John 1:29-34

The Shepherd's Church

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If you're new and this is your first week, thank you so much for coming. Like I said, we are approaching six months.

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We're a toddler, not even. We're an infinite vest as a church plant goes and our prayer is that the

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Lord would help us grow strong and that the only way that's gonna happen is through the word of God. So let's pray, let's ask the

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Lord to bless our time together and then let's dive into the word together. Jesus asked that in a real, tangible way that you would be here with us, your people.

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Lord, you would do it by the power of your Holy Spirit that descends upon us. And Lord, we know you've taken residence up in our heart, but Lord, also there are those sweet times in our life where you are more near, more present, where it feels like that you're quickening our hearts, where it feels like that you're moving and churning us even down into our bones.

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Lord, I pray for us tonight. I pray that we would not be passive listeners of your great word, but that Lord, your word would be strong and powerful.

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That Lord, that it would just be written on our hearts, Father. God, I pray that whatever

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I would say would be from you. And Lord, whatever is not from you, I pray that you would take it away.

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And Lord, I pray that we all would be united around this word, in Christ's name, amen.

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We're gonna read first the text for this evening. We're gonna be in John 1, 29 through 34.

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And if you are new, this is an interesting thing. We normally do one or two verses a week, but we're now out into the narrative portions of John, so we're taking a little bit larger sections of scripture.

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So we're gonna read right now about eight verses. It says, the next day he, that's

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John the Baptist, saw Jesus coming to him and he said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

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This is he on behalf of whom I said, after me comes a man who has a higher rank than I, for he existed before me.

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I did not recognize him, but so that he might be manifest to Israel, I came baptizing in water.

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And John testified, saying, I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven and he remained upon him.

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I did not recognize him, but he who sent me to baptize in water said to me, he upon whom you see the

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Spirit descending and remaining upon him, that is the one who baptizes in the

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Holy Spirit. I myself have seen and have testified to you that this is the

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Son of God. Now what's interesting is that this verse ends with John's testifying.

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And last week it began with John's testifying. So what we saw last week is that John was this great witness for Jesus and that we were introduced to this man,

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John the Baptist, through his witnessing of Jesus. And we saw that John the Baptist was that great prophet, the last and final prophet that the

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Old Testament scriptures had announced that he is going to come before the great and awesome day of the

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Lord. We saw how both he and Jesus were, came to this earth through miraculous birth.

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Jesus through the virgin womb and John through the barren womb. But yet both of them were part of this amazing plan of God, John to introduce the world to Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ to come as the

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Lamb of God. John, we found out he came in the spirit and the power of Elijah, but even though he was too humble to admit that, that the

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Old Testament scriptures did identify John the Baptist with Elijah, Jesus himself identifies

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John the Baptist with Elijah, it's because the content of his message was repentance. Repent and believe the gospel.

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You see the whole point of John's ministry was that we are not enough, that we must look to Jesus Christ.

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John didn't exist for his own glory or purposes. He had a mega church very quickly in the first century.

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Crowds of people were coming to him, but yet consistently he was not saying, look at me, look at what

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I'm doing. He was saying, look at Christ. That was the ministry of John the Baptist. And we learned last week that he did that in five or six different ways.

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The first is that he understood that it was a shocking message. He understood that the message that God was going to come in the flesh was not a popular message.

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Then, and we learned last week that it's not a popular message for us today, but if we wanna be a faithful witness like John, we have to understand that the gospel is shocking.

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The gospel is going to not make you popular. It's not gonna make you have a lot of friends.

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And if you share the gospel rightly, you'll have what John had and you'll have persecution.

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But we also saw that in the midst of that, John was humble in everything he pointed people to Jesus.

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He was vocal. It said that he was a voice, which really goes against kind of the modern way of lifestyle

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Christianity that says, just live your life and people will notice Jesus. John would have disagreed with that.

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He said, you have to share it with words. John was faithful even when he was persecuted by this

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Jerusalem delegation. He was faithful even when he realized that he was unworthy. So unworthy, in fact, that he says he would not even be able to untie the straps of Jesus' sandals, but yet he was faithful in his ministry because he knew that that was what he was called to.

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And we, as the people of God, can be faithful witnesses of Christ because we know that we are called to share this gospel.

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Acts 1 .8 says, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.

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The ends of the earth have not heard the gospel yet. So therefore we still have a mission. Now today, we're gonna move from what

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John witnessed about until now what he saw with his own eyes.

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And what I love about this, and may it be true in our life as well, John's testimony of Jesus gets better this week.

