Behold The Lamb Of God (part 1) - [John 1:29-34]

I have a question for you this morning, one that I would often get framed a little differently to me. You know, people would say, what's your problem? I'm not going to ask you that. I'm going to ask you, what is your biggest problem?

What's your biggest concern? Do you have financial difficulty? Health problems? Your own or someone you care about? Someone you know has cancer? Thinking about, even as I say that, about my dad? Are you upside down in your mortgage?

Are you not even aware that you're upside down in your mortgage? Do you wish that you could qualify for a mortgage? Are there any number of situations that could cause you to worry, that could draw your attention?

Maybe you need a new car. Maybe you'd like to fix your car. Maybe you'd like to be able to fix your car. Maybe you need a job. Maybe you need a better job. Maybe you have some issues with your spouse.

Maybe you wish you had a spouse. Maybe you have issues with a child, with your parents. Maybe you are dealing with the death of a loved one, even as we think about Prudy this morning. Are you able to care for, or are you having to care for or manage the financial affairs of one of your parents?

All those things can really weigh us down, can draw our attention, can cause us to just sort of wallow in them. But may I tell you, with great love and affection, that none of those things are your biggest problem.

Because apart from being in Christ, apart from being purchased by Him, your sin is your greatest problem. And God Himself ought to be your greatest fear. Just to kind of catch us up to where we are as I've been working slowly through the Gospel of John.

For some of you, I think there are a couple of you who might not be here all the time on Sunday nights. A little review to catch us up to where we are. The Gospel of John is different than the Gospel of Matthew, Mark and Luke.

And you say, sure, I know that because I'm a biblical scholar. I know about the synoptic issues. And I know that the Gospel of John was written later. And we know that John had those Gospels, and yet he decided to write his own Gospel.

Why? Because he saw some things that he thought maybe he could fill in the gaps. And he wrote to address those issues. And his primary theme, he writes in John 20, verse 31, that he wrote these things that we might know that Jesus is the Christ.

He wants us to know those things. Each one of the Gospels is written with one purpose, and that's that we might believe that Jesus is God, that He is the only way to heaven. That's what each one is for, and each one is historically accurate, and yet they're written by human authors, superintended by the Holy Spirit with a different purpose.

And as I said, John wants us to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing in Him, you may have life in His name, that is to say, eternal life. In this Gospel, John presents nothing.

If you went to a Christmas service that was based on the Gospel of John, it would be really short because you wouldn't have much of a birth narrative. You would have nothing, really, to work with. And really what we have is just we start almost in the beginning of Jesus' ministry except for the sort of preamble where He sets forth the deity of Christ.

In fact, in verses 1 and 2 alone, we see that the Word, which is revealed in verse 14 to be Jesus because He became flesh and dwelt among us, was in the beginning, and He was God. And in the beginning, He was with God.

All those verbs and phrases would lead the original readers, the Jewish readers, to conclude one thing, that Jesus is the ever-existent creator of all things. That is to say, Jesus is God, the second person of the Trinity, eternally the Son of God who condescended to take on a human nature while remaining fully God.

He never ceased to be God. And in the last message that I taught from John, we saw the beginning of John the Baptist's ministry and how he was investigated by what I called the Grand Jury, a group of priests and Levites who would be temple workers, basically musicians, who were sent out by the Sanhedrin, the Jewish leadership, to investigate John the Baptist.

There's a great hubbub, a great furor, a great crowd gathering around John the Baptist, so they want to find out who he is. Was John the Baptist the Messiah? He says, no, I'm not. Was he Elijah? No, I'm not.

Was he a prophet? Was he a charlatan? There were plenty of people running around calling themselves the Christ in those times. Who was he, and why was he baptizing people? After all, only converts to Judaism, that is, Gentiles, got baptized.

Those are the only people who got baptized, and they baptized themselves. So why is it that John is baptizing people, calling for repentance? Why is he doing this, and what authority does he have to do it?

