Love | John 1:29

Notes
Transcript
Ok 4-5 year olds you guys are dismissed to go upstairs for children’s church! Music team thank you guys so much for leading us in worship. I’m grateful for the time and effort you put in every week to prep and serve our church. Thank you guys.
If you have your Bible’s go ahead and flip on over to John 1. We’re going to continue our Advent series through John 1 this morning and look at how the birth of Jesus displays God’s love for us. We’re specifically going to focus on John 1:29 this morning, but we’ll look at some of the surrounding verses as we attempt to begin to understand the fullness of this passage.
Now you know we haven’t actually looked back at the birth narrative of Jesus for this series, we’ve been in John 1 instead that looks past the birth of Jesus to the very beginning of everything and then quickly jumps forward to the start of His ministry after his baptism. Don’t worry, we will read through and reflect on the birth narrative for our Christmas Eve service, so we’d love to see you and your family here for that. We won’t have childcare. It’ll just be all of us together. I’m not going to preach a long sermon, just a 10-15 minute reflection over the narrative. So don’t worry, we will give the birth narrative of Jesus some attention this year.
But for now, back to John 1…John 1:29 finds us on the heels of Jesus’ baptism by his cousin John the Baptist. JB has just been peppered with questions from a group of priests and Levites that were sent to see who JB was, which is really interesting to me since JB’s dad was Zachariah, the former High Priest. So JB would’ve grown up around and among the temple and probably known some of the current leaders in charge. They come to see who he is and JB responds in John 1:20
He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.”
He said he wasn’t the Christ, he wasn’t the prophet Elijah. Intead, he responds with a quote from Is. 40:3 and says in John 1:23
He said, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.”
He tells them the one they’re looking for is coming. The one John 1:27
even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.”
JB confirms what we saw a few weeks ago back in John 1:6-8, that John the Baptist has come as a witness to prepare the way of The Lord. He has come to point towards the true Messiah that was born as a baby in the little town of Bethlehem and placed in a manager. The one whose birth we celebrate this week. The turning point of all of history. That’s what John has come to point towards and prepare us for. So we pick up in John 1:29 and we see exactly what the purpose of that little baby was born for; we see why he came and what we came to do. So, let’s read this verse and then pray and then jump into it.
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
This is God’s Word. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray.
Behold!
Behold!
Do we have any art connoisseurs in the room? Is there anyone who likes to go to art museums and just stand in front of paintings? I’m not really that kind of guy. It doesn’t totally make sense to me to stand there and look at pictures. To me it doesn’t seem like a productive use of my time, but that says more about me than it does you. Maybe you’ve seen that picture floating around on the internet about artist before degrees were a thing and then artist afterwards. The banana taped to the wall sold for $6.2 million bucks. Kinda ridiculous.
They say when you stand in front of paintings that good paintings actually move you. They cause you to feel things and they take you to places without actually going there. While I’m not an art connoisseur I do have a painting from my great Aunt of a stream running through the mountains and that’s one painting that can take me places. Being able to look at that painting takes me to the mountains. I can stand there and almost smell the fresh air and hear the breeze. I can remember what it’s like to be on the edge of the river with a fly rod in my hand or to go to Alaska with my Dad & brother or to take my kids fishing. Looking at that painting has an affect on me.
I saw a quote this week from American psychologist Robert Keenan. He said, “What the eye sees more deeply the heart tends to love more tenderly.” I think he’s right and I think that applies to a lot of different areas of life. Seeing a painting stirs up feelings, but seeing my wife, that stirs up an entirely different set of feelings. We get to celebrate our 14th wedding anniversary in a couple weeks and I’ve seen her endure cross country moves, bearing our children, walk through really tough times, endure unjust accusations and carry herself with integrity, I can keep going, but as I’ve seen her go through these things, as I’ve observed who she is and the deeper I’ve seen her the more I love her.
In our passage today John the Baptist has one imperative verb: “Behold!” So when JB says to behold, what does he mean? Does he mean to stand in front of a painting and observe and be moved? OR does he mean to look and and know and experience like a husband sees his wife?
