Following The Lamb, Protected By The Lion!

Ask for the children to come to the front of the stage and ask them questions.

Can anyone tell me what time of the year it is?

Right, and since it’s almost Thanksgiving we celebrate..........(wait for the kids to respond and then respond in accordance)

What kind of sound does a lamb make?

Can anyone tell me who

Well, since it is almost Christmas and the season of giving, can any of you tell me anything that you want for Christmas? (wait for some to respond)

Now, let me ask you another question, since we are talking about gift giving and gifts, what is the single greatest gift that has ever been given in all of time?

Can anyone tell me what famous passage in the Bible tells us about God giving His own son to us, out of His amazing love for us? (quote )

Do any of you know yet wh

Who needs the gift of Jesus in their life?

How do people get this gift?

(SUMMARIZE ABOUT OUR GIVING THE GIFT OF JESUS TO EVERYONE AND EVERYWHERE AND THEN HAVE CHURCH STAND AND PRAY OVER THE CHILDREN!)

HAVE THE CHILDREN STAY UP FRONT AND HAVE THE TITHES AND OFFERINGS BROUGHT DOWN!

I love to reflect back to the mornings of Christmas’ in the years past, when mine and Dee’s girls were just little bitty things, in pig tails and long, footy pajamas!

I can still vividly remember that sound of their little feet running through the house and bursting into our room and them yelling, “It’s time to get, it’s time to get up!”

And then came that sweet moment when shoes and books were hurled through the air at the girls as we yelled at them to go back to bed until some time more civil than 6:00 am!

Seriously though, I can still see in my mind that look of surprise and sheer joy on their little faces as they feverishly tore through the wrapping paper and beheld the gifts that we had given to them!

That look of joy upon their little faces as they look up at us and said, “thank you mommy, thank you daddy”, was priceless!

(Or at least I think that is how I remember it being, in between periods of passing out from sheer exhaustion, due to no sleep!)

And the thing about the gift giving in our home was that it was never, at any time, about trying to give the most expensive gifts to our daughters, but rather, it was always about giving them the things that we knew they would love and appreciate!

Like: new power tools and new coffee makers and ..........!

My wife is amazing at gift giving! I mean, so much so, that at times, I would even begin to feel like a small child get all giddy and excited over the gifts that were being opened. Even though they weren’t mine!

And my point here, is that if we, as parents, who are born into the spiritual condition known as sin, know how to give good gifts to our children because we love them, how much more does our Father in heaven know how to give us the most amazing gifts in this life.

I mean, isn’t that what the Bible tells us in ,

Matthew 7:11 NLT

11 So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give good gifts to those who ask him.

And God proved it to us, by sending the single greatest gift ever known to the universe. His beloved Son and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ!

And I want to emphasize to you this morning, as I have done so in past, about the very obvious point that God could have easily, sent His beloved Son to the earth, as an already grown man and just walked onto the scene, as the proverbial night in shining armor and paid the price as the massive hero for the story.

This morning, I want to very briefly

But, that was not God’s plan or design for us and our redemption and it was not God’s plan for Yeshua, His Son, and His coming to this earth.

God made sure that the Messiah would, in all ways and all points, be able to relate to us and our lives, but even more importantly, that we would be able to relate to Him and His life as it would parallel our own existence, and thus give to us a model to live by!

If Jesus had come onto the scene an already grown man and a deity, kind of like a spiritual super hero if you will, perfect and impervious to even the temptation to sin and He went to the Cross and then back to Heaven, there would have never been a connection between us and Himself and God!

In other words, people would have said, “Well, of course He didn’t sin, He’s not from here; He’s not one of us. He was a god and didn’t have to go through what we do!”

“He didn’t grow up in a poor home.”

“He didn’t have to feel the hurt and sting of losing loved ones.”

“He never had to deal with the rejection of others and all of the hurts and offenses in this life!”

“Jesus could never relate to what I am going through, because He never walked in our shoes!

But, in God coming to this earth as one of us, through His Son, born through a woman as a human and growing up as a fellow citizen, and facing all of the temptations that are common to man, yet without sin, He fulfilled what must be done to satisfy our eternal debt and in a way that every human could relate to!

tells us, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

He had to grow up and experience submission and honoring parental control, so as to fulfill the commandments of the law, as the law stated, “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.”

In fact, He had to grow up completely under the requirements of the entire law, as a human, from infancy through adulthood, so that He could fully accomplish the law and its requirements.

The law was not given from God, for God, but rather it was given by God, for a sinful humanity!

