THE BLOOD OF JESUS CHRIST
SESSION 4
APPLYING THE BLOOD OF JESUS
THE BLOOD OF JESUS SANCTIFIES US TO ENJOY GOD’S BEST BLESSINGS!
We have seen thus far that the Blood of Jesus:
Redeems Us
Reconciles Us
Cleanses Us
Sanctifies Us
Makes Justification Available to Us
Makes Available to Us the Peace of God
Gives Us Access to the Father
Purges Our Conscience
Provides Us a Way to Have Communion With the Father
Makes Us Kings and Priests
Provides a Way of Perfection for Us
Has Life in it
Has Eternal Life in it
Brings Us Heavenly Joy
Purchased Us
Empowers Us
Heals Us
Makes Us Overcomers of Satan
Gives Us Greater Freedom
Gives Us Greater Power
Gives Us Greater Deliverance
Gives Us Divine Protection
Gives Us the Victory
It has come time for us to discuss how to begin using that weapon in our daily walk with the Lord Jesus.
If you are as I was, then you say “Applying the blood, how do you apply the blood?” Well that is what we will be discussing this evening. Like so many things it is a simple process, and like so many things we just fail to do it. The devil has us convinced that we shouldn’t mess with simple things, I mean after all we are mature Christians, walking the walk and talking the talk. Well, what I see is we are not walking and we definitely aren’t talking. I believe that most just think that when they become born again they are just struggling through this life until they die and then it will be the Promised Land. WELL THERE IS MORE TO IT THAN THAT. If that was all there was to it, why don’t we have “hit squads” to kill all Christians just at the moment they become saved? I mean if that is all Jesus came for, why hang around? I am here to tell you that there is more to it than that. We are left here to enjoy the redeemed life on this earth and to set an example for others so that they might become born again believers. In enjoying that redeemed life there are some things that we need to do and weapons we have been provided to get the job done. One of those weapons is the Blood of Jesus.
Plead is a legal term. When we see courts in action we see people making pleas as to their charges. So when we are charged for something by the devil, we make our plea to counter it. We see pleadings in the Word:
The Lord pleads for us:
Psalms 119:154 (NASB95) - 154 Plead my cause and redeem me; Revive me according to Your word.
Proverbs 22:22-23 (NASB95) - 22 Do not rob the poor because he is poor, Or crush the afflicted at the gate; 23 For the LORD will plead their case And take the life of those who rob them.
Proverbs 23:10-11 (NASB95) - 10 Do not move the ancient boundary Or go into the fields of the fatherless, 11 For their Redeemer is strong; He will plead their case against you.
We are to plead for others:
Proverbs 31:8-9 (NKJV) - 8 Open your mouth for the speechless, In the cause of all who are appointed to die. 9 Open your mouth, judge righteously, And plead the cause of the poor and needy.
Isaiah 1:17 (NASB95) - 17 Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow.
Jeremiah 12:1 (NASB95) - 1 Righteous are You, O LORD, that I would plead my case with You; Indeed I would discuss matters of justice with You: Why has the way of the wicked prospered? Why are all those who deal in treachery at ease?
We are to plead for ourselves:
Jeremiah 12:1 (NASB95) - 1 Righteous are You, O LORD, that I would plead my case with You; Indeed I would discuss matters of justice with You: Why has the way of the wicked prospered? Why are all those who deal in treachery at ease?
Micah 6:1 (AMP) - 1 HEAR NOW what the Lord says: Arise, contend and plead your case before the mountains, and let the hills hear your voice.
Isaiah 43:26 (NASB95) - 26 "Put Me in remembrance, let us argue our case together; State your cause, that you may be proved right.
So we see that we have a command to present our cases, to plead our cause. So now that we have the command to do that, what are the weapons we are going to do that with?
