Scripture: Leviticus 17: 10-14; John 6: 53-57

Sermon: Why Blood?

Topics: blood, atonement, biology

Preached: March 17, 2002

Leviticus 17: 10-14

If anyone of the house of Israel or of the aliens who reside among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood, and will cut that person off from the people. ¹¹For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar; for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement. ¹²Therefore I have said to the people of Israel: No person among you shall eat blood, nor shall any alien who resides among you eat blood. ¹³And anyone of the people of Israel, or of the aliens who reside among them, who hunts down an animal or bird that may be eaten shall pour out its blood and cover it with earth.

14 For the life of every creature—its blood is its life; therefore I have said to the people of Israel: You shall not eat the blood of any creature, for the life of every creature is its blood; whoever eats it shall be cut off. 

John 6: 53-57

So Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; ⁵⁵for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.

This is the Word of the Lord

Thanks be to God

INTRODUCTION

I have an aversion to the sight of blood. While watching the war movie Black Hawk Down recently, I shut my eyes during a number of the more gory scenes. I even shut my eyes during graphic scenes in the television show ER. I’m one of these people that doesn’t think color TV was such an improvement over black and white. To tell you the honest truth, the sight of blood can make me somewhat whoozy. There is a good reason I became a minister rather than a surgeon.

But the ministry did not allow me to escape from blood. The Bible is literally awash in the stuff. In the Old Testament, the word blood is used much more often than the word for sacrifice. And in the New Testament, the blood of Christ is mentioned three times as often as the cross of Christ, and six times as often as the death of Christ. So, biblically there is no way of avoiding the mention of blood.

Our confessions of faith are also filled with references to blood. Take Q&A 1 of the Heidelberg Catechism, which we said in unison earlier this service. In that well-known and well-loved statement of faith, we confess that Jesus has fully paid for all our sins with his precious blood.

The hymns we sing are also filled with references to blood:

The Church’s One Foundation,

O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing

Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

And Can it Be

These are but a few of the many, many hymns that include words about the saving power of Jesus’ blood.

In his recent book The Smell of Sawdust, Richard Mouw, President of Fuller Seminary, has a whole chapter entitled “Preaching the Blood.” According to Mouw, a sure-fire way to tell whether a church is in the camp of evangelical orthodoxy is if they confess the blood, sing the blood, and preach the blood of Jesus Christ. It is the liberals who scoff at any “blood sacrifice” language as a “slaughterhouse religion.”

Still the question may be asked: “Why so much blood?”

OLD TESTAMENT

To begin to understand the significance of blood, we have to start in the Old Testament sacrificial system. For the Israelites wandering around in the desert, eating meat was a real luxury. For them to sacrifice their prized animals was a real sacrifice. What we often do not realize is that it was not the religious professional – the priest — who sacrificed these animals. No, it was the worshipper, it was the person presenting the sacrifice who had to do all the messy and bloody work of the sacrifice. He had to kill the animal and collect its blood. Then he had to skin it and cut it into pieces. The collected blood would be given to the priests. The priests would then proceed to splash the blood against the sides of the altar.

For us moderns who buy our meat in packages at the store, this does sound awfully bloody and it may sound somewhat barbaric. We may wonder, “Didn’t they respect life back then?” The reality is that they did respect life. In fact, they respected it very, very, much – perhaps more than we do. Blood represented life, the essence of life. Blood was respected as sacred. The reason the priests splashed the blood on the sides of the altar was to graphically display that the life of this animal was being given in place of the life of the worshipper. The whole idea behind these sacrifices was the idea of substitution. The sacrificed animal was taking the place of the guilty person. It was the blood that made atonement.

Blood was precious. That is why in our passage, the Israelites are told again and again and again – six times in total — not to eat or drink blood of animals. This was not a new law just for the Israelites in the desert. This was a prohibition that went all the way back to Noah in Genesis 9:4. Already back then, Noah was commanded not to eat meat with blood still in it. Why not? Because blood represented life and life was sacred. To drink blood was to despise life, to trivialize life.

NEW TESTAMENT

In this context, we can imagine how shocking even revolting the words of Jesus in John 6 must have been to his Jewish listeners: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” How could Jesus demand such a thing? How could Jesus demand something that seemed to go directly against a fundamental Old Testament law?

Again, we need to look at why the blood of Jesus is so important.

