The atonement is not achieved by our actions but entirely through Christ’s blood. Many people misunderstand atonement, thinking it involves their own efforts to get right with God, but Scripture reveals it is completely God’s work. Jesus’ sacrifice has already paid for our sins in full, requiring nothing from us except belief. His blood changes everything: it propitiates God’s wrath, reverses our fallen position, and silences Satan’s accusations against us. When we trust in Christ’s finished work rather than our “dead works,” our conscience is purified, and we serve God not to earn salvation but out of grateful love.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] That last hymn that we just had, I can remember singing that when I was smaller than these ones going out downstairs, and it is amazing how much of good Christian understanding is preserved in the things that we sing and rehearse, and that hymn happens to be one of them. I also think another place where we gain knowledge of things is through the films that we watch and the films, I don’t know whether you like watching American ones, or I tend to prefer British films. It’s a bit of a prejudice I suppose, but they’re a bit more deeper, never mind. But there is a film that is a British film put out that is called The Atonement. Put your hand up if you’ve seen that film, The Atonement. Ones and twos of you might have, but some of the best British actors are Nick Chira Knightley and James McElroy. It’s a film which is about getting back ground loss because of some bad thing that happened.

[00:01:16] It caused me to want to know if you look it up in the internet, or if you look it up in your phone, just exactly what the definition of atonement is. There it is. I’ll read you what is the common knowledge that the people who send things into your phone think atonement is, and I’m reading here. What’s the meaning of atonement? It’s the process by which people remove obstacles to their reconciliation with God. It is a recurring theme in the history of religion and theology. Rituals of expiation and satisfaction appear in most religions as the means by which religious people re-establish or strengthen their relation to the holy or to the divine. The picture that people have of atonement is the things that we do to get back right with whoever it is that we worship. I want to tell you that’s entirely wrong. It may be descriptively accurate to how people think, but it is not what the Bible means

[00:02:33] by the atonement, and that’s what this morning I want to talk about. For the atonement is something that’s been achieved entirely by the blood of Christ. Although there are some folk who for not liking the style of language, talking about blood, may not be able to take that, there’s a very deep meaning behind what is the atonement and how it’s been entirely accomplished by the blood of Christ and not by anything that we might do. A backdrop picturing of that being the case in the Old Testament is how the Jewish religion arranged, and I’ve mentioned this previously a few weeks back, in terms of their sacrificial system, where there would be one place where a blood sacrifice was made, and that was public and open, and the blood would be collected, carried by just one person, a specially prepared priest, into the holy place, and sprinkled around. No other person was allowed to be there. It was between the sacrifice, the

[00:03:58] blood carried by the priest and God. Previously, a few weeks back, I had a message that the blood is for God to see, not for us to see. The blood is for God to see, because atonement could not be made by anything less precious than the precious, precious blood of Jesus. Today I want us to go a bit more deeper into how this is the case, and what does the atonement mean for us becoming Christians and us staying Christians, and us being sanctified and going to Heaven. It’s so different from what is the popular idea of atonement, because the popular idea makes you think you’ve got to do something. And one of the greatest, how will I say this not so badly? I was going to curses, but one of the greatest hindrances in Baptist churches is one of our strengths. The strength is that we get everybody to join in to do some of the action. The hindrance is when people’s natural, wrongful thinking about how you get right with God makes them

[00:05:16] read that as by what you do in the church you achieve a good standing. It’s a salvation by works lived out by one of our precious Baptist principles that is what you do that gets you God’s smile. The exact opposite is the truth, that there’s nothing that you can do. I should say it a bit more carefully, there’s only one thing that is required of you, do you know what it is? To believe God. When he says he’s arranged your atonement, just believe God. Believe God and be a natural, but don’t take to yourself what the human heart that wants to always somehow pat itself on the back wants to give you the credit for your own salvation or wants to give you some part of causing it to be the case and miss the meaning of the whole gospel. At Christ Jesus came to save sinners, not to stir them up to save themselves. The atonement is entirely about what God has done, which is why Jesus