When in the Marines if I was issued a weapon the first thing I wanted to know was: What is it for? Then I wanted to know how to use it? Then I wanted to know: how do I take care of it? It is useless to have weapons that we don’t have the slightest idea what they are, weapons we don’t use, and absolutely no idea how to care for them. You might say, “Well spiritual weapons aren’t something that we need to take care of, they are there when I need them.” WRONG. We have take care of our spiritual weapons just as we would our earthly weapons. If I let my rifle get rusty, dirt down the bore, sand in the bullet magazine, no oil on the moving parts and not even sure it had bullets in it, then I would be real dumb to think it would respond the way it should when I needed it in a hurry. Our spiritual weapons are the same way. They get rusty from non-use. Paul told Timothy in 2 Timothy 1:6:
6That is why I would remind you to stir up (rekindle the embers of, fan the flame of, and keep burning) the [gracious] gift of God, [the inner fire] that is in you by means of the laying on of my hands [with those of the elders at your ordination].
He was saying don’t let your weapon get rusty. Use it, stir it up, take it out and handle it, get to know the atmosphere that it operates best in, and so on. USE IT.
Then, we think about:
1 John 1:9 (HCSB) - 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
That is the Word telling us to keep the dirt out of the barrel and sand out of the magazine.
Then we come to the oiling part of the operation. We find that in:
Jude 1:20 (NLT) - 20 But you, dear friends, must build each other up in your most holy faith, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit,
Psalms 92:10 (AMP) - 10 But my horn (emblem of excessive strength and stately grace) You have exalted like that of a wild ox; I am anointed with fresh oil.
Now we come to the bullets that my magazine should contain:
Acts 1:8 (NLT) - 8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
And one of those bullets is: The Blood of Jesus
The amazing thing about the Blood of Jesus is it is a weapon and armor. We can use it to attack the devil and his schemes or we can use it to protect ourselves against him and his schemes. The decision is one that takes Godly wisdom to discern, because there are times when we should attack, and others when we should enter into our resting place.
I am reminded of the following verses:
Isa 54:17 (New Century Version) - 17 So no weapon that is used against you will defeat you. You will show that those who speak against you are wrong. These are the good things my servants receive. Their victory comes from me," says the Lord.
2 Corinthians 10:3-4 (NASB95) - 3 For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, 4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.
That is a powerful verse if we know and understand our rights and privileges in the Lord. You might ask why I am using this verse and the previous ones to discuss the Blood of Jesus. Because we need to know our weapons and what the results are when we use them. In this case, no weapon will defeat us and we are to show that people speaking against us in condemnation are wrong. We use the weapons of Pleading the Blood of Jesus to do that.
H. A. Maxwell Whyte said, “Since the life of Jesus is in His Blood, if we plead, honor, sprinkle and sing about it, we are actually introducing the life of the Godhead into our worship.”
I believe that the Lord God wants to physically manifest His power, however, the only way it can come into the open is as the Blood is honored, because His life is in The Blood. Therefore if we want the manifestation of the Lord’s power in our life we need to pay more honor to the sacrificial Blood of Jesus. When we honor His Blood, we are honoring His life and when that is done He will honor us by manifesting Himself among us.
What are some of the things that are required of us in applying the Blood to our lives:
First, I believe that we have to have a true revelation of the power of the Blood. We have played “copy-cat” long enough with the Word of God. It is time that we stop trying to rely on other’s revelation and get our own, because that is the only way we can have the Word working in our lives. Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines the word “revelation” as : “1 a: an act of revealing or communicating divine truth b: something that is revealed by God to humans 2 a: an act of revealing to view or making known b: something that is revealed; especially : an enlightening or astonishing disclosure c: a pleasant often enlightening surprise.”
Easton’s Bible Dictionary defines “revelation” as: — “an uncovering, a bringing to light of that which had been previously wholly hidden or only obscurely seen. …. The Scriptures are not merely the "record" of revelation; they are the revelation itself in a written form, in order to the accurate preservation and propagation of the truth. Revelation and inspiration differ. Revelation is the supernatural communication of truth to the mind; inspiration (q.v.) secures to the teacher or writer infallibility in communicating that truth to others.”
