Gospel—Jim Hyland
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
And I'd like to connect three portions of the Word of God at the beginning of our Gospel meeting. The first one is in the book of Leviticus.
Leviticus, chapter 17.
Leviticus chapter 17 and verse 11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls, and it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. And then a portion in John's Gospel chapter 19.
John's Gospel chapter 19 and verse 33.
But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was dead already.
They break not his legs, but one of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side, and forthwith came there out blood and water, and one more portion in first John chapter one.
One John chapter one and I want to read just the last part of verse 7.
The blood of Jesus Christ his Son.
Cleanseth us from all sin. Well, I began this evening by reading these scriptures.
Because our burden tonight is to preach Christ and make much of His precious blood.
Because this is the way of salvation tonight. This is the way of blessing tonight. The gospel is available. It can be preached because the Lord Jesus came into this world and went to Calvary cross the Apostle Paul who gave us such precious truth such as we've been taking up in these meetings already. He spoke of the gospel and how the gospel was that Christ died, he was buried, and that he rose again the 3rd day according to the scriptures.
And his exercise in presenting the gospel was that he might preach Christ.
And Christ crucified. And that's our burden tonight, because we are just so burdened to think that there might be someone in this room, maybe someone who sat here all day or someone who came in this evening because they were invited and they're not saved. You do not know the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. You have not experienced the cleansing power of the blood.
Of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, there was a little boy one time and he was playing in the mud and he was very dirty. And you know, in that town there lived amongst others, an infidel and a soap manufacturer. And one day the soap manufacturer and this infidel met on a street corner and they knew one another and they were walking down the street together.
And they came to this little boy who was playing in the mud. But prior to seeing this little boy, the soap manufacturer, who was a believer, was seeking to impress upon the infidel the importance of the blood of Christ. And this infidel kept saying, what good is the blood of Christ? Look at the world today. It's full of sin and sorrow and corruption and immorality on every hand. And things are getting worse and violence on every hand and wars and all this kind of thing. What good is it to talk about the blood of Christ?
And as they came to this.
Little boy.
He said to the soap manufacturer. He said, Look at this little boy, he's filthy. You tell me that the blood of Christ can cleanse from sin, but look at this little boy, he's filthy and you're a soap manufacturer. What good is your soap? Oh, the soap manufacturer said my soap is no good unless it's applied. And just so the blood of Christ has no effect.
If it's not applied, the blood of Christ was shed at Calvary's cross.
00:05:05
But it must be applied in the Old Testament, when the children of Israel took the Passover lamb.
The night that God was going to pass through and destroy the first born.
It was number good that the blood of that lamb simply be shed and placed in a basin.
No, it had to be applied to each home where the children of Israel were.
Suppose they had taken that blood and done everything up to that point that God had instructed them to do.
And then left the blood sitting on a base in a basin on the front steps of that house. Would that have availed those inside the house anything when the Destroyer went through? No, nothing. It had to be applied to the lentil and the two side posts. It had to be taken and sprinkled around the door if it was going to have its effect. And so it is with the blood of Christ tonight.
It is that which we have read that cleanses from all sin, because God has always taught through the history of man.
That if there is going to be blessing and the cleansing of sin, it must be based on the death of and shedding of blood of an innocent victim. I suppose this really takes us back to the Garden of Eden, doesn't it? Because there we find man's history of sin begins by one man's disobedience, sin entered, and death by sin. So death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.
There it started. Sin came in, and the human race was brought under the curse and the effects of sin, and there was a separation from God because of it.
Because your iniquities have separated between you and your God. But what did God immediately do? He did two things. He provided through the death of an innocent victim or victim, coats of skin for Adam and Eve. I know we don't actually read of blood being shed there, but we can see very quickly that if he, Adam, and Eve were going to be clothed with what was suited to God, with his provisions for them.
There must be the death of an animal or animals, and God did something else there.
He announced the blessed news that the woman's seed would bruise the head of the serpent. Oh God was looking on to a far, far greater sacrifice.
He was looking on to the sacrifice of the Lamb of God, his beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The one that we have to present to you tonight is the Savior of sinners, the blood of Jesus that indeed cleanses from all sin.