Jesus had to be able to face temptation and sin the same as we do and yet never yield to it, thus completing the righteous requirement of the Law.

He had to come fully as a human, because only another human’s blood could ever serve as propitiation for our sins!

And not just another human’s blood, but the blood of another human that had NEVER been infected with the spiritual disease known as SIN!

As the Bible tells us in , “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.”

You see, this is what we need to understand about sin and the law. Before God gave the law and its requirements to Moses for the people as a reminder of their sins and the need for forgiveness and repentance, the first and original sin in the garden, was still committed against God’s LAW!

Even though the Mosaic Law would not come into being for another 2,500 years, the first sin was still against God’s law.

Without a law, there can be no sin. How can you do something wrong, when nothing is called wrong?

Adam and Eve sinned, because they openly broke God’s command law of, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

God’s law for Adam and Eve was cut and dry and simple, just one law to observe, “Don’t eat from this one tree” and yet they still fell to temptation and broke that one law!

They only had ONE law to observe!

How much more difficult do you think that it was to uphold 613 laws, as came through the law and Moses and the religious leaders?!

And if mankind could not stand up to one law and keep its righteous requirement, before sin was even in existence with mankind, then what chance did anyone have of keeping and fulfilling all of the law and its requirements under the law of God as given to men through Moses?

And whether you are talking about the garden account with the first sin, or anytime thereafter, the issue of sin and morality and God’s commandments all deal with a spiritual war, against a spiritual enemy who is relentless in his efforts to destroy us and keep us separated from God, by sin!

So, in order for a human to achieve a morally righteous state, which, by the way, is not possible for anyone, because the Bible tells us, “as it is written: “None is righteous, no, not one”; but such a person would have to fulfill the entire law, start to finish (and never sin once in the process).

Then and only then, could the price of redemption for our sins be paid to God!

The redemptive price, that is, the ransom price for the sins of all mankind, could only be perfect sinless human blood, in exchange for our sinful human blood!

That is why Jesus, God incarnate, had to come, fully human and fully given to temptation in all ways as we are, yet, never sinning, so as to fulfill the law and its righteous requirements, and be able to offer His perfect blood as atonement for the sins of all mankind!

,

Hebrews 9:13–14 ESV

13 For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

And here’s the kicker of it. Jesus, the Son of God, in full humanity, had to come and live His life for us without sin and yet He still had to become SIN for us!

, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

There are those who reject Biblical truth and say that Jesus was a man, but was NOT GOD. This belief is called Ebionism.

And then there are those who embrace the unbiblical idea that Jesus was God, but was not a man. This idea is called, Docetism!

These are both unbiblical and lies, because God’s word tells us that Jesus was fully God and fully human.

, “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.”

, “For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,”

, “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.”

Theologically speaking, this is what is called a “Theanthropos”, which simply means, “the God-man, Christ as being both divine, as well human.”

Fully God, fully man and fully committed to saving His creation!

, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”

The greatest gift ever given, in all of universe, was Jesus the Christ and His life lived as a ransom for many.

In , we see an interesting title/description given of Jesus, a title and theme used elsewhere within the New Testament as well as within the Old Testament prophecies of His coming and His purpose for coming. This title and its meaning for our lives is the main point that I am making this morning and it will probably carry over some into next week’s message as well,

Revelation 13:8 NLT

8 And all the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast. They are the ones whose names were not written in the Book of Life that belongs to the Lamb who was slaughtered before the world was made.

John, the author of Revelation, a disciple and also a very close friend of Jesus while He was carrying out His earthly ministry, refers to Jesus as a Lamb, in this closing book of the Bible, numerous times.

A LAMB, not a great and mighty warrior, or the conquering king that Israel was looking for throughout the ages.

I mean, let’s face it, a lamb is not exactly the most intimidating of titles that you could give to someone, as far as the natural mind goes.

And with God, the Father, sending this great and mighty gift to the world, to ransom and save and deliver the people and nations of the world, from being under the tyrannical ruling of an evil host................. WHY A LAMB?

I mean, if I am going into a hostile environment to wage war and I am going to be announcing my coming to others before I get there, I am going to use some powerful titles to let everyone know that a force to be reckoned with is heading their way and bring some fear and intimidation into play to the hearts and the minds of my enemy!

You know, titles like: Chris the Bruiser, Chris the Punisher, or even the one that I am known by in my own home, Chris the awesome, amazingly powerful and talented force to be reckoned with!

BUT A “LAMB”?!

In order to understand this title and make more sense of it, there are a few things that we need to understand and that we will begin to look at and make sense of between today and next week.

