2/18 Sunday John 1:19-34 The Lamb of God Billy Sunday, a famous evangelist of the last century said: There are 256 names in the Bible for the Lord

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1 2/18 Sunday John 1:19-34 The Lamb of God Billy Sunday, a famous evangelist of the last century said: There are 256 names in the Bible for the Lord Jesus Christ, and I suppose this was because He was infinitely beyond all that any one name could express. In our reading from John s gospel, we encounter John the Baptist who points to Jesus and calls him the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. (1:29) We sing these words in our communion liturgy but do we really catch the powerful implication of these words and this name for our Lord Jesus? In that verse, John is telling us what Jesus came to do he came to take away the sin of the world, because, in case you haven't noticed, we have a bit of a sin problem. I'm talking about the entire human race, and including every person in this room. If you have ever felt like you were at war with yourself, and felt like you were alienated from others, and felt like you were separated from God I want you to know you re not imagining things. It's true. This is the human condition. We are alienated and separated. We are broken. We are fallen. And you don't have to take my word for it. You only have to look around. You see it on a global scale and maybe even in your daily life. Something isn't right. We are not right. We are not as we could be, and not as we should be. Isaiah said it well: We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way. Isaiah 53:6 1

2 Sin is the problem which everyone struggles with and it s the reason Jesus came into the world to save us from our sin. For the first century Jew who heard John speak these words, several images would have come to mind. 1) The first was The Passover Lamb. Passover was an ancient Jewish celebration commemorating an event that occurred during their days of Egyptian bondage. Thirteen hundred years before the birth of Jesus, the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. God sent Moses to convince Pharaoh that he should release the slaves [Let my people Go!], but Pharaoh refused. Then God sent plague after plague, trying to force Pharaoh to relent. Pharaoh still refused. The last of the plagues was the death of the firstborn children and animals throughout Egypt. On that night the angel of death would pass through Egypt, but God offered the Israelites a way to identify themselves as God s people and thus to be spared from this terrible plague. God told the Israelites to slaughter a lamb, roast it, and eat it. They were then to take some of the lamb s blood and, using a hyssop branch, sprinkle the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. The angel of death, seeing the blood, would pass over the Jewish houses, sparing their children and animals from death. That night, the Egyptians were so decimated by the plague that they released the Israelites and sent them away. i This began their journey toward the promised land of Israel. 2

3 Following this night, God commanded Moses to have the Israelites mark their deliverance with a meal, the Passover Seder. Each year on the Day of Preparation, a day prior to Passover, the Jewish people would slaughter one lamb per household, and the meat would be roasted and shared in celebration of God s deliverance, salvation and liberation. ii When we get to the end of John s gospel, we will find that Jesus is crucified on the Day of Preparation at the same time all of the lambs are being prepared. John wants us to see the connection that Jesus is the true Passover Lamb. On that first Passover, the lambs were slaughtered not to take away sin but to spare the firstborn of the Israelites from death. From that time on, the lambs were slaughtered at Passover as a visible reminder of God s deliverance of the Israelite children from death and of the Israelite people from slavery. John, like many New Testament writers, wants us to understand the events concerning Jesus as a new and better, Exodus story. Just as God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, so God was now bringing a new people out of an even older and darker slavery slavery to sin. In the original Exodus story, Israel is rescued from the dark powers of the world, which in that case meant the Egyptians under Pharoah. But now according to John, God s lamb is going to take away the sin of the world itself God s rescue operation is moving out, wider than just Israel, to embrace the whole of Creation. iii 3

4 2) The first century Jew would also have thought of the temple ritual of animal sacrifices instituted after the people left Egypt. According to Exodus 29, every morning and every evening, a lamb was to be sacrificed in the Temple as a burnt offering to God. And Leviticus 34 explains how the blood of this sacrifice was for the forgiveness of sins. This sacrifice was made every day until 70AD, when the Temple was destroyed. Again, we have a connection of the lamb with the forgiveness of sin. 3) A third image from the Old Testament that comes to mind for me is the prophecy of Isaiah who prophesied that the Messiah, God s servant, would be led to the slaughter like a lamb. To pay the penalty for a sin, a life had to be given and God chose to provide the sacrifice himself. The sins of the world were removed when Jesus died as the perfect sacrifice. iv Here's the bottom line.... We're all sinners. We've all sinned against a holy God. We've all done things which we should not do, and we've also left undone those things we should ve done. It isn t that everyone else is sick and messed up and we re the only ones who are normal and OK. It s the fact that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. None of us are immune. Even the best of you, you are sinners in need of the grace and mercy of Jesus. When we realize we are sinners, when we can admit we sin and need help, then we will realize we are in need of a Savior. This is Jesus the Lamb of God. When Jesus died on the cross, every sin you ever committed, past present and future... and every ugly 4

5 thing you did and every decent thing you avoided doing.... and hateful word you said and nasty thing you thought... every heart you broke and every spirit you crushed... every person you took advantage of and... every time you turned your back on someone in need and every time you exploited a situation to your own advantage...every time you cut someone down and every time you tried to puff up yourself... every time you lied, every time you stole and every time you looked at God and said you knew better.... every sin in your past, present and future was placed upon Jesus, as He hung on the cross. v Jesus is the Lamb of God, whose blood marks the doorposts of our hearts. He offered himself as the sacrificial substitute. With a crown of thorns crushed on his brow, spikes hammered through his wrists and feet, and a spear thrust in his side, the Lamb of God was slain on the altar of a rough wooden cross. Through the blood, God s wrath toward sin was satisfied once and for all. vi When Jesus said It is finished when He was on the cross. That s what that statement means in Greek. It means what I set out to do, I accomplished. It means the bill is totally paid. When you say yes to Jesus, He stamps your account, which is filled with sinfulness as PAID IN FULL - - forgiven. All you have to do is say YES to Jesus! Amen 5

6 i Adam Hamilton, John: The Gospel of Light and Life (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2015), 129, 130. ii Adam Hamilton, John: The Gospel of Light and Life (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2015), 130. iii Nicholas Thomas Wright, John for Everyone (Louisvill, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 10, 11. iv Life Application Study Bible (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2004), v Michael Deutsch, The Lamb of God, April, 25, 2017, accessed February 16, 2018, vi Charles R. Swindoll and Bryce Klabunde, Jesus: When God Became A Man (Anaheim, CA: Insight for Living, 1992),