We began here in the book of Leviticus, and it speaks here of the blood being given as a gift. You know God has given many gifts to man because that's the heart of God. God is a giver, and all we want to impress upon you tonight that God loves you and God wants you for what he can give you. The enemy Satan, is not your friend. He wants you to.
But not for what he can give you. He wants you for what he can get out of you. Just like Pharaoh, when the children of Israel were under the ******* and slavery of Pharaoh and the Egyptians. A very graphic picture of Satan and his hosts. A picture of where we are born into this world in sin by nature and by practice under *******. Because the way of the transgressor is hard.
And we're told in proverbs were held by the cords of our sin. Sin is not liberty.
Doing your own thing is not liberty. Satan is a hard taskmaster.
You know, with Pharaoh, it even came to a point where he told his those that were over the children of Israel, not even to give them straw, and yet they had to keep up the tally of bricks. He still wanted what he could get out of them, but he was not a giver in any sense of the word. But God is a giver tonight. The gift of God is eternal life. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, he gave that unspeakable gift. Paul could say, thanks be unto God.
For his unspeakable gift, he's given many wonderful gifts.
00:10:00
And one of those wonderful gifts is the blood, the blood of the Lord Jesus. We have here in the Old Testament these sacrifices that were slain on those altars from day-to-day and year to year.
And those sacrifices, again, were but pale reflections, but feeble foreshadows of what was really in the heart of God when the blood of that innocent lamb or bird or goat, or whatever it was, was.
Shed on those Jewish altars in the Old Testament. Why it was really in God's mind, looking on to a far, far greater sacrifice, and of the shedding of a far, far more precious blood than the blood of these Old Testament sacrifices. In fact, it tells us in the book of Hebrews that every priest standeth daily, ministering and offering oftentimes the same.
Sacrifices which could never take away sin.
There's a hymn we sometimes sing. Not all the blood of beasts on Jewish altars slain could give the guilty conscience peace or wash away its stain. But Christ the Heavenly Lamb took all our guilt away. A sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they. You know. We like sometimes to recount the stories and histories of famous people.
I suppose we find it fascinating, and it's always been so, You know, people will spend a great deal of money to read about the rich and famous who are living today. They will spend a lot of time researching the rich and famous that lived in past ages. But you know, sometimes when you read their secular history, you don't always get the end of the story.
JP Morgan was reputed to be one of the greatest financiers and and bankers of all.
American history. He was also an avid art collector, and he amassed a fortune. In fact, they say by today's standards, if you take what he left when he passed away out of this scene, it would be in the equivalent of $68 million today. That's what he left behind when he died in 1913. But you know, when they came to read his will.
His will was prefaced by an exhortation of plea to his family, particularly his son.
John Junior, they called him Jack to tenaciously hold on.
To the truth of salvation and redemption and at all.
Cost to hold on to the precious truth of the cleansing power of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Because JP Morgan at some point in his life realized that there was more to life than money down here, and that a man's substance doesn't consist in the things that he has here, and that it is no good when he passes out of eternity. Because when JP Morgan died, he left everything behind. He took nothing of what he had obtained in this world in the way of money or properties.
He left it all.
But he was ready to meet God, I suppose. If we were to go home this evening and look in our refrigerators, perhaps many of us would find a bottle or a container with the name HJ Heinz on it. Pickles or relish or something in our refrigerators. And certainly any supermarket of any size in this area will have something that bears that man's name.
But you know when he passed away, the same thing he wanted at the beginning of his will, he said.
That's the most important part of his will was to set forth the fact that he was resting on the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ and that he rested his soul on the blood of Christ.
You know, we were singing My Hope on Nothing less is Built than Jesus and the blood he spilled. You know, things are pretty shaken today, aren't they? In the corporate world, in the political world, things that people once put stock in, things that people once thought wouldn't change that much in value they're finding out, aren't as stable as they once thought.
But there is something that doesn't change in value. I'm going to repeat something that we said in the Reading meeting. But you know, it tells us in First Peter that we're redeemed with the precious blood of Christ and that it is not with something corruptible as silver and gold. Because silver and gold and money, as we said this afternoon, changes in value. It fluctuates.
00:15:27
You know, for years the American dollar was a lot stronger than the Canadian dollar.
The first time, I went to the bank and lost money on American Exchange.
