~ January 19, 2014 ~ Second Sunday after Epiphany 10:15 am Living Hope Lutheran Church Pastor Todd Goldschmidt Theme: Look the Lamb of God! John 1:29-41 29The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! 30This is the one I meant when I said, A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. 31I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel. 32Then John gave this testimony: I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. 34I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God. 35The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. 36When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, Look, the Lamb of God! 37When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. 38Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, What do you want? They said, Rabbi (which means Teacher), where are you staying? 39 Come, he replied, and you will see. So they went and saw where he was staying, and spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour (4 pm). 40Andrew, Simon Peter s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. 41The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, We have found the Messiah (that is, the Christ). (425) 868-9404 - www.lhlc.org, pastortodd@lhlc.org Page 1 of 5
John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! His expression may mean little to us in our 21 st century world. In fact, it s conceivable that some of you have never even seen a lamb except at a zoo or down the hill at Farrel McWhirter Park. If you want to see sheep grazing on a hillside, just head out of the church parking lot this morning to the right and about a ½ mile down on the right-hand side there s a fenced pasture that almost always has a foraging flock. John s original audience of 1 st c. A.D. Palestinian Jews would ve instantly understood the picture he was painting for them. Flocks of sheep and their ever-vigilant shepherds crisscrossed the land of Canaan, from the mountains of Lebanon up north to the Judean hills in the south, from the banks of the Jordan River to the shores of the Sea of Galilee. But John s sentence was also dripping with sacred symbolism. It pointed to the Passover. Passover was one of the three chief religious festivals which the LORD expected every Israelite to observe at His temple in Jerusalem. It commemorated God s deliverance of His people from their brutal bondage in the land of Egypt under the leadership of Moses, his sister Miriam and brother Aaron the first high priest. This exciting, action-packed account is found in Exodus, the 2 nd book of the Bible. If you ve never read it, or if it s been awhile since you have, try to read it this week or sometime soon. It s a great read! The LORD hand-picked Moses to serve as His deliverer. He and his brother Aaron spoke repeatedly to the hard-hearted ruler in power at the time (possibly Pharaoh Thutmose II), informing him that the God of the Hebrews said: Let my people go! Nine times in a row he summoned them to his palace each time following a debilitating plague that they d predicted would occur if he refused to comply with God s command. Each time, pharaoh assured them that his land had suffered enough. The Israelites were free to go. But then he d change his mind. In response to his stubbornness, Jehovah sent wave upon wave of pestilence. In the first four plagues every lick of water in the land turned into blood; frogs covered the entire country; all the dust of Egypt became nasty gnats; filthy flies buzzed, and died everywhere. But the next five plagues were not visited upon the Israelites. God made a distinction between them and the Egyptians. The Egyptians livestock perished; painful boils covered their people and animals; hail destroyed their crops and trees; a wave of locusts stripped bare every last surviving plant; and thick-black darkness enveloped the land so that no one could move about for three days. But it was the 10 th plague that proved to be the straw that broke the camel s back for hardhearted pharaoh. Moses reports in Exodus 12: At midnight, the angel of death passed through the land and struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well... there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead (vv. 29-30). The Israelites were spared because every family followed God s command to sacrifice the very-best male lamb from their flock and spread its blood over the outer doorframe of their homes. (425) 868-9404 - www.lhlc.org, pastortodd@lhlc.org Page 2 of 5
When the angel of death saw the blood of the unblemished lamb, he passed over the house and spared the Israelites firstborn sons. We re told: During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD as you have requested. Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And bless me also (vv. 31-32). For the next 40 years, the Israelites wandered in the wilderness until they crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land of Canaan under Joshua s leadership. Jehovah charged His people to celebrate an annual feast to memorialize His mercy in sparing them from death and delivering them from their slavery in Egypt. The Passover celebration centered around the unblemished lamb that God s people would sacrifice, remembering the blood of those first lambs whose lives were given to spare their own. So when John the Baptist pointed to Jesus of Nazareth along the banks of the Jordan River and proclaimed, Look! Right there! There goes the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! his Jewish audience would ve immediately understand what he meant. This was their Messiah! This was the Redeemer they d longed for and prayed about for centuries! This was the One to Whom all the blood of the Passover lambs had pointed for generations! Jesus was their Savior, their Deliverer and their Consolation! Jesus God s Lamb is your Savior, Deliverer