It all begins in the Garden of Eden. Everything tracing the gravity of sin, God’s view of atonement and our ultimate redemption in His eyes begins with the story of Adam and Eve. The entirety of God’s relationship with humans not only starts from when Adam and Eve were cast out, it encompasses how blood has been used to bind and continue God’s love for us.
The covenant of blood as a means of purification is a running thread from The Old Testament to The New Testament. If one does a close reading of The Old Testament, there would be the observance of how from the introduction of sin courtesy of Adam and Eve, through the time of Abraham, to when God gave his laws to Moses, the fact of blood as a seal of a covenant is a recurring one.
This relationship with blood shared by God and we the Beloved of Christ eventually culminates in the new and everlasting covenant; one which the Blood of Jesus shed on the Cross of Cavalry cements.
This article discusses the importance of blood to God, how to access God through blood and ways to get speedy answers to our prayers.
To start with, we must first come to an understanding of the Biblical nature of God exemplified by the prophet Malachi. In Malachi 3:6, the prophet Malachi affirms that God doesn’t change. Pay attention to that fact brethren. What that means in a literal sense, is that God’s ways are exact from the book of Genesis right down to Revelation. There is nothing new with God; especially when it comes to restoring how He relates with Mankind whom He loves deeply and longs to have a continual and wholesome relationship with. From the Old Testament to the New Testament thesame principle predicated on the sacrifice of blood applies.
Brethren, there is a truth about our God that we must always internalise. It is the truth that He loves us so much, desires to be in fellowship with us, and always wants to come close to us. However, these desires cannot happen where sin exists. If God literally comes to us in a tangible form, we will be consumed by his glory, because the very nature of mankind is sinful. Hence, the only way God can fellowship with us is when BLOOD has been shed as an atonement for our sins.
As you continue to read this article, you will understand how every story, experience, or incident in the Bible points to how the blood of Jesus is the perfect and complete sacrifice. We will also realise how Jesus Christ is literally the word of God made manifest in the flesh.
Take this illustration. For a moment, see God as gas or petrol and see mankind as fire. No matter how much gas may love fire and even need to harmonise with it in order to cook food, both components cannot ideally come together without an interface because there will be an explosion. One only need look at when God spoke to the Israelites at Mount Sinai to totally grasp this concept. The end result was a fearful time of thunder, lightning, storms and earthquakes.
The Israelites sensed that they were experiencing something really strange and never was a nation so unified in fear as they were. Every person knew that they were unclean before the Almighty God.This made them tremble in one accord and they said in fear while trembling: ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, don’t let me see this great fire anymore lest I die’.
The result of that incident is that God gave them His laws in a physical medium, and offered them an option of temporal remission for their sins through the shedding of blood – this structure is what we comprehend as the birth of the OLD COVENANT. That said, from the period before the establishment of the Old Covenant right to when Jesus told the Samaritan woman that salvation came from the Jews in John 4:22, blood has always been of significant importance to God.
BEFORE THE OLD COVENANT
When Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden, sin entered the world and immediately, they became aware and ashamed of their nakedness. This made them fashioncoverings for themselves using fig leaves (Gen 3:7). When God realized what they had done, He placed a curse on the land, and passed judgment upon them for their disobedience. But his love for mankind prevailed, and in order not to break His fellowship with man, God made “unto Adam and also his wife…coats of skin and clothed them” Genesis 3:21.
It is imperative that we ask ourselves some questions.
The answer to these two questions can be seen in Hebrews 9:22 – without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Also, Leviticus 17:11 says: ‘It is blood that makes atonement for the soul’. This same principle was repeated with Cain and Abel. However, something peculiar happened with the children of Adam and Eve. Something that will, today, reflect what the blood of Jesus means to God.
Cain and Abel brought offerings to God, and since Abel was a keeper of sheep, he presented a lamb from his flock to God. Cain, on the other hand, was a tiller of the ground and offered produce from the ground and not that born of animals which inevitably would have been linked to blood. The Bible records that God rejected Cain’s offering and accepted Abel’s. Remember Ephesians 6:9says “God is not a respecter of persons”. Also, remember that both Cain and Abel were equally sinners in God’s eyes. So why accept one person’s sacrifice and reject the other? God asked Cain, “Why has thou countenance fallen? If thou does well, shall thou not be accepted” (Gen 4:6). Obviously, Cain didn’t offer the sacrifice to God with a complete knowledge. He didn’t know that God always requires a blood sacrifice.
Cain immediately killed his brother and when God asked him about the location of his brother, he denied any knowledge of his whereabouts. In response to this, God said to him “The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground” (Genesis 4:10). This tells us that blood has a voice and innocent blood has an even louder voice. I can imagine the sound of Abel’s blood screaming to God ‘VENGEANCE, VENGEANCE, VENGEANCE’ and God, being just, cursed Cain. The curse was so severe that Cain had to complain [Gen 4:13].
