THE HYSSOP BRANCH
John 19:28-29
When Jesus was dying on the cross for our sins, the Bible says that He said, “I’m thirsty.” When Jesus said that the Roman soldiers reached over, got a sponge and filled it full of vinegar and John says they put it on a hyssop branch and put it to His mouth.
I want to talk today about the hyssop branch. Probably this morning at breakfast you said to your family, “I’ve been wondering what a hyssop branch is. I really hope the preacher talks about it this morning.” You’re in luck. You picked the right Sunday to come. I want to talk with you about this hyssop branch and the importance of it.
The hyssop branch was a very common bush or branch in the Holy Land. It grew out of the walls around that particular area. Because of its leafy texture and its ability to absorb liquids very well, it was commonly used as an applicator or brush. Especially in the Old Testament ceremonies the hyssop branch was used for the sprinkling or the application of blood.
So, the hyssop branch is going to preach us a sermon this morning about the shed-blood of the Lord Jesus Christ at the cross the day He died.
When Billy Graham was a young man and just getting started in his preaching ministry, a professor of Cornell University came to him and said, “Young man, it is obvious that you are gifted. You are a good communicator. You have a winsome personality and you are evidently sincere.
I believe you are going to have a very successful ministry, but you are going to have to leave out that “blood stuff.” Billy Graham decided, at that point, that he would preach more than ever on the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible says without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sin.
When you go to a church and you listen for a few Sundays, see if they ever make mention of the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not every message that is preached, but just see if the blood of Jesus has a place in the preaching of the church where you are going. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is an essential. It is the ingredient which the Bible says pays the penalty for our sins. In the Old Testament the blood was mentioned many times.
This hyssop branch which John inserts in the narrative at the cross is a connection between the blood of Jesus on the cross and all of the Old Testament ceremonies.
In the Old Testament in a variety of ceremonies they would take a hyssop branch and sprinkle or apply the blood. All of the Old Testament system, all of the ceremonies, all of the sacrifices, all of the Laws; the entire system was a picture like that hyssop branch pointing us to what Jesus would do that day when He died on the cross.
It’s as if God says, “Do you see that manna falling out of heaven? That’s my son the Lord Jesus Christ. Do you see that sacrifice on that Jewish altar being consumed? That’s the sacrifice of my Son the Lord Jesus.
So, this hyssop branch points up to the Lord Jesus Christ and says everything that the Old Testament predicted about who Jesus is and what Jesus would do is fulfilled in the symbolism and in the meaning of the hyssop branch.
Especially does the hyssop branch tie the cross of the Lord Jesus to an Old Testament ceremony known as the Passover. Turn to Exodus 12. This is the Old Testament account of how God delivered the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. So, let’s take a little journey down to the land of Egypt.
Remember that the Israelites are slaves down in Egypt. God has sent Moses the Great Deliverer. He has given to the Pharaoh the message of God. God’s message is “let my people go”. Of course, you know that Pharaoh refused to do that and there was a series of plagues.
Now, in Exodus 11:1 we are told that there is one more plague. God says there is going to be a death angel. The death angel will go throughout the land and all of the firstborn in the land are going to be slain.
But in Exodus 12 God gives to His children Israel a special ceremony. He says to them that they are to take a spotless lamb. They were to kill that lamb, let its blood fall in a basin. Then you are to take that blood of the spotless lamb and apply that blood.
Look at verse 22 of Exodus 12, and you shall take a bunch of hyssop, and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and strike the lintel and the two side posts with the blood that is in the basin:
and none of you shall go out at the door of his house until the morning.
Verse 23 says, For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians; and when he sees the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, the Lord will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer to come in unto your houses to smite you.
God says to take the blood of the lamb and with the hyssop branch apply it to the door of the house. When the death angel sees that blood of the lamb, he will pass over. Here we have in the symbolism of the hyssop branch, a sermon about the blood of the
Lord Jesus Christ.
I want to say several things about this hyssop branch and what it means. I pick up this hyssop branch and it teaches me a lesson that the blood of Jesus is –
I. SPECIAL Blood.
It is not ordinary blood. It is special blood.
Notice in the beginning part of chapter 12 we are told specifically that God’s requirement for the lamb is that the lamb must be a lamb for the house and it must be a lamb without blemish (verse 5).
