BREAKING THE ALABASTER BOX

By John Hames

Chapter 1

BREAKING THE ALABASTER BOX

"Then Jesus six days before the Passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made Him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with Him. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair: and the house was filled with odor of the ointment." – John 12: 1-3

"But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." – Luke 10:42

"And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head." – Mark 14:3

The two sisters of Bethany loved Jesus. Their home was always open to Him. Their hospitality and service of love proved irrevocably their devotion and spiritual standing. While all of this is granted, immediately on closer examination, we see a great difference in their lives. The road, so to speak, forks. The likeness changes suddenly into two dissimilar religious lives.

Martha illustrates one life. The Scriptures bring out facts about her life and conduct that find a strange response and recognition by the people who are only regenerated. Let us notice a few things said about her. "She was cumbered about much serving." Oh, that much serving, and that heavy feeling that arises often as a consequence in the Christian life! The wrinkles and care-worn expression in many Christian faces spell the sentence "cumbered about much serving." Her eyes were on her sister. One of the hardest things in the world for a regenerated person to do is to keep his eyes off his brother. Then her grief was increased by having "to serve alone." This is a great trial to the soul that has not passed into the Heavenly zone of the sanctified life. Again she was "careful and troubled about many things." Her life was full of anxiety, worry, fretting, and fear about the past, present, and future. This is true of multitudes of professed Christians today.

Mary illustrates the sanctified life. The things said about her bring out the hidden traits of her character.

1. She gave her most costly possession to Christ. Many Christians keep back the costly things. They will give of their money, but withhold their name and reputation. However, the sanctified soul feels there is nothing too good or costly for Christ.

2. Mary broke the alabaster box because she would not use it for anything else. If she had only taken the lid off, it could have been used for something else; but she made a complete sacrifice, and broke the box. When Moses smote the rock with his rod, he broke the rock, and the water poured out. Gideon's three hundred men broke their pitchers to let out the light. Jesus broke His own body on the cross that He might save the world. So those who would have the highest Christian experience must break their boxes. You will find that the saints of all ages have had to break their boxes, and the Devil does not like that.

There are many boxes we must break, if we would receive the Holy Ghost. There is the Church box, the sectarian – the ecclesiastical box, the financial box, the social box, all of which should be broken for Him. Then you must break the box of affections. Many times the affections are set on things that are wrong. Now God does not destroy our affections or freeze them. But He gently unwinds them from earthly things, purifies, and sets them on things above.

3. Notice the fragrance. When Mary broke the alabaster box and poured it on Jesus, the house, we are told, was filled with the sweet odors. When Jesus poured out His life on Calvary, earth and Heaven were filled with the fragrance of His life. The fragrant oil which she poured out is a type of the Holy Ghost. So the Holy Ghost brings to us the very fragrance and sweetness of Heaven. There is something about the sanctified, Spirit-filled life which cannot be put into print. "It is the breath of Jesus in the heart, the vapor from the river of life, the perfume of the Rose of Sharon, the elixir of prayer. This is far more in the sight of God than all the outward hulls of religious form and teaching which only serve as the alabaster box to this divine spikenard of Heavenly love." The holy anointing oil compounded of myrrh, calamus, cinnamon, and cassia made a most delightful odor. "But it was not as fragrant as Holiness itself. Think of perfect love, perfect peace, perfect faith, and perfect joy all poured into a purified heart. The fragrance of such a life soon steals through the home, is felt in the church, distributes itself through the community, and even goes around the world. The spices of Ceylon can be smelled leagues away at sea, but the perfume of a Holy life crosses seas and lands, belts the whole world, and even after hundreds of years is as fragrant as the first day it started forth to bless mankind." The sweet incense consisted of select ingredients. When these were crushed and beaten into a fine powder and finally offered by fire, the sweet fragrance arose to fill the Holy place in the old tabernacle. In like manner when God takes us and breaks us and puts us through the fiery tests, it is then our prayers and tears ascend up to God as a sweet smelling savor.

Years ago a young successful preacher became rich. He was engaged to a very wealthy lady. When she became sick and died, it broke his heart. He lay on the floor for hours each day for two or three months weeping and fasting. Later he went to India as a missionary and gave away his great wealth to those people. For forty years living in a small room he served God and those people. William Taylor met him and led him into the "more excellent way." He renounced Calvinism and joined the Arminian Methodist Church and was known all over Bombay as a devoted saint of India. God often breaks our plans and our affections that we may pour out our prayers, our love, and tears on the feet of Jesus.

4. She sat at His feet. What a picture of contentment, rest, quietness, and humility. "It was the nestling attitude of a little child sitting at a mother's knee."

