Lamb of God
Notes
Transcript
Dr. H.A. Ironside once shared a story that was the clearest illustration of the Gospel I have ever heard. He said that he was visiting in South Texas and had the opportunity to visit a sheep ranch. While he was there, he spotted what he thought to be a two-headed lamb. He asked the foreman of the ranch, "Why in the world does that lamb have two heads?"
The foreman smiled and said, "You are a city slicker. Let me explain what we did. The other day we had two ewes who gave birth to lambs. One of the ewes died in childbirth and one of the lambs died, also. We took the living lamb and put it in the pen with the living ewe to see if she would nurse. She smelled of the lamb and walked away. It wasn’t her own."
"What did you do?" Ironside asked. "Well, we took the coat off of the dead lamb and wrapped it around the living one and put it back in the pen. When the mother smelled the blood of her very own lamb......she accepted the little lamb and began to nurse."
Dr. Ironside said, "Thank you for sharing with me the greatest picture of the Cross I have ever seen. For without Christ, I am hopeless for eternity. God will not accept me into Heaven on my own works. But, when I stand before Him covered in the blood of His own Son, Jesus........He accepts me and allows me to be part of His family!"
Jesus became what WE ARE....that we might have what HE IS!
Let’s pray for the message today.
For the past few weeks, we have been studying and understand who Jesus is and why He came down in the flesh. We came to a better understand of how Jesus is fully God and fully man.
This section of John’s gospel we begin the inauguration of Jesus’ public ministry. After John’s explanation of Christ’s divinity and humanity, there is a shift to Jesus’ baptism and the gathering of His disciples.
But first, we get a glimpse of the tenacity of John the Baptist.
This was John’s testimony when the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him, “Who are you?”
He didn’t deny it but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.”
“What then?” they asked him. “Are you Elijah?”
“I am not,” he said.
“Are you the Prophet?”
“No,” he answered.
“Who are you, then?” they asked. “We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What can you tell us about yourself?”
He said, “I am a voice of one crying out in the wilderness: Make straight the way of the Lord—just as Isaiah the prophet said.”
Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. So they asked him, “Why then do you baptize if you aren’t the Messiah, or Elijah, or the Prophet?”
“I baptize with water,” John answered them. “Someone stands among you, but you don’t know him. He is the one coming after me, whose sandal strap I’m not worthy to untie.” All this happened in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.
Explain this in OCT!
This brings us to what we will be looking at today.
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 told you about: ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me.’ I didn’t know him, but I came baptizing with water so that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he rested on him. I didn’t know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The one you see the Spirit descending and resting on—he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.”
Titles in biblical times held so much more meaning than they do today.
John the Baptist cries out
Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
So why call Jesus, the Lamb of God?
Well, let’s first note, that this phrase only happens twice, both in the Gospel of John and both times said by John the Baptist.
Jesus is the fulfillment, complete, and justifiable sacrifice that is the only true atonement for our sins before our Holy Father. Like our illustration earlier, He covers us with His blood, so that when judgement comes, God only sees His Son and not our filthy sinful selves.
So why call Jesus, the Lamb of God?
The Fulfillment Sacrifice
John the Baptist father was a priest who served at the temple. So John would have been very familiar with the sacrifices done at the temple.
Many of us know of the sacrifices done during the festivals, like passover, but everyday at the temple, two lambs were killed as a sacrifice. One in the morning and one in the evening. Their deaths were necessary because of the sins of the Israelite nation. Blood must be shed for the forgiveness of sin.
According to the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
As we discussed last week, the Old Testament is promises made and the New Testament is promises kept. So the sacrifice of these two lambs were a promise made by God that pointed to promises kept of the One who would shed his blood once for the forgiveness of sin forever.
Jesus Christ was the lamb sent by God to give His life as the fulfillment sacrifice. He was the promise kept.
So why call Jesus, the Lamb of God?
The Fulfillment Sacrifice
The Complete Sacrifice
Make no mistake, we deserve hell, and nothing we can do on our own will give us an escape. We should pay the price for our sin, but God...I love how things change when the words but God show up...but God sent the Lamb so we can have a way out. He sent the Lamb that was the complete sacrifice.
He doesn’t need to offer sacrifices every day, as high priests do—first for their own sins, then for those of the people. He did this once for all time when he offered himself.
His death, His sacrifice was the only sufficient way to pay the penalty for our sin.
Notice carefully, John did not say a lamb has come. He said THE Lamb of God has come.
In the earlier verses, the religious leaders asked all those questions of John the Baptist, but they never asked the most important question. Are you the Lamb of God spoken about in the Old Testament?
He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth.
Like a lamb led to the slaughter
and like a sheep silent before her shearers,
he did not open his mouth.
Why they didn’t ask that, is because they were not concerned about forgiveness of their sin. They were the ones who did the sacrifices. They were in the clear. They selfishly only wanted to be away from Roman rule.
They did not realize that they needed saving from themselves. From Their own sin. They wanted the Lion of Judah. Which one day He will come. We know this because of Revelation.
Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. Look, the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered so that he is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”
All they wanted was the Lion of Judah, but they needed first the Lamb of God.
They said with a loud voice,
Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered
to receive power and riches
and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and blessing!
In his book Seeing and Savoring, John Piper wrote this:
Exalting Jesus in John The Lamb Provides a Substitute
The Lion of Judah conquered because he was willing to act the part of a lamb. He came into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday like a king on the way to a throne, and he went out of Jerusalem on Good Friday like a lamb on the way to the slaughter. He drove out the robbers from the Temple like a lion devouring its prey. And then at the end of the week he gave his majestic neck to the knife, and they slaughtered the Lion of Judah like a sacrificial lamb.
They needed, we needed, the complete sacrifice. The promise kept.
So why call Jesus, the Lamb of God?
The Fulfillment Sacrifice
The Complete Sacrifice
The Justifiable Sacrifice
Our sin demands punishment. Jesus is the justifiable sacrifice. We serve a God who is loving, gracious and kind, but He is also holy and just. And because He is holy and just, we as filthy sinners can not be in His presence.
In other words, our sins deserves the full wrath of God. We deserve His full fury thrown down on us.
Because of your hardened and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment is revealed.
But God sent the justifiable sacrifice, the Lamb of God. He took the full wrath on our behalf.
How much more then, since we have now been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath.
Jesus came to completely satisfy the justice God demands for our sin. He is the promise kept.
As we conclude, calling Jesus the Lamb of God is saying He is the justifiable complete fulfillment sacrifice that the Old Testament pointed towards. It is a title that brings hope to those who call upon His name. And for those who call upon His name, we are free.
Isn’t this the fast I choose:
To break the chains of wickedness,
to untie the ropes of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free,
and to tear off every yoke?
We say we fast for revival, and that is true, but do we not fast to break every chain that the devil throws upon us. And when we call out to the Lamb of God, the promise kept, Jesus Christ, we are free.
Are you free today?
