Lamb of God
PARTIAL outline: FULL PDF HERE
John 1:29-36
This is one of the great texts of the Bible. It states one of the most cherished names of the Lord Jesus Christ—“The Lamb of God.”
John the Baptist pointed his listeners to Jesus! This was His calling—To prepare the way of the Lord (v. 23 cf. Mal. 3:1). It was never about John, but all about Jesus—“He must increase, I must decrease!” As John pointed men to Jesus, we are also called to point people to Jesus.
DOCTRINAL CONTEXT: The name “Lamb of God” is peculiar to the Apostle John. He used it 22 times. It is noteworthy that the Apostle Paul never used the word “lamb” in Scripture.
Why is this significant? Because no one understood that Jesus Christ had to die for sins before He could reign on earth. Israel was looking for a Messiah to sit on a throne, not be nailed to a cross (cf. Luke 1:68-75; 18:31-34; 24:19-23).
When John the Baptist proclaimed, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the SIN [singular] of the world,” he was not talking about Christ’s death on the cross for sins. John was expecting the Messiah to come and rid the world of sin and set up His kingdom on earth (Mt. 3:2). He was talking about Christ removing the whole package of sin (i.e. the cause of sin; effects of sin; penalty of sin; etc.).
It never occurred to John that Jesus would be rejected by Israel and be crucified. This explains why John later in prison had doubts and asked Jesus, “are you THE ONE we should look for another?”
It is true when an individual trusts the Lord Jesus Christ as their Savior, He takes away all their SINS (1 John 3:5—“And ye know that he was manifested to take away OUR SINS”). But John was not referring to the sins of an individual—He was talking about “the SIN of the WORLD,” that is, removing the whole gamut of sin without leave a trace of it on earth.
Obviously, sin has not be been removed from the world. Sin is seen everywhere you look. Therefore, John’s statement reaches beyond Christ’s death on the cross to the time when Christ comes back and completely takes away all the effects of sin from the world.
Adam brought sin into the world—“By one man SIN [singular] ENTERED INTO THE WORLD…” (Rom. 5:12). Jesus Christ, “the last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45), would remove sin from the world!
In this message lets look at five things the Bible says about “the Lamb.”
I. The CONCERN in the Old Testament—
“Where is the lamb?” (Gen. 22:7). First mention to “the lamb” in the Bible.
A. The PROPHECY (Gen 22:8— “God will provide HIMSELF a lamb…”).
- It does not say, “God himself will provide a lamb…” Or, “God will provide for himself a lamb.”
- It says God HIMSELF will be the Lamb. It is prophetic because God never provided Abraham with a lamb in Genesis 22. God provided a RAM (v. 13). [There is a difference!] “THE LAMB of God” doesn’t show up until 1900 years later.NOTE: Every modern translation of Genesis 22:8 changes the wording to remove the prophetic reference to the Lord Jesus Christ.
B. The PICTURES of the Lamb.
1. Passover (Ex. 12). When God delivered Israel out of Egyptian bondage, He used the blood of a spotless lamb. God was going to send judgment. The only protection was to have the blood of the lamb applied on the lintel and door posts of the house with family abiding inside. The firstborn of anyone’s family who did not have the blood of the lamb on their door would die.
2. Under the law of Moses, a lamb had to be sacrificed every morning and every evening upon the brazen altar (Ex. 29:38- 39). This continued everyday from the time of Moses to 70 AD—About 1,500 years—equivalent to over 1,080,000 lambs slain. Gallons of blood all pointing Jesus “the Lamb of God.”
3. Isaiah 53:7 personifies “the Lamb” — “he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.” Acts 8:32-35 clearly states the lamb Isaiah wrote about was Jesus.
C. The PROGRESSION — As the message of the Lamb of God unfolds through the Bible, it becomes ever more encompassing.
PARTIAL outline: FULL PDF HERE