I stood there rather speechless. I'm rarely speechless, but I stood there rather speechless. To think that after all these years, the currency of choice on the world stage was now less than the Canadian dollar. It's bounced back a little bit, but certainly not what it once was. People had questions about the euro when it became the common currency in Western Europe a few years ago.
Now, the euro is the currency of choice. In many countries, it's a lot stronger than the American dollar. These things change in their value. But we're resting on something. If we know, Christ, that doesn't change in value. One more little story.
I suppose most of us at some point in our lives, have eaten a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken. You know, in the Caribbean it's very popular.
A McDonald's will come and go. A Burger King won't last, but Kentucky Fried Chicken will survive in a Third World country. And sometimes, out of necessity, we have to eat a piece of Kentucky Fried Chicken. I must say it's not my favorite meal, but it fills the hole. But you know Colonel Sanders or Harlan Sanders, as was his proper name. He was a man who most of his life felt he was OK before God in himself.
As he said, by his own testimony, he always gave 10% of his profits to Christian organization. He sought to live a good, morally upright life. But you know, as he got older, he felt an emptiness within his soul, and he realized that there must be something more to life than this world's goods and just living clean and morally upright.
He traveled all the way to Australia for a special evangelical campaign.
Looking for the answers, he didn't find it there. He came back, he looked in other places, he did some reading, He went to different religious UH meetings and so on. And finally, one day on the streets of Louisville, KY, he was invited by an old friend to go and hear a gospel preacher. And he went and he listened to those life giving words and verses quoted.
And as he said when he walked out of that meeting, he knew that he was a Newman. He knew that he was changed his the emptiness of his soul was filled, and he knew that the blood of Jesus had taken care of his sins.
That was he was 79 years of age. He lived another 10 years. He lived to be 89.
By the mercies of the Lord, but at 79 years of age, he came to know the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior. But I want to pause for a moment this evening and just bring a challenge home to every soul here.
Has everyone here in this room come to know the value of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ? We didn't take the time to read in John's Gospel chapter 19.
But there we find the cross of Christ brought before us the circumstances surrounding the cross of the Lord Jesus, where after his trial and those hours and hours and hours of cruelty.
They took the Lord Jesus and it says they led him away to crucify him.
And it tells us there in that chapter he bearing his cross, went forth.
He went forth to Calvary, and they took him, and by wicked hands they nailed him to a Roman gibbet.
And there they hung him up between heaven and earth as a spectacle for men and angels.
There there were those who passed by and shook their heads.
00:20:03
And reviled him. There were others who sat down and watched him suffer in his agony.
And after man had heaped upon the Lord Jesus all the cruelty.
That their awful, wicked hearts could come up with.
God said that's enough.
And a darkness came over the the whole land at noon.
And the Lord Jesus, in those hours of darkness, bore my sins in his own body.
On the tree.
Prophetically, we read I am the man.
That hath seen affliction by the rod of Israel.
The rod of God's judgment came down on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And no eye penetrated to see what took place there.
You know, a few years ago many people were very impressed to see the Passion Movie.
And I had a friend, a believer, and he was telling me all about the movie. He went to see it and he was telling me how impressed he was with it and how moving it was.
And after I had listened to him, I said, But you didn't see the most important part.
Because no one saw the most important part. The most important part.
Was during those hours of darkness when the Lord Jesus suffered for sin.
Those atoning sufferings that he bore there, and then at the end of it.
He cried. It is finished. He bowed his blessed head.
He said, Father, into thy hand I commend my spirit, and he gave up his life.
Like no other ever did. It could be said of his life, or he could say of his life. No man taketh it from me. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my father. And then we read that stirring scene, and I know we pictured this in our mind's eye on previous occasions, Many times, perhaps when they came.
And there was a thief on both sides of the Lord Jesus, and they came, and to hasten the one thief's death, they broke his legs.
And the same with the other on the other side, but they came to the Lord Jesus.
And it had been prophesied that a bone of him should not be broken.
And when they came to the Lord Jesus and saw that he was dead already.
A soldier with a spear pierced his side, and I loved these blessed words forthwith.
Came there out blood and water. You know, if it just said there came out blood and water, that would be enough.
But forthwith, it is just to me, as if God was in a hurry to bless.
No hesitation on the part of God. And you know tonight too, God is in a hurry to bless.
He's bending low over this room to hear the heartfelt breathing of 1 Sinner.
Who will turn to him in repentance and faith?
