Well, if you have your Bibles, would you turn with me to the book of Hebrews this morning, Hebrews and chapter nine. I'd like to draw your attention to some wonderful words in Hebrews chapter nine, verse 14. We are gonna get back to Genesis, but it's not gonna be this week, obviously, and it may be in a few weeks' time. We'll see how the Lord leads. But Hebrews chapter nine this morning. Hebrews 9 verse 14, it's quite a long verse with lots of parts to it, so it's a passage in itself for preaching. It says, how much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences, from acts that lead to death so that we may serve the living God. Please keep that verse in your Bible before you. In 2023, the Marcus National Blood Services Center was opened in central Israel in the town of Ramla. And it's the most remarkable blood bank, if I can put it like that, that you'll find anywhere in the world. It's made of reinforced concrete and steel. It has blast doors with airlocks on them. And a large part of it has been built underground. It is bomb-proof, rocket-proof, nuclear, biological, and chemical-proof. It is without doubt the most heavily fortified blood bank in the entire world. And the reason for that is obvious. The Jewish people know what we all know, that blood is vitally important to all of us. You and I depend on it all the time. Even as I talk to you right now, your heart is pumping five liters of blood around your body every minute, carrying food and oxygen to your body's cells. You depend upon it for your very survival. And it's amazing stuff, blood. You know, one single drop of blood contains 250 million red cells, 13 million platelets, and 375,000 white cells, according to one book I read. And every day, it travels over nine miles around your body. I guess some of our bodies, it may even travel further. I don't know. I could tell you more about blood, but it would be in vain. But just as blood is vital to our physical life, so it is to our spiritual life, too. But not your blood. the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect, as Peter calls him in 1 Peter 1.19. It is the most vital thing in Christianity because by the blood we are saved from our sins. We're not saved from our sins by the Lord Jesus' great teaching. We're not saved from our sins by his marvelous example. We are saved from our sins by the Lord Jesus' death on the cross and the blood he spilt there for our salvation. You see, when Jesus died on the cross he died as a substitute for sinners who put their trust in him. And the Bible says that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us. so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5 verse 21. He was a substitute and when he died his blood was paying the price for our redemption, our salvation and forgiveness. So today anybody who wants to be forgiven of their sin and made right with God can put their trust in what Jesus Christ did on the cross and be forgiven in full by Jesus, by God, on account of Christ having paid for their sin. It is the most vital thing in Christianity. And so today I want to bring it to your attention again, the blood of Christ, and I want to do so from Hebrews 9 verse 14, because this verse is a part of the bigger argument of the book of Hebrews, which is to explain to the Jewish Christians who attempted in the first century after Christ to go back to Judaism, leave Christianity and go back to Judaism to avoid persecution. And they thought that they still had a great religion to go back to. But the author of Hebrews, possibly the Apostle Paul, is saying to them, why do you want to go back? He's saying everything we have in Christianity is better. We have a better person in Christ. We have a better priesthood in Christ's priesthood. We have a better principle in the principle of faith. And here in chapter nine, he even emphasizes the fact that we are saved by better blood. We're saved by the blood of Christ. And so he makes a wonderful argument here on the blood of Christ, showing Christ's blood is better in three wonderful ways. And he talks about the perfection of Christ's blood, the power of his blood, and the purpose of the blood. And I want to show you these things this morning. You know, this morning, as you know from the news, there's this terrible fire, these fires that are raging in America, in Los Angeles, and they've said that part of the problem is the low water pressure when they're trying to fight. Well, do you know what? Part of the problem in our world today is we haven't got the blood being sent out, the message of the blood being sent out. So I want to raise the water pressure, as it were, this morning and send out the message of the blood so people can trust in it today. So let's see these three things. And the first thing I want to draw your attention to is the perfection of of the blood. As it says in the first part of this verse, how much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God. You know, in Port Talbot, a lady saw this advert outside a trading estate where they were selling car tires. And she took a photograph of it and sent it into the newspaper. It says, lovely new round black tires for sale. And she obviously felt that this advert was stating the obvious. It had no spin, perhaps. And she said it was really unusual. Well, the point is this. I mean, it's just saying what tires are, isn't it? They're round tires. So what's the big deal? How is that a great advert? And it made the papers. Well, some people may say that when we're talking about Christ's blood being perfect and wonderful, we're saying something which is, well, so what? What's the big deal? You know, we hear that all the time. What's the big deal about it? But I want to tell you, it's not as obvious as that to everyone in the world. There are a lot of people who don't trust in the blood. They trust in other things. You know, in 2010, Mr. Su of Henan province in China, if I've pronounced that right, offered his brand new Subaru car to the Chinese water god by driving it from the beach into the sea until the waves covered it. That brand new car cost him 30,000 pounds, and he offered it as a sacrifice to appease the gods, as they're so called by