I'm both privileged and humbled, to be on this side of the pulpit this morning. I've spent so many years on that side. I know the questions that you probably have besides who who is this guy up here preaching. The question that I always had was what's going to be for lunch? And rumor has it, I've heard it's Tzatziki's Friday special.
Joel Brooks:Don't hold me to that. So you picked a good day to be here. When Timothy George called me and asked if I would come and preach, I said, okay. Well, what will I be preaching on? And he said, the pews.
Joel Brooks:And he explained further and he says, there's an emblem there of the lamb of God. I would like for you to preach on the lamb of God. And I thought how appropriate that that's where we find our rest, when we come in this place is on the lamb. Pray with me. Lord, in this moment may my words fall to the ground and blow away and be remembered no more.
Joel Brooks:But, Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. John the Baptist's declaration of Jesus is both curious and profound.
Joel Brooks:It's curious because John the Baptist had so many other titles from which he could have drawn from to call Jesus. He could have said, behold the Christ. Behold the Son of David. Behold the Son of God. But he chose the curious image of a lamb.
Joel Brooks:And certainly, this is not what the people expected. Earlier in the chapter, as we heard read, when the priest and the Levites were wondering just who John the Baptist might be, they asked if he was the Christ. They asked if he was Elijah. They asked if he was the prophet. Those were the the things, those were the people they were looking for.
Joel Brooks:They weren't looking for a lamb. They didn't ask for a lamb. They they wanted a mighty king or a mighty prophet to come and deliver them. They saw no need to be delivered from incoming judgment, which is curious. Because one would expect that the priest and the Levites of all people, people who spend so much of their time making sacrifices, so much time interceding for the people, that they of all people would be looking for the lamb.
Joel Brooks:But they missed him. Perhaps they missed him because they saw no need for their sins to be taken away. They saw greater, bigger, more pressing problems all around them, like being suffocated by Roman rule. And so they needed a deliverer. They didn't need a lamb.
Joel Brooks:And so they were looking for the wrong thing. He's declaring both an unexpected identity and an unexpected mission. His identity is the Lamb of God. His mission is to take away the sins of the world. This is why Jesus came.
Joel Brooks:You can actually see the rest of the gospel of John in light of those two things. So let's take a closer look at this image of the lamb, what John is declaring here. Now, many scholars have written a lot of things about what exactly John meant when he when he said, behold the lamb of God. Let me take the obvious one, also the right one. That Jesus is the sacrifice to which all other sacrifices point, in particular, the sacrifice of the passover lamb.
Joel Brooks:And the priests and the Levites should have recognized us. Now we're familiar with the story of the passover that we find in Exodus chapter 12. My wife and I, we've done over the years, we have a Passover meal or a Seder meal, and we invite people to come to it. And let me just tell you, we do it outside in our patio a lot. It freaks out the neighbors.
Joel Brooks:It it really does. There there's one part of it. I don't know if you've ever done a Seder's supper and you dip your pinky into the wine and you let it drip on the plate as you go through the plagues, and you're going blood, blood, blood. You know? Frogs, frogs, frogs.
Joel Brooks:And when you get to the last part, you're going death of the firstborn death of the firstborn. And it's at that point people are locking their doors. They're pulling down the shades. They're wondering what in the world is going on back there. But but as you go through this and you're reminded of the 9 plagues, the first nine plagues, you remember that the Israelites didn't have to do anything.
Joel Brooks:They didn't have to do anything to avoid them. You would have frogs. You'd have flies, boils, hail, and they would all invade the Egyptians, but the Israelites would be untouched. Even when the plague of darkness came, darkness covered Egypt, but the the Israelites, they're basking in the sun and they didn't have to do anything to distinguish themselves. God always made the distinction.
