The Bible is a blood-soaked book. The culmination of the theme of blood is the "precious blood of Christ" (1 Pet. 1:19) and the unique centrality, cost, and the capability of Christ’s blood. The centrality of Christ’s blood as the fulfillment of the blood themes throughout the Scriptures. The cost of His blood in Gethsemane and Gabbatha and Golgotha to include even the forsakenness of His own dear Father. Finally, the capability of His blood in accomplishing full-orbed salvation for us through His atonement in order to justify and cleanse us, to sanctify us, and to open heaven for us.

Turn with me please to 1 Peter, 1 Peter chapter one, verses 13 through 21. Let's hear the word of God. Wherefore, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance, but as he which hath called you as holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation, because it is written, be ye holy, for I am holy. And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons, judges according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.

For as much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God. Let's pray. Great God of heaven, may thy blood be precious to us in these moments, and may we understand its centrality, its capability, and its cost, and worship thee for the giving of thy well beloved son, and for the giving of thyself, Lord Jesus, and dear Holy Spirit, for giving thy son into our hearts by taking the things of Jesus and revealing them to us. Spirit of God, we know that is thy delight. And so as we lift up Jesus in this conference, We pray, take the things of Jesus and apply them, make them real and true, and get glory to thy triune self in so doing that we would worship thee in spirit and truth.

In Jesus' name, amen. Well, some years back, I preached a series, a mini-series of sermons on those four little creatures in Proverbs 30, one of which is called the conies in the King James Version. It's kind of a rock rabbit. As I preached, I said, what the rock rabbits did or the conies did was they would dwell on rocks, and as soon as there was any sign of danger, because they had no defense mechanism, they couldn't stand up against any enemy, they would disappear in a moment into the rocks. I had never seen that happen, but I gathered that info from books, and about two weeks later, I took a trip to Australia to speak at a conference, and we came around the corner of a road, and suddenly, I saw on a series of rocks all these little animals.

I said to the guy with me, what are all those animals? He said, those are conies. I said, you gotta be kidding me. I just preached on them. So I reached for my camera, I wanted to take a picture, and just the lifting up of my hands, choom, they're all in the rock.

I didn't get anything. In one split second, those Koneys disappeared in the rocks. Jesus is our rock of salvation because of his precious blood. And we are not able to stand against all the enemies that confront us. We need to be in the rock at the sign of the slightest danger.

Flee to Jesus, not once, not 10 times, a thousand times, take shelter in his precious blood. That's what I want to talk to you about this evening from First Peter one, 18 and 19. For as much as you know, you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation, received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. Tonight, I'm just going to focus on two words. Scott talked about one word.

I'm going to give you two words. Precious and blood. And I want to look at three thoughts with you. The centrality of that blood, the cost of that blood, and the capability of that blood. Centrality, cost, capability.

Now if something is precious, it is extraordinarily valuable. The Bible uses the word precious 75 times. Speaks of human life as precious. Speaks of the blood and death of saints as precious. Redemption is precious.

Wisdom is precious. The thoughts and loving kindness of our God are precious. Faith is described together with God's promises as precious. Peter even says our trials are precious because they are sanctified and refiners as gold. But most of all, the Bible speaks of Jesus as precious.

Jesus as precious. He's precious, the Bible says, in his sympathy. He's precious to those who believe. He's precious as the cornerstone of our salvation, we're told. But we're also told he's precious in the shedding of his blood.

Nothing is more precious, more valuable than the blood of Jesus Christ. Martin Luther said one drop of his blood is of infinite value because he's also infinite God to save 10, 000 worlds of lost sinners. Nothing, nothing do you need more sprinkled on your conscience, washing you within and without than the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now The Bible speaks of blood 450 times. The Bible is a blood-soaked, blood-filled book.