This importance of blood to God can also be seen in the story of Noah and The Flood, after God destroyed the world with flood due to the sin of mankind. Immediately Noah stepped his feet on dry ground, the first thing God made him do was to offer a blood sacrifice (Genesis 8:20). With God, blood indicates the beginning of new things. It is a sign of a new relationship and most importantly, blood, with God, serves as a symbol and seal of a covenant.
In the Abrahamic Covenant, the symbol was circumcision, which involves blood. In Genesis 22:2,God said to Abraham “Take now thy son, Isaac, whom thou lovest and get thee into the land of Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering.” In this instance, God told Abraham to offer his only son as a sacrifice to him and a way to test his faith. And when Abraham passed the test, God provided him a ram instead.
There are two very important points about God which are needed to understand him better.
The Old Covenant
The entirety of the Christian faith can be summarised into the relationship of the two covenants which bind us to God. Let us first understand what a covenant means in the Biblical sense.
A covenant is an agreement between two people. It is a bond or a pact held between two parties over a specified set of ideas. Everyone knows the Bible is divided into the Old and the New Testament, but just a few know that the word “covenant” can be used to replace the word “testament”. Hence, we could say the Bible is divided into the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Under the Old Covenant, there were 613 laws altogether, covering every aspect of human behavior or interaction.
Some included the following:
Humanly speaking, it is impossible to keep 613 laws. But what is most intriguing is the fact that, according to James 2:10, “the person who keeps all the law but is guilty of one is guilty of all”. But think about it for a moment. Was God being wicked when he stipulated all of these laws? Ofcourse not. The bible clearly points out that God is love (1 John 4:7).
Of course, God knows that no man can keep all of his laws, and that no animal sacrifice can truly cleanse a man and make him holy. So, the big question we need to ask ourselves here is: “What was our Heavenly Father trying to achieve by this?”.
I can confidently reiterate that God was preparing us for the New Covenant. God wanted us to see for ourselves that we could not keep His laws. He wanted to imprint in our hearts the necessity of Jesus The Messiah; a Savior – the perfect offering and perfect sacrifice – a sacrifice that will involve the death of his own son. God already knew from the beginning that the perfect purification for man’s sins would involve the blood of one that was whole, sinless and perfect. It is with this knowledge and authority that Jesus declared in John 14: 6 “I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE. NO ONE COMES TO THE FATHER EXCEPT THROUGH ME”.
Just before the Old Covenant was established, the intriguing story of Moses and how he led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt sheds light on the importance of blood to God. Before going into details of how God wonderfully set his firstborn, Israel, free from Egypt, we must take note of something that happened to Moses. This reference informs us that no matter who you are, God will only spare you if you are in a relationship with him through a covenant.
In Genesis 4:24-26, when God almost killed Moses, his wife, who was not even an Israelite, quickly took a flint knife and circumcised their son. Then she touched his feet with the foreskin and declared: “Now, you are a bridegroom of blood to me”, thereby making her family a part of God’s covenant.
If you are familiar with this story, we can notice that Egypt was the most powerful nation in the world at that time. Powerful in terms of culture, wealth and the efficacy of their gods. At this time in history, the wealth of a particular nation was seen as a direct indication of the strength of their god(s). Egypt was known to have various gods and goddesses with varying job functions. They were Anubis, Apo Phis, Baast, Isis, Ma‘at and so on. Knowing this, it is now clear why God chose Egypt to display his mighty power. To show to the whole world, not only who the one and only God is, but also who his chosen people are, God made an example of Egypt.
God needed to show to the whole world that there was only ONE GOD. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the ‘I AM, THAT I AM’, as he described himself when Moses inquired of him in Exodus 3:14 during the Burning Bush incident. God needed to do something no other god could do, something that could continuously point to the whole world that the Jews were not only the chosen people but also THE WAY to salvation. He needed to do something seemingly impossible, something spectacular, like parting the Red Sea that has an average depth of 1,610ft. Hence it was miracles after miracles until Pharaoh was forced to let God’s people go.
The last miracle which eventually forced Pharaoh to free the Israelites is worth mentioning because it also points out the importance of blood to God. According to the Bible in Exodus 22;21“Moses called for all the elders of Israel and said to them: ‘Go and get lambs from your flock, kill the lamb, drain the blood into a basin, then take a cluster of hyssop branches and deep them into the lamb’s blood and strike the hyssop against the lintel above the door and against the two side panels, so that there will be blood upon them and none of you shall go outside all night, for JEHOVAH will pass through the land and kill the Egyptians, BUT WHEN HE SEES THE BLOOD UPON THE PANEL OF YOUR DOOR, HE WILL PASS OVER THAT HOME AND NOT PERMIT THE DESTROYER TO ENTER AND KILL YOUR FIRST BORN. “
From this, we can easily understand that a blood covering always offers protection under God, as His ways are the same. We can understand Psalm 91 which says: “He that dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty”. The secret place of God MUST have a blood covering and today, that secret place is located under the blood of Jesus Christ. And as stated in Hebrews 10:4, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to completely take away sins. Think about it like this, if I knew that no matter what I do, all I needed to do was to offer the blood of an animal and God will immediately forgive me, I will continue in sin which will eventually lead to death.