and Consolation too! He is God the Son: eternal, all-powerful, present everywhere and most importantly for us full of grace and mercy! The prophet Jeremiah wrote in the Book of Lamentations: Because of the LORD s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness (3:22-23). God the Son loved us so much that He offered His sinless life into death on a cross to secure our pardon before God the Father and to flood our troubled souls with peace that surpasses all human understanding. To that end, the Apostle Peter wrote the ensuing truth that applies equally to each of us: For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect (1 Peter 1:18-20). Did you catch that? Jesus bought you back from the empty way of life you inherited with [His] precious blood! He s delivered you from the pit of despair, the kingdom of darkness and eternal death! Since that s the case, why do we continue to walk in ways that anger God? Why do we erect an ever-higher wall of sin between us and Him and drive an ever-deeper wedge between us and others? Why do we so often behave like Gollum or Bilbo Baggins, for that matter in J.R.R. Tolkien s Lord of the Rings trilogy? We wants our preciouses. We lust after forbidden fruit. Imagine the points we d rack up if we had a credit card that earned them every time we traveled to our happy place that fantasyland where we can indulge our sinful passions without fear of discovery. We fool ourselves into thinking that if our fetid behavior takes place only internally it s a victimless crime. No harm, no foul. But don t we know better? God has inscribed His moral law on each of our hearts and He s revealed His will for the way He wants us to live in the pages of His Word. (425) 868-9404 - www.lhlc.org, pastortodd@lhlc.org Page 3 of 5
We re without excuse! We have no grounds to rationalize our failures, minimize our sins, shift the blame for our misdeeds onto someone else or blame our circumstances for our bad behavior. God sees through every one of our flimsy smokescreens! We need Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! We need the Son of God John the Baptist testified about and pointed his contemporaries to as the Messiah who found us when we sought Him not as the hymn writer put it. By His Spirit, Jesus called us to trust in Him as our Redeemer, our Lord, our dear Brother and our best Friend. Jesus confidently assures us as He did His first followers on the day of His death: I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit fruit that will last and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other (John 15:15-17). Our Master Jesus wants us to share His love with others in tangible ways. And the highest form of love we can show for the Lamb of God is to share His love for others with others like John the Baptist s two disciples do in our text. One is identified as Andrew. The other one was no doubt the writer of our text: Zebedee s son John, the brother of James; the disciple whom Jesus loved and to whom He entrusted the care of His mother Mary as He hung dying on the cross. They trailed after Jesus, who saw them following [and] asked, What do you want? They said, Rabbi teacher where are you staying? Come, he replied, and you will see. So they went and saw where he was staying, and spent the day with him. It was about the tenth hour, that is, about 4 in the afternoon. John recalled the exact hour their lives were turned upside down forever for the better! Imagine what it must ve been like for these Galilean fishermen to be commissioned by Jesus to fish with Him, from His boat, with His gospel-net for the souls of men! And that s exactly what they did! The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, We have found the Messiah (that is, the Christ). Who is your Simon Peter? What member of your family can you focus your witness on this week? Start by praying for that person, and keep it up. What neighbor or co-worker do you know who really needs to experience God s love in Christ in a big, powerful way? Look around the sanctuary right now. Who s missing? What sheep is wandering away from the green pastures and the life-giving waters of worshiping with the other sheep of Jesus flock on Sunday mornings? Why not pick up the phone and call them today? It might be wise to do it before or after the Hawks game this afternoon, though. How could you strike up a spiritual conversation at the grocery store, the beauty parlor or your yoga class? I ll give you a couple of concrete examples that might help. When we lived in Sitka, Alaska my mom had a friend named Dixie who invited her to her bridge club. My mom replied, I ll come to your bridge club if you come to my Bible class. Dixie agreed, and she, her husband R.J. and daughter Bev became believers and members of our little Lutheran church. (425) 868-9404 - www.lhlc.org, pastortodd@lhlc.org Page 4 of 5
In fact, Bev became a WELS school teacher and married a WELS pastor! As for my mom s bridge game, I can t say whether it improved or not! It s really not that hard to start a dialog that points to Jesus as the light of your life. Try it! We ll conclude this sermon with a prayer: Dearest Jesus, Lord and Light of our lives, equip us with the zeal and power of your Holy Spirit Who lives in us to be bold to share Your life-giving gospel with others in this week ahead. Open us up to respond to the people You put on our respective paths the same way You would: with soul-vision; with ears that are truly attentive to their needs; with a mind-set that s quick to listen and slow to speak instead of the other way around; with a heart that aches for their forgiveness and their eternal salvation with You and all believers in heaven. We pray for all these blessings in Your name, O Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! Amen (425) 868-9404 - www.lhlc.org, pastortodd@lhlc.org Page 5 of 5