Jesus Is the Lamb of God

Day 5: Jesus is the Lamb of God

Prayer:Our Father in heaven, open the eyes of our hearts to see what it means that Jesus is Your Lamb, given to pay the penalty of death for the sins of the world, including our own sin. Amen.

Primary Scriptures:John 1:29: The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”

John 1:35-36: 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!”

To fully understand this name of Christ, we must go all the way back to the dawn of time. According to the Bible, the first man was not spoken into existence as the rest of creation was; but the very hand of God scooped up the clay of the earth and sculpted a unique creature, shaping him into the likeness of Himself—a self-portrait. Then God breathed His own breath into the clay sculpture, and Man became a living soul.

We are then told that God gave Man one command: not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And God gave one warning: “In the day you eat of it you shall surely die.” This warning from God was not a threat. No, God was revealing Truth to Man: Choosing to define our own morality, ignoring the God who made us, turning away from obedience to His expressed commands, and trusting in our own judgment rather than trusting His clear Word leads to only one outcome—Death. And God desired to spare us.

Later that same day God took one of Man’s ribs and shaped Woman, the carefully-thought-out counterpart to Man. The Bible tells us they were perfect, formed in the image of God. They were also innocent, having neither experience of nor inner propensity for wrongdoing. There was no shame; nothing marred this pristine world. It was the kind of world we all dream of and read about in the happy endings of fairy tales.

Death (and all the grief and tragedies that come with it) was unknown except as a verbal warning from the mouth of God. Satan, the enemy of God who wanted to usurp God’s throne, came into this perfect world. He enticed the first man and woman, saying the direct opposite of what God had said: You won’t surely die. Satan led them to believe that this fruit was good for them, even best for them, that God was untrustworthy and selfish, withholding what was in their ultimate best interest. He made them think they were not made in God’s image; but if they ate this, they would be. Who would they believe? They had never been lied to before. Did they even know what a lie was? Yet they had the Word of the God who had created them, and this new word was utterly contrary to God’s Word. Adam and Eve chose to listen to The Lie, trusting their own eyes and desires and human understanding rather than the Word of God.

The Bible tells us what happened next and where death originated. Death was not part of a long chain of events over millions of years, which, contrary to science, allowed all the mutations that evolved into the vast variety of creatures in our world. No, death was a foreign thing, outside of God's original intent, that came into the world as a result of Man's choice to define his own standards of right and wrong in the vain attempt to "be like God," the God in whose image they were already made.

Instantly and for the first time they experienced shame. Shame is an appropriate response after disobedience. Then come cover-ups, attempts to hide, and blame—all symptoms of broken relationship. God came into the Garden and initiated repair of the friendship Adam had broken, first confronting the shame and then the sin.

The judgment God pronounced included the first promise of total future redemption: Satan would be crushed by Someone born of a woman. In response Adam named his wife Eve, meaning the mother of all living, or simply, Living. It was a statement of faith in the Promise, a return to belief in God and the reliability of His Word, which they had a few moments before doubted and discarded. The death sentence had just been pronounced but so had the promise of restored Life—and it would come through the woman, the one who had succumbed to the temptation first. How merciful and restorative our God is!

God’s response to Adam’s statement of faith in naming his wife was to make tunics of skin, clothing them and covering their shame. Tunics made of skins require the death of an animal. It was the first death Adam and Eve had ever seen and the first death the world had ever known. Sin causes death (Romans 5:12 & 6:23). But God provides a substitute to cover sin (Romans 3:23-26).

We are not told what those first tunics were made of. But the next chapter in the historical narrative tells of Adam and Eve's two sons bringing offerings to God. One understood what needed to be brought: a lamb, a death, a substitutionary sacrifice. It was a humble acknowledgement on Abel’s part of who he was—a sinner—and of what that cost. The sacrifice proclaimed his faith in the future Promise.

When God told Abraham to take his son Isaac, his only son, the son he loved, to Mt. Moriah and offer him as a sacrifice there, we’re given a foreshadow of the only beloved Son who was to come. Was there a tear in God’s eye and a quaver in His voice as He said those words, knowing what the future held and what it would cost? He who can see the end from the beginning, was His Father-heart breaking as He spanned the annals of time? There on that mountain God provided another substitute. While Abraham and Isaac were trudging up the mountain, wood on the son’s back, fire and knife in the hand of the father, Isaac asks, “Where is the lamb?” By faith Abraham responded, “God will provide Himself a lamb, my son.” Just as Abraham raised his knife to slay the heir of God’s promise, God stayed his hand. Close by, caught in a thicket was a ram. Abraham named that place “The Lord Will Provide.” The biblical narrative goes on to say, “It is said to this day, ‘In the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided.’”

