Behold the Lamb of God
Notes
Transcript
Can anyone tell me what Christmas is all about?
Can anyone tell me what Christmas is all about?
In the classic Christmas movie, A Charlie Brown Christmas, Charlie Brown is incredibly frustrated by his search for the true meaning of Christmas. The kids and dog around him are distracted by the glitz and glamour of Christmas, the presents, the decorations, the traditions. Yet in the end, Charlie Brown screams out, “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about!!!???” And so, Linus cuts through all of the extra razzle dazzle and recites the story of Jesus’ birth, saying, “That’s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.”
In much the same way, as we have seen these past few weeks, the ministry of John the Baptist has created quite a stir, with the people focused in on questioning who he is, and what prophecy his ministry might fulfill. In this week’s passage, we see John the Baptist fulfill his true purpose, pointing to Jesus the Christ.
Would you join me this morning in the Gospel of John? Let us read this morning starting in John 1:29.
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!”
Confession
Confession
As we begin our study of this passage, we need to understand that some time has passed since the baptism of Jesus recorded in the other Gospels. After Jesus was baptized, he went into the wilderness for forty days. So, this passage is happening after Jesus has returned from the wilderness. The previous day, the Jews had sent priests and Levites to John the Baptist, trying to understand who he was and what his ministry was. He denies being the Messiah, Elijah, and the Prophet. Instead, John connects his ministry to the prophecy of Isaiah, quoting from Isaiah 40.
A voice of one crying out: Prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness; make a straight highway for our God in the desert. Every valley will be lifted up, and every mountain and hill will be leveled; the uneven ground will become smooth and the rough places, a plain. And the glory of the Lord will appear, and all humanity together will see it, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.
John says that he is the voice crying out to prepare the way of the Lord! Yahweh! Here John is in the wilderness, proclaiming that God will come. Then, they asked John why he was baptizing people.
“I baptize with water,” John answered them. “Someone stands among you, but you don’t know him. He is the one coming after me, whose sandal strap I’m not worthy to untie.”
So, John spent a day explaining that his ministry is to point to One who is greater, and then:
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.’
Look! There He is! The One I was talking about!
Who is this Lamb of God that John is proclaiming? Scholars, doing their scholar thing, have suggested several answers to explain what John must have understood when he proclaimed Jesus as the Lamb of God.
One suggestion is that John the Baptist was pointing to Jesus as a conquering lamb in the apocryphal literature who would judge the world, and cleanse it of all unrighteousness. Certainly, Jesus does fit that picture as we read later in the Book of Revelation. However, this understanding assumes a lot of reliability of possible mid-testamental apocryphal literature and John the Baptist’s familiarity with it.
It also doesn’t really follow from the Greek word translated “lamb” here. In Revelation, the word used for the Lamb is arnion. Another word frequently used for lamb, particularly the Passover Lamb is pascha. The word used here is “amnos.” It is only used four times in the New Testament. Twice here by John. In Acts 8:32 when the eunuch asks Philip to interpret Isaiah 53, “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb is silent before its shearer.” The other passage is in 1 Peter 1:19, “with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb.” So, here, Lamb of God does not seem to refer to a conqueror, but rather a sacrifice.
A few scholars have suggested that John was referring to Jesus as the fulfillment of the story of Abraham and Isaac. Rather than the son being spared as Isaac was, God did not even spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all as Romans 8:32 tells us. Certainly, this understanding of Jesus as the Lamb fits, but is not terribly obvious reading the text.
One of the prevailing understandings of Lamb of God is read in light of Jesus as the fulfillment of the Passover Lamb. Certainly, if John the Baptist didn’t have this meaning in mind, John the author of this Gospel likely did. One of the most important themes of the Gospel according to John is that of the Passover.
Certainly, with the background John the Baptist had, he would have understood well the sacrificial significance of the Lamb. Remember that John’s father Zechariah was a priest, and so John would have understood the sacrificial functions of a lamb, including that of the Passover Lamb. However, again, I wonder about the specific word John used. If he were thinking of Jesus as the Passover Lamb, it would have made more sense to refer to him as pascha.
