THE LAMB OF GOD

John 1:29,35,36; Genesis 22:7,8,13; Isaiah 53:7; Exodus 12:3-7,12,13; Revelation 5:6-14

God desires that His glad tidings should be preached in order that you might come to know Him and to enjoy His blessings for ever. He wants you to know Him! On the one hand, He would have you to know that He is love, (1 John 4:8), and that He is gracious and that He is merciful. On the other hand, He would also have you to know that He is righteous, that He is holy and that He is just. By man’s fall in the garden of Eden, “sin entered into the world, and by sin death” (Rom.5:12), and the scripture says, “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom.3 23) and “the wages of sin is death”, Rom.6:23. God desires you to ask yourself this afternoon, just as Job asked, how is it possible that a sinner in such a state can be just with God (Job 25:4)?

Well, it is glad tidings that God has made a way for you to be just with Him. You as an unsaved sinner cannot expect anything from Him in His holiness and in His righteousness apart from judgment. God would have you to stop and think this afternoon about what sin and sins mean to Him, and how abhorrent they are to Him. Not only the things that you have done, that you have said, that even you have thought. You may think that you are able to stop doing those things, but if you are continuing in sinning, He would tell you this afternoon to repent and stop doing so. But more than this, He would have you to consider what you are as a fallen creature, as a sinner; and there is nothing you can do about that. God is holy, He is just, He is righteous but He is a God of love. He does not want you to remain apart from Him and banished from His presence eternally. Think of eternity! He would have you to think about where you will spend it. In the glad tidings, He tells you that you can be made fit to spend eternity with Him and know the fulness of His love for ever. In the Old Testament, we can read in the books of Moses about the way that God’s earthly people, Israel, were able to bring offerings to make atonement for their sins, to pay some price as they acknowledged what they had done, but those sacrifices and offerings had to be repeated again and again. But God finds no pleasure in the death of a sinner and He has provided a way in which sins can not only be forgiven but can be removed once and for all, while sin has been condemned completely.

You will notice that all these scriptures that I have read speak of the Lamb of God. In the Lord Jesus, God has provided Himself with a Sacrifice in virtue of which all our sins can be completely removed. In John 1, John the baptist sees Jesus coming to him. John had some light as to who Jesus is – we can see that by reading the beginning of this gospel – so when John sees Him, he says “Behold the Lamb of God”. There was something about this Man Jesus which John could identify that was different and special. The gospel of John is different from the others in that it presents Jesus in the greatness and deity of His Person; “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1) and “the Word became flesh” (v.14). How great the Lord Jesus is, none other than God’s own Son. The other gospels present Him in His lowliness, coming in as a Babe in a manger, but in this gospel He is presented in the greatness of His Person. There is no other man so great, not even John the baptist himself, although the Lord said Himself that “there is not arisen among the born of women a greater than John the baptist”, Matt.11:11. But even John could never do anything that would take away the sin of the world and that is who John saw here, a Man who was going to take away the sin of the world. That is because of the greatness and the majesty of who He is in His own Person, none other than God Himself.

These Old Testament scriptures bring out the perfection of this Lamb. In Genesis 22, we do not have a lamb, we have a sheep and then we have a ram. We have to be very careful when we speak about the Lord Jesus because He is very great, but Scripture records that He came in as a Babe, and then He grew up. In Isaiah 53, it says of the Lord typically that He grew up as a “tender sapling” (v.2), then after His birth, we have one record of Jesus being about twelve years of age and being occupied in His Father’s business (Luke 2:49). And then we get Him moving into His public service at about thirty years of age. What we see here in this sheep is the mature thought, it is not the lamb exactly. There had been those thirty years in which Jesus was here in holy perfection doing the will of His Father. He did nothing but that will, nothing that did not manifest and declare God in all His glory. How valuable and how precious those thirty years, of which we have hardly any record, were to God, and then Jesus entered into His public service and all that lay before Him. Scripture speaks of Him as being the effulgence of God’s glory and the expression of His substance (Heb.1:3). John the baptist no doubt had some insight into what that pathway would involve for the Lord Jesus. We have this beautiful type here of Abraham and Isaac and we get some insight through the type into the love of God for His Son. Earlier on, God had said to Abraham, “Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, Isaac …” (v.2). Think of God seeing the state of people in this world as far from Him in their sins, yet He was prepared to send out in His public service the Object of His love, His own well-beloved Son, to become an offering and a sacrifice for sin. How great the love of God is, that He was prepared to send that One who meant so much to Him.

