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

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Let's begin with a word of prayer. Dear God, our
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Heavenly Father, we thank you for this evening, for bringing us together here to worship you and to hear your word.
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Lord, as we open the words of the scriptures, may these words come alive to us, and may our hearts be filled with the glory of your dear
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Son, Jesus Christ. And we ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen. The message this evening is called
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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.
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We have the communion service this evening, and the text and the message will focus on the person and the work of Christ.
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When you think of Jesus, the text this morning is taken from John 1, verse 29.
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And as you know, John here, John the Baptist, is proclaiming who
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Jesus Christ is to a nation that is eagerly anticipating the
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Messiah. And in fact, John has so much success that the people are looking up to John and thinking, is this the one that they have been waiting for?
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Is this the Messiah? And in that context, John has a proclamation about who
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Jesus Christ is. And let's just read verse 29, and then we'll look at this context a little more closely.
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The next day he, that is John the Baptist, saw Jesus coming to him and said,
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Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
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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
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Baptist talks about Jesus, he is proclaimed as the
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Lamb of God. In fact, if you go back a few verses in John 1, verse 19, when the
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Jews came and asked John the Baptist, who are you, that we may go back and let the authorities know, he said,
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I am not the Christ. But he had a specific function. John the Baptist came to proclaim Jesus.
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He said, I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way of the
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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.
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The people of Israel knew through various prophecies that here was the Messiah, the son of David, who was going to come.
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And this much awaited king had a forerunner, and this forerunner was
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John the Baptist. He was preparing the hearts of the people and making straight the paths before Jesus would make his entrance.
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And this proclaimer, if you can go back into the Eastern culture and think of this man who is announcing the king is coming, and what does he choose to say about this king when the king comes?
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He does not say the lion of the tribe of Judah is here or David's own son is here to take the throne.
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Those would be the kind of things that you would expect the forerunner of the king to say. But here, John the
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Baptist says, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
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It just goes to talk about the work of Christ and what was it that Jesus was primarily about.
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And John focuses straight on that and explains or exclaims, this is the lamb of God.
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And in fact, in verse 30, 36, if you see the next day,
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Jesus, John sees Jesus again and he has two of his disciples with him. And he says again, behold, the lamb of God.
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And when John does that, the first two disciples start to follow after Jesus. We have John and Andrew who follow after Jesus.
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Now, what is this lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? If you think of John the
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Baptist and the context in which he has been doing his ministry, what was it that John the Baptist came to do?
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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.
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He was talking about sin and he was talking about repentance and readiness before God. And here he says, the lamb of God.
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Now, when you look at this term, lamb of God, many commentators have a difficult time trying to nicely tie this up with the
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Old Testament. Say, this is exactly what was written in the Old Testament that John is referring to.
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In fact, there are so many references to the lamb in the Old Testament that it is hard to say this precisely is what
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God said in the Old Testament that John the Baptist is referring to. When it says lamb of God, it could be the lamb that has been sent from God.
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And this is God's own lamb. And there are at least nine different places in the
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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.
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For most of us looking back, we can kind of put some of these pieces together.
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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.
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So the passages that we are going to look at very briefly in the time that we have are from, you don't have to turn here, most of these stories should be familiar with you.
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The first one will be from Genesis 22 where Abraham is asked to sacrifice
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Isaac. The second one will be from the Passover lamb that was sacrificed.
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And then finally, we will look at Isaiah 53, which was foretold about this lamb that would come and bear our sin.
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Let's begin with Genesis 22. Genesis 22 says, Abraham actually, well, let me give you the context and then
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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.
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And that heir was born when he was very old. And that was Isaac. And Isaac grew up to be a young boy.
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And God made a very interesting demand of Abraham. He said, you need to sacrifice your son.
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And the Bible says that God was testing Abraham for his faith. And as Abraham, you know, right, obeys
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God, takes Isaac and starts going towards the mountain to sacrifice him. Isaac asks a very simple question.
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He says, Dad, we have everything that we need for the sacrifice except the lamb.
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There is no lamb. And there, Abraham says in verse eight of Genesis 22, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering.
