Not All the Blood of Beasts

One of my biggest failings has been in not staying in touch with some of the people who have been very near and dear to me in the past. It’s partly the difficulty of having moved several times and coming into contact with numerous people. It’s inexcusable in many ways. 

In Northern Ireland several families become very special too us and we hope to visit with them all one day. We pray the Lord works this out. This morning I am thinking about one of the men in particular, and of a hymn he would often quote. He never got over the foundational truth that God saved Him. Quite often in prayer he would ask “Why God would stoop so low, to pick up so little”. The hymn he would quote begins with the declaration,

“Not all the blood of beasts
On Jewish altars slain
Could give the guilty conscience peace
Or wash away the stain.”

In time a couple of the other men in the church quoted the hymn also, though I’m not sure that we ever sang it there. This morning I was looking through some hymns and stumbled across the full text of the hymn and wanted to share it here:

“But Christ, the heav’nly Lamb,
Takes all our sins away;
A sacrifice of nobler name
And richer blood than they.

“My faith would lay her hand
On that dear head of Thine,
While, like a penitent, I stand,
And there confess my sin.

“My soul looks back to see
The burdens Thou didst bear
When hanging on the cursèd tree,
And hopes her guilt was there.

“Believing, we rejoice
To see the curse remove;
We bless the Lamb with cheerful voice,
And sing His bleeding love.”

I thank God for precious friends, friends I hope to see soon, at the very least to see in Heaven. But most of all I thank the Lord for His precious gift of salvation through the vicarious death of Jesus Christ!

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