In response to those kind of questions, John the Baptist answers with kind of a non-answer. And eventually we see in verse 27, he talks about this Messiah, and he says, he calls him, or he refers to him, and he says, the strap of whose sandal I am unworthy, or I am not worthy to untie.

We talked about how the idea of this is, listen, a disciple. If John the Baptist was a disciple of Jesus, he could be called on to do anything, but only the lowest of the low of slaves would be called to strap somebody's sandal, or untie somebody's sandal, because the feet are unclean in that part of the world, and that's not something that even a disciple, a follower, would be called upon to do.

So John the Baptist says, listen, I'm not even worthy to be his disciple. I am a slave. I mean, it echoes the kind of language that Paul would use when he called himself an under-rower. So we come to John chapter 1, verse 29.

The next day he, being John the Baptist, saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.

I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel. And John bore witness. I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.

I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son of God.

Now this morning, in Bethlehem Bible Church tradition, we're going to look at one verse, and then we're going to go into the Old Testament and look at a bunch of other verses. But I want you to see three truths about Jesus, about the Lamb of God.

Three truths that we'll introduce about that. And whatever you are fixated on, when it passes, some new issue will pop up for your attention. Some new life-threatening issue will arise. But when this problem of sin is dealt with, when we understand rightly that it has been dealt with for those of us who love Christ, the things of this world, the problems of this world seem less important.

I don't know every problem of every one here in the congregation, but I do know some of them. I do know in that list, I didn't just draw those up out of nothing. It's not unusual for me to get a call, I don't know, late Saturday night about one of those exact issues.

And I still manage to sleep at night, and it's not because I don't care, it's because I know Christ. It's because He has dealt with these things, and we need to focus on Him. So now, a little bit of introduction here.

We're on day two in verse 29 of a very special week. We see that right there in the first few words there, the next day. This is the second day. On the first day, we have the investigation, where the Sanhedrin sends their little grand jury, their mobile grand jury.

They get them in the van pool, and they go out to find out what John the Baptist is all about. Sometime after that, I believe, if we put all the Gospels together, we would see that this is the exact time frame where Jesus comes to John the Baptist for baptism.

And you say, well, why doesn't John deal with that? The same reason he doesn't deal with a lot of other things, because they're already covered in the three Gospels, and he's writing decades after that.

He's got those three Gospels. He knows, or he would figure pretty much that the people who are going to read this Gospel will already have access to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. So we have every reason to believe that He was already baptized, and we'll see that a little bit later in our text.

I'll be talking about it tonight. But Jesus has already been through the 40 days without bread and water, and the temptations of Satan. All these kind of things have already happened. Now, just for a moment, let's try to get a mental picture.

Let's just paint a picture of what's going on. John the Baptist is the last of what we call the Old Testament prophets. Why do we call him the Old Testament? Because the new covenant has yet to be inaugurated.

And we've had a period of silence where there's been no new revelation for 400 years, and here comes John the Baptist out of the wilderness. Let me read Matthew 3, verses 4 to 6. So there's a pretty good-sized crowd around this man.

Why? Because he comes out of the wilderness. He's dressed funny. Actually, he's dressed like the prophet Elijah. We saw that the last time I taught here. He's dressed like the prophet Elijah. They recognize that.

The people do. They listen to his message. Repent and be baptized, for the kingdom of God is at hand. They are coming forward. They're being baptized. They're confessing their sins. And the Jewish leaders take notice of this.

And that's why they went to investigate him. Luke 3, verse 15. Again, talking about John the Baptist. As the people were in expectation, there were all these messianic expectations. This was the end time.

There were all kinds of signs and everything going on. This was the time where the Messiah was going to appear. As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ.

This is why he gathered such a crowd to him. A lesser man, one less sure of his calling, one less filled with the Spirit of God, might have stumbled. He might have said, Yep, it's me. Thanks for coming out.