There is a beautiful grace known as "Sanctification" which takes all worry and unrest out of the heart and deposits within a rest and peace which cannot be described. A sense of unmistakable fullness is realized. The consciousness fills one that every part of the soul and body has been reached. There is a sense of being inwardly healed, for an exquisite experience of purity is felt. The soul fairly melts with a baptism of perfect love, and through it all and in it all, the Spirit of God whispers to the soul this is sanctification.

5. She "heard His words." What words of comfort, words of love, sweetness, and tenderness. "She sat at His feet and drank in the deep ocean meaning of His words, and gazed into the depths of His Spirit, until she was nigh beside herself with divine fervor. She yearned to give the highest possible expression of her personal love for the Master. Her act at the banquet beautifully illustrates those believers who reach the highest state of divine contemplation and those whose love becomes a burning flame."

There is special blessing pronounced on those who have ears to hear what the Spirit has to say. Listen to the prophet Isaiah, "Hear and your soul shall live." How simple! How sublime! "The river of crystal love flowing into my panting spirit simply by listening to the ripple of its flow. Cease your useless struggling; hush the self-noise of your self-will and heart; get quiet; listen to Jesus – only let His words float into your ears, down into your heart, and it will heal. If our entire soul will but hearken to Christ, His word will heal our soul, His voice will soften and pacify us." Oh, to sit at His feet and like Mary of old, drink in the ocean meaning of His words.

6. Mary chose the good part. We are told "Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." Luke 10:42. Here you have the key to Mary's marvelous life. She chose the more excellent way. The word "chosen" in the above quotation explains the difference between the two sisters in Bethany. Some would try to make it appear that the difference between Mary and Martha was a purely natural one – a mere question of temperament. This is contrary to the teaching of the Bible. This would make God unjust. No person can choose his temperament. There are three factors in every life which can make or break us: heredity, environment, and willpower. Heredity has to do with our natural birth. Environment has to do with our surroundings and associates. But, if we will make God our choice forever, we can be made a partaker of Divine Nature. Then God will work miracles in our lives. God can take a Jacob with a fallen twist in his very nature and by conquering and subduing him, change him into a prince overnight.

Notice the power of choice in some Bible characters. "Ruth and Orpah go for awhile side by side, and Orpah seems much more devoted of the two.

Notwithstanding all her kisses and caresses, Orpah goes back to her heathen people and her earthly life. Ruth, with her quiet, unostentatious manner chooses the people of God and cleaves unto her mother-in-law. Thus her whole nature moves on majestically in the line of God's covenant and blessing, and the heir of all the promises.

The secret of Moses' life can be summed up in one word "choice." He was the great lawgiver and leader of Israel. It was he who went up into the Holy Mount and spent forty days with the Lord. He brought with him a perfect pattern of the tabernacle with its golden candlesticks, the golden altar of incense, the Holy of Holies with its golden ark of the covenant. Moses gave to us a set of moral codes which has affected every civilized nation on earth. But all of this dates back to one word "choice." As he looked out over Egypt with her great wealth and pomp and glory, we are told by the Hebrew writer, "By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season."

God seems to take a peculiar delight in showing His love to the heart that wholly chooses Him. It must be a single choice. Christ describes it in the words, "One thing is needful." Saint Paul says, "This one thing I do." "If there be but one thing needful, then all other things and beings are not needful. They can come or go, can smile or frown, can be for us or against us, and all the time the soul in the enjoyment of perpetual love and presence of Christ is amazingly lifted above the force and influence of them all. The trouble about many things is gone. A great contentment and indescribable satisfaction reigns within."

7. Mary had an independent blessing: Jesus said "which shall not be taken from her." Thank God for such a blessing. The Comforter has come to abide. The Dove of Peace spreads her wings within the inner chambers of the human heart and lifts her angelic voice with Heaven's sweetest message "Peace be still." We enter into a Divine Sabbath of rest and unfailing sunshine which has no end, though the earthly sun hide its face for days. Things of time and earth fail to disturb this inner repose. All through the trying hours of the day the blessing holds good like a golden lump of honey which seems to have been lodged right in the middle of the heart dripping sweetness and tenderness into all parts of the entire being as the hours of the day go by. The blessing is with us in the morning hours, and all through the day this undergirding is realized. The cares of life and the assaults of men and devils vanish as the waves split and fall to the right and left under the irresistible prow of the rushing steamer. Christ has a blessing for each of us that shall never be taken from us without our consent. We die with it in the soul, enter Heaven with it, and go through all eternity enjoying it. No one can take it from us as long as we choose to keep it. Trouble may beat upon us; tongues may slander us; riches may take to themselves wings and flee away and leave us in poverty; old age may creep into this temple of clay; but nothing shall be able to rob us of this Pearl of Great Price. It abides with us forever.

