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JANUARY 20, 2008
The next day he 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 have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” The next day again John was standing with two of his disciples and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God!”
John 1:29–36
His words must have stopped Mary cold. Forty days after giving birth, Mary ran into the prophet Simeon. He had a prophetic word for her. Of her baby boy, he said, “Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel and for a sign to be spoken against. And a sword shall pierce through your own soul also.”1 Mary couldn’t have known, then, what this piercing of her soul could be. But come one tearful Friday she would understand it only too well. She shall, one day see her son writhe, bleed, suffer, and die on the cross!
Now, fast–forward the clock 30 years. We remember that John the Baptist baptized Jesus in the Jordan. His baptism was his inauguration into the office that only he could hold, that the Messiah or Christ. Here, at the Jordan he begins to bear our sins in earnest and to take his first public step to the cross.
The next day, John sees Jesus again. John points him out to two of his disciples.2 He says to them, “Behold, the Lamb of God.”3 Please note: Jesus is, here, given the title “Lamb of God.” Had his mother Mary heard this, she might have trembled, for everyone of Jewish blood knew what lambs were used for. You see, they had to slay two lambs daily, one in the morning and one in the evening to atone for their sins.4 Yes, this Jesus is a Lamb marked for sacrifice. And so we say:
Why does he come to take our place? O see him now on yonder cross
To live without sin’s spot? The Lamb of God is he.
To give us his own righteousness He drinks the bitter cup of death
Lest hell become our lot. His love to set us free!
Do we deserve this Lamb? Of course we do! Let me count the ways:
We all know that something’s wrong with this picture, don’t we?
In truth, we wish this were so! But, alas, it is not. And because of our sins, it is only a matter of time before we are swept away and cast into the lake of fire. ... Unless, . . . unless this promise of hell and the fire thereof exposes our sins for what they are, high crimes against our Creator, and makes us “repentantly hungry” for the forgiveness of sins. Only then will we need a Savior.
The question written all over our text is this: Can this Lamb of God can do anything for us? And we should individualize the question: “Can this Lamb do anything for me, an oft–listless and lethargic disciple?
Let’s investigate the possibility. Why, we wonder, is Jesus given the title “Lamb of God?” Surely, he does not look like a lamb; he does not act like a lamb; and he does not speak like a lamb!
No, he is called a lamb for this reason, that he, in the most exalted sense of the term, will perform the work of a lamb! Indeed, the work of all lambs.
So, if there is anyone here this morning who is not repentantly hungry for the Creator’s forgiveness, you may go to sleep now. You see, I am shortly going to set forth what God’s Lamb has done to take away the guilt of sinners. But, since you have judged yourself “not guilty” of sin, then you will have no need of God’s sin–removing remedy. The rest of you, however, would be wise to stay awake because you, like me, know yourself to be in desperate need of this very remedy.
John the Baptist has pointed out Jesus to us. He has already said, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” But that is not all he says. Regarding this Lamb, John adds, “Who takes away the sin of the world!” This Lamb, then, is the One on whom our eternal destiny hangs. He will take away our sins by doing the work of a lamb.
This Lamb is preeminently God’s Lamb. He has come to do God’s work. Jesus is not one among a number of equally good lambs. No, he is the Lamb, the one and only Lamb that avails before God for human sin. The particular Greek word that John uses for “Lamb” [amnós] occurs only four times in the New Testament, and in each case it is used only of Jesus.5 In the Old Testament, we recall that the lamb played a crucial role as a sacrificial offering in Israel’s worship. Lambs were daily presented as burnt offerings and sacrifices to atone for the sins of the people. The sacrificial system of ancient Israel taught the people one thing for certain: Without the shedding of blood, and especially lamb’s blood, there was no forgiveness of sin.6
Moreover, at the yearly celebration of the Passover, a lamb without spot or blemish was slain. This served as a reminder of the first Passover in which the Angel of Death passed over every Israelite home. Why? Through Moses, God had commanded his people to slay an unblemished, male lamb (a foreshadowing of the sinless Christ) and smear its blood on the lintels and doorposts of each household. Regarding this blood, God made a solemn promise, saying, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.”7
Every household that did not slay a lamb and mark its doors with blood was visited with human death. But where there had been a lamb’s death, that household was spared human death. We see, therefore, the fundamental principle established by God, viz., that in every household there will be a death, either that of a lamb or that of a person. And in God’s eyes, a lamb’s death is both necessary and sufficient to avert a human death. Thus, God regards the lamb as a suitable substitute for a man.