Drop your money in the offering plate. That wasn't John the Baptist. Look at the text in John 1. Look what he does. Verse 29. This is what John says. Behold. And it really is kind of an exclamation and a pause there.

It's like, look. Just look. That is the Lamb of God as he sees Jesus coming. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And just at the time where we might expect, humanly speaking, that John the Baptist to promote himself, he's gaining crowds, he's gaining popularity, he's got disciples.

We know that if we read in other texts. There's all kinds of controversy about what he's doing. He sees Jesus approaching, and like as if with a megaphone, he just says, Look at him. That was John the Baptist's ministry.

That was his entire purpose for life. We know that from John 1 .8. It says this. He was not the light, talking about John, but came to bear witness about the light. That was his singular function in life.

And he never veered from it. He was entirely faithful to it. Now, why does John the Baptist refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God? I'm going to give you three reasons. Three reasons this morning. First, Jesus is the sacrifice.

He is the sacrifice for sins. That word translated, Lamb, occurs only two times outside this immediate context in the New Testament. The Greek word occurs only twice outside of this passage. One is in 1 Peter 1.

These passages you don't have to turn to, because we're going to turn to a few passages later. But 1 Peter 1 .18 -19. Knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but listen, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.

Peter says you were bought back. You were ransomed out of the marketplace of sin. And what was the price? Nothing perishable like silver or gold, the things that we invest ourselves in, but with the precious blood of Christ.

Again, that idea of a lamb having his blood shed to redeem others. The other time it occurs is in Acts 8. We have the account of the evangelist Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. And if you recall, the Ethiopian is riding through basically a wasteland, and he's reading Isaiah 53.

In Acts 8 .32 we read this. Now the passage of the Scripture that he was reading was this. Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer is silence, so he opens not his mouth.

Philip is brought to him and he says, do you understand what you're reading? Because the man, the Ethiopian eunuch, is reading aloud. So Philip says to him, do you understand what you're reading? And what does the eunuch say?

He says, how can I unless someone explains it to me? And so Philip goes on to explain the Gospel, explain who Jesus is. And in both instances where we have that word lamb, it is the idea of a sacrifice, a ransom paid for sin, which is precisely what John the Baptist is talking about here in John 1, verse 29.

And that concept of a sacrificial lamb, of a lamb being sacrificed to pay the price for something else, is first introduced, and this is where I want you to turn, Genesis 22, Genesis 22, verses 7 to 14.

And we see the narrative of Abraham and Isaac. Now for those of you who aren't familiar with the story of Abraham and Isaac, one thing we have to keep in mind here, we don't have, when we come to the story of Abraham and Isaac, we don't have a temple, we don't have a Jewish religious system, there's no nation of Israel, that's still yet to come.

What we have though is a promise that God made to Abraham, and he said that he would make of Abraham a great nation. Well Abraham had no children. He and his wife Sarah had no children, and they get older and older and older, and things aren't going well.

They're just not having any kids. And they even get to the point where they devise this scheme, and Sarah pushes it right along, where they are going to have Abraham commit adultery with their servants, so that they can have a son.

They are unfaithful, but God is faithful, and eventually in their old age, even as we would learn from Hebrews 11, when they are past the age where they should have been able to have children, they have one, and they name him Isaac.

And as we come to this passage, we see that God has commanded Abraham to sacrifice his only begotten son, which by the way means, not that he only had one son, but that he was unique, he was special, because we already know Ishmael was already born.

Genesis 22, verses 7 to 14,. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, My father, and he said, Here I am, my son. He said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Committed to make this sacrifice for sin, but where is the lamb?

Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So they went, both of them, together. When they came to the place of which God had told them, Abraham built the altar, and there laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.

And just a word here, there are many thoughts about how old Isaac was. Here's a few things we do know. Whether you believe he was young, whether you believe he was around 30, like I probably think he was, there's absolutely no doubt he could have got away from Abraham, because Abraham's old.