Of course, the Bible makes it very plain that all through the Old Testament there were predictions made about the lamb. The first time the word occurs is in Genesis 22. Abraham is taking his son, Isaac, up to Mount Moriah. Isaac asks his father, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Abraham said, “God will supply himself a lamb.” You read that and all through the Old Testament that question is attempted to be answered. Where is the Lamb?
The first time the word, Lamb, occurs in the New Testament is in John 1:29 when John the Baptist sees the Lord Jesus coming. He says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
The Old Testament says where is the lamb? The New Testament says Behold the Lamb of God. As you study through your Old Testament you will find certain predictions.
Abel took an offering in Genesis. I think it was a lamb. When he offered that lamb it was one lamb for one man.
We come to Exodus 12 and there was one lamb for one family. We go into the tabernacle and there was one lamb for one nation. But when we come to the cross of Calvary there is one lamb for the sins of the whole world. God has predicted a lamb.
So, as that hyssop branch was lifted up to the mouth of the Lord Jesus, it’s as if the branch is saying, “There he is, God’s predicted lamb.”
It had to be a perfect lamb. Notice again in Exodus 12:5, your lamb shall be without blemish. In fact, they inspected that lamb for four days to see if there were any flaws. After that four-day period, if they determined that the lamb was a spotless lamb, then that lamb qualified to be killed and its blood applied. It is a picture to us about the perfect Lord Jesus Christ.
When Jesus came into the world, this world looked Him over. He was tempted 40 days and 40 nights by the devil in the wilderness. Yet, the Bible says
He was tempted in all points like as we are and yet without sin. Even when Jesus was going to the cross, even when Jesus had been condemned to die, every testimony gives evidence that Jesus Christ is God’s sinless lamb. He was without spot and blemish.
In I Peter 1:18-19 it says, we are not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without spot or blemish. As that hyssop branch is lifted toward the Lord Jesus it’s as if it is saying, There
He is, God’s perfect Lamb.”
When the lamb was slain, without blemish, it means it was special blood. When Jesus died on the cross and His blood began to flow at Calvary it was special blood. It was sinless blood. Some people say that it doesn’t matter what the Bible says about some of this stuff. It doesn’t matter whether Jesus was born of a virgin or not.
I’m here to declare to you that it is absolutely essential that Jesus Christ be born of a virgin. The Bible tells us that human blood is all one blood. Acts 17:26 says, he hath made of one blood all of the nations of the earth. That means that blood types, though they may be different in type, it is all the same blood.
So, when you need a blood transfusion it doesn’t matter if it comes from a white person or a black person or a red person or a yellow person.
If their blood type matches you then that blood can be transfused to you.
The problem with that is -all of us get our blood from the same source. We know that when human birth occurs the baby receives the blood not from the mother, but from the father. But there is a problem with my blood. It’s tainted blood. I got my blood from my father and my father got his blood from his father and it goes all the way back to the first man, Adam. When Adam sinned it tainted and infected the bloodstream of the whole human race.
When Jesus was born he was not born of Joseph and Mary. Jesus was born of Mary and the Holy Spirit. So, the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ is not mere human blood. It is special blood. It s the blood from God himself that flowed in the veins of the
Lord Jesus Christ. That’s why the Bible says in Acts 20:28 that God has purchased his church by His own blood. When Jesus shed His blood on Calvary’s cross it was not blood that had been tainted by human sin, it was the perfect holy blood of God Himself that was shed on that cross for our sins.
That hyssop branch points up to the Lord Jesus and says, “His blood is perfect blood.”
Not only a predicted lamb, not only a perfect lamb, but notice the progression of thought here in exodus 12:3,4,and 5. A lamb for a house. If a household be too little for the lamb. Verse 5, your lamb. See the progression. A lamb. THE lamb. YOUR Lamb.
God is saying that the lamb has to become personal to you. People had to go inside the house where that lamb had been slain and the blood applied for them.
When we say that Jesus Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, that is an all-
inclusive statement, but it needs to be a personal statement also. Jesus Christ died for the sins of the world but He died for your sins and my sins. Jesus Christ died for the sins of the whole world and anyone in the world who will come to Him and receive Him personally as their Savior, He becomes their personal Savior.
Here’s the question before the house this morning. The question is Jesus YOUR Savior? He may be A Lamb to some. He is THE Lamb. Is Jesus YOUR Lamb? Has there been that experience in your life when you personally came to the Lord Jesus and said, “Lord Jesus, I believe you shed your special, perfect blood on that old cross for my sins. Lord Jesus, just as that hyssop branch reaches up toward you, by faith I reach up to receive what you did for me on that cross.” When by faith you receive what Jesus did at the cross, you are born again. You become a child of God. You are saved; you are
under the protection of the shed-blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
So, that hyssop branch points up toward Jesus. It teaches us that the blood of Jesus is special blood. That hyssop branch teaches us something else about the blood of Jesus. Not only is the blood of Jesus special blood it also teaches us that the blood of
Jesus is-
II. SHED Blood.
The Bible doesn’t say this but I think we can make this conjecture and I think it would be a logical conjecture.
When Jesus died on that cross He was disfigured like no one had ever been disfigured. In fact, the Bible says that HE was so marred and disfigured that he was no longer recognizable as a man. There was blood everywhere. Jesus was bleeding like a stuck hog on the cross. I see these pictures about the cross of the Lord and my spirit reacts against them. Sometimes I see a picture and there a little drop over here and a little drop over there. That’s not the way it was.
You imagine in your mind the most bloody scene you can ever imagine and what Jesus was going through on the cross that day is worse than your imagination can bring up. He was bleeding all over. He was bleeding profusely out of His head and His ears and His mouth. He was a pool of blood.
So, I think it is reasonable to believe that when that
hyssop branch was lifted with a sponge of the vinegar and Jesus took of that vinegar, the blood came down and dripped on that hyssop branch. Jesus Christ was shedding His blood on that cross. Jesus was pouring out His blood on that cross. It’s not the life of the lamb that God required in the Passover. It was the death of the Lamb. It was not the blood still in the veins of the lamb that God asked for. God said, “Take that lamb and kill
it.”
Look at it in Exodus 12:6, and ye shall keep it until the 14th day of the same month and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. It was not the living lamb that did the job; it was the dying lamb and the blood shed from the dying lamb that provided protection.
It’s the shed-blood of Jesus Christ today that provides our protection also. When that blood was shed and applied to that doorpost, everyone on the inside of that house was protected from the death angel. The Israelites were just like the Egyptians were. They were living in a land of death. God had said there was one more plague; the plague of death.
Of course, you and I know we are living in a land of death also. Every time you go by a cemetery and you see graves and tombstones there, they are sermons to you that we are living in a land of death. Every time you go by a funeral home and you see cars and saddened faces walking slowly into the funeral parlor, you know that we are living in a land of death. It is the universal plague. The Bible says, it is appointed unto man once to die. It’s universal. Doesn’t matter how much education you have. Doesn’t matter your strata of society. Death is a reality that comes to all. You better be thinking about preparation for death. Are you prepared for death? It’s the universal plague.
It’s the fatal plague. That night, as the death angel poured through the land of Egypt, there would be a terrible cry and wail because death had come. Oh, the cry, the sadness, the horror, the heartbreak
when death invades a family or a home. It’s the universal plague. It’s the fatal plague.
It’s the final plague.
You have to get ready for it. It’s coming sooner or later. It’s your final battle. The Bible says the last enemy that shall be defeated is death. Are you prepared for the battle with death?
In Egypt that night there were two kinds of people. There were the Egyptians who were under the condemnation of death and then there were the Israelites who were under the protection of the blood. It was the blood over the doorposts that protected them from the angel of death.
I have good news for you. It is the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ that is our protection. There are only two kinds of people in this world today. There are those who are under the wages of sin which is death. They are under wrath. They are under condemnation.
But then, praise God, there are those who are under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let the death angel come because God says when I see the blood I will pass over you. When the death angel invades my home he may take this body, but he can’t take the soul. I’m under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Are you under the blood? Are you under the protection of the blood? That’s where the security is. That’s where the safety is. It’s under the blood. It’s not who you are; it’s where you are.
I can imagine that night as the blood had been applied and the little Israeli family was in the house, I can imagine one of those children going to daddy and beginning to weep and say, “Daddy, I don’t feel too safe. The death angel is coming over tonight. All the first born are going to be killed and I’m your first born. I’ve heard the word all the first born are going to be killed.”
“But, son, you don’t have to be afraid, the blood has been shed.”
“But, daddy, I don’t feel safe.”