In all of this we have a vivid picture of what the lamb represented. When John, then, calls Jesus the Lamb of God, we dismiss from our minds any thought that this Lamb would frolic in Galilee’s green pastures. He will not graze to his heart’s content. No, this Lamb is marked for sacrifice and for a substitutionary sacrifice for sinners at that. And with his sacrifice, we are told that it shall, once and for all, take away the sin of the world. This is God’s sin–removing remedy. The Good News is that Christ’s death is reckoned as our own. Trust this and you shall live!
Now let’s talk about the Christian life. When someone comes to faith in Jesus Christ, he often believes that his life will go better. He expects that God will bless him and give him success in his endeavors. He expects that his faith will be rewarded in tangible ways.
It would seem, at least to our limited human reason, that the struggle should be over and that the great spiritual battle is behind us. Life should now be easier now. But that is not true. More often than not, the real battles and spiritual struggles begin in earnest. That is to say, the Christian will face temptations that he never faced while he was on the unbelieving side of the cross.
Why? Why the increased struggle? Consider the story of a new Christian who maintained the grounds of a nobleman’s mansion. He was always telling his master how Satan kept after him and tempted him all the time. The nobleman scoffed at this remark and said, “There was a time when I used to take religion seriously. But now that I'm an adult, I have put away childish things. You say the devil keeps tempting you. I say, that's a bunch of nonsense. I don't believe in the devil. And even if there was a devil, how do you explain the fact that he never tempts or bothers me?” The young man had no answer.
One day, however, they went hunting together. The master shot at some wild ducks. Some he killed and some he just wounded. “Run,” said the nobleman, “and catch the wounded ones before they run away.” The young Christian came back with several of the wounded ducks. But more importantly, he now had the answer as to why Satan never bothered his master. “You know, sir,” he said, “I now know why Satan does not bother you? It's because you are spiritually dead. You had me chase after the live ducks because you knew that the dead ones were already yours. Satan chases after me because I'm spiritually alive. As for you, he doesn't have to chase you because you are spiritually dead. Don't you see, he's already got you?”
As Christians, there is another thing we must understand. It has to do with the great spiritual war that goes on inside every Christian soul. It is a war between our sinful nature and our new nature in Christ. The old nature, often called the old Adam, cannot be reformed. It always wants to drag us into sin. Our new nature in Christ is perfect and always wants us to do what God would have us do, i.e., to shun sin. The warfare between the Old Adam and our new nature is intense. Listen to what the apostle Paul says. He writes, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”8 Let me ask you, who sees our sins most clearly, Jesus or you? Jesus does. And so the closer you draw to Christ, the more you see your sins. And the farther away we are from Christ, the less you see and feel our sins. So the spiritual warfare raging in you and me is not a bad thing. It is the common experience of all Christians who live their lives under the cross.
And so I say to you, “Friends, Texans, countrymen, lend me your ears. From conception to eternity future, the Lamb of God is true God and true man. This Lamb does not belong to his mother Mary. He is God’s Lamb for all, for great and for small. Therefore, we rejoice in him, even as we sing these words in the liturgy,
Worthy is Christ, the Lamb who was slain, whose blood set us free to be people of God. . . . Blessing, honor, glory, and might be to God and the Lamb forever. Amen.9
Indeed, worthy is he, for the Lamb who was slain lives! Therefore, I say to you, “Behold the Lamb of God. He takes away the sin of the world. Especially yours!” Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!
Endnotes
1 See Luke 2:34-35.
2 These two disciples were Peter and his brother Andrew. See John 1:40-41.
3 See John 1:36.
4 Exodus 29:38-39 says, “Now this is what you shall offer on the altar: two one year old lambs each day, continuously. The one lamb you shall offer in the morning and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.”
5 See John 1:29, 36; Acts 8:32, and 1 Peter 1:19.
6 See Exodus 29:38-41, Leviticus 14:21, 17:11 and Hebrews 9:22.
7 See Exodus 12:13.
8 See Romans 7:19.
9 See Lutheran Worship, pp. 162-163, passim.
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