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Junk to Jewels
Chapter 7
The Blood Of The Lamb
"And they
overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and
they did not love their lives to the death" (Revelation 12:11). This chapter emphasizes the finished
work of Christ on the Cross and at the Resurrection. The first step in overcoming is "the blood of the Lamb." We must continually build our faith in
what Jesus did for us, what He accomplished for us, and what His promises and
purposes are for us. We live in a
negative world, and it is difficult to keep our minds positive and upbeat. Focusing on what Jesus did and not so
much on what we can do is a necessary point of beginning.
When I need to overcome, I spend whatever time and energy needed in order to hear what God has to say about my situation. Everything else must take second place! If I can hear Him speak, I am on the way to victory! Usually the word that God will speak will have something to do with what He accomplished for us. It is often centered around the finished work of His Cross, His grace, and His mercy. Once you receive this promise from God then continually meditate on it. This procedure will fulfill what we are calling, "the blood of the Lamb."
The Word says that anything that is not of faith is sin. "for
whatever is not from faith is sin" (Romans 14:23b). That does not necessarily mean that you
are "sinning," as in some moral act or in un-forgiveness or the
like, but it does mean that you
are living in the natural and missing God's mark.
The
Word says that faith pleases God. "But without faith it is impossible to
please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a
rewarder of those who diligently seek Him" (Hebrews 11:6).
The
Word says that if we wake up and see who we really are, then we will not be so
prone to live on a lower level, or missing the mark in sin. "Awake to
righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak
this to your shame" (1 Corinthians 15:34, KJV).
How do we receive this faith? "So then faith cometh by hearing, and
hearing by the word of God" (Romans 10:17, KJV). The word "Word" in this Scripture is rhema, which
means a personal word spoken out of the mouth of God and customized for you
personally. How do you hear in
this manner? I suggest that you
practice the "Relationship Skills" that we have outlined in the
attached appendix.
Having said that, now ask God to make these Scriptures and truths
real to you from His mouth so that you may hear the Word and that faith would rise
in your heart, and that your life would turn from one that is lived on the
lower level of the common (sin) to the abundant life which comes by faith.
Here are some Scriptures and Scriptural facts that can let you
know who you are; they can help to give you your real identity. Meditate upon them, study them for
yourself.
A blood covenant has been applied to your life.
You are clean by the blood of Jesus! It is up to you to accept it or reject it, or perhaps ignore
it out of ignorance. A great exchange
has taken place between you and Jesus Christ. On the Cross, He took every bad and negative thing in your
life. At the resurrection He gave
you every positive thing in the nature of God Almighty! He begot you as sons and daughters and
seated you with Him in a realm far above all your enemies.
Satan, your enemy, will do all in his power to steal this from you with
lies. However, if you know the
truth, and stand on the truth, you will be a winner! You went through the crucifixion with Him, His death with
Him, and have already been resurrected with Him.
These facts are good seed, which will bear good fruit in
your life. They require a faith in God's Word that
surpasses your natural senses.
What is more reliable to you, the Word of God, or your senses? They are generic facts that apply to
all believers. Besides these, God
may give you a specific promise that applies to your situation. The Holy Spirit through the Word can make who you are in Christ a reality. You need to take the Word at face value
and believe it as a legal document.
You were hopelessly lost. That means
that someone else had to search for you.
Ephesians 2:12 (a & b) says, "that at that time you were without Christ, having no
hope and without God in the world."
You were dead in your sins.
There is no way
out for a dead man, except to receive life. Ephesians
2:1 says, "And
you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins."
The blood Jesus shed on the Cross removed your sins.
He took your place. Ephesians 1:7 says, "In Him we have
redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches
of His grace." The word, "forgiveness,"
actually means to separate or cut away.
Our sins have been taken away from us and put onto Jesus, our
sacrificial Lamb.
You were already "In Christ" when the following
events took place.
You were crucified with Christ.
"I have been
crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and
the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who
loved me and gave Himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).