his culture. He was thinking there was nothing he could give more than that. You know, if you go to climb Mount Everest, and count me out if you want to do that, but if you do that, you'll probably need a Sherpa guide to go up. And, you know, the Sherpas will not go on the mountain unless they first make an altar out of stones, and then they offer juniper branches and incense on it to the quote-unquote gods of the mountains to protect them from avalanches and things like that. These people are trusting in other things that they obviously feel are sufficient and good to put their trust in. And that was a bit like the Hebrews. The Hebrew Christians, the Jewish Christians, they had somehow got their eyes off Christ and they were tempted to go back to the old animal sacrifices that were being offered in the temple that was still standing in 68 AD at this time. And they thought, well, you know, those sacrifices, you know, they're good sacrifices. They can save us. But the writer to the Hebrews says, you're never gonna find better than Christ's sacrifice. It is the best sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice that you will ever be able to have. You're never gonna find better. That's why he starts off with this phrase, how much more then? How much more than what? How much more than the sacrifices that are being offered in the temple? How much more then will the blood of Christ who through the eternal spirit, you see Christ's blood was offered in the ultimate channel to God, it was offered through the Holy Spirit to God. Now, the Holy Spirit here is called the Eternal Spirit. That's interesting, isn't it? Shows that he's divine, not a force like the Jehovah's Witnesses say. He's eternal. He's not a created power. He's the Eternal Spirit. And Christ offered his blood through the Eternal Spirit, the ultimate channel to God. And he said he offered himself. So the Lord Jesus here is acting as both priest and sacrifice. So you have the ultimate priest, far better than Aaron's descendants, who are sinners themselves, but Christ isn't sinful. And Christ is the ultimate priest, offering the ultimate sacrifice, offering himself, and he offers it with the ultimate quality. It says, unblemished to God. You know, every priest had to examine the sacrifices before they were offered on the altar to make sure they didn't have any bruises or marks or a gammy leg or something like that, a dent on them or something, because you had to give God the best. Well, Jesus really is God's best. He is the unblemished one who has nothing. Even his accusers, they couldn't find anything against him. They had to make up lies against him to get him crucified by Pontius Pilate. He offered himself unblemished to God. And the simple point is this, you're not going to get a more perfect sacrifice than the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's why we know God will accept us if we come to God through his son, the Lord Jesus, because this is the ultimate offering given for sin. So don't settle for anything less. Tina Turner, the pop star, had a song that made it to number one called Simply the Best, Better Than All the Rest. And as I've been preparing this sermon this week, I've had that going around in my head because it's basically the message. He's simply the best, better than all the rest. Nothing else can do that for us except the Lord Jesus. If you don't turn to the Lord Jesus, what have you got that's going to deal with your sins? You know, William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, when he was a very old man, he was very concerned about the rejection of Christianity in our country. And he was found by his son one day sitting in a chair, weeping. And he said, father, what's wrong? And he looked at his son and he said, what are they going to do with their sins? What are they going to do with their sins? It's a thought, isn't it? If you reject Christ, what are you going to do with your sins? There's only one other person who can pay for your sins, and that's you. You'll have to pay for it in hell forever. So don't reject Christ. Take the perfect blood of Christ as your way of salvation. He's simply the best. The second thing I want to draw your attention to, which this verse teaches us about the blood of Jesus, is the power of the blood. And this comes to the heart of the verse and the heart of the message, because he goes on to say, well, he says, how much more then will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse are consciences. Other translations like the New King James says cleanse your consciences to bring it home. Cleanse your consciences from acts that lead to death. Now, we come here to the heart of the verse, as I said, and the heart of the message, because this sacrifice, this blood of Christ, can do for us what no other blood and no other sacrifice can do. It can cleanse our consciences. That's a remarkable thing, isn't it? And that's why he began with that phrase, how much more then? You see the verse before talks about ceremonial cleansing by other sacrifices. If you just go back to verse 13, you'll notice he says the blood of goats and bulls which by the way were the offerings made on the Day of Atonement, the goats and the bulls in Leviticus 16. And the ashes of a heifer, the red heifer was an offering in Numbers chapter 19, often offered at the same time on the Day of Atonement, which is when this letter was probably aimed at being read and understood by the Jewish people. He says, the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean, sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more then will the blood of Christ, and he goes on and says, cleanse our consciences from accidently to death. And his argument is this, the Old Testament sacrifices could make us ceremonially clean, but Christ can clean us inside. Now, what does it mean to be ceremonially clean? What's the difference there? Well, ceremonial cleansing is a little bit hard to try and explain. But the best way I can think of is to say it's a bit like wiping your feet or taking your shoes off when you go into someone's house. It's what you do as a mark of respect to the person, your house you're going to, don't