Innocent Blood 1984

Beginning by reading from Mark, chapter 1, verse 14. Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the good news of God and saying, the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe the gospel.

Repent and believe the good news. Why does he say repent? Why doesn't Jesus just say, the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, believe the good news? Why does he all the time throw in this call to repent, repent, repent? Luke, chapter 13, verse 1. There were some present at that very time who told him of the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. In other words, Pilate killed them and then mixed in their blood with their sacrifices.

And he answered them, do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered thus? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. For those 18 upon whom the tower of Siloam fell and killed them, do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you no, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Unless you repent, repent, what does he mean repent? Why does he say this all the time? I mean, I know I'm not perfect, but I've lived a good life and I've never killed anybody.

So what does he want me to do? We don't walk with Jesus very long before we discover that his good news of the kingdom is not only a word of mercy and a word of grace and a word of peace and a word of hope, but it's also a word of judgment. Yes, Jesus heals the sick. I'm going to tell you something.

You're going to come in and sit down or you're going to go. We're not going to have this week after week, man. Everybody's welcome, but everybody behaves and if they don't behave, they go.

Is he going? Jesus heals the sick. He opens the eyes of the blind. He casts out demons.

Yes, Jesus opens the door of the kingdom of heaven for us right now. But Jesus not only opens the door to the kingdom of heaven for us, he also warns us that unless we repent, unless our hearts change, unless our lives change, really change, we are going to reap the consequences of every evil thing we have ever done. The time is fulfilled.

The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news. And even when we begin to walk with Jesus, he begins to get specific about those areas where there needs to be repentance.

For instance, Matthew 5.21. You have heard that it was said to the men of old, You shall not kill, and whoever kills shall be liable to judgment. But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment. Whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council.

And whoever says, You fool, shall be liable to the hell of fire. In other words, if I belittle my brother, merely with my tongue, and don't get that right, I'm going to be judged. Not by my brother, but by the living God.

So if you're offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, then come and offer your gift. And if there is something between this sister or this brother and me, if they have a gripe with me, if I in some way have wronged them, if I allow a wall to come up between us, I'm absolutely wasting my time trying to draw near to God.

First get it right, then draw near to God. Make friends quickly with your accuser while you're going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.

All this is Jesus, Jesus speaking. And in this case, the court is the court of heaven, the judge is the living God, and the prison is hell. We're living in a day when everybody is trying to receive Jesus' message of mercy and grace and peace, while at the same time filtering out all his words of judgment.

See, and when you filter out the words of judgment, the message of grace and peace evaporates. When you no longer see or hear the warnings of hell, your vision of heaven is gone. We love to remember how merciful and kind Jesus was to the woman who was caught in the act of adultery, and how hard Jesus was on the men who brought this woman to him and allowed the man who was in the act of adultery, whether she couldn't have done it alone, to get away.

Let him who is without sin among you be the first one to cast a stone at her, he says, and bends down and starts writing in the sand. We're not told what he writes, but it could have been, where's the man? Could have been the names of certain ladies that these men knew perhaps better than they should. But bit by bit, from the oldest to the youngest, they all turn, you know, hang their heads and walk away.

Jesus stands up, only the woman is left, and he says, where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you? No one, Lord. Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.

We like to picture ourselves standing there with the woman, receiving his mercy. And we do. But remember, once we receive his mercy, he still has a few things to tell us about adultery.

Reading on in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 27. You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

And then we say, well, then we're all going to hell. But Jesus says, if your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. Throw it away.

It is better to lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.

With his good news of the kingdom, Jesus turns on the light and shows us, forces us to see that we are sinners who must be cleansed. Yes, he opens the door of the kingdom of heaven for us now. But the minute he opens the door of the kingdom of heaven, by opening that door, he opens for us also the door to hell.

Before, we had a cloak for our sin, our ignorance. Jesus says, if you were blind, you would have no sin. But now that you say we see, therefore your sin remains.

Now the light comes on, our hearts are exposed and we only have now two choices. Either we repent and enter with him into the kingdom of forgiveness or we harden our hearts and put ourselves into the outer darkness. Habakkuk chapter 2, verse 12.

Woe to him who builds a town with blood and founds a city on iniquity. Behold, is it not from the Lord of hosts that peoples labor only for fire and weary themselves for naught? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. For a long time I had problems with that passage, couldn't see the connection between those verses.

Woe to him who builds a town with blood. What does that have to do with the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea? See, but when the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, it's not going to be all joy bells and singing. It's going to be terror.

Because the knowledge of the glory of the Lord will expose and call to account every evil and every wrong that's not under the blood of the Lamb. And so we read in Revelation chapter six, verse 12. When he opened the sixth seal, I looked and behold, there was a great earthquake and the sun became black as sackcloth and the moon, the full moon became like blood and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as a fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale.

The sky vanished like a scroll that is rolled up and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the generals and the rich and the strong and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains calling to the mountains and rocks, fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come and who can stand before it? Yesterday afternoon, Marcus Rodriguez, Jerry Castro and I were walking together in Park Park talking to people about Jesus, passing out tracts and along comes Barbara Spears and her daughter Kathy who comes here maybe here now, can't see the balcony too well but Barbara said, did you know there was a murder here last night? A man was murdered right here.

Then we walked on a little farther and there a few feet away from one of the park benches, not far from a tree was all this blood and it was still, it hadn't dried yet and the flies were buzzing around in the sunshine around this blood. On the bench, just a couple feet away, a couple people were talking and over here was a man, probably drunk sleeping, a foot or two from the blood It was as if they paid no attention. Who cares? The only creatures that paid any attention to that blood were the flies.