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My son. And here we see the faith of Abraham in knowing that God would provide.
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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.
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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
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Abraham knew that God would be able to even bring him back from the dead. God, Abraham trusted
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God and he walked looking for God to provide for the lamb. And of course, we we hear what actually happens.
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Abraham goes all the way up to the mountain. He binds up his son is ready to sacrifice. And there
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God provides a ram in the ticket. He provides an alternate to the sacrifice of Isaac.
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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.
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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 eight.
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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.
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And secondly, this provision was. I think Nate prayed about this when he read
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Isaiah 53 was a substitution, as you can think about it. Here is a sacrifice that was to be made.
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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.
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And so you have the first image of substitution in the scriptures and when you're in the in the imagery of a lamb.
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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
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Abraham went up to in order to provide the sacrifice? Mount Moriah.
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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.
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And this is not that far off from another hill outside of the city walls of Jerusalem where someone else was going to die.
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It is the Mount Golgotha where Jesus would actually be crucified.
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And here you have actually on the people believe that Mount Moriah is where the temple was actually built eventually under Solomon.
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And here you have the first imagery of God himself providing a way, you know, right in Genesis three.
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When we have the fall, God had given a picture of this, this salvation that will come to the seat of the woman.
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But here we have the image of substitution that comes through God's own provision.
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The second image I want us to think of is the angel of death that we see in Exodus 12.
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If you remember Moses, he comes here to redeem God's people under God's charge.
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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.
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And at the culmination of all of this is the death of the firstborn sons. And God tells
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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.
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And then God again makes the provision. I'll just read for you Exodus 12 verses five through eight to talk about what
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God instituted in terms of the Passover. He says that your lamb shall be without blemish.
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He has already said on the 10th day of the month you need to pick this lamb and you need to get this lamb without blemish.
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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.
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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.
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They shall eat the flesh that night roasted on the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.
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They shall eat it. Your God is going to send the angel of death, which is going to kill every single firstborn.
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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.
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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.
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And that is exactly what happens here. The 10th plague comes in. You have all the firstborn, including the humans and the animals.
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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
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Christ dies and sheds his blood for us. In fact, if you look at John 19, you look at Jesus dying on the
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Passover. And there are very there are many similarities to the way in which Jesus dies.
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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.
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Just as the lamb that was without blemish died in in the event of the Passover. In fact,
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I think last Sunday, Pastor Steve preached about this lamb. And I think it's a first Peter 1, 19, the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.
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And here was Christ who died in our place in order to do take the punishment of our death that was upon him.
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Of course, right here in the first Passover, you don't have the sense of atonement. Here was judgment that was coming upon Egypt.
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And it was through the provision that God had given that was the lamb that the angel of death passed over.
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And, of course, once you have this first Passover, you know that the Israelites celebrated Passover year after year after year.
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It was a commemoration of what happened that first Passover when
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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
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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.
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And through the ceremonial system, you had the sacrifices that were offered daily. The morning and evening, you had to have the lambs sacrificed.
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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.
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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.
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And that involved an innocent lamb dying on the place of the sinful human being.
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And that brings us to our last passage, which Nate read for us, which is in Isaiah 53.
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And here we have a prophecy about the lamb. So until in the old covenant, the people of Israel had the ceremonial system that God had instituted.
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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.
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As we read in the book of Hebrews, the blood of those lambs were unable to actually pay the penalty for sin.
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But what they were doing was they were pointing forward to the time when the perfect lamb would come.
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And that is what Isaiah prophesies in Isaiah. I'll just read verses six and seven. In fact, in Isaiah 53, verse six,
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Isaiah says, All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way, and the
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Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. And him is the Messiah that is to come.
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And in verse seven, we did. 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.
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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.
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By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
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He shall make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.
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So here was a prophecy that Isaiah gave about this coming, suffering servant, the
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Messiah. Something that the people of Israel had a very difficult time understanding. Because the servant in the book of Isaiah would sometimes refer to the nation of Israel.
