Part 3

I imagine some of you will say, "Haven't I anything to do?" Well, you haven't. Salvation has been worked out for you by another. Many go all round the world in search of honour or possessions. Salvation is worth thousands of times more than any thing earth can produce; but you don't get it that way. God has but one price for salvation. Do you want to know what it is? It is without money and without price. Rowland Hill said that most auctioneers found they had hard work to get people up to their price, but that he had hard work to get people down to his. "The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life." Who will have it now? I say to you, young man, will you have this gift? Suppose I was going over London Bridge, and saw a poor miserable beggar, bare-footed, coatless, hatless, with no rags hardly to cover his nakedness, and right behind him, only a few yards, there was the Prince of Wales with a bag of gold, and the poor beggar was running away from him as if he was running away from a demon, and the Prince of Wales was hallooing after him, "Oh, beggar, here is a bag of gold!" Why, we should say the beggar had gone mad to be running away from the Prince of Wales with the bag of gold. Sinner, that is your condition. The Prince of Heaven wants to give you eternal life, and you are running away from Him.

THE DYING SOLDIER.

Then you say, "If it is not by working in earnest, how am I to be saved?" I will tell you; Scripture will tell you--that is better. Take the illustration Christ used to Nicodemus; you could not have a better. He took him to the remedy: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life" (John iii. 14, 15). Now there is the remedy. How am I to be saved? By looking to Christ; just by looking. It's very cheap, isn't it? Very simple, isn't it? Just look away to the Lamb of God now and be saved. What says the great wilderness preacher? "Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world." You might say the whole plan of salvation is in two words--Giving; Receiving. God gives; I receive.

I remember, after one of the terrible battles in the American Civil War--I was in the army, tending soldiers--and I had just laid down one night, past midnight, to get a little rest, when a man came and told me that a wounded soldier wanted to see me. I went to the dying man. He said, "I wish you to help me to die." I said, "I would help you to die if I could. I would take you on my shoulders and carry you into the kingdom of God if I could; but I cannot. I can tell you of One who can." And I told him of Christ being willing to save him; and how Christ left heaven and came into the world to seek and to save that which was lost. I just quoted promise after promise, but all was dark, and it almost seemed as if the shades of eternal death were gathering around his soul. I could not leave him, and at last I thought of this third chapter of John, and I said to him, "Look here, I am going to read to you now a conversation that Christ had with a man that went to Him when he was in your state of mind, and inquired what he was to do to be saved." I just read that conversation to the dying man, and he lay there with his eves rivetted upon me, and every word seemed to be going home to his heart, which was open to receive the truth. When I came to the verse where it says, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life"--the dying man cried, "Stop, sir. Is that there?" "Yes, it is all here." Then he said, "Won't you please read it to me again?" I read it the second time. The dying man brought his hands together, and he said, "Bless God for that. Won't you please read it to me again?" I read through the whole chapter, but long before the end of it he had closed his eyes. He seemed to lose all interest in the rest of the chapter, and when I got through it his arms were folded on his breast, he had a sweet smile on his face; remorse and despair had fled away. His lips were quivering, and I leant over him, and heard him faintly whisper from his dying lips, "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life." He opened his eyes, and fixed his calm, deathly look on me, and he said, "Oh, that is enough; that is all I want"; and in a few hours he pillowed his dying head upon the truth of those two verses, and rode away on one of the Saviour's chariots, and took his seat in the kingdom of God.

Oh, sinner, you can be saved now if you will! Look and live. May God help every lost one here to look on the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

THE BLOOD

"And almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without the shedding of blood is no remission."--Heb. ix. 22.

No man can give a satisfactory reason for the hope that is in him if he is a stranger to the "Blood." At the very commencement of the Bible we find reference made to the subject in Genesis iii. 21: "Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them." In this verse we get the first glimpse of blood. Certainly God could not have clothed Adam and Eve with the skins of beasts unless He had shed blood. Here, then, we have the innocent suffering for the guilty--the doctrine of substitution in the garden of Eden. God dealt with Adam in grace before He dealt in judgment. Death came by sin. Adam had sinned, and the Lord came down to make the way of escape. God came to him as a loving friend, and not to hurl him from the earth. Adam could have said to Eve, "Though the Lord has driven us out of the garden of Eden, He loves us," for this coat is a token of love.