I can't even imagine tracking down, you know, let's say Isaac was 12. At my age, I couldn't track him down, and Abraham's twice my age. He's an old man. So this is not only an act of faith and obedience on the part of Abraham, but also on his son Isaac.

But listen to verse 10. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. Why? Because God told him to. But the angel of the Lord, and make no mistake about it, that is God, and we will see why in just a moment.

But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here I am. He said, this is the angel. Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from him, from God?

No, from me. The angel of the Lord is the pre-incarnate Christ. You fear God. Why? God commanded you to sacrifice your son, and you obeyed. I am here to stop you, the angel of the Lord, God. Verse 13.

And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

So Abraham called the name of that place, The Lord Will Provide. As it is said to this day on the Mount of the Lord, it shall be provided. Again, this is a remarkable illustration of obedience and faith on the part of Abraham and Isaac.

Not knowing what would transpire, both set about obeying God. They just trusted God completely. And Abraham was commanded not to sacrifice his son. After he was commanded not to sacrifice his son, he was not left to his own devices.

He didn't have to look around for some sacrifice. Yahweh, the covenant-keeping God, himself made provision for the sacrifice Abraham had been commanded to make. God provided what? A substitute. A substitute.

God provided the sacrifice. Does that sound familiar? God provided the sacrifice. God provided a substitute. A sacrifice. Sounds very familiar. Hebrews 9 .22 would tell us that there can be no forgiveness of sin without the shedding of blood.

And in everyone's sins, right? And in a fair system, we would each pay for our own sins. Here's the problem. That's a price none of us can pay. Not one of us is worthy of paying for his own sins. And that's why punishment for sins is eternal.

But God provides the Lamb. In fact, back in John 1 .29, it's not, Behold the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. It's the Of God Lamb. Even if we went back to the back or to the front of John's Gospel, He is sent by the Father.

He is commissioned by the Father. We can look at Isaiah 48 .16 where it says that, where Christ, pre-incarnate Christ again is saying that, God the Father sent Him. Over and over in John's Gospel, He says that the Father sent Him.

But Jesus was not only a sacrifice, He was also a sin-bearer. He was not only a substitute, but also a sin-bearer. Listen. Well, in fact, turn to Isaiah 53. We're going to look at that. He's a fulfillment of many Old Testament prophecies.

Jesus is. Including Isaiah 53. Referred to often as the suffering servant. There are, I believe, seven servant chapters in Isaiah. And this is by far the most well-known. And just as an aside, if you want to see, if you have Jewish friends, and you want to see their eyes get really big, you read them this passage.

Isaiah 53, and I'm going to read verses 4 to 10. And listen to the substitutionary language. Listen to this sin-bearing language. Listen to how Jesus pays the price for our actions. Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.

Yet we have esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace. And with His wounds we are healed.

This doesn't sound fair. But nobody complains about this. Verse 6. All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned, everyone to his own way. And the Lord has laid on Him, that is on Jesus, on this servant, the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and 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. By oppression and judgment He was taken away.

And as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of My people, and they made His grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in his death, although He had done no violence, and there was no deceit in His mouth, He never sinned.

Verse 10. Yet it was the will of the Lord, of the covenant-keeping God, all capitals, Yahweh, to crush Him. This was God's will to crush the Son. He has put Him, Jesus, to grief. When His soul makes an offering for guilt, He shall see His offspring.

He shall prolong His days, and the will of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. One commentator says this, he says, this is what the entire sacrificial system is about, making it possible for sinful humans to have fellowship with a holy God.

He talks about other sacrifices. The sacrifices of typical animals do not mitigate the temporal effects of sin, so what do they do? They deal with the spiritual effects of sin. They address the truths that the soul that sins shall die.

And we're reminded again and again in the Old Testament that sin demands payment, and that payment is death. But it is only through substitution, the substitutionary death of Christ, His sin-bearing on our behalf, that fellowship between humans and God is possible.

