Tag Archives: the Lamb of God

JOHN’S GOSPEL…THE SPIRIT’S WITNESS – 5

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“The next day, John 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 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.’”

‭‭John‬ ‭1‬:‭29‬-‭33‬ ‭NIV‬‬

How could John the Baptist be so confident that Jesus was God’s sacrificial Lamb? Wasn’t he being a bit presumptuous? After all, Jesus was no different from any  other man…or was He? What made Him stand out to John as the special one sent from God?

The three Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, record Jesus’ baptism as the moment when the Father affirmed Jesus as His Son. The Holy Spirit coming on Him in visible form was the sign to the onlookers of His anointing even if they didn’t believe or even remember that moment.  

To John, the coming of the Holy Spirit on Jesus had special significance. It was the sign that Jesus was the one to whom he would bear witness to all Israel who would baptise people in the Holy Spirit. John would never forget that moment. God had told him it would happen. 

“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.’

However, for John, this moment meant more than identifying Jesus as Messiah. Once he knew who Jesus was, he was able to do the task he was called to do…to point Him out to every Israelite whenever and wherever he could as God’s sacrificial Lamb and the baptiser in the Holy Spirit. 

What did John’s witness mean to his hearers? Lamb…sacrifice…the focal point of Israel’s worship. From the moment of their deliverance from Egypt to this moment, the lamb was the symbol of God’s forgiveness, the dividing line between life and death. 

Did Israel understand the message? No, they did  not! How ironical…Israel killed Him for being God’s Lamb!

The baptiser in the Holy Spirit…Israel’s greatest need! Their history was the witness to their failure. They could not obey God’s covenant because of their corrupt hearts. God’s Spirit left the human race when Adam disobeyed God. Only through God’s Lamb and the forgiveness He made possible could God restore His Spirit to humanity. 

So, John’s message was simple and clear. The one on whom he saw the Spirit descend was the one he was to reveal to God’s people. His constant refrain? “Look at Him!” More than that. “Look to Him!” 

“The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!””

‭‭John‬ ‭1‬:‭35‬-‭36‬ ‭NIV‬

John was faithful! He went ahead of Jesus to show the way, never to get in the way. When he had accomplished his mission, he bowed out graciously, if not rather abruptly, by losing his life.  

Jesus, in turn, cemented John’s place in history…the greatest of the Old Covenant prophets despite his short ministry and untimely death.  

“But what did you go out to see? A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet. This is the one about whom it is written: “ ‘I will send my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way before you.’ I tell you, among those born of women there is no one greater than John; yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.”

‭‭Luke‬ ‭7‬:‭26‬-‭28‬ ‭NIV‬‬

To believe John’s message, to look to the Lamb of God, to receive His forgiveness and His gift of the Holy Spirit, is the only way to cross the great divide between death and life. 

JOHN’S GOSPEL…COME, FOLLOW ME – 8

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John 1:36-39 NLT
[36] “As Jesus walked by, John looked at him and declared, “Look! There is the Lamb of God!” [37] When John’s two disciples heard this, they followed Jesus. [38] Jesus looked around and saw them following. “What do you want?” he asked them. They replied, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?” [39] “Come and see,” he said…”

John’s story about Jesus begins slowly and quietly…a couple of young guys hear John’s pronoucement, “Look, the Lamb of God.” Their curiosity is aroused. They trail after Jesus to find out more about Him. He notices their attention and invites them to his home. Where? We don’t know. Nothing unusual!

However, events begin to snowball. This ordinary situation, from John’s perspective, explodes into a growing following of inquisitive and excited admirers. First two, one being Andrew, Peter’s brother, then another, Peter… then Philip, then Nathaniel, joining the interested group. Did this early association blossom into the official calling of the twelve men who would accompany Him throughout the rest of His life? We don’t know how the two accounts come together except that John was recording these events from his own perspective. Many followed Jesus out of curiosity and interest before He called the Twelve.

Remember, one gospel record tells us that Jesus only officially chose His disciples after a night of prayer.