8. One more thing about Mary's experience. The blessing came back on her own head. When she broke the alabaster box and anointed the feet of Jesus, she then wiped His feet with her hair. We see in this act that the blessing and sweetness came back on her own head. In like manner when we pour out our prayers, love, and money to bless others, the blessing to a very great extent comes back into our own lives. This will continue to draw interest as long as we live here or hereafter. In the words of a great saint I heard preach nearly forty years ago concerning the poured-out life: "The love that we pour out comes back on our own head. The love that Jesus poured out will come back on His own head. The tears you shed and the prayers you offer will come back to you. The life poured out will come back like birds coming home to roost."

Jesus said Mary had anointed Him against the day of His burial, but Mary did not know she had done that. A child of God will often do and say things he did not intend to do. A preacher will say things under the guidance of the Holy Spirit away beyond his knowledge, and things he did not intend to say because God is dealing with the people. It is a wonderful thing to serve God. It is a wonderful thing to have the Holy Ghost in you. If you belong to God, you will write words, you will pray prayers, you will preach sermons, you will give money, you will do many things without being conscious why you are doing them. It is a wonderful thing to pray and to think and to walk and to teach and to live in the Holy Ghost. Jesus gave Mary a memorable reputation. He said, "Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her." It is two thousand years since this incident and Mary is still remembered by this act. God tells us that the memory of the just shall live forever.

Dear friends, God wants to give you a blessing that will transform your life. Do you know there are gifts, talents, and powers lying hidden away in your soul which will never be discovered until they are quickened by the Holy Ghost? When this takes place, oh, what praying; oh, what preaching, what unction, what power, what liberty and Heavenly anointing! Your words, looks, and manners will bless people. I trust the Holy Ghost will reveal these things to your hearts and give each one of you a Mary-like experience which shall not be taken away from you.

Chapter 2

THE BLOOD OF JESUS

"But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin." – 1 John 1:7

Faith in the precious blood of the Lord Jesus is the touchstone by which to test every man's religious faith and character. We hear a great deal of nice talk about Jesus as our example and His beautiful life, but we must not stop short of Calvary. Let us remember that blood is life, and the life of Jesus reaches us only through His shed blood. Hence, a crimson salvation is the only salvation. To reject Christ's blood is to reject the whole plan of salvation and the three Divine Persons in the Godhead. Therefore, salvation or damnation hinges on our attitude toward the shed blood. All the types and shadows of the Old Testament pointed toward this. The bleeding sacrifices and smoking altars were just God's kindergarten, leading up to Calvary; then as we pass over into the New Testament, we still trace the crimson stream.

John hardly gets started in his letter, before, with a holy hush, he comes to "The Blood." There are two outstanding things in his Epistles: One is the dark stain of sin, and the other is the precious blood of Jesus. First, he introduces us to the sin question. "The fact of sin is closely bound up with the problem of redemption. Sin constitutes the necessity for redemption, and the degree in which we realize the turpitude of sin will determine our view of our need of a Saviour. In John's thinking, sin is not an accident, it is not a mistake, it is not a slip in the cog of development, but it is an awful reality."

John has several things to say about the blood. First, that it cleanses. No sweeter music ever fell on mortal ears than this comforting message. It is sweeter than the sound of the evening bells or the note of the silver bugle which announced the dawn or the birth of the Year of Jubilee, when all debts were canceled and all slaves went free. Sin burdens the conscience, saddens the life. Many a man would give his millions and even part with his right hand, if by so doing, he could get rid of a stinging conscience. All kinds of methods have been resorted to in order to purify the soul. In the dark ages, long whips were plaited and faithfully applied to the bare body, thinking that sin would evacuate the soul. But John says that it is the blood that cleanses. This verse ought to cheer millions of human hearts. There is nothing in penance, tears, suffering or punishing the body to cleanse the soul from sin. There never has been a soul yet that was saved from all sin that did not come the blood route. The Bible says that "The blood cleanseth." and that is enough whether we understand the process or not. Is it not strange after God made such a wonderful statement about the blood that men will look elsewhere for cleansing! There is nothing in the flight of years to cleanse the soul. Time is no Saviour. It is the blood, and the blood alone that cleanseth.

The second comforting thought made about the blood is that it cleanseth from all sin. This goes further and deeper than the first statement. No matter what the sin is or what caused one to sin, if they will bring it all to God with a Godly sorrow, the blood will cleanse from the last and least remains of sin. The blood can go deeper than the serpent trail has ever gone.

