Rev. 5:88And when he had taken the book, the four beasts and four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odors, which are the prayers of saints. (Revelation 5:8). Where is this song of redemption-praise sung? On earth, or in heaven? Although now in a place where you feel more and more what the worth is of that blood on your crimson sins, (so that, as David said, Give me the sword of Goliath, for there is none like that, so you say, Give me the blood of Christ, and nothing else), yet there is no place where, in connection with that blood, its worth is more intrinsically appreciated than the throne of God. That song is sung, and has been sung, down here since the Lord tool. His seat on high; but when the time comes for shifting the scene, the twenty-four elders (that is, the church) will sing before the throne, " Worthy is the Lamb!" What so precious as the thought that this lip of mine will never be weary of singing, " To him who has loved me and washed me from my sins in his own blood, be glory and dominion forever and ever?" Not one of the angels, nor any other creature can touch that note with regard to His blood.
Next we see in chapter 7:9, a company arrayed in white robes-robes made white in the blood of the Lamb. That is something which we want. Our consciences are purged, but we want our robes washed too. That company is fit outwardly as well as inwardly. One might have a cleansed conscience, but a soiled robe. A believer ought not to allow a spot. Your robes are to be spotlessly white as you go along-fit to walk with the Lord. The conscience may be clean before the robes are.
Do I walk as a heavenly man-my ways, my conversation, the ways and conversation of a man whom Christ has stooped to wash in His blood?
Walk is an immense thing to us-it is everything to have a walk which tells that the feet are washed by Christ day by day, because we have been washed in His blood. Are we exercised about it? Exercised as to whether outward walk has a voice that tells out we are a peculiar people, not only washed from the guilt of our sins, but our robes white, everything about us in harmony with it.
Next turn to chapter 12:11. " They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.... and they loved not their lives unto the death." We find there what every one of us requires to have, that is, a screw put on us. "You have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin." That is what I call putting on the screw. The calling of a redeemed people is to be overcomers, not to shrink from suffering. We find something like it in Heb. 10:3232But call to remembrance the former days, in which, after ye were illuminated, ye endured a great fight of afflictions; (Hebrews 10:32). In Rev. 12:11,11And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death. (Revelation 12:11) we see a company who, when the whole energy and activity of Satan in every form was put forth against them on earth, overcame him by the blood of the Lamb. That was their power to worst him.
Shall I say, I cannot overcome," to that Christ who resisted unto blood, and shed His blood for me: He now crowned with glory at God's right hand, because He overcame, putting that blood forward here, as that which tells of Satan being a worsted foe?
Ah, as we go on we shall find, and do find more and more, no one thing so precious to us as that blood. The blood of Him who was God manifest in. flesh, and who came down here to shed it for us.
Never was there any character down here like that of the Eternal Son of God as Man-a character that has a depth and height in it that could be found in none but in God Himself, and could have been sketched only by the Holy Ghost. Satan would have done all in heaven and earth to have dimmed its perfectness, but he could not touch that holy undefiled One. It was God drawing near to man according to His own character: the whole thing, from the manger to the cross, was divine.
It is a very real thing to have to do with Christ; when you receive Christ, you meet all the moral glory, of God in the face of that Christ; not merely His glory shining there, but all the tender affections of the Father's heart of love displayed in Him who took our form and dwelt among us as Man.
Why was He to leave heaven and come down here-this perfect, matchless, peerless God-man? What was this world to Him? people might say. Ah! God had all His plans centered in that One. From the foundation of the world it was ordained that He should take up the question of sin; and whatsoever the ruin and the misery brought in by it, Christ was perfectly equal to turning all the ruin to His own glory.
No one but the Son of God Himself could look up in God's face and say, " I can settle the question of sin." None save He could look down into the heart and mind of a sinner, whether Jew or Gentile, and say," I know exactly what you are, and I can do a work of which God "an say that He has found His rest, and through which He is perfectly free to deal in grace with the most wretched sinner.
There is no part of the life of the blessed Lord in which He stands forth so conspicuously as God as when on the cross, able to meet the whole volume of God's wrath for sin; bearing in His own body sins heaped up without number, and by the sacrifice of Himself making clear God's right to be just in justifying the sinner. The character of God as Love displayed too, in giving His Son to be the accepted sacrifice for sin. God had never before been revealed after this fashion.