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John only spoke about what he had heard from the scriptures last week. Now he's gonna tell us what he saw with his own eyes and it is better.

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And as we grow as Christians, may it be the truth for us as well, as we grow more in love with Christ that our witness becomes better and sweeter, even more powerful.

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The text says, the next day he saw Jesus coming to him and he said, behold, the

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Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Now what I find fascinating about this is that John doesn't introduce

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Jesus as king. He is a king. He doesn't introduce him yet as God in the flesh. He is

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God in the flesh. He chooses to introduce him to the people of Israel as the

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Lamb. I find that fascinating. The very first words on John's lips about Jesus when he's pointing him out as behold, the

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Lamb of God. Now, of course we know John is not saying that Jesus is a lamb.

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He's saying that the character and the quality of Jesus's ministry was gonna be like a lamb.

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It was gonna be lamb -like and we're gonna see in a moment what that means. And not just any lamb, he calls him

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God's lamb, which is a superlative for the ultimate lamb.

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Now, when we talk about lambs, we are not agrarian people. Maybe you have a lamb at home.

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I don't. My grass would not support it for maybe an afternoon meal for a lamb.

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So maybe you have one, but I don't. What does he mean when he says

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Jesus is the lamb? What does he mean by that? Well, there's four ways that the text could be interpreted.

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So you see, this is an agrarian society where almost everyone would have owned a lamb. This is a society where it was built upon lambs, built upon sacrificing lambs.

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The Old Testament was replete with stories of lambs. So we'd do well to understand, as modern people who don't understand these references, what it might mean.

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The question is, what did John have on his mind when he said the lamb of God? Well, like I said, there's four possibilities that scholars have argued about, and I'm gonna share the one that I think is most probable.

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The first is the lamb that was caught in the thicket on Mount Carmel. Maybe John had this in mind.

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If you remember, Abraham was told by God, take your son, your one and only son, up to the top of Mount Carmel and sacrifice him as an act of obedience to me.

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And if you remember from that text, Isaac, probably 18, 19 years old, the text says he was a young, unmarried man.

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That's what the Hebrew word means. He wasn't a boy. He was old enough to resist. He carried the wood.

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He carried the fire, and he said, Father, it's a very strange sacrifice that we're doing here.

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Every other time, we've had an animal. Abraham says, in faith, the

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Lord will provide. Abraham says, in faith, you and I will come back. He says that to his servants.

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And as they go up to the top of the mountain, Isaac, the teenager probably, allows his father to strap him down to the rocks.

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He allows him to raise the knife. And at the moment before he descends upon the helpless boy,

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God says, stop. Now I know that you are obedient. And Abraham looks up and he sees what?

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A ram, a male lamb caught in the thicket. And he walks over to that lamb. He frees it from the thicket.

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They sacrifice the lamb and that's it, right? No issues. Mom doesn't have anything to say about that incident.

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Isaac probably didn't go to therapy later. I'm just joking. They didn't have therapy.

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Now, if you're John, and this is the incident that you're referring to, then you're saying that Jesus is that lamb.

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That at just the right time, Jesus shows up and he's the one who's going to sacrifice himself for the people.

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You see the substitutionary atonement, the lamb standing in place of the guilty. Isaac was not innocent.

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Isaac deserved death like all sinners. But yet the Lord allowed the lamb to die on behalf of the child.

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The Lord allowed the lamb to die on behalf of Abraham's one and only son. Why? I think it's a picture of the gospel.

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I think it's a picture to showcase that God's one and only son one day, although innocent, would die on behalf of the people.

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Now, if John has this in mind, which it may well be, this is what he's talking about. But I don't think this is exactly what

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John has on his mind. A second school of thought is the daily sacrifices that happen in the temple.

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According to Exodus 39, every morning and every evening, a lamb would be sacrificed at the temple.

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And the reason for that you can find in the context of Exodus 39, was because the people longed to live in the presence of God, but they had one massive problem.

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God is holy and they are not. So in order for sinful people to live in the presence of God, they had to shed the blood of a lamb.

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So if John is referring to Jesus as the great sacrifice that would end the sacrificial system, then he's saying that Jesus is bringing

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God's presence. Jesus is bringing the presence of God that is no longer dangerous because he would absorb the wrath of God, not us.

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And again, this might be what John has on his mind, but I don't think it is. The third could be the end time lamb in Isaiah, the metaphorical lamb.