In Exodus 12 we are told of another lamb, the Passover Lamb. Before their deliverance from Egypt, God instructed the Israelites to kill a lamb and put some of its blood on the top and sides of the doors of their houses. Those houses with the sign of the blood would not be visited by the angel of death but would be passed over. While the Israelites were painting the doorposts of their houses with a hyssop branch dipped in the blood of a lamb, God was painting a prophetic picture of His Promised Redeemer.

Then in the desert of Sinai as God was giving to this fledgling nation the foundational principles upon which their new civilization would be built, He commanded them to make substitutionary sacrifices for sin. The offering had to be a lamb without blemish. The person bringing the offering put his hand on the head of the lamb. It was very graphic and personal: this lamb was taking my sin upon itself and dying in my place, receiving the penalty I deserved. It was a vivid living—and dying—picture, reminding the people that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).

For nearly fifteen hundred years the nation of Israel maintained this sacrificial system. How many thousands of animals were brought to the Temple, hands laid on their heads, sins symbolically transferred? Within that context, God inspired the prophet Isaiah to write about the Messiah. Looking down the long corridor of history—both past and future—Isaiah wrote of the Genesis 3:15 Promised One who would come and redeem this sin-cursed world: “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone, to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth.”

Over 700 years later a Man comes onto the stage of earth’s history, who from birth is heralded as the prophetically promised King. For 400 years there had been no prophetic word from God. Then another man wearing camel skins, living out in the desert begins to proclaim a prophetic message: “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” This newly recognized prophet, John the Baptist, sees Jesus coming toward him and declares for all to hear, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” While John is baptizing Jesus, God speaks from heaven, “This is My Beloved Son.” We hear the mighty echo from Abraham and Isaac on Mt. Moriah. The Beloved Son is the Lamb God would provide. Redemption has come.

The death of Jesus was not an isolated, independent event, nor was it merely a Roman judicial decision based on the fomenting politics of the first century. Rather, it was a God-ordained, precisely-timed plan. The Lamb, prophesied from the dawn of time, was slain on the exact same day as the annual Passover Lamb. On the exact same mountain Abraham and Isaac had plodded centuries before, Jesus walked bearing the wood of the cross. Here was the fulfillment, the reality of which all other sacrificed lambs were the symbolic, prophetic picture. But Peter takes us back before the dawn of time, telling us that God foreordained the sacrifice of Christ, His own beloved Son, before the foundation of the world (I Peter 1:20). Before He spoke the first creative word, before He reached down to scoop up the dirt and form the first man in His own image, the plan of God the Father to redeem mankind from the sins God knew Adam would commit was already in place; and the heart of the Son was willing to carry out that plan. This is true unalloyed grace: Grace with its eyes wide open. In some future day, we will worship the Lamb that had been slain, now seated, alive and victorious, on the Throne of highest heaven. We will fall on our faces in utter adoration and gratitude. Hallelujah to the Lamb!

In your mind's eye, lay your hands on the head of Christ as He walks the road to the cross. Enumerate your sins and place them all on Him. Jesus paid it all. On the mountain of the Lord it has been provided—for you.

Family Worship:Discuss what substitutionary means and how each of the lambs slain in the Old Testament (for Adam and Eve, Abel, Abraham and Isaac, and the people of Israel at the Passover and beyond) were substitutionary.

Conclude your family time with prayer. Let each person thank God for the substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus Christ and for what it means to them personally.

Jesus Christ: The Lamb of God given for the sins of the world, the sacrifice slain "before the foundation of the world" who would pay the full price for the death penalty we deserved.

Other Related Scriptures (see also Genesis chapters 3, 4:1-15, and 22):

I Peter 1:17-21: And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear; knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

I Peter 2:24: [Christ] Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness—by whose stripes you were healed.

Revelation 5:1-13: And I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a scroll written inside and on the back, sealed with seven seals. Then I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and to loose its seals?” And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll, or to look at it. So I wept much, because no one was found worthy to open and read the scroll, or to look at it.

But one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has prevailed to open the scroll and to loose its seven seals.” And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth. Then He came and took the scroll out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne.

Now when He had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-our elders fell down before the Lamb, each having a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll, and to open its seals; for You were slain, and have redeemed us to God by Your blood out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and have make us kings and priests to our God; and we shall reign on the earth.”

Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, the living creatures, and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honor and glory and blessing!”

And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, I heard saying: “Blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb, forever and ever!”

II Corinthians 5:21: For He [God] made Him [Christ] who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Hebrews 10:8-14: Previously saying, “Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings, and offerings for sin You did not desire, nor had pleasure in them” (which are offered according to the law), then He said, “Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God,” He takes away the first [covenant] that He may establish the second [covenant]. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this Man, after He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God, from that time waiting till His enemies are made His footstool. For by one offering He has perfected forever those who are being sanctified.

Isaiah 53:4-11: Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed. 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 o us all.

He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; for the transgressions of My people He was stricken. And they made His grave with the wicked—but with the rich at His death, because He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth.

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand. He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.

I John 2:2: And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.