Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1567
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, November 14, 1880
“This is the blood of the Testament which God has enjoined unto you.” Hebrews 9:20.
[The original title of this sermon was The Blood of the Testament..
THE Apostle declares that whenever God has entered into covenant with man it has not been without the shedding of blood. To a covenant a sacrifice and to a testament a death was evidently necessary. It was so when the arrangements of Israelite worship were first published and established in the wilderness. Paul says, “Neither the first testament was dedicated without blood.” He probably had in his mind’s eye the 24th chapter of the book of Exodus where we read that after the tribes had entered into covenant with God and promised to keep His Law, Moses, “sent young men of the children of Israel, which offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen unto the Lord. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins and half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar. And He took the Book of the Covenant and read in the audience of the people: and they said, All that the Lord has said will we do and be obedient. And Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people and said, Behold the blood of the Covenant which the Lord has made with you concerning all these words.”
As it was in the old dispensation so is it in the new—there could be no Divine Covenant, even though it was of Grace, without the shedding of blood. Inasmuch as the new Covenant was not the type, but the substance, a more precious sacrifice was needed and nobler blood than any which is found in the veins of bulls or of goats. Jesus, the Son of God must die, or the Covenant would be unsealed, the testament without force. No Covenant blessing comes to us apart from the death of our great Sacrifice, for “without shedding of blood is no remission,” and remission is one of the earliest of the gifts of Divine Grace. If we cannot even begin the heavenly life by receiving forgiveness of sins without coming into connection with the blood, we may be sure that no further blessing can come to us apart from it.
It seems to be absolutely necessary that when God comes into communication with guilty man it must be through an atonement and that atonement must be made by blood, or by the sacrifice of a life. I shall not dwell upon the blood-shedding of the old Covenant, for they are only intended to be types of the one great blood-shedding in the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. The death of a chosen victim was the emblem of the death of Christ. The sprinkling of the people with blood was the type of the application of the blood of Christ to the conscience of Believers and every single item of the ceremony, if looked into, would furnish points for edification. But of these we cannot, now, speak particularly, as the Apostle said on a like occasion.
It suffices us to meditate, at this time, upon the blood of our Lord Jesus, once and for all shed on Calvary, trying to understand its relationship to us according to the tenor of the text—“This is the blood of the Testament which God has enjoined unto you.” The words which Moses used in the wilderness concerning the typical sacrifice are far more emphatic as we point you to the bleeding Savior on the Cross and say, “Behold, the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you.” The wisdom of God had many ends to serve in connecting His covenants with blood-shedding and this will be very evident if we think of its effect upon our own hearts. We all feel somewhat of awe in connection with the thought of blood. It is no light thing to see an animal slaughtered—at least it is not so to me—I cannot endure the sight! As to our fellow men, we can scarcely see the tiniest crimson stream issuing from a wound in their flesh without being distressed.
Tender and sensitive natures, such as all should possess, regard the life of men with great care and the blood, as its token, with great reverence. We view a corpse with awe and if we were called to look upon one who had been slain, we would view the body with horror. If any one of us should pass a spot stained with a man’s blood, we should tread lightly and hurriedly, feeling, “how dreadful is this place.” The Lord God intended that there should be much of awe about every covenant
that He made with man, for it is a matter of great solemnity. The Covenant of Works might well be surrounded with dread, for by reason of our sin it was soon turned into a curse. The quaking mountain, the thick darkness and the trumpet voice were fit accompaniments of the Law which brings condemnation and so, also, were the basins filled with blood.
As for the Covenant of Grace, it is also rightly surrounded with awe, even with such awe as that which bows down at Calvary amid the mid-day midnight, the rending of rocks, the opening graves and the groans of the expiring Son of God. The God of Love is, nevertheless, a God of Holiness and the God who passes by transgression, iniquity and sin, is also a God who first vindicates the honor of His broken Law. The Lord intended that pardon and all other Covenant blessings should come to us in such a way that we should never think sin a trifle, nor conclude, from the freeness of Grace that men were free to transgress. The death of Jesus manifests the solemnity of God’s dealings with sin and is fitted to bow the soul in the lowest humility before God.