Blood is precious, for it is the most valuable thing in our bodies. Blood is essential to life. Our bodies may be perfectly framed, but if they're drained of blood, we die. The life of flesh is in the blood, the Bible says. And spiritually, you see, the Bible is saying a thousand times that the blood of Jesus Christ received by faith gives us spiritual life.

In God's eyes, Jesus' blood is sacred. And so twice, Hebrews nine tells us that God cannot be approached without blood. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin. And that's the message of the entire Bible. When Adam and Eve fell, God shed blood to clothe them and cover their nakedness.

In Genesis 4, God showed he was pleased with Abel's sacrifice, which involved sacrificial blood. When Noah was released from the ark, the first thing he did was kill animals and offer bloody sacrifices of thanksgiving to God. When God established covenant with Abraham, Animals were split in two. Blood was shed. Exodus.

Blood is everywhere in the book of Exodus. God commands the Israelites to sprinkle their door frames with the blood of a lamb. Life is preserved by means of a substitute. Fifty days later, this lesson is reinforced when Israel reaches Sinai. God gives his law out of the covenant of grace to show his people how they should live.

Then to ratify that covenant, sacrificial blood must be sprinkled, first on the altar, then on the Book of the Covenant, representing God's side of the covenant and convincing us that this is not a republication of the covenant of works. This is bathed in the covenant of grace through the blood of Jesus Christ. We're told in Exodus four, therefore, behold the blood of the covenant. Blood is central to worship. All throughout the book of Leviticus, the worshiper would see blood upon the altar, on the sides of the altar, flowing around the altar.

The altar with which he approached him to God in worship was saturated with blood. The Holy of Holies was unapproachable without blood. Once a year, the high priest entered that sacred place, walking backwards because he couldn't see the presence of God face to face, sprinkling blood, then turning around and sprinkling it seven times, a number of fullness on the mercy seat, that God might turn away through the blood, pointing to the bloody Messiah to come, His wrath from hell-deserving people like you and me. So wherever you look in the Old Testament, be it at circumcision of a son, be it at the highest religious festival, be it in the deepest repentance, the way to life and fellowship with God is always through blood. Substitutionary, bloody sacrifice as the only way to escape death is what the Old Testament is all about.

And the New Testament realizes it in the person of Jesus and continues to teach it in every single writer. Behold the Lamb of God. We're told at the very introduction of the New Testament that taketh away the sin of the world. When Jesus spoke of himself, he and his death on the cross, he tells us, was the reason he came into the world. His bloody death was a necessary condition of your and my redemption.

Without his blood, we would all go straight to the abyss of eternal condemnation. His blood, therefore, is precious. His blood gave birth to life. And so the expression, the blood of Christ, is not intended to mean something crass or crude. As someone in my congregation once told me, why do you use that expression so often, the bloody death of Jesus?

That sounds so crass. I said, no, no, no. The blood of Christ is but a synonym for the cross, for all the sufferings of Jesus, for our salvation itself. The blood of Jesus is a synonym for his suffering and obedience that satisfied the justice of God so that God could justify those who believe in Jesus. And if that expression is crass, what do you make of Jesus' words?

Except ye drink my blood, ye have no life in you. He that drinketh my blood hath everlasting life. And again, my blood is drink indeed. And again, in the institution of the Lord's Supper, This cup is the New Testament, and my blood shed for you and for many for the remission of sins. Drink ye all of it.

Paul's epistles are saturated with Christ's blood. He speaks of faith in Christ's blood, being now justified in his blood, the blood of his cross, redemption through blood, may nigh by the blood of Jesus. And the whole book of Hebrews tells us that Jesus has a better priesthood, better than Aaron, better than Melchizedek because of his blood, because his blood has been shed once for all so that no more blood needs to be shed. How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God. And so we're told by the author to the Hebrews that we're to come to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than the blood of Abel.