Well in this gospel we’ve already seen John describe seeing Jesus. Remember last week we looked back at John 1:14
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
They saw Jesus’ glory. How so? They walked with him and talked with him. They saw the works he did; they heard the things he said; they experienced his presence; they saw his death and resurrection. The disciples saw God’s glory through the son. So to behold is to see and to know in a more intimate way than knowing a painting.
Now throughout the NT there was a whole bunch of people that saw Jesus. They “beheld” him. But just because they beheld Jesus doesn’t mean they responded positively, but the point is, they did respond. In fact, John Stott said, “If you read the bible you’ll see that nobody who ever met Jesus Christ ever had a moderate reaction to him. There are only three reactions to Jesus: they either hated him and wanted to kill him, they were afraid of him and wanted to run away, or they were absolutely smitten with him and they tried to give their whole lives to him…”
So then to truly behold Jesus is to respond to him. It is to have an encounter that is so real that you can’t help but respond. You either hate him, are afraid of him, or adore him, but there’s no middle ground. So then there’s a whole host of questions then that just come from this word, “Behold”, and my goal this morning is to work through some of them and as we do the thing that I hope you find to be true is this: When you truly see God’s love for you, you can’t help but grow in your love for him. That’s the main point of our sermon today. My hope this morning is that we, together, behold God’s love for us, and in doing so grow in our worship for him. If we truly behold Jesus, we can’t help but respond. It will either be with passion fueled worship, or fear, or hatred, but we will all respond. So then, with that long bit of an intro I want to look at 3 different ways in which we see God’s love in this one verse. Here’s the first one:
God’s love moves toward us.
God’s love moves toward us.
I want to go ahead and put the verse back on the screen. John 1:29
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him. Now I don’t want to make a mountain out of a mole hill, but God moving toward his people has been a recurring theme in this chapter. Look back in John 1:9
The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.
Then just a few verses later in John 1:11
He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
Then in John 1:14
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Now I spent quite a bit of time on this last week, so I don’t want to belabor this point a whole lot this morning. But to me, since John uses similar language repetitively there’s something worth paying attention to. The eternal, all-sufficient God came towards us.
Now, why? Why would the holy God who lacks in nothing take on flesh and move towards a rebellious and wicked people? Was it because he was lacking? Heaven just got boring within the Trinity so God decided he should find a few more people to hang out with. There just wasn’t enough glory or joy or compassion or love or ____ so God needed to come pick out the best of the best to add to his team. Is that what is was? If that’s the case…://. Have you seen your pastor?
No God didn’t move toward us because he was lacking. He didn’t need anything. He didn’t come to save us because we had something to offer him. God moved toward us solely because he loved us. Look at Deut. 7:7-9. I think this is one of the most encouraging passages in all of Scripture.
It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations,
Why did God choose Israel? Was it because of their significance? No. And God’s character hasn’t changed since then. God has moved towards his people by the sending of his son through the birth of Jesus because he loves us.
Church, behold the God of the universe who came to you. Not because of what you had to offer, but because of who he is. But it’s not just that he came, it’s how he came. He came meek and lowly, born in a manager in the good for nothing town of Bethlehem. He was a man of no consequence—he was the son of a carpenter and raised to know the trade. He grew up in Nazareth, ugh. Can you imagine? The same God who said let there be, and there was, was now walking the earth with a rag tag group of followers getting ready to flip the world upside down. He came meek to save the lowly.
This means that for those of you who just feel like no one sees you, God does. And he has moved towards you. For those of you that believe no one knows what it’s like, God does and he moved towards you. Behold. See him. See his love for you in that he came toward you.
The second way we see God’s love for us in this verse is that:
God’s love perfectly atones for sin.
God’s love perfectly atones for sin.
How does John describe Jesus in this verse? What title does he give him?
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
The Lamb of God. Now there’s actually quite a bit of debate about what John the Baptist was referring to here when he described Jesus as the Lamb of God. Some see this description to point back to Genesis when God called Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac on the altar. Abraham obeyed, but in the process God stopped him from making the sacrifice. Instead, there was a ram caught in a thicket after Abraham had just said God would provide a lamb.
