Behold the Lamb of God
The Light Breaks Through: Advent 2020 • Sermon • Submitted
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Introduction
Introduction
<<PRAY>>
<<READ 1:19-34>>
Today is the third day of Christmas. It’s technically Three French Hens Day, because the Twelve Days of Christmas start on the 25th and go through the 5th of January. I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed, but that song is awfully repetitive.
This is the final message in our Advent and Christmas series, “The Light Breaks Through.” We’ve covered a lot of ground. We read a lot of Scripture in our services and in our Advent readings.
I wonder if you noticed how we eventually started reading passages more than once? Between Sunday mornings, daily readings, and Christmas Eve, it was bound to happen.
The wonderful thing about God’s Word is that it’s never a bad thing to read it again. Repetition doesn’t diminish the wonder of Scripture.
In John 1:19-34, you might notice that John repeats what he said back in verse 15. And just past our text for today, he repeats his proclamation that Jesus is the Lamb of God yet again.
There must be something to John’s testimony that bears careful consideration.
If you take a close look at verses 19-34, you’ll notice that the first half is John’s testimony about himself; the second half is about the identity of Jesus. But even when John is talking about his own identity, he can’t help but put it in terms of his relationship to his Lord. So as we look at his testimony in those two parts, we’re going to ask the question,
Q. How should we think about Christ’s identity and our own?
We’ll take them in reverse order, starting with this:
I. Agreeing with Jesus about ourselves (1:19-28)
I. Agreeing with Jesus about ourselves (1:19-28)
Explain:
Every answer that John gives in his testimony points away from himself to Jesus, every answer saying, “Not me, but him.”
Background: According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, John the Baptist was a miraculous child, born to a priest named Zechariah and Elizabeth. They were both very old, beyond childbearing years, and barren. But an angel appeared to Zechariah while he was serving in the Temple, promising that Elizabeth would bear a son, who would go before the Messiah, preparing the way for him.
2 during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3 And he went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
The people start flocking to John, listening to his teaching, and getting baptized. He tells them to repent, and they ask him what repentance looks like, and he tells them.
15 As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ,
And that’s the context for verses 19-34.
So a delegation shows up to find out more about this guy.
For John’s Gospel, “the Jews” often means “leaders from Jerusalem,” and that’s what it means here. The governing council in charge of Jewish matters, especially religious and judicial ones, was called the Sanhedrin. The high priest was in charge, and the council was made up of elders from the two primary factions of the day - the Pharisees and the Sadducees.
The Pharisees were a popular revival movement and had the backing of most of the people. They were concerned with personal religiosity and understanding the Bible, but they often paid more attention to their traditions and man-made rules rather than the actual content of Scripture.
The Sadducees were sort of the first-century version of the “Frozen Chosen.” They were more concerned with the Temple and the sacrificial system than with the religiosity of individual Israelites, so they were stuck in a sort of ritual religiosity. They were mostly made up of priests and Levites, although there were some priests who considered themselves Pharisees.
Verse 24 tells us that the Pharisees sent these priests and Levites to interrogate John the Baptist. After all, he’s the son of a priest, and he shows up in the wilderness out of nowhere right at the age when Numbers 4 tells us he should have been starting his priestly duties. But instead, he’s dressed like an Old Testament prophet and baptizing people. We can picture the Pharisees looking across the council chamber at the low-level priests and Levites and saying, “Well, he’s one of yours, and he’s doing weird things in the wilderness, and people are asking if he’s the Christ. Go get your house in order.”
So they head out to the spot. “Who are you?” they ask. “I’m not the Christ,” he says, so he knows what they meant to ask. His answer is more telling than it appears. To his audience, it would have sounded like, “I’m not the one who is the Christ.”
Which, if you think about it, isn’t a very helpful answer from a worldly perspective. If you walk into the living room and there’s a glass of chocolate milk on its side on the rug, and you shout, “Who spilled on the rug,” and you hear a chorus from every kid’s room, “Not I, said the fly,” you won’t feel that this is a tremendous amount of information.
So they try again: Are you Elijah? He says no. Not in the way they mean, at least.
There was a ton of messianic expectation in the 1st century. But it wasn’t exactly unified. Some Jews people expected a single Messiah who would deliver them from Rome. Others thought there’d be a priestly Messiah and a royal Messiah.
Because of Malachi 3 and 4, some people expected Elijah the prophet to literally come back from heaven before the Messiah. After all,
5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.
And after all, in 2 Kings 2, Elijah is taken bodily up to heaven in an angelic chariot at the Jordan river, so maybe they figured he’d come back the same way in the same place. And John wore the same kind of clothing as Elijah.
