Jesus, The Lamb Of God - [John 1:29]

Let's begin with a word of prayer Dear God our Heavenly Father. We thank you for this evening for bringing us together here to worship you and to hear your word Lord as we open the words of the scriptures made these words come alive to us and may our hearts be filled With the glory of your dear son Jesus Christ and we ask all this in Jesus name.

Amen the message this evening is Is called Jesus Christ the Lamb of God and It should be pretty easy for you to guess what we are going to be talking about today. We have the communion service this evening and The text and the message will focus on the person and the work of Christ when you think of Jesus the text this morning is taken from John chapter 1 verse 29 and As You know John here John the Baptist is proclaiming who Jesus Christ is to a nation that is eagerly anticipating the Messiah and In fact, John has so much success that the people are looking up to John and thinking that is this the one that? they have been waiting for is this the Messiah.

And In that context John has a proclamation about who Jesus Christ is and Let's just read verse 29 and then we'll look at this context a little more closely. The next day he that is John the Baptist saw Jesus coming to him and said Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

John the Baptist Points to the Lamb of God

If you look at the entrance that Jesus makes into history in Israel he is proclaimed and this is the first thing that John the Baptist talks about Jesus. He is proclaimed as The Lamb of God in fact. If you go back a little a few verses in John chapter 1 in verse 19 When the Jews came and asked John the Baptist who are you that we may?

Go back and let the authorities know he says I'm not the Christ. But he had a specific function. John the Baptist came to proclaim Jesus. He said I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord as the Prophet Isaiah has said He was given a task of proclaiming this King who was going to make an entrance into Israel.

The people of Israel knew through various prophecies that here was the Messiah the Son of David who was going to come. And this much awaited King had a forerunner and this forerunner was John the Baptist he was preparing the hearts of the people and making straight the paths before Jesus would make his entrance and this Proclaimer, you know if you can go back into the Eastern culture and think of this man Who's announcing that the King is coming the King is coming and what does he choose to say about this King when the King comes?

He does not say the Lion of the tribe of Judah is here or David's own son is here to take the throne. Those would be the kind of things that you would expect the forerunner of the king to say but here John the Baptist says Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

It just goes to talk about the work of Christ. And what was it that Jesus was primarily about and John focuses straight on that and explains. Or exclaims. This is the Lamb of God and in fact in verse 30 36 if you see the next day Jesus John sees Jesus again and with he has two of his disciples with him and he says again behold the Lamb of God.

And when John does that the first two disciples start to follow after Jesus we have John and Andrew. Who follow after Jesus now? What is this? Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world if you think of John the Baptist and the context in which he has been Doing his ministry.

What was it that John the Baptist came to do? What was he preaching about? He was preaching a baptism of repentance. He was preparing the hearts of the people to be ready for God. He was talking about sin and he was talking about repentance and readiness before God and here He says the Lamb of God.

Now when you look at this term Lamb of God many commentators have a difficult time trying to nicely tie this up with the Old Testament say this is exactly what was written in the Old Testament that John is referring to in fact There are so many references to the Lamb in the Old Testament that it is hard to say this.

Precisely is what God said in the Old Testament that John the Baptist is referring to when it's a Lamb of God, it could be the Lamb that has been sent from God and This is God's own Lamb and There are at least nine different places in the Old Testament where you can go and look for different Elements of this Lamb that God has spoken about which is coming to fruition in the life of Christ right here for most of us looking back we We can kind of put some of these pieces together and this evening I want to just take a couple of those examples from the Old Testament to just refresh our hearts and our minds about this Great Lamb that God has sent for us so the passages that we are going to look at very briefly in the time that we have From you don't have to turn here.

We'll most of these stories should be familiar with you. The first one will be from Genesis 22 where Abraham is asked to sacrifice Isaac. The second one will be from the Passover lamb that was sacrificed and then finally we will look at Isaiah 53 Which was foretold about this lamb that would come and bear our sin.

Abraham, Isaac, and God's Provision of a Substitute

Let's begin with Genesis 22. Genesis 22 8 says Abraham actually, well, let me give you the context and then I'll get to this verse as you know, Abraham in his very old age He did not have children and God promised that he would have an heir and that heir was born when he was very old and that was Isaac and Isaac grew up to be a young boy and God made a very interesting demand of Abraham he said you need to sacrifice your son and the Bible says that God was testing Abraham for his faith.

