1. Title: Why You Need a Blood Donation – first hour edition
2. Text: Hebrews 9
3. Audience: Villa Heights Christian Church, AM crowd., August 27, 2006, in the series “Nothing Better Than The Best”
4. Objectives:
-for the people to understand the meaning of atonement, why it is necessary, and how we are able to have it n Jesus only
-for the people to feel needful of forgiveness before God and grateful to have it in Jesus
-for the people to share the need and meaning of the atonement with someone else who needs it; to express thanks to God for the precious blood of Jesus, especially during the time around the Lord’s Table.
5. When I finish my sermon I want my audience to have a much greater appreciation for the blood of Jesus and plan to share it with someone this week and the weeks ahead.
6. Type: expository
7. Dominant Thought: The blood of Jesus is the sinner’s only hope to be truly made whole
8. Outline:
Intro: October 22, if I can get all the details worked out, I’m going to see if we can have another blood drive at VHCC. I’d encourage you, if you’re able, to plan on donating blood. It fulfills a real need, and it’s another way that our church family can be visibly serving our community. If I could have gotten it done on shorter notice, I would have had it today – to make a point. This morning we’re going to talk about blood – and why you need a blood donation.
Why a blood donation? Giving blood? – that’s pretty significant. Some people pass out having it done. Some people even pass out watching it done! Wouldn’t some other kind of donation be easier? Navel lint? Ear wax? When’s the last time someone passed out because of a Q-tip? Start drawing blood, and that’s serious stuff. That’s the point. Blood is serious stuff.
Story - Early in 1998, my dad was home in FL recovering from a surgery. He seemed to be doing well, but no one knew that a blood vessel in his stomach had been weakened by the procedure. He awoke one morning, feeling sick, and suddenly began to vomit his own blood, in huge amounts. He was literally bleeding to death inside, and fast. They rushed him to the hospital, where they immediately began to give him blood. They located and stopped the hemorrhage, but it was too late – he had lost so much blood that his heart stopped. They continued to give him blood, shocked him with a defibrillator, and got his heart started again. By the time they had him settled, he had received 11 units of whole blood. Dad recovered from that episode, but there was no way he would have survived it without donated blood.
250 years ago, the medical world didn’t realize just how vital blood was. In fact, “bleeding” was a debated but fairly common medical practice. Doctors figured if you’re sick, you’re blood is bad, so the way to cure it is to remove that bad blood. Historians agree that George Washington died in part due to the 2 pints of blood they bled from him when he was sick. We’ve learned some things since then.
You can’t live without blood. We understand that it’s significant. Rather than saying, “People are being injured or dying” we often talk about how they’re “shedding blood.”
Ill - When Andy was just a few years old and he’d get a scrape or a cut. He was fine with it, that is, until he saw that he was bleeding. Then, he’d go ballistic! Why? Because blood is significant…especially when it’s yours and you’re looking at it! When it’s separated from our body, it means that life has either been lost or endangered or compromised somehow. Or, when you’re donating it, it means that by giving up some of yours, life is being saved on the other end. There’s nothing quite like watching that donation bag fill up with your own blood while you sing, “I’ve got a river of life flowin’ out of me!” Life is in the blood.
Lev. 17:11, as God introduced sacrifices, He pointed this out. He told the Israelites that they were being given the blood of sacrificial animals to make atonement. It wasn’t their hair or their horns or their milk that made atonement. It was their blood, because it meant the life of an animal was taken away and it couldn’t be regained. Serious measures – especially if you’re the bull or goat or sheep! But it was given by God to Israel as an important ordinance. They needed a blood donation.
Leviticus 17:11 - For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.
Blood. Atonement. This is one of the messier subjects of the Bible, and it’s really the central theme of Hebrews 9. God is holy and just, and that holiness in God causes there to be a wrath against evil. That wrath stands between God and the person who sins. God is just. Someone has to die. That was true for Adam and Eve, and has been true ever since. V23 – “…without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” Something or someone has to pay. That payment, the one that takes the wrath of God so that we can be forgiven, is called “atonement.”
Early on, that was why God gave Israel very detailed instructions about animal sacrifices. Those sacrifices were something the Jews needed because they had sinned against the perfect and holy God. They needed atonement. But the need for atonement isn’t something unique to them. You need it too. You and I need a blood donation too. You need that transfer of life that will save your life. You need atonement.
Why do you need a blood donation?
I. Because of the Stain of Sin
In Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” Lady Macbeth convinces her husband to commit murder, and then later she complains and curses because she can’t get the blood stain to wash out of his shirt. Sin is like that. There are reminders that we’re stained, and no matter how hard we try, we can’t make the stain go away.