The third comforting thought made about the blood is that it cleanseth from all sin now. Then, if it cleanseth now, why should one wait a week, day, hour, or a single minute for the soul purification and restoration? This one verse dashes to pieces the old Dark Age Theology, where Time, Bodily Humiliation, Peter's Pence and Pilgrimages were invested with atoning, saving, sanctifying power, and so Christ was robbed of His glory. To this day, evangelical Christianity is burdened with these old, false, middle-age teachings. God did not say when I see your good work, or how much you have fasted and prayed and suffered, "I will pass over you," but the blood and the blood alone cleanseth from sin. The heart that believes this is sure to find light, liberty, purity, and everlasting victory.

The fourth comforting thought is that the blood atones for mistakes, blunders and human failures. Numbers of God's people have made shipwreck of their faith right here. Because of some mistake or blunder after they received the light and blessing of sanctification, and for the lack of teaching on this subject, they cast away their confidence, gave up in despair and went into soul darkness. Let it be known that a soul does not forfeit its justification, nor sanctification because of some failure, provided they will go at once to the blood.

I will never forget, to the dying hour, some forty years ago, how I was lifted out of doubt and despair, after going through almost the tortures of the damned because I had grieved the Spirit in sharply rebuking a brother at a prayer meeting. I apologized and asked for forgiveness, but Satan rushed in like a dark cloud and tormented me with the thought that I had committed the unpardonable sin. Through doubting, I lost the victory out of my soul. God only knows the lonely hours I spent in prayer in the grove; not knowing the secret of going to the blood. It was my thinking that it took suffering and agony to get God's favor again. However, the way only grew darker, because I was depending on my prayers, tears, and suffering to restore me. Great is the mistake! It does not take suffering to restore us; the blood and nothing but the blood does the work. There is nothing in the bodily mortification, and the flight of years to cleanse the soul.

During these three months of darkness which hung over me like a thick cloud, in the providence of God, someone presented me with that great book, "Heart Talks," by that wonderful author, B. Carradine. When I came to the chapter on "The Cleansing Blood," the writer went on to say,

"Deplorable as it is to fall into sin, yet God never intended that we should sink in paralyzing despair and perish. In case of wrong thought, word or deed, He would have His grieving child instantly confess all to Him, promise to be more faithful in the future, and believe that the blood of Christ cleanseth him from his most humiliating of sins, a sin committed after the reception of grace and light and Christ has become the Lord and Master of the heart and life. Thank God for the blood that cleanseth even there!"

Such a wonderful statement was like a divine flash from the skies. Right then and there my heart melted and a fountain of tears broke loose. Amidst the falling tears, I looked up and cried out, "Lord, I do believe what thy word says about the blood!" No sooner had I uttered these words than the Spirit, like a flash of lightning, reappeared. All darkness and gloom was immediately gone; the Heavenly choir began to sing and a peace like a river with increasing power flowed through my soul.

Reader, that has been over forty years ago, and I have never quoted that passage about the blood over once or twice without the warm spirit answering to the blood.

Oh, when will men believe what God says about the precious blood? "If the heavy hearts, silent lips, drooping souls, troubled consciences and sin-defiled people around us could just let this wander into their minds and hearts, that the blood cleanseth from all sin now, they would be transformed in one moment into joyful-lipped, sunny-hearted Christians." Thank God for the great remedy, the cleansing, keeping blood, the Omnipotent Grace in Jesus Christ, which cleanseth now and will continue to cleanse till the clouds part and He comes again. Right now, while I pen these lines, He is saving thousands of souls throughout the world. With such a Redeemer and Saviour, how can the heart sink and the faith fail? Let us leave our case in His hands, who is able to keep that which we have committed unto Him, and present us unblameable in love before the throne with great joy, in that Day.

Chapter 3

THE BLOOD OF SPRINKLING

“And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.” – Heb. 12:24

In the above passage I want to call your attention to three remarkable statements.

I. The Apostle is drawing a contrast between the two Pentecosts. The first Pentecost was at Mount Sinai when the law was given and when God wrote the Ten Commandments on tables of stone.

At the Pentecost at Mount Zion the Holy Ghost was poured out in all of His fullness, and He wrote the law of God in the hearts of believers and filled them with an inward power, enabling them to walk in His statutes and to keep His commandments.

The full baptism of the Holy Spirit puts the believer into a whole world of supernatural things in his heart and mind and the interior depths of his character. Another effect of Pentecost was that of clarifying all the Christian graces in the soul. Before Pentecost we know the Disciples had faith, humility, love, hope, zeal, and good works, and other Christian virtues; but we notice in their conduct there was a tremendous mixedness. However, after Pentecost they manifested in their lives the various graces free from admixture; so the graces of the Lord Jesus were poured into them and ran through them like a clear, limpid stream without any other mud in the current.

