John 1:29-34 - Behold The Lamb
Main Idea: We must accept Jesus’ sacrifice for our sin, and choose Him personally as our God.
JESUS IS OUR SUBSTITUTE (v. 29)
Sin and evil deserves God’s punishment.
Jesus loved us so much that He took the entirety of our punishment.
JESUS IS GOD’S SON (vs. 30-34)
Jesus is eternal God, revealed to us in human nature.
Jesus is the prophesied Anointed One (Messiah) of Israel.
Jesus is our King and Shepherd.
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by YouTube)
Today, we are continuing our study in John 1-4.
As we've been going over, this is John the Apostle that has written this account of his time with Jesus, what he saw, his first-hand eyewitness testimony of Jesus of Nazareth from what we read now is 2,000 years ago.
John would have experienced this all as a young man. And as he interacts with Jesus, as we'll see later in the Gospel, even next week, there's at least one hint that John might have been there for Jesus' baptism and some other things.
As John's writing all of this, he's got two main purposes. He says, number one, I want you to know who Jesus is. Jesus is God.
And because he is God, because he is the promised Messiah, you need to believe on him. It's not just a foregone conclusion of Jesus is God, and you can just go about the rest of your life.
If Jesus is really God, the challenges that he gave to us, the commandments that he had, it prompts us to action. If he is who he says he is, then it demands our whole life, demands our worship. And that's what we'll see today.
As John recounts the beginning of Jesus' ministry, he goes all the way back to Jesus' forerunner, the herald.
Back in those times, you would have, before the king would maybe go into a particular area, a city or a town, you would have the herald that would go forward and say, hey, the king is coming.
In American history, we don't really have kings, but you might remember, you know, Paul Revere, the British are coming, where you have someone that's announcing, hey, something really big is coming and it's just behind me.
And here, that's what John the Baptizer did, that as he called Israel during that time to repentance, to turn back to the Lord, to say, the Lord is coming, and what will be our heart attitudes, what will be our posture towards him?
Will he find us being faithful and obedient to him, or will he find us just off wandering on our own?
And so John the Baptizer was calling all of Israel to repent, and even some soldiers and different individuals that were outside of the family of Israel, even they were coming and were getting baptized, and there was amazing things happening with
John the Baptizer. But as we learned last week, John didn't think it was about him. Like, he didn't care if people thought he was great. He wanted to point to the Messiah.
He wanted to point to Jesus, and that's what he gets the opportunity and the privilege to do in our passage today. Have you ever wondered why Jesus came to earth? Did he have to?
Did he want to just give us a good example? Was it an accident that he died? Today's passage answers those questions as the gospel writer recounts when the king was announced by his herald.
Let's read through John 1 verses 29 through 34. It says this, The next day, John, the baptizer, saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. This is the one I told you about.
After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he existed before me. I didn't know him, but I came baptizing with water so that he might be revealed to Israel.
And John testified, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he rested on him.
I didn't know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me, the one you see the Spirit descending and resting on, he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit. I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.
Today, as we have been singing about and now reading, John declaring that Jesus is the Lamb of God, if you've not been around church for a while, it might be an odd statement to read.
Jesus as the Lamb of God refers back to the origin story of the Jewish people when they were delivered from slavery in Egypt.
God had brought nine plagues on Egypt, each escalating in size and scope, while demanding that the Pharaoh of that time release his people. Pharaoh refused each time till finally God brought the tenth plague, the Passover.
In this plague, the people of Israel were commanded to kill a spotless lamb from their flocks and to brush some of its blood on the door frames of their houses.
They were commanded to eat a meal of the lamb along with some unleavened bread, and they were told that they would leave Egypt the following day. That night, every household in Egypt was visited by what scripture calls the Angel of Death.
But every house that had the lamb's blood on the door frame was passed over. That's where we get the phrase Passover. In this passage, John the Baptizer is declaring Jesus to be the one who would save us from judgment through his death.
That fact was not simply true 2,000 years ago when John said this. It's the call to us today that we must accept Jesus' sacrifice for our sin and choose him personally as our God. Let's pray this morning and we'll look at the passage.
God, I ask today that you would make Jesus our focus. Help us see our place in your world. Help us see our desperate need of your forgiveness and love.
Thank you that though we were alienated and enemies, you befriended and forgave us and made us yours through your sinless life and death. Thank you that Jesus is raised from the dead and that we have eternal hope through faith in you.