But he says, “no.” In fact, the angel that announced John’s birth said he would go forward in the spirit and power of Elijah to get people ready for the Messiah. And in Matthew 11 and 17, Jesus expressly identifies John not as the old Elijah, but as Elijah who was to come. So he was not Elijah in the way they meant it, but he was Elijah in the way that Malachi meant it.
But that answer wasn’t what the delegation needed, either. “Are you the Prophet?” As in, the prophet promised by Moses in Deuteronomy 18? The one who would speak face-to-face with God? And this time, John gives the most infuriating response. One word, two letters in English and in Greek: “No.”
Their response is as brusk as it can get in verse 22: “WHO ARE YOU?” And finally he gives them a fuller response in verse 23, quoting from Isaiah 40. <<READ v23>>
Isaiah 40 begins 26 chapters of Messianic prophecy, with God promising to rescue, redeem, and save His people, and even the Gentiles, through the Christ, the Messiah, culminating in a vision of the New Heavens and the New Earth.
And at the beginning, we have this quote about a voice in the wilderness. The voice doesn’t point to itself, it doesn’t magnify itself. It points to the Messiah, and calls to people to listen.
But the delegation has another question: If you’re not the Messiah, Elijah, or the Prophet, what business do you have baptizing out here?
Baptism wasn’t invented by John the Baptist, by the way. Converts to Judaism often performed a self-baptism as part of their official conversion. They pointed back to another prophet who came in the spirit of Elijah, his apprentice with the similar-sounding name, Elisha. Just a few chapters after Elijah went to heaven, Elisha told Naaman, a Syrian army general with leprosy, to bathe himself in the Jordan river 7 times. When he came out of the water, he was healed, and not only that, he was transformed. He went into the river bitter and annoyed that he came all the way to Israel, and Elisha told him to do something he could have done at home - in a much more impressive river. Plus, Elisha didn’t even come to tell him - he sent a servant to do it. But when he came out of the river, and saw what the LORD had done, he immediately promised that he would never worship any god but the LORD from then on.
Imagine the strangeness of what John was doing. Instead of baptizing themselves, this was a different thing. And instead of baptizing Gentiles, John was telling everybody to get right with God. His behavior said to religious people, “Your religion is worthless. You can’t even bathe yourself. You can’t wash your own sins away. Your only hope is for salvation to come from outside."
His answer in verse 26 once again points away from himself. “All I’m doing is dipping people in water. BUT very unknown to you, the Messiah Himself is already here, and I’m not even worthy to be his most menial servant.”
Sandals were pretty gross in those days. Disciples often served their teachers in every way imaginable, but no disciple was ever expected to take off his master’s shoes - that was left to the basest servant. And John says, “I’m not even the basest servant to that guy.”
See, John’s view of himself was completely formed by his understanding of who Jesus was, and that made him speak of himself in terms of extreme humility.
Look back in verse 20 with me. It says, “He confessed, and he did not deny, and he confessed, ‘I am not the one who is the Christ.’” Why does the Gospel writer repeat “confess” this way?
The word “confess” here actually points to the idea of acknowledging the truth, or agreeing with someone else.
John’s testimony agrees with his Lord’s.
When Jesus begins His ministry, and John’s own disciples start leaving to follow Jesus, John says,
27 John answered, “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. 28 You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ 29 The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease.”
The greatest thing that John ever says about himself is that he is a friend of the bridegroom who rejoices that the bridegroom has shown up. And even here, it’s stated with utmost humility.
Jesus Himself later says about John,
35 He was a burning and shining lamp, and you were willing to rejoice for a while in his light. 36 But the testimony that I have is greater than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me that the Father has sent me.
And
11 Truly, I say to you, among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.
In fact, John the Baptist’s greatness lay specifically in this: He knew that Jesus was the One. He knew that every single thing he had was a gift from God. And he knew that his calling was not to increase, not to gain power or influence, but to point joyfully to Jesus.
Apply:
Like John, we should agree with Jesus that we are unworthy even to untie His sandals. Like every Jew who went out to the Jordan to be baptized by John, we must cast aside any claim to our own righteousness and instead come to Christ with no claim at all.
Like John, we should agree with Jesus that everything we receive is a gift from God.
Like John, we should identify ourselves in terms of our relationship to Jesus. John was a voice - that was his role, his purpose, his identity. The voice who calls out to make ready the way of the LORD.
We try to find our identity in so many things. Our jobs, our hobbies, our interests. Half of the misery and half the deluded revelry we see in our world is a result of mistaken identity.