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It says in Isaiah 53, we read this earlier, he was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth like a lamb that has led to the slaughter and like a sheep that is silent before his shearers.

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So he did not open his mouth. And as you read in Isaiah 53, you see that he was crushed for our iniquities, bruised for our sins.

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The punishment that we all deserve was placed upon him. If this is what John is thinking, again, he's thinking about the man who would die in place of the people.

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Do you see the common theme here? But I actually think that there's another lamb that John is thinking of.

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And I'll give you four reasons for that right now. I think it's the

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Passover lamb. If you think about it from the perspective of Israel, the most prominent lamb in their entire year, the most prominent lamb in all of their thinking and in their minds was the

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Passover lamb from the book of Exodus. It was the most important of all the lambs that were sacrificed in the

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Old Testament. And since John is making a very generic statement about lambs in general, he's appealing to something that they would have known.

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Like if I were to say, I'm going down to the city. None of you think

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I'm talking about Bill Ricka. I'm appealing to something we all know.

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Bill Ricka is fine, but it's not Boston. When I say I'm going down to the city, you know what I'm talking about.

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When John says the lamb, no disclaimer, I think they knew what he was talking about. I think they knew he was talking about the

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Passover. That's the first thing. If you were gonna say an unambiguous lamb, it would be the

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Passover lamb. That's number one. Number two was the people were expecting

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Exodus. The people were thinking Exodus thoughts. The people were praying

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Exodus prayers. What does that mean? Well, if you look back in the book of Exodus for 400 years, they were in slavery to Egypt.

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And they were in slavery to this tyrant king who had humiliated them, treated them wickedly and awfully.

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And here you are 400 years of silence from the book of Malachi to Matthew.

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Isn't that interesting? The people in Exodus were in slavery for 400 years. The people modern day

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Israel, when this is occurring, had had 400 years of the silence of God. They also had a wicked king who was over them from Rome.

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They also were in some sort of a sense of slavery. They didn't have an autonomous nation. They were praying that God would send a new

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Moses figure to free them from their slavery. Isn't it funny?

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John is out in the wilderness preaching repentance. He's out at the Jordan River, which was parted by God in the

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Exodus right after when they go to enter the land. All of these Exodus themes are coming together.

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So why would they not be thinking of the great Exodus lamb? Why would that not be the lamb that they're thinking of at this time?

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That's the second line of evidence is that Exodus was on everyone's mind and the lamb of Exodus is the

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Passover lamb. The third, it's just chronology. The Passover happened every year on the 10th of Nisan.

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This is not the 10th of Honda, but the 10th of Nisan. Dad joke. And it corresponded to Israel leaving

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Egypt on the 10th of that particular month, probably modern day April. Now, when we think about the

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Passover feast in the gospel of John, when does it happen? That's an important question because if the

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Passover happens every year, well, in relation to our narrative, where's the Passover? And if you just look, it's only 10 days away.

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In John 1, 19 through 28, that's what we dealt with last week. That's John being a witness. In John 1, 29, he says on the next day.

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So that means the previous day and now we're on day two. In John 1, 35, he says again on the next day.

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That takes us to day three. In John 1, 43, he says the next day again.

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So that's day four. Flip over to John chapter two. He says, and on the third day.

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So that's five, six, now on the seventh day. That is very important and we'll deal with that when we get to John two.

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On the seventh day, Jesus does something amazing, just like God on the seventh day rested.

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So we'll see that in a few weeks. John 2, 12, it says after that he did this, he went down to Capernaum, he and his mother and his brothers, and they stayed there a few days.

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Let's say a few means three. We're on day eight, nine, 10, 10 days. 10 days from when

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John says, behold, the Lamb of God. Then in John 2, 13, it says the Passover of the Jews was near and Jesus went to Jerusalem.

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The Passover was one of the three high holy days of the year and every male, every female and every child had to go to Jerusalem.

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The city was about the size of Lowell and it would have swelled to the size of Boston during this particular time.

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Can you imagine 600 ,000 people in downtown Lowell? It'd be a mess.

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I already can't get to my house. It's absolutely clear that Passover was on the people's minds.

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As John is preaching repentance, they're already packing their bags and their minds.

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Have you ever had a vacation where you got a couple of things to do before you go home and pack, which are already kind of packing?

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You're like, I need this, I need this, I need this, I don't need that. The people were preparing to leave. John the

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Baptist ministry was gonna have to take a break because the Passover was getting ready to happen. So isn't surprising then that when the

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Passover is right here, getting ready to happen, that John's lamb that he's talking about is

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Passover. He's not saying to the people here, here's the lamb that you're gonna take from your own field and you're gonna sacrifice in Jerusalem.

