Welcome to the Hackberry House of Chosun. My name is Bob, and I want to thank you for listening and ask you to please look around the site when you're finished with this audio. We've got over 3,500 more audios featuring great preachers, persecution stories from North Korea and other lands, Bible studies. My books are on amazon.com, and you can contact me at bob.j.falkner.72. at gmail.com. Please also check out my new website. It allows you to tune in to the new Hackberry Radio. Just go to hackberryhouseofchosun.com and take a look and a listen. Today I'm reading from the Free Grace Broadcaster periodical that comes out every three months, can be delivered right to your home, and I hope that you'll go after it, because it's a good thing to have around. We're studying the precious blood of Christ this quarter, and today we're going to be listening to two articles by John Flavel, who lived from 1627 to 1691. He was an English Presbyterian minister born in Worcester, England, UK. Make that Worcester shire. John Flavell, Forgiveness for the Greatest Sinners. Is Christ dead? And did He die the violent, painful, shameful, cursed, slow and succorless death of the cross? Then surely there is forgiveness with God and plenteous redemption for the greatest of sinners that by faith apply the blood of the cross to their poor guilty souls. So speaks the Apostle. It says, in whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins, Colossians 1.14. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sins, 1 John 1.7. Two things will make this demonstrable. First, that there is sufficient efficacy in this blood of the cross to expiate the greatest sins. Secondly, that the efficacy of it is designed and intended by God for believing sinners. How clearly do both these propositions lie in the Word? Well, first, that there is sufficient efficacy in the blood of the cross to expiate and wash away the greatest sins. Well, this is manifest, for it is precious blood, as it is called. You are not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, 1 Peter 1. This preciousness of the blood of Christ riseth from the union it hath with that person who is over all, God blessed forever. And on that account, it is styled the blood of God. And so it becomes royal, princely blood. Yes, such for the dignity and efficacy of it as never was created or shall ever run in any other veins but his. The blood of all the creatures in the world, even a sea of human blood, bears no more proportion to the precious and excellent blood of Christ than a dish of common water to a river of liquid gold. On the account of its invaluable preciousness, it becomes satisfying and reconciling blood to God. And so the apostle speaks. He says, and having made peace through the blood of his cross by him to reconcile all things to himself, by him I say, whether they be things in earth or things in heaven. Colossians 1.20. The same blood which is redemption to them that dwell on earth is confirmation to them that dwell in heaven. Before the efficacy of this blood, guilt vanishes and shrinks away as the shadow before the glorious sun. Every drop of it hath a voice and speaks to the soul that sits trembling under its guilt better than the blood of Abel. It sprinkles us from all evil that is an unquiet and accusing conscience. For having enough in it to satisfy God, it must needs have enough in it to satisfy conscience. Conscience can demand no more for its satisfaction, nor will it take less than God demands for His satisfaction. And in this blood is enough to give both satisfaction. Secondly, as there is sufficient efficacy in this blood to expiate the greatest guilt, so it is as manifest that the virtue and efficacy of it is intended and designed by God for the use of believing sinners. Such blood as this was shed, without doubt, for some weighty end, and that some might be the better for it, who they are for whom it is intended is plain enough from Acts 13.39, by him All that believe are justified from all things from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses. That the remission of the sins of believers was the great thing designed in the pouring out of this precious blood of Christ appears from all the sacrifices that figured it to the ancient church. The shedding of that typical blood spake a design of pardon, and the putting of their hand upon the head of the sacrifice spake the way and method of believing. by which that blood was then applied to them in that way, and is still applied to us in a more excellent way. Had no pardon been intended, no sacrifices would have been appointed. Moreover, let it be considered, this blood of the cross is the blood of a surety that came under the same obligations with us, and in our name, or stead, shed it. So, of course, it frees and discharges the principal offender or debtor. Can God exact satisfaction from the blood and death of His own Son, the surety of believers, and yet still demand it from believers? It cannot be. who, saith the Apostle, shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect. It is God that justifieth. Who is He that condemneth? It is Christ that died. And why are faith and repentance prescribed as the means of pardon? Why doth God everywhere in His word call upon sinners to repent and believe in this blood, encouraging them so to do by so many precious promises of remission, and declaring the inevitable and eternal ruin of all impenitent and unbelieving ones who despise and reject this blood? What, I say, doth all this speak but the possibility of a pardon for the greatest of sinners, and the certainty of a free, full, and final pardon for all believing