Now the ancient Jews had much better insight than we have. They understood that if a man murders another man and nobody is around to see it the blood of the victim will cry out against the murderer. Never mind the police.

Never mind the corrupt court system. The blood will scream like an alarm that you can't shut off. Who does it scream to? It cries to the living God.

For a long time, it appears as if God doesn't even hear and it looks as if the murderer gets away with it. He gets up in the morning takes a shower, has his cornflakes and blueberries goes down to the bank, pulls out some more money has a good time goes shopping in Hong Kong, next week he's going to be lying on the beaches of Hawaii his family is healthy, his wife is beautiful everything is going fine then one day there is an earthquake the sun becomes dark the full moon turns to blood and then in the midst of this thick darkness off on the horizon comes a ribbon of light up over the horizon like a tidal wave and it moves over the surface of the earth like a flood like Noah's day but now it's a flood of light when that light reaches the blood in a mystery, the murderer is called back to the scene of his crime God speaks to him Where's your brother? How should I know? Am I my brother's keeper? What have you done? Your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground What do you say? That lets me off the hook because I've never murdered anybody I'm not perfect but I've lived a decent life far better life than most people that's exactly what the scribes and Pharisees said to Jesus you know, in many ways they implied and they showed all over their lives we're okay, we're far far better than most people we live religious lives we discipline ourselves to talk to God we know the law and Jesus says, you're murderers reading from Matthew 23, verse 29 and he's talking to religious people just like us Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites for you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous saying, if we had lived in the days of our fathers we would not have taken part in the shedding of the blood of the prophets thus you witness against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murdered the prophets fill up then the measure of your fathers, you serpents you brood of vipers how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes some of whom you will kill and crucify and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barakiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar now how can this be? Zechariah the prophet was murdered between the sanctuary and the altar in the temple that had long since been destroyed centuries before and Jesus says to these men, you killed him and they stand there blinking their eyes, trying to figure out what he's talking about not realizing that within a matter of days from the time Jesus says that to these men they're going to be screaming for Jesus' blood crucify him, kill him and Pilate the man who mixed the blood of the Galileans with their sacrifices now calls for a basin of water and washes his hands and he said, I'm innocent of the blood of this just man and they scream again there's blood beyond us and on our children and Jesus says that unless we repent and enter into the kingdom of righteousness we are in that mob bloodthirsty mob that kills still every prophet and every wise man God sends to us and their innocent blood is on our heads now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of God and saying the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand repent, repent, repent and believe the good news so how are we to repent? of what are we to repent? of basically two things first, our arrogance before God and second our mercilessness toward each other and toward all people first, we are called now to repent of our arrogance before God Jesus says to us, unless you repent and become his children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven meaning that unless we repent of our arrogance get off that throne in our hearts which belongs only to God and get down there and become children children will never get in blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven and who are the poor in spirit? the poor in spirit are the ones who repent of their arrogance and become children and have bit their knee from the time Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil his heart and the heart of his race is arrogance arrogance, pride, self-idolatry this is why we nail him to that cross and this is why we still block our ears when he talks to us we're offended by this God who comes to us in lowly guard and calls us to repent and follow him and we will not see him hear his voice understand his glory believe in him until we repent of our arrogance you say, wait a minute arrogance is not my problem my problem isn't arrogance my problem is self-esteem all my life I've been trying to find my own worth I have a low self-concept well listen my friend you can read all the self-esteem books in all the bookstores in the world from Norman Vincent Peale to Robert Shuler to Aug Mendino to Dale Carnegie all of them and your self-esteem won't grow a 32nd of an inch until you understand that beneath your bad self-esteem is a secret arrogance that resents having anybody on the throne but yourself and refuses to revolve around God and wants everything to revolve around you and until you get off that throne and repent of that arrogance your self-esteem will never improve not in any genuine way you can repeat all the formulas and you may feel better and sleep better once in a while but it will never happen until you repent innocent blood was shed for this arrogance of ours but it won't wash away it won't go until we repent of it second thing we need to repent of is our mercilessness toward each other and toward all people and when I'm talking about lack of mercy I'm talking about lack of mercy in our dealings with people we know, people around us every day there's a popular movement among mainline churches where they're trying to get rid of all the injustices and the structures of society and I can remember a man here in the neighborhood a few years ago who was one of the leaders in the grape boycott he was out there marching in front of A&P every day and while he was marching they had a babysitter and you know he cheated that babysitter left and right until he gets right and pays the babysitter forget about trying to make the government and everybody else and the grape growers and everybody else just and the same is true for us, it's so easy for us to see everybody else's injustice the Lord is telling us about our own lack of mercy starting with that, if you want to improve the structures of society go to it but start with yourself go learn what this means, Jesus says to us I desire mercy and not sacrifice forbearance kindness, goodness patience toward each other and we can't begin to do that until we see our hardness apart for what it is as sin and repent of it innocent blood was shed so that this heart of stone could be pulled out and a heart of flesh could be put in by God but that holy exchange will not happen until we repent woe to him who builds a town with blood and founds a city on iniquity behold, is it not from the Lord of hosts that people labor only for fire and nations weary themselves for naught for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea and on that day when the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea we will either be washed in that blood of the lamb or we will be answering for it and for all the innocent blood that was shed from the beginning of time the time is fulfilled the kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe the good news how about if we throw another hymn in today in addition to what we have