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He's saying, don't even think about that lamb. Here's the lamb. Christ is the lamb. He's the true

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Passover lamb. I think that's what John is getting at. And then fourth, going right along with the chronology,

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I just think theologically, this makes too much sense. I think the lamb that is gonna die for the people so that God's wrath would pass over them, giving all of the evidence, the beautiful theology of who

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Jesus is, is he's the great Passover lamb. And for all four of those reasons, I think that is why

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John is referring to Jesus as the Passover lamb. I can't prove that, but I think that.

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Now, maybe you're like, what's the Passover? I don't even know what that is. Okay, let's take a look.

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What is the Passover? What does it mean? People of Israel were in slavery for 400 years.

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They were praying that God would free them. Now, you can imagine that when he raises up a man named

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Moses, who stutters and who has all of these excuses that things are gonna go difficult for this rescue operation and indeed, there are some struggles.

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Egypt doesn't just say, it's a great idea. We'd love to get rid of our labor force.

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No, they make it difficult. And God comes in with these 10 surgical plagues that strike right at the heart of the religious system of Egypt.

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One by one, plague by plague, they are crescendoing to the point to where Egypt will be forced to let

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Israel go. And the 10th and final plague was the death of the firstborn son. All throughout

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Egypt, from the smallest to the largest, dads and uncles and little small boys were going to drop dead on this night because this plague was the final and greatest plague against the people of Egypt.

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Egypt had this mythology that the Pharaoh's son became the son of God on earth.

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This is a part of their mythology. So when God strikes Pharaoh's son, he's killing the line of the gods in Egypt and he's showcasing

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I am the only real and true God. This is where Passover comes in because this was a nationwide plague.

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It would affect everyone, even Israel. It would affect any firstborn child would undergo this curse.

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So that is why God made an exception clause for his people. Now, every single family, and if you were poor and you could not afford it, then you would have to combine with your next door neighbor.

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But every family essentially would take a lamb. It would be a year old lamb. It would be a spotless lamb, unblemished.

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And you would take that lamb and you would bring it into your home for four days.

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From the 10th of Nisan until the 14th day of the month, the lamb would come in and live in your home.

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And if you cared about cleanliness and hygiene, you would have washed the lamb before you invited it into your home.

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And the children would have snuggled with the lamb and they would have played with the lamb. You would have probably slept beside of the lamb.

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You would have woke up and maybe the kids would have played games with the lamb. And the lamb actually would have grown accustomed to this new life of safety in the home, except that on the 14th day, the father would have to take the lamb outside of the home.

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And the father on this day would have to look that lamb in the eyes and he would take it and hold it by its head so that only he and the lamb were looking at each other.

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And the father would have to understand, my sin caused this.

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This lamb is innocent. I am guilty. My wife is guilty.

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My family is guilty. This is not, I think sometimes we get the understanding that the cultures that sacrificed animals were just heartless towards animals and they just, this was a fun game for them.

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The tragedy of their sin would have been readily apparent as they looked at that poor defenseless lamb.

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And in this sacrificial exchange, the innocent would die so that the guilty could walk away free.

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The blood of the lamb would be collected in a bowl and it would be painted over the doorpost so that when the angel of death descended upon Israel and went house from house, the houses with the blood of the lamb would be spared.

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Now you can imagine, if that's the message that you heard and that is what you did and you painted the blood on the doorpost, not a very normal thing to have happen in your week.

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And you sit in terror inside of your house, you're told not to go outside or else the plague will overtake you.

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Can you imagine what sleep would be like on that night? Is the blood of the lamb sufficient?

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Is the blood of the lamb really gonna save me? And as you wake up in the morning with the cries of all of the people who did not heed the word of the

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Lord, crying in agony over their loss, you realize that the blood of the lamb did spare your son.

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It did spare you as dad. Exodus 123 through 27 says, for the

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Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the

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Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to come into your houses to smite you.

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And you shall observe this event as an ordinance for you and your children forever. When you enter into the land, which the

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Lord will give you as he has promised, you shall observe this rite. And when your children say to you, what does this rite mean?

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You will say it is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord who passed over the houses of the sons of Israel in Egypt when he smote the

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Egyptians, but he spared our homes and the people bowed low and worshiped.

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Now, not only is this event happening, it is commissioned that it would become central to the national identity.

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Every year from that Passover onward, they were to reenact this particular rite.

