Following Judah's Lion

The Life is in the Blood

Ex.12:12-13 - For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite 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.
13 And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.
Throughout the Old Testament God revealed a consistent ingredient in His path to redemption and deliverance. That ingredient was blood. There were literally millions of gallons of blood spilled for the sins of Israel, collectively as well as personally. The blood sacrifice had been stamped upon the spiritual understanding of God’s people. That was the core element in the Mosaic Law and it was the shadow of the perfect sacrifice that was to come, the Son of God’s own blood.
For most people the sight of blood is startling. And after many centuries the blood stained brazen alter probably became mundane in the midst of Israel, and its significance became cultural rather than spiritual, and although understood in the context of the law, it became stale. The practice of animal sacrifice administered by the Aaronic priesthood also became very predictable and redundant. As time went by all those things pertaining to the blood sacrifice became part of the religious culture and lost its spiritual weight. The Jewish people had settled into a very superfluous religious expression.
But there was something very important about all this blood, and although the forgiveness through animal blood was only temporary and had to be repeated, it all pointed to one, spectacular event that would only happen once and never repeated again. The blood that was to be shed from the veins of Emmanuel would more than suffice for all the sins of all mankind, and Christ would only be sacrificed one time. But let us not romanticize the vision of the cross. And let us not just stuff it with doctrine and hang it upon some theological wall to be admired for our antiseptic orthodoxy.
But after the Spirit of God illuminates our hearts and reveals the redemptive significance of the cross as well as the significance of the Person who adorns it, we should not stop there. We should never be content with the doctrinal abstract, but we must proceed further into the realm of spiritual awakening that expands our hearts, flood our souls with greater understanding of His sufferings, and a redemptive realization that explodes with gratefulness and worship. The cross in all its glory competes with all the accoutrements of this jingle-jangle culture that accentuates the temporal, the technical, and the sophisticated while diminishing the eternal, the simple, and the unvarnished.
And like the blood sacrifice in the Old Testament Tabernacle, the cross has become mundane and inconspicuous within the current evangelical practice. It has a place in our expedient doctrinal statements, but it has become commonplace and unremarkable. We know Jesus died, we know He shed His blood, and we know He suffered, but that no longer moves us the way it once did. The blood was placed upon our doorposts, the death angel has passed over us, and now it is time to move on. The blood is now history rather than present reality. We have used the blood to gain eternal life and now it has been all but discarded except in a very few songs and as a theological footnote. How tragic.
Do we incline our ears to hear His groans? Can we hear the pounding of those nails or the mocking of the crowd? Can we hear His voice as it calls out to His Father? And are our eyes opened to that blood - all that blood? Smeared all over His face, and dripping down upon the earth below Him, and running down His side, and mingled with His matted hair. Yes, all that blood. Here we are almost 2200 years later and do we still hunger and thirst to see, hear, smell, and experience that glorious cross? We were dead and now we live! We were lost and now we are found! We had no hope and now we have a sure hope! We were blind but now we see! We knew not God but now we have been made His sons and daughters!
There can be no talk of Christ’s birth without speaking of His death. Much of the church avoids the subject, and some consider it a sign of defeat. But that blood is the river which flows right into the throne room of God and into eternal life. That blood is life, and everything without that blood that claims life is an imposter. Christianity without the cross is nothing more that a religious system without redemption. I realize we live in a sophisticated culture and that many people are very educated, but man’s wisdom becomes worthless when it is in competition with the cross.
The last enemy is death, and the only victory over death runs right through the cross. Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. Shake your slumbering soul and awake to a new revelation and a new love for that cross. The blood of God’s lamb is on the doorposts of our hearts and we are safe - eternally. This is what the world is searching for in all the wrong places. But after we have found the cross, and it has found us, our seeking journey has only just begun.

Ps.27:8 - When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek.