Love is:
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More than 440 years passed by. The people of God were held as slaves in Egypt. Pharaoh had oppressed them, saddling them with extremely hard labor. The Lord, after warning from Moses, sent plague after plague, but it failed to get Pharaoh’s attention.
And then one finally did. This plague would cause Pharaoh to insist Moses and his people leave Egypt. It would also cause the Israelites to consider God’s mercy and salvation.
The last plague—the plague that finally got Pharaoh’s hardened heart to pay attention—was the death of every firstborn son throughout Egypt.
The Lord told His people what to do in light of the coming of this tenth and final plague. The Lord told them to take lamb from their flock; He told them how to choose it, how to care for it, how to kill it as a sacrifice.
The people of Israel had to choose their own lamb—a yearling, to be specific. They were to select the best one. The perfect one. Pure, spotless. No defect. No blemish. No injuries. No issues of any kind.
And from the 10th day of that month to the 14th day of that month, each perfect little lamb lived among an Israelite family in their respective homes. They took care of the lamb. They fed it scraps from the table. For those 5 days, the lamb was vitrually part of the family.
A lamb—a perfect little lamb—was what God required of His people. If they were to escape the last plague upon Egypt, they needed a lamb.
A lamb was what God required, not merely at this point in history.
In the days of Adam and Eve, their son Cain brought as offering to the Lord some grains and vegetables. And their son Abel brought sacrifices from the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel’s sacrifice, but not upon Cain and his sacrifice.
Abel was the one who brought a lamb, and only his offering was accepted. God required a lamb.
Incredibly, God gives what God demands. Again and again throughout history, God always seems to provide a lamb or other sacrificial animal to save His people.
God told Abraham to go up and sacrifice his only son, Isaac, as a burnt offering. As Abraham and Isaac went up the mountain, Isaac realized something was missing; they forgot something.
Isaac asked his dad where the lamb for the burnt offering was. Even the boy Isaac knew what God required.
Abraham said, teaching his son:
8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
And so it was. Just as Abraham took the knife to sacrifice his son, he was interrupted by an angel, directing Abraham to a ram caught in the thicket. And so, Abraham sacrificed the ram instead of his son.
God provided what God required: “A lamb to sacrifice instead of Abraham’s son.”
A lamb is what God has always required. And it’s what He required of the exiled Israelites living in Egypt.
Blood had to be spilled. Moses relayed the command of God to them. The people understood. They would have to slaughter the lamb they’d selected.
So, at twilight on the 14th day of the month, every believing household sacrificed the lamb they had selected, the lamb that lived with them, the lamb—perfect and spotless. It would be sacrificed and its blood put to use.
Every believing family was instructed to take a branch of hyssop, dip it in the blood, and paint the doorframes of their homes crimson with the blood of the little lamb.
The head of each family would say something like: “Blood represents the taking of a life; this lamb will die as sacrifice. This lamb will pay the price we owe. Tonight, the Lord Yahweh will come in judgment. But, thanks to the lamb, we are covered.
And so, the lamb was sacrificed.
13 The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
The lamb sacrificed for the people, its blood smeared on the doorjambs of each home; the people, protected.
The blood-protected people would roast the lamb over fire, along with bitter herbs. They’d eat it along with unleavened bread. They’d eat it all. The lamb—and all it signified—was too sacred, much too special for any of it to go to waste.
After their special dinner, each family waited in solemn silence. That night, God would claim a life from every single household in Egypt. Either there’d be evidence that a lamb was sacrificed, or the firstborn son of every family would die. A life from every single household in Egypt would be claimed.
There was salvation for all who took shelter under the blood of lamb. Death would pass over. Penalty paid. God’s wrath satisfied.
Justice served.
Mercy extended.
Grace given…in the form of a lamb, sacrificed for the people.
God provides what God requires. Just as God provided the lamb to take Isaac’s place under Abraham’s knife, He provided each believing family with a way out—a lamb and its blood.