[00:06:42] cried it is finished, paid in full, debt cancelled and until you understand that the atonement was God’s work and he wasn’t inviting you to participate with a small contribution as small as you may think it is. He did it all himself. The blood was for God to see and the blood was the precious blood of Christ. Let’s follow this through about how the blood changes everything and in Revelation 12 and verses 10 to 11 we see how the scriptures speak about what salvation is going to be looked at in the future when the end times are fully upon us and I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of God and the authority of this Christ has come. For the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down who accuses them light and day before God and they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word, the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even under death. They didn’t earn their salvation

[00:08:01] by loving not their lives even under death they did it because their salvation was totally theirs is by God’s doing. But anyway, it’s the blood of Christ, the blood of the lamb that is the feature. We’re going to see this over and over again. What difference does the blood make in the first instance to God? Why do we talk about atonement as something that God won’t allow any old, any odd or not odd person in the Old Testament to be present when it’s sprinkled in the sacred place? And even the priest who gets to carry it in has to be specially all decked out and specially had forgiveness and cleansing applied to him for him to be there to sprinkle it because the blood is for God to see. Now I want to elaborate on this concept this morning because it’s actually enormous, a lot bigger, a lot more. It comes out of it than you might imagine. But let’s go to another

[00:09:06] passage and see the part of the problem that is ours in Romans 3, 22-29. In Romans 3, we have the Apostle Paul and his lovely, I call it a Gospel, but it’s his letter to the Romans. It’s not Matthew, Mark, Luke or John, but it’s really Paul’s version of the Gospel. He’s setting it out in clear, logical ways. But let’s read. The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Remember the only thing required of you given God seeing to your atonement is that you believe God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. That’s all you have to do. He does it all and you believe him and thank him and that’s it. The rest is a flow on, there’s a consequence. For there is no distinction for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace freely, when some version’s word as a gift, this version reads, justified as a gift. You don’t do anything

[00:10:13] in the light of your atonement that’s been achieved by Jesus and his death in the cross. The Gospel announces what God has done, how Christ has died, how his blood was shed, how the deal is fixed and God is atoned for your sins entirely. All you are asked to do is to believe it and trust it. You don’t make a contribution, belief is not a contribution, it’s you not calling God a liar. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace, total gift, grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. If you’ve come in here this morning, you’ve never really sorted it out, how to be right with God, I’m announcing to you that he’s got in the head of you in history and in Christ and how Christ shed his blood for your sins and you’ve been atoned by what he achieved and all you’re asked to do is to believe

[00:11:27] it, to live in the light of it, to rejoice in what he did, not what you do, whom God put forward as a propitiation. That’s one of those big words you find in the Bible. There’s two that are used to talk about the death of Jesus. Both have an application but depending on which one you like better so your theology will pick on. Mine happens to be one that picks on propitiation. The other one is called expiation. Expiation is not wrong but it’s saying less. If you get a parking ticket in the city and you pay the money, you’re paying it to expiate. Someone goes and pulls the parking ticket out of the prosecute list or one to get money out of your list and puts it in the bin. It could expiate it. Propitiation is about people and where there’s a person that’s got it against you and something is done so that person changes their attitude.

[00:12:31] So expiation is not wrong. It’s just not full enough. Propitiation is what Jesus’ blood did. Now why did Jesus need to shed his blood about your sins and mine? It’s because back in the history of the human race, we the human race sinned against him and God could not accept our rebellion, could not distinguish the stains of our sin but he kicked Adam and Eve out of the garden. The whole human race fell at the fall and we’ve been sinners the lot of us ever since. You don’t need any proof. Just look around the world. Just look at society. It doesn’t matter which one, how good it is. Australia is a very good society but we still have the signs of sin everywhere and they’re getting worse at the moment. Well, propitiation by his blood. When he died on the cross and he gave his life, that life taken was to pay for our sins and God saw the preciousness of his blood

[00:13:44] and forgave you. That’s some deal. His blood is infinite in value because the person that he is was and is. And you, like me, are a weak pathetic little sinner, really. But his blood has earned a total atonement for you. There’s nothing you need to do to add to it. It’s as though you owed God 35 trillion Australian dollars. They’re better than, anyway, 35 trillion dollars and someone else came and paid it and you’re introduced to the person. He’s the person who just paid off your debt. Oh, excuse me. Look, I’ll give you this. This is 250 cent pieces. A good two bus trips. Have this. That would be an insult to the person who paid your 35 trillion dollar debt. When Jesus shed his blood for a propitiation of your sins, all you do is receive it by faith.

