June 3, 2018 The Covenant Made in the Blood

The Love of Blood 

God is love. That is why God made us His children. This is not just a religious doctrine but a certainty that we have already experienced, and that whoever opens his heart to Him can also experience. Faith is experiencing God’s love, nothing else.

Generally, people grow up with the love of their parents. To a parent, there is nothing more precious than a child, regardless of whether or not the child is aware of his parents’ love. An expecting mother is particularly affectionate toward her unborn child because she carries the baby until birth. In fact, it is not uncommon for a daughter to confess that she didn’t fully understand a mother’s heart until she became a mother.

The Bible talks about the pain of childbirth. After Adam sinned, God said to Eve, “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, In pain you will bring forth children.”(Genesis 3:16) It is very hard for a woman to give birth to children and to be concerned about them for the rest of her life, and that is not even counting the pain of giving birth. Nevertheless, women do not feel the pain of conception much. Some women do not even realize they are pregnant for three or four months. This is because God cares so much. Although women may not feel the full pain of childbearing at conception, the pain of childbirth is very real and the Bible talks about it.

A newborn baby comes out of his mother’s womb covered in her blood. The mother loves the baby more than she loves herself.  That love never changes even when her baby grows up to be an old man. It is because a mother and a child are connected by blood.  Leviticus 17:11 says, “For the life of a creature is in the blood; it is the blood that makes atonement for your souls.” God’s love cannot be separated from the blood; it cannot be separated from life. We became God’s children because we received His love, and it was accomplished by God’s own blood. Like a mother giving her blood to bring forth a child, God gave us His own blood and made us His children.

Those Who Entered by The Blood

When the Israelites were suffering in bondage in Egypt, how did God rescue them?  God commanded that every household slaughter a lamb and apply the lamb’s blood on the doorposts. (Exodus 12:22) Then everyone in the house passed through the door, and through the blood, as it were, individually. Everyone, even the Egyptians themselves, who passed through the door whose posts had been covered in the blood of the lamb could escape the curse which was coming for the Egyptians. They escaped the cruel power of the Pharaoh that ruled Egypt and all the detestable idols in the land. They became the people of God.

Nevertheless, some of them longed for Egypt and complained about living in the dessert. (Numbers 11:5) This angered God more than anything because it was a fundamental denial of what God had done for them. Those who longed to go back to Egypt eventually died in the wilderness. God cut them off from His people. Our spiritual life is just like the Israelites who wandered in the wilderness, isolated from the world. If we return to the world, complaining about our spiritual life in spite of having received God’s grace, we will certainly pay for it, just like the Israelites who were cut off from God’s people.

When the Israelites came out of Egypt, they came out for a specific purpose: to hold a feast to God in the wilderness(Exodus 5:1). That feast was the Passover(Exodus 12:43). The reason God made them keep the Passover is that He wanted them to remember that they had come out of Egypt by the blood of the Passover lamb. It was vitally important that they remember that until the time when the Son of God would come to this world, shed His blood and die. This is why God commanded the Israelites to keep the Passover for all the generations to come(Exodus 12:42).

Just as the Israelites were saved by the blood of the Passover lamb, our souls are saved by the blood of Jesus Christ; the blood of God. We received the grace of His blood through baptism and we have been united with Jesus Christ. A mother must still go through the pain and blood of childbirth even though a baby does not, and will not, remember the pain. Similarly, we only have to enter the water for a moment and then come out again when we are baptized, but Jesus had to suffer excruciating pain and shed His blood on the cross so that we could have life. If we could hear the sound of Jesus as He cried out on the cross, could we stand it, even for one day?

Because of the blood which Jesus Christ shed on the cross, baptism for us is painless. To be baptized is to approach God through the door covered by His blood. We must not treat such a precious baptism simply as a religious ceremony. Those who are baptized will experience eternal life. We must only wait for Lord’s return. We must not return back to where we came from before Jesus comes back for us.

