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Village SDA Church

Ron Kelly

The Price of Blood

Father, the chapters of gratitude and devotion continue to grow in our lives.

I'm so thankful for your patience and humility that you would condescend and then wait for us to understand when we walk through life sometimes as proud as the greatest fool that's ever lived.

So take that away from us, I pray, through your goodness.

And then help us, Lord, to be patient with the people you put in our lives.

And now I'm asking, Lord, that the great themes of scripture would be illuminated by your spirit in the word, in the message, in the reception, and in the impact on our lives.

So bless us now Lord as we think about the great gift given so freely in Jesus' name, amen.

I entitled my message this morning, From Drop to Drop, The Price of Blood.

Were you there, as the spiritual says, when they crucified the Lord?

Why does that song say, 000, sometimes it makes me tremble.

You can be certain that the author of the song had come to the great awareness that the sum total of all the potential of humanity, unmitigated by the love of God, was there.

You can be sure in that refrain or whatever you would call it, that the singer-songwriter of that song understood that The culpableness, the responsibility of the human race for the death of Christ rests squarely on his or her shoulders.

But this morning, I think we might have come here not really believing that.

And so last week as I talked with you about Adventist arrogance, perhaps this morning is a part 2 corollary, not by intention, but only by this 1 thing, that we can so easily wash our hands from the blood of this man, that we forget that the blood of all men or the blood of that man is on the hands of all men and while you may not have been there as Caiaphas or Annas you were there and so was I and John Stott the theologian said before you can see the cross as something done for you, you have to see the cross as something done by you.

And so when we think about that moment in history where the hinge of hope was turning on the door to reinstatement in the family of God, you might have been there as the thief.

On 1 side hardened, on the other side not so hard, who somewhere along the way recognized this wasn't about this man's sin, it was about my own.

It's possible that you were there as the centurion, rough and callous and dealing with the things of life, and religion was just 1 more speed bump of which hypocrisy created a real distaste.

Maybe you were there as Pilate, inconvenienced as well by this early morning engagement with institutional darkness and hypocrisy.

And maybe you were put off by the ones who projected they had the truth, and yet you deny and denied the incontrovertible voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to your heart.

It's possible you were there as a Pharisee.

It's possible that you're here right now as a Pharisee, full of conscientiousness, certain not to break the minor matters of the law, but blinded to the major compulsion that the Spirit won't release you from, and yet you deny it in conscientiousness.

And maybe you were there as a disciple, afraid to name the name of Jesus, afraid to associate as 1 of Jesus' associates.

Maybe there was, Peter, an absolute denial of the convicting voice of Jesus himself about who you really are, but maybe it's Judas, the love of Jesus crowded out by the slow creep of greed.

And maybe there is Simon Cyrene, perhaps the most innocent, if such a word exists, for the sons of Satan.

If you don't think you were there, the rest of this sermon won't mean very much to you.

I hear the voice of that singer with that group, C'est La, where it says, ashamed to hear my mocking voice call out amongst the scoffers.

The same cowardice that ran through the crowd and was operative in the hearts of the disciples.

It's operative in your heart and my heart, and while we might not have been the 1 pounding the nails in, we certainly brought the darkness on, and sometimes we still have and do.

Oh yes, we were there, every single 1 of us, and oh, it should make us tremble, tremble, tremble.

And if it doesn't at the beginning of the sermon, I hope it does by the end Take your Bibles this morning open them up to the book of Genesis chapter 4 the price of blood drop by drop Genesis chapter 4 You need to know there's nothing more precious in all the human existence and perhaps in all of the cosmos than blood.

We understand that It represents the transit of oxygenated life.

It takes with it the sustenance to sustain every cell.

We know That those red blood cells delivering that life-giving oxygen out to the extremities But the blood is the consummate summation of all that is life and it speaks at least to God Genesis chapter 4 verse 9 the Lord said to Cain where is Abel your brother?

The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.

Now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand.

And when you cultivate the ground, it will no longer yield its strength to you.

You'll be a vagrant and a wanderer." Cain said to the Lord, my punishment is too great to bear.

Behold, you've driven me this day from the face of the ground, and from the face, Your face I will be hidden, and I will be a vagrant and a wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me." And there was a reason why.

Because the willful destruction, the intentional taking of life, homicide we call it, That act of murder is only atoned by blood itself.

The sailors that had Jonah in their hands before they threw him overboard, they got it, pagan though they be, probably.

