Good morning! We’re in the second half of the “I AM …” series. In a way, this message is the first in a two-part message about the Lamb of God. We will celebrate the Passover together next Sunday and have a meal together afterward. I Corinthians 5:7 tells us that Jesus is our Passover lamb. We look forward to celebrating that truth together next week.
It is good to be home. I enjoy traveling about as much as anyone. It’s beneficial to go and see places and things and people you would never see if you didn’t go.
Work-wise, we did what we were sent to do. In addition, I met a guy from Antioch named Berkem. One night, we had dinner in a medieval walled city. I visited the Dachau Concentration Camp. But probably the most memorable thing that happened was getting caught in a rain shower on Monday evening.
It was nearly five o’clock when I got free from a supplier visit in Berlin. Since I had a car, and the city center was a mess of traffic, I decided to drive out to Potsdam and look around the gardens of the former monarchs of Prussia. The gardens were larger than I expected and they had quite a number of flowers in bloom.
The sky was partly cloudy, the temperature cool. I was wearing a jacket but didn’t bother grabbing my umbrella. I had just turned back toward where I had parked when it started drizzling. I looked up in the direction the weather was coming from, which happened to be in the trees away from the gardens, and there were solid dark grey clouds moving toward the gardens.
I was a good 20 minute walk from the car, so there was no need to rush. There was no way to outrun the rain. Gradually, the rain picked up. I pulled my hood out of my jacket. One of the nice things about gardens is that there are wandering paths. One of the not nice things about gardens is there are rarely straight paths to where you want to go.
About the time I got fairly wet, but not soaked, I saw some little white things bouncing off the gravel path. I thought surely it can’t be hail, but it surely can’t be anything else. I stopped, bent over and picked up a piece, and yes, it was hailing. I can’t even remember the last time saw hail much less when I ever was walking outside when hail was falling.
At that point, there was a long rolling boom of thunder that just went on and on and on. On the one hand, I was thinking that it was like the thunder of the voice of the Lord. On the other hand, I was wondering if I was about to move from being wet to getting soaked. But, that was the end of the shower. I walked a little farther and came upon another garden with a building overlooking it. There, as the clouds were breaking apart, was a rainbow.
I’ve never thought of a rainbow as a symbol of anything dangerous. I’ve always thought of it as either something beautiful or as the promise of the Lord not to flood the earth again specifically or almost in a Jeremiah 29:11 kind of way. That God does not have plans to harm us but rather for our good, to give us hope and a future.
In the last year or so, I heard someone make the comparison of a rainbow to a bow like a bow and arrow, bow. So, God puts His bow in the clouds. It’s the same word in Hebrew and in English, so the comparison is similar. Even if you do make a connection with a rainbow to real bow, which direction is the bow facing? It’s pointing toward the sky, not toward us.
That connects with our message today. We are going to talk about Jesus as the Lamb of God. Jesus is the one who has taken the wrath of God for us. The judgment against our sin was directed to the Son of God, and not to us, in an everlasting covenant.
Let’s pray and then dig into the identity of Jesus our Savior as the Lamb of God.
Father God, thank You that You have put Your signs before us whether it is in the heavens or the rainbow or through one another. Speak to us as we look into Your Word. Thank You for Who You are and what You have done for us. Amen.
When we talked about Jesus as the good shepherd a few weeks ago, we looked at when the word shepherd first appeared in Scripture. So, today, I thought I would ask where the word lamb first appears. Turns out, there are three or four Hebrew words that get translated as lamb. There is an occurrence of a plural lambs, ewe lambs, in the chapter before this occurrence of a single lamb. So, I’m asking where does the word lamb singular first appear in the bible?
It's in Genesis 22:7, when Abraham is taking Isaac to Moriah as a sacrifice.
Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”
And the two of them went on together. Genesis 22:7-8
That’s one of the most emotional moments of scripture to me, especially the last sentence. Neither Abraham nor Isaac knew what was going to happen for sure. Abraham was obeying and honoring God. Isaac was too, by obeying and honoring his father. Despite the not knowing how things were going to work out, the two of them went on together.
There is something powerful in that. Ecclesiastes 4:12 is often shared at weddings that a cord of three strands is not easily broken. The three strands being symbolic of husband, wife, and God Himself. That thinking is not only limited to husbands and wives. It can apply to any of us, just as it applied to Abraham and Isaac. They walked on together in the Lord.
In relation to our message today, I want to point to Abraham’s answer. God Himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering. And as God often does, He is working many things out at once. He did provide a burnt offering for Isaac and Abraham, specifically a ram caught in a thicket. He also has provided a lamb as a sacrifice for all of us including Abraham and Isaac.
I try not to get things wrong. When I found this passage as the first occurrence of the word lamb, I wanted to look at multiple translations to see if the Hebrew word gets translated some way other than lamb. Turns out the Darby translation was one of fourteen translations that used a word other than lamb. It uses the word sheep.
