In chapter 1 of John, John the Baptist was talking with his disciples when he saw Jesus
approaching him on the riverbank.
And as he watched him draw near, John said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the
sins of the world.
Now why did John refer to Jesus as the Lamb of God?
What are the implications of this particular term?
That's the focus of today's study.
Just a moment ago, I mentioned today is Palm Sunday.
Now again, we call it Palm Sunday.
If you had gone up to the people in the first century and said,
hey, what do you think about Palm Sunday?
What are you going to do on Palm Sunday?
No one would have known what you're talking about.
However, that's not to say that the day itself was not important.
It was very important to the Jewish community.
Why?
Well, it was because, although it was not called Palm Sunday,
it was referred to or thought of as Lamb Selection Day.
Lamb Selection Day.
Now what is that?
Well, think about it. Jesus is going to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover.
Now, the Passover itself was a commemoration of an event that had happened centuries earlier.
The Passover celebration that they did every year was a commemoration of an event that occurred during the time of the Exodus.
You remember Pharaoh was naughty. Pharaoh was restraining God's people. Pharaoh was oppressing God's people.
God sent Moses and said, let my people go. Pharaoh said, no, not once, not twice, not thrice, but a countless times until,
until, after a series of plagues came before it, God sent a final plague, the death of the firstborn.
Now, if you remember, Pharaoh let the people go after the death of the firstborn,
but the night of the death of the firstborn occurred something that we call the Passover.
And what happened was this. God told his people what was coming.
He says, if you want to survive it, when the angel of death comes through the land and claims the firstborn,
here's what you've got to do. You've got to go find yourself a lamb.
You have to find yourself a lamb, and it can't be just any lamb.
It needs to be a perfect lamb.
It needs to be an unblemished lamb, the best lamb that you can find.
Now, when you find this lamb, don't break any of its bones,
but when you find this lamb and you kill it,
you take the blood from this lamb, and you go to your doorpost,
you go to the lentils of your house,
you take the blood of the lamb, and you mark.
You mark your dwelling, you mark your door, you mark your house.
And in marking your house, you will safeguard those who are inside.
And the angel of death will pass over your home, even as he strikes others.
So this was the Passover that occurred in the time of Exodus.
And for centuries upon centuries upon centuries, God's people had been honoring and celebrating
and remembering what God had done way back then, how God had rescued and delivered and
redeemed his people from bondage to Pharaoh during the time of the Passover.
So you have Jesus, he's going into town.
And the day he marches in, the day with all the palm branches and the hosannas and everything else,
that was Lamb Selection Day.
In Jerusalem, the people were going around, they were looking for those best lambs they could find,
the perfect, unblemished lambs.
There was a whole cottage industry that had come up.
The Sadducees and others would breed these lambs, and people, the pilgrims, would come on in,
and they'd buy the lambs, and they'd sacrifice the lambs and the like.
And in doing so, they would commemorate what God had done way back when.
But the great irony, the great irony is that on the very day that they're doing that,
on the very day when pilgrims are running around, they're buying lambs and finding the perfect lamb
to sacrifice, to try to appease God, because that's their understanding of what it was.
On the very day that they were doing that, trying to appease God by finding this lamb,
sacrificing and hoping that God would find that sufficient,
on the very day that they were trying to appease God through this means,
God sent something better than appeasement.
He sent a lamb, all right, but he sent the Lamb of God, and the Lamb of God didn't come to appease,
but to atone. And as we're going to see this morning, atonement's way better than appeasement.
Atonement's way more necessary than appeasement. So that's the context of what we call Palm Sunday.
With that said, today we're not looking specifically at the text in which Jesus went
into the city. Today we're looking at a different text. Today we're looking at a text that happens
earlier in John 1. And the reason we're looking at this text in John 1 is because in this text
in John 1, for the very first time, someone got it right. Someone looked at Jesus Christ and they
saw that in Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of everything they had been doing for the Passover
for centuries. In today's text, a man named John the Baptist is going to look down the riverbank
and he's going to see Jesus Christ and he's going to call him something that no one else,
none of his contemporaries had called him. He's going to refer to him as the Lamb of God. Why?
Because he knew what the Lamb of God meant, and he knew how Jesus Christ would fulfill the shadows
and types of the Old Testament. That's the context of today's passage. Let's look again at verses 19
through 28, and then we'll just work our way through as time will allow this morning. Verse 19.
