BLOOD - O' The Precious Blood!

AS CLEAR AS MUD! [1 Samuel 16:7; cleansing, heart, righteousness]

Rudy, one of the men in our church, took on the job of cleaning and waxing the floor of the ladies bathroom. After stripping the floor, we both marveled at how clean it was compared to its earlier condition. I then had to leave to run a few errands.

While I was gone, Rudy decided to try a detergent cleanser on the floor, just to see if it might improve the appearance even further.

I returned in the middle of his efforts. Half of the already once-cleaned floor was bright and like new, the other dark with grime ... this was the same floor we’d just a short while earlier thought was "very" clean.

Man labors in his efforts to live a clean life ... but the Bible says "there are none righteous, no not one" [Romans 3:10-18]. Man examines himself and says, "I’m not so bad! At least not as bad as so-and-so." But God doesn’t look at the outer man, as we do. What we see with our natural eyes appears clean but what God sees is far from clean.

The blood of Jesus cleanses in such a way that is beyond man’s understanding. That which is stained permanently black from sin is cleansed to pure white. Had we known how truly dirty the floor was in the first place perhaps we would not have been fooled into believing it clean. Were man to know how desperately polluted his sins have made him he would never claim to be "Worse than some but better than most; after all I’ve never murdered anyone or robbed a bank or plundered and raped."


BLOOD STAINED TESTIMONY! [1 Peter 1:19; atonement, power]

A Gideon friend recently told of how their well-known, pearl-white New Testaments were distributed to the Pacific Fleet prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.

He also told of how, on a later occasion, the evangelist Harry Rimmer was speaking to a meeting of believers interested in military evangelism. During the speech, Dr. Rimmer displayed his own personal copy of the white Pacific Fleet New Testament.

Following the meeting, a member of the audience tarried to show Dr. Rimmer another white New Testament, one given to his son prior to the bombing of the Hawaiian base ... one stained with blood. The man smiled and said, "Yes … this little book is very precious … it’s … stained with the blood of my son." Dr. Rimmer paused for a moment, then held up his personal Bible and said, "God feels the same way about that Book. He loves [it] too. Its pages are stained with the blood of His Son." [Thanks to Brian Stromsoe, of The Gideons, for recently sharing this vignette with our church.]

Indeed it is; each page of Holy Writ is covered with that precious, precious blood which flowed from pierced and bleeding side of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.


MAJOR FOWL UP! [1 Peter 1:17-19; iniquity, licentiousness, permissiveness, secular humanism, sin]

Except for two weeks out of the year, Geese are federally protected game birds. Yet they're killing cattle. Recently a Virginia Beef Corp. spokesman informed WorldNetDaily (WND) that wildlife protections have resulted in overpopulation of the species; they’re crowding – and fouling – pastures where livestock graze.

WND was told that goose droppings, which carry swine and other viruses, are causing a profusion of stillbirths among heifers. Some 65 calves, valued at about $3,000 each on the market, have been lost this year at Virginia Beef's Louden County, Va., pastures … only one of many such pastures affected.

Similarly, federal protection of sin has resulted in the eternal damnation of tens of thousands of American citizens. In recent years representatives of the Christian community have been trying to warn public and private groups about the ever increasing problems associated with the licentious and permissive behavior of our fellow citizens.

Like most birds, sinners have been fouling their own and our nests with government sanction. The absence of moral clarity and its accompanying devaluation of human life has resulted in a holocaust of murders among unborn children. This moral and ethical dysfunction has brought about the eternal loss of an untold number of Americans … at what cost? Just the precious blood of Jesus!