We speak of having a RHEMA word, a now word and when we do we are saying that the word has been revealed to us through the Holy Spirit. The Strong’s Enhanced Lexicon states that the word “RHEMA” is used seventy (70) times in the Authorized Version. Of that seventy it is translated “word” fifty-six (56) times, “saying” nine (9) times and “thing” three (3) times. It gives the definition as “that which is or has been uttered by the living voice, thing spoken, word. 1a any sound produced by the voice and having definite meaning.”
Charles Cowan in his book “Are You Speaking the Word?” writes, “There are two words that describe the Word of God. One is LOGOS, and one is RHEMA. LOGOS is the entire or total volume of the Word of God, and RHEMA is the spoken Word, or bits and parts of the LOGOS that is spoken.”
On its website, Advanced Training Institute records the following, “The second primary Greek word that describes Scripture is RHEMA, which refers to a word that is spoken and means “an utterance.” A rhema is a verse or portion of Scripture that the Holy Spirit brings to our attention with application to a current situation or need for direction.”
Romans 10:8-10 (KJV) - 8 But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach; 9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.
So if we read this according to the Greek words it would be “8 But what saith it? The RHEMA is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the RHEMA of faith, which we preach; 9 That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. 10 For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”
So here we have Rhema and we are speaking of the Blood of Jesus. If we have RHEMA we will speak and, just as in salvation, speaking is what manifests the power and operation of God in our lives. That is why we need to be vigilant in what we say. To guard our mouths so that we do not create another stronghold, or enemy, to have to overcome.
Therefore I can take from this that the Word we receive into us by studying and hearing can only become a “RHEMA” Word when we speak it. You see if we believe we speak. And if we speak then the force of faith in our words create the desired outcome. The Lord God believed and spoke and the worlds were created.
So we need to take the “Blood of Jesus” and get a revelation of it. We do this by studying the Word and how it relates to the Blood of Jesus, and to our lives. Taking the specific verses and getting in into us so that the Spirit of God ignites itSpeaking the Word that God has shown us out of His Word.
When we encounter a problem that certainly has fact to it, we must remember that TRUTH overcomes fact. It might be a fact that the devil is trying to put sickness on you BUT the TRUTH is that by the stripes of Jesus we WERE HEALED. Truth overcomes fact. The law of gravity is a fact however there is a higher law. The law of lift overcomes the law of gravity. So if you are in an airplane, you start the engine, adjust the wing flaps and gain speed, at some point the law of lift will overcome the law of gravity. We have to apply the higher law to our lives and that is the law of TRUTH.
Revelation 12:11 (AMP) - 11 And they have overcome (conquered) him by means of the blood of the Lamb and by the utterance of their testimony, for they did not love and cling to life even when faced with death [holding their lives cheap till they had to die for their witnessing].
We see here our weapon (our empowered use of the RHEMA Word) in action. They overcame, they did it by their words and they did it by the Blood.
I enjoy playing computerized chess. It came to me that the Lord is the greatest chess player there is because in my chessboard of a life he plays my pieces (if I allow him to). He blocks every attack on my king, takes the enemies pieces and in the end checkmates the enemy. We do it in our lives by:
Recognizing an attack, or a setup for an attack
Praying about it, seeking what to do
Finding a Word that applies to it
Having faith in Jesus and in His Word
Recognizing that the Blood of Jesus prevails in the situation
Taking the Blood of Jesus and speaking the Word of Faith over the situation
BELIEVING THAT THE BLOOD OF JESUS AND THE WORD OF GOD WILL PREVAIL
As the children of Israel took the blood of their sacrificial lamb and applied it to the doorposts of their homes (lives), shouldn’t we take the Blood of our Sacrificial Lamb and apply it to the doorposts of our lives. Our lives, our children, our grandchildren, our great-grandchildren, our homes, our cars, our furniture, our land, our trees, our buildings, our job, our businesses, our fun things and our work things. Our pastor and his wife, our associate pastors and their wives, our church, our church building and the lives that He brings to us to work with.
