfection.
Somebody who not only didn't do the wrong things, but someone
who fulfilled all of righteousness, did all the right
things. So this is not just something
we're we're passive. I'm just not going to sin, not
going to do anything, not going to sin.
No. God wants you to engage and do
the things of the Father. Do His work, do what you see the
Father doing, say what you hear the Father saying, walk and
unfold that character and become all that he intended you to be.
That's God's plan. And so that was the the
objective of Jesus, even to the point where, hanging on the
cross, it says he was obedient, Philippians too, He was obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross.
He had to fulfill all of righteousness.
And then what did he say? Hanging on the cross.
It is finished. What was finished?
I personally believe that what was finished was God's dream for
man, that God could finally say, I have a man made in my own
image. He has fulfilled every purpose.
He has fulfilled all of righteousness.
My heart is satisfied with that man.
It's such an amazing thing. Hebrews Chapter 9.
It says that OK, so Jesus dies, gives his life, he resurrects.
And it says that he went into the holy, the holiest place, not
by the blood of goats and not by the blood of bulls and lambs,
but he entered the most holy place by his own precious blood.
Now you need to catch this. What he was saying is that Jesus
earned the right to walk in. He could come in, He was holy,
and he could step into the Father boldly and say I'm here
and there could be there was nothing between them.
He had fulfilled all of righteousness.
He entered by his own righteous life.
That's what God was longing for. And when God had that, God could
say, I'm satisfied, rent the veil, come in.
So what does all that have to do with you and I?
Well, that's the back story. When you and I use the phrase,
we enter by the blood, we come before him out of the blood, I
plead the blood. What do we really mean by that?
By these Christian phrases, when God began to teach me about
this, I was a young believer. I got saved.
At 18 years old, I've been living on the streets for a
couple years. Some people hear my testimony
and think I was in my 30s when I would God say I was.
I was 18. I've been an alcoholic for a
number of years, living on the streets for two years, and I was
a demonized young man. And when I got saved, I got
saved. I mean, God, I was broken and I
knew God. I don't want to touch my life.
It's yours. You you tell me to jump.
I'm just saying how high. You and And when I had authority
figures in my life, they say jump.
I'd say how high. I mean.
I was a broken person. I was sincere.
The problem is my sincerity was uninformed.
I did not understand the gospel when you are very sincere, but
you have a misunderstanding of the gospel.
You will burn up like a crispy critter and trying to please
God, the enemy will leverage your own sincerity against you.
Now there are other people who they don't understand the
gospel, but they're not sincere. Their failures won't bother
them. The enemy can't leverage them
because they don't really care. But if you're sincere and you
don't have an accurate understanding of the gospel, the
enemy will use his. His primary weapon of accusation
and condemnation? To drive you into the ground and
to cause you to just work and work, to please God, to purchase
something you already have for free.
So as a young man, I I got saved and I went off to Bible school
and I was about five years into my walk with God.
I was in Bible school and I remember just crashing and
burning I was, I was in my my Bible school dorm room.
Laying on the floor for a couple hours, just weeping and saying,
God, I'm done, I can't serve you.
I I can't do this thing. I don't have it in me.
And I I remember telling Lord this, this is an indication that
I did not understand Christianity.
I said I guess I only had five years in me.
Other people, I don't know how they have 20 years of
Christianity in them. That was telling.
And I was laying there crying, just saying, God, I can't do
this thing. And I heard an audible voice say
there is therefore now no condemnation for those who in
Christ Jesus. It wasn't God.
It was my My best friend had snuck in through the bathroom.
Seriously, I didn't know he was there.
It freaked me out. And I don't know.
Yeah, I know I had you for there, you guys.
It was my friend Richard Green. Some of you made rich pastors
over in Coralville, got a great church life church over there,
and it rocked me. But that one word began to be
the foundation through which God began to build something in my
life. And over the next three years,
God began to teach me about the blood of Jesus.
And everything I've told you this morning and everything I'm
about to tell you came out of that three years.
But God began to set me free, and I began to understand.
That the Father is satisfied with Jesus life.
What God wanted was a perfect life.
One person, a man made in his own image, A man who would
cooperate with him and out of faith in his character, yield to
him and allow him to develop him.
And he had that in Jesus. What does that have to do with
the blood? Leviticus.
I want to say it's chapter 16. Don't quote me.
Ask Bill Culver. It but Leviticus says the life
is in the blood. That's a very, very important
principle because the life that is in Jesus blood is a life that
has fulfilled every righteous requirement the Father ever had
for man. He fulfilled all of
righteousness. It's a perfected life.
And so when Jesus offered that to the Father.
The Father could say, I'm satisfied.