It’s not a matter of how you feel whether or not you are saved. A little child says he doesn’t feel 50% saved. Or 75% saved. Or 99% saved. Your assurance is one thing. Your safety in your salvation is another thing. You are safe and secure, not on the basis of your feelings or your performance or what you have or have not done, it’s the blood
that provides the protection.
If you were a nine-year-old boy or a fifty-year-old man and you repented of your sins and by faith received the shed-blood of the Lord Jesus Christ,
you are under the blood and you are eternally protected and secure. The hyssop says there is protection in the blood.
That hyssop branch reaches up and also says there is purity in the blood. I read such statements as this. I read where David prayed, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. I read in the New Testament where it says in I John 1:7 that the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. I used to read those statements and it didn’t compute with me.
I never thought in terms of blood as a cleansing agent. When I thought of blood I thought of something that stained. When I thought of water I thought of something that cleansed. I couldn’t put it together; how does the blood cleanse? But
the fact of the matter is, blood is a cleansing agent.
I want you to do a little experiment. Take your left arm and put a blood pressure cuff on it. Wrap that blood pressure cuff as tightly as you can around your left arm. Then take your fist and begin to make a fist, five or six, eight or nine times; all of a sudden at some point you will begin to feel discomfort and uneasiness. If you persist in making that fist at some point there will be a sudden flash of pain and you will quickly release that cuff.
The moment you do, you set the flow of the blood back down through your arm and you will feel soothing relief. You have just experienced the cleansing power of blood. Blood is a cleansing agent. When we exercise the muscles of our body,
our bodies put off toxins or poisons. They put off wastes. The blood stream is like a cleansing outfit. As the blood stream begins to flow through all of these muscles of our bodies, it picks up those waste products. It picks up that poison. Then the blood stream takes that poison to our kidney or our bladder or our liver and it’s sent away from the body.
Sin is the poison of satanic origin which has infected the blood stream of the whole human race. It is the shed blood of Jesus Christ that cleanses the life and the heart and the soul from the poisonous affect of sin. That’s why I can say to you, I don’t care who you are. I don’t care what your condition is. I don’t care what you have done. I can say to you this morning that if you will receive Jesus as your Savior, His shed blood will cleanse you from all of your sin.
“My sin has gone deep, preacher.”
Praise God! The blood of Jesus has gone deeper.
“My sin has gone too far, preacher.”
Praise God! The blood of Jesus has gone further.
“My sin is strong.”
The blood of Jesus Christ is stronger.
The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin. That’s the hope of purity. Now a way in world you can live good enough to be pleasing unto God. You can’t live good enough to earn or merit your salvation or your entrance into heaven. But all you have to do is take that little hyssop branch and by faith receive the shed-blood of Jesus Christ and when you do you are protected and you are purified. It’s just like you never sinned.
You can walk out of this place today saying, “Praise God! My sins are gone. Praise God! My sins have been forgiven. I’m pure.”
This is getting better and better. That hyssop branch points to the shed blood of Jesus Christ and says that shed blood is your protection. That shed blood is your purity. That shed blood is your power. There’s power in the blood of Jesus. I’m glad we sing that in this church.
Listen to the songs people sing. These little ditties. “Jesus is a good guy.” Here we are in a world that’s filled with sin. Here people are dying and going to hell. They are facing death without any hope and we are going to sing, Jesus is a Real Cool Dude?
No, I want to sing, There’s power, power, power in the blood. In the precious blood of the lamb.
Let me prove to you there’s power in the blood of the lamb. Revelation 12:11 says, and they overcame him by the blood of the lamb. Overcame who? The devil. There’s power in the blood. The devil comes to you and says, “Huh, you’re not saved.” When he does just pick up that hyssop branch and say, “There’s power in the blood.”
The devil says, “I know what you did this past weekend.”
Pick up the hyssop branch and say, “There’s power in the blood.” He says, “You’re doubting your salvation. You’re not saved.” When the devil says that to you pick up that hyssop branch and say, “There’s power in the blood.” The devil says, “You aren’t going to go to heaven when you die.”
Pick up the hyssop branch and say, “There’s power in the blood.” It will shut up the devil every time. He can’t hang around when the blood of Jesus comes on the scene. Power!