We must clear our minds of the natural/physical warring ideology that we have. That is, when we hear or think of warring and conquering and delivering, we instinctively go the mindset of physical warring, with human hands and weapons of human invention.

Jesus did not come to this earth to fight a physical war. Jesus was coming to this physical world to pay a spiritual price!

And even now, having been redeemed and set free and called to engage into the war of heaven and earth, our war is still not carnal and our weapons are not physical, but rather they are spiritual and mighty for tearing down the spiritual strongholds of the enemy.

We serve a God who is spirit, we fight an enemy who is a spiritual being and we ourselves, are spiritual entities, created in the spiritual image of our Creator and cloaked in physical shell.

The next thing that we need to understand is the nature of a sheep and a lamb and also their relationship to a shepherd.

And in saying this, we MUST remember that the Bible was written thousands of years ago, to a people and a culture that thrived on and depended upon their flocks and knew very well all that went into raising and caring for sheep.

We’ll come back to this point and expound on it next week.

And the third thing that must be emphasized about this title for Jesus, was the nature of the ransom price itself.

The very reason that Jesus came to this earth was to pay a ransom price, to come and buy back a people that He and His Father loved more than we will ever understand.

We understand, in the natural, that if someone has been abducted and held as a prisoner, there is a ransom payment that is expected to be paid for their release.

In fact throughout history, there are scores of documented cases of ransom payments being made for people’s release from captivity.

One of the largest in modern history, was back in 1974 with a $60 million price tag, that in today’s economy, is worth around $340 million!

And arguably, the world’s largest ransom price ever paid, in the post or pre-modern world, was for that of the Incan emperor, Atahualpa, from the Spanish explorer, Francisco Pizarro.

The Incans paid enough gold and silver for the return of their king, that would amass today to over $1.5 billion!

So, if these outrageous amounts of money have been paid for individuals and their release, how much more would the cost be for the release of the entirety of every man and woman and child who has ever existed, or would ever exist in the future ?!!

To answer this, I will go to ,

1 Peter 1:18–21 NLT

18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. 19 It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. 20 God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake. 21 Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory.

Truly, the highest price ever to be paid in all of history, both here on earth, as well as in the heavens, was that of the Son of God and His precious, sinless blood for us!

As Peter stated, “It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless LAMB of God. God chose him as your ransom long before the world began.”

Pure and spotless blood, in exchange for marred and sinful blood, is the exchange rate for the Kingdom of God.

It was a pure, spotless lamb’s blood that served as a temporal covering for sins in the Old Testament, but it was the pure and spotless blood of the Lamb of God, that made complete atonement for the sins of all who would believe for ALL TIME!

For this reason, the heavens and the heavenly host praise and glorify Him, for the price that He paid. says,

Revelation 5:13 NLT

13 And then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea. They sang: “Blessing and honor and glory and power belong to the one sitting on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever.”

Jesus, God’s gift to mankind, had to come as a spotless LAMB and allow His perfect blood to be shed, to cover over and wash away our sins, so that when God looks at us, He doesn’t see us and our sin, bur rather, He sees His Son and His perfect sacrifice!

I will close with this story.

I heard a story of a New Zealand sheep herder, who found himself in a predicament one morning. He awoke to find that he had two female sheep, both going into labor at the same time. The first mother sheep gave birth to her lamb, but due to complications, the mother sheep dies shortly after giving birth to her lamb. The second mother sheep gave birth to her lamb, but instead of the mother having complications, it was the lamb that had issues and died right after birth.

Now, the farmer found himself in a precarious position. He had a motherless lamb on the one hand and a lamb-less mother on the other hand.

The farmer did what would seem logical and took the surviving little lamb the surviving mother sheep for her to tend and nurse it. What the farmer found was, that the mother sheep could smell the blood and the scent of a lamb that was not her own and so she rejected it and would not care for and protect it.

The farmer then had the most ingenious idea. He went to the body of the little lamb that had just died and he removed its skin from its lifeless body and fashioned it, much like a cloak, around the body of the living lamb and then presented it before the mother sheep.

The sheep was already starting to reject the lamb again, until a scent caught her nose that drew her in. She smelled the scent of her own and thus she engaged the lamb and began to care for it from that day on!

The covering blood of the one lamb, protected and enabled the life of the other.

It took the shedding of the blood of the Lamb of God and His death on the Cross, to serve as a cover that was placed over us, to where when God look at us, He doesn’t see or “smell” our sin, but only the sweet smell of His Son, Jesus Christ!

CLOSE AT THIS TIME!