Peter in our text, but also elsewhere, reminds his readers that they are elect unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. And the apostle John declares that the blood of Jesus, God's son, cleanses us from all sin. He even writes of seeing Christ's blood in heaven. Can you imagine that? He saw a lamb slain on the throne and heard the elders sing before Him, Thou art worthy for Thou was slain and has redeemed us to God by Thy blood.

When he talks about those who have entered into glory, he asks the question, who are they? And the answer is, they are those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Who are they who have overcome? He says, the redeemed overcame Satan by the blood of the Lamb. So from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, from the closing of the gates of Eden to the opening of the gates of the heavenly Zion, blood runs through scripture.

It's that scarlet thread throughout all of scripture that unites the whole. Substitutionary blood, the blood of Jesus gloriously restores what sin destroyed. Through the second Adam, through his blood, God undid what the first Adam did and so he reconciles sinners to God. In Germany, there is a particular church building where there's a beautiful lamb carved in stone above its entrance. And I wondered how it got there.

And then the story was told that a man was at work on the steeple of the church. He lost his footing. He plunged to the ground below. But a flock of sheep happened to be grazing there, and the fall of the man was broken by a lamb. The lamb was killed, and the man ended in a pool of blood, but his life was saved.

And so out of gratitude, he cut into the stone over the doors of the church that the lamb had saved his life. I wonder, my friends, tonight, can you say that? Have you fallen upon the blood of the Lamb as your only hope for eternity? Nothing that you could accomplish, no religiosity on your part, no work you've ever done, but you're saved only, only by the blood. Is the blood central in your life?

Do you have any other way that you can enter into heaven beside the blood of the lamb? If you do, you're on your way to hell. Only the blood of the Lamb. The blood of Jesus is the only passport to enter into heaven. Some months ago, there was a man, young man, who had to be a best man in a wedding in our city in Grand Rapids, and he was from Ontario, and he got to the border, and he realized, I forgot my passport.

So he said to the border patrol, I don't have my passport, but I just have to be there. I'm the best man. And the border patrol guard said, well, I'm sorry, but you don't understand. I can't let you into this country without a passport. You see, in that great day, you will not get into heaven if there's any iota of salvation that you think you possess because of anything else than the blood of the lamb.

So I ask you tonight, is this blood your treasure? Is it your foundation? Do you love Christ for his suffering, substitutionary, mediatorial, bloody work for you? Do you rejoice in the blood of the Lamb? Do you eat and drink spiritually?

Not physically, of course. This blood. Do you grasp its necessity? Do you embrace its satisfaction? Do you receive its beauty?

And do you live out of its fullness? Now that beauty of the blood, the precious blood of Jesus, becomes all the more rich, not just when we consider its centrality, but also its cost. So often in Reformed circles we say, well, grace is free, and of course that's true. It's free to us, even though in a sense it costs us our entire life, because once we're saved, we want to worship God with everything within us. But in terms of merits, it's free to us.

But that doesn't mean it wasn't costly. Costly to God to give his son, costly to Jesus to give himself. If you forget the costliness of this blood, you cheapen the grace of God. So though salvation is free to us, we must never forget, it's costliness to God. Grace is never cheap.

Grace is always costly. Grace cost the father the death of his own son. God had only one son, and he gave that son for people who rebelled against him. What a wonder that is. It's as if God looks around heaven, and he says, who and what is the best I could find?

And he settles on his own son. And then he looks on earth and he says, who and what is the worst I could find? And he says, sinners, hell worthy sinners like you and me. And he says, I will give the best so that he might conquer the worst by the blood of the lamb. That's the amazing mismatch of God in matching Jesus and in betrothing, espousing, engaging a hell-worthy people to him, to be married with him in everlasting bliss and utopian marriage in sin-free Emmanuel's land forever and ever.

What an amazing thing the gospel is. Free grace through costly blood. And Jesus' whole life is saturated in blood. From the time He was eight days old and was circumcised to the last day when He cried out, speak about one word containing everything, tetelestai in Greek, it is finished. All of salvation is wrapped up in one word, when his last blood has been shed.