Waiting for Lord’s Return

Those who had passed through the blood of the Passover proceeded to the final destination: Jerusalem. Just like them, we who have been baptized in the name of Jesus must await His return. Our body will die and return to dust, but our souls will be resurrected and go to heaven with Jesus. Until then we must keep the Passover generation after generation, just as God commanded the Israelites, so that they would remember the grace of the blood of the Passover. We ourselves must proclaim that we are saved through Jesus’ blood until He comes.

That is why it is very important for us, who have received grace through His blood to observe the Lord’s Day. What is the origin of the Lord’s Day? It is the day for us to meet together to break bread. Acts 20:7 says, “On the first day of the week we came together to break bread.” What is the significance of breaking bread? 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 says, “For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘this is My body, which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same manner, He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘this cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.” The meaning of the Lord’s Supper is to remember that Jesus gave His body and His blood for us, and to proclaim it to the world.

We should not consider ourselves to have done our part just because we go to church and take Communion on the Lord’s Day. If we take a part in Lord’s Supper this week, we should bring another person the next week so that the person may participate in it through us. We should encourage people to look forward to the Lord’s return with the same faith we have by continuously preaching the grace of the blood to others.

Sometimes people skip church on the Lord’s Day because they are busy doing something else. The Lord clearly commanded those who were the recipients of the grace of the lamb’s blood to not only observe the Lord’s Day, but to make it their top priority. The lord of the Lord’s Day is Jesus Christ(Revelation 1:10). It was He who said, “Therefore the Son of Man is Lord also of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:28) And the Lord also said to the Israelites, “Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to death.”(Exodus 31:15) How then should we treat the Lord’s Day?

“If you turn away your foot from the Sabbath, from doing your pleasure on My holy day, and call the Sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable, and shall honor Him, not doing your own ways, nor finding your own pleasure, nor speaking your own words, then you shall delight yourself in the Lord.” (Isaiah 58:13-14) On the other hand, those who do not set their mind to the things of God but the things of men, will lose favor in the sight of God. When Peter did not have his mind on the things of God but the things of men, did not Jesus say to him, “Get behind Me?” (Matthew 16:23) That is like telling him ‘I don’t want to be seen with you.’ Should we lose favor in the Lord’s eyes while we await His return?

We must catch the eye of the Lord Jesus. Whoever is faithful in little is faithful also in much(Luke 16:10). In the eyes of God, it is a great thing to observe the Lord’s Day. That is because the Lord’s Day commemorates the Son of God shedding His blood. It might seem like a small thing in the eyes of man to observe the Lord’s Day, but if we are faithful in observing it, the Lord will entrust us with great things. On the other hand, if we consider the Lord’s Day a small thing and do not faithfully observe it, the Lord will record it in the book of life and judge us according to our deeds(Revelation 20:12).

The life of faith is not just about having religion. Faith and life are connected. It is meaningful when we come together to break bread and drink the cup on the Lord’s Day because we are conveying the good thing we have to others. 1 Corinthians 11:29-32 is directed at those who do not preach the grace of Jesus blood: “For he who eats and drinks in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment on himself, not discerning the Lord’s body. For this reason many are weak and sick among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened by the Lord that we may not be condemned with the world.” Those who are recipients of God’s grace and of the precious blood of Jesus but do not share it are disciplined by the Lord.

Let us faithfully observe the Lord’s Day. We should not just remember that Jesus Christ was crushed and wounded, and that He shed His blood for us.  We should definitely do that, but we must also tell it to more and more people. The Lord promised us that whatever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever we loose on earth will be loosed in heaven(Matthew 16:19). Let us first set free on earth so that the Lord will set free in heaven. Let us not forget that we are a new creation that God has purchased with His own blood.

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Outline translated by John Kim and Daniel Hong
Letter translated by John Kim
Interpretations by Daniel Hong
Korean Summary by Ki-Taek Lee