God put a lamp of promise into Adam's hand before He drove him out; for He said, "The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." Did you ever think what a terrible state of things it would be if man was allowed to live for ever in his lost, ruined state? It was from love to Adam that God drove him out of Eden, that he should not live for ever. God put the cherubim with a flaming sword there. But now Christ has taken the sword out of his hand, and opened wide the gate, so that we can come in and eat. Adam might have been in Eden ten thousand years, and then be led astray by Satan; but now "our life is hid with Christ in God." Man is safer with the second Adam out of Eden than with the first Adam in Eden.

Let us next turn to Genesis iv. 4: "And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering." Cain and Abel were brought up outside of Eden, and had the same parents, and both received the same instruction as to how they were to draw near to God; but

CAIN CAME IN HIS OWN WAY,

while Abel came in the way God commanded. Cain said to himself, "I am not going to bring a bleeding lamb. Here is the grain and the beautiful fruit that I have raised by my industry; and I'm sure it looks better than blood, and I'm not going to bring blood." Now it was not that there was any difference between these two men, but it was the offering which each brought. One came in the way God had marked out, and the other in a way of his own. Now there are a great many just like that at the present day. They prefer what is agreeable to the eye, as Cain did his beautiful corn and fruit, and they do not like the doctrine of

THE BLOOD OF ATONEMENT.

But any religion that makes light of the Blood is the work of the devil, even if an angel from heaven came down to preach salvation through any other means.

Undoubtedly on the morning of creation God marked out the way a man might come to Him; and Abel walked in God's way, and Cain in his own. Perhaps Cain could not bear the sight of blood, and so he took that which God had cursed and laid it upon the altar.

THERE ARE MANY CAINITES IN THE CHURCH

even now; and some have got into the pulpit, and they preach against the doctrine of the Blood, and that we can get to heaven without the Blood. From the time Adam went out of Eden there have been Abelites and Cainites. The Abelites come by the way of the Blood--the way God had marked out for them. The Cainites come by their own way. They repudiate the doctrine of the Blood, and say it does not atone for sin. But it is better to take God's word than man's opinion.

Again, turn to Genesis viii. 20: "And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt-offerings on the altar." We have thus passed over the first two thousand years, and have come to the second dispensation. The thought I want to call your attention to is this: The first thing Noah did when he got out of the ark was to build an altar and slay the animals, thus putting blood between him and his sin. The second dispensation is founded upon blood; and these animals were taken through the flood in the ark that they might illustrate the indispensable necessity of the shedding of blood.

ABRAHAM OFFERING UP ISAAC.

Again, in Genesis xxii. 13, it is written: "And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt-offering in the stead of his son." The ram was typical, and was offered up in the place of Abraham's son. God loved Abraham so much that He spared his son; but He so loved the world that He would not spare His own Son, but gave Him up freely for us all. It may be that from the top of the mountain Abraham saw a glorious sight. He saw Christ going up Calvary carrying His cross. He saw that mountain peak sprinkled with blood; and he saw that sacrifices were to go on until the true Isaac made His appearance and offered Himself for us all. Abraham had the altar built, and he was ordered to take his only son, and to bind him, and to slay him; and he bound that boy, and everything was ready. He took the knife, and was about to slay him, because it was the will and command of God. He did not know what it meant; but he obeyed.

Would that there were more men like him now, ready to obey God in the dark without asking the reason why! The old man took his son, and he told him the secret that he had hid from him all the journey--that God had told him to offer him up as a sacrifice. And he bound the boy hand and foot, and laid him all ready on the altar; and just when he was about to stretch forth his hand and slay him, he heard a voice from heaven calling to him: "Abraham, Abraham, spare thy son." God was more merciful to the son of Abraham than to His own, for He gave Him up freely for us all. He opened up to him the curtain of time, and showed him Christ coming in the future; and Abraham saw his sins laid on Christ and was glad.

THE PASSOVER.

In Exodus xii. 13 we read: "And the blood shall be to you for a token on the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you." God did not say, When I see your good deeds; when I see how you have prayed, and wept, and cried. No; but "When I see the blood I will pass over you. The blood shall be a token." What was it saved those men? Was it their good resolutions or their works? It was the blood. "When I see the blood I will pass over you." Very likely when some of the lords, and dukes, and great men rode through Goshen, and saw the Israelites sprinkling their dwellings, they said they never saw such foolishness, and that they were spoiling their houses. They were to sprinkle the door-posts and lintels of their houses with the blood, but not the threshold. God would not have

THE BLOOD TRAMPLED UPON,

but that is what the world at the present day is doing.