He was scourged, he crawled on the ground as a man and as a worm and no man, in Gethsemane, saying, Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass for me. And he was so full of anxiety that blood exuded from the pores of his skin as he crawled on the ground. He bled everywhere, from the crown of thorns that was smashed down into his skull, to the scourges that descended upon his back with the little fishtail bones, as it were, in a mop-like instrument that would cause little rivulets of blood to run down his back. He's bleeding in his wrists and in his ankles as he's nailed to the cross. There's blood everywhere.

Most of all, there's blood flowing, as it were, in his soul. Forsaken of God, his heart is bleeding for communion with his Father. Communion that his Father now on the grounds of justice must withhold so that he can be the sacrifice, dear child of God, for your sin. What a solemn moment this was when Jesus went to those last three places of intense, bloody suffering, the three Gs, Gethsemane, Gabbatha, Pilate's Judgment Hall, and Golgotha, Calvary, where he cries out the cry of dereliction, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Those final hours of Jesus' life, they are bloody hours, precious bloody hours.

Isaac Ambrosi, a great Puritan author, said, we should follow the trail of Christ's blood all the way to the cross, and through the next six hours, remind ourselves wherever we see blood, that this was done for our sins. My dear friend, if you want to know how dreadful sin is, If you want to understand the common Puritan conviction that there is more evil in the smallest sin than there is in the greatest affliction, You have to encamp your soul at Calvary's cross, remembering what your sin has cost our Lord. There is no comfort for Jesus on Golgotha, except that momentary comfort when he speaks to the thief and the nails of both of them are forgotten a moment when he says, today, thou shall be with me in paradise. But oh, what sorrow pierced his soul, what bloody sacrifice he endured, And then no comfort coming from above, no voice coming down from heaven saying, this is my beloved son. When he most needed reassurance, no one said, I am well pleased.

No dove descended from heaven to symbolize peace. No angel sent to strengthen him. No well done, thou good and faithful servant. Resounded in his ears, he's in a fire country. He's trotting the winepress alone.

He's hanging naked in the flame of his father's wrath, bleeding from head to foot. And the women who supported him throughout his ministry are silent. The terrified disciples are a long way off. Jesus walks the way of suffering alone in darkness. That array of light shines upon him.

Even the realm of nature goes miraculously dark. The sun won't shine upon him. He's there in the midst of his father's displeasure. Instead of love, there's wrath. Instead of affection, there's coldness.

Instead of support, there's opposition. The son cries to his father. Do not make the father turn to him. God the Father so distanced himself from his son that eventually it was as if the Father disappeared from the horizon. He can't say, my Father, my Father.

He's just overwhelmed with the sin of his people. Yes, he doesn't lose faith altogether. He says, my God, my God. He keeps pursuing the Father, yet the Father seems to retreat from him. No amount to pursue can help him catch up with the Father.

Jesus is alone, deserted, forsaken, overwhelmed with grief. Every detail of that forsaken abandonment shouts to us, this is what God thinks of your sin and of my sin. Every detail declares the irrationality, the heinousness, the dread character of sin. Jesus' suffering at Golgotha is the essence of what God thinks of sin. This precious blood is costly.

But thirdly and finally, we want to look at the capability of Christ's blood because this is where we get the application of the wonder of salvation in Jesus Christ. I want to look at five or six things here with you. First is this. Christ's blood accomplishes full-orbed redemption for sinners just like us. When by grace you may believe in the Son of God alone for salvation, the moment that you truly believe, this full-orbed redemption is imputed to you, even if you don't realize its fullness yet, and it may take years for you to do that, maybe eternity, but at that moment, you see, that's imputed to your account, as Paul says in Romans 3, by faith, when we believe in Christ alone, this righteousness of Jesus, brought about by his blood, our ransom price, not gold or silver or tradition, Peter says in our text, or anything you can do, but only the precious blood of Jesus.