And as Abraham, you know, right obeys God takes Isaac and starts going towards the mountain to sacrifice him. Isaac's Isaac asks asks a very simple question. He says dad we have everything that we need for the sacrifice except the lamb.

There is no lamb and there Abraham says in verse 8 of Genesis 22 God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering my son and Here we see the faith of Abraham in knowing that God would provide he would take care of Whatever he has to in order in the one hand to keep his promises that Abraham's descendants will continue and there will be his promise that is fulfilled but at the same time if Isaac has to die.

He we read in Hebrews that God knew Abraham knew that God would be able to even bring him back from the dead God. Abraham trusted God and he walked looking for God to provide for the lamb and of course we we Hear what actually happens.

Abraham goes all the way up to the mountain he binds up his son is ready to sacrifice and there God provides a ram in the ticket he provides an Alternate to the sacrifice of Isaac and there's one two things we look we learn from in that particular instance.

It's a it's a very dim shadow of what was going to happen. But there are two things that we can learn from here. The first one is that God provides, you know. Just as Abraham said through faith not knowing what was going to happen in verse 8 God will provide.

God did provide the lamb and the means of acceptance before God was provided by God in a way that Abraham had no idea about and secondly this provision was I think Nate prayed about this when he read Isaiah 53 was a Substitution as you can think about it here is a sacrifice that was to be made and that was Isaac and there on the mountain.

You have a substitution happening right there by God's provision which is this ram that God provides in the place of Isaac and so you have the first image of substitution In the scriptures and it when I'm in the in the imagery of a lamb and that comes from God himself making the provision.

In fact, if you think about this place where Abraham is when this Sacrifice is offered. Do you know where this Abraham went up to in order to provide the sacrifice? Mount Moriah and It is actually very close to Salem, which is Jerusalem, you know in the before David took it and made it his own city and This is not that far off from another more hill outside of the city walls of Jerusalem where someone else was going to die.

It is the mount the Golgotha Where Jesus would actually be crucified and here you have actually on the people believe that Mount Moriah is where the temple Was actually built eventually when under Solomon and here you have the first imagery of God himself providing away.

You know right in Genesis 3 when we have the fall God Had given a picture of this this salvation that will come to the seed of the woman, but here we have the image of Substitution that comes through God's own provision.

The Passover Lamb and the Blood on the Doorposts

The second image I want us to think of is the angel of death that we see in Exodus 12 if you remember Moses he comes here to redeem God's people under God's charge. The Pharaoh hardens his heart doesn't want to let the people go and you have plague after plague after plague that God sends to Demonstrate his power and at the culmination of all of this is the death of the firstborn sons and God tells Moses that this is what is going to happen every firstborn in the land of Israel will be killed as the angel of death passes over and Then God again makes the provision.

I'll just read for you Exodus 12 verses 5 through 8 to talk about what God instituted in terms of the Passover. He says that your lamb shall be without blemish he has already said on the 10th day of the month you need to pick these lamb and You need to get this lamb without blemish a male a year old and you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.

And you shall keep it until the 14th day of this month when the whole congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.

They shall eat the flesh that night roasted on the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. They shall eat it. Here God is going to send the angel of death, which is going to kill every single firstborn.

But God provides a means for the people of Israel and here he says this is how you will be passed over when the angel of death comes through you and he says you know kill this lamb without blemish and put its blood on the two doorposts and the lintel and The angel will pass over and that is exactly what happens here.

The tenth plague comes in you have all the firstborn including the humans and the animals. Everyone is killed. But those who had the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and a very powerful symbol of what actually happens eventually when Christ dies and Sheds his blood for us.

In fact, if you look at John 19 you look at Jesus dying on the Passover and There are very there are many similarities to the way in which Jesus dies it's not in all senses, but there is a there is a very definite sense in which Jesus is The one who dies in our place just as the lamb that was without blemish died in In the event of the Passover.

In fact, I think last Sunday pastor Steve preached about this lamb in I think it's in 1st Peter 119 the precious blood of Christ like that of a lamb without blemish or spot and here was Christ who died in our place in order to do Take the punishment of our death that was upon him.