I say again, the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
You know, this is, I suppose, what they call Good Friday.
And, you know, 144 years ago on Good Friday and Good Friday on that occasion was on the 14th of April, a few days later than it is today. But there was a momentous event took place 144 years ago on April the 14th, which was Good Friday because on that date Abraham Lincoln went to Ford's Theater.
To see a play in Washington DC, Abraham Lincoln will be remembered.
For the Civil War, and as the great Emancipator of the slaves, but he went there with his wife Mary, and a few other guests. He had invited General Grant and his wife, but they declined for some reason. But some other guests joined them in the presidential box on that occasion.
And that is the occasion where he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
But the story is told and it is authenticated.
The story is told of how.
00:25:03
The president as he stumbled forward.
Was taken by a lady in that same box wearing a white silk dress.
She took his head and cradled it.
Until they were able to move him across the street, where he later expired.
When that Lady returned home that night, she realized that this very expensive white silk dress had been stained by the blood of Abraham Lincoln. Her first thought was to take that dress and sit to the laundry and see if those stains could be removed. On second thought, she decided against that and she took the scissors and cut out.
An 18 inch square.
Of cloth with the blood of Abraham Lincoln on it.
And she sent it off to the city fathers of Springfield, IL.
And for many years, that cloth was on display in a museum in Springfield, IL. It is now housed in a drawer very carefully in Camden, NJ, by the Historical Society there. And that piece of cloth is much valued to that very day, you know, the fathers of Springfield, IL, which was the home of Abraham Lincoln for so many years.
They were more than happy to get that cloth and it was displayed, as I am told, under a glass Dome for many years.
And it is still treasured and valued today and put away very carefully.
But if the blood of the great emancipator of the slaves is valued like that?
How much more the blood of the Lord Jesus, the one who shed his blood to free us?
Not from some earthly slavery or ******* but to free us.
From the slavery and ******* of.
Sin I have often been in Belgium and I have on occasion gone to Bruges. I love Bruges, Belgium, I love the arts and Fine Arts and architecture and that kind of thing. And if you like that Europe is the place to be and bruise Belgium especially. In fact, one year it was designated as the Cultural Center of Europe.
That Bruges, Belgium is reputed to be the Venice of the North. It's built with a series of canals through it, and so on.
But there is a cathedral in Bruges, Belgium, called the Cathedral of the Blood.
And if we were to go into that cathedral tonight, we would find behind a glass case, a huge silver urn. And in that silver urn is a piece of cloth.
And I want to say this very carefully. There is reputed to be on that silver, on that cloth, in that silver urn some drops of the blood of the Lord Jesus.
Not so, But that is what is reputed to be in that silver urn. And the cathedral in which it's housed is called the Cathedral Church of the Blood. And I suppose there are many who go specially to Bruges and to that cathedral, to see and to feel something inside, some kind of feelings when they see that urn which is reputed to have this shroud in it with some drops of the blood of the Lord Jesus. But that's not what we're talking about tonight.
No, we're talking about the one who shed his blood on Calvary's cross.
And the one who now is risen from the dead, he's living.
He died, but he was buried and he rose again the 3rd day, and he's in heaven as the man in the glory.
And a man that is going to give a shout at any moment, perhaps before this gospel meeting ends.
A shout that is going to call every St. of God, everyone who is washed in the blood of Jesus, home to heaven, to be with him. But I would be less than faithful tonight.
If I didn't warn you that there is a day when those who refuse God's salvation through the death and the blood of Christ will stand at a throne called a great white Throne. And the one that sits on that throne is not in the character of the Lamb of God, and there's no blood there. There's He's there in the character of Judge.
00:30:28
And those who have not availed themselves of the blood of Christ stand there.
To be judged, and to be taken and cast into the lake of fire.
Where there's weeping and gnashing of teeth, there was a man one time, a Christian man.
Passing a glass factory in his hometown. And as he was passing that factory, he looked in and he saw that the doors of the furnace were open and he stepped into that factory for a moment and he stood before those doors.
Seemingly mesmerized by the seething flames of that hot furnace.
And as he stood there, his mind turned to spiritual things, and to eternity, and allowed, he said, as he turned to leave, what must hell be like?
What he didn't realize was that the Stoker, the man who tended the fire.