Joel Brooks:But not this time for the final plague. God is going to send the destroyer to kill every firstborn child. Not one family or one household of Egypt will be spared, and not one household of Israel will be spared, unless they put a certain mark outside of their home. Then the destroyer won't come in and he won't kill the firstborn. But the destroyer is coming for all of the firstborn in every household, and he is coming to judge everyone, Egyptian and Hebrew alike, unless they have the mark.
Joel Brooks:And what we see here is something that the Levites and the priest in Jesus' day failed to understand, that all are guilty before the Lord. All need to escape the wrath to come. The Hebrews cannot say, Lord, we we are chosen people and therefore you just you have to spare us. They they couldn't say, look at our moral deeds. Spare us.
Joel Brooks:They couldn't say, we don't deserve this. Spare us. No. The destroyer was coming and he would not discriminate. And everyone in this room is guilty as well.
Joel Brooks:We've all sinned. Even apart from the moral law we find in the bible, if we judged ourselves according to our own moral standards, we fall short. So everyone here stands guilty before the Lord. Going to church will not spare you from judgment. Being a good moral person will not spare you from judgment.
Joel Brooks:Getting your masters of divinity just marks you for double judgment. Look down on others. You can't ever think that you are somehow better than them. You can't ever say, you need the gospel. You have to always say, we need the gospel.
Joel Brooks:Because we all stand guilty before the Lord. We all deserve judgment. Hebrews were no better than the Egyptians, and they would be judged the same unless they put this mark. Let's look at this mark. Every Hebrew family must get a lamb, and not just any lamb.
Joel Brooks:The lamb needed to be a year old. It needed to be male. It had to be spotless. And then at midnight on 14th day they would kill this lamb and they would take some of the blood and they would put it on the door post. They would put it on the lintel of their home.
Joel Brooks:And when the destroyer would come by, he'd he'd see these marks, the blood of the lamb, and he would pass over. And so no one in that household would be killed. And this is extraordinary, when you think about it. The destroyer is coming. And by the way, I have no idea who this destroyer is.
Joel Brooks:He just he sounds bad. And and he is coming and he has great power, so much power that he could go through the greatest powers of the day, the greatest defenses of the day, and they could not do anything to stop him. He was gonna come in and he would kill the firstborn unless they got some defenseless little lamb and they put the blood outside the door. And in Egypt that night, you were either gonna have a dead lamb or you're gonna have a dead son in every household. But why kill a little white fluffy lamb and and how is that going to keep out this mighty destroyer?
Joel Brooks:You know, why why does that have to be the symbol? Why not tie a yellow ribbon, you know, around the tree out front? Why not put a wreath on the door? Why not some other symbol? Why does it have to be a lamb?
Joel Brooks:In my neighborhood, there's a lot of break ins. We've been robbed twice. My wife even walked in on a robber one time. Our office has been broken into. Let me tell you, lamb's blood is not gonna keep out a common thief.
Joel Brooks:It will freak them out. I mean, if you paint blood on the door that they might be scared, but but I will put my trust in a double deadbolt, rather than lamb's blood. What's so special about this? And when you read through Exodus, you're gonna notice that God goes to great lengths to ensure that the image of the lamb is intact, that it is in no way destroyed. This lamb was to be taken into your home 4 days before you killed it.
Joel Brooks:And I just kept thinking how awkward is that? That that 4 days, you know, you're you're kinda taking care of this lamb whether it's in your home or your backyard. You're you're feeding it. You're taking care of it, and all the while you're thinking, I got to kill this thing. And when you did kill it, you weren't allowed to chop it up.
Joel Brooks:You couldn't have lamb chops. You couldn't make it into a stew. You had to roast the entire lamb. And so when you ate this lamb, it had to still look like a lamb in front of you. And so this is not like when you go to Chick Fil A.
Joel Brooks:If you have children, you you spend most of your life at Chick Fil A. And so I I'm always at Chick Fil A and when they eat a chicken sandwich, there's not that the head coming out, you know, in the eyes and the beak and there's not the feet out the back. The chicken sandwich or the nuggets look nothing like chicken. You have to tell them that it's chicken. It's not like this here.