II. The contrast between the two covenants. "And Jesus the mediator of the new covenant." The first covenant, properly speaking, began at Sinai, and under it Israel flourished and grew to be a great nation. But concerning the first covenant, the Apostle brought several objections to it. One was that it could not make the "Comers (Worshipers) perfect." Second, the old sin was not "purged away." Third, there was a constant "remembrance of sins." All of which is well understood by the regenerated man. He feels and knows that he is a Child of God; yet, there is a lack. The first blessing does not bring satisfaction and Christian perfection. In spite of all the preaching and trying to make himself believe that he got it all at conversion and that he has no need for a second work of grace, there is still that painful fact that the "old man" is not yet purged or burned out of the soul with the baptism of fire and that he has a constant remembrance of an inward foe.

The second covenant began at Pentecost. The distinguishing feature of this new covenant is in the fact that God promises to write His law upon our hearts and to "put it in our inward parts." The old covenant was written on tables of stone, but did not give power to obey God's laws. But the new covenant is put within our innermost being and becomes a part of our very nature. It enters into our affections and our desires. In Ezekiel we read: "I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them." This is something different from the new spirit and the new heart. It is God Himself coming to dwell in the new spirit by His own Spirit and bringing a constraining and efficient power that causes the soul to walk in holiness and enables him to keep His commandments. Notice in this new covenant God is the causing power. As the mainspring in a fine watch which causes all the delicate works to move in harmony and to keep correct time, God's Spirit within the believer causes him to be patient, Heavenly-minded, even tempered, sweet-spirited, and victorious under all circumstances. This is the great work of the Holy Ghost. This is the meaning of Sanctification.

God's Spirit within us with His radiating light and glory constitutes a Pentecostal experience. Dr. B. Carradine says:

"The law of God is written in the heart and mind. it would be hard to describe this to one not having the second covenant experience. The Bible becomes a new book, an illustrated one at that, and seems to be embedded in the mind. There seems to be a Bible within. There is a delightful agreement with the soul of such a man and all that is written in the printed word of God. Truly, the Word is now hidden in the heart, and he finds it sweeter than honey or the honeycomb.

"In the better covenant of Sanctification, the principle of decay is taken out; the balm of Gilead is placed within the soul; there is a constant conscious stream of life, strength, health in the Spirit; a welling-up joy in the heart; freshness in the experience, hallelujahs in the soul and on the lips; and Christ and Heaven everywhere."

III. The third thing we want to notice is the contrast between the two kinds of blood; that which was shed under the law and cried for justice and that which was shed for the sins of the whole world and cried for mercy.

With relation to the blood of Jesus there are two statements made: First, it is the blood of "sprinkling" and second, it is the blood that "speaks." Let us notice prayerfully "The Blood of Sprinkling." Here is a truth almost too deep for human brain to fathom. The blood of Jesus Christ means the life of Christ. The life of Christ was given for us through the shedding of His blood and the atonement of His death on Calvary. But the life of Christ is imparted to as through the blessed Holy Ghost. This truth was brought out in the twenty-fourth chapter of Exodus. When Moses was about to take the leaders of Israel up into the Mount, he offered sacrifices of oxen, pouring out half of their blood at the base of the Mount on the Altar, thus signifying Christ's blood for us on the cross. But he took the other half of the blood in basins and carried it up into the Mount, sprinkled it upon the people and the book of the covenant; thus sprinkled with blood, they went up into the very presence of God; and were received with love and favor.

Instead of the thunders and lightning and the voice of trumpet which waxed louder and louder, which the day before made Mount Sinai a scene of terror, the blue Heavens without a cloud hovered over them as a celestial dome, and God received them into His presence, feasted them at the royal banquet; and we read "Upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not His hand, and they saw God and did eat and drink." Now the sprinkled blood in this beautiful scene is different from the shed blood poured out on the altar. It represents the life of Christ imparted to us, making us partakers of the Divine nature and fitting us for His presence. It brings us into vital union with His Divine person and reproduces in us the Christlike life within us.

Says Dr. G. D. Watson:

"Jesus washes our sins away by His own blood, His blood is His life. You take a grape and look at it. It is full of juice. You then squeeze it and out comes the juice. Jesus Christ, figuratively speaking, was that grape, and He allowed the law of God and Divine justice to break Him on Calvary. and in the Garden till out came the blood, and the blood is the life. Every atom of life in your body is in the blood. His blood washes away sins and original sin. Ignorant people that do not know God nor the Bible say they do not like the blood; Unitarians, Christian Scientists, and higher critics do not like the blood. It is the blood that is the life in everything. The life of that tree is in the blood – the sap. The blood is the sweetest part of the bogy, the best part, the grandest part, the fundamental part. God makes the blood first, then builds and builds, and that is life The best, the sweetest, and most valuable thing in every living creature is the blood. Jesus washes us with His own blood, opens up His own being, takes the sweetest, the warmest, the innermost of His own body and pours the juices of His own existence to wash away our sins and our depravity."