Luke 6:12-13 NLT
[12] “One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night. [13] At daybreak he called together all of his disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles… “

So, the connection was made, the association happened, and the story gathered momentum.

Then, the first burst of light! Jesus and His buddies went to a wedding. The festivities were long and drawn out until…a disaster hsppened…the wine ran out! Not a drop left. Jesus’ mother, also among the guests, knew her son well so she threw the ball into His court and Jesus ran with it… for one reason…an opportunity!

Jesus always had two things in mind, the Father and His kingdom. His reason for being on earth was to introduce the real God, the Father, to His people and to usher in God’s rule again. His own people had effectively rejected His rule despite His covenant with them. Now He had come in person to set the record straight and to complete the task He had been assigned.

To complete His task, He needed, disciples, followers who were convinced of His identity and would continue where He left off..so, He did the impossible. He made water wine! That sounds crazy! He grabbed the opportunity, not only to do a remarkable miracle but also to teach an equally remarkable lesson using the situation as an object lesson. Jesus was always about teaching truth.

The outcome was startling…so much top quality wine that the party could go on for a long time.

And what of His disciples? John was there. He saw the evidence. He knew the outcome.

John 2:11 NIV
[11] “What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

They saw His glory…they believed in Him… until the next crisis hit and they needed more evidence.

LION OR LAMB?

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LION OR LAMB?

“The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, ‘Look, the Lamb of God!’

“When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, ‘What do you want?’ They said, ‘Rabbi (which means “Teacher”), ‘where are you staying?’ ‘Come,’ He replied, ‘and you will see.’ So. they went and saw where He was staying, and they spent that day with Him. It was about four in the afternoon.” John 1:35-39 (NIV).

Jesus rated John the Baptist the greatest of all the prophets. Why? He was not like Isaiah, for instance, who was a member of the royal family and whose long ministry lasted through the reigns of four kings. Isaiah was the prince of prophets in the Old Testament era. He had insights into the nature and ministry of the Messiah like no other prophet. After all, didn’t he write the most profound and sublime chapter in the Old Testament — Isaiah 53? But John was greater.

Why was John such a great man? His ministry lasted no more than six months before he was incarcerated and then beheaded. I believe his greatness lay in the way he fulfilled his assignment. What was his assignment? He was to prepare the way for and introduce the Messiah to Israel. It was not so much what he did but the way he did it that marked him out as a truly great man.

In response to the constant squabbling of His disciples over who would be the greatest, Jesus taught them what true greatness was all about. They thought that greatness was about being the most important and the most visible person in the pecking order. James and John even asked for positions at His elbows in His kingdom! Imagine that!

Jesus was quick to point out that it was they, not He, who determined their greatness. If they were prepared to stoop down to the level of the lowliest in society, a little child, and lift him up, they would be truly great. Humility, and the behaviour it produces, is the way to greatness.

How did John the Baptist measure up to Jesus’ criterion?

When the Pharisees interrogated him, he was quick to point out that he was no more than a voice. He could have claimed to be Elijah come back from the dead, a great prophet who had ministered during a time of apostasy in Israel and who had done amazing miracles – stopping the rain, bringing on the rain and even raising a dead child on one occasion. Jesus identified John as the fulfilment of God’s promise to send Elijah ahead of the Messiah but John made no such claim for himself.

John had the heart of a servant. His fiery preaching was not to humiliate but to call people back to God. When they responded, he spent time encouraging and teaching them about God’s kingdom.

He never lost an opportunity to point people to Jesus as the Lamb of God. Whenever he saw Jesus, he declared, ‘There is God’s Lamb!’ John, unlike Jesus’ own disciples, had grasped the real mission of the Messiah.

The disciples were anticipating a stand-off with the Romans, their humiliating defeat and an era of glorious freedom for Israel under their new ruler, Jesus. The miracles He did confirmed their notion that He would restore Israel to the former glory it enjoyed under their great king, David, when everyone lived in safety and in plenty under his merciful and benevolent rule.