There is the idea that John the Baptist would be recalling the Passover Lamb that was slaughtered and whose blood was smeared across the door posts back in Exodus.
Or maybe the lamb he was referring to was the guilt offering or sin offering described throughout the Torah. Among a few other things, the people of Israel would offer up a lamb as a guilt or sin offering for something they had done.
Or maybe he was pointing towards Isaiah 53:7
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted,
yet he opened not his mouth;
like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent,
so he opened not his mouth.
But there’s also Jer. 11:19
Jeremiah 11:19 (ESV)
But I was like a gentle lamb
led to the slaughter.
Then there’s the idea that he was referring to the lamb of the daily sacrifices. John the Baptist would’ve been completely accustomed to that with his father serving as a hight priests.
There’s also the scapegoat. Remember that God would have the people of Israel lay their hands on a lamb and confess their sin and then that goat would be turned out to wander into the wilderness taking away the sins of the people with it.
But some people also think that John the Baptist was forward thinking and was really pointing toward the triumphant lamb that we see in Revelation.
So how do we know which one it was? I’ve read several different authors and there’s pros and cons for each view, so should we or must we work to decipher what exactly John the Baptist meant when he called Jesus the Lamb of God? And maybe more importantly, does it really matter? Well, as one commentary says, “The lamb figure may well be intended to be composite, evoking memories of several, perhaps all, of the suggestions we have canvassed. All that the ancient sacrifices foreshadowed was perfectly fulfilled in the sacrifice of Christ.” In other words, maybe when John the Baptist said, “the Lamb of God”, he wanted those standing around him to remember and think of all of the uses of lambs that God described in the Old Testament, but this lamb was a better than lamb than all the previous ones. This lamb was a perfect lamb that would perfectly atone for all sin.
But why was atonement needed? What is atonement? Last week I talked about substitutionary atonement, so I won’t cover it in as much detail this week, but substitutionary atonement is why Jesus came, so it’s really important for us to understand what it means. When we sinned, like Adam & Eve, and determined for ourselves what was right and wrong and rejected God’s word there was a fracture in our relationship with God. Since God is just, he couldn’t let wrong go unpunished. In his mercy he instructed his people, the Israelites, to sacrifice a lamb in place of being sacrificed themselves. But the problem is that a lamb can never truly remedy the sin of man. It can never fully pay back the debt that man owes God because of his sin. God accepted the lamb, but it never fully atoned for all of man’s sin. SO man had to offer another lamb and another and another. The role of the High Priest was to continually offer sacrifices to God to pay for the sins of the people.
But the Lamb of God, now that’s a perfect lamb. It’s without sin and spotless. When God saw his lamb offered up as a sacrifice he saw the one payment that would fully and completely pay for sin. It was the perfect atonement for sin and the only true payment that would satisfy God’s just wrath towards sin.
Now we can step back and go, woohoo! There’s been an atonement, a payment, made for our sin. That’s great news! I’ll take that and we can go on with life not really seeing why it truly is good news. I love what Spurgeon said:
“If thou shouldest bring the fattest of thy flock, and the choicest of thy herd, thou mightest hear God say, “I will not accept thy sacrifice”! But when thou bringest God’s own sacrifice, he cannot reject thee. Thou art accepted in the Beloved; there is such acceptance of Christ with God that it overlaps thine unacceptableness; it covers thy sin, it covers thee, it makes thee to be dear to the heart of God.”
Church do you see why that’s good news?! When the Lamb of God is the sacrifice you stand behind, God can’t reject you. He will accept you, because he loves that sacrifice. He loves that Lamb and when you’re behind him he loves you. You are accepted and loved by God because of Jesus. God’s love—which is seen in the sending of the Lamb of God—perfectly atones for sin and that perfect atonement brings God’s love to you. Oh church, that our hearts may have “strength to comprehend what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of christ that surpasses knowledge.” Church may we behold, may we see, may we know the depths of God’s love perfectly atoning for our sin.
But God’s love isn’t just seen in atonement for our sin. Our last point runs real close to this one, but there’s enough nuance to make a note of it. In that atonement, what does God do with our sin? That’s our third point
God’s love removes sin.