Then Isaac speaks to his father, and he is unquestioning about everything that is going on, but eventually he asks, “Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the sheep for a burnt-offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself with the sheep for a burnt-offering?”, and that is what God has done – what glad tidings! Although “the wages of sin is death”, you are not required to lay down your life for your sins – you could not possibly do so. The scripture says, “for the good man some one might also dare to die; but God commends his love to us, in that, we being still sinners, Christ has died for us”, Rom.5:7,8. God has provided the Saviour, Jesus, the only One who could take upon Himself the entire liability of your sins if you believe, and the sins of all who put their faith in Him. Peter speaks of it; “who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Pet.2:24. God has provided the sheep, He has provided the Offering who alone could make this great sacrifice.

Then it says here, “they went both of them together”. The Lord Jesus was always to be found as a Man here doing the will of His Father. It was no light or easy matter for Him. We read of Him in the garden of Gethsemane as He contemplated going to the cross at Calvary, that place where He would lay down His life. To the onlooker, He was put to death by wicked men who cast Him out and rejected Him, but His death was all in the divine will as the means by which the Lord Jesus could lay down that precious and holy life of His. It was not only death itself and the awfulness of the crucifixion that He faced, but it was the whole moral matter of being “made sin”, 2 Cor.5:21. He truly felt that in a way in which you or I could never ever enter into. He contemplated it in the garden; “his sweat became as great drops of blood”, Luke 22:44. How awful it was for Him to contemplate being made sin. He said, “My Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me”, Matt.26:39. But He was ever the obedient One and then He said, “but not as I will, but as thou wilt”. He went to the cross with all that it would involve. So “Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, behind was a ram caught in the thicket by its horns”. Those horns would speak to us of the commitment and dedication of the Lord Jesus to His Father’s will. We have spoken of the sheep being a mature thought and the ram speaks to us of strength and durability. Think of the Lord Jesus being in type held there because of the greatness of His love for His God and Father, and for you the sinner.

The passage in Isaiah 53 refers, also in the type, to the sufferings of Jesus on the cross at the hands of men; how they abused Him, spat upon Him, gave Him a crown of thorns. They scourged Him, they mocked Him, derided Him – they did all of these things to Him. The previous chapter says that His face “was so marred more than any man” (v.14); what awful physical abuse Jesus received from the hands of men! He was oppressed and He was afflicted but it says here of Him typically, “he opened not his mouth”. Jesus was led by the soldiers into the praetorium, He was given a mockery of a trial before Pilate, and “he opened not his mouth”. He did not resist, He did not defend Himself, for He was there doing the will of His God. It says here, “he was led as a lamb to the slaughter”; think of that! The Lord Jesus was led into the court of Pilate, He was led there. And then after that, He was led out bearing His cross, knowing what was before Him: “led as a lamb to the slaughter, and was as a sheep dumb before her shearers”. Think of Pilate wondering at Him because He answered not a word. What a testimony there was to His righteousness. Pilate’s wife came to him and said, “Have thou nothing to do with that righteous man”, Matt.27:19. Pilate knew that Jesus was just. One of the other criminals who were executed with Him understood that they were receiving the “just recompense of what we have done; but this man has done nothing amiss”, Luke 23:41. Think of the perfection of the Lord Jesus there “as a sheep dumb before her shearers”. He was perfect in all He went through.

Then the scripture records for us how the sun was darkened (Luke 23:44). No man was able to see my Saviour there as He atoned for my sins. God Himself hid His face from that holy, blessed One that He loved so much as He became the sin-bearer, bearing the sins of many in His body on that cross. God could no longer look upon Him at that moment and He turned His face from Him. Jesus was truly alone in those hours of darkness as He atoned for my sins, and I trust for yours. And then as the darkness passed, He laid down His life, He delivered up His spirit to His Father and He died. Men thought that it was the end, and that they had got rid of this One who had exposed the darkness that was in their own heart, but divine giving was not yet over.

We read in Exodus 12 of the Passover lamb, and it emphasises that the “lamb shall be without blemish”. We have already spoken about the perfection of the Lord Jesus. You will find as you read through the offerings, particularly in the book of Leviticus, that the shedding of the blood of the offering was an important part of the sacrifice. It says in chapter 17 that “the soul of the flesh is in the blood” (v.11)¹. The blood of the offering being poured out was proof that a life had been given up forever. Think of the holy life of Jesus, and all that it was for God! The soldiers came up to Him, and saw that He was already dead (John 19:33); there was nothing more they could do to Him, yet as the hymn says;

‘Though man in hatred pierced Thy side,

Thy blood love’s answer gave’      Hymn 230.