Now this is the testimony of John, John the Baptist, when the Jews sent the priests and
the Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who are you? He confessed, and he didn't deny,
but he confessed, I'm not the Christ. In other words, I'm not the Messiah, because some thought
he was. And so they asked him, well, what then? Are you Elijah? He said, no, I'm not. Are you
the prophet? He answered, no. And then they asked him, well, who are you that we may give an answer
to those who have sent us? What do you say about yourself? What do you say about yourself? Let me
stop there for just a moment. One of the things that's interesting when you think about John the
Baptist is this. John the Baptist operated well outside the norms in Judaic society. John the
Baptist was way outside the norms. John the Baptist was not schooled in their institutions. He wasn't
raised in their synagogues. They couldn't say that the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin and others had
anything to do with his development. He was literally from the wilderness, of the wilderness,
and he acted like it to the point that they didn't even know who he was. He wasn't part of the system.
so to speak, which is very important to realize because the system was broken. You see here in
those first three verses, the Sanhedrin sends representatives, Pharisees and others to go to
him and say, who are you? You're doing all this stuff. We're hearing all these tales. You're
apparently baptizing thousands of people. Who are you? And the reason they didn't know him is
because he was completely outside of the system, which should suggest to us that the system was
broken. If you need a voice from the wilderness to come minister to you, it means something is
broken in the city. If we need someone from the outside to breathe light and life to that which
is inside, it means that that which is inside is spoiled. And that's the case. The Pharisees and
the Sadducees and the scribes and the Sanhedrin, this was a cabal, a religious cabal. It had all
the marks and hallmarks of religiosity. They had the tall pointy hats. They had the ceremonies.
They had the priests. They had all that. And yet it was broken, absolutely broken. So they go to
John the Baptist, and they say, who are you? We know all the power players that are supposed to
be operating in town. I mean, we're the system. We know who the power players are, and you are
operating with the power and authority that didn't come from us. Who are you? So that's what you see
up there in verse 22 through 23. So his response, verse 23, he says, I'm the voice. I'm the voice
of one crying in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah had said.
He marries himself up to a prophecy in the book of Isaiah.
Now, those who were sent were from the Pharisees,
and they asked him, saying,
Well, then why then do you baptize if you're not the Christ,
you're not Elijah, you're not the prophet?
And John answered them, saying,
I baptize with water, but there stands one among you
who you do not know.
It's he who, coming after me, is performed before me,
whose sandal strap I'm not worthy to loosen.
These things were done in Beth Barah, beyond the Jordan,
where John was baptized.
All right, so these verses introduce us to John the Baptist.
What do we know about John?
Well, we know a few biographical details.
He was the son of Zechariah and who?
Zechariah and Elizabeth.
Now, Zechariah and Elizabeth were pretty old.
If you remember, it was a miracle at all that John the Baptist was born.
With that said, he was not only born to Zechariah and Elizabeth,
but he was also, as we understand it, a cousin, a cousin of who?
Starts with a J, Jesus, right.
So John the Baptist came from a family line.
It was a priestly family line because his father was a priest, and yet he was also related to Jesus Christ.
So we know that that's his biographical backstory.
He was also a hairy guy who lives out and eats the locusts and all that.
He's truly living as a wilderness man.
With that said, he was the fulfillment of prophecies.
This guy didn't just come on the stage out of the blue, but God had anticipated that this one would come.
Now, a season of quietness had existed.
If you look at the Old Testament and you flip to the New Testament, you go, all right, we've got Malachi and we've got Matthew.
what happened in between? Because there's about 400 years. Well, in the world stage, a lot happened
in between. There was all sorts of events and Joseph Maccabees and all sorts of interesting
things that happened. And yet, prophetically speaking, nothing had happened. For 400 years
between the Old Testament and the New Testament, nothing had happened. God hadn't spoken. And so,
and so, all of a sudden, out of the blue comes this one, comes the first prophet that Israel
has had in 400 years, and when they ask him his identity, he says, I'm one who was anticipated
in the last book of the Old Testament. I'm one who was anticipated in Malachi. I'm one who was
anticipated in Isaiah and elsewhere. I'm the voice that cries out in the wilderness, make straight
the path of the Lord. I'm the one who precedes the one who is coming. Now, me and myself, I'm nobody.