So you are redeemed to be set free from the slavery of sin by the blood of Jesus. You're redeemed to be set free from the curse of sin by the blood of Jesus. You're redeemed to be set free from the enslaving power of Satan by the blood of Jesus. By his blood, Christ destroyed him that had the power of death, that is the devil. And you're redeemed to be set free from everlasting death by the blood of Jesus.

And so the blood of Jesus redeems us, it buys us back, that's what redemption means, buys us back from our allegiance to Satan. It buys us back from sin, from Satan, from death, from every enemy that would hinder our salvation. God proves he is inexorably just, and one who lavishes at the same time. Infinite love upon sinners through an infinite savior is for only an infinite substitute can satisfy, as Jonathan Edwards said, an infinitely offended God. You see, you're finite.

You can never satisfy for your own sin. You have offended, I have offended, an infinitely holy God who cannot look upon any sin, who cannot admit any sin into heaven. Every one of us. My friend, if you had only sinned once in your entire life and it wasn't covered by the blood of Jesus, the very character of God would mean you'd be excluded from heaven. Every single sin is wiped away only by the redeeming power of the blood of Jesus.

That's why Paul says in Ephesians one, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace. So That's amazing capability. His blood accomplishes full-orbed redemption. Total redemption for all eternity for those who believe in Him. Number two, Christ's blood accomplishes complete atonement for us.

This atonement means at one with. God and a sinner, a holy God, an unholy sinner, are brought together to be at one with each other through the mediator, through the mediatorial atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. And because of the effectual character of his blood that satisfies the justice of God, this atonement covers all sins, original sin, actual sin, sins of omission, sins of commission, sins in thought, sins in word, sins in deed, and it covers all kinds of sinners. Even chief sinners are covered. The chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed.

Now freed from sin, I walk at large, the Savior's blood my full discharge. At His dear feet my soul are lay, a sinner saved in homage pay." Thirdly, Christ's blood justifies and cleanses us. And cleanses us. His blood is also the heartbeat of our sanctification. Paul says, be now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him.

The unjust is made just by the blood of Jesus, and out of that, we are sanctified and live out of the power of that blood. The blood of Jesus, therefore, cleanses us from all sin. And that may seem strange to us, our logical thinking, because blood stains clothing. But instead of staining us with filth, The blood of Jesus washes out the stains of our sin. Instead of defiling our souls, it washes them white as snow.

What a fountain filled with blood, drawn from Immanuel's veins, and sinners plunged beneath that flood lose all their guilty stains. Charles Spurgeon said, O Lord Jesus Christ, sanctify us by thy blood, burn up the love of the world in us by thy blood. Let thy death be the death of my sin by thy blood. Let thy life be the life of everything that is gracious, heavenly, eternal by thy blood. You see, this precious blood provides a melting power within us.

Nothing melts us down so much as the blood of Jesus. What's more humbling than to have Galatians 2 20 become an experiential reality in your soul that he loved me and gave himself for me. What's more humbling than when his blood is sprinkled upon our conscience and we look upon him whom we have crucified. And we say with Zechariah, they shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourneth for his only son. You know, Mary Winslow, the father of the famous 19th century preacher, Octavius Winslow, once said this in one of her letters to her friends, if Jesus had died only for me, he would have had to suffer as much as he did given the enormity of my sins.

When you feel what your sins have done to Jesus. And yet that he loves you and saves you and sanctifies you nonetheless, that is overwhelming. Then you say with a poet, law and terrors do but harden. All the while they work alone, but a sense of blood bought pardon soon dissolves a heart of stone. Do you know what it means to just weep with joy and sorrow at the same time that the blood of Jesus was shed for your sin.

Joy because it's effectual and you're forgiven, but sorrow because you've done this to the Lord of glory. Precious blood gives a melting power. It gives a pacifying power. It gives you peace that passes all understanding. In John Bunyan's pilgrim's progress, when he saw the cross and saw the blood, the burden rolled off his back.