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They were to teach it to their children. They were to demonstrate the sacrificial atonement that was necessary to free the people from Egypt.

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The innocent dying on behalf of the guilty. This is getting ready to happen in John's narrative.

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This is on the hearts of the people. So when you ask the question, why would John employ such a vivid narrative?

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He's saying Christ is that Passover lamb. Let's look at what

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John says. Let's turn to the gospel so that we can see how this plays out. The next day he saw

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Jesus coming to him and he said, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is he on behalf of whom

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I said, after me comes a man who is higher than I and he has existed before me.

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Again, when John wants to describe who Jesus is, he talks about a lamb and that metaphor drives the entire narrative.

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He says, behold, the lamb of God. So when he says that he ranks higher than me, he existed before me, he's not mixing metaphors.

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He's not saying that Jesus is the lamb. Now Jesus, the person ranks higher than me. Jesus, the person existed before me.

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John and his mind, the narrative that he's advancing, the metaphor is that he's the lamb.

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So when he's saying that this lamb ranks higher than him, this lamb has existed before him. He's not just describing any old lamb.

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He's describing the supreme lamb. Look at what he says. The first thing out of his lips, behold, the lamb of God.

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In Israel's history, that phrase had never been uttered. Behold, there's a lamb. There's John's lamb.

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There's Joseph's lamb. There's Zedekiah's lamb. Here's my lamb, never God's lamb.

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This is the first time that phrase had ever been uttered. And notice how

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John escalates his argument to talk about the supremacy of this lamb. And he begins with, this is

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God's lamb. He doesn't say that he is God right away. He said, this is God's choice for a lamb, which means he's the supreme lamb, the greatest lamb that's ever been born, existed.

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But he goes on. He says, this is he on behalf of whom

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I said, after me comes a man who is a higher rank than I. So what he's saying is that in a human sense,

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I know that my ministry started before Jesus. I know that I have more experience than Jesus. A couple of weeks ago,

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I said he was nine months older than Jesus. I was wrong. He's six months older than Jesus. Thankfully, that one didn't record.

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All my heresies just somehow get deleted post -production. John knows in a human sense that he is a higher rank than Jesus, but he's saying, no,

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Jesus ranks higher than me. John is looking past his experience. He's looking past humanity.

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He's looking to the fact that this lamb has an unlimited rank and he ranks supreme.

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John is saying that this is a God chosen lamb that has a rank higher than any lamb.

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No lamb could ever rank higher than this lamb. That's what John is saying. He says, after me comes a man who has a higher rank than I, and therefore, he existed before me.

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This lamb not only has the highest rank, but he also has eternal status.

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If you go back to John 1, 1, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was

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God. In the beginning was the lamb. Eternal. It's preexistent.

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A thoroughly unique lamb, to say the least. Now, I wonder if John also might be getting at another point.

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I can't prove this. I can't prove that John thinks this, but sometimes we are used by the

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Lord, even if we don't have the full picture. You see, I think if you look at the very first Passover, you'll see that the true lamb of God, Jesus Christ, was there as well.

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He was preexistent, even at the first Passover. When we look at the

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Exodus account, it most certainly looks like Jesus is there. It says in Exodus 12, for I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and I will strike down all of the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both male, man, and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgments.

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I am the Lord. The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live, and when

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I see his eyes, the blood I will pass over, and no plague will befall you or destroy you when

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I strike the land of Egypt. Why am I enunciating this? Because either

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John is talking metaphorically about God the Father, who cannot be contained in a human body.

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God came down in a way, he struck the land in a way, he saw with anthropomorphic eyes.

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It just means we're using language to describe God. God doesn't have eyes. He sees without eyes.

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Or, either that's what Moses is saying, or this is a physical appearance of Christ.

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I will come, I will strike, I will walk, I will execute. When I see the blood requires eyes, then

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I will pass over and I will strike. All of these verbs are so very physical. God is coming and walking the links of Egypt.

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He's looking with eyes, he's noticing doorposts. And again, is this

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God the Father? It could be. The triune God is a mystery to us and we can conjecture about this.

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It could be that he's talking about God the Father, but I think that a case for the second person, the

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Trinity, can be made. When John says the Lamb of God, I think it's actually quite probable that the

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Lamb of God was there when the Lamb was first sacrificed at the Passover. Jesus is known to have a physical body.

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That's indisputable. Jesus was born as a real man. He's the only one in the Trinity that had eyes.

