but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or spot.but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish or spot, the blood of Christ,But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot:but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ:
7 sermons cite this verse
I'm going to go to 1 Peter chapter 1 in verses 19 through 21. But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, he indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world. I want you to understand, he's talking about Jesus Christ, the Lamb, without spot or blemish. Remember that phrase, without spot or blemish. He indeed was foreordained, that means predetermined, before the world, the foundation God ever spoke and said, let there be. He was preordained before the foundation of the world. but was manifest in these last times for you who through him, who believe in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory so that your faith and hope are in God. My faith, my hope is not in a church. It is not in a priest. It is not in a preacher. My faith and my hope is 100% in Jesus Christ, who was God on that cross, dying for you and for me. And he rose, the text said, from the dead. I want to take just a few moments this morning and I want to talk about the lamb that was slain before the foundation of the earth. This is important. In other words, there was a redemption plan already in place when God stepped into the garden of Eden and he realized Adam and Eve had been tempted by Satan who used the body of a serpent because God gave dominion to humans. And a human is someone that …
… that was handed down to you from your ancestors, but you were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him, you believe in God. Come on, people who raised him from the dead and glorified him so that your faith and hope are not in yourself and your accomplishments, but they are in God. It's time for us to lower the rope so that people see that we've been saved. It's time for us to live a life that distinguishes us from the empty way of life but saying we've been redeemed by the precious blood of the lamb. Come on, church. Come on, church. If you were encouraged by...
… Or as Paul said it to the Ephesians, because in him we have redemption through his blood. Of course, if you think about how the catechism words it, it's hard not to hear echoes of 1 Peter 1, verses 18 and 19. you were ransomed from the feudal ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. Again, it's a fitting word as we look ahead to Holy Week to the cross, the Lord of all creation hanging there, shedding his precious blood to redeem his chosen people from all of their sins. You know, history has a lot of lords, a lot of lords who saw their position, their title, their rule, their governance as means to their own privilege, to padding their own accounts, to promoting and protecting themselves. Lords who used their people to deliver their own privilege and power. Jesus Christ is the Lord who spends his privilege and power to deliver his people. …
… with perishable things such as silver or gold or Venmo that you were redeemed with from the empty way of life handed down to you from all of your ancestors, but it was with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. What did God pay for you with? In this story, Hosea, he finds his wife. She is a prostitute, and he says, so I paid for her to come home. Did you know that God paid for you to be returned back into the right standing in front of the Father? And he paid the high price of the gift of his son. And Jesus paid the price of shedding his innocent blood on the cross at Calvary so that you would not have to pay the penalty or the debt of your sin, but you would not have to owe anything because of the greatness and the love of Jesus Christ. Redemption. Redemption means deliverance from sin, bondage, or debt through the payment of a price. …
… not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. 1 Peter 1, 18-19 One other way to express our wonder over a purchase is to ask, or at least silently wonder, what did that set you back? The idea is that you have savings. You've been getting ahead on your savings. But when you buy something big, much of that forward motion is gone. Buy that new house and your savings are certainly set back, maybe to near zero. So what did it set God back to purchase the world? Well, on the one hand, nothing, since God owns all the world and nothing can take the universe from him. But to pay the ransom of the world's debt, to purchase us out of our debtor's prison, this is what it set him back. The life of his son turned into the bitter cup of death, even death on the cross. Paul describes this law so well in Philippians 2, 5 through 8. …
… For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down from your ancestors, but with the precious blood, there it is, the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him. And so your faith and hope are in God. Paul wrote it this way, but God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since we have now been justified, there's our word, made righteous. How? By his blood. The life of the flesh is in the blood. The innocent living son of God is shedding his blood. We've been justified by his blood. How much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him? Paul writes again, your boasting is not good. Don't you know that a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough? Get rid of the old yeast so that you may be a new unleavened batch as you really are. And then here comes his closing. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Now it's in the tradition of the church. It's in the teaching of the early church. Christ is the Passover lamb. There were Passover lambs back in Egypt, but now there's just a Passover lamb, capital P-A-S-S-O-V-E-R, lamb, and he is Christ. This is what John was talking about. …
… you weren't redeemed with silver and gold, but verse 19, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect, he, Jesus, this lamb was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. It was already settled what Christ was about. Grace was already moving before the world. Ephesians 1, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who's blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us, God did, he chose us, God at work, in him, in Christ, before the creation of the world. Before you were born, he chose you in Christ. Grace was moving in your direction before you even knew there was a direction. God was already at work to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ in accordance with the pleasure of his will to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given to us in the one he loves. It goes on to talk about the riches of God's grace before the foundation of the world. I'm not going to do everything with four passages, but I just want you to see this isn't a verse or two in the Gospels that are about grace and about Jesus dying on a cross. This thread runs through the entire scripture and all of eternity. Second Timothy, he has saved us and called us to a holy life. Not because of anything we have done. Why? …