Now let's turn our attention to the Word of God to the book of 1 Thessalonians, where we are studying through that particular book this winter in spring, chapter 1, verse 9. For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come and then looking back to the gospel of Mark. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many, the Word of the Lord. You may be seated. Blood sacrifice is the basis of the only approach to the true and living God. Last Sunday we looked at idols and idolatry. Paul says concerning those Christians at Thessalonica is we just read in our text that they turned from idols to serve the true and the living God.
What is service to the true and living God? Last week we looked at the awfulness and the insidiousness and the subtleties of idolatry and how apt and prone we as human beings are to idolatry, to go for that which is vain and empty, to have another God before us. It's interesting in that commandment. The Lord did not say that you'll have no other God above me. He said that you'll have no other God before me. Do you see the difference? Oh it's easy to say that the true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the creator of the heaven and the earth, Lord God Almighty is above all. And I think the Israelites never failed to have God as the God above all. So they would safely say, oh we never had a God above you, oh Lord God Jehovah, you are the true and living God. We had you always as the highest of the high, the most high God. What the commandment said was, I shall have no other God before me. In other words, you shall not have a God that is in my face. You shall not have a God that is preferred to me. You shall not have a God that you serve and worship other than me. Even idolatry at its worst under the days of the wicked kings of the northern kingdom of Israel, they always had God Almighty, but they had all these other gods that we spoke of last week, the fertility gods, the nature gods, the gods of the heavens and earth, the family gods, the personal gods. They always had those right before God in priority and in position. There's a wretchedness and a vileness to idolatry, and idolatry is the primal sin of mankind. That is to seek to have some other way of living, some other way of justification, some other way of atonement, some other way of righteousness before God, in place of God. You can go all the way back to the Garden of Eaton. When in their pristine glory, Adam and Eve reflected in their nakedness the glory of God, the image and likeness of God, the creator, and they were on a shame. Then after the awful commission of sin, the sin of disobedience, they were naked and now in their shame. The glory of God had departed, the brilliance of the image of God and the likeness of God was no longer theirs and they were standing there in their humanity and in their sin, naked before God. And the first thing that Adam did was to perform a priestly act. He functioned as a priest and that is he sought to make an atonement. The word basically means to cover the caffer, the covering. He sought to cover the sin, to cover the shame, to take away the humiliation and the guilt and so he sowed fig leaves and made an apron or a covering or as the old Bible translation said, bridges. He made bridges of fig leaves. He was functioning as a priest, somehow trying to cover and somehow make acceptable to God and to hide his sin and to cover his sin. And it was absolutely an act of self-salvation. It was something he did himself. He plucked those leaves off of the tree. He sowed it into a fabric. He covered himself and Eve. He fashioned his own salvation. He covered himself in his own rightness, their righteousness, totally unacceptable to the living and the true God in whose image he had been created. When God entered the scene, he fashioned a covering for Adam and Eve. And it was a covering of skins. It was a covering of flesh and never, ever forget it. The only true atonement it's ever made for the sinfulness of mankind is a covering of skins, a covering of flesh, a covering of an incarnation, but in order to have a covering, an atonement to cover Adam, blood had to be shed. And so the slaughter of the animal from whom the skins, the hide, would come, was a shedding of blood. God made the sacrifice, a shedding of blood to cover sin and the sinner and God has never changed. His modus, upper and high, God has always required the shedding of blood and the covering of the flesh in order to have man acceptable before him, in order for man to approach him, in order for man to be right with him, in order for man to be justified. Atonement always involves the shedding of blood.
And that's precisely what our text said. You turn from idols to serve the true and living God in the approach to the living God and the true God is always an approach of sacrifice. Let me fast forward just about as fast as I can. That's what the coming of Christ is all about. Jesus said that he came not to be served, but to serve. And by the way, the basic idea of serve is to worship and to bow down. And Jesus came in human flesh, skins, hide in order that in his flesh he might make that sacrifice.