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He is the only one in the Trinity that has a habit of showing up physically in the Old Testament, especially during important occasions in the

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Old Testament. Jesus is there. Let me give you a few examples. Who's the God who walked physically in the garden?

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Who's the God who spoke audibly with their voice? I think it was Jesus. I think you have the

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God -man kneeling down and fashioning the human man. Who's the one who danced in the fiery furnace?

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Three went in, but yet they saw four. I think that was Jesus. Who's the one, the angel of the

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Lord, that men and women bowed down to and worshiped because they saw a human form in the flesh?

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It happened to Abraham. It happened to Hagar. It happened to Jacob. It happened to Joshua. It happened to Samuel. It happened to Manoah.

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It happened to many others. A physical manifestation of the triune

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God in the Old Testament. I think that's Christ. So either this was the pre -incarnate

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Christ or it was a metaphorical telling of God striking

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Egypt. Either way, you can believe both and you're fine. The reason

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I bring this up though is because if this was Jesus Christ, what a beautiful picture that you see of Jesus in the

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Old Testament. While the men and women were sacrificing their lambs, the lamb was watching.

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Think about how beautiful that is. When they were hiding in their houses in absolute fear, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world was holding back the destroyer of death from entering their home and he passed over.

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Think about the irony. The blood painted on the doorpost and you have the lamb who would one day paint his blood upon a cross holding back the angel of death from you and I passing over so that we could be at peace with God.

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If this was the lamb, he's acting out the gospel in Exodus 12 and he's foreshadowing

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Christ 1 ,500 years before he comes in the flesh. John shouts, behold the lamb of God.

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What rich symbolism that small little phrase actually is. Especially if he was the one present at that original

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Passover. Whether John actually believed that or not, we don't know.

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John doesn't say it. What John does say is that this lamb is supreme.

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This is the supreme lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. That's our first point, the lamb is supreme.

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The second, we're gonna look at verses 31 through 33 and we're gonna see that this lamb is also sufficient.

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John says, I did not recognize him but so that he might be manifested to Israel, I came baptizing in water.

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John testified saying, I have seen the spirit descending as a dove out of heaven and he remained on him.

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I did not recognize him. That's the second time he said that. But he who sent me to baptize in water said to me, he upon whom you see the spirit descending and remaining, this one is the one who baptizes in the spirit of God.

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Now we can learn a lot from this passage but I want us to narrow our focus just for a second on the sufficiency of Christ for salvation.

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The sufficiency of the lamb for salvation. John says,

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I did not recognize him. What a profound statement that he says twice. I didn't recognize him.

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This is a man who Jesus calls the greatest man ever born of woman and he didn't recognize who

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Christ was. This is a man who was in the best human position to understand who Jesus was.

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This was his cousin. This was Jesus's flesh cousin.

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His uncle was Mary and Joseph. This is a man who when Jesus's mom shows up while he's still in his mother's womb leaps because of who

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Jesus is. If you're a mom, you have to tell that story. Hey, this one time when Mary showed up, you like drop kicked my rib cage because we know he's

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God. But yet John doesn't recognize him. John had all the advantages that humanity could offer a person and yet even he did not understand who

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Christ was and this teaches us a very practical point. Without the spirit of God, we cannot recognize

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Christ. Without God's spirit, we cannot recognize Christ. Human intelligent alone was not enough.

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John was an intelligent man. Being obedient to the law was not enough.

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John says he was the greatest man ever born of woman. He's a representative for all of us.

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None of us have obeyed God better than he and yet he could not recognize Christ. His obedience did not do it for him.

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He had a superior position to us. He knew Jesus growing up. He knew the prophecies backwards and forwards.

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He heard stories about things that we can't even understand. So he had a better position than us and it still did not help him understand the reality of who

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Jesus really was. In his human understanding,

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John has to admit, I could not recognize him.

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He doesn't even say I did not recognize him as if he was mistaken or as if he had something in his eye. He said,

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I could not. I could not possibly recognize who Jesus was on human ability alone.

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John is looking at the crowds and he's saying, the lamb is right here in front of me and I can't even recognize him and neither could we.

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That's the point. On human ability alone, we cannot recognize who

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Jesus is. It took the spirit of God descending on Jesus for John to belt out, behold the lamb of God.

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It says that it wasn't until he saw the spirit descend upon Jesus that he even knew who

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Jesus was. It took the spirit's effort for him to understand. It took the spirit to open up his eyes so that he could see the reality of who

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Jesus was and the same is for us today. None of us were in a better position than John.

