PAID IN FULL

UNDERSTANDING AND APPROPRIATING THE

POWER IN THE BLOOD OF JESUS

‘Redeemed by the Blood – Part I’

Pastor Tayo Adeyemi

                                                                  Sunday 17 April 2011

Foundation Scriptures: 1 Peter 1: 18-19 & Revelation 12: 11

We are continuing on our journey towards a deeper understanding of the significance of the blood of Jesus. We looked last week in detail at the four benefits of the blood namely, forgiveness and cleansing, access, protection and deliverance. Sin, we understood, is a vile and evil spiritual problem that requires a spiritual solution and there is no sin too big or too small to be cleansed by the blood of Jesus. We established that Jesus, our High Priest, has procured and secured permanent access for us into the presence of the Father by His blood as a result of which we can come to God without fear, hesitation, condemnation or intimidation. Further, the blood of Jesus is our strongest canopy of protection and when we are covered with the blood, the devil cannot harm us; more than this however, we can raise the standard of the blood as a weapon of offense and aggression against the devil.

Redeemed by the Blood!

For each of the benefits of the blood, Jesus represents something powerful to us: for forgiveness and cleansing He is our substitute, for access He is our High Priest, for protection He is our Passover Lamb and for deliverance He is our Defender. Today however, I want to introduce an understanding of Jesus as our Redeemer.  Redemption is referred to in both 1 Peter 1: 18-19 and Ephesians 1: 7, the meaning of which in both the bible and the dictionary is to ‘buy back or release from captivity by paying a ransom or to recover possession or ownership by paying a price’. By way of illustration, when you buy a property with a mortgage the bank holds the property as security until the loan is repaid. In reality therefore, even though you are living in the house and consider it to be yours, it actually belongs to the bank until the loan is paid off and it is only when the mortgage is ‘redeemed’ that you recover real ownership of the property. This is exactly what Jesus did when He shed His blood for us. His blood was the price He paid to release us from the devil’s grip and to claim ownership of our lives. In 1 Peter 1:18 we understand that we were redeemed with the precious blood of Jesus and 1 Corinthians 6: 20 makes clear that we are not our own but were “bought at a price.”

Our first introduction to the concept of redemption is in Leviticus in which it related to a person’s liberty or property. If a person, either by foolishness, carelessness or adversity lost their liberty or property, God made provision in the Law for a relative to come and redeem what was lost. The relative was referred to as a Kinsman-Redeemer. To qualify as a Kinsman-Redeemer a person had to fulfil three key criteria: they had to be (i) a relative, (ii) able to redeem (i.e. free himself and with the financial means to redeem his relative) and (iii) willing to redeem.

This is exactly what Jesus came to do for us. We were sold into slavery to the devil and He came as our Kinsman-Redeemer to release us from bondage and captivity. He qualified on those three grounds: He was a man like us – a kinsman; He was able to redeem us because He was sinless and had the means to do so and He was willing; He said “No one can take my life from me but I lay it down of my own accord.”(John 10: 17-18) Everything that Adam lost when he allowed himself to be deceived by the devil, Jesus Christ has restored back to us by paying the price with His blood. We can sum up the redemption story in Galatians 3: 13-14 in which we understand that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law.  But notice, not only did He remove the curse, He also released the blessing.

If you look closely, you will notice that Jesus shed His blood through five specific places: His back, His head, His hands, His feet and His side. Each of these places represents a specific aspect of life in which He has redeemed us. Today and on Good Friday, I am going to be sharing with you the five key areas where Jesus, through His shed blood, removed the curse and released the blessing; the first two are as follows:  

By His Stripes We Were Healed

Sickness is Removed and Healing is Released: Before Jesus even got to Golgotha, where He would be crucified, He had begun to shed His blood for you. The first place recorded in scripture where he shed His blood was from His back as referred to in Mark 15: 15 in which we understand that He was scourged. Scourging is not the same as whipping or beating. When the Romans scourged a person, they did not use a whip but a scorpion or a scourge which was a weapon with a thick handle and thirteen long tentacles, attached to which were sharp and jagged objects such as pieces of stone or metal, designed to pierce and viciously tear the flesh. 