Some preachers speak not of the death of Christ, but His life, because it is more pleasing to the natural ear; but the life of Christ may be preached for ever and it will not save any man, if His death is left out. A live lamb could not have kept death out of the houses of Goshen. God did not say that He wanted a live lamb at every door, but to have the lintels and door-posts sprinkled with the blood of the lamb. People sometimes say, "If I was as good as that minister, that preached the gospel for fifty years"; or, "If I was as good as that mother, who did so and so for her children"; but if we are behind the blood of God's Son, we are just as safe as any Christian that has ever walked the face of the earth.

It is not a long life of usefulness that makes men and women acceptable to God. We must work for Christ; but we get salvation as a gift, and then begin to work because we cannot help it. All the work a person does before he becomes converted goes for nothing.

The little child down in Goshen behind the blood of the lamb was just as safe as Joshua, or any man in the whole town. The angel of death passed by when he saw the blood. The little tiny fly was as safe in the ark with Noah as the elephant. It was equally the ark that saved the fly and the elephant, and it is

THE BLOOD THAT SAVES

the weakest and the strongest. When death came that night with his sword, he entered the palace of the prince, and went into the houses of the great and mighty, and they all had to pay tribute to death; for the first-born in Egypt was smitten down that night. The only thing that kept death out was death itself. The only way that death can be met is by death. I have sinned, and must die; or get some one to die for me. The great question is--Have you got the token? If death should come after any one of us to-night, are we sheltered behind the blood? that is the point. It is the blood that atones. Not my good resolutions, or prayers, or position in society, or what I have done, but what has been done by another. God looks for the token.

Take another illustration. Suppose a man wanted to go from London to Liverpool, and he got into a railway carriage, he would soon hear the guard running along the platform crying out for tickets. A man might be rich or he might be poor, black or white, he might be learned or unlearned, that was not what the guard wanted to know--he wanted to see the tickets; for the ticket was the token, and if you have got a ticket you pass.

NO DEATH WHERE THE BLOOD WAS.

The Egyptians looked at the Israelites killing a lamb and sprinkling the blood on the door-posts no doubt as a very foolish proceeding, but not one house in the city, upon the doorposts and lintels of which the blood was not sprinkled, escaped; no matter who were the inhabitants, rich or poor, that night there was no difference. There was a wail heard in every habitation, from the palace to the meanest hovel where the blood _had not_ been sprinkled, but where it _had_ been sprinkled death was kept out. That showed clearly the truth, that without the shedding of blood there is no remission. Let no man or woman be guilty of laughing at this doctrine, that "the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin."

In the eleventh verse of the same chapter we read, "And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord's passover." Why you have not got more power is because you don't feed on the Lamb; and this is why there are so many weak Christians. The Lamb not only atones for our sins, but we are to feed upon the Lamb. We have got a wilderness journey before us, as the children of Israel had. After we are saved we are to feed upon Christ; He is the true bread from heaven. If I don't feed my soul with the true bread from heaven I am sickly, and have not power to go and work for Christ; and that is the reason, I believe, why so few in the Church have power. Some people think if they get one glimpse of Christ that is enough.

Some think much of their dinner; why should not God's children think a good deal of

THEIR SPIRITUAL FOOD?

We should no more think of laying in spiritual food to last for ten years than we should bodily food. A good many people are living on stale manna. A man in Ireland said to his boy, "I want you to eat two breakfasts. Do you know why?" The boy said he understood one was for his body and the other for his soul. All Christians should similarly take two breakfasts, for the soul and for the body.

The Passover was to be to the Jews the beginning of months. "This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you" (Exodus xii. 2). All the 400 years that they had been in bondage went for naught, because this was the first month of the year to them. And in like manner throughout all the years that we have served the devil, and all the time that we have been in Egypt, whatever good we may have done in this world is to be reckoned as naught. Everything dates back to the Passover night--to the time the blood was put upon the door-posts. All the time we are serving the world goes for naught. If you have not come to Calvary you are losing time. Everything you do on the wrong side of the cross counts for naught; the first thing is to be saved by faith in Christ, and then we commence our pilgrimage to heaven. We don't start, as some people suppose, from the cradle to heaven. We start from the cross. We have got a fallen nature that is taking us hellward. We must be born of the Spirit, and

SHELTERED BY THE BLOOD,

and then we become pilgrims for heaven.

