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Will you pray with me? Mine is the sin, but Thine the righteousness. Mine is the guilt, but Thine the cleansing blood. Here is my robe, my refuge, and my peace. Thy blood, Thy righteousness, O Lord my God. In the name of Jesus, Amen. Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. Something that’s very removed from us in this country, especially in the last 80 or 90 years, is something that was a part of the culture of the people of Israel for thousands of years. And it still is vital for us to hearken back to what we read in this evening’s Old Testament reading. Because the Christian faith is a very, very, very important Bloody religion. They would sacrifice those oxen. You heard it read. Filling bowls full of animal blood. And it would be poured out, half of it, against the altar. Dripping down. The aroma of animal blood wafting through the air. Then, Moses would take the hyssop plant, dip it in the other bowl, and sprinkle it on all the people. I don’t know if you’ve ever had animal blood on you like that. Maybe if you shot a deer and you gutted it yourself. Maybe if you slaughtered chickens or hogs when you were younger. But that was a regular occurrence, not a once in a lifetime. Annually, obviously, it would happen. And regularly did it happen as a part of their worship. Not as something extraneous, but as a central part of their worship. Was blood a part of it? And was it so a part of the people’s lives who worshiped, being spread upon them, splattered? The reason that that’s so far removed from us is because none of us get animal blood on us except when we take the steak out of the package or mold the hamburger meat into patties. And what do we do? We quickly wash it off. We don’t want to get some disease. It was scattered upon them. This is important because in the epistle reading it said very clearly, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. Annually and regularly were those sacrifices done by the priests of the Old Testament practice done. And it was never meant to be the end all. It was regular and annually. And it was always pointing to the one sacrifice. The one lamb that’s blood would be shed to take away the sin of the world. As the writer of the Hebrews wrote, once for all was that sacrifice given. No longer do I need to take blood and sprinkle it upon you. You eat it and drink it now. And let’s go to this night of Christ’s institution of the Lord’s Supper. What did He tell His disciples to do? Go make ready the Passover. What did they have to do to get ready the Passover? They didn’t go to the local market and have a sacrificial lamb already sacrificed for them. They would have to go with their own bare hands and slit the throat of that lamb. They would have to bleed that lamb out. They would have to skin and gut that lamb. All of this done before they gathered in the upper room with Christ to eat that lamb. The blood of that lamb was on their hands. Cleansed, yes, they probably washed, obviously, but that sacrifice was fresh upon their memory. And now Jesus speaks of blood being shed for them in a sacrifice that would not be sterile, but very full of blood and very bloody. In the early Christian church, the Romans thought the Christians were the ones who were Ate and drank blood, literal blood. They thought that early Christian church, the Christians ate their God even. And they were right, weren’t they? It just wasn’t the blood that you and I think of. It was the blood of the Lamb. For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness. Each year they had to renew the covenant with their God. Each year. Annually, to remember what God had done for them in the Passover, bringing them up out of Egypt. The great salvation story of the Old Testament. And now he comes once for all. He entered once for all into the holy place by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption, the writer writes. He added a little later, how much more will the blood of Christ purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God? We talk about the blood of the Lamb and the blood covering you and the blood saving you, but you and I don’t ever have to interchange or interact with blood like they did in the Old Testament. In many ways, they had a very graphic experience. And you have to remember that the people that watched Christ die… Watched blood flow from his side and his hands and his feet and his head. Human blood. Divine blood at the selfsame time. If you’ve ever smelled human blood, it has a smell. Different than animal, but a smell. That’s what covered the sacrifice. There is no such thing as a bloodless sacrifice. There is only a bloody sacrifice. That’s it. And you eat it and you drink it. For without blood there is no forgiveness. This is the very last thing that He does with His disciples. And in fact, not all of His disciples. He only does it with the twelve. There were many other hundreds of other disciples. Mary, Magdalene, and the woman whose son was raised from the dead in the city of Nain. And all those other people. They weren’t in the upper room, mind you. It was just the twelve. Twelve. And when he celebrates this, he tells them that he is giving them a new covenant, a new will. Now, if you haven’t got a will done, here’s a commercial. Get a will done for your kids. It’s important. But that will has no power, does it, until what has to happen to you? You have to die. Then the will is put into effect. Then the will has binding power. Right? When Christ gives us His last will and testament, this meal, it cannot be initiated until He dies. And He cannot die without shedding blood. For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. If the first covenant was established by the blood of animals and was repeated because it never was perfected, The last and perfect sacrifice had to be bloody. And just as the people yearly had to eat that Passover lamb, so we weekly eat the Passover lamb whose blood was shed and we drink that same blood. Not some magical blood, the blood with the wine. We drink that blood. For without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. That’s the background we need to grasp as we look at this central part of our worship service and the central part of the Christian faith. This meal. If this is His last will and testament, and it was brought about and made real for us in His death, and His death was not without blood, then this meal is center to our faith life. It’s not symbolic or memorial. It’s not a remembrance only. It is a participation in the flesh and in the blood of the sacrifice for your sins. For without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. When he comes and says, take eat, this is my body, and they have just sacrificed a lamb and they’ve eaten it, it is not a quantum leap for them to think, well of course he’s talking about his very flesh. And if that blood they use to mark their door, It’s not a broad stretch of the imagination for him to say, drink of it, this is my blood, and they get it. Now granted, not everybody did. You read John 6, there’s some disciples who did believe in him, but walked away because this teaching about eating his flesh and drinking his blood was too much for them, and they stopped following Jesus. They stopped following Jesus because of this. But not you. You know that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. You participate in that sacrifice in this meal. As we sang, mine is the guilt, you’re the righteousness, mine is the sin, you’re the forgiveness, your blood is that which is my forgiveness. You don’t symbolically think about it. You don’t memorialistically reflect upon it. You eat it and drink it. That’s the gift He gave to His disciples. Then if you go to Acts, and it talks about the early church, one of the things that it mentions, which was the center part of their worship service, was the breaking of bread. That’s not a meal like we have in the fellowship hall before a midweek service. That’s the breaking of the bread for the meal in the service for His people. It made the center of the worship. When you step into a Lutheran church, you’re going to see the altar smack dab in the middle because that’s the focus, not the preacher, not the podium, the sacrifice. And there’s the sacrifice once for all that we are blessed to be participants in one with the other. Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins in the name of Jesus. Amen. The peace of God which passes all understanding. Keep your hearts and minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