I am nobody. I am not even worthy to untie the shoelace, to do the sandal strap of the one who's
coming that you should be paying attention to. I and myself am nothing. And for what it's worth,
in that culture, anything that dealt with tending to other people's feet was the lowest. If you had
the lowest, scurviest bondservant in your entire house that was given the lowest responsibilities,
it was to deal with feet because feet were gross. They still are kind of gross, but they were very
gross back then. You didn't mess with people's feet. So when Jesus washed feet, that's why it
was stood out so much. Well, John says, I'm not even worthy to be the guy, to be the lowest guy
on the ladder, the lowest guy on the totem pole, to be one who even messes with the sandals of the
guy who is coming, of the guy who is greater than me and yet who precedes me. Notice how he says
that. He's greater than me and I was born before him, which he was, but yet he preceded me because
he comes from eternity. So John the Baptist identifies himself as the one that precedes
the one. That's his answer there in those verses. All right, let's look at verses 29 through 31.
Verse 29, now the next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and he 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 is preferred
before me, for he was before me. You see that? See how that works? I did not know him, but that he
should be revealed to Israel, therefore I came baptizing with water. All right, so verse 29,
John is busy baptizing. He's been baptizing for a while. People have come to him and they've had
broken hearts and they need to repent and so he baptizes them and he's been doing this at some
length. Now this is not a normal baptism. At that time, the only baptism that they really knew in
the Old Testament leading up to the time of Jesus was something called proselyte baptism.
Proselyte baptism is what happened when you had a convert from Moab or from Canaan or from somewhere
else that God had enfolded into the Jewish faith community. And in order to go from Moab or what
have you into Israel, you underwent proselyte baptism, which was the immersion, the washing
with water to wash away your evils and your sins and the taints of your pagan nation and the like.
So proselytes came to Judaism through this action of proselyte baptism. And some think that that's
maybe what John was doing, but that's not what he was doing. That's not the case. John was doing
something different. John was doing something that they hadn't really experienced and didn't
really have a keen understanding of. People were coming to him in repentance of their sins,
hearing him preach because he could speak like none other. Remember, Jesus would talk about John
the Baptist and say, this is the greatest man ever born up until that time. Greatest of all,
born of women. He was a great speaker. He spoke. He preached. He turned the hearts of the children
to their fathers. He turned the hearts of people to their God. And when he did so, their response
was to repent and say, I've got this all wrong. I have sinned. I've sinned. I shouldn't be as
worried about Rome and the centurions and all the things of this world. I should be worried about
the sin of my own heart. I should be worried that I've offended a king greater than me. I should be
worried that in the eyes of God, I am a rebel. I repent. And they underwent this baptism of
repentance. And what's fascinating was, unlike proselyte baptism, proselyte baptism involved
people from Moab and Philistine and Canaan and the like coming to Israel to be baptized. But
unlike proselyte baptism, this baptism that John was doing included the Jews. You understand that
Jews were coming to be baptized. That was not the norm. It was the foreigners that should be
baptized. For a Jew to undergo this baptism was a sign of tremendous humility and also tremendous
repentance. And so many came to him with hearts of repentance, but not everybody. Some came to him
just to check him out and say, what is going on here? And that's what the Sanhedrin was doing.
That was the Jewish council at the time. They sent their people to go and to find out what's
the deal, what's going on, who is this guy? So he's preaching this repentance. Some are coming
to him with the right reason. Some are coming to him with the wrong reason. With that said,
someone else, someone else came to him that day in verse 29. Not the usual folks that had come
to be baptized, and not the Pharisees and the scribes, but in verse 29, we see that Jesus comes
to John. Jesus comes to John the Baptist, and John the Baptist's response to seeing him
is to say, behold, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
Now, that's a fascinating phrase, because you have to understand, in the sacrificial system
of Old Testament Israel, in the sacrificial system of John's day, they didn't sacrifice lambs.
they would sacrifice the ox and the bulls and the goats and the like. They didn't necessarily
sacrifice lambs. So why did he say lamb here? Why didn't he say there comes the ox, the goat,
the bull, the what have you of God? Why did he say lamb? Well, the reason he said lamb is because he
knew his Bible. He knew the Old Testament and he knew what the Passover pointed to. He knew it.