Of course right here in the first Passover. You don't have the sense of atonement here was judgment that was coming upon Egypt and it was through the provision that God had given that was the lamb that the angel of death passed over and Of course once you have this first Passover, you know that the Israelites celebrated Passover year after year after year.

It was a commemoration of what happened that first Passover when God redeemed his people out of Egypt and brought them to the promised land and every every year they would remember the miraculous way by which God had saved his people and Brought them out of Egypt and of course the whole redemption from Egypt is also a symbol of God redeeming his people from the slavery to sin and Through the ceremonial system you had the sacrifices that were offered daily.

The morning and evening you had to have the lambs sacrificed and these were instituted in order to take or atone for sin and these Sacrificial system was pointing to something that was going to come in the future but the children of Israel through their obedience in the way that God had provided would have Their sins atoned for in God's own way and that involved an innocent lamb dying on the place of the sinful human being and that brings us to our last passage which Nate read for us, which is in Isaiah 53 and Here we have a prophecy about the Lamb.

The Suffering Servant Who Bears Our Iniquities

So until in in the Old Covenant the people of Israel had the ceremonial system that God had instituted. Here is how you can atone for your sins by obeying the law that was given and the ceremonial Killing of these lambs that would atone for the sin of as we read in the book of Hebrews the blood of those Lambs were unable to actually pay the penalty for sin.

But what they were doing was they were pointing forward to the time when the perfect lamb would come and that is what Isaiah prophesies in Isaiah. I'll just read verses 6 and 7. In fact in Isaiah 53 verse 6 Isaiah says all we like sheep have gone astray we have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all and Him is the Messiah that is to come and in verse 7 we read he was oppressed.

He was afflicted yet He opened not his mouth like a lamb that is led to the slaughter and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent. So he opened not his mouth and in verse 11 It says out of the anguish of his soul He shall see and be satisfied by his knowledge.

Shall the righteous one my servant make many to be accounted Righteous and he shall bear their iniquities. He shall make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. So here was a prophecy that Isaiah gave about this this coming suffering servant the Messiah something that the people of Israel had a very difficult time understanding because The servant in in in the book of Isaiah would sometimes refer to the book to the nation of Israel sometimes it would talk about the Messiah and Sometimes the things that it talked about the Messiah was very difficult to understand.

Why would the Messiah suffer? He is the one who's going to come and redeem the people but then it was Revealed in in shadows and that becomes into full clear picture when John the Baptist here in John chapter 1 says you know behold the Lamb of God who has come to take away the sin of the world and The two elements again that we see in what Jesus came to do was firstly he was our Substitute just as how the Lamb was given in the place of the sinner dying Jesus was to take our sin and in fact in Isaiah 53 11 we read that he shall bear their iniquities he was to take the punishment of sin that each of us had to bear and secondly he would actually Count us righteous because of the work of Jesus so it was through the work of Christ our perfect substitute that we would be both righteous and We would have our sins accounted for in fact in the very end of the Gospel of John in John 19 verse 30 We read that Jesus said it is finished and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit the very last words before he dies and Right there He completes the task that was given to him by the Father and he came into the world as the Lamb of God to bear us in and that is exactly what he did on the cross to be our substitute to die in our place and to complete the Satisfaction of God's wrath and he completed that work on the cross when he died.

The Finished Work of Christ and Our Substitutionary Atonement

All of us know that we needed a substitute. Every anyone here who is a believer knows that you went through a moment in time or a period in time when you knew that You could not face a righteous God on your own.

So often as believers we I think forget the preciousness of that substitutory Substitutionary death that Jesus did for us. I remember when I was going through the time when God was working in my heart the first Conviction that I had in my my life was the conviction of sin.

I had understood the holiness of God and I said, you know I I can understand why God is holy and we we need to be better than what we are. But of course we can we can live better than what we are if we try hard enough, right?

If I I just didn't know that we had a holy God and I I will just Work harder at trying to be not sinful because when the Holy Spirit does his work of conviction the first thing that we want to do is What do I do?

I I need to do something because what I'm doing is unacceptable before God and you try harder. I tried harder to say, you know, I will I will do everything I can to be acceptable before God. You try and you fail and you say well, I didn't try hard enough.