John, on the other hand, kept insisting that Jesus was God’s Lamb, not God’s Lion, at least not yet.  He was not in any way resentful when some of his disciples left him to follow Jesus. That was his purpose, to point people to Jesus and to introduce Him to the world as God’s sacrifice for sin.

John was faithful to his calling. He had no other purpose in life but to ensure that everyone he encountered knew who Jesus was. He was consumed with the passion to prepare the way so that, when Jesus arrived on the scene, people would recognise and follow Him.

This story speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

SOAKED IN THE SPIRIT

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SOAKED IN THE SPIRIT

“The next day John 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 meant when I said, ‘A man comes after me who has surpassed me because He was before me.’ I myself did not know Him, but the reason I came baptising 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 baptise with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptise with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.'” John 1:29-34 (NIV)

There you have it, straight from John’s mouth! It seems that John and Jesus, although they were relatives, had no connection with one another until this moment. Jesus grew up in the northern province of Galilee and John in Judea in the south. There were no motor vehicles to make the trip to Galilee or Judea easy for a family holiday, and besides that, John’s parents were elderly and probably not given to travelling around.

Naturally John knew about Jesus — had his father not prophesied over him at his birth that he would be a prophet and forerunner of the Messiah? Had he himself not leapt for joy in his mother’s womb when she came face to face with Mary, mother of the Messiah? Would his parents not have thoroughly prepared him for the day when he would begin his role as priest-prophet in Israel, the first after 400 years of prophetic silence?

What about the time he spent in the wilderness with God, soaking up the Word he had studied and memorised during his years of preparation to be a rabbi? Of course, John was a rabbi! Only rabbis had disciples — and John had his disciples as did Jesus. So crucial was John’s ministry to be that God would not have left his first meeting with Jesus to chance.

God gave John a clear sign to identify Jesus as the Messiah from among the many Jewish men he would encounter in his ministry. How would he recognise Him? Would He be wearing special clothing, have a distinguishing mark on His face or on His body, have a specific hair style, wear a name tag on His chest? Of course not! Nothing as silly as that!

The Spirit! The Holy Spirit was the key, but how would John know that the Holy Spirit was on Him? God told him that he would see the Holy Spirit descend and remain on Jesus and that would be the sign that He was the Messiah. And it happened!

This was the first and only time in Scripture that the Holy Spirit was visible to human eyes. Matthew and Mark wrote that Jesus saw the Spirit descending while Luke simply related the fact that the Spirit descended on Him in bodily form, like a dove. That must have been visible to someone who either wrote it down or told Luke about it. ,

However, John saw the Holy Spirit and to him this was a sign of great significance because it showed him exactly who the Messiah was. From that moment, he used every opportunity to point out to those who followed him or came to listen to him that Jesus of Nazareth was God’s Chosen One. That was his job and he did it with great delight and with all his heart.

The apostle John, with hindsight after decades of contemplation, weighing up the evidence of John’s ministry and his years with Jesus, recognised in John the Baptist the qualities that made him a truly great prophet. After His baptism, when John the Baptist knew who the Messiah was by the visible presence of the Holy Spirit coming upon Him, he used every opportunity to point Him out to the people. ‘Look, there’s the One I keep telling you about, God’s Lamb who is to be sacrificed for the world’s sin.’

John was not intent on drawing attention to Jesus to make Him popular but to introduce Him in His true role as God’s sacrificial Lamb, not just for the sin of Israel alone but for the sin of the world. Jesus cautioned those who were healed not to speak about it because He did not want to be known as the miracle-worker who did things for people. That was only evidence of the real reason He came, to take away the sin of the world so that God’s wayward sons and daughters could return home to the Father.

The Holy Spirit was crucial to Jesus who laid aside His deity to live as a man, and He is crucial to every believer. Without the Holy Spirit in us, we are as vulnerable as the Israelites were who failed to keep the covenant God made with them at Sinai. It was Jesus’ death and resurrection that cleared the way for the Holy Spirit to saturate every believer just as He saturated Jesus and empowered Him to live as a true Son and to lay down His life for us.

Are you drenched in the Holy Spirit?

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.