A lamb, a regular lamb, cannot die in a human's place, but a perfect human could. And if that human, there are no perfect humans other than Jesus, a perfect human who is also God, He could die for every human's sin.

And that provides us with the extent. We know that the death of Christ, if there were an infinite number of planets and an infinite number of people, the death of God on a cross is sufficient to pay the sins for every single one of those people.

This servant, in Isaiah 53, has provided for your every spiritual need. He has carried your sorrows. He suffered for your transgressions and iniquities. He received the penalty that you deserved. If you are in Christ, you are no longer estranged from God, no longer at war with Him, all because of the work of this servant.

He did not defend himself verbally or physically. He went peacefully to a horrible death. Why? I read in Isaiah 53, because it was the will of God to crush him. And what does he say over and over again in the Gospel of John?

I'm here not to do my own will, but to do the will of the Father. To be crushed. Just a little bit further down in verse 11, second half of the verse, By his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous.

Make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. He will make many, not all, to be righteous, but many to be righteous. He shall bear their iniquities. So John the Baptist introduces Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Now it's shocking. Again, let's just think about where we are. We're early in the ministry of Jesus. There's all this tumult going on about Messiahs, about all manner of speculation about who John the Baptist is.

And he says, The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Not the sin of Israel. Not the sin of the sons and daughters of Abraham. The Jewish mindset, this is what they would expect. They would expect to hear that kind of thing.

But what does it mean that he takes away the sin of the world? Well, that verb, takes away, means to lift off, to carry away, to remove entirely. So we have the idea that the Lamb of God removes entirely sin from those for whom he dies.

But does this mean when it says he takes away the sin of the world, does it mean that he pays the penalty for the sin of every person ever born? Well, it cannot. If it meant that, if Jesus was the Lamb of God who took away the sin of every person without exception, then why would anyone go to hell?

The answer is, no one would. What manner of wickedness would it be for the Son of God to pay the price for sin in your place, only to have the Father refuse payment for it? That's madness. There is no disagreement or disharmony within the Trinity.

So what does the world mean? Is it conditional? Is it a conditional payment? No, he absolutely takes away, carries away, bears away those sins. And in fact, looking back at the word, you'll notice that it says he takes away the sin of the world.

The sin, we would expect it to say the sins, but it's not. It is singular. It is one block of sin. You say, well, I've got more than one sin in my book. So do you, Pastor. Yes, I do. But Jesus paid the price, the penalty for sin as one block, one time.

It's a one-time deal. He paid it all. Jesus paid it all, all to him I owe. Now, you might be sitting here saying, well, did John the Baptist really understand all of this when he wrote this? Or when he said this, you know, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

I don't know if he understood all of it, but I guarantee you who did? John the Evangelist, the man who wrote this, inspired by the Holy Spirit. I mean, what we see is a progressive revelation. Even those who walked and talked with Jesus, who ate breakfast with him every day, who listened to all his sermons, they didn't fully understand until after they saw the resurrected Christ and were commissioned by him.

But it's safe to say that, again, that John the Evangelist, he understood that. So now, the last aspect we're going to look about, about this Lamb, is that he is salvific. That is, he brings about an actual salvation, an actual salvation.

Turn, if you will, to the back of your Bibles, to Revelation chapter 5. Revelation chapter 5, beginning in verse 6. Again, developing this theme of the Lamb and what it means. And between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders, I saw a Lamb standing, as though it had been slain, with seven horns and with seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth.

And he went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who was seated on the throne. And when he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb. Now, it doesn't take much thinking to think, okay, who would it be okay to fall down before?

You can't worship just anyone. You can only worship God. Each holding a harp and golden bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, which is emblematic of God's salvation.

We see that over and over again in the Old Testament. Saying, worthy are you to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slain. And by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.

That is the world. When he takes away the sins of the world, he's talking about people from all over. Not every single individual, but from every tribe and language and people and nation. And you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.

Then I looked and I heard around the throne the living creatures and the elders, the voice of many angels, numbering myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.