Teens, you probably think that nobody has ever had it as hard as you guys have it now. And you might be right! But I will tell you that every generation spends the teenage years trying to figure out who they are. In most high schools, this means they start dividing up and start trying to look or act the same. Some grow their hair out and dye it and hang out with others who do the same. Some join the football team or the band and hang out with teammates or bandmates. You find your squad and hope they have your back.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with finding a good group of friends.
But your identity should not be based on your extracurriculars or your musical tastes or hobbies;
It was John’s identity as friend to the bridegroom that gave him complete joy.
Imagine if his identity had been wrapped up in how many disciples he had - then every disciple that went from him to Jesus would be a blow to his self-image. Like a Social Media Influencer, he’d be desperately looking for likes and mentions that never come in. But it was the opposite.
And by the way, the world seems to have devolved into one gigantic high school cafeteria, with everyone breaking up into their own identity groups. It’s a toxic, destructive, way to live.
John shows us a better way: Agree with Jesus about who you are. You and I are unworthy to untie His sandals; yet He took off His tunic to wash His disciples’ feet.
Now, look at verses 29-34 and
II. Agreeing with Jesus about Himself (1:29-34)
II. Agreeing with Jesus about Himself (1:29-34)
Explain:
Time change - “The next day” (v29). The other Gospels tell us what’s happened up to this point. Weeks earlier, Jesus came to John to be baptized, and when Jesus is baptized, the Holy Spirit descends upon Him like a dove, and John and Jesus hear the Father’s voice say, “This is my beloved Son; with whom I am well pleased.” Jesus is then taken into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted after forty days of fasting. And then, Jesus comes back to the Jordan to begin His ministry in Galilee. That’s when John sees Him.
Verses 29-34 begin and end with two incredible statements about Jesus - He’s the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (v29), and He’s the Son of God who baptizes with the Holy Spirit (v33-34).
John the Baptist recognizes that Jesus is not just the Messiah, the Christ, but that He existed before John, that He ranks before John, that He is the whole reason John was sent to baptize. As he said to the delegation from Jerusalem, “All I’m doing is dipping people in water, but this is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.”
Since John and Jesus were cousins, he might have met Jesus before, he might even have heard the stories about Him from his parents, but he didn’t know Jesus as the Word who made all things, the Lamb of God and the Son of God, until his baptism.
Now he knows, and now he proclaims it.
As the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, Jesus is the fulfillment of all the Old Testament sacrifices and the promises of salvation through the Messiah.
The messianic prophecies that start with Isaiah 40 come to an amazing crescendo in chapter 53
4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 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. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. 7 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.
The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world is the substitute who bears the punishment that our transgressions deserved.
He is the fulfillment of the Passover, the lamb who was slain so that God’s people could be delivered from slavery in a land of deep darkness.
He opens with “Lamb of God” and ends with “Son of God,” and Jesus is the fulfillment of Abraham’s words to Isaac, “God will provide for himself the lamb for the offering.” When God spoke to Abraham in Genesis 22, He told him, “Take your son, your only son, the son whom you love, and offer him to me.”
But where God provided the ram as a substitute for Abraham’s beloved son, for the sins of the world, God Himself gave His only Son, the Son whom he loved, as our substitute.
According to Revelation 22, for all eternity, we will worship and praise Jesus as the Lamb.
That’s not all. John says that Jesus is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.
All of the promises about God’s New Covenant are wrapped up in Jesus. In Deuteronomy 30, the LORD had promised that one day, He would circumcise His people’s hearts so that they would love Him with all their hearts, and souls, and have true life.
In Ezekiel 36-37, the LORD had promised that He would sprinkle them with clean water and cleanse them from all their sins. He would give them new hearts and new spirits. He would put His Holy Spirit in His people, and they would truly live.
In every way, John agrees with what Jesus says about Himself.
He is the One who gives the Holy Spirit, who gives life. He is the Son of God and the Lamb of God, given for us.
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
And
14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
Let’s close by considering how we should agree with what Jesus says about Himself.
Apply:
Like John, agree with Jesus that He is the Lamb of God who takes away sin
The necessity of substitution, the provision of the Lamb by our Father
24 I told you that you would die in your sins, for unless you believe that I am he you will die in your sins.”
Like John, agree with Jesus that He is the Son of God who gives the Holy Spirit
26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
26 “But when the Helper comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, he will bear witness about me.
Like John, agree with Jesus that He is the Christ, the Messiah - the Savior
What it looks like to agree with Jesus:
“I am who you say I am” -
Like John: Unworthy, yet beloved.
9 As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.
A friend of the bridegroom:
13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
And, children of God by His saving action in Christ
(Gal 4:4-7?)