I tend to lean towards the idea that that the title, “Lamb” makes the most sense within the context of Isaiah. Remember that John has been sprinkling Isaiah references to his purpose, and will again recall Isaiah in the next verses. For this understanding, it makes sense to me to think of Isaiah 53.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth. Like a lamb led to the slaughter and like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth.
Yet the Lord was pleased to crush him severely. When you make him a guilt offering, he will see his seed, he will prolong his days, and by his hand, the Lord’s pleasure will be accomplished.
Therefore I will give him the many as a portion, and he will receive the mighty as spoil, because he willingly submitted to death, and was counted among the rebels; yet he bore the sin of many and interceded for the rebels.
Here, Isaiah is describing this suffering servant who will bear the sin of many. Although many in Israel didn’t connect this person to the Messiah, we know that this is the case. John is proclaiming Jesus to be the Messiah promised and described by Isaiah.
That said, as Christians, we know that the reason that all of the above possible descriptions of John’s understanding are plausible because we know them all to be true!
We’re reading this from the perspective of those who understand the connections in hindsight. We know that the answer is really e) all of the above. Jesus is the conquering Lamb we see in Revelation who is coming to judge the world and cleanse it from all unrighteousness. Jesus is the Son who was not spared so that we all might be saved. Jesus is the ultimate Passover Lamb, and finally, Jesus is the Messiah, the lamb slain for the sins of the world.
What does John mean by slain for the sins of the world. I don’t doubt this confused John’s questioners. They understood the scope of Messianic hopes in light of Israel. Instead, John is saying that this Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world!
This continues the the understanding of the Messianic work described in Isaiah 49.
he says, “It is not enough for you to be my servant raising up the tribes of Jacob and restoring the protected ones of Israel. I will also make you a light for the nations, to be my salvation to the ends of the earth.”
This Lamb of God had come not just to redeem the people of Israel, but the whole world!
So, how does John the Baptist know that Jesus is this Lamb of God, this Messiah? He explains that Jesus’ baptism was the proof of who Jesus was.
Explanation
Explanation
Remember that some time has passed since the baptism of Jesus, so John is recounting his understanding of previous events. The event that John is interpreting is recounted in the other Gospels. Matthew 3:13-17, the passage Pastor Bill was originally going to preach from this morning says,
Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. But John tried to stop him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you come to me?” Jesus answered him, “Allow it for now, because this is the way for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John allowed him to be baptized. When Jesus was baptized, he went up immediately from the water. The heavens suddenly opened for him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming down on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased.”
Some might object that there’s a bit of an apparent confusion between the passage in Matthew and John’s recounting of these events. In Matthew 3:14, John clearly knows who Jesus is, and tries to stop him from being baptized, yet in John 1, John says he didn’t know him.
I didn’t know him, but I came baptizing with water so that he might be revealed to Israel.”
The apparent contradiction here comes again from the English language’s somewhat limited vocabulary. The one English word, “know” has a range of meaning that perhaps doesn’t fully capture the original Greek underlying words. Thinking about it a little bit, it seems somewhat obvious that John was aware of Jesus when he came to be baptized. Remember the relationship of Mary and Elizabeth, and the closeness in age between John and Jesus. It seems likely that they knew of each other. Also, Jesus was sinless, so I imagine that kind of thing would stick out a bit.
John’s baptism was about repentance and cleansing of sin. It seems obvious that John would have known how little Jesus needed to repent. John knew the man Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph. What John is saying in John 1 is that he didn’t KNOW who Jesus was. The Greek word here has connotations of understanding all over it. John is saying that he didn’t understand that Jesus was the Messiah until His baptism.
If we’re tracking with all of the Isaiah allusions, this really should not be surprising. Isaiah 53 describes the Messiah saying:
He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground. He didn’t have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him.
So, what clues John into understanding that Jesus isn’t just a really holy guy, but is actually the Messiah?
And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he rested on him. I didn’t know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The one you see the Spirit descending and resting on—he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.”