We love you, in Jesus' name, amen. We're going to see two things that John highlights for us today. First, that Jesus is our substitute.
And secondly, that Jesus is God's son. And what the call to action to our hearts and lives is as a result. First, from verse 29, we see that Jesus is our substitute.
Verse 29 again, the next day, John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, that Jesus took our sins on himself. He gave us his righteousness and he died in our place as our substitute.
Question would be, but why do we need a substitute? The reason is because sin and evil deserves God's punishment. Romans 623, verses we quote here often, The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
There is a punishment for evil. We all get a little squirrely about this when it comes to our own sin or our own evil, but we accept it at large when it comes to other people.
We think that those that steal from, maybe those that steal from us or those that steal from others, there needs to be punishment for that sin.
We think, okay, if someone murders someone else, if there's war crimes that are committed, there needs to be punishment for these things.
As we look even at some of the things that my sister-in-law loves in her True Crimes podcast, we would see and hear about the ridiculous things that people can do. And we'd say, why isn't there justice in this world?
We could look at perhaps dictators from the past. We look at the evils that take place through greed and through abuse of others. And we would say, where is the justice?
Why isn't there punishment for wrongdoing? Scripture tells us that there is a punishment for sin. And it is death.
But not just like our physical death that we all experience. The Bible says that there is eternal punishment for sin. Because sin is not just human-to-human inconvenience.
It is defiance against the eternal God of the universe. It is a breaking of God's eternal morality and character.
That for the one who is love, the one who is life, to take life, to treat others in such a way that would be unloving and unkind and unjust, for us to take from others what does not belong to us, when God has given us all that we need, and when He
has given others what they have, to flaunt God's morality and character, to subdue it, to choose, to define right and wrong based on how we feel and the actions we would like to take. It deserves eternal punishment because it's sin against an eternal
God, breaking His eternal law. Habakkuk 1 and verse 13 says, Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, and you cannot tolerate wrongdoing. Bible says, All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.
We like to compare ourselves with others, and we say, well, I'm not Hitler, so shouldn't that earn me some brownie points with God? We say, listen, my neighbor, they're a real piece of work. My sibling, they're a real piece of work.
So as long as I'm not as bad as them, I think I'm doing all right. I don't deserve any punishment. But the Bible says that the one that keeps the whole law, but disobeys it, transgresses, offends in one point, he is guilty of breaking the whole law.
If, let's say, you know, got those glass panes up there, you couldn't maybe throw a, I don't know what would break through those, maybe like a steel ball, like take an airsoft gun or something like that and shoot through it and say, okay, well, I
only broke this tiny piece of the glass pane. I didn't break the entire thing. I didn't take a hammer and shatter the whole thing. That glass pane still needs replaced.
It's still broken. Same is true for our lives. We may not have broken every single one of God's laws.
We might not be as terrible as we could possibly be. But all of us have sinned. All of us have said things to others that we should never have said.
All of us have done things that we should not have done. All of us have thought in ways that completely goes against God's morality and character. And there is punishment for sin.
None of us would think that a judge was good or righteous or just if when someone committed the crime, if the judge said, Well, except for the crime, everything else you did in your life was great. So I'm just going to let you off.
Saying no, that's not a just judge. And God is the perfectly just and right judge. And so our sin must be punished.
Skeptic or unbeliever today, does the presence of evil in our world not give you pause to think why? If this world were merely material, flesh and blood, wholly naturalistic, then why are there universal wrongs and rights?
Why do we all agree today that to murder someone is bad, to take from others what does not belong to you? Things of abuse. Why do we all agree that these are wrong?
That's not a naturalistic. That's not a materialistic world view. And that kind of world view, it should be fine to take whatever you can get your hands on.
I challenge you to realize that a wholly perfect God made this world and placed in our consciences the underlying knowledge that he's also given us in his word. Good and evil exist.
And so there must be someone who has stated what is good and what is evil. Believer, are you enjoying the sins and evils that are the basis of this world's condemnation by God? Are you enjoying what will be judged?
Do you excuse your pride? Do you value your immorality? Do you take pleasure in your judgment, gossip and slander?
As Paul tells us in Romans 6, if we've died to our old sinful nature, let's not pick it up again. Sin must be punished. But Jesus loved us so much that he took the entirety of our punishment.
Isaiah 53, 4-6 says, He himself bore our sicknesses, and he carried our pains, but we in turn regarded him stricken, struck down by God and afflicted. But he was pierced because of our rebellion.
He was crushed because of our iniquities, our sins, our wrongdoing. Punishment for our peace was on him, and we are healed by his wounds. We all went astray like sheep.
We all have turned to our own way, and the Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all. Matthew 20, verse 28, Jesus said, The son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.
That we were under condemnation. We needed to be ransomed, and Jesus paid that ransom for us. John 10 and 11, Jesus says, I am the good shepherd.
The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
First Peter 1 says, You know that you were redeemed from your empty way of life inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of an unblemished and spotless lamb.
First Peter chapter 2 says, He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed.
On the cross, Jesus took the punishment, death, separation from God, that we all deserved. He took it on himself. He paid the price in full.
Just as the Passover lamb in the story of the Exodus showed who was part of God's people and who was not, so Jesus shows who is God's family and who is not.
God will not ask you on the day of your death to enumerate all of your virtues, to show records of your gifts to charity, or ask for other people's opinions of you.
On that day, God will look for only one thing, a relationship with his son that died in your place. Christian, do you know how Jesus suffered for you?
Do you know the physical, emotional, and spiritual agony that he endured so that you would never be condemned, never be without God's presence, and would enjoy everything that belongs to Jesus forever?
Jesus, the one who did not know any sin, the one who had never done wrong, the one who had never said anything that was against God's character or nature, the one who never thought anything that wasn't perfectly in line with God.
He was the one that on the cross cried out from the words of Psalm 22, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from me?
The alienation from God that we justly deserve, that we were born into, we were happy to keep on sinning and increasing that goal.
Jesus took that on himself, so that he could say to us in Hebrews 13, be content with what you have, because he has said, I will never leave you or forsake you.
He was the one that in the garden before his trial, before his beatings, before his crucifixion, in anticipation of the pain that would come, in anticipation of all the sins of the world being placed on him, he sweat drops of blood, so that he could
tell you, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God, and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep, will protect, will guard your
hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Jesus was the one whose body was broken for you, that you will never go through the suffering that Jesus went through. You will never experience the alienation from God that he experienced, because he was your
substitute. He died in your place. He wasn't forced to, as he told the people that came to arrest him, he says, no one's taking my life. I am laying it down.
He says, if I wanted to right now, I could call legions of angels to come and rescue me. He says, but this was the plan.
When Jesus' disciples tried to protect him, cut off an ear of someone that was trying to arrest Jesus, Jesus picked up the ear and as God, as the miracle worker, put it back on the person's head. Let's put away your sword.
Those that live by the sword will die by the sword. Jesus is our perfect substitute. Christian today, are you grateful for what Jesus has done for you?
Maybe if you don't know Jesus yet, can I challenge you? Today can be the day that you accept him as your savior. He's not looking for an amount to come out of your bank account.
He's not looking for an amount of community service hours served. He wants your heart. He wants you to repent of your sin, to say, God, I'm not pursuing my own way anymore.
I'm not in charge of my life anymore. I'm turning to you. I'm making you my Lord and my God.
I'm accepting the payment that you made on my behalf, the punishment that you endured so that I wouldn't have to. I accept it. I claim you as my God.
Scripture says, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. God's not looking for the most righteous. God's not looking for those that have it all together.
If you wait till you get it all together to come to God, you're never going to come at all. Instead, realize that God wants you just where you are.
While you were a sinner, while you were his enemy, he died for you to make a way so that you could return to him. First, Jesus is our substitute. Secondly, today, from verses 30-34, Jesus is God's son.
From verse 30, Jesus is eternal God, revealed to us in human nature. John, the baptizer, told the people that were around him, this is the one, Jesus is the one I told you about.
After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he existed before me. Now, John was related to Jesus. I think I mentioned last week or two weeks ago.
I'm not sure if it was like a second cousin or third cousin once removed, but was related to Jesus. And he was born about six months or so before Christ was. So, earthly speaking, he existed before Jesus, but Jesus was not just human.
He was eternal God who had taken on human nature so that he could die in our place. Colossians 1 says that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the preeminent one over all creation.
For everything was created by him in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.
He is before all things and by him all things hold together. In Hebrews 1 and verses 2 and 3, God has appointed Jesus heir of all things and made the universe through him.
The sun is the radiance of God's glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word.