And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea and all that is in them saying, to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever.

And again, and the four living creatures said amen, and the elders fell down and worshipped. That's what the death of the Lamb accomplished. People from every tribe and language and people and nation were ransomed or purchased for God.

They were redeemed. Their sins were paid for. That's the heavenly picture. We've kind of looked at the past, what a Lamb represented, and now we see into the future what he actually has accomplished. One man said this, Jesus bears the consequence of human sin in order that its guilt might be removed, and that's exactly what he did.

Now to the original audience, to this Jewish audience, the idea that the Messiah would have come for more than just the nation of Israel would have been shocking. It would have been contrary to what they were taught by the rabbis of that day.

It's not contrary to the word of God, it's just contrary to the religious traditions of that day. Now getting back to the text in John, and this question, whose sins did Jesus the Lamb actually remove?

Again, if it's everyone's, if that's what the world means, then no one goes to hell. If some, or as Isaiah says, if many, then those whose sins he removes, right, he lifts them off, he carries them away, listen, cannot be subject to hell.

Cannot be subject to hell, for he has paid the price for their sin. He has redeemed their lives from the pits. Some will say, maybe even some here today, that he removed the sins of everyone, but those who fail to repent and receive him, those who do not choose of their own free will to choose him, their sins will return to them.

And I can only say, with all due love and respect, there's no condition present in that verb. There's no if, there's no possible condition in that verb. He takes them away, it is effectual. The Lamb does not attempt, Jesus does not attempt to take away the sin of the world.

He takes it away. It cannot be thwarted, the will of God is never stopped. This is not some kind of tug-of-war, it's not a 50 -50 situation, it's not a jump ball, salvation is of the Lord. He always goes first, and he always redeems the objects of his love without fail.

I used to teach at our former church, a class called Fundamentals of the Faith, and I had a man one day challenge me, I think it was about the third time I had gone through the class, and he says, you know what?

He says, you always bring up the verses that stress the sovereignty of God and salvation. How come you never talk about the free will verses? And I said, well, really, that's not true. I do talk about the free will verses.

Like, we see the effects of free will in Acts 5 with Ananias and Sapphira. They exercise their free will. And I said to him, I said, okay, let's go to your favorite free will verse. And it was right about that time that the crickets started chirping, and there was...

We have a will. We do have a will. I want to be clear about that. But our will before salvation is enslaved. In fact, even repentance, which we are commanded to accomplish, is a gift from God. We know that from 2 Timothy 2 .25.

God does not repent for us. Sinners must repent. So how is it that, getting back to John, how is it that Christ can bear away your sins, and yet you die in them and are judged and go to hell? That cannot be.

If the Lamb bears them away, then they have been removed as far as east is from the west. John Stott said this. How then can God, and this is important to think about the love versus the holiness of God.

How then can God express His holiness, that is, that He hates sin, without consuming us, and His love without condoning our sins? How can God satisfy His holy love? How can He save us and satisfy Himself simultaneously?

We reply at this point, only that in order to satisfy Himself, He sacrificed, indeed substituted Himself for us. That's the gospel. That's the gospel. Left to our own devices. Our sin. If we were to stand before God someday, and He were to say, why should I let you into my kingdom?

We would say, what? We would have nothing. We can't merit, we can't earn salvation. The gospel is that God takes undeserving wretches, those who deserve nothing but His judgment and hell eternally. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, the second person of the Trinity, into this world to live among us, to live among sinful people, to live a perfect life, and then to die a substitutionary effectual death on behalf of all those who would ever believe.

Then He raised Him on the third day. That's the gospel. The gospel isn't about Jesus making some kind of possible payment, and then we have to appropriate it by faith. That is nowhere presented in the gospel.

And again, in this passage, He bears away the sins. He carries them away. They're gone. Some of you this morning are hearing this message and thinking, well, how is it possible that these people heard John the Baptist make this proclamation, this audience that would have been around him?