He knew it. He knew it. He knew it. That the Passover lamb, that the Passover lamb that
they've been sacrificing literally for centuries up to that point had been intended to point forward
to the guy who was coming down the riverbank. These lambs and goats are never going to save
anybody. You could slay lambs and goats up to the rafters, and you're not going to be saved because
a bunch of animals died. But you are going to be saved if the Son of God comes down, takes your
sin upon him, and dies in your place. That's the means of salvation. And when John looks down the
riverbank, he sees the Lamb. Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
He understood him correctly.
That's what makes John stand out here.
No one else got Jesus, especially early on.
Even when he's sitting there doing all the miracles
and on the road to Jerusalem to die with the palm branches,
they didn't necessarily see him right.
But John got it right from the get-go.
John got it right early on.
He knew who this Jesus was.
Let me stop and ask a question.
Do you know who this Jesus is?
You know, the culture we're in,
the culture we're in, let's say they assume there is a God.
I think they do.
I think the culture around us basically generally understands and accepts the idea that there is a God.
Now, there are some agnostics and atheists who would deny who God is and the like.
But generally speaking, we would say that most of the people in the culture around us understand there's a God.
So then the next question is, how do you get right with this God if you've offended him?
If there is a God who made you and formed you and you broke his laws and you broke his rules,
then how do you get right with him?
Well, the culture around us would say through appeasement.
Remember we mentioned that earlier.
The culture on us would say this, all right, let's say that God exists, and let's say I have done
something wrong, because most people acknowledge they've done something wrong. In order to address
that, they'll say, well, I just have to do enough that's right, okay? I did something wrong. In fact,
I did a number of things wrong. I grant that. I own that. I'm a sinner, okay? But the way I'm
going to deal with that is I'm going to do more things right than I did wrong. In the eyes of God,
I will have appeased his wrath by doing all these things, you know, holding old lady's hands across
the street. I won't kick my dog. I'll be nice to folks. I'll smile big. I'll do this stuff that
people want me to do. And as I do that, then God also will be pleased. I'll appease his wrath. I'll
satisfy him by bowing and scraping just enough. You know the reason the church is going to be
full next week? You know why? It's appeasement. It's appeasement because people will come once
or twice a year and they'll say, aha, aha, I did it. I did it. I came in. I was there. God,
you saw me. I was here. Sure, I won't be there next week. Sure, I won't be there the other weeks.
You know, sure, I don't live accordingly, but I did just enough. I can appease God by doing just
enough that he'll let it all slide. Wrong! Dear heavens, one sin, one sin which functionally
involved biting into a piece of fruit, one sin in the garden was enough to cast the entire created
realm into chaos. One sin brought about death. One sin brought about judgment. One sin was the
causation by which Adam and Eve were evicted from the garden. You've sinned a million times,
more times than you can count if you were given time to count them. You think, you think that you
can appease God by showing up in church once or twice a year? You think you could show up to church
a thousand times a year, every day three times? You think you can appease God by doing things?
No. Your salvation does not hinge on being here once a year, and it doesn't hinge on being here
10,000 times a year if such a thing were possible. It does not hinge on the things you do as if you
can appease God and make him happy. Your salvation hinges on your faith that one has come and paid
the debt that you were due. Your salvation hinges on this idea that the Lamb of God came, and on
Calvary, your sins were placed upon him, imputed to him. The things that you were done wrong were
placed upon him, and in a very real sense, God judged him instead of you. The wages of sin is
death. If a man has sinned, a man must die. On Calvary, that's just what happened. On Calvary,
the lamb was slain. On Calvary, Jesus Christ, through substitutionary atonement, stepped into
the law place and the wrath of God that was due to you came down on him instead. Now I get it,
that's not a popular concept because it takes our works and says our works are not the foundation
of our faith. I can't appease God. It takes our faith and elevates it to a level a lot of folks
just aren't that comfortable with. And yet that's the singular means of our hope. We are saved not
through our works, not through appeasing God, but through the atonement of Jesus Christ on our
behalf. He died so that we don't have to. He suffered the wrath of God so we don't have to.
We will not die a spiritual death because Jesus Christ has paid our penalty. So when John the
Baptist sees him approaching and says, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world,
he knew what he was talking about. All right, let's look at verses 32 through 37.