Listen to the words of Jesus: "Whosoever drinketh my blood has eternal life; and I will raise him up in the last day. He that drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me and I in him." It is not merely the death of Jesus for us, but it is His risen life imparted to us every moment. Just as in medical science, they can take blood from one person's veins and transfer it to another's veins, and the patient receives new and fresh life. The life is in the blood. That is the reason that God makes so much of the blood of His Son. Oh, how we need that Divine life poured into our weary souls and into our cold affections and every power of our being, quickening and keeping the heart warm and clean from day to day.

One more thing about the blood. It is the blood that "speaks." Blood not only has life, but blood has a voice. The blood of Abel could talk; God could hear the blood drops as they fell and God said, "Cain, where is thy brother .... I hear the voice, a feeble, painful, pitiful cry coming up from the ground." You may wonder why the Apostle speaks of the blood of Abel in connection with Mount Zion. The Apostle in describing Mount Zion suddenly goes back and talks about the blood of Abel. He mentions the two Mounts – Mount Sinai and Mount Zion. Why does he do this? Because Mount Sinai was law, righteousness, and justice; and the blood of Abel cried for law and justice. But when Jesus hung on the cross, the blood flowing from His hands and feet, he cried, "Father, forgive them."

Every drop of blood that flowed from His precious veins cried for mercy and forgiveness. Oh, that blood talked then and is talking today. Every time a penitent sinner pleads the blood, the blood is on the mercy seat to meet his cry with forgiveness. Then, when the believer comes with a heart cry for purity and when the conditions are met, the Holy Ghost is right there to apply the blood in sanctifying power. It avails not only for our sins and our depravity, but for our mistakes, failures, and shortcomings. As long as we live and walk in the light we are under the mercy seat of the precious blood, which cleanseth now and will continue to cleanse as we keep step with God forevermore.

BLOOD I WILL PASS OVER YOU"

“And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt.” – Exodus 12:13

In the Old Testament God took great care to teach His people that the cleansing of the soul could only be had through the blood. This was the meaning of every smoking altar and the rivers of blood which flowed from the Jewish altars. On the dark night when Israel left Egypt, blood played a big part in their deliverance. In the twelfth chapter of the book of Exodus, we have a full description of the slaying of the Passover Lamb and the sprinkling of the blood. There are several points about the lamb and the blood which are striking and typical.

I. The lamb was to be without blemish. The Christ of Christianity was without spot or blemish. This was true of His human body. Christ could have lived on earth ten thousand years and have been as fresh and pure as the June rose. "Thou hast the dew of thy youth."

II. At the appointed time the Lamb was to be slain by the whole congregation of Israel. Jesus the Lamb of God was delivered by the Jewish Sanhedrin and publicly crucified about the time of the evening sacrifice. Ten thousand could have witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus. The Apostle said, "For this thing was not done in a corner." Acts 26:26. We are not saved by His example but His death.

III. The sprinkled blood. They were to take the blood and sprinkle it on the doorpost of their houses. It was their only safety. Every member of the household was safe where the blood was sprinkled. Thank God, we can go into a covenant with God for our whole house. "The promise is unto you and your children." Hold on to God for them. Hold up His Word before Him. Plead its promises. God cannot deny His word; He cannot deny His Son, and He cannot deny a God-inspired prayer, one that is formed in the Spirit, fanned into a Heavenly flame until it is caught up into that intercessory current and borne to the very ear and heart of God. Sprinkle the blood by faith over the past, present, and future and claim your household for God.

IV. Eat the whole lamb. The next thing was the eating of the Lamb. In like manner we are to get saved and cleansed by the blood and then feed and feast on the Lamb. Love is the very blood of spiritual life. Truth is perceived by the intellect, digested by the faith, and through the constant in-breathing of the divine Spirit, this truth digested is turned into love which constitutes the very substance of the spiritual man.