I received, He received. Jesus was not only the Lamb that
was slain, he was the priest who carried his own blood, the high
priest. And he came not in a tent made
by men, not in a holy of holies made by men, but in the the true
holy of Holies in heaven, the throne room of God.
And he walked in and He said, Father, I want to present to you
your dream, what you've longed for a man.
That perfectly exemplifies you. And the Father said, I am
satisfied. That is why the blood of Jesus
is so valuable to God. It's not a sentimentality that
oh, he's my he's, he's close to me.
He's my boy. And that's why it makes, you
know, I'm I'm have an affinity for his blood knowing it's that
his blood fulfilled all of righteousness.
And when we really begin to understand that, it gives us
confidence before God. First John has it says this.
If your heart condemns you, you do not have confidence before
God. There are a lot of believers
that do not have confidence to go into the presence of God.
They they dwell on the outside at best in the holy place, not
the holy of holies. They stand on the outside as
kind of a they they feel like they're a kind of a second class
citizen that God, God's disappointed Jesus bought you,
you know, and. Man, Jesus, every time you go
out, you bring back something. And now I'm stuck with him, you
know, and okay, he's mine and you bought them and I'll, I'll
put up with them. But it's more toleration than
celebration. It's a lot of people have that
view of God because they're so in tune with their own failures,
and the precise reason they're so in tune is because of their
sincerity. They want to please God, and
they are painfully aware of their own failings and their own
weaknesses. And the more sincere you are,
the more susceptible you are to condemnation until you
understand the blood. And so we've got to understand
how the blood satisfies the Father.
And when God began to teach me this, I remember I was standing.
I was, I went, went to Berean Assembly of God over on
university, we were in worship. Those mob chairs, it those pink
mob chairs, we were in worship. And those were the days.
And I was, I was worshiping all of a sudden I I saw this picture
and I didn't know it was a vision.
I just saw this picture of this huge gymnasium like room but it
had this polished glass floor and I was looking in and it was
like the floor went on forever. I couldn't see the full expanse
but I knew it was the throne room and my heart I wanted to go
in and I'm like, Lord, I want to come in but I knew I'm not
worthy. I Lord, you don't want me in
there. I I, I I'm not worried to go in
there. And the Lord called my attention
to the threshold of that big huge room, which was the throne
room. And there was blood all over the
threshold. And he simply said to me, you
have to enter through the blood, the only way in.
God loves you enough that He will never allow you to rest in
your own works, because if you have confidence.
To approach him based on your own works, You are living
deceived. You can never be good enough.
You can never earn the right. You're made good enough through
the blood of Christ. During that season of my life, I
would picture myself standing outside the throne and I'd want
to go in and worship. And I would picture this big
Angel like he's the bouncer, you know, like he's carding
everybody. You got what you need, buddy.
And I'd, I'd, he'd say, do you have a perfect life?
And I would say, no, not enough of myself.
I know who I am and what I've done in the past.
But I do have this, and I would pull out the blood.
I have the perfect life of Jesus.
I have a life that is fulfilled every righteous requirement.
I present this blood to you, this life to you.
And the Angel would grin and say, go on in and worship.
And I would go and I had to do those mental gymnastics.
I had to retrain my mind. Hebrews, there's, there's a
number of passages. Let me, let me read a couple
verses to you and we're going to land this.
We'll have to get into this again later because I want to
teach you how to use this against the enemy.
Hebrews 10 verse one you have the worship team could come up
here and you guys, if you guys could come on up, we're going to
receive communion. For since the law was but a,
this is 10/1. For since the law was but a
shadow of good things to come, instead of a true form of these
realities, it can never by the same sacrifices that are
continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw
near. Otherwise would they not have
ceased to be offered, since worshippers have once been
cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sin but
these sacrifices? In these sacrifices, all the
reminder of sin every year, he said.
If you're really cleansed, you don't have the consciousness of
sin. He goes on to say Hebrews 10,
verse nine. So being cleansed a racist sin
consciousness. If you're living in sin
consciousness, it's because you're not yet cleansed.
Now pause there. Cleanse Cleansing your heart is
not the same as being forgiven. Being forgiven is the Ledger in
heaven that's taken care of. The shed blood of Jesus has
already been presented to the Father on your behalf and as a
born again believer, God opens the books and says forgiven.
You're righteous. But if in your mind your heart
is not cleansed, you don't take advantage of that.
You've got a check you won't cash.
You stand on the outside because you have a defiled identity,
because you've never learned to apply the blood to the doorposts
of your own heart. Thanks for listening to our
podcast. If you'd like to help more
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you can do so at Heartland Church online.com/give.