By the time the notoriously brutal Roman soldiers had finished with Jesus, His flesh was hanging off His body like torn pieces of ribbon. Isaiah 52: 14 states that he was so badly disfigured that He hardly looked human. According to Isaiah 53: 4-5, His body was so badly broken in order that we could be made whole. It is important to understand that the words grief and sorrows in this scripture refer not so much to an emotional state but is translated ‘pains, sickness, diseases, sufferings and infirmities’. When Jesus shed His blood through His back, He paid the price for us to be healed. When He endured the intense pain of scourging, He did it so that we could walk in divine healing and divine health.

If therefore, anyone asks you why you have the right to expect Jesus to heal you, you can boldly state that He already took your sickness in His broken body and every single day, present the blood that flowed from the back of Jesus as your argument before God and continue to claim your healing until you see the full manifestation. Sickness is rebuked and can no longer dwell in your body as by His stripes you were healed and by His stripes you are made whole!

The Curse is Broken!

The Curse is Removed and the Blessing is Released: The second major place where Jesus shed His blood was through His head (see Mark 15: 17). The significance of this is that when a blessing comes upon a person’s life, it lands upon their head; this can be seen in Deuteronomy 33: 16 where Moses says “Let the blessing come upon the head of Joseph and the crown of the head of him who was separate from his brothers.” It can also be seen in Proverbs 11: 26, which also makes reference to the blessing being upon the head. In both scriptures the word head means ‘chief’ or ‘the highest place’ or the ‘pinnacle of a person’s life.’ In the Old Testament, when the patriarchs wanted to transfer the covenant blessing to their children, they laid hands on their heads to bless them. Likewise, in the New Testament the apostles and the early church saints laid hands on people’s heads to bless them, heal them and consecrate them for ministry.

Whatever you receive into your life, you have to receive it through a particular gate. You receive good news through your ears and receive water through your mouth. If you want to receive money you receive it through your hands. If you receive a blessing, you receive it through your head as the head is the pinnacle of your life, the seat of power and control. Whatever falls on your head – spiritually or physically – will affect your entire life.

You may wonder how this relates to the crown of thorns on the head of Jesus. Thorns are a token of the curse; when man sinned, the curse landed on his head and the first physical expression of that curse was thorns. (See Genesis 3: 17-18) Thorns speak of hardship, frustration, toil, turmoil, difficulty failure, defeat and pressures of all kinds. But when Jesus wore the crown of thorns on His head and blood flowed from His pierced scalp He took that curse upon Himself and by doing so, He has forever cancelled, nullified, obliterated, overruled and reversed and revoked any curse that seeks to operate in your life. He shed His blood through His head and paid the price for you to be released from the grip and power of any and every curse forever! All unseen negative forces that have been working against you, the devil doesn’t want you to know it but they don’t have a hold on your life – you are free from their grip.

You will recall from the account in Numbers 23 that Balak had hired a sorcerer, Balaam to curse the people of God. It is clear that Balaam would not have been hired had he not established a reputation for cursing people effectively and therefore his conclusion that he could not curse the people of God and had in fact received a command to bless them, stating ‘He has blessed and I cannot reverse it. For there is no sorcery against Jacob, nor any divination against Israel’ was of great frustration to Balak. The day that you came under the blood, the legal basis for any curse in your life was removed. The curse has been replaced with the blessing and if we examine the blessing of Abraham in Genesis 12:2 in which God promised to make him a great nation, bless him and make his name great, blessing those who bless him and cursing those who curse him, we see the manifestation of that blessing in Genesis 13:2 in which it is stated that “Abraham was very rich in livestock, in silver and in gold.” You are not cursed but blessed!

Jesus has released you from every curse and there is no divination against you! No hex, no spell, no incantation, no sorcery, no witchcraft, juju, voodoo, denunciation or malediction, enchantment, jinx, charm, amulet, talisman or fetish has any control over you! Because of the shed blood of Jesus, the curse has been broken and the blessing has been released – you have been redeemed by the blood! - Go therefore and enjoy your covenant blessings as the seed of Abraham!