TEXT: 29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
Dear Friends in Christ, the Lamb of God,
People often ask me, “Why are there so many churches and denominations today?” The short answer is because there are many differences in teaching. The long answer, especially today, involves the doctrine of Verbal Inspiration.
What is Verbal Inspiration? Our Synod’s confession of faith in the little booklet entitled, “This We Believe” defines this important doctrine of Scripture in this way:
6. We believe that God gave the Scriptures through men whom he chose, using the language they knew and the style of writing they had. He used Moses and the prophets to write the Old Testament in Hebrew (some portions in Aramaic) and the evangelists and apostles to write the New Testament in Greek.
7. We believe that in a miraculous way that goes beyond all human investigation, God the Holy Spirit moved these men to write his Word. These men “spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21). What they said was spoken “not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 2:13). Every thought they expressed and every word they used were given them by the Holy Spirit. Saint Paul wrote to Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Timothy 3:16). The church has called this miraculous process inspiration, which means “breathing into.” Since every word of Scripture was inspired, we also call this process verbal inspiration, or word-for-word inspiration. This is not to be equated with mechanical dictation, since the Holy Spirit guided the writers as they used their individual vocabularies and writing styles.
This is what we believe, teach and confess. Unfortunately, many churches today no longer teach this doctrine or verbal inspiration. Instead they say, “All Scripture is ‘inspired’ in the same sense that someone is inspired to write poetry, etc. The Holy Scriptures were written by well-intentioned men of God. They wrote what they believed to be from God, but they were also affected by the cultural beliefs and influences of their times. The Holy Scriptures contain errors and contradictions. Since the Scriptures were written by many different men, their various teachings often contradict one another. The traditions of the church and the witness of Christians today may also be just as “inspired” as the Holy Scriptures.” (Lange, What’s Going on Among the LUTHERANS, pages 54, 55, NPH)
If you believe that there are errors in Scripture, then all of Scripture becomes doubtful, a question mark. Nothing can be trusted to be the truth. And worse yet, false teachers then are able to stripe the Scriptures of any doctrine their sinful nature is offended with. If we don’t like it, we will just call it an error and get rid of it.
But this is not what Jesus taught. He said, “The Scripture cannot be broken” (John 10:35). Therefore the Bible is the infallible authority and guide for everything we believe and do. It’s for us Christians who believe in Verbal Inspiration what the worldview scholars call the “Prime Reality” (what is really real).
Every word of the Bible is God’s word. Every word is true. And it’s also true that every single word teaches us something. That is especially true of the words of our text this morning, John’s words, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
“Look,” John said, when Jesus was coming toward him. John was drawing his disciples attention to something, someone, with that little word. How important that word is because it identifies the one who is “the Lamb of God.” This was John the baptist’s purpose in life, to prepare the way for the Messiah, to point him out to the people. John himself knew that Jesus was that Messiah because God had revealed it to him. This was John’s testimony: “30 This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ 31 I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.” 32 Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. 33 I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.” (NIV)
“The” in the expression “the Lamb of God” is also a very important word. It tells us that Jesus is the one and only Lamb of God, the only Redeemer of mankind. It’s what Peter later confessed when he said, “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12).” (NIV) Jesus is the only one who can save us from our sins. Man can’t save himself. Animal sacrifices can’t save man. Only Jesus can save us. Jesus removes our sin. Jesus’ blood blots out our sins so that in God’s eyes we are holy, righteous.
The word “Lamb” would have immediately communicated a multitude of images in the Jewish mind. It even does so for us who just read about the Jewish culture in the pages of Scripture. One of those images was the Passover Lamb. Paul identified Jesus as our “Passover Lamb” in his first letter to the Corinthians (5:7). But that was not the only image that would have come into the minds of Jewish believers. Lambs were used daily and at other special times as sacrifices in the temple. With the sacrifice of lambs or goats God was giving his people a daily reminder that he demands blood, death, for sin. “The wages of sin is death,” Paul wrote in the book of Romans (6:23). He was also reminding them that he would allow a substitute to die for man so that man himself would not suffer the consequences of sin.
Because of the blood of the Passover Lamb, God passed over the homes of the Israelites who had painted the blood of that slaughtered lamb over their doorposts as God had commanded them to do. That blood saved them. This points, of course, to the central teaching of Scripture, that we are redeemed from the power of sin, death and Satan “with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” The Passover lamb that was sacrificed was to be a year-old male without spot or blemish or defect. Peter identifies Jesus as that sinless, perfect lamb of God when he reminds them that they have been redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect (1 Peter 1:19).” That lamb was to be sacrificed. Paul wrote, “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2).”
Countless thousands of lambs were offered at the temple but none of them were “the Lamb.” The blood of lambs and bulls could not redeem the Israelites from their sin. These sacrifices, these lambs were “shadows of thing to come, the reality of which was Christ.” (Colossians 2:16,17). Christ Jesus is the One and Only Lamb that all the others pictured or symbolized. He is the sacrifice that ended all the other sacrifices. For after Jesus came and suffered and was sacrificed on the cross, no other sacrifices were necessary from that time on. The real one had already come!
John says to his disciples that Jesus is “the lamb of God.” “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” The one whom mankind rebelled against, who deserve nothing but God’s wrath and judgment, this one God gives the sacrifice that will save his rebellious, undeserving creation. “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son (John 3:16).” Picture Abraham in the Old Testament putting his son, Isaac, on the altar there on Mt. Moriah. (Genesis 22) Picture Abraham lifting the knife into the air and ready to drive it down into the innocent son he loved so much. God stopped Abraham from doing this. But with his little lamb, Jesus, God our loving heavenly Father, gives him to the world to redeem the world. He kills him. To redeem us!
His death, his sacrifice “takes away the sin of the world.” Once again every word is inspired and important. Our sin is no longer in God’s sight. It’s been removed, taken away, blotted out as if it had never been there. The word “sin” together with the definite article “the” reminds us that it wasn’t just some sins, but sin as a entire unit that was blotted out when Jesus was sacrificed. And it wasn’t just the sins of believers or the sins of the Israelites, but the sins of all people that were blotted out. Therefore your and my sins were also blotted out. John said it this way in his first letter, “…the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin…He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 1:7; 2:2)
Now which of these words of verse 29 would you like to say is not inspired? If you teach that not all the words of the Bible are God’s inspired Word, then the whole body of Scripture is brought into question. Which words do you think the devil would want you to doubt most? Isn’t it the Gospel, the good news that your sins are forgiven through the shed blood of Christ on the cross.
Look! John shouted to his disciples. When they looked what did they see. Isaiah described what they saw. “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. 3. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 4. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. 5. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (Isaiah 53) What did they see? They saw the God-man whom God had sent to be our Lamb, our substitute, to suffer in our stead, that we might have peace with God.
That was John’s message and confession. May we also be messengers like John in pointing out the Lamb to others around us for whom he came to die. Amen.