Was sitting just around the corner and he heard this man say what must hell be like. He knew where this man lived, and a few days later there was a knock at this man's door.
And he went to the door, and there was the Stoker, and he said in deep earnest.
He said. Sir, a few days ago you stopped at the factory.
And as you looked into the flames of the furnace, I heard you turn away and say what must hell be like?
He said, Sir, tell me how I can be saved, how I can avoid going to that awful place, And that Christian man was only too happy to invite him into his home and to tell him about the work of Calvary and the blood of the Lord Jesus that cleanses from all sin. You know, when the Lord Jesus died on the cross, the separation of the blood from the body.
Was the proof of death. The Lord Jesus had to die for sin because the wages.
Of sin is death.
I'm going to tell you one more little story.
I'm going to call these two children. I'm not sure of their name, but this is a true story. I'm going to call them John and Mary for the sake of the story tonight.
But John and Mary were both very young and they were brother and sister.
And John had been very sick with a disease. I'm not sure what the disease was, but it was a very serious disease and he had recovered. And two years later his sister got the same disease, but she was even more sick than her brother. And the doctor said that unless she had a blood transfusion, she would surely die.
The other problem was she had a very rare blood type which only her brother or her older brother had or was available. None of the other family had this same blood type.
And so they went to this young boy and they said, are you willing to give your blood?
To your sister.
His lip trembled.
He hesitated for a few moments and then he said.
Yes, for my sister.
It wasn't very long till they wheeled these two children.
Into the room where this transfusion was going to take place in the hospital.
They looked each other in the eye, and her brother bravely smiled at his sister.
And the transfusion took place.
And as the transfusion was coming to an end.
This boy turned to the doctor and he said, Doctor, when do I die?
He didn't understand when they had said to him, Are you willing to give your blood to your sister?
00:35:02
He thought he was going to have to die.
You know, if I had thought that, I'm not so sure, I would have been so willing to go through.
With something like that, I don't know. I've never been put to that kind of a test. But, you know, his sister received that transfusion and she eventually cured and lived.
Her brother didn't have to die, but oh, tonight the Lord Jesus had to die on Calvary's cross.
He had to give himself as that great and supreme sacrifice.
He shed his precious blood.
This meeting is scheduled to end in 3 minutes.
If love like that doesn't touch your heart, I don't know what goes on within your heart.
But I know that the prayer of so many here is that these scriptures that we have read and quoted tonight.
Would so touch your heart that before you get out of your seat tonight?
You would receive God's offer of salvation and forgiveness.
Redemption through the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
That blood is sufficient to cleanse, not just from some sin.
But from all sin not one sin left.
Martin Luther, the great reformer, had a dream one time, and Satan came to him in the dream and he had a scroll.
And he opened this scroll in front of Martin Luther, and it was his sins written there.
In black and white.
And Martin Luther said, is that it?
And Satan reached and said no, and he opened another one.
Is that it? No. You have a third one.
And as he unscrolled, the third one, Martin Luther said, But you have forgot something, you need to write across it. The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. You know, tonight I'm not afraid of one charge of sin being brought up against me, because it's all been settled once and for all. By one offering he has perfected forever them that are sanctified.
What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
What can make me whole again? Nothing but The Blood of Jesus Precious Precious. Blood of Jesus Shed on Calvary, shed for rebels, shed for sinners.
Yes, thank God, Shed for me. Can you say that? Has it been applied? I say.
Oh, tonight I beg you to have your sins washed away in the blood of Jesus.
Naaman was told 2 words, and in a sense this can sum up everything we've said tonight, he was told Go wash. And what I want to tell you tonight is go wash. Not in the in some river, not in the river Jordan, but in the precious blood of Christ. Oh precious is the flow that makes me white as snow. No other fountain. I know nothing but the blood of Jesus. Go wash tonight, right where you are.
As I pray tonight, receive the Lord Jesus. He loves you, He wants you. He died to redeem you only Believe His word. Our God and Father, how thankful we are tonight for the work of the Lord Jesus for His precious blood shed on Calvary's cross. Our God. We pray that no one would leave this room lost and in their sins, that everyone might be washed in the blood of Jesus. We ask blessing.
In his name, the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Well, I can ask everybody in this section here, please put your Bibles and whatever else you've got. We know you want to reserve your seat under the seat because there will be people.