So, John had been given the message when he was sent into ministry that his ministry of baptism would lead to seeing the Spirit descend and rest on someone who would be the Messiah. This understanding again is straight from Isaiah, this time in chapter 11, where it says,
Then a shoot will grow from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him— a Spirit of wisdom and understanding, a Spirit of counsel and strength, a Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
So, John is the prime witness to this revelatory event showing that Jesus is the Messiah, and he testifies as such. John understands that his ministry of baptism is simply a picture setting up the ministry of the One who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.
I didn’t know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The one you see the Spirit descending and resting on—he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’
Baptism
Baptism
I want to pause here for a minute and consider this relationship between the water baptism of John, the Holy Spirit baptism of Jesus, and the water baptism of Christians today.
John understood that his baptism with water was a picture setting up the understanding of what Jesus would do with the Spirit. In other words, John’s water baptism was a forward looking symbol of what would come. One commentator pointed out that “The confession of sins, repentance, cleansing, and commitment to living before God that the Baptist ministers in water, Jesus will minister in the Holy Spirit.”
In much the same way as John’s baptism is a forward looking symbol of what Jesus would do, our baptism is a backward-looking symbol describing the work that Jesus has already done in our lives.
It seems as we read the New Testament, God understands our need for tangible, physical, symbols to help us understand something that has happened spiritually. There are a couple of dangers as we approach symbols though.
The first is to confuse the symbol for the event. This is what happened in history with both the symbols of communion and baptism. Later in the service, we will be sharing communion together as physical reminders of the broken body and shed blood of Christ. This is a remembrance, a symbol to help us remember. However, as the church interpreted and reinterpreted the Bible and church fathers who had come before, by the 9th century, an abbot argued that the bread and wine were the real body and blood of Jesus Christ, and that rather than a symbol of the sacrifice of Jesus, communion was actually itself the sacrifice of Jesus. This became the official position of the Roman Catholic church in 1215. They had confused the symbol for the true sacrifice.
In much the same way, over time, the church confused the symbol of baptism. The church began to understand that the symbol of baptism actually washed away sins. This led to a discussion about baptizing infants, but in the 3rd century, the argument was that the infants had not yet committed any sins, so it wasn’t appropriate to baptize them until they were older. By the 5th century, they had decided that baptism also washed away the original sin, and so infants were baptized as soon as possible. The symbol had become the action.
Another danger is confusing what the symbol is actually symbolizing.
Like the first error, this happened early on with communion. For several centuries prior to the abbot’s suggestion of transubstantiation, the prevailing understanding of communion was the one articulated by Augustine. He suggested that as the individual grains come together to form the bread, and the many grapes on the vine combine to form the wine, so too is communion a symbol of the unity of the church. It’s a nice sentiment, but when Jesus broke bread in the upper room, he didn’t say, this bread is broken for you, to remember your unity with one another. The bread represents his body! The church had confused what the symbol was supposed to represent.
This error happened with baptism in the Reformation. While the reformers backed away from the Catholic understanding of communion, infant baptism was a firmly entrenched practice at this point. It was Zwingli that suggested a new understanding of baptism. He suggested instead that just as the old covenant had the practices of circumcision and passover, the new covenant had the signs of baptism and the Lord’s supper. There are several problems with this understanding. First, to flatten the Old Testament covenant practices down to two signs requires a lot of flattening. However, the biggest problem is that this understanding of baptism confused the symbol for what it was supposed to represent. Zwingli, and the churches that followed suggested that baptism was a symbol for circumcision. And so, just as infants were circumcised into the covenant community of Israel, so are infants baptized into the new covenant community of the church.
However, this isn’t what baptism is symbolizing. John the Baptist knew well what his baptism represented. He wasn’t suggesting that it was somehow a replacement for circumcision. No, baptism was something different. His baptism with water was to point to Jesus’ baptism with the Holy Spirit. Just as those coming to John were baptized, immersed, in the waters of the Jordan, so too would the followers of Jesus be immersed in the Holy Spirit.
Our baptism is a physical symbol of what has happened spiritually to us. We have been buried with Christ, and raised with him to new life! We have been immersed with the Holy Spirit. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ this morning, have you been baptized? Have you declared by the symbol of baptism the work that Jesus Christ has done in your life? If not, what is holding you back?
