The Blood of Sprinkling

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Hebrews 12:18-24

For you are not come to the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor to blackness, and darkness, and tempest,…

I. WHAT IS IT? What is this "blood of sprinkling"? In a few words, "the blood of sprinkling" represents the pains, the sufferings, the humiliation, and the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, which He endured oil the behalf of guilty man. He properly, but yet most generously and spontaneously, came and shed His precious blood in the stead of sinners, to bring the guilty near to God. But the text does not merely speak of the blood shed, which I have explained to you, but of "the blood of sprinkling." This is the atonement applied for Divine purposes, and specially applied to our own hearts and consciences by faith.

1. The blood of sprinkling is the centre of the Divine manifestation under the gospel. Observe its innermost place in the passage before us.

2. I next ask you to look at the text and observe that this sprinkling of the blood, as mentioned by the Holy Ghost in this passage, is absolutely identical with Jesus Himself. If you have done with the blood of sprinkling, you have done with Jesus altogether; He will never part with His mediatorial glory as our sacrifice, neither can we come to Him if we ignore that character.

3. Observe that this "blood of sprinkling" is put in close contact with "the new covenant." To us Jesus in His atonement is Alpha and Omega, in Him the covenant begins and ends.

4. But I want you to notice that according to the text the blood is the voice of the new dispensation. Observe that on Sinai there was "the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they heard that entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more." You look, therefore, under the new dispensation, for a voice, and you do not come to any till you reach the last object in the list, and there see" the blood of sprinkling that speaketh." Here, then, is the voice of the gospel; it is not the voice of a trumpet, nor the voice of words spoken in terrible majesty; but the blood speaks, and assuredly there is no sound more piercing, more potent, more prevailing.

5. Observe, that this voice is identical with the voice of the Lord Jesus.

6. This blood is always speaking. It always remains a plea with God, and a testimony to men.

7. This precious blood speaks " better things than that of Abel." It saith, "There is redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace." "He His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we being dead to sins should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes we were healed." "He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him." The voice of the blood is this, "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin."

II. WHERE ARE WE? I have to explain what is meant by the expression which is found in the twenty-second verse of the chapter, "Ye are come." Link the twenty-second verse with this twenty-fourth, and read, "Ye are come to the blood of sprinkling."

1. Well, first, ye are come to the hearing of the gospel of the atoning sacrifice. You are come to hear, not of your sin and its doom, not of the last judgment and the swift destruction of the enemies of God, but of love to the guilty, pity for the miserable, mercy for the wicked.

2. In a better sense, going a little further, we have not only come to the blood of sprinkling by hearing about it, but we have come to it because the great God now deals with us upon methods which are founded and grounded upon the atoning sacrifice of Christ.

3. Further, there is a far more effectual way of coming to the blood of sprinkling than this — when by faith that blood is sprinkled upon our souls. This is absolutely needed: the blood shed must become to each one of us the blood sprinkled.

4. Further, to come to this blood of sprinkling means thankfully to enjoy all that comes to us through the blood of sprinkling.

5. I think, once more, that this coming to the blood of sprinkling means also that we feel the full effect of it in our lives. The man who knows that Jesus shed His blood for him, and has had that blood applied to his conscience, becomes a sin-hating man, consecrated to Him who has cleansed him.

III. WHAT THEN?

1. Do not refuse the voice of Jesus by cold indifference.

2. When you resolve to study the doctrine, do not approach it with prejudice through misapprehension.

3. Do not refuse the voice of the Lord Jesus by rejecting the principle of expiation.

4. Do not refuse this voice of mercy by preferring your own way of salvation.

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