[00:15:11] This was to show God’s righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the former sins, all the past generations, to show at last his righteousness and the availability of becoming a Christian. The righteousness of your becoming a Christian is how he forgives you for all of your sins and he grants you a status of being righteous in his eyes, no more needing to be added. You don’t have to prove your worth by going to church and doing little jobs. Now, mind you, it’s a Baptist tradition to spread the work amongst all of the members of the body of Christ and it’s quite correct, but it’s the way people take that. There’s some way to show, give back to God in a way he doesn’t want you to give it back. All he wants you to do is believe him. There is a place for Christian service and you’ve heard some sermons on me about that and in the example there was of Mary and the story of her worshipping Jesus and tipping all the

[00:16:18] over him. Jesus said it will be told everywhere the gospel’s proclaimed and sure enough in our four gospels, there’s one thing it gets to mention, Mary’s doing and anywhere the gospel of free grace is told, then also opportunity to love him and serve him is made the normalcy of response. So I’m not speaking against our Baptist tradition of giving people opportunity to serve because they love Him. One of the things I like about going to church, I hope I’m not talking out of turn, but I like going on and watching some of the things that people do with a big smile and joy. Some of them who look after the prayer meeting at the back who get early to go there, there are people who come along and set everything up. You’ve no idea of some of the things some people have to do for a good service. There’s people down the back who turn knobs and make the thing go and the singers come and you should. I like coming along and hearing the practices

[00:17:27] and they’re all practicing so this time of worship will go well but they’re not doing that to earn anything from God. They’re doing that because when they found out how much He loves them, they just want to. This is a very deep principle of Christianity that the source of our love of God is not as something that we do because we want to earn our atonement. God’s not going to let you in on the fact that He paid for it in full whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood to be received by faith, no other way. You don’t get to do anything to make up the debt or pay back a little bit of it the next two fifty-seve pieces. It’s an insult to offer anything to God when the price that He paid was so great. Now this was to show God’s righteousness because in the divine forbearance of previous eras He overlooked sins because of what He knew Christ was going to come and do. Well that shows

[00:18:39] the effect of Jesus’ blood on God that makes Him want to forgive us so totally freely. It also helps us understand how we got kicked out of the garden and until there was a proper sacrifice paid we could never get welcomed back in. But because that’s happened through Christ it’s all been turned around and now we can get in the door freely and participate relaxedly, be a part of the Christian church knowing that you got in the door by the biggest price ever being paid. I don’t know whether you’ve ever been along to some gathering or some concert or something where only special people seem to get the invites and they all dress up wonderfully. In my case I go along like I normally am and people are looking at me how do He get in here, you know, or there’s a sense in which you want to show how you know you’ve got special insignias on or something or you’re a part of the establishment that

[00:19:45] put on the show and so you’re very welcome, but I don’t know about these other people. Oh, I hurt me so badly. At one church where I used to help out and we had a coffee shop in the downstairs area and I went out into the streets of Brisbane because it was a city church and got some young fry. I was a young fry so it wasn’t hard hurting up a few to come along and when they were sitting with me around a table and one of the special people of the church who was dressed so that you’d know so, he had a big proper suit on like we all should do according to him and he was standing at the side and he walked across to my young friends and some of them were smoking and he said, put that cigarette out, haven’t you seen the sign? And they go up all of them and left. This is God’s house and he’s paid for the lot and we don’t put prices of getting in the door to anybody,