you? You show your respect to that person. You take your shoes off, or you at least clean your shoes before you go in. And you do it as well to respect their property as well. Well, when the people were going to the temple as a show of respect to God, they would acknowledge him in the same way. They would offer sacrifices that were for ceremonial cleansing, just like wiping your shoes before you go into someone's house. You cleanse yourself before you go to worship God and bring other matters before him. And the Old Testament sacrifices could make them ceremonially clean. But Christ could cleanse inside. He can cleanse the heart from the things that we've done wrong and wash us in our standing before God. But this verse goes even beyond that to the most precious and amazing truth that I find absolutely thrills me in the book of Hebrews is this, that it cleanses Our consciences. Our consciences. What is your conscience? One little boy said, your conscience is the thing that feels really bad about you and everything else feels good. Well, the best description that I've found of a conscience is it's like a fire alarm, a smoke alarm. You know, a smoke alarm goes off as a warning, doesn't it? There's something wrong. Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. Everybody puts their fingers in their ears and say, oh, stop that noise. It's awful. I don't know about you, but our smoke alarm has a habit of doing that well and too well sometimes. And long after the event is over, it's still beeping. Is yours like that? Sometimes it can be a real nuisance. Well, sometimes our consciences can be like that too, long after we have sinned and long after we've asked God's forgiveness. They can still be hurting us very much. And they can keep us awake at night. Spurgeon said this, he said, midnight sins stare you in the face. And that's right, isn't it? You know, there's some sins, you know, you just... Oh man, I wish I d never done that. I wish I d never said that. I wish I d never thought that. How could I even pray that? You know. And we are, we are haunted by these things that we do wrong. But here we find the blood of Christ can do something that no other offering can do. It can cleanse our conscience. And this is the argument of the book of Hebrews. If you go back to verse nine, he says about this, about the Old Testament sacrifices, he says, this is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper. They could make them ceremonially clean, but they couldn't get rid of their guilty conscience. And we find the same thing in chapter 10 verse 2. It says, if it could, would they not have stopped being offered? You would only have to offer it once and that would be the end. For the worshipers would have been cleansed once for all and would no longer have felt guilty for their sins. The fact he says that they had to keep offering those sacrifices is proof that their consciences were still hurting them and nothing had cleansed them. But the power of the blood of Christ is that it can cleanse even our consciences as well as our standing with God. And this is the wonderful truth about our Savior and the power of his blood. As I often say, Jesus didn't come to rub it in, he came to rub it out. and he came to cleanse away all our sins. And when we sin, we can go to God in prayer and we can ask him to cleanse us and he will cleanse us and cleanse our consciences as well. That's a precious, precious truth. You know, sometimes we sin and make a big mess of life, don't we? This lady here had two little children. I think her name was Hayley, if I remember it rightly. Hayley Kid is her name. She has two little children. And one day, Hayley was deciding to decorate the kitchen, and so she put the children in the back garden where she could see them out the window and watch them playing in the back garden while she got the paintbrushes out and decorated the kitchen. Unfortunately, mothers do sometimes have to pop to the loo, and she popped to the loo, and she was only in the loo a minute, but when she came back in, this is what she found. Somehow the children, the toddlers had got in and got their hands on the paint and made an awful mess. Took ages to clean up, and that's just the kids. Now, you know, sometimes in life we make a big mess, don't we? And we think, what is sufficient to clean this? What is sufficient to wash this clean? Friends, I've got something. that'll make you clean again. It's the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. He will cleanse your heart and your conscience from acts that lead to death. Even public sins. You know, I found another silly thing in the paper where somebody who was responsible for putting the road markings misspelt the word entry. No entry, E-N-T-R-E-Y. Now, I had to have that pointed out to me. That was a bad spelling. But, you know what? That's the sort of thing that hurts, doesn't it? Because everybody knows you've done it. And everybody's like, look at him, look what he did. It's in the paper. Sometimes we sin big and everybody knows it. I feel for David. David the King committed adultery with Bathsheba. Everybody knew about it. Everybody knew what he did to Uriah afterwards. How could he ever be cleansed? In Psalm 51, David tells us that he looked to the Lord and the Lord washed him clean and he had restored to him the joy of his salvation. It's a wonderful thing. The Lord Jesus' blood has power to it that nothing else can shift. Nothing else can do. And you'll notice he says here, he's even able to say from acts that lead to death. Now, what are the acts that lead to death? Those are the offenses under the law which would require stoning. The worst of the crimes, the worst violations under the law. Adultery. and other such crimes. But the blood of Christ can cleanse where no other sacrifice can in full. Now dear friends, I want you to take that and believe it. Because God says it. It's true. You need to rest your faith on what God has said. God cannot make it any more true He cannot make his word any more true. It's already 100% truth. You need to rest your faith on it and find the peace of God through it. And you need to because you have an enemy called the accuser of the