Let me try it next time and I'm pretty sure I'll I'll do better and you try and try and try and you soon realize it is not in you in order to live a life that is pleasing to God and Then you come to the conclusion.

Well The reason I'm not able to succeed is first of all because even though I know there is a God who is holy the things that I do I Like them. I really don't want to give these things up in order to live a life.

That is pleasing to God and even for a moment if I say well, I don't like these things I find that my my mind says one thing but my my flesh drags me down and before I know it I'm back in the sin from which I tried to walk away from and Thanks be to God and and the reason why we do that is of course our pride in our sinful human pride.

We think that we can do everything that is acceptable before God. But we have to come down to our knees to recognize that it is not in us. It is not in us to live a life that is perfect and acceptable to him.

In fact, even granted that if we were able to live a perfect life What would we do about every sin that happened until then? Who can go back and erase those tracks from our from our lives? And that is why we are so grateful for the grace that God has given us where he says you cannot but I will and he provides the Lamb of God Jesus Christ as our substitute and We can all look back at that moment you know if you if some of you may remember it more vividly than others when You had come to the end of your life when you said I do not know I know the sin that is so much of a burden.

I know the fear and the terror I have of this Holy God and I have nothing within me and then this God by his mercy just Illumines our heart and he just convicts us and he releases us. He says, you know Here is the perfect Savior that is for you and the moment when we looked up to him and we put our faith in him He saved us and that joy that we had at that time is something that I I think we will Continue to experience through our lives here till one day we are in heaven where we will look at this lamb that was slain Face to face and be Rejoicing the rest of our life with him.

The Once-for-All, Complete, and Universal Sufficiency of Christ's Sacrifice

There's just three quick things. I want to mention as we look back at what Christ has done as a Lamb of God. One thing is that this? Substitutionary atonement was not temporary if you look back at all the lambs that were slain they were slain again and again and again and when we put our faith in Christ when we were Saved or justified by the work of Christ.

That was a work that was done once and for all if you look at There's many verses here. If you look at Hebrews, for example Hebrews 912 we talked about an eternal redemption that is accomplished for us in Christ and not just Temporary it is also not partial.

In fact, if you look back at the time when you try to overcome sin on your own. You know, you you succeed in some areas but you fall in other areas and then eventually you give up and Likewise this righteousness that is given to us in Christ.

It's not just a partial righteousness. It doesn't cover just one area here and another area here. It is complete it is perfect as Hebrews 5 9 says he has been made perfect and Provides this eternal salvation to all.

It is a work that is finished as we read in John 19 and that is fully and completely done and It is not just temporary. It is not just a partial work and it is also not just for a few. It was for every single person who would obey him.

In fact the last Sunday morning and this Sunday morning we looked at the work of Christ that has brought us this precious Salvation and through which we can live a life that is glorifying to God. This evening we are going to spend we are going to celebrate the Lord's Supper and look back at this work of Christ that he has done for us and One verse that is just burned in my mind.

Which I always look back to for comfort where even I'm struggling with sin. Or when I just look back at the work of Christ is in 1st John. It says it's in 1st John chapter 2 verses 1 and 2 John writes my little children.

I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation or the satisfaction of God's wrath for our sins and not for ours only But also for the sins of the whole world.

Jesus Christ the Lamb of God Bore our sin on that cross 2 ,000 years ago and He has completely satisfied God's wrath for each and every one of us in and we can look up to him thankful for what he has done for us when we came to Christ and Look up to him even in the walk that we have today as we overcome sin by his power.

Let us thank God for this great lamb that he has given us. The lamb that we read in Revelation 5 a lamb that was slain that is one day going to come back and Conquer this world and reign it and rule it With the authority of God.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father we thank you for Your Provision to take care of sin we thank you for giving us Jesus Who died on in our place as our substitute and as our appeasement of your wrath. We thank you that you did this because you loved us and we thank you because Even though it cost Jesus his life.

He was willing to be obedient even to the point of death. Help us. Oh father even this evening as we look back at that finished work as we look back At what happened in our lives When we came to faith in Christ help us.

To truly thank you with hearts of gratitude Even as we celebrate this Lord's Supper in Memory of what you have done for us. We ask all this in Jesus name.