[00:20:47] we don’t give any idea, you know that’s the reason why although it’s not always understood as the best thing, we don’t take up the offering. We do receive offerings and there’s a bag at the back, you can put it in if you want to find it just near where the camera is. We’re not stopping people wanting to give if they want to but we don’t put people on spot as though this is a show but you’ve got to pay for it. Something about England, since I gave them such a good promotion just before, I’d better say, something about England that I really found upsetting when I was visiting in London a few times. And there’s all these old churches that no one goes to anymore, but some very faithful people trying to keep going, but they have to put a sign out, we’re in trouble, please

[00:21:33] give, we’ve got to save the roof. It’s like a big advertisement. God’s bankrupt, he can’t keep his church going, you better come and give and help him out. Don’t come and try and help him out, please. He doesn’t need your help. That propitiation in his blood was so overboard in the head of all that it might be needed in the precious blood of Jesus that he doesn’t need your contribution. Check that you believe him, just believe him, receive what he’s done in the atonement by faith. There will be a time in your Christian growing where he will teach you how to serve, but

[00:22:18] that’s because he’s giving you a further privilege. Were you listening to Heather, when she talked about she and the family she went with who went over to serve? You know a lot of people when they hear these stories, I know this because my dad was a principal of a Bible college where missionaries got trained and I got to hear what people said even as a boy, but somehow there’s an attitude, oh pity the missionaries, they sacrifice so much to go over there and live in those awful countries and not be at home. Don’t pity the missionaries, envy them because of the blessing it is to go with God and to give yourself any service, not because you have to, not because there’s any debt unpaid, because the atonement’s totally free, but because you love him and you counted a privilege

[00:23:18] to be counted in with his purposes. In fact if I was sitting on a missionary committee to interview the candidates coming to decide whether you let them go, if any of them thought that way that they were somehow, it’s a burden to go but they were willing to pay the cost, I’ll tell you the first thing I try and teach them, but I’m telling you now, but if they had this attitude that it’s going to be an awful, painful, definite, terrible task to be a missionary, same thing with being a pastor a preacher. I used to get this a lot as an Italian evangelist when you don’t have any money you know. But those poor people who didn’t get to be able to go preach, I pitied them because I had the greatest opportunity any young man could have to tour Australia and go with the gospel and to have the joy of seeing God’s kingdom move in different

[00:24:15] places as God’s spirit works through his message. This preaching does something when you simply preach the facts of what God has done, when you preach that the Atonement is finished, when you preach that the blood of Jesus is precious and it’s enough for you to believe. And you see people believe you. I’ve got all these stories I could rehearse to myself at night of the time in one church in Tasmania where the people who came forward in the Crucile had them for four months. There are over 40 people came to Christ. I’m posting now I guess, but it’s worth posting about. But I want to tell you that there was others who came into a deeper experience, but one of the people who came to Christ was a policeman federal. And he’d come forward at the invitation to stand at the front to indicate that he needed Christ. And then came a really big bruiser fellow. I don’t know whether he was

[00:25:18] a biker or not, but he looked dangerous, who stood next to this policeman. And I got to counselling both at different times. And when I talked to the policeman, he told me what he did. I said, oh, you know that bloke you’re standing next to. He was running away from the law and you were there. Anyway, I got to be friends of both a little bit. But that joy, I still rehearse over some of those stories of people who came to Christ. Do you think that I trade those years? Sometimes I didn’t get paid much, sometimes I did. But you think I’d trade those years? I still rejoice in the stories. I still remember the occasion some of the people. You should pity the missionaries. Don’t envy them. Understand that they’ve had a calling from God to go and join in his mission, and there can be no greater joy. As a Christian, when you discover on the other side of having accepted the Atonement, Jesus’

[00:26:26] blood got you, you find that he’s recruited you to join in his life and have the power and the joy and the purpose of his resurrected life flowing through you. That is the most biggest privilege you could ever have. And all you are asked is to believe his promise. Believe him. Receive it by faith. He shows that God is the one who’s righteous in his divine forbearance that he’s forgiven a lot of sinners. Sometimes the people who become Christians are people who’ve really got all the big, bad backlog of things they did wrong. And if we were humans deciding who got into heaven or not, we’d probably sort of make sure they weren’t on the list. You want to know a name or two? You don’t know what I’m going to say, do you? I’ll tell you someone. Who’s the person that wrote the song Amazing Grace? Newton, isn’t it? Help me please. John Newton, yes. Anyway, he was a slave trader.