He went into an empty sepulcher. And Bunyan says later that like a maid sweeping dust in the chamber of the soul until the dust of sin clouds the soul and threatens to choke its spiritual life, only the precious blood of Christ can remove the dust, clean the room, and quiet the soul. When you rest in the blood, the blood of Jesus, there's a quieting power, there's a peace, a quiet peace, that passes all understanding. Then you say, I have that peace of conscience that comes from having my heart fixed upon God that will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is fixed on thee, through the blood, through the blood. And then two, in our sanctification, that precious blood provides invigorating power.

Just as the bread and the wine of the Lord's Supper provide us with spiritual nourishment. So the blood of Jesus nourishes our faith, offers us hope, gives us profound joy, makes us sing, makes us go out and do good works for the cause of our King and His kingdom. There's no, as The Puritans used to say, no cordial for the heart, no medicine for the soul like the blood of Jesus. Drink, yay, drink abundantly, O beloved, God says. Meditate on Christ's atoning sacrifice as your surest path to comfort and joy and invigorating power.

And then fifthly, Christ's blood preserves and assures us and makes us victorious. That blood gives us not only salvation and sanctification, but it also gives us assurance with its confirming power. It's the blood of the new covenant, The blood of Jesus is his last will and testimony. It cannot, testament, it cannot be unsealed. It cannot be taken back.

It's imputed to you. It's yours, dear believer. His covenant blood affirms you, assures you of your salvation. And that blood is as it were, I say it with reverence, spread in heaven's courts and Jesus provides through his intercessory power the continual effectiveness of that blood in the holy of holies, in the heaven of heavens. The wounds of Christ, said a poet, for us incessantly do plead.

That's what Christ does for us. He dies for us that we might live, but he now lives for us and proceeds for us that we might die to ourselves in order to live to him. And sixthly, Christ's blood, finally Christ's blood opens Heaven for us. How are you made fit for Heaven? How can you be holy for Heaven?

How can you be justified, ready for Heaven? It's all by Christ's blood. Christ's precious, precious blood. Paul said, he hath made both one, both God and man, through the blood of Christ. What an amazing thing it will be on the glorious day of days to see a multitude no man can number of millions and millions and millions all redeemed from every tribe and nation and people in tongue by the same effectual, precious blood of Jesus.

And that blood is sufficient even for the greatest trials, even for a deathbed, even for an agonizing deathbed. It fits you for heaven. Hugh MacPhail was a great Scottish minister who just was overwhelmed with a king of terrors on his deathbed and he could find no relief and he lost all assurance of his salvation and elders came and ministers came from all over Scotland to comfort him, nothing could comfort him. He was unable to look to Christ's blood. He said, I'll be a castaway in the end, though I've been a preacher all my life.

His wife was distressed, everyone was upset. Dr. John Kennedy even came to visit him, made a special trip all the way to show him God's salvation, but he was bound up. He had no freedom. He was dying in despair.

Then one night, MacPhail had a dream. He had a dream. In the dream, he saw large, pearly, celestial gates and he heard music. And then he saw a group of people coming to the gates. He saw Abraham and David and Jeremiah and people who had been saved by the Lord but had committed great sins.

And as the gates went open and the Old Testament saints went in, he heard a voice in his dream saying, Hugh MacPhail, can't you go in by the blood of Jesus with these Old Testament saints? And in the dream, he said back to the Lord, no Lord, I can't go in. They're all far more holy than I am. Far more holy. And the doors shut.

And the doors reopen. And he saw the New Testament saints. He saw Thomas with all his doubts. He saw Peter who denied him. He saw so many New Testament saints coming and the doors went open and the voice said, can't you go in with them?

And he said, no Lord, they're far more holy than I am. He saw the ancient church fathers. Then he saw the reformers. He saw the Puritans, he saw the Scottish Covenanters, and again and again and again the door went open. They all went in by the blood, but he said, I am worse than them all, I cannot go in.