The Bible is very clear that Jesus laid down his life, that he was delivered up. He laid down his life. The picture, if we had time this morning to go through the whole scope of the Old Testament sacrificial system from the sacrifice that God made with Adam to cover him and then the sacrificial offerings and the worship of Cain enable and then move forward to that of Noah and then Abraham and the patriarchs and then finally into Moses and the sacrificial system of the great temple cultists. And then moving forward all the way into the days of Christ, we see that there's a pattern. There's a few things that always come up over and over and over without the shedding of blood. There is no remission of sins. And Jesus came to make that offering to God which would atone or cover sin and enable you and me to be able to approach God, to bow down to God. We cannot enter into the presence of God. We cannot leave the presence of God and approach the presence of God and come and go and serve and do anything without the shedding of blood. It's the shedding of Christ, but that's the meaning of the cross. Cross-centered service always comes down to the sacrifice that Christ made. One of the most interesting little statements you'll find anywhere in the narratives of the crucifixion. We always read the crucifixion narratives in around Easter time. And one of the most interesting little phrases is in the gospel it says that they brought Jesus bound to Pilate. Remember when Jesus had his five appearances before the Sanhedrin and before Pilate and then before Herod and Pilate and back and all of the hearings and the trial that Jesus went through in the early hours of that morning. They brought him bound to Pilate. They didn't need to bind him. He wasn't going to do anything. He was overwhelmed and overpowered by the temple guard and the Roman spears that pointed at him and the swords at their side. He had been separated and isolated from his disciples. His disciples had all fled. He was not a threat, but there's that imagery of Jesus bound before Pilate who would yield him up to be crucified and that's the picture of the Old Testament sacrifice. They bound the sacrifice to the altar and Jesus is that sacrifice. In order to enter the presence of God in order to serve the true and the living God in spirit and in truth, there must be sacrifice. Blood sacrifice. And that's what Christ is for us. He is that blood sacrifice. He is that lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Let me mention just one feature of that sacrifice. 585 times in the Old Testament alone, the Scriptures mentioned the wrath of God. That is, God's anger. And God's anger is a settled, just and righteous disposition against sin and the sinner. It is not God throwing the temper tantrum. It is not God being petulant. It is God's settled, permanent, righteous disposition. His continual attitude and action against sin and the sinner. The Bible tells us that the wrath of God abides on us. The wrath of God is directed toward us in our sin as sinners.
And there needs to be something, someone, somehow that takes that wrath and placates it. It appeases, the biblical word group is the word group having to do with propitiation, plastering. It means a covering, just like the covering that God provides in all of the atonement sacrifices from Adam all the way through history. Something has to propitiate the wrath of God to cover the sin of the sinner. And that's what Christ in his flesh and blood does for us. He propitiates, he appeases, he deals with, he handles the wrath of God so that no longer is God's wrath directed toward us. No longer will the wrath of God be poured out upon us as it mentions in our text about the wrath to come. The punishment, the sin, the condemnation is carried away, abated by the sacrifice of Christ. And we do not live under the wrath of God any longer because of the sacrifice of Christ. It is his blood that has been shed. It is him giving his life, the life of the flesh is in the blood and is the blood poured out coming from the seven wounds in the body of Christ. The wrath of God was quieted. Jesus received in his body all the wrath of God because he bore in his body on the tree all of our sin. The sting and the poison and the sour wrath of God was poured out upon Christ in our place. That's another principle that was taught all the way through the Old Testament's sacrificial system, substitution. That one could substitute for another, a lamb could substitute for the family, a bullock or a goat could substitute for the people. There was a substitution principle. The blood poured out by this one would have toned for this one. And so it is in the great economy of God. The blood of Christ poured out can be substituted for you so that his death is your very salvation.
How important is this blood and lamb and all of that? Well, we're talking about worship. We're talking about serving God, serving the true and living God. Let me read just a portion of a description of a worship service. It's a worship service in heaven. It's recorded in the book of Revelation. And I pick it up a little ways down into chapter five. And between the throne, this is the heavenly throne room, between the throne and the four living creatures. And among the elders, I saw a lamb standing as though he had been slain. And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of the him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down. That's the bowing down in the worship before the lamb. Each holding a harp
praise. Do you know the word Psalm just means to pluck, means to pluck a string, like a harp string. So the harp in the scripture is always the symbol for the praise of God, the singing of Psalms before God. Each holding a harp praising singing a Psalm and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. Worship is not only singing the Psalm and plucking the string of the harp, but it is prayers and praying. And here's the new Psalm. Worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals for you were slain. And by your blood, you ransomed people of God from every tribe and language people in nation. Then I looked and I heard around the throne living creatures in the elders and the voice of many angels, numbering mirids of mirids and thousands and thousands saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb who was slain. And I heard every creature in heaven and earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them saying to him who sits on the throne and to the lamb be blessing an honor and glory and might forever and ever. And the four living creatures said amen and the elders fell down and worshipped.
Have you turned from idols to serve the true and living God? And is that worship that you give him the worship that Christ Himself gave him by bringing the blood sacrifice to him? Did you know that's what Jesus was doing on the cross? He was performing the supreme act of worship of the Almighty Father. That is bringing a sacrifice to the true and the living God. And the sacrifice was Himself and it was for you and for me.