John bore witness saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he
remained upon him. I did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me,
upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon him, this is he who baptizes
with the Holy Spirit. And I've seen and testified that this is the Son of God. And again, the next
day John stood with two of his disciples, and looking at Jesus as he walked, he said, Behold,
the Lamb of God. He says it again here. Then the two disciples heard him speak, and they went
and followed Jesus. All right, in verses 32 through 37, John's referring back to Christ's
baptism, which you'll find in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. You see John is talking about the baptism
that Jesus underwent. Remember, Jesus goes to John the Baptist to be baptized. And at first,
John the Baptist says, no way. We should reverse roles here. You baptize me. It shouldn't be me
baptizing you. But Jesus says, let's do this to fulfill all righteousness because Jesus came to
live the life that we should have lived, do all the things that we should have done. So he says,
let's do it. Let's get it done. So John baptizes Jesus there in the Jordan. At the moment that
John baptizes Jesus, a voice is heard from heaven. What does it say? This is my son in whom I am
well pleased. This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased, and the spirit alighted like a dove.
We don't know that it was actually a dove. It was like a dove. Whatever it is came down
like a dove upon Jesus, and the father's voice is heard. The spirit comes down. If you were sitting
on a hillside watching all this, watching Jesus be baptized, it was one of the coolest things,
because in that moment, you could have sensibly detected all three persons of the Trinity.
At that moment, you could have sat there and watched Jesus the Son being baptized. You could
have seen the Spirit coming down like a dove descending upon him, and you could have heard
the Father's voice. The three persons of the Trinity were all sensibly perceived at that very
moment. What a cool thing that would be. Well, John says, I was there. I saw this. I heard this.
this is the one this is the lamb of God who comes to take away the sin of the world so he says it
more than once on different days and what's very fascinating here if you look at verse 36 he has
disciples with him and they looked at Jesus as he walked and John says behold the lamb of God and
the two disciples heard him speak and then they followed Jesus look at him John says listen to him
when they heard him speak, John says, and then follow him. That's the model. What these two
disciples did is what we're called to do. We look at him, we listen to him, and we follow him. And
every good pastor says the exact same thing. Behold the Lamb. The job of the pastor, of the
prophet, of the priest, the job of the apostles, the job of the epistles, the job of all these
things was to say, behold the Lamb, to point to Jesus Christ with clarity that others would look
at him, others would listen to him, and that others would follow. All right, let me close with this
thought. Charles Spurgeon, the Prince of Preachers, he once said something that is striking, especially
in my vocation, but he said this. He said, the preacher's primary business, primary business
above all else, is to declare, behold, the Lamb. Now, he goes on to say, he says this, he says,
if John the Baptist had preached repentance, even if he had been the most earnest disclaimer
against the sins of his time, he would nevertheless have missed his life's work if he had forgotten to
say, behold, the Lamb of God. You see, the gospel, in order for it to be well-rounded, has two parts.
The first part is to preach repentance. The first part is to remind a fallen world that we are
sinners and the wages of sin is death. So it's good to do that. It's important to do that. If
you don't do that, then no one will understand why they need a savior. If you don't explain how
Jesus came to save sinners, if you don't explain why sin is bad and why it's deadly, if you don't
explain that part of it, then they won't look at Jesus as something that they want or something
that they need. So you need to preach repentance. But Spurgeon said if John the Baptist had just
shown up and just preached repentance and baptized in repentance and the like, that wouldn't have
been enough. If he'd given his whole life's work, that wouldn't have been sufficient. He needed to
be able to say, behold the Lamb of God. Churches can get caught up declaring a lot of things.
Churches, pastors, ministers can get caught up declaring a lot of things, and many of them are
very important. You need encouragement, being equipped with what this word says on marriage,
on parenting. You need what this word says on any manner of things that touch upon your life.
And the church should declare these things to you.
And yet, the peak, the primacy, the focus, the apex of the church's ministry, the pastor's ministry,
this microphone and the like, is to bring it close and say,
Behold the Lamb, to point to the person and work of Jesus Christ.
This morning, I trust we've done it in some small way.
This morning, if you're visiting, I hope you'll come back on Easter next week
as we expand on all of this in greater detail.
Let's pray.