And finally the door shut, and he despaired in his dream. And then he saw one more group coming. These were his people from his church. He knew all their flaws, he knew their faults, he knew their sins, he'd been pastoring them for years. Would the gate go open for them, that sinner?

That sinner, that sinner? Yes, the gates went open. And the voice said, Hugh McPhail, can't you go in with them? And he said, no Lord, I'm worse than them all. And the gates were shut.

And then the gates opened once more and he saw one lone man coming. He said, who is he, Lord? And the Lord said to him, this is all in his dream, of course, Manasseh, who has filled the streets of Jerusalem with the blood of the saints, and Jesus' blood is good enough for him, why can't that blood be good enough for you? And he woke up. Now we don't believe in God's special revelation and dreams, but we do believe that there are rare times when God could even use something like this when we're awake, you see.

So when he was awake, he's thinking about this dream and suddenly he says, call my wife and call my friends and tell them all that Hugh MacPhail can go in solely by the blood of Christ for it's for the greatest and cheapest of sinners. No one is excluded. No amount of skeletons in your closet can exclude you from the blood of Christ. Maybe you have things you've never told anyone. Maybe you're overwhelmed by your own sin.

Maybe you think, like John Bunyan said, when Paul wrote 1 Timothy 1.15, that this is for the chief of sinners. He didn't know Paul Bunyan or he wouldn't have said that. Maybe you say, I am that chief of sinners. I say to you tonight, upon the authority of my master, the blood of Jesus Christ is the blood of one who is infinite God and an infinite God has more power than your finite iniquity, his righteousness exceeds your unrighteousness, you can go in by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sing with the poet, and can it be that I should gain an interest in the Savior's blood?

Did he for me who caused his pain, for me who him to death pursued, amazing love, how can it be that thou my God shouldst die for me? Yes, we can go in by the blood. And when we go in by the blood, we will be as holy as Jesus is holy. We will have every stain of sin purged away from us, also in sanctification forever and ever. All good will be walled out.

Evil will be walled out. All good will be walled in. And we will be as sinless as Jesus. That's amazing. It's almost too good to be true.

No more to have to say with Paul, evil is present with me. Every sin gone, no more lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, or pride of life. No more temptations, No more temptations to be tempted. Absolute purity. He will see no sin in his Jacob, no transgression in his Israel.

What a day, what a future, what a glory. The best is yet to be all because of this almighty, omnipotent, powerful, precious blood of Jesus. Let that blood motivate you. Let that blood fill your life. Let that blood spill out of your heart, as it were, and out of your mouth, and out of your hands, and go out and live out of gratitude for this glorious Redeemer who saves sinners by the precious blood of the Lamb.

What sacred fountain yonder spring up from the throne of God, and all new covenant blessings bring, tis Jesus' precious blood. What mighty sum paid all my debt when I a bondman stood, and has my soul at freedom set? Tis Jesus' precious blood. What stream is that which sweeps away my sins just like a flood? Nor lets one guilty blemish stay.

Tis Jesus' precious blood. What voice is that which speaks for me in heaven's high court for good, and from the curse has set me free? Tis Jesus' precious blood. What theme my soul shall best employ thy harp before thy God and make all heaven to ring with joy, tis Jesus' precious blood. Let's pray.

Gracious God, we thank thee so much for the precious blood of the Lamb of God, our only justification, and the secret source and strength of all our sanctification and the foundation of our everlasting glory. We owe all to thy blood, Lord Jesus. Thank you so much for coming and suffering and dying and shedding thy blood on our behalf. And grant, Lord, that for those who are not true believers in our audience tonight, they may flee immediately to this precious blood to cover them from the wrath of God and the wrath of the Lamb. Oh God, bring everyone in this audience to see their need for and to experience by faith in this precious blood full-orbed salvation.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen.