The Bible says if the demons had understood the cross they'd have never crucified Jesus. They didn't understand what He was doing, but He acted as a representative for us and when He shed His blood, His blood, the blood of a king, the blood of the Son of God - when He shed His blood He legally made it possible now for everything against us to be taken out of the way so we could be totally free from demonic power AND have authority over them as His representatives - so when He died we died with Him. When He rose we rose with Him and now we represent Him in the earth. We have authority and dominion over evil spirits, so this is what He has done - but what do we have to do?
So you will recall these scriptures. Let me give you a couple of scriptures - just go in Leviticus, Chapter 16 and 17, and then I'll just spell out just what it looks like specifically that is our part in contributing to this journey into freedom. If you look in Leviticus, the Old Testament, Chapter 17, Verse 11; For the life of the flesh is in the blood. I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls. It's the blood that makes atonement. The word 'atonement' has the meaning of covering over or paying fully the price needed to rescue you from the power of something that's got hold of you, so whenever we use the word redeem - my redeemer lives - what it means is it's the one who has paid the kidnap ransom. It's the one who fully paid the price to set me free and so the Bible tells us very clearly that blood must be shed to deal with sin. There's no remedy apart from the shedding of blood, so in Exodus, Chapter 12, when the people came out of Israel for example, what they did when they came out of Israel was they had to take the blood of a lamb and they had to apply the blood - apply the blood to the lintel, apply the blood to the doorpost, apply it in three places.
Now notice what it says here. Let's go back into Leviticus 16, Verse 21 and it's talking about how sin is dealt with. Now Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, confess - notice this - confess over it. So once a year on the Day of Atonement High Priests would go in. Every year he'd have to do this because this could never totally deal with sin, not like Jesus' offering did - once and for all Jesus' offering has done the job for us, but in the Old Testament they had to go every year to do the same thing. Aaron - notice this - he would lay his hands - that means he would identify with this animal and he would speak over the animal three things; 1. The inequities of the people of Israel, 2. The transgressions of the people of Israel, and 3. The sins of the people of Israel.
Now for most of us we can't even begin to distinguish what those are, but it must be important if it's written in the Bible. In the New Testament often it just used - we use the word 'sin' and used this kind of general word 'sin' but actually the Bible's quite specific. There are three different kinds of issues that the blood deals with. The first one is inequities. Inequities is the tendency, it's the crookedness that gets into a family line or gets into a person's life that tends to twist us away from God. It's the inclination towards sin. Inequity is the root cause of the outworkings of sin in our lives, so when inequity gets into a family there maybe say adultery starts to run down a family line and inequity is in the family line, a crookedness, a twist or a bent towards sin. So inequity is the crookedness in our heart that inclines us towards particular kinds of sin.
It could be a lust in a family so in a family line you may find that generation after generation there's promiscuity, there's lust in the family so there's an inequity of lust. There's a twist towards lust and there's a familiar spirit that drives and powers it. Get the idea? So inequity is the twist or bent towards sin.
The blood dealt with inequity. Jesus was bruised for our inequities. Bruising is an internal wound. You don't see it. Inequity is an internal thing, something that just works on the inside inclining us constantly towards sin, so the blood of Jesus dealt with inequity. The second thing it dealt with was transgression. Transgression was a deliberate intentional breaking of the law of God. That means when you know it's wrong but you do it anyway - a deliberate violation of the law of God and so the blood deals with our deliberate going against what we know to be right and the word 'sin' in the Old Testament referred to breaking the laws of God in ignorance. So you notice the three things: breaking the law of God in ignorance, breaking the law of God deliberately, and then the root inclination towards a certain kind of sin.