saints, the devil. And we read in Revelation chapter 12 that he loves to accuse the brethren. He loves to come and point the finger. and he loves to rub it in and make us hurt. You know how we overcome the devil? Revelation chapter 12 tells us. They overcame the devil, they overcame him by the blood of the lamb, by the word of their testimony. They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. They were willing to be martyrs. But they overcame the devil by the blood of the lamb. Like Martin Luther, when one time he had an apparition of the devil himself in his office. And the devil appeared, and the devil had a long scroll, like a roll of wallpaper, and on it was written all Martin Luther's sins that he could find. And Martin Luther said, what's that, devil? And he said, that's your sins. And Martin Luther said, there's more than that. And he picked up the inkpot and threw it at the apparition of the devil, and he said, and the blood of Jesus cleanses me from them all. The devil went. Now, I'm not saying you're going to get an apparition from the devil. I hope you don't. But he will come to you in your heart sometimes, and he'll say, oh, you've done a bad thing there. Oh, it's all your fault. And you need to say, the blood of Jesus cleanses me from all sin. My conscience is free because Christ has cleansed me. God's not holding it against me. No one else can. Let me tell you something. This is the truth of the word of God. You must trust in it. Don't look to your feelings, all right? Your feelings, some people say, well, I want a sign. I want a feeling. Listen, God doesn't give feelings and signs. God gives his word. Feelings can change and fluctuate. They can go up and down with your moods, your body chemistry. But the word of God, that's written, that's firm, that's sure. And the word of God says, it cleanses you from your sins. God, if you've asked the Lord to save you, if you've asked him to forgive you, And if you've asked him to forgive you of your sins as you've gone through your Christian life and you're trusting in his work, God isn't finished with you. He's just beginning. He's just beginning. He's starting again and again to keep moving forward in your life. So keep the water pressure up, as it were. Keep the blood unfocused on your conscience. Christ has cleansed you from your sin. Now the third and final thing we see here is the purpose of the blood. And the last line of this verse says this, so that we may serve the living God. The purpose of the blood of the Lord Jesus is not so we can go and do it again and again and again, though I confess that sometimes I have done. But the purpose of the blood of Christ is to liberate us to be able to serve our God. That's what it's for. Now, how does this come into reality? I'll tell you how it works. Sometimes when I'm preparing, when I come up into the pulpit, and I know full well what's come out of these lips has been unholy speech in the week before. Or what these eyes have seen has been unholy things. Or what these hands have done have been unholy things. And I come up here, and I think to myself, you're a hypocrite. Look at you, coming up here to lead these people in worship. And do you know what I have to do? I've memorized this verse because I've had to fall back on it again and again and again in my Christian life. And I have to say, the blood of Christ cleanses my conscience from acts that lead to death so that we may serve the living God. It's so I can get up and do it. So I can go out and witness. So I can. It's so I'm liberated to serve God. The devil will try and hold you back because of your sins. But God says, your sins are forgiven. Go out and serve. This is what it's for. You know, when Heather and I had the privilege of going to Canada, we went to Vancouver, and they were in the process of renewing the airport there, and it was really an airport, a new airport that was being built. And when they got to a certain stage, the airport was active, even though it was still a work in process. And do you know what? It was a fascinating thing. It showed me it doesn't have to be finished and all perfect before it can be used. And that's like us. You know, we don't have to be all finished and perfect like we're going to be in heaven before God can use us. If that was the case, then nothing would get done. The only people God has got to use on earth is imperfect people. So we all need the cleansing of the blood to be able to serve him. And this is the wonderful thing, the blood cleanses us and inspires us to serve the Lord. We can serve him. I want to serve him. He's done that for me. Don't you want to serve him? He's done this for you. There's a hymn I came across just a week or so ago. It says this, there's a work for Jesus, none but you can do. And I was so touched by that. You know, God's made me for a work that only I can do. And that's true for you as well. There's a work for Jesus, none but you can do. So you need to get out and serve him, start serving him, seek the Lord. What is it, Lord, you would have me do? That's the purpose of the blood, so you can move into an active Christian life, serving the Lord. So this is the precious blood of Christ, the most wonderful doctrine, and I've only touched one verse out of the 27 or so in the New Testament that form the doctrine of the blood. But I hope you're thrilled to see it this morning. And I want to ask before we move on to the conclusion, as I close, are you saved by the blood? You know, I find lots of people today, they're trusting in water, not in blood. They say, oh, I was christened when I was a baby. Let me tell you, water on your head won't get you into heaven. You need to be under the blood of Jesus. You need to ask him to wash you clean from your sins in the blood. If you haven't yet come to the Lord and asked him to save you, do it this morning. Put your trust in him. The Bible says, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. The blood is sufficient and powerful and perfect enough to cleanse you from all your sins. The word faith stands for forsaking all, I trust him. Forsake everything else and trust Christ only and I'll see you in heaven by the blood of Christ alone. Amen.