You see, the Israelites didn’t pass muster with their good looks, their charming ways; they didn’t get a pass because they were a little better than the Egyptians.
They needed a sacrifice to pay the penalty their sins had wrought. Blood would be spilled; their own or that of the lamb.
As so it was God provided what He required.
Sacrifice.
Once the people were freed from Egypt and started to wander in the desert, God gave them His Law—a set of instructions; 10 Commandments and then some. They constructed the tabernacle where God met with His people.
Inside the inside of the inside of the tabernacle was the Most Holy Place where the high priest, Aaron, would once a year make atonement for the people of Israel.
Aaron would take two goats, presenting them before the Lord. One goat would be sacrificed and the other would be the scapegoat.
One would be offered to the Lord, killed, its blood sprinkled in the holy place and its body burned outside of camp. The other would be a substitute for the people. Aaron the high priest would:
21 He is to lay both hands on the head of the live goat and confess over it all the wickedness and rebellion of the Israelites—all their sins—and put them on the goat’s head. He shall send the goat away into the wilderness in the care of someone appointed for the task. 22 The goat will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness.
It’s an awfully strange ritual. Priests and goats and sins and wilderness—all instructions detailed and given to Moses by God.
God could have just said that once a year the high priest would make atonement for the sins of the community and left it at that. Bing, bang, boom. An abra-cadabra or a wave of the hand from the priest.
But God made us and knows us and understands that an abstract theological concept wouldn’t connect with us the way a tangible act would. So he gives us something we can see and smell and hear and hold in our hands.
Instead of mere words to express the ideas of forgiveness and substitution, God gives a goat who carries all the sins of the community, out of the temple, past the people, into the wilderness, never to be seen again.
Talk about surreal; that’s one weird Tuesday. Your sins being carried away by a substitute, right in front of you like you’re watching a parade, only it’s not some inflatable Charlie Brown; it’s a goat carrying your sins far, far away. It’s a powerful picture, an incredibly powerful moment.
Once a year, every year this would happen. It would be a lasting ordinance for priest and people. A day of atonement, a day of propitiation. A day when the wrath of God was turned away from the people by a substitute.
It was God who made this powerful allowance. A substitute to take our place. A great exchange. Like a teacher out on a sick-day, a substitute comes in and takes their place, their responsibilities; fills their shoes.
Sometimes you’ll even hear someone ask a substitute teacher: “Who are you today?”
It’s funny when a young lady like Alli Steuck says "I’m Mr. Moles today,” but that’s what a substitute does. That’s the job.
The people could not begin to carry the weight or pay the price for their ongoing sinfulness. So the Lord provides a substitute, a scapegoat, to take the sins, carry the blame; the Lord gives a substitute to take the place of the people.
A substitute.
Fast-forward a few hundred years to the time of the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah speaks about one who is to be both sacrifice and substitute. As I read, listen for the themes of sacrifice and substitute.
2 He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
4 Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.
9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.
11 After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.
Isaiah speaks of one who takes our pain, bears our suffering; one who was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.
The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all, kind of like the goat on the Day of Atonement.
He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, innocent; silent. For the transgression of the people, He was punished. In the place of the people, as a substitute. Indeed, He bore the sins of many.
Sacrifice and Substitute.
Some of you might be thinking that I pulled out my Good Friday/Easter sermon instead of my Christmas sermon; but you’d be wrong. This was intentional. But here’s the truth: I probably could bring out an Good Friday/Easter sermon on Christmas, and vice versa, because Jesus was born to die. He was born to be sacrificed for us; born to become our substitute.
Jesus didn’t take on flesh and dwell among us simply to teach us how to live, to be a good teacher, a moral example. He did all those, but Jesus wrapped Himself in human flesh, he breathed our air and walked our sod to identify with us, in order to die for us and in our place.
Make no mistake: the Christ-child isn’t just another cute baby for us to coo at and fawn over. He is the eternally-existing, second person of the Trinity, God with us, given the name Jesus because He will save His people from their sins.
This baby—God in the flesh—was on a mission. He came as substitute and sacrifice.