[00:27:43] Now, back in those days, that meant he ran a ship of all the whips on the backs of people and of all the capturing of people in other countries and putting them in handcuffs and killing some and whatever. Being a slave trader was more than just someone that made money out of slaves. It was a cruel abduction of other nations’ kids and pressing them into a service of agony for the rest of their lives and coming and selling them and not caring how many died on the journey. This man was one of those. And his entire career of making money out of slavery was something he knew was absolutely ugly. But when he heard and understood, I don’t know how long it took him to understand, that Jesus’ blood had forgiven him. That’s why he wrote Amazing Grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind. But now I see one of the best hymns

[00:29:05] that captures the enormity of God’s grace to forgive us when our sins are so deeply bad. We the whole human race, that’s true of it, and some people it’s lived out very badly. But God accepted him the moment I first believed his hymn says. God doesn’t want anything more of you than just that you believe his promise, you trust his person. The very reverse of Adam and Eve who doubted his word and relied on their own ideas and got kicked out of the Garden of Eden. When you reverse that verdict and say, God I believe you, you come and you hear a message like this that his blood is enough for God to forgive you and for God to be atoned. And you say, God I believe you for it. That’s what faith is. Simply when you put your trust in Jesus as the saviour that he is. What a fantastic thing. Now, so far I’m working through here to try and make my sermons orderly, a bit more like Andrew

[00:30:23] did. He’s challenged me. It’s a magnificent orderly. I’ve talked about what the blood does to God. It turns him right around from being our enemy to being ready to forgive. What does it do for us? It reverses our position because of the fall and sets us up that we can be on the inside with God. Let’s turn to Hebrews 9, 11 to 14. Hebrews 9, 11 to 14. And there’s mention of the high priestly work of someone who is the person that administers the blood doing all the job. But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, or that are to come, then through the greater or more perfect tent. Now, tent is something that is temporary, but it’s a temporary shelter that brings someone to be with the others. So if I were to say to you, can I come and tent in your backyard? You better know that I’ll be there for a few weeks and you’re going to have to make breakfast. But it’s temporary,

[00:31:34] but it’s a way to be alongside people. Well, God tabernacled amongst the children of Israel until they got their temple done. And it is because it’s temporary, but it’s a way of living with you. He entered once and for all into the holy… Oh, let me read it again. Through the most… There’s a greater and more perfect tent than the tabernacle was or the temple eventually in Jerusalem was. And it’s one not made by hand, so it’s not the temple in Jerusalem, or any future temple the Jews might make. They may do that make another one, not really knowing what they’re doing. Not by means of the blood of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh and the outwardness of that demonstration, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the

[00:32:35] eternal spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? Now, let me illustrate about these dead works. I was trying to get onto that the other Sunday. I often need two guys to get an idea. But what are dead works? Some people think they’re just something that you do of yourself. That’s too weak a definition. Why are they dead works to serve the living God? Because it says in the books of Psalms and Proverbs, there is a way that seems right to men or to a man, but the ends of them are the ways of death. There’s something about our human construction and our sinful mindset that we have since the fall that we think that we can get back in God’s good books some way, but the Bible calls them dead works because none of them are going to be permitted. So a dead work is anything you do, thinking you’ll earn a bit of grace with God. It can be a good thing that you’ve done, but your

[00:33:47] motive made it a dead work. Dead because God won’t listen to it, and too because it’s a part of your deathliness that you don’t understand that there’s nothing you can do. There’s everything for you to gain when you hear that he has atoned your sins and all you have to do is believe him for the forgiveness. Everything else is a dead work. There was a storyline fact and faith films I also used to watch, not only movies from Britain, but fact and faith films from America which talked about things, lessons learned by events that happened, but there was the story of a bomber in World War II somewhere in Africa, and this bomber in World War II in Africa had a mission and then they had to return. They had to get back to one of their own bases and they were flying, but what they did not know is that they had a tail wind, and the tail wind, the tail wind made the bomber go much faster and further than they realized. There’s a certain amount of time they were used to how much it should