God’s love removes sin.
Let’s look back at John the Baptists confession: John 1:29
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
Notice that the verb here is a present active verb. He takes away. Does that meant that Jesus is constantly being re-sacrificed each time we sin? No, that’s not what this means. Jesus’ atoning sacrifice, though it was but once offered, is perpetual in its effect. Again I find Spurgeon to be helpful, this is a bit of a long quote, so I’ll put in on the screen.
Those dear wounds of his in effect perpetually do bleed; in his case the print of the nails is the token of an inexhaustible fount of merit, which is always flowing forth for the removal of my guilt, eternally efficacious, ceaselessly sin-cleansing. This is where we rest. It is the grandest fact in the history of all ages that Jesus takes away the sin of the world. We do not know what happened before this solar system was created, and we do not need to know. We cannot prophesy what is going to happen when you sun and moon and stars shall disappear like transient sparks from the anvil of power; but there never will be any new fact which can equal this first of truths—that the Son of God assumed human nature, and in that nature bare sin and bare it away. This is the truth to be looked at beyond all others.
God in his love took on flesh for the purpose of bearing our sin away. Why was Jesus born in a manager in Bethlehem? Why did the Son of God become a man? To take away our sin. He removes our sin as far as the east is from the west and he does so by bearing it in his body on a tree. Now this leads to a couple questions in my mind. If something is removed, what’s put back in it’s place? That’s question 1 and question 2 is, so what does that mean for us?
Scripture gives us a clear answer to both. If our sin is removed, then what fills that void? Paul in 2 Cor. 5:21 gives us clarity:
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
When we stand under the atoning sacrifice of Jesus not only does he remove our sins but he gives us his righteousness. Those sins are now paid for and gone and we’re left with a new and righteous identity. The removal of sin is filled with the righteousness of God.
Now, at this point in the sermon I want to tell you how to live as the righteousness of God. I want to give you practical instructions on what to do when you walk out of here. It’s what I want to hear, but that’s not the point of this passage.
Many of you know who Chris Kyle was. He was an American Sniper who served multiple tours during the Iraqi war and is credited with more kills than any other sniper. He came home to save his marriage, but in doing so his own PTSD led him down some dark paths. He found recovery through exercise and service to others, but one day, as he was shooting with a troubled former Marine that guy turned and killed him. Despite his issues he is rightfully seen as a hero for the work he did in saving lives on and off the battlefield. In fact, now there’s a shooting program and workout regimen that you can do to become like him. We can read his books and follow his steps to being like Chris Kyle because we see him as a hero worthy of emulation, but really, in reading his books and studying his life what are we doing? We’re beholding. We’re looking at him and seeking to know him.
What we want, what I want, is to be told how to be the righteousness of God. I want to know what steps I take and what things I do in order to pay off the debt. But what is John the Baptists command? Behold! Look and see and know the Lamb of God who has taken away your sin. You can’t pay this debt off; it was paid for you! If you are in Christ, if your faith is in the Lamb and his atoning sacrifice, then you are functionally the righteousness of God. So how do you grow in that? How do you live out the righteousness of God? You behold. Look to him. Look at him. Seek his face and his righteousness. As you behold him do you know what happens? You become like him. Do you know why? “What the eye sees more deeply, the heart loves more tenderly.”
So this takes us back to the very beginning. The question for you and for me today is have you beheld the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? Have you seen him? If you truly have you will respond in one of three ways. You’ll hate him because he paid the debt you couldn’t and you can’t get over that. You want to on your own, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and earn your own way, but the gospel of Jesus and the Scriptures show us you can’t and because of that you hate him. But if you don’t hate him then you fear him. You see him and his works and the reality of those things settles in on you, but it terrifies you of what it calls you from and what it calls you to. So because of this you can’t continue to behold him. It demands too much of you.
But, when you truly see the Lamb of God, and you truly see that your sin has been atoned for and that it has been carried away, when you really behold God’s love for you, you can’t help but grow in your love for him. You can’t help but worship him. You can’t help but in humility fall at the feet of our merciful Jesus and praise him. Have you beheld the love of God in the Lamb of God for you? Will you today?