Titus 2.13 would tell us that we wait for the blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. Today we don't serve some like subservient God.
We're not worshiping just a good person who over time, people came to think of him as somewhat divine. And so now we worship Jesus as God. No, he is eternal God.
And the testimony from the very first day that Jesus steps out into public ministry in this world, the declaration is this is the son of God. Then we can see in verse 33, Jesus is the prophesied anointed one, the Messiah of Israel.
The word there Messiah coming from the Hebrew Mashiach. It means one who is anointed, one specially chosen by God for a specific purpose.
Here in verses 32 and 33, John testified, I saw the Spirit, God's presence, descending from heaven like a dove, just as a dove would float down. The Spirit came down and he rested on Jesus. He says, I didn't know him.
I didn't know Jesus in particular as the Messiah. He says, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me, the one that you see the Spirit descending and resting on, he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.
That is, the one who would immerse God's people in God's own presence. That it would no longer just be that we live our lives and maybe we visit a building and we encounter God.
It's that every single day of our life, the Holy Spirit of God resides in the life, in the heart, proverbially, not your actual literal physical heart, your spiritual heart, if you will. The Holy Spirit lives in you.
As Romans 8 would tell us, the one that has the Son has the Spirit. If we don't have the Spirit of God, we don't have the Son of God. As Ephesians 1 would tell us, that we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of God until the day of redemption.
That on the day that you confessed your sins to God, that you said, God, I'm repenting of my way, of my sins, of my wrongdoing, and I am choosing you as my God, and I will follow you with my life. I am choosing your gift of salvation for myself.
On the day that we do that, God puts a seal on your life. And I promise you, no one is taking off that seal from you.
Jesus would tell us in John 10, he says, I am in my father's hand, and they are in my hand, and no one is able to pluck them out of my father's hand. That if you have received Jesus, he's not letting you go.
There's no, oh man, okay, I guess you sinned too much. You weren't perfect enough this week, so now I guess I got to let you go.
No, if you've been saved by Jesus' righteousness, of Jesus taking your place, there is nothing that can undo the sacrifice of Jesus.
As we think about the Messiah, the anointed one of Israel, the one who would give us God's own presence, this was something that was prophesied from the very beginning of scripture.
Jesus wasn't an afterthought or something that a small group of Jewish individuals came up with 2,000 years ago. He was the whole purpose of the Old Testament scriptures and the focal point of God's work on this earth.
He was prophesied to come for millennia with prophecies that included details he could have no control over, such as his lineage, a descendant of King David, as we would read about in 2 Samuel 7.
It included details of his birthplace from Micah 5 2, that he would be born in Bethlehem. It included his hometown of Nazareth and the way in which he would die with pierced hands and feet.
Genesis 3, from the very beginning of creation, God promised Satan that there would be hostility between Satan and those that would follow him and humanity.
And he said there will be hostility between your offspring and the offspring of Eve, of humanity. He said he will strike your head. There would be a promised Messiah who would crush evil forever.
In Genesis 12, about two millennia before Christ, God promised Abraham that all of the peoples on earth would be blessed through Abraham, specifically through one of his descendants.
In Deuteronomy 18, about 1500 years before Christ, God told Moses that he would raise up for Israel a prophet like Moses from among his brothers, that one, an Israelite person would be a prophet, that everyone must listen to that prophet, or they
would be cut off from Israel. And Isaiah 53, about 500 years before Christ, God said this, after the servant's anguish, after the Messiah's anguish, he will see light and be satisfied.
By his knowledge, my righteous servant will justify many, and he will carry their iniquities.
Therefore, I will give him the many as a portion, and he will receive the mighty as spoil, because he willingly submitted to death and was counted among the rebels. Yet he bore the sin of many and interceded for the rebels.
God promised, this coming Messiah will die in your place, that you don't have to be punished for your sins. Someone else will take that. In Daniel 9, there was even a direct prophecy about the timeline of when Jesus would come to earth.
He says, 70 weeks or groupings of 7 years are decreed about your people and your holy city, to bring the rebellion to an end, to put a stop to sin, to atone for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to
anoint the most holy place. No one understand this from the issuing of the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the ruler will be 7 weeks and 62 weeks.
There in Daniel 9, there's a specific prophecy given that frankly, once it's given in his lifetime, Daniel couldn't like orchestrate things to secretly make it happen.