You died with Christ. "For if
we have been joined together in the likeness of His death, we shall also be in
the likeness of His resurrection" (Romans 6:5).
You were buried with Christ. "We were buried therefore with Him
through Baptism into death" (Romans 6:4). "Having been buried with him in baptism"
(Colossians 2:12).
You were made alive with Christ. "And you
being dead through your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, you
did He make alive together with Him" (Colossians 2:13). "Even when we were dead through
our trespasses [God] made us alive together with Christ" (Ephesians 2:5).
You were raised with Christ.
You are seated with Christ. "He [God] made us alive with Christ
even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been
saved. And God raised us up with
Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus"
(Ephesians 2:5,6).
That is our legal standing with God today and the foundation of our
legal rights. As far as the spiritual world is
concerned, your position is with Christ in the heavenlies. You are in a seat of authority. Satan and your mind will tell you that
you are not seated with Christ in the heavenlies, but that is a lie! You need to know that God seated you
with Him while you were yet a sinner!
You are a new creation. "Therefore,
if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away;
behold, all things have become new" (2 Corinthians 5:17).
You might ask, how can this be?
Good
question. God put us in
Christ. "But of Him you are
in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God--and righteousness and
sanctification and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30). Being in Christ is like you were in
your father and mother as a sperm and an egg. You inherited their history in your genealogy. Just imagine that you are a marker
inside of a book. When the book is
moved, the marker goes with it.
When the book is put on the shelf, the marker goes on the shelf. If the book is burned, the marker is
burned. If by some miracle the
book is restored and put back on the shelf, so is the marker.
You were redeemed. Redemption is a Bible word that confuses many people. Let's see if we can dig out the hidden treasures in its real meaning.
According to Vines Complete Expository Dictionary, redeem means "to buy" or "buy out," especially of purchasing a slave with a view to his freedom. It means "to release by paying a price of ransom from bondage." It was a word commonly used in the market place. Think of it as going to a pawn shop to redeem something that was sold in the hands of a stranger, the wrongful but yet legal owner.
The
price of redemption was the blood of Jesus. We are not explicitly told to whom the price was paid. I submit that the price was due to God
Himself. And it was God Himself
who paid the price.
Colossians 1:14 says, "in whom we have redemption through His
blood, the remission of sins."
1
Peter 1:18,19 says, "knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible
things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition
from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot."
The
worth of an object is ultimately established by the price one is willing to pay
for it. God thought that you were
so valuable to Him that He paid that price of His own son for you. Your worth is not established by what
other people think of you, how much money you have, how much education you
have, or how successful your life has been. Your worth, and your identity is based upon the fact that
the Creator of the Universe paid the highest price He could pay to purchase
you, His own Son!
The parables in Matthew chapter 13 tell the
story. "The kingdom of heaven
is like treasure hidden in a field.
When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold
all he had and bought that field" (Matthew 13:44).
The man who found the treasure is Jesus. The field is the world. This is stated in Matthew 13:38 in
another parable. When the man
discovered that there was a treasure, he hid it. This is like Jesus putting a cover on us so that Satan
cannot steal us. He did not really
want the field, but he was realistic enough to know that in order to get the
treasure, he had to pay the price for the field. The price of the field was very high. It cost him all he had.
"Reconcile" is a powerful word. Strong's Concordance defines it "to
bring back a former state of harmony." It is defined "to repair, to put back into working
order, making peace between two opposing views or groups." "Reconcile" infers that
changes have taken place, even exchanges.
Why do you suppose it was God's plan to reconcile us to Him? I submit that the end goal for this and
all of the other aspects of the Cross we have been writing about is friendship
and intimacy with God. He desires
to be close to you. He said in
John 15 that we were His friends, not only His servants. That is a very foreign concept to many
people, and is easy for even Christians to forget and to fail to nurture. Our "normal" position with
God is intimacy.
All evil was reconciled.
2
Corinthians 5:18 says, "All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself
through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation." This is our ministry here on earth, to
take all the enemies of our lives, dip them into the blood and Cross of Jesus
Christ, and turn them into friends. We covered this subject at length in
chapter 5.
