“For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh: How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?”
(Hebrews 9:13-14)
November 2022 was a hard month. On November 11th we remembered our son who died on that day back in 1993. On November 2, 2022, I lost my mom to cancer seven weeks after her diagnosis. Days later, Linde’s mom suffered a major heart attack and had to be rushed to the hospital for a life-saving procedure. November is turning out to be the month where we are forced to reflect upon life’s brevity and fragility. My mother-in-law’s heart attack reminds me of two major preconditions for the continued existence of human life, namely, blood and breath. The cells that make up our body’s tissues and organs need oxygen or they will quickly die. In a staggeringly complicated process, the oxygen in the air we breathe enters our lungs and is from there transferred into our blood. The heart, an engineering marvel in its own right, pumps the blood with its life-sustaining oxygen to all parts of the body. In this way, blood and breath work together, twin components of an intricate and yet irreducibly complex system. It is a system that defies any naturalistic explanation; it cannot be the product of anything less than a super intellect. The fact that the system fails at times, in events like heart attacks and strokes, also cries out for explanation. The Bible tells us that the entrance of sin into the world caused a curse to fall upon the entire created order (Romans 8:18-22). Nothing in the world works quite like it was intended to. As time goes on, our bodies inevitably begin to fail. The good news is that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19); all who trust in Him for salvation will be saved from sin’s condemnation now (Romans 8:1) and the rest of its deadly effects in the future (Matthew 13:43; Philippians 3:20-21; 1 John 3:1-3). The twin preconditions for the amazing blessing of eternal life are similar to the twin preconditions for human life in the present dispensation. Just as we need blood and breath to survive physically now, our eternal life depends upon the shed blood of Jesus on the cross, which cleanses us from all sin and unrighteousness (Ephesians 1:7; Hebrews 9:12, 22; Revelation 5:9; 14:4), as well as the quickening, baptizing, and sealing ministry of the Blessed Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5; 1 Corinthians 12:13; Ephesians 1:13; 4:30), Who is Himself typified as breath or wind (John 3:7-8; 20:22; Acts 2:2). Everywhere we look, even in times of great trial, we see myriads of things that remind us of the Lord’s marvellous work in creation and redemption. May God direct our thinking to many such things today, for His glory and for our encouragement.
God bless you, dear saints,
pastor john
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