Each man was to take a lamb for his house. "And if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb." The lamb was not too little for a household, but the household might be too little for the lamb. Christ was enough for every household, enough and to spare, and we ought to pray that salvation may come to every member of our households.

Let us next turn to Exodus xxix. 16: "And thou shalt slay the ram, and thou shalt take his blood, and sprinkle it round about upon the altar." Even Aaron could not come to God until he sprinkled blood round about the altar; and when the high priest went into the holy of holies, he had to take blood with him. From the time when Adam fell there has been no other way by which a man can approach God than by the blood. You cannot have an audience of God until you come by that appointed way. So it has been for 6000 years. When Adam fell in Eden he broke the golden chain that linked humanity to the throne of God, but Christ came and made atonement for that fall.

Again, observe in Leviticus viii. 23: "And he slew it; and Moses took of the blood of it, and put it upon the tip of Aaron's right ear, and upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the great toe of his right foot." I used to read a passage like this, and say it seemed absurd. I think I understand it now. The blood _upon the ear_ means that we are to hear the voice of God. The unconverted man does not understand the voice of God; and we are told that when the voice of God was heard, the uncircumcised said that it thundered. They did not know the difference between God's voice and thunder. Without the blood we cannot hear the voice of God and understand it. A man must be sheltered behind the blood before he can hear God's voice.

The blood _upon the hand_ signifies that a man may

WORK FOR GOD.

You cannot work for God until you are sheltered behind the blood; and until you are sheltered it all stands for naught. You may build churches, endow colleges, pay ministers and missionaries; but it all goes for naught until you are sheltered behind the blood. Don't let any one deceive you on this point. Don't let Satan deceive you by telling you that you can get to heaven by some other way. They asked Christ, "What must we do that we may work the works of God?" Perhaps these men had got their pockets full of money, and were ready and willing to build churches. Christ told them that the work of God was that they should believe in His Son. But they were not willing to do such a small thing; they would rather do some greater thing; but that was not what was wanted. You cannot do anything to please God until you believe.

"Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice." People may work day and night, and even work themselves to death; but they never will do right until they do what God requires them to do.

The blood _on the toe_ of the right foot was to show that Aaron was to walk with God. When Adam fell, communion with God was broken. Before he had walked with God; but the moment he sinned he fell out of communion with Him; and from that time to this God has been trying to get man back into communion. God is full of truth and justice. His justice must be met; and after that has been met He is satisfied. God never walked with men until He put them behind the blood at Goshen. What could stand before them then? They passed through the Red Sea, and God said to Joshua, "Take this country, and no man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life." In the days of Joshua there were whole regiments of giants; but one stripling from the Lord's hosts defeated the giant of Gath. If God is with us, the giants will be like grasshoppers; but if God is not with us, it will be different. I would rather have ten men separated from the world than ten thousand nominal Christians who go to the prayer-meeting to-night and the ball to-morrow.

In Leviticus xvi. 14 it is said: "He shall take of the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it with his finger upon the mercy-seat eastward; and before the mercy-seat shall he sprinkle of the blood with his finger seven times." It seems as if God originally gave Adam a life by which he held communion with Him; but on the day that he broke the command he lost that communion. And ever since God has been trying to get men back into communion with Himself. But how could God be just and the justifier of sinners? That is done through the Blood of Christ. "The life of the flesh is in the blood." God demands blood to atone for sin.

MAN'S LIFE WAS FORFEITED,

and he had to die, or pay the wages of death. He could not pay the penalty and live; so he wanted a substitute. Every man had sinned, and could not be a substitute for his fellow; but Christ was sinless, and could become the substitute for man; and He has become that substitute, because He has died in the room and stead of man to satisfy the law. Then the question for each and every one to answer is, whether they will love Him and serve Him who has died to redeem them by His precious Blood.

In Leviticus xvii. 11, we read: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul." There may be some who are saying, Why does God demand blood? Some one said to me: "I detest your God; He demands blood. I don't believe in such a God; for my God is merciful to all." I want to say, My God is full of mercy! But don't be so blind as to believe that God is not just, and that He has not got a government. Suppose Queen Victoria didn't like any man to be deprived of his liberty, and she threw all her prisons open, and was so merciful that she could not bear any one to suffer for guilt, how long would she hold the sceptre? how long would she rule this empire? Not twenty-four hours. Those very men who cry out about God being merciful would say: "We don't want such a Queen."

GOD IS JUST.