The Generous Father

John 1:29–31 NIV

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”

John 3:16–17 NIV

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

Introduction

How many of you remember the term YOLO?

I feel like the word has lost it’s steam a bit, but I need to reference it in my sermon so I need to revive that word once again.

YOLO is an acronym for You Only Live Once.

Drake made this word popular in 2011. And people would say it often. I mean like for silly things.

Someone would order something unhealthy off the menu and immediately say, “yolo”.

Or, someone would do something daring and say “yolo!”

Or, you’d charge the vacation. Because why not? Yolo!

Transition

I bring that up because it actually goes against what I am going to talk to you all about today.

We are in week 3 of this series called The Blessed Life, and we are now ready to get into the meat of our series. If you have not listened to parts one and two of this series you should go back and listen to these messages. I am building on each week. I have a very systematic approach tho teaching on what a blessed life is.

We began that discussion with reminding ourselves that a blessed life begins with having the right perspective about this life. You should not be living this life according to YOLO.

You don’t only live once.

We live here on this earth, and then we live again in eternity. So we need to make a fundamental shift from being only focused on the here and now.

So you have to live with what we’ve called an Eternal Perspective.

You got that? Does that make sense so far everybody?

And so that being the case, what does it mean to live with an Eternal Perspective? Well I present that we need to remember that we are Citizens of Heaven, and there are Kingdom Principles that we must be living out here in this life. When we prioritize Kingdom Principles over culture, fads or trends, you will live The Blessed Life.

Text

So the principle that I want to unpack together next in this series is the principle of giving God our first.

In our first passage we read about John, the cousin of Jesus.

Before John and Jesus came out of their mama’s and walked on this earth their destinies were intertwined. John was on a mission to prepare the way for Jesus. He was Jesus’ forerunner. That was his sole assignment on this earth.

When we catch up to John in our first verse John is baptizing people at the Jordan River. He was doing this to baptize people to repentance because the Messiah was coming.

So one day, as he is doing this, his cousin Jesus pulls up…

In that moment John says behold the Lamb of God.

Now, that’s some interesting language to use, isn’t it? The Lamb of God.

Jesus had other names too.

He’s the Lion of Judah. That’s a cool name. Very strong. Very masculine.

But that’s not what he was called. He was called the Lamb of God. And the reason for that name is found all the way back in Exodus 13.

Let’s read a few verses.

Exodus 13:1–2 NIV

The Lord said to Moses, “Consecrate to me every firstborn male. The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me, whether human or animal.”

So God said to Moses, every firstborn, whether human or animal is the Lord’s, and it belongs to him. Let’s read on...

Exodus 13:12–13 NIV

you are to give over to the Lord the first offspring of every womb. All the firstborn males of your livestock belong to the Lord. Redeem with a lamb every firstborn donkey, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem every firstborn among your sons.

Let’s break that down…

The Lord said you either give me your first , and by give he means as a sacrifice, or you redeem your first.

To redeem your first you would need to sacrifice a lamb instead. Everyone say lamb.

Not a pigeon. Not a dove. A lamb.

That’s the Old Testament. That’s the Old Covenant. But it established a principle.

How do I know that it established a principle?

Well, sometimes you have to look back in order to move forward.

The Lord asked Abraham to give him his son Isaac as a sacrifice. Isaac was Abraham’s first son given to him in covenant with the Lord. When Isaac got older, the Lord said, now you need to offer your son as a sacrifice back to me.

Crazy as that sounds, Abraham went along with it. He got Isaac all the way onto an altar and was ready to plunge a knife through his son’s chest when the Lord spoke and said you’ve passed my test. Then the Lord instructed Abraham to sacrifice the ram instead. That ram redeemed Isaac, and this was all before the law.

Later God would give Moses these instructions and it would be formalized as law. But the law was built on the principle.

Here in the New Testament, Jesus comes down to the water and John calls him the lamb of God.

Here’s the application.

Just as in the Old Testament a lamb was needed to redeem the firstborn, in the New Covenant a lamb was needed to redeem us back to the Lord. Jesus was that lamb that God would give to us to bring us back to himself.

Jesus was the lamb of God who was born clean, and he was born spotless. But everyone of us is unclean and we are in need of a sacrifice in order to be redeemed.

Through the sacrifice of Jesus we are brought back to God.

The Generous Father