Perhaps you’ve procrastinated long enough that you feel embarrassed that you haven’t been baptized yet. That was certainly me before I was baptized. I really committed to the church my freshman year of college, and it took a couple of years before I understood that I should be baptized, but then it became awkward that I hadn’t done it yet. I was leading worship occasionally on Sunday mornings, I was helping to lead the college/career outreach ministry. So, finally, when the pastor invited anyone that wanted to be baptized in the Mississippi one night of that college ministry, I came forward and was baptized, at least seven years after I started attending church regularly. Perhaps that is you, there’s no time like the present! There’s a least one person who won’t judge you for procrastinating.
Perhaps you were baptized as an infant. This is certainly a sensitive topic, and a very difficult one in many families. All of the pastoral staff were baptized as infants, the Lutheran church, Pastor Clint was baptized into the Methodist church. I was baptized Presbyterian. All of us have had to confront that awkwardness before we were baptized as believing adults. Please talk to one of us if you want to know more. At heart though, one of the main reasons that I would implore you to consider being baptized as a believer is that the baptism of your infancy was representing something completely different than the believer’s baptism by immersion that we practice in this church. In a way, infant baptism and believers baptism are two completely different actions. Literally, actually, since people usually don’t dunk babies! If that’s you, would you let one of us know, and we would love to work through that with you.
Let’s return to John’s testimony:
I didn’t know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The one you see the Spirit descending and resting on—he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.”
So, having begun with the testimony that Jesus is the Lamb of God, John ends with the testimony, declaring that Jesus is the Son of God. In verse 31, John said that he came baptizing with water so that the Messiah might be revealed to Israel, and here John confirms that Jesus is that man! John’s ministry is to point to Jesus as the Christ.
Response
Response
So, what should our response be? Well, let’s go ahead one more day.
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!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus.
So, what is the response John’s testimony cries out for? Follow him! This was certainly the reaction of two of John’s disciples. In a way, these men were prepped by John to recognize and follow Jesus. D.A. Carson points out, “If some of Jesus’ first disciples had earlier followed John the Baptist, we must suppose that something encouraged them to abandon their old master at the peak of his influence, in order to follow a still unknown preacher from Galilee. The best reason is the obvious one: they changed their allegiance precisely because it was the Baptist himself who pointed Jesus out as the one who was coming to fulfil the promises of Scripture.”
Follow Jesus!
Follow Jesus!
Perhaps this morning, you are here, a believer, who has been baptized and is already following Jesus. I would ask, is your mission that of John the Baptist? Do you point to Jesus Christ? Are you grabbing the people around you and saying, Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world! Is your ministry pointing people to the Son of God. Does your life testify to him? If not, let me encourage you to refocus your ministry this morning back to making Christ known.
Are you here this morning like Charlie Brown, confused by all of the distractions around Christmas? Have you gotten distracted by all of the things around you, frustrated because you feel like there should be something more? There is a Lamb of God who was slain for you, that you might believe in him and have your sins taken away. The promised Messiah has come. God became flesh and dwelt among us. He lived a perfect, sinless, life and was crucified on the cross for your sins. More than that, the grave could not hold him. He is a risen savior, and has conquered sin and death. And he is coming back and will judge the world such that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. Don’t let another day go by apart from him. Repent and believe. If you want to know more, please reach out to one of the staff or elders. Eric, who prayed earlier will be down front after the service and would love to talk with you. If you’re online, reach out to us. You can either email us, or you can fill out the connection card this morning, and check the box, “I want to know more about finding peace with God through Jesus Christ.”
Let me close with with a picture of the Lamb that John gives us in Revelation 5:
Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll, And to open its seals; For You were slain, And have redeemed us to God by Your blood Out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, And have made us kings and priests to our God; And we shall reign on the earth.” Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain To receive power and riches and wisdom, And strength and honor and glory and blessing!” And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying: “Blessing and honor and glory and power Be to Him who sits on the throne, And to the Lamb, forever and ever!” Then the four living creatures said, “Amen!” And the twenty-four elders fell down and worshiped Him who lives forever and ever.