Pastor’s Corner: “Blood Work”
1 Peter 1:18-19 (NLT) – 18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. 19 It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.
What is blood? Blood is the life-giving and life-maintaining fluid that circulates through the body’s heart, arteries, veins, and capillaries. Here are some interesting and important facts about blood: The average person’s blood is approximately 8 percent of his body weight – Healthy kidneys recycle four hundred gallons of blood every day – The average woman has about 4.5 liters of blood in her body – The average man has about 5.5 – Because blood leaves an indelible stain, Native Americans used it for paint – One out of every seven people entering the hospital needs blood – Someone needs blood every two seconds – One pint of blood can save three lives.
Here is an undeniable and important fact: Blood gives and maintains lives. Christians should know this better than others. At the very heart of our Christian faith is a precious red substance; the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In the Old Testament God wanted to deliver His people from bondage in the land of Egypt. Exodus 12:13 (AMPC) – 13 The blood shall be for a token or sign to you upon [the doorposts of] the houses where you are, [that] when I see the blood, I will pass over you, The miraculous events of the first Passover illustrate the power of the blood. It is an amazing foreshadowing of the sacrifice of Jesus which gives us life. In this story, an angel of death was going to pass through the land of Egypt to kill the firstborn sons in every household. But God instructed His people to apply the blood of lambs to the doorposts of their homes so the angel of death would see it and pass over their houses or families.
Today, Jesus is our Passover Lamb. He shed His blood to set us free from the curse of sin and death. I believe that we need to be diligent to apply Jesus’ blood over our lives by faith and seal the doors of our lives through which satan can gain access to us. The Israelites had to go to a lot of trouble to get the blood on their doorposts. They had to kill the lambs, skin them, remove the blood and put it into containers; they had to get some hyssop (a brush-like plant), dip it in the blood and put the blood on their doorposts. That could not have been a neat, clean endeavor! But they did it, and they did it by faith because God told them to. The Israelites had to apply the blood of the lamb physically, but we can do it by faith. Jesus is the Lamb of God, and, as believers, we can apply the power of His shed blood to our lives by simply believing in it!
There is Power of the Blood of Jesus: His blood redeems us. There was a price against us that we could not pay, but the blood of Jesus redeemed us. Revelation 13:8 proclaims that He was slain before the foundation of the world. He came to die; He planned to die; He lived to die; and He was born to die. Put yourself in the context of Isaiah 53:5: “But he was pierced for [my] transgressions, he was crushed for [my] iniquities; the punishment that brought [me] peace was upon him.” Does this humble your heart and bring you to your knees today? “Thank You, Jesus, for being my Passover lamb!”
In His Grace,
Pastor Hamilton