sinners? Oh, what a joyful sound this is! What ravishing voices of peace, pardon, grace, and acceptance come to our ears from the blood of the cross! The greatest guilt that ever was contracted upon a trembling, shaking conscience can stand before the efficacy of the blood of Christ no more than the sinner himself can stand before the justice of the Lord with all that guilt upon him. Reader, Listener, the Word assures thee, whatever thou hast been or art, that sins of as deep a dye as thine have been washed away in this blood. I was a blasphemer, says Paul, a persecutor, injurious, but I obtained mercy. But it may be thou wilt object this was a rare and singular instance. It is a great question whether any other sinner shall find the like grace that he did. And no question of it at all if you believe in Christ as He did, for He tells us, For this cause I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show forth all longsuffering, for a pattern to them which should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting. 1 Timothy 1.16. And so upon the same grounds that He obtained mercy, you may obtain it also. Those very men who had a hand in the shedding of Christ's blood had the benefit of that blood afterwards pardoning them. There is nothing but unbelief and impenitence of heart that can bar thy soul from the blessings of this blood. Another article by John Flavell in this same quarter list this time around is called The Only Physician of Sick Souls, and he uses Matthew 9-12 as his text. They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. The Lord Jesus Christ is the only physician for sick souls. The world is a great hospital full of sick and dying souls, all wounded by one and the same mortal weapon, sin. Some are senseless of their misery, feel not their pains, and value not a physician. Others are full of sense as well as danger. They mourn under the apprehension of their condition and sadly wail over it. The merciful God hath, in His abundant compassion to the perishing world, sent a physician from heaven and given him His orders under the great seal of heaven for His office. Isaiah 61, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek. He hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted. He opened and read in the audience of the people, Luke 4, 18. He is the tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. He is Jehovah Rapha, the Lord that healeth us. He is Jehovah Tzidkenu, the Lord, our righteousness. The brazen serpent that healed the Israelites in the wilderness was an excellent type of our great physician, Christ, and is expressly applied to him. He rejects none that come and heals all whom he undertakes. But more particularly, I will point at those diseases that Christ heals in sick souls. First, the guilt of sin. This is a mortal wound, a stab in the very heart of a poor sinner. It is a fond and groundless distinction that papists make of sin's mortal and venial. All sin in its own nature is mortal. The wages of sin is death. Yet, though it be so in its own nature, Christ can and doth cure it by the sovereign, fragrant medicine of His own precious blood. In whom we have redemption through His blood, Ephesians 1, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace. This is the deepest and deadliest wound the soul of man feels in this world. What is guilt but the obligation of the soul to everlasting punishment and misery? It puts the soul under the sentence of God to eternal wrath, the condemning sentence of the great and terrible God from which nothing is found more dreadful and insupportable. Put all pains, all poverty, all afflictions, all miseries in one scale, and God's condemnation in the other, and you weigh but so many feathers against a talent of lead. This disease, our great physician, Christ, cures by remission, which is the dissolving of the obligation to punishment, the loosing of the soul that was bound over to the wrath and condemnation of God. This remission being made, the soul is immediately cleared from all its obligations to punishment. There is, therefore, now no condemnation," Romans 8.1. All bonds are cancelled. The guilt of all sins is healed or removed, original and actual, great and small. This cure is performed upon souls by the blood of Christ. Nothing is found in heaven or earth besides His blood that can heal this disease. Without shedding of blood there is no remission. Nor is it any blood that will do it, but that only which dropped from the wounds of Christ. By His stripes we are healed. Isaiah 53. His blood only is innocent and precious blood. 1 Peter 1. Blood of infinite worth and value. Blood of God. Acts 20. 28. Blood prepared for this very purpose. Hebrews 10. 5. This is the blood that performs the cure. And how great a cure it is! For this cure, the souls of believers shall be praising and magnifying their great physician in heaven to all eternity. To him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Revelation 1-5. Next, I shall show you that Jesus Christ is the only physician of souls. None is like him for a sick sinner. This will be evident in diverse respects. First, none is so wise and judicious as Jesus Christ to understand and comprehend the nature, depth, and danger of soul diseases. Oh, how ignorant and unacquainted are men with the state and case of afflicted souls! But Christ hath the tongue of the learned, and that he should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary, Isaiah 54. Only he understands the weight and depth of inward troubles of sin. Secondly, none is so able to cure and heal the wounds of afflicted souls, as Christ is. Only he hath those medicines that can cure