Think of that blood being poured out. It was proof of a life laid down, but also it was the price of redemption that was fully paid. “For the redemption of their soul is costly, and must be given up for ever”, Ps.49:8. In this world, things are valued by money, but Peter says, “ye have been redeemed, not by corruptible things, as silver or gold … but by precious blood”, 1 Pet.1:18,19. We would say reverently that our salvation required not only the death of the Lord Jesus; it also required the pouring out of His precious blood because that is the means by which believers have redemption. God is the creator of the world and everything in it, creationally we belong to Him, but we had fallen under the ownership of another, Satan, the one who deceived man. But God, through the death and the shedding of the precious blood of His Son, has paid the ultimate price to buy us back, to redeem us to Himself. What a tremendous cost, the blood of His own well-beloved Son! God was so pleased, so satisfied with that Offering that He was delighted to raise Jesus from among the dead. He was then found among His disciples for forty days, giving them many proofs that He had been raised from among the dead, and then He ascended into heaven, where it was the Father’s delight to glorify His Son. The hymn speaks of it;

‘The Father’s greetings, honours rare,

Are heaped upon His Son’s blest brow’ Hymn 350

Think of the wonderful way in which Jesus is now glorified in heaven!

In Exodus 12, the lamb was to be in the house and the children of Israel were to kill it and take its blood which they were to put on the door-posts and the lintel of each of their houses. If you stood in the doorway, the blood would be all around you, speaking of how we can be completely covered by the power of the blood of Jesus. There is a day of judgment coming when all of those who are in their sins will be judged, but God says here, “when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be among you for destruction”. This brings in your responsibility to answer to the glad tidings. It is very simple: you need to understand what you are in the sight of God, not only what you have done, but what you are, and that you need a Saviour, and that God has provided one for you and He is the Lord Jesus. You must come to understand that you need Him and all that God asks you to do is to feel that need, to turn to Jesus in faith and repentance and ask Him to forgive you your sins, ask Jesus to be your Saviour and know in faith that His precious blood washes you from your sins. When the time of judgment comes, He will own that you belong to Him and there will be nothing but eternal bliss and glory. Many of you here would have known a brother in Vancouver, now with the Lord, Mr John Bellamy. He used to tell us that when he was about ten years old, they were singing Hymn 446 in the gospel and he was suddenly conscious that he had not turned to the Saviour. Right there in the meeting room, he said, ‘O Lamb of God, I come’. God would desire that you should do that this afternoon, if you have not done it already. Come to the Saviour; say to Him, ‘O Lamb of God, I come!’. Come to the Saviour and have your sins forgiven: how simple it is.

And then too we need to ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Lord Jesus has promised all those who put their faith and trust in Him that He will come again to take each and every one to be with Himself. But we do not know when it might be. It could be any second now, which is why the glad tidings are so urgent. But if not, the Lord Jesus understands that this sinful condition will always be with us and that we need divine help to overcome it. We also need the Holy Spirit as a Comforter for us here. In difficult and dark times, there is One who is able to add His strength to our weakness (Rom.8:26). When we are at work or school, and something comes up and we do not know what to do, we can prove that the Holy Spirit is the unction (1 John 2:27); He is able to gently guide us, to give us a feeling about what is right or is wrong. And most importantly, we need the gift of the Holy Spirit to be able to speak with and to worship divine Persons. We need the Spirit to be able to speak to the Father, and to be able to say ‘Lord Jesus’.

I want to finally close with this scripture in Revelation. It is very interesting that this book contains such a large number of references to the Lamb. If I counted them correctly, there are twenty-seven, with several references in this chapter. But the impression I have this afternoon is that this book is dealing with very great and glorious matters, the finalising of things here on this earth in view of eternity; and there is One who is great enough to do that; and He is our Saviour. It is an affecting thing that all through this book, with its great display of power and glory, Jesus is still spoken of and portrayed as the Lamb that was slain. It is as if, when sin and the effects of it will be completely removed and never remembered any more, all the tears wiped away, that through all eternity there will be this constant reminder that the One who is the basis for it all is none other than the Lamb who was slain, One who Himself is one of the Godhead. And we are to have an impression of that in our souls this afternoon – the greatness of the Lord Jesus, who was prepared to empty Himself, taking a bondman’s form, as Paul says in Philippians 2, and that He was prepared to become a sacrifice for sin, and become known as the Lamb that was slain. We can see here how He will then be a great object of praise and of worship. He is God’s object now, and will be through all eternity. He will ever be so, but He desires this afternoon that He should be your object now as well as through eternity. That can be so by your owning Him as your personal Saviour this afternoon, the Lamb of God who laid down His life for you to take away your sins.

Just like our dear brother of whom I spoke, may you turn to the Lord Jesus afresh and say, ‘O Lamb of God, I come’, for your blessing and for God’s glory.

Preaching of the gospel, Kirkcaldy

25 April 2021

 

 

Vernon Harvey