But about, I forget if the number is 434 or 466, read it earlier in the week, 434 or so years after that command to rebuild Jerusalem occurred, what happened was Jesus rode into Jerusalem in his triumphal entry on the Sunday before his crucifixion.
That he was presented to Israel as the Messiah, as the ruler. But just as God had also prophesied, he would die for the sins of the world. Not just for maybe one ethnicity or one group of people, but for everyone, everywhere.
That's what we would read about in 1 John 2 and verse 2. He is the propitiation, the atoning sacrifice, the acceptable payment for our sins, and not only for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world.
Here, John the Baptizer lets people know exactly who Jesus is. That to know Jesus, to follow him, is to invite God's presence into your life. That Jesus baptizes us, he places us into God's own presence, the Holy Spirit.
Then in verse 34, with John's closing statement of, I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God. We can see that Jesus is our king and he is our shepherd.
If Jesus is God, if he is the promised Messiah, if he did die in our place, then that truth demands our obedience and our following him. If it's all true, we would be foolish to not give him everything that we are.
In John 10, Jesus describes what it's like for those that are truly his sheep, his followers, the ones that view him as their king, the one that commands what they do.
He says, the one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep, talking of himself. The gatekeeper opens it for him and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
The sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will never follow a stranger. Instead, they will run away from him because they don't know the voice of strangers.
Do you know today that Jesus has called you by name? You aren't just some add-on to him. You are specifically, individually known by Jesus.
That he didn't just die for the everyone. He died for you. He died for Judy.
He died for Gwen. If he died for you, don't you think that you can include him in your life? And not just include him.
Don't you think that you can follow him? To pursue knowing who he is, to growing in your knowledge of what does he have for my life? How does he want me to interact with others?
How does following him affect my schedule? How does it affect my finances? How does it affect my friendships?
It is so worth knowing Jesus, pursuing him, because he knows and pursued you first. As the book of 1 John would tell us, we love him because he first loved us.
Do you know that Jesus claims authority over your life if you've said that you are a Christian? He decides how you treat people, not you. He decides your habits and goals, not just you.
And can I soften that affront a little? His aim for your life is incredible. It's to be more and more like him.
More like the kind of person God made you to be, and more like the person that God will one day perfect you to be. 1 Peter 2 says, You were like sheep going astray, but you have now returned to the shepherd and the overseer of your souls.
Can I ask you today, what areas of your life right now are currently off limits to God? What can't He command you to do or to give up? As you look at your life, your habits, your words, your relationships, is there anything that you would say?
Okay, God, you can have my Sunday mornings. God, you might be able to have maybe some time that I take during the week to read your word. But God, don't touch this.
Like, I know this area over here isn't really in line with what the Bible says, but I really like this, so I'm going to keep it. Can I challenge you today? If Jesus is king and messiah, your substitute, give him every area of your life.
He will take better care of it than you will, I promise. Jesus became a human. He lived a full life.
He worked miracles. He confounded the religious. He died for our sins.
He defeated the grave and is now seated on heaven's throne. Do you think that he won't do right by you in your life?
That his plans were perfect for all the ages past, that he orchestrated over the course of millennia, Jesus coming to earth, but his plans aren't quite going to cut it for your life? Trust in him and obey him as your God.
Today, we've got two questions to end with. Number one, have you embraced Jesus as the only substitute for your punishment? Have you accepted what Jesus gave?
His own life? Verse, we started with Romans 6.23, the wages of sin is death. There is that punishment that we get for sin, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
It's not earned. Today, if you don't know Jesus, the call to you is will you accept his payment? Will you turn to him as your God?
Then secondly today, do you worship and obey Jesus as your God? Are there any areas where you're keeping them kind of hidden off to the corner, if you will, in the house of your life, and you say, Jesus, you can come in the living room. That's great.
You can come in the kitchen. But don't go into the guest room. It's not some place that I want you to go.
Is there anything in your life that's off limits to what God can tell you to do? I'm going to challenge you. Give it over to Jesus.
It will be worth it. He has good plans for us. Today, we must accept Jesus' sacrifice for our sin and choose him personally as our God.
Certainly, that happens at salvation, that moment when we turn and repent from sin and believe in Jesus and accept his gift. But it's also true for every day of your Christian life.
As we're sanctified, as we grow closer and walk with him, that we'd say, God, right now, I have the choice to follow you in your way or to do what I want to do. Let's all ask, God, help me to pursue you in every area of my life.