This hyssop branch points up to the cross and says, the blood of Jesus is special blood. The hyssop branch points and says the blood of Jesus is shed blood. The hyssop branch says the blood of Jesus is-
III. SPRINKLED Blood.
The blood had to be shed, but it also had to be applied; sprinkled. The Bible distinguishes between the two; the shed blood of Jesus and the sprinkled blood of Jesus.
Turn to the book of Hebrews 9:22. There it says, and almost all things are by the law purged with blood and without shedding of blood there is no remission. That’s the shedding of the blood for forgiveness.
Look at verse 21, moreover he sprinkled with blood both the tabernacle and all the vessels. There’s the shedding of the blood in verse 22. There is also the sprinkling of the blood in verse 21.
Turn to I Peter 1:2. Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. The blood had to be shed, but to make it effective to you the blood has to be sprinkled. The blood in the basin didn’t do any good in the Passover. It was only when they took the hyssop branch and applied the blood to the door posts that the job was done.
I want to give you two illustrations. Sinners need the blood to be applied. Leviticus 14. When a leper was to be cleansed he would go to a priest. By the way, leprosy is probably the most nauseating picture of sin in the whole Bible. Leprosy starts
with a small white dot and then it would run like a wild runaway train throughout the human body until the body collapsed in a pool of slime. That’s what sin will do to you.
That leper would go to the priest, wanting to be cleansed. The priest would take two living birds. Then he would take a cedar vessel, put some water in it, take a piece of cedar wood, some crimson scarlet cord, then he would take that hyssop branch and make a brush.
He would kill one of those birds and the blood of that bird would flow into that water in the vessel. He would take that living bird and with the hyssop put it down in the blood so that when the living bird came out it had the blood there and then he would take
that blood on the hyssop and sprinkle it on that leper.
The leper and the priest would go out there with that living blood and he would let that living bird go loose. As he did you could see that blood dripping down. That leper would look up there and say “the same blood that’s pouring from him is on me. I’m clean. I’m clean. I’m clean by the blood.” That’s what needs to happen to you.
By faith if you will come to Jesus Christ in some mysterious, miraculous, marvelous way this blood of Jesus Christ will be applied to your heart.
There’s an old Gospel song that goes this way:
I do not know the depths of Jesus’ love
That brought Him down to earth from heaven above.
Nor why He went to the cross of Calvary and shed His blood for even me.
But this one thing I know,
That when the crimson flow fell to the earth below
It fell on me.
My eyes were opened wide, I saw Him crucified.
And knew it was for me He died on Calvary.
Sinners need the blood. But believers need the application of the blood. There is the initial cleansing of the blood; that’s for salvation.
Now, there is the continual cleansing; the blood of Jesus Christ keeps on cleansing. That’s what the Bible says.
You had cancer. You went to the doctor. He diagnosed the malignancy. He went in and said we are going to take out all of the affected parts. So, the doctor went in and cut out that old cancer and cleansed your body of that cancer. But from time to time some cancerous cells appear. When they appear you go back to the doctor that he might
cleanse your body continually of those old cancer cells.
There was a time when by faith we received Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, but from time to time those old cancer cells of sin pop up in our lives. It happened to David. David was a man after God’s own heart. David wrote almost half the psalms. He
was a believer. David was at the zenith of his career. All of his enemies had been vanquished. He thought he had it made.
Christian friend, you don’t ever have it made. You don’t ever get beyond the point where you can sin and fall. David fell tragically into deep, dark, dreadful sin. In Psalm 51 when David came to confess his sins to God he said in verse 7, purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. He was saying that he needs that continuous application of the blood of Jesus. God forgave him and David went out saying, “I’m clean again. I’m clean again. I’m clean again.” Praise God!
When you and I sin as believers we come back to the Great Physician, the Lord Jesus Christ and say,
“I’ve blown it again, Lord.”
The Bible says the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin and we walk away saying, “I’m clean again. I’m clean again. I’m clean again.”
The hyssop branch is just a little flimsy plant. What’s the deal about the hyssop branch? That’s all it was; just a little flimsy plant. But it was that little flimsy plant that applied the blood. The hyssop branch is our little weak flimsy faith. By our weak hyssop branch faith we receive Jesus Christ as our personal Savior.
The moment we do the shed blood of Jesus does the job.Have you been to the cross where Jesus shed His blood? Have you personally asked God to forgive you of your sins, to come into your heart and to wash you in the blood of Jesus? If you have never done that, I’m going to ask you to do that this morning.