And they're calling out to God, saying, don't hold this man's blood against us.

And you know the story of Naboth, the man who had this lifelong vineyard, beautifully cared for, the apple of his eye, unfortunately, it was the fruit of desire in the eye of Ahab.

And Ahab so desired it and was so discouraged not to get it that Jezebel came up with a plan to throw a feast for Naboth, and in the midst of it all, suggests that he had cursed God and cursed the king, and thus the destruction of a good man was hand-held at the hands of an evil woman and a weak, worthless king." God told Ahab, you will be responsible because this is what the Scripture calls blood guilt.

And the only atonement for this kind of blood guilt is the blood of the guilty one." You remember those 2 spies that went into Jericho?

They hid on the roof under the flax, and when it was time for them to leave, they were let down.

And as they pushed away from the walls of Jericho, they reminded Rahab, if that rope is not hanging in the window when we come back, your blood will be on your own hands, not on us.

When we think about this componentry of blood guilt, we're driven to the story of David just before he dies talking to Solomon, and his charge is to make sure that somebody is executed.

Take your Bibles, if you would, and go to 1 Kings 2, the story of the transition of the throne, but in the midst of the transition there is to be justice.

1 Kings 2, verse 5, now you also know what Joab the son of Zoriah did to me.

So let's make sure it's really clear, Zoriah is big sister to David.

The problem is that Joab was the 1 that had all these amazing military exploits and the loyalty of the people was with Joab.

The other problem was that Joab killed Abner and Joab killed Amasa in innocent non-war environments.

You know what he did to the 2 commanders of the armies of Israel verse 5 to Abner the son of Nurn to a Masa the son of Jether Whom he killed a Masa was also a relative of Joab's He also shed the blood of war in peace and he put the blood of war on his belt about his waist and on his sandals And on his feet so act according to your wisdom and do not let his gray hair go down to Sheol in peace Skip down verse 10 then David slept with his father's and he was buried on the city of David.

The days that David reigned over Israel were 40 years and 7.

He reigned in Hebron thirty-three years, and he reigned in Jerusalem.

The blood of Joab, unjudged and unexecuted, remained on the hands of the nation in some sense and certainly as a responsibility of David in another.

And even though Joab will grab on to the horns of the altar, Because He murdered 2 people, His blood guilt remains.

And while He can be forgiven hanging on to the horns of that altar, not because He had the altar by the horns, He had God, I trust, firmly in His grip, and yet there was a price to pay which David did not feel he could politically enact during his lifetime so he left it to his son and his son took care of it.

The blood guilt of Joab was on David's hands until his son took care of it.

Of course, we think about the cities of refuge.

Take your Bibles and turn over to the book of Numbers.

They weren't for the murderers, at least not the cold-blooded murderers.

They were for those who were the manslayers, the ones that hadn't intended to take life but did.

And in these cities of refuge, a man or a woman could run so that the avenger of the blood would have to let a fair trial take place before the avenging took place.

And as long as the manslayer stayed in the city of refuge, he was safe from the avenger of blood.

It wasn't a hideout for cold-blooded murderers, but it was a place for 1 who had mistakenly taken life because God keeps track of every single drop.

And as long as they remain there in the shadow of the provision of the high priest, they could live.

And when that high priest died, they were free to go back out into society.

But that was a city of refuge, 3 on 1 side of the Jordan, 3 on the other.

Numbers chapter 35, beginning with verse 15.

These 6 cities shall be for a refuge for the sons of Israel and for the alien and for the sojourner among them that anyone Who kills a person unintentionally may flee there?

But if he struck him down with an iron object So that he died he's a murderer and the murderer shall surely be put to death.

And if he struck him down with a stone in the hand by which he will die, and as a result he died, he's a murderer, and the murderer shall be put to death.

Or if he struck him with a wooden object in the hand by which he might die, and as a result he died, he's a murderer, and the murderer shall be put to death the blood avenger himself shall put the murderer To death he shall put him to death when he meets him And that's why there was a city of refuge because sometimes what looked like murder was simply Manslain and the city of refuge was the place for a safe trial.

It was a sanctuary from the Unmitigated anger of the 1 grieving the loss through the shedding of blood But if he pushed him of hatred or threw something at him verse 20 Lying in wait and as a result he died Or if he struck him down with his hand in enmity, and as a result he died, the 1 who struck him shall surely be put to death.

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The Price of Blood

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