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None of us had better experience than John. None of us were the best person ever born. You might think that and that might be really great in the morning when you're looking in the mirror.

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It's just not true. The very best that we can do unaided by the spirit of God is blindness.

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That's it. The Bible says that we're dead in our trespasses, that we're blind in our sins. He might be standing right in front of us and we wouldn't even recognize him.

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He would be like any other man. Without the spirit of God, he's just a way to God. He's just a truth.

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He's just a life. He's just one way to get to the Father. Look at the world who has no spirit, what they say.

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Yeah, Jesus is a good moral teacher. Yeah, Jesus is a good man, but he's not

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God. That statement that Jesus is God and to really understand it is a spirit motivated statement.

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Unless the spirit of God descends upon you, you cannot think this way.

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You cannot imagine this. You're like John. You and I would both have to agree in the dullness of our own spiritual understanding.

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We don't know who he is. We would have to stand with Peter. Peter knew Jesus for three years and at the end of his life, he says,

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I don't even know the man. But yet when the spirit comes on Peter and acts, he gives one of the most profound statements of Christ ever made.

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See, the point is is without the spirit of God, we cannot know Christ. But with the spirit of God, we can cry out with John, behold, the

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Lamb of God, the supreme, awesome Lamb and the only one that I need.

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Next, with the spirit's power at work, we will not only see who Jesus is, he's the Lamb, but we'll also with John see why

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Jesus is. So John sees both. He sees when the spirit descends, he sees not only who

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Jesus is, but he sees why Jesus is. Why did Jesus come? John says that he baptized in water to manifest

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Christ to Israel. John is saying, I did this so that the Messiah would come. Why does John want the Messiah to come?

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So that he can showcase to the world who this Lamb of God is. John says,

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I did not recognize him, but he who sent me to baptize in water said to me, he upon whom you see the spirit descending and remaining upon, he is the one who baptizes in the

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Holy Spirit. John is saying, not only do we need to see who he is, that he's the Christ, we need to understand that every part of our life and everything that we do is entirely insufficient.

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John's baptism that was God ordained was not enough. He says that I baptized in water, but one is coming who baptizes in the spirit.

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John is alluding to the fact that his baptism and everything that he did with his life was not enough in comparison to Christ.

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He said, I'm preparing the way for Christ, but I'm not a substitute for Christ. And the same is true for us today.

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We cannot stand before a holy God and justify ourselves apart from the spirit's work.

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That's the truth. Seeing the world in this way only comes about by the spirit.

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Now we can say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe in Jesus. There's lots of people who go to churches every day or every week.

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We don't have church every day. There's lots of people who go to church every week and say, yeah, I believe. Jesus says, there'll be a lot of people who go to heaven and they'll stand before him and he'll say, depart from me,

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I never knew you. So there's something about confession that's not enough.

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You can confess inappropriately. You can think that you believe. True belief comes from the spirit of God coming upon you and manufacturing true belief inside of your heart.

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When your whole person comes under the conviction that without this Christ, it's helpless.

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You and I basically are out in the middle of an ocean spiritually. And even if we were the greatest

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Olympic swimmer that ever existed, say Michael Phelps, you might get a couple miles before you're eaten by a shark.

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You're not gonna get to land. Unless someone comes along in a lifeboat and reaches out a strong hand and pulls you out, you're doomed.

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What John is saying is that unless you come under the conviction that your whole life is doomed apart from Christ, you do not know

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Christ. You know religion, but not Jesus. And that's something that only the spirit of God can produce.

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We're religious creatures. We're systematic creatures. Give me the rules,

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A, B, C, and D. Good, check it off my list. Good to go, God's pleased with me. That's what religion is.

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The spirit of God offers something completely different. John is talking about a sufficient lamb.

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Not an insufficient lamb. He's talking about a sufficient lamb. I love how this passage kind of continues the story of the gospel.

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I think this passage tells the entire story of the Christian life. Because look at what happens.

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The spirit descends on Christ in a way that had never been before. So what,

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Jesus can walk in the power of the spirit every moment of his life. He can minister in the spirit, pray in the spirit, talk in the spirit, live in the spirit, resurrect

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Lazarus in the spirit, do miracles in the spirit. Jesus is walking in the spirit constantly in a way that none of us can ever possibly understand.

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He lives by the spirit and he was crushed and killed with the spirit. And the

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Bible says he was resurrected by the spirit. Every moment of his life.

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And why does John say that? Because this is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.