Jesus substituted Himself for us on the cross; He carried our sins upon His shoulders and like the scapegoat, was paraded before us on the Via Dolorosa all the way to Golgotha.
God did what we had no right to do—God handed over the blame to Jesus Christ and He died for guilty people. God pointed the finger. God laid on Jesus the iniquity of us all.
This is imputation (Latin: imputare, “to charge to someone’s account”). God imputed our infinite debt to our substitute; the unbearable weight of our guilt was credited to Him.
21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
This is the love of God, deep and wide.
Jesus was born to die, went willingly as our sacrifice, gladly and resolutely stepped into our place as our substitute. He willingly laid down His life.
Like a lamb led to slaughter. He chose not to fight back. He received what came without any protest whatsoever.
Jesus as sacrifice and substitute was the will of the Lord. It’s what was required.
Jesus as sacrifice and substitute is the fulfillment and fullness of the OT sacrificial system.
Upon seeing Jesus with His disciples, John the Baptist ceased baptizing and shouted:
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!
He announced Jesus this way again the day after that, and likely every time he saw Jesus:
36 and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”
John wanted his disciples, those to whom he was preaching, all those within earshot to know that Jesus is the Lamb of God, come as sacrifice, come to stand in our place, come to restore our relationship with God, taking away our sins.
The word “lamb” is intentional. It was on purpose that Jesus was referred to as the Lamb of God.
John holds out Christ, testifies that He is the Lamb of God. That is, all the sacrifices which the Jews were accustomed to offer under the Law had no power to atone for sons. Those sacrifices were only figures of Christ.
Jesus, like tossing tables in the temple, overturns all human attempts at satisfying our sins, purifying ourselves, redeeming ourselves, reconciling ourselves to God.
And Jesus informs us there is no other way in which God and man are reconciled then through Jesus Himself, the One who takes away the sins of the world; only through Jesus, the Lamb of God.
During this season of Advent, we talk a lot about hope and peace and joy. We sing songs and read stories about the hope of nations, peace on earth, joy to the world.
What we must not miss is LOVE. This, I believe:
Love is a Lamb
Love is a Lamb
Love is a lamb, standing in as substitute for the people.
Love is a lamb, sacrificed for the people.
The Christ, the Messiah came and met the Lord’s standard for perfection. He was spotless, sinless, unblemished: the perfect Lamb. This Lamb would die for the sins of the world, and would rise again to show that He was, indeed, able to satisfy what God required.
“Behold, the Lamb of God
Who takes away our sin.
Behold the Lamb of God
The life and light of men.
Behold the Lamb of God
Who died and rose again.
Behold the Lamb of God who comes
To take away our sin.”
Love is a Lamb, willingly given, sacrificed in our place, taking away our sins, bearing our shame. The baby Jesus was announced to the shepherds that first Christmas morning as “Savior.” Simeon knew he was holding salvation. Anna met redemption itself.
Love is a Lamb, given us by God to deal with our deepest need. Twas the Father’s will to crush Him, to sacrifice the perfect spotless Lamb for the perfectly imperfect, marred, sin-stained beggars like you and me.
Love is a Lamb.
Love is a Lamb, born to die, the One who would save His people from their sins.
Without sacrifice and substitute, without a lamb, no one ever came to know a right relationship with God. Blood must be shed. Imperfection must be removed. Jesus is perfection, like the nursery rhyme says:
“Mary had a Lamb, And He was white as snow.”
We need a substitute to step-in and take our place, bear our shame, accept our punishment.
Ask the Holy Spirit to give you the grace to admit that you’ve gone too far to get yourself out. Let the Lamb, the Scapegoat, bear your guilt away and trust that God will never, ever bring it up again. He promises. Receive Jesus as your Savior right now; you are the very reason He came. He was “born that man no more may die.”
Look at the manger. Gaze upon the nativity. Think about the Christ-child. Like John the Baptist, boldly believe and announce to those around you, with joy and praise and gratitude:
“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away our sin!”