Story - I was 5, and I was in CA with my parents, visiting a Christian school. My folks went into an office, and I lingered in the hallway. I’d always wondered what those red fire alarms would do if you pulled one. So, of course, I did. I found out real quickly what they did! I find out another thing too – once you pull out that handle, it won’t go back in. I’ll never forget the helpless feeling of trying to pound that handle back in while the alarm was blaring. No matter how hard I hit it, it wouldn’t go back in, and the alarm wouldn’t quit. It didn’t take long for my parents and everyone one else to figure out I had started a surprise fire drill that day!
Once you shoot off your mouth, once you damage the relationship, once you take the money, once you take the drink, you suddenly learn how impossible it is to undo what you’ve done. It won’t go back. The damage is done and the stain is there.
If you go up the street here, there’s a carwash. Actually, there are several in town. Why? Because there’s a lot of dirt outside, and cars get dirty. So why does God tell His people to go through specific actions of worship? Because they sinned, and they were stained, and something needed to be done about it.
The description of the Tabernacle seems rather detailed. In fact, the writer in v5 says we don’t have time to discuss it in detail right now. Let it serve as a reminder that when we sin, when we stain our otherwise good relationship with God, we make the return trip very complex.
Then, there’s a day each year that God had Israel set aside – the 10th day of the 7th month – the Day of Atonement. It was the one day each year that the current high priest would enter into the Most holy place in the Tabernacle. First, he’d kill a bull and come in with its blood to atone for his own sins. After that, he’d come in with the blood of a goat for the sins of the nation. The blood was sprinkled on the altar and on the Ark of the Covenant – to make atonement. Or did it?
Hebrews 9:7-10
…only the high priest entered the inner room, and that only once a year, and never without blood, which he offered for himself and for the sins the people had committed in ignorance. The Holy Spirit was showing by this that the way into the Most Holy Place had not yet been disclosed as long as the first tabernacle was still standing. This is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper. They are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings--external regulations applying until the time of the new order.
There was a valuable lesson taught in those sacrifices both for Israel and for us: that there needed to be something better, because the stain runs deep, and it’s going to take something more than the blood of an animal to make atonement!
There really was no way to go to where God is, there was nothing to give a person a clear conscience, and the whole system of worship was merely symbols, not the real thing.
How sad and how lost some people are today. They realize there’s a stain to be dealt with – that there’s the need for something, but what they find is churches who make it a matter of various ceremonies and external regulations, and deep-down they don’t find the help God has for them. What they need is a blood donation.
II. Because Bulls and Goats Aren’t Enough
I’ve heard the commercials for the stain remover that will remove anything. It works in the rehearsals, but when you get it home, it’s not nearly as effective. Funny, isn’t it, how that “miracle spot remover” doesn’t really get the spots out?
Hebrews 9:12-15
[Christ] did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance--now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.
Look again at v13. How would you feel? It’s that time of year again, 7th month, 10th day – the Day of
Atonement. So, you go to the tabernacle and participate in the ceremony. How do you feel? I’d feel better. I did what I needed to do. Oh, a goat had to die – sorry. Better him than me! At least I’m OK for another year! So you go home, and you feel better – at least, you did what you were supposed to. Then, 3 months later, you mess up. So what do you say? “Wow! Look how far I made it this year!” And now you have a 9-month wait before the next Day of Atonement, where another goat will die, and you’ll go through all the ceremony…again. And then you’ll see how far into the 12 months you get before messing up again, and it will go on year after year after year.
Ill - It’s a lot like flea dip. Have you ever had your dog dipped? Ol’ Duke is getting fleas there, so you take him to a local flea dip clinic on day, and he gets dunked, and there are no more fleas. After a while, what happens? He starts scratching again. Time to take Ol’ Duke and have him dipped again.
Hebrews 10:1-4 The law is only a shadow of the good things that are coming--not the realities themselves. For this reason it can never, by the same sacrifices repeated endlessly year after year, make perfect those who draw near to worship. If it could, would they not have stopped being offered? For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all, and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. But those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins
That’s what was wrong with it. Those sacrifices were an annual reminder of sin – not a life-long cure!
So much of what we call “religion” is just man’s attempt to get the spot out, and it doesn’t work. You can go through all the right motions, but, when it’s all over, if you really understand that you’ve violated a Holy God, you still realize that you blew it. None of those sacrifices allowed a person to feel OK about his standing with God. Instead, they just reminded people every year that their sin was costly.