Notice, the whole Lamb was to be eaten with the legs and pertinence thereof and nothing of it was to remain until the morning. Just so we are to eat all of God's Lamb. That is eat all of His divinity, His Virgin Birth, His life miracles, His death and glorious resurrection, ascension, and second coming. Is it not strange how the masses of professed Christians will accept the new birth but ignore the second crisis. The Apostle sounds a note of warning to the Galatian Christians for said he, "Are you so foolish, having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh?" They took their place as hopeless sinners at the foot of the Cross, and then they went about trying to sanctify themselves by their own self-denials and ineffectual struggles. Well did the sainted Dr. A.B. Simpson write nearly forty years ago a timely warning:

"The same old doctrine of evolution has got into the teachers of the Gospel. They are telling that they do admit a miracle of regeneration, but that our subsequent experience is just a development. Yes, even some of the scientists admit a creation somewhere, but after that the world can take care of itself. So they tell us that when a soul is regenerated, the work is complete; you have everything in embryo and after that it is just a development. By a progress of growth in grace you will become a Saint, and if you do not you wilt at least grow old, and the course of nature and the power of passions will decay; and if you do not become holy you will at least become harmless.

“These teachers tell us at conversion we receive the Holy Spirit and that there is no such thing as a later baptism of the Holy Ghost except for special service.

“The teaching of the New Testament is very different from this vague, unsatisfactory theory. It tells us of a crisis as distinct as conversion and a new experience as marked and radical as regeneration. There is a crisis up to which we must come and through which we must pass in death and resurrection, and exchange the human for the divine and our poor imperfect struggling for God's victorious life.”

There is a remarkable passage in I Cor. 1:30, "Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus who of God is made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption." "Ye are complete in Him." – Col. 2:10. Our sanctification like every other blessing is in Him. It is not character with a little culture, slowly built up in us and then stereotyped and crystallized for life. "Christ is made unto us Sanctification." He does not give us a few virtues to cultivate and develop unto Holiness. He gives us His heart, His mind, His holiness, His indwelling life to keep us pure and holy. Christ is made unto us redemption. The word redemption has a larger meaning than our mind can conceive. It not only means deliverance from sin in its twofold nature; but redemption in Christ takes in our body. It means the Lord for the body. The resurrection life begins to reach us even here. We read, "But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that dwelleth in you."

This is the secret of divine healing. It is the life of Christ in our mortal body. Divine healing is not just a mere touch of power upon our body which restores and then leaves it to its own resources of natural strength. It is nothing less than a measure of the resurrected life, quickening, strengthening, inspiring the human frame with Divine life and vigor.

Oh, friends, let us eat all of the Lamb. You can trace the weakness of the present day Holiness movement to this very thing. They have failed to eat the whole Lamb. Eat all of His Virgin Birth, glorious life, sacrificial death, and glorious resurrection.

Christ is not only everything in redemption, but He is everything in Heaven. The attraction in Heaven is not golden streets and walls of jasper but "The Lamb." You will doubtless remember John the Beloved when he started to describe the City of God. He began with the walls and the gates, then coming inside he said that the streets were paved with gold; when suddenly lifting up his eyes, he said, "I saw a Lamb." Have you noticed he never said any more about golden streets? The Lamb had absorbed all of his attention. For the moment he lost sight of everything else. So shall it be with us when we enter the gates into the City. The one great theme song will be unto Him who loved us and washed us in His own blood. To Him be glory throughout all ages world without end. Amen.

Chapter 5

THE HOLY GHOST: PRESERVER OF SOUND DOCTRINE

The Holy Ghost is essential to the preservation of sound doctrine. The Holy Ghost is the only person in the universe who is authorized to reveal Jesus. He is authorized to guard the Lord Jesus from misrepresentation and misunderstanding on one hand; and authorized to reveal His excellency and personality and grace on the other hand.

The Apostle plainly states in I Corinthians 12:3, "No man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed; and no man can say Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Ghost." That is, no matter however highly cultured and educated he may be, without the quickening power of the Holy Spirit he cannot know that Jesus is Divine. It is not for the lack of education that men do not know God, but it is for the lack of the inner intuition, or that God-sense which is lacking in every unregenerate person. The mere cold intellect can never know the things of God. It is too dull to grasp Divinity. This brings us up to our subject, The Holy Ghost – the preserver of sound doctrine.

The Holy Ghost in the believer vitalizes and makes real to the inner consciousness all the great truths of the Bible. He takes the living Christ and reveals Him in all His beauty to the cleansed heart. It is the great work of the Holy Ghost to take events that took place nearly two thousand years ago, such as the Virgin Birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, and make them as real to us as if they happened just yesterday.

There is abroad in the world and in the Church today, the same God that made the Bible, the same Holy Ghost that made Calvary, the same Holy Ghost that made the incarnation, and that caused the birth of Jesus. It is the same Holy Ghost that filled Him at the baptism and in His life, and that inspired His words, and the same Holy Ghost through whom the Bible says He died – for Jesus died by the help of the Holy Ghost. Jesus, through the eternal Spirit, offered Himself up unto God, and the same Holy Ghost that was with Him in life, and that walked with Him and was with Him on the Cross, was the same Holy Ghost that raised Him from the dead. That same Personality is here today and in this earth and in all believers' hearts.