I don’t know why, but the Blue Letter Bible website then starts with Latin as the first of the foreign language translations. Since I was skimming down all these sentences, I just went ahead and skimmed over the Latin. Hebrew and Greek are next. When I get to those, I stop reading because I don’t know either alphabet well enough to try. If I read something in English (14 times) before I read it in Latin and it’s simple enough, then I sort of can figure it out.
The Latin surprised me because it omits the word lamb entirely. More than that, I was surprised how you say whole burnt offering in Latin. It’s victimam holocausti. Literally, that means a whole burnt offering. But the word holocaust jumps out at you. My English-speaking brain renders the two words as holocaust victim.
Last Saturday, Matt (the guy I was traveling with for work) and I went to Dachau, the large concentration camp near Munich. Most of the buildings are torn down, but a couple of barracks and some of the main buildings remain as part memorial, part history lesson.
I’ve been traveling to Germany on and off for work for more than twenty years. But, I’ve never been to a concentration camp. I wasn’t trying to avoid it, but I wasn’t seeking it out either. It is a heavy experience, but not graphic, at least not at Dachau. I got choked up a couple of times. Once was after we visited the barracks, and I was talking to Matt about The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. I was telling him about the part where Betsy tells Corrie that the must thank God for the fleas. In the barracks, there were several signs which had quotes from former prisoners.
I’ll share just one. “As in the military, cleanliness and tidiness were a means of harassment, only here in the camp this was taken to a … diabolical level. … Not even the smallest spot is allowed to get on the wood, for if the block leader sees it, he will write up a report for punishment right away … You can get an hour of pole hanging if even a single drop … can be seen …” If you remember, the barracks were Corrie and Betsy were housed was so infested with fleas that the guards avoided it entirely. In that way, God spared them some trouble.
The other thing that choked me up was what we saw as we entered the camp. The gate says, “Arbeit macht frei.” Arbeit is work. Macht means makes. Frei is free. Work makes you free. Or work sets you free. What a horrible lie! These prisoners were brought into this and other concentration camps under the sign of a false promise that work would allow them to be free. I learned even at a death camp like Auschwitz, this phrase is prominently displayed at the entrance.
It's not work that sets you free. Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching … you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32) Jesus also told us, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6) Jesus makes you free, not work.
One more thought about the word holocaust and its use to describe the killing of six million Jews during World War II. Neither the Nazis nor the Jewish people had any sacrificial meaning or symbolism in the Holocaust, certainly not religious. So, one different name that has been suggested is Shoah, a Hebrew word that means catastrophe or devastation.
We’ve spent a long time looking at this passage about the lamb that God would provide for Abraham and Isaac. The theme of the sacrificial lamb runs throughout the Old Testament. Here are a few of the main examples.
• The animal slain in the Garden of Eden to cover the nakedness of Adam and Eve, the first sinners. Genesis 3:21
• The lamb God would Himself provide for Abraham as a substitute for Isaac. Genesis 22:13-14
• The Passover lamb for Israel. Exodus 12:1-13
• The lamb for the guilt offering in the Levitical sacrifices. Leviticus 5:6-7, 14:12-13
• The lamb, ready to be shorn, who is led to the slaughter. Isaiah 53:7
The last one from Isaiah 53 is part of a passage that foretells the One known as the Suffering Servant. It’s one of the most clearly Messianic passages in the whole Old Testament. And right in the midst of it, we have this passage.
He was oppressed and afflicted, yet He did not open his mouth; He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He did not open his mouth. Isaiah 53:7
This is the same passage of Scripture that the eunuch was reading in Acts 8:32 when Philip the evangelist came alongside him. “The eunuch asked Philip, ‘Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?’” Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. (Acts 8:34-35)
And so, as each of these lambs of the Old Testament fulfilled their role in their death. Each instance is also an announcement that Jesus would die, and His death would be a sacrifice for the sin of the whole world.
John the Baptist is the one who first calls Jesus the Lamb of God. John came as a prophet, and he was baptizing people at the Jordan River before Jesus began His earthly ministry. Many people were coming out from Jerusalem and the surrounding area to see John and to be baptized by him. This got the attention of the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem, so they sent out some priests and Levites to ask John who he was.
John freely and openly tells them, “I am not the Messiah.” So, then they ask John a bunch more questions. Who are you? Are you Elijah? Are you the Prophet? John answers each question, “No. I am not.” Finally, these priests and Levites demand that he give them an answer to take back to those who sent them.
John answers with the words of Isaiah (40:3), “I am the voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’” After answering another of their questions about baptism, John says, “Among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”
The very next day, John sees Jesus coming toward him, and he says,
“Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know Him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that He might be revealed to Israel."
Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know Him, but the One who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the One who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is God's Chosen One.” John 1:29-34
The next day, John is there with two of his disciples, and he sees Jesus passing by again. He immediately says, “Look, the Lamb of God!” It’s like every time that John sees Jesus after baptizing Him, he says, “Look, the Lamb of God!” as a part of his ministry to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah, the Chosen One of God.