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Sometimes it would talk about the Messiah. And sometimes the things that it talked about, the Messiah was very difficult to understand.
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Why would the Messiah suffer? He is the one who is going to come and redeem the people. But then it was revealed in shadows.
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And that becomes into full clear picture when John the Baptist here in John chapter one says,
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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
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Jesus came to do was, firstly, he was our substitute. Just as how the
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Lamb was given in the place of the sinner dying, Jesus was to take our sin.
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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.
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And secondly, he would actually count us righteous because of the work of Jesus.
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So it was through the work of Christ, our perfect substitute, that we would be both righteous.
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And we would have our sins accounted for. In fact, in the very end of the
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Gospel of John, in John 19, verse 30, we read that Jesus said, It is finished.
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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.
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And he came into the world as the Lamb of God to bear our sin. 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.
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And he completed that work on the cross when he died. All of us know that we needed a substitute.
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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
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God on your own. So often as believers, we forget the preciousness of that substitutionary death that Jesus did for us.
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I remember when I was going through the time when God was working in my heart, the first conviction that I had in my life was the conviction of sin.
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I had understood the holiness of God, and I said, you know, I can understand why
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God is holy, and we need to be better than what we are. But of course, we can live better than what we are if we try hard enough, right?
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I just didn't know that we had a holy God, and I will just work harder at trying to be not sinful.
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Because when the Holy Spirit does His work of conviction, the first thing that we want to do is, what do
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I do? I need to do something because what I'm doing is unacceptable before God. And you try harder.
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I tried harder to say, you know, I will do everything I can to be acceptable before God.
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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And even for a moment, if I say, well, I don't like these things, I find that my mind says one thing, but my flesh drags me down.
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And before I know it, I'm back in the sin from which I tried to walk away from. And thanks be to God.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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Who can go back and erase those tracks 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.
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And He provides the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, as our substitute. And we can all look back at that moment, if some of you may remember it more vividly than others, when you had come to the end of your life and you said,
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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
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Holy God and I have nothing within me. And then God, by His mercy, just illumines our heart and He just convicts us and He releases us.
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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.
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And that joy that we had at that time is something that I think we will continue to experience through our lives here until one day we are in heaven where we will look at this
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Lamb that was slain face to face and be rejoicing the rest of our life with Him.
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There's just three quick things I want to mention as we look back at what Christ has done as a Lamb of God.
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One thing is that this substitutionary atonement was not temporary.
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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.
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If you look at, there's many verses here. If you look at Hebrews, for example,
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Hebrews 9 -12, we talk about an eternal redemption that is accomplished for us in Christ.
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And not just temporary, it is also not partial. In fact, if you look back at the time when you tried to overcome sin on your own, you know you succeed in some areas but you fall in other areas and then eventually you give up.
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And likewise, this righteousness that is given to us in Christ is not just a partial righteousness. It doesn't cover just one area here and another area here.
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It is complete, it is perfect as Hebrews 5 -9 says. He has been made perfect and provides this eternal salvation to all.
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It is a work that is finished as we read in John 19 and that is fully and completely done.
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And it is not just temporary, it is not just a partial work and it is also not just for a few.
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It was for every single person who would obey him. In fact, last
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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.
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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.
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And one verse that is just burned in my mind which I always look back to for comfort where even
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I am struggling with sin or when I just look back at the work of Christ is in 1
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John. It is in 1 John 2 verses 1 and 2. John writes,
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My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the
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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.
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Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, bore our sin on that cross 2 ,000 years ago and he has completely satisfied
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God's wrath for each and every one of us sin. 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.
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Let us thank God for this great Lamb that he has given us. The Lamb that we read in Revelation 5, a
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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.
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Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your provision to take care of sin.
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We thank you for giving us Jesus who died in our place as our substitute and as our appeasement of your wrath.
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We thank you that you did this because you loved us and we thank you because even though it cost
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Jesus his life, he was willing to be obedient even to the point of death.
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Help us, O 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.
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Help us to truly thank you with hearts of gratitude even as we celebrate this
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Lord's Supper in memory of what you have done for us. We ask all this in Jesus' name.