The great masses of church members, and some so-called ministers, are as dead as a stone to these eternal realities. Christ is just a being that once lived and died; that is all, and he does not mean any more to them than Washington or Lincoln, but to the heart that has crowned Him as Lord of all, He is a warm, personal, living Christ. The world and the church are starving and dying for just such a Christ.

Then we are told that the Holy Ghost not only reveals Jesus to us, but He also protects His Divinity. Says the Apostle: "No man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed." That is, no man or set of men can have the Holy Spirit abiding with them without honoring Jesus. That leads me to say that all those modern preachers, destructive critics, writers, and professors that attack the inspired Word are void of the Spirit of God as a corpse in yonder cemetery. A heart in which the Comforter dwells is too hot to allow heresy to take root. Whenever Christ is robbed of His Divinity it paves the way for other heresies.

Deny the incarnation of God in man you tear away from him potent nobility issued by Heaven itself, and you leave Him a highly developed tadpole, an educated and trained monkey evolved into a man void of immortality. In the same way the Cross of Christ is the only correct measure of sin. If Jesus is God in human form, His death as the sin-bearer gives sin a tremendous significance. Otherwise it is a mere trifle, and its eternal punishment is offensive to reason and disgusting to the delicate moral sensibilities of our refined civilization. But what was the first step which led down from Puritanism to Atheism? It was the attempt to build up a Church without the Holy Spirit.

Says Watson: "There is in the human soul a native darkness that no amount of learning can dispel, though he walk with Solomon or talk with the bodily Saviour. Conversion cannot fully remove it; conversation with the Lord for three years could not remove it. It is something that nothing but entire sanctification of our souls will ever remove. All things combined are inadequate in removing the native darkness of the soul without Holiness. Hence we find the baptism of the Holy Ghost is the only safeguard against heresy. Without it, a man may be a heretic though he be as wise as Solomon."

Church history goes to prove that no church remains orthodox long after the Comforter is grieved away. Let any church cease to preach the doctrine of entire sanctification for a quarter of a century, and it becomes a lost art, and is finally ignored and denied. I point to Methodism for proof. What is the remedy? Let the church find an upper room and tarry until Pentecostal lightning with its tongues of Heavenly fire leap from the upper skies and burn out all uncertainties and doubt.

Pentecost proves that Jesus ascended and mounted His Father's throne a glorified man. All modern believers who have had a personal Pentecost are convinced by overwhelming proof. The Spirit takes the living, glorified Jesus and shows Him unto them." Had it not been for the Holy Ghost following up the work the resurrected Christ, Calvary with its bleeding Lamb would only have been a dim outline of God-love, which we would never have understood. But the Holy Ghost can make Jesus as real and as sweet to us as a spring morning.

Just as the shining summer sun puts all darkness to flight, so the Holy God illuminates our innermost beings until spiritual things become as real to our inner senses as the outward world is to our outward senses. When this takes place you will know beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus is the very eternal God.

Anyone who has a doubt about the Divinity of Jesus should get sanctified, and he will know that He is Divine if he does not see Him for a million years yet. The Holy Ghost takes the blood of Christ and applies it to the heart, for it is the baptism that sanctifies. At that instant you are fully sanctified, the Holy Ghost enters, but it may be sometime before He reveals all the facts in the case. When He enters in He will take the blood of Christ and reveal it to your consciousness so that you may be conscious of the blood. That may sound extravagant, but it is in the Word. Previously you have believed in the blood and accepted it as meritorious ground of salvation, but in the indwelling Comforter He gives you the fulfillment of your faith with power. You may believe in the blood without feeling it, but the Holy Ghost makes you conscious of it so that you not only believe that the blood cleanseth, but in the Spirit indwelling He makes you feel and know it cleanses; and a soul can feel that it is clean.

Through His indwelling we come into the realm of certainties. A South Carolina minister at a National camp meeting, when sanctified, said: "The uncertainties of a life time are gone. What the world is dying for is ministers to preach what they absolutely know."

In conclusion we would say, in the language of the noted scholar, Dr. Daniel Steele: "I wish I had the power to reach every Methodist on the round earth. I would say, 'Cease living on the heroism of your fathers; quit glorying in numbers; sacrificing to statistics and burning incense to the general minutes; get down upon your knees, seek and find for yourself the secret and power of your fathers, a clean heart and the endowment of power from on high, salvation free and full and a common sense theology, the beauty of which, as Joseph Cook says, is that it can be preached. Then in double quick time charge upon the hosts of sin and conquer the world for Christ.'"

Come, Holy Spirit, and fill us till Christ be formed in us, the hope of glory.

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