Joel Brooks:Here, they know that they're eating a lamb. They are painfully aware that something had to die in order that they might live. Exodus 1213 tells why exactly they had to do this. Verse 13 is really the key to understanding that chapter. It reads like this.
Joel Brooks:It says, the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you and no plague will befall you or destroy you. Notice. The lamb's blood on the outside of the door is not a sign for the destroyer. It is not a sign for God to know not to kill these people.
Joel Brooks:Points us forward 1400 years to Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Not just taking away the sin of some family huddled in a home as the destroyer passes over, but takes away the sin of the whole world. The sign points us to Jesus, the Passover lamb without spot or blemish, undefiled by sin. That's what John the Baptist is declaring here, when he says behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Now I mentioned earlier that this declaration by John the Baptist, it really sets the tone for the rest of the gospel of John.
Joel Brooks:It gives you lenses, if you will, in which you can read through the rest of the gospel. To illustrate this, we'll just look at a couple of stories that follow John's declaration. In chapter 2, we have Jesus's first miracle, in which he turns water into wine. This is perhaps Jesus's most famous miracle. It's, certainly his most unusual.
Joel Brooks:He doesn't do anything like this again. It's also really puzzling, because Jesus is launching his ministry here and he he chose this. I mean, he could have raised someone from the dead. He could have made the lame to walk. He could have fed 5,000 people.
Joel Brooks:But he chooses to fix a wedding catering faux pas. That's that's how he launches his ministry. Let's just read maybe the first 3 or 4 verses. It says, On the 3rd day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee. And the mother of Jesus was there.
Joel Brooks:Jesus was also invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine. And Jesus said to her, woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. Now, why is Jesus here talking about his hour, which we know to be the time of his his death?
Joel Brooks:Why is he talking about this at a wedding? I mean weddings are happy joyful times. If if you're not Baptist, there's there's drinking and there's dancing and and and and then they're they're really fun. You don't go to a wedding and think about your upcoming death, But Jesus does. And I think the reason he's doing so is he is doing what every single guy or single woman does when they go to a wedding, is they begin thinking about their own wedding.
Joel Brooks:For Jesus, it's the wedding of the lamb. John has a vision of this wedding in Revelation 19, where he records, Let us rejoice and exalt and give him glory for the marriage of the lamb has come. His bride has made herself ready. Then he says, blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the lamb. Some of you all go looking for the person in which you might have that magical day to come.
Joel Brooks:But Jesus here, it was both a magical day and it was gonna be a day of sorrow. He longed for his wedding day, the wedding feast of the lamb, but he knew what it would cost to make the bride ready. It couldn't just be the marriage piece of the lamb. It was gonna be the lamb that was slain. In order for Jesus's bride to be holy and without blemish, she was gonna have to be sanctified through the washing of his blood.
Joel Brooks:And so, when Jesus is asked to provide for the wedding feast, he's saying, my hour's not come. It's not come. I I I know what it's gonna take to make my bride ready and for us to have the wedding feast. The lamb of God is not yet slain. Immediately following this wedding at Cana, Jesus goes to the temple.
Joel Brooks:Now, the synoptic gospels, they all have Jesus coming to the temple, during the week of his crucifixion. John writes about this here. So your two choices are either it's the same event just put in different places in Jesus's life, or it's 2 separate events. Really doesn't matter here. Regardless, John is recording this close to the declaration of John the Baptist.
Joel Brooks:And you need to see it in light of that. Jesus enters into the city. He goes straight to the temple, which is the focal point of the story. And when he gets there you know the story. He goes ballistic.
Joel Brooks:Absolutely ballistic. He he he begins making a whip and driving out the livestock. He begins overthrowing tables. And I don't know if you've ever seen somebody throw over a table in anger. I have.