[00:34:58] take to get back to their base, and when they’re compasses said to them, ”Oh, you’ve passed it. You’ve passed it,” they said, ”No, the compass must be wrong, the compass must be wrong. We’ve only been in so long we’ve got to keep flying. So they kept flying, they disobeyed the compass, they believed in their way, their thoughts, their minds. Well the Bible says that we in our lost humanity are like that. And we do lots of things thinking this is what we have to do to be a good person, this is what we’ve got to do to get into eternity, to know God, this is how we should be, when really it is because there’s more factors than we know. And we’re disobeying the compass, what’s the compass? It is the Word of God. And the way you obey God, the way that you get in and get the benefit of His work on the cross is you just believe God. Just believe God. And even if your feelings tell you that it

[00:36:02] should be more difficult, I thought that my becoming a Christian would be some enormous experience or something to happen, I had to make a difficult move. It’s not difficult, just believe God. You could do that today. And He will purify your conscience. And what He will purify your conscience from is all the trust you might have had in all sorts of dead works. I never forget. The minister, I won’t say what denomination, but I had a crusade, one of the cities of Tasmania where the minister was very helpful and helped the meetings go and took me back to his house. It was somewhere I’d have to drive away to get there and I was to stay with him and he’d set up a little bed near the front door actually. I don’t know whether that’s because he looked at me and said, this one will do a lot, but it was a real skinny bed. I’m lying there like this. But before I could get to go to

[00:37:08] sleep he wanted to talk to me and talk to me and talk to me. But what he talked to me about was, he’d been listening to me talk about how you just believe God and you gain an assurance the Spirit lets you know you’re in the door. He didn’t know any such experience. He had no assurance. He was saved at all, but he was a minister. He was trying to help other people, but he didn’t really know that he himself had gotten in the door. He might have thought that by registering for the ministry and serving other people, and I understand he was good, and he did well and different things, he somehow thought maybe that would get him in the door? What he needed was this experience of having your conscience purified so you know you’re in the door. I know this from experience because I always thought I was

[00:38:03] a Christian, even as a boy, but the day that I came to Christ I’ve never had doubts ever again. It purified my conscience to have to rely upon all these other reasons I could stack up. I had lots of good ones about my family and my dad being the principal of the Bible college who trained the missionaries. I had lots of evidence that I could put up by, you know, I’d always believed those evidences that I was in the door. But when I came to Christ I didn’t need them anymore. Purify your conscience from dead works and then what you do is you serve the living God, not because you have to, not because you’ve got your 250 cent pieces and you’re offering it back, but because you love him and you’re so glad that he’s included you in his program, don’t pity the missionaries, admire them and envy them at the opportunity they have to find a place where God has led them. You don’t

[00:39:07] go and do it, you know, that you invent the place but you find where he leads you to serve. And some people serve in ways that are visible to the rest of the church. Other people have found ways to serve that no one else knows. We met some of them in America. These are people who God was using them, they’d found out from him and from the Lord that they were to be special agents to help and we got to be targets a bit by some of these people coming along and saying, the Lord’s told me, well God’s given me an idea, you need this? But the man who turned up at the door, Michelle was out and we were needing to fly home and I didn’t have the money. I was really worried what was going to happen. I didn’t want Michelle to sort of realise, just maybe had Jim miscalculated or has he spent it all or we had no money, we needed so much. A man came to the front door, rang the door but when I came I didn’t

[00:40:12] know who he was, he says, this is for you. It was sort of an envelope, I don’t know whether it was a brown paper or a piece of plastic, just had coins and notes. I said, well who’s it from? And he said, a friend. He was hiding, I don’t know who it was from. I didn’t then. And I went inside and counted it and it was the same figure, only $6 off the amount I needed for the airfare I hadn’t been yet able to buy. God has his people and they love the place they’re in where they help and you’d be surprised how many there are Christians around the place who serve the Lord as special, unnotified or under secret agents for the Lord and he tells them things to do and you find out because of the accuracy or some of the things they do that they, serving the Lord, you don’t have to be a missionary overseas to do that. You can be a Christian in Australia and you

[00:41:19] find something, and the different Christians find different things that God does with them. And one person’s this sort of thing, and another person’s another sort of thing. But it is amazing amongst them, some of the people who actually have a role of serving the Lord, they’re not dead works. They’re works of the life that you have in Jesus. It’s natural when Jesus has found you, that you find Him. and he shares with you his divine supernatural life.