We also see that John connects this name, Lamb of God, with taking away the sin of the world. That is what the Lamb has done for us. The Lamb of God is more than a prophet. He is from of old, before John. He is the One on whom God’s Spirit remains. Not only that, He will baptize with the Holy Spirit. The Lamb of God is God’s Chosen One. There is none like Him.
Jesus is the perfect fulfillment of every time that image of the Lamb of God is displayed in the Old Testament.
• Jesus covers our shame as the animal slain in the Garden of Eden covered the nakedness of Adam and Eve. Luke 13:34
• Jesus is the true lamb God Himself would provide to Abraham as a substitute for Isaac or any other person. I Peter 1:18-19
• Jesus is our Passover lamb. I Corinthians 5:7
• Jesus the guilt offering sacrificed to absolve us of our sin. I John 2:2
• Jesus is the lamb of whom Isaiah wrote, the one led to the slaughter, silent as before the shearers. Acts 8:32
• Jesus is the lamb slain before the foundation of the world. Revelation 13:8
The need for Jesus to come and save us is not plan B. It’s plan A, from before the foundation of the world. Jesus was the Lamb of God. He is the Lamb of God. The decision to be the sacrifice for our sins had been made before the first sin had been committed. That is incredible.
If you take all the instances of the word lamb from the whole bible you end up with about 100. If you include plural lambs, that’s about 100 more, but let’s just stick with singular lamb. Which book do you think has the most occurrences of the word lamb?
You might guess Leviticus, but Leviticus is actually third. Second place does belong to another book of the Law. That’s Numbers. Number one is … Revelation. 29 out of 99 verses happen in Revelation, and all but one of those are about Jesus the Lamb of God. And now, we’re going to read them all. No, just kidding. We’re not going to read them all, but we are going to look at a few of them because it gives us a deeper understanding of the Lamb of God.
The Lamb first appears in Revelation in chapter 5. If you remember, the apostle John is the author. He is being shown a vision of things to come in the Spirit. At first, He sees God the Father on the throne holding a scroll with seven seals. No one is worthy to open the scroll, and John begins to weep. But one of the elders tells him not to weep because “ the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.” then, he sees a Lamb, but it is unusual. It is a Lamb that looks like it has been slain, but it is standing.
I looked at some artwork of the Lamb of God, and it is all very strange, and I think that Revelation 5:6 is the reason. We can’t understand how to capture a Lamb standing and looking like it had been slain. But at the time of the writing of Revelation, Jesus has already been to the cross. His sacrifice has been made.
The Lamb takes the scroll and opens six of its seals with accompanying events of the last days. At this point, we get a glimpse of the power and majesty of the Lamb as those in heaven worship Him.
After this I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice: “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.”
All the angels were standing around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, saying: “Amen! Praise and glory and wisdom and thanks and honor and power and strength be to our God for ever and ever. Amen!” Revelation 7:9-12
Can you imagine a multitude beyond counting all crying out in unison with loud voices? It must be a sight to behold. They’re not cheering for a football team or any other sport or human activity. Their message of their cheer is the gospel. Salvation belongs to our God and to the Lamb! Not only are people worshiping. The angels and the elders and the angelic creatures are worshiping, too. This is the Lamb raised up.
Remember that we talked about the passage in Isaiah about the Suffering Servant. Isaiah 52:13 says that God’s “Servant will act wisely; He will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.” Revelation 7 shows us how it will come true.
The Lamb of God is not just one to be worshiped. He cares for those who worship Him. Immediately one of the elders explains to John,
“These in white robes … are those who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore, they are before the throne of God and serve Him day and night in His temple; and He who sits on the throne will shelter them with His presence. ‘Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat down on them,’ nor any scorching heat. For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; ‘He will lead them to springs of living water.’ ‘And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.’” Revelation 7:14-17
The Lamb shelters, He provides, He protects, He shepherds, He leads, He comforts, He cares.
You would think that everyone would want to come and wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb and enjoy His blessings forever and ever, but sadly that is not the case. There are many who hate the Lamb. In fact …
They will wage war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will triumph over them because He is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with Him will be His called, chosen and faithful followers. Revelation 17:14
This is the last passage we will examine from Revelation. The Lamb is not weak. He is the victorious Lamb. He has all power and authority. He is Lord of lords and King of kings. And, He is not alone. He brings those he calls to be with Him.
So, praise God! Whoever calls on the name of Jesus to be saved has been saved and has become one of the many called, chosen and faithful followers of the Lamb. Those who the Lamb shelters, provides for, protects, shepherds, leads, comforts, and cares for.
Let’s close with this exhortation from I Peter 1:18-25:
For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through Him you believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and glorified Him, and so your faith and hope are in God.
Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. For, “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” And this is the Word that was preached to you. 1 Peter 1:18-25
Worship the Lamb. Worthy is He! Let’s pray.
Jesus, Lamb of God, thank You that You have taken away our sin. Thank You that You chose us first. May we be faithful followers, servants and lambs. Guide us we pray, in Your Name, Amen.
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