On the other hand, Jesus doesn’t just serve in an earthly tabernacle. He deals with heaven itself. And Jesus doesn’t just have us go through a ceremony to remind ourselves how terrible we are. He deals with the root – our hearts – and He brings us to a point where we can actually feel forgiven too. That’s why we need an atoning blood donation. Listen to the language of atonement in these verses:
V12 - he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption
V14 – Christ…offered himself unblemished to God,
V15 - he has died as a ransom to set them free
V26 - he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself
V28 - Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people
Some people try to deny the atonement of the cross. They try to say that the cross was God’s way of motivating man to holy living – that our real problem is inward, and not that we’ve sinned against a holy God. But we can’t get around that fact that Jesus died on the cross to take the hit for us.
Romans 3:25
God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished…
1 Peter 2:24
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed.
Galatians 3:13
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: "Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree."
2 Corinthians 5:21
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
There are many songs about atonement. Without using the word, that’s what you sing when you sing the hymn “My Redeemer”
Sing, Oh, Sing of my Redeemer! With His blood, He purchased me! On the cross, He sealed my pardon, paid the debt, and made me free.
You need a blood donation…
III. Because There’s No Other Way to Receive the Inheritance
Did you realize you have an inheritance from God? Pretty neat, huh? He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, the wealth of every mine. I wonder what your cut of it is?
Colossians 3:24
…you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward…
1 Peter 1:4
…an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade--kept in heaven for you…
But here’s the rub: There has to be a death. Blood has to be shed. Before a will becomes useful, the one who writes it has to die.
Hebrews 9:17-18
…a will is in force only when somebody has died; it never takes effect while the one who made it is living. This is why even the first covenant was not put into effect without blood.
Once again, what was going on in the OT helps us understand the New. Both the Old and New Testament work like wills. And both have gone into effect because someone died – but not until. You stand to receive a great inheritance in Jesus Christ, but that’s not even feasible unless someone dies. In other words, it’s another reason you need a blood donation.
IV. Because Our Need is Ongoing
There’s a feature here that’s worth remembering: Jesus died only once for all times. If He had to die for each person, every time they sinned, He’d be dying a lot. Look at the wording in v26:
Hebrews 9:26-28
…Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.
How can any one of the faithful people of the OT receive the atonement of the cross when some of them lived thousands of years earlier? Simple: God knows our need is ongoing, but the sacrifice of Jesus is over. So, the cross looks backwards – into OT days, and forward, into NT days and beyond. He can do that – He’s God! Jesus, by being one perfect sacrifice, because He is deity, is able to meet our great need by His one perfect death.
Understanding how God can look at the cross and see the atonement of it applied to people from 2,000 years ago and today helps. It helps because it is God’s way of acknowledging that once we accept Him we have an ongoing need to remain close to Him. The atonement means we have a Savior, and we can cease to have a Savior if we so choose. This isn’t over.
1 John 1:7
…if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
That “if” depends on us. Just like Jesus’ forgiveness is an on-going blessing every day, we need to have an on-going relationship with Him. We need to walk in the light, because our need for forgiveness is ongoing. So is the atonement we have from Jesus.
Now, here at the end, I want to run back over this whole atonement idea and have us leave with some practical actions to do about it.
Applications:
1. Give thanks to God that we can be and are forgiven
If we really believe we need forgiveness, and we really believe that we couldn’t pay for it with our lives, and we learn to understand how Jesus is our only, needed atonement, then we really have a lot to be thankful for, don’t we? Let’s thank God for the Atonement we have in Jesus.
2. Develop a deeper appreciation for the Old Testament
Hebrews is full of OT allusions and facts because it’s a letter that draws the connections for us. Until you have some understanding concerning the OT sacrifices, you can’t fully appreciate what it means to have a Savior in Jesus; you can’t appreciate the significance of the Tabernacle; you won’t want to spend time reading over genealogies and regulations. But understanding why God has sacrifices in the first place will help you develop a deeper appreciation for the sacrifice of Jesus.
3. Live a life that looks like you value a clean conscience
Make a note of it. The OT sacrifices could never clean a person’s conscience. No matter what they did, there were annual reminders that every one of them had sinned, and that the next year, they’d have the same problem. Understand what atonement means: it means your guilt is taken away. So, if our consciences are cleaned and our sin washed away, what should our lives look like? If you really value your clear conscience, then you’ll live like it.
Conclusion:
This morning, we want to give you an opportunity to receive a blood donation. The donor is Jesus. His blood type is universal donor. He allowed His blood to be taken away so you could have life for yourself. His presence as your atonement is on-going, and so is your need for Him in you life…