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Do you see what John is saying? The spirit came to live on Jesus in a way that none of us could ever imagine so that he could give the spirit to us.

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He lived in the spirit every day of his life and was resurrected by the spirit so he could share the spirit with you and I.

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Because we don't have what it takes spiritually to save ourselves. Christ had to do what he did.

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And I think this is a whole picture of the gospel. In conclusion, let's tie all these thoughts together.

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We've got Passover, we've got the death of Christ, we've got the resurrection of Christ, and we've got the spirit. How does all this work together?

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Around 30 AD, John the Baptist began baptizing and the first thing he did was he washed the

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Christ. Remember I said that if you're gonna invite the lamb into your home, first thing you do is wash.

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Then the spirit descended upon him and John cries out the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and John understands what all of this means.

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Like the Passover lamb, this is how God decided to take away the sins of the world.

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We see when the crowds were getting ready to go to Jerusalem, here is this Jesus who was preparing to die even from the first moment.

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Do you remember I said just like the father would bring the lamb into the household for four days, how many days do you think

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Jesus stayed in the city of Jerusalem on the week that he died? Four days. He came into the home of God.

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The temple was in Jerusalem, so therefore Jerusalem in and of itself became known as God's home on earth.

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Jesus comes into the home for four days, just like the lamb. And after four days, just like the

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Old Testament father would go out and slaughter his son, after four days, it was pleased, the father was pleased to slaughter his son.

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After three years of ministry and four days in the town of Jerusalem, the same crowds who cheered him descended upon him and arrested him, put him through an unjust trial and scourged him like an animal.

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Like a lamb led to the slaughter, he was silent before his captors. Like a Passover lamb looking in the eyes of his master, he was totally innocent.

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And he knew he would die, the innocent lamb, to set the guilty free.

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John says, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Do you know what that word means? Takes away.

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I believe knowing a little bit of the Greek language is important because you get these wonderful gold nuggets every now and then, and then it makes it all worth it, makes the years of pain trying to learn this language worth it.

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When John says, Jesus takes away the sin of the world, that word takes away normally means lifted up.

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Isn't that ironic? That in order for Jesus to take away our sin, he had to be lifted up.

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2 ,000 years ago on a cross, the true Passover lamb of God was lifted up onto a cross.

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His blood was painted on the doorpost of that wooden cross so that you and I could walk away free.

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So that you and I could be ones in whom he sends the spirit of God to dwell.

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We are set free because of what Jesus Christ has done. It says that he died for the sins of the world.

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I wanna clarify this for a second because we know not everyone is saved. We know not all 7 billion people in the world are saved.

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Why does he say the sins of the world? Because he lived in a nation, Jesus did, that basically treated the nations like scum of the earth.

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They would have said to hell with the world, let the nations be damned. They would have thought that the

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Passover lamb just applied to Israel. So when John says the Passover lamb that takes away the sins of the world, he's saying what other gospels say, that this gospel will go forward to the ends of the earth.

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That men and women from every tribe, tongue and nation will come to know Jesus Christ, the true

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Passover lamb. That's what John is saying. And that's where we will end our time and continue next week.

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Let's pray. Jesus, as we look back into your

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Old Testament, and Lord, even that is not an appropriate title. As we look back into the history of what you did for your people, you littered crumbs of the gospel all throughout its pages.

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Lord God, I pray that each and every single one of us tonight would get a glimpse of what it is that you've accomplished for us.

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Lord, I pray that we would get a glimpse, like John, of who you are. Lord, I pray, like John, that at the end of that passage, we would not only be able to say, behold the lamb of God, we would be able to say the son of God.

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My eyes have seen, and I testify that this is the son of God. Lord, I pray that that would be true for everyone here.

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Lord, I pray if there's anyone here who is trying to use religion as a way to claw and scrounge their way towards your throne, that they would realize the absurdity of that, that they would realize the foolishness of that and the insufficiency of that, and they would cry out to you,

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Jesus. Holy Spirit, I pray if there's someone in this room who does not see you like John, they don't recognize who you are.

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Maybe they believe the facts of the Bible, but they don't have the spirit. Holy Spirit, would you descend upon that man or that woman or that person who's listening to this later online?

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Holy Spirit, would you descend and would you open their eyes so that they could see and so that they could cry out with John, behold the lamb of God, behold the son of God.

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Holy Spirit, you're the author of true faith and you are the author of sincere faith. And as we, your

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Passover people, languish and celebrate in what you've done,

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I pray that you would author praise in us. It's in your son's precious, beautiful name we pray.