a sick soul. The blood of Christ and nothing else in heaven or earth can cure the mortal wounds that guilt inflicts upon a trembling conscience. Conscience may be numbed by stupefactive medicines prepared by the devil for that end, but pacified it can never be, but by the blood of Christ. How inexpressible is the grace of God in providing such a physician as Christ for the sick and dying souls of sinners. Oh, blessed be God that there is a balm in Gilead and a physician there, that their case is not desperate, forlorn, and remedyless, as is the case for the devils and damned. Though there be such a disease as is incurable, yet take this for thy comfort. Never any soul was sick, that is, sensibly burdened with it, and willing to come to Jesus Christ for healing, for under that sin the will is so wounded that they have no desire to Christ. O inestimable mercy! The sickest sinner is capable of a perfect cure, There be thousands and ten thousands now in heaven and earth who said once never was any case like theirs, so dangerous, so hopeless. The greatest of sinners have been perfectly recovered by Christ. Oh mercy, never to be duly estimated. What a powerful restraint from sin is the very method ordained by God for the cure of it. By His stripes we are healed. The physician must die that the patient might live. Nor the thing but the blood, the precious blood of Christ, is found in heaven or earth able to heal us. This blood of Christ must be freshly applied to every new wound sin makes upon our souls. Oh, think of this again and again, you that so easily yield to the solicitations of Satan. Is it so easy and so cheap to sin as you seem to make it? Doth the cure of souls cost nothing? True, it is free to us, but was it so to Christ? No, it was not. He knows the price of it, though you do not. If you renew your sins, you must also renew your sorrows and repentance. You must feel the anguish and pain of a troubled spirit again, things with which the saints are acquainted, of which they may say, as the church, Remember my affliction, the wormwood and the gall, my soul hath them still in remembrance. Lamentations 3.19 Yes, and if you will be remiss in your watch, and so easily incur new guilt, though a pardon in the blood of Christ may heal your souls, yet some rod or other, in the hand of a displeased father, shall afflict your bodies, or smite you in your outward comforts. If Christ be the only physician of sick souls, what sin and folly is it for men to take Christ's work out of His hands and attempt to be their own physician? Thus do those that superstitiously endeavor to heal their souls by afflicting their bodies. Not Christ's blood, but their own must be the plaster or the bandage. As blind Papists, so many carnal and ignorant Protestants strive by confession or restitution or reformation, stricter course of life, to heal those wounds that sin hath made upon their souls without any respect to the blood of Christ. This course shall not profit them at all. It may divert for a time, but can never heal them. The wounds so skinned over will open and bleed again. God grant it be not when our soul shall be out of the reach of the true and only remedy. How sad is the case of those souls to whom Christ has not yet been a physician. They are mortally wounded by sin and are likely to die of their sickness. No saving, healing applications have hitherto been made unto their souls. This is the case of the greatest part of mankind, yes, of them that live under the discoveries of Christ in the gospel. What cause have they to be glad that are under the hand and care of Christ in order to a cure, and who do find, or may upon due examination find, their souls are in a very hopeful way of recovery? Can we rejoice when the strength of a natural disease is broken and nature begins to recover ease and vigor again? And shall we not rejoice much more when our souls begin to mend, recover sensibly, and all comfortable signs of health and life appear upon them? This is particularly when the understanding which was ignorant and dark hath the light of life beginning to dawn into it. such as that in 1 John 2.27, when the will that was rebellious and inflexible to the will of God is brought to comply with that holy will, saying, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? When the heart which was harder than an adamant is now brought to contrition for sin and can mourn as heartily over it as ever a father did for a dead son, a beloved and only son. When its adversations from God are gone, they at least have no such power as once they had. But the thoughts are now fixed much upon God, and spiritual things begin to grow pleasant to the soul. When times of duty come to be longed for, and the soul is never better pleased than in such seasons, when the hypocrisy of the heart is purged out, so that we begin to do all that we do heartily as unto the Lord and not unto men, when we begin to make conscience of secret sins and of secret duties, when we have an equal respect to all God's commandments, and our hearts are under the holy and awful eye of God, which doth indeed over all our souls. Oh, what sweet signs of a recovering soul these are. Surely such are in the skillful hand of the great physician, who will perfect what yet remains to be done. Amen. That's from the whole works of the Reverend John Flavel, written in 1820. Thank you so much for being with us again. I hope that you will write to the Mount Zion Bible Church to have the periodical sent to you every three months. Just send an email to chapel at mountzion.org. And this is the Hackberry House of Choson. Lord willing, we'll talk again real soon. Bye-bye.