Propitiation.
Propitiation, according to The
American Heritage Dictionary, [1]
means to "conciliate (an offended power); to appease wrath." The Bible clearly states that God is love, yet God has wrath
that must be appeased. How do
these two apparent opposites become reconciled?
Without wrath, a law cannot accomplish its
intended good.
God is a God of mercy and
judgment. Actually they are not
contrary to one another, in fact one cannot exist without the other. The are interdependent.
God set up the universe and man to
operate under laws. The law of
gravity is one example. If someone
abused the law of gravity, they would feel the wrath of that law. But if they for some reason would not
feel the wrath of gravity, neither would gravity be capable of its intended
good, keeping us planted on Earth without floating around. Hebrews 1:3 states that God upholds all
things by His Word. If His Word
fails then the entire creation would fail and most likely implode. Therefore God must maintain His laws
with justice and judgment. If we
have laws prohibiting murder, our government must prosecute those who break
that law and bring them to justice.
In the same way, the breaking of God's laws must be prosecuted,
otherwise we could not exist.
Therefore God cannot wink at sin, or at the man who sins. He cannot simply excuse sin or
unrighteousness. If He did, His Word and His laws would fail.
In the Garden of Eden as recorded in Genesis chapter
3, God did two things that I would like to mention in reaction to the sin of
Adam and Eve. First He informed
them that they had come under a curse (as He also did to Satan) and had lost
the blessing of being connected to Him, and second He made coats of skin and
clothed them. These acts of wrath
and kindness taken together can tend to confuse man's view of God's nature.
All of God's wrath was put on Jesus at the Cross. The Passover Lamb is your example. The Israelites who were in Egypt did
not deserve to be delivered from the horrible plagues that were coming on the
land and its people. However they
were instructed by God through Moses to take a perfect lamb, kill it, and
spread its blood over the doorposts of their homes. That act of faith kept them perfectly safe. The lamb took their place. Jesus took your place. Jesus was your propitiation. God took the wrath due to you, and to
those you need to forgive, and put it on Jesus.
You were made righteous.
Righteous means to have a right standing with God. A son (or daughter) is righteous with
his father by birth. He is in the
family and he has a right standing that the neighbor does not have. We are righteous by our new birth, not
by anything we have done. "God
made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21). We are righteous because God put His life in us, not because
of the way we act or live.
You were justified. This subject
will be covered in chapter 9.
Satan's dominion over you is broken. Satan had
dominion of your old nature, but your new nature is Christ's own Spirit that
has already defeated Satan. Romans
6:8-10 says, "But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also
live with Him, knowing that when Christ was raised from the dead, He dies no
more; death no longer has dominion over Him. For in that He died, He died to sin once; but in that He
lives, He lives to God." If
the spirit world has had you living in fear, God will set you free right now!
All of these wonderful things we just described were a free gift
from God. You did not deserve
them, and you could not earn them.
Keeping the Law could not obtain them. God just loved you so much that He gave them to you for
free. Now it is up to you to
treasure these rich, eternal gifts.
Amazing grace!
The solution is to move from hope to faith.
When you focus on what the blood of
Jesus and the finished work of the Cross has accomplished, you will move from
just hoping that God will do something to knowing that He has already done
it. You are righteous, you
are reconciled. You have
been
crucified with Christ, you have been translated out of the kingdom of
darkness and into His Kingdom. The
difference between hope and faith is a time issue. Hope sees it in the future, faith has it now even though it
cannot be seen with the physical eyes.
Only God can do that. You
cannot work up faith. Faith comes
by hearing God speak to you personally, and that comes by pressing in to a one
on one relationship with Him. It
comes by taking up your cross, obeying His Word, and seeking Him until you find
Him. When your personal revelation
of Jesus burns in your heart, you will know that you have the victory. Then you can put the Word that He has
given you on your lips and proclaim the victory. Doubt may come, but you do not have to give into it.
Soak in the Word of God and prayer until He becomes real to you