But if I knew that it is the blood of God’s only begotten son that was sacrificed for my sins, I would naturally make Jesus my Lord and savior. I will get to know him and improve my relationship with him, which will cause me to love him, and my love for him will make me want to obey him. Then, I will understand how precious his Blood is to God. When I efficiently do these, I can then say that I am part of the new covenant of God.
THE NEW AND EVERLASTING COVENANT
Jesus said – For this is my blood, which confirms the covenant between God and his people. It is poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins of many.
To fully understand the length and breath of God’s love for all of us, we need to realise not only how but why he sent his only son to die for the sins of the world. In the early days of my life as a Christian, it took me a very long time to comprehend how God could have a son.
But one day it dawned on my spirit. I had my own Eureka moment. Think about it like this and ask yourself: “How did God create the world?” He did so by simply speaking.
For example, in Genesis, God said “Let there be light and there was light”. That is exactly the same way it will be if God wants to have a son. God will simply say, “I want a son to be born of a virgin” and that is exactly what will happen. Or do we expect God to have sex to have a son? If not, then why is it difficult for us to understand that Jesus is the son of God? I can tell you with all confidence that Jesus is the only son of God and God loves him so much. But because of the love he has for you and I, he had to offer his only son as a sacrifice so that any man irrespective of tribe, race, or color can be adopted into the family of God and dwell with God in his kingdom.
John 3:16 says: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life…” The first time John the Baptist set eyes on Jesus, he said: “Here comes the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29).
Have you ever heard this saying before, that Jesus Christ is the word of God made flesh? There is a very popular misconception about God that has to be corrected. Most people think there is always something to decipher, or there is something more to what God says. We tend to think very spiritually, hence this hinders our understanding of God and makes us not study the word of God because we think it is complicated. Brethren, believe me when I say God is the easiest to deal with. Who will create someone in his own image and want to confuse the person? God gave us his Word to study so we can know him and as we get to know him, we begin to see him as father and no more as God.
When we see simple terms like “Jesus is the word of God made flesh”, we may assume there is something more, but I am here to tell you that it literally means that Jesus Christ is the word of God in flesh. Thus, Jesus Christ is the Bible in flesh, because, as we read earlier, God started to point us towards the Blood of his son Jesus as far back as the beginning of the world – from the story of Adam and Eve. Furthermore, the beginning of the book of John says, “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the word was God”. Then chapter 14 says, ‘and the word became flesh, and dwelt among men”. Also, Colossians 1:15 says: “Jesus is the image of the invisible God”.
We must also take note of the fact that there was no prophet of God that didn’t prophesy about the coming of a messiah. But, most importantly, everyone was very specific about his birth, his life and his death and resurrection. Hence, the fulfillment of all these prophecies, makes him, literally, the word of God in flesh as those prophecies spoke of, thousands of years before His birth.
Prophesies About Jesus Given Thousands of Years Before He Was Born
In the history of mankind, since this world began, it is very important to say that nobody, either Prophet or priest or any man, ever spoke in the manner of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. According to John 7:46: “The temple guards had been sent to go and arrest Jesus. These people were under authority but they came back without carrying out the order they were given”. Chapter 45 says: “When the Temple guards returned without having arrested Jesus, the leading priests and Pharisees demanded: ‘Why haven’t you arrested him as instructed, and the soldiers replied “we have never heard anyone speak like this”.
To be the complete expression of God, Jesus had to be God, to communicate and understand man, Jesus had to be human also. Hence the title “SON OF GOD, SON OF MAN”. God used Christ’s blood as a ransom to reconcile the whole world to himself ONCE AND FOR ALL. If we study closely the way Jesus Christ of Nazareth was crucified; we will notice that his blood was shed as a sacrifice. The blood in him was literally emptied, such that when he was pierced in the side by the Roman soldiers, water came out of him. Furthermore, He bled from his head, from his body, from his hands, and from his legs. He was beaten and stripped and he looked so bad, that if we had seen the cross on which he hung before he was put down, all we would see is BLOOD.
To confirm this, let us quickly go through Psalm 22:14 as it describes how Jesus Christ felt on the cross of Calvary. “My life is poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax melting within me, my strength has dried up like sunbaked clay, my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. You have laid me in the dust and left me for dead, my enemies surround me, like a pack of dogs, an evil gang closes on me, they have pierced my hands and feet.”
Furthermore, John 19:34 says: One of the soldiers however pierced his side with a spear and blood and water flowed out”.
Things We MUST Know About The BLOOD OF JESUS
In conclusion, I implore anyone and everyone to read this material closely with an open mind as a child, and check out each Biblical reference. The SECRET about these things is we can only be shown the door, but we are the ones that have to walk through it.
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