[00:41:55] I’m describing the Christian life. There’s some people for whom it’s very dramatic and other people it’s just a simple faithfulness that they know God’s entrusted them. We had a fellow at our church in Sydney who found for him something God wanted him to do. And it was to be the last person to leave. He went and closed the windows and made sure all the lights were off. And he relieved poor old people

[00:42:22] who were like a secretary or somebody who’s running around worried. He found a job that he did. He didn’t have to talk about it. But when you find something, God has given it to you. It’s you with a purified conscience. You’ve ceased to do dead works, but you’ve ceased to be in the position to serve the living God. This is what Jesus blood, how it affects us.

[00:42:52] It affected God by allowing him to, our sins to be atoned. It affects us by reversing the fall of the fall and now being kicked out of his fellowship. And it affects us by including us in his program. Nothing more beautiful. But finally, it helps us if you turn to Revelation 12 again, 10 to 11, we’ve already read this verse for Revelation 12, 10 to 11. Sorry, I’ve jumped one for the sake of time.

[00:43:27] And here it talks about the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down. You know what Jesus blood does? Where previously the devil had something on us to accuse us with. Previously, we could be offside from God without knowing it. But now God is on our side. And the devil, he’s told to get lost. More than told, he’s thrown down. Because Jesus blood took the initiative

[00:44:03] all out of the devil’s hands. And he’d been accusing us day and night. That’s what happens to people with guilt in their hands. You can always tell a person who’s not really converted and they’ve not really benefited from the atonement when they can’t forgive themselves. But when at last you know that his blood has availed for your sins. Like John Newcomb, you can write him his amazing grace. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

[00:44:35] What a boast for someone who was such a rotten sinner. He’s had it all reversed whereas before God was against him. Now God is for him and the devil has been taken out of his role. And they’ve conquered him by the blood of the lamb. Don’t let people talk you out of the relevance of the talk of the blood of Christ. And particularly he’s a lamb, a sacrificial lamb, the blood of the lamb, has conquered the devil

[00:45:06] and by the word of their testament. When you attach your justification to the success of the blood of forgiving you, you become a mighty weapon against Satan and all of his tricks. They love not their lives even under death. Something’s happened to those people because of the blood of Christ. It’s reversed the whole spiritual atmosphere whereby now God is on their side.

[00:45:32] The devil’s being thwarted. And here it’s because of what the blood of Christ does against the devil and puts him the one who’s on the offside. Is the blood of Jesus powerful? I’ll give you four or five reasons why his blood is very powerful today. Let’s pray. Father, I ask in Jesus’ name, just per chance, if there’s any person here who’s never really understood the atonement,

[00:46:07] was successful for them in as much as Christ can forgive them if they will but have faith. That is, believe God. Stop arguing with him. Stop trying to do dead works. Just accept your forgiveness because of what that shed blood achieved. Lord, may that person, whoever they are, find a moment today to tell you that they’re sorry for not believing you earlier,

[00:46:41] but just accept that free forgiveness. And don’t question the efficacy of the power of the precious blood of Jesus. And Lord, if there’s some here who have no assurance, who have no sense of quietness because they’re busy doing dead works to add to Jesus’ blood, would you tell them to leave that task? They don’t need to add anything to Jesus’ blood. Father, I thank you for how the Bible keeps telling us

[00:47:16] that this blood of Jesus shed is precious. I don’t know whether that’s anything to do with its chemistry or whether that’s to do with the person out of whose veins it came in his specialty of being the eternal Son of God, or whether it is because of the love that it carried when Jesus set himself up to die for us. But I pray, Father, that you will break in on all of us the completeness and the successfulness of the atonement that is in Jesus’ blood. We ask it in his name, amen.