Throughout the New Testament, the blood of Christ is described as the price paid for our sins.

The blood of Jesus does two things: it purifies us and it gives us life.

In 1 John 1:7, John writes, “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.” In other words, blood is what washes us clean from our sin.

In our passage from John 6, we also see that the blood of Christ gives life, eternal life.

Jesus said, “Whoever drinks eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life” 6:54.

Now how is it possible that blood washes us clean and gives us life? If anything, blood is something we try wash out, not something we wash with. And for many of us, me included, the sight of blood usually conjures up images of death not life.

BIOLOGICAL ANALOGY

Maybe a way to begin to understand the cleansing and life-giving power of Jesus blood is to think of the role of blood, the function of blood in our own bodies. In a very real way, the blood that is coursing through our bodies right now has a cleansing and a life-giving function.

Let’s start with the cleansing function. If you were to put a blood pressure cuff on your arm and pump it tight so that you would actually cut off the flow of blood to your arm, a few things would happen. At first you would be able to use that arm quite normally. But after a couple of minutes, your arm would begin to feel pretty weak. Eventually your muscles would begin to cramp up and you would start feeling a pretty sharp pain. Now that would be the time to rip the pressure cuff off and let the blood rush back into your lower arm. The return of the blood would also relieve the pain. With the blood rushing back into your arm, you would be experiencing the cleansing power of blood.

You see, when muscles work, when metabolism occurs, certain waste products are produced. These waste products have a certain toxicity. Normally they are flushed away in our blood stream. But when the blood flow is stopped, these toxic wastes build up and begin to cause us the pain we feel. It is only when the blood flows again, that these toxic by-products get cleaned and flushed away. That is how blood cleanses.

And blood also gives life. Blood not only cleans out the toxins, but it also carries with it what the body need to live. Blood carries the oxygen and the nutrients the body needs. Without a good blood flow, tissue dies. With a good flow of blood, tissue lives.

In much the same way, the blood of Jesus both purifies us and gives us life. The blood of Christ both washes us clean and fills us with a power that is not our own.

Sins are like the poisonous by-products of our life. If sins aren’t cleansed, they will interfere with living a healthy Christian life. One of the reasons Jesus calls us to drink his blood is to remember that it is only through the blood of Jesus that all the poisonous, toxic, sinful by-products of our lives are washed away, cleansed, purified. No wonder John again uses this image in Revelation 7 when he describes the saints as those who have washed their robes and been made white in the blood of the Lamb (Rev. 7:14)

The wonder of the blood of Christ is not only that it cleans away what is toxic, poisonous and sinful. The real wonder is that it also replaces everything that is impure with what is pure, everything that is unholy with holiness, everything that brings death with everything that gives life. Our own sin gets washed away and what is left in it place is the righteousness of Christ. What is left in its place is the purity of Christ. What is left is the holiness of Christ. What is left is the life of Christ.

In the words of the Heidelberg Catechism,

God grants and credits to us

The perfect satisfaction, righteousness, and holiness of Christ

As if we had never sinned nor been a sinner,

As if we had been as perfectly obedient as Christ was obedient for us.

(Q&A 60)

CONCLUSION

The sight of blood will still make me somewhat queasy.

But that is okay. Blood signifies both life and death.

It captures all our hopes and all our fears.

Hebrew 9:22 tells us, “Without the shedding of blood there is no atonement.”

This was true in the Old Testament.

Animals were killed, blood was collected, and it was splashed against the altar and consumed by fire.

We still believe that “without the shedding of blood there is no atonement” but the blood that truly cleanses us from sin and truly gives us life is no longer collected and splashed against an altar and consumed by a fire.

The blood that cleanses us from sin and gives us life is the blood that Jesus shed on the cross. It is this cleansing and life-giving blood of Christ which we both remember and believe when we raise the glass of wine to our lips.

This blood still makes my heart pound.

This blood still causes me to catch my breath a little.

But not out of fear. Rather out of gratitude.

For the blood of Christ’s death has become the blood of our life.

Amen

Prayer:

Lord God, we thank you for your Son, Jesus Christ,

who became for us our once-for-all sacrifice.

We thank you for his shed blood which is enough to wash away the sins of all the world;

We thank you for this cup of thanksgiving through which we receive eternal life.

Now Lord, fill us with your Holy Spirit so that we may eat and drink with mouths of faith and believing hearts. Amen