Joel Brooks:I've been in a room where somebody was really angry, and they just flip the table over. It is a violent aggressive act. It scared the daylights out of me. And then Jesus is knocking over the the chain. He's not like neatly stacking it and saying, you could put this up later when I'm done.
Joel Brooks:I mean, this is this is an aggressive act. He drives out all of the oxen, all the sheep, all the sacrifices. It's hard for us to imagine this scene. This happened during Passover in which, you know, scholars say that there was roughly around 200,000 visitors that would come during that week passing through the temple gates. And to clear out the temple area during that season, the analogy that kept coming to my head, it would be like going to the Galleria Mall at the day after thanksgiving sales and emptying it with all the craziness that's going on.
Joel Brooks:You've got to have some authority to do that. Why? Why did Jesus do this? Now I know there were abuses going on in the temple. I know there was some extortion happening, but that's not the real drastic reason for Jesus's drastic and, aggressive actions.
Joel Brooks:You know, since Jesus was 12 years old and he first went to the temple, I'm sure his father Joseph kind of walked him through, told him what everything meant, what the sacrifices were for. And as that was happening, I I'm sure his heavenly father was teaching him these same things, what the sacrifices were for, and who they pointed to. And now when Jesus comes into this temple and he sees it noisily packed with 1,000 upon 1,000 of people crammed in there, hardly having even a a a moment to to kind of, you know, you you you buy your sheep. You would kind of turn around. You you'd give it to the priest.
Joel Brooks:You know, this is gonna get butchered there. You're gonna quickly kind of move out there, move on. And there's no time to really meditate, no time to really think about what you're doing in this season. And people are mindlessly going through the motions here. And Jesus goes ballistic.
Joel Brooks:Says, don't you see these sacrifices point to me? They point to me. Don't you see it? Don't you get it? And so he drives out every sacrifice.
Joel Brooks:Every goat, every lamb, every pigeon, every dove, they're removed from the temple. And Jesus alone stands there. Do you see what he's doing at that moment? He drives out every sacrifice except for 1. And Jesus stands there alone in the temple as the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, The lamb to which all other lambs point.
Joel Brooks:The sacrifice to which all other sacrifices point. He is the final sacrifice. When Matthew, Mark, and Luke all write about Jesus coming to the temple and doing these things, All of them record this immediate conflict with the priest and the scribes. They all read pretty much the same. They asked Jesus, by what authority are you doing these things?
Joel Brooks:Who gave you this authority? Jesus answered them. I will ask you one question and if you tell me the answer, then I will tell you by what authority I do these things. It goes back to the baptism of John. The baptism of John.
Joel Brooks:Where did it come from? From heaven or from man? And it says they discussed among themselves and they said if we say from heaven, he's gonna say to us, well, why did he not believe him? And if we say, well, it's from man, then they're gonna stone us because they think John was a great prophet. And so they said, well we don't know.
Joel Brooks:And Jesus said, well then I'm not gonna tell you where I give this authority. And let me tell you for the longest time as I read that, I thought Jesus was merely trying to quiet these priests and these scribes, you know, give them this stumper question he knew they couldn't answer just to shut them up. I don't think that anymore. Look carefully at what Jesus is saying. The the thrust of this question is this, do you believe what John the Baptist said was true?
Joel Brooks:Was it true? And I don't think he's talking about just general repentance here. It's about behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Do you do you believe what John the Baptist said was true about me? Because if you understand that, you will understand that I have the authority to cleanse out this temple.
Joel Brooks:I am the sacrifice. So what should we do? I've always, people when when I preach, I guess the the weakness of my preaching has always been application. You know, like, you know, what how do we apply this? Let me just tell you something very simple.
Joel Brooks:This is what we should do. Exactly what John the Baptist tells you to do. You need to behold the lamb. You need to look to the lamb. You need to look at him and trust him for every moment of your life.
Joel Brooks:You need to treasure Him in all things. You need to never stand on any righteousness of your own. You need to always look and behold the lamb who takes away the sin of the world.