The Gospel of John - Christ the Lamb of God

We're continuing on with this last couple of months of the year on topics that are touched on significantly in the Gospel of John. And so we have Christ the Lamb of God is today's topic. First of all, why call Christ the Lamb? Does that sound like a good idea or strange? Why would that be a thing to call Jesus? Okay, lambs were sacrificed even before the Law of Moses was given as a revelation on Mount Sinai, right?

Because it was Passover. So, yes, even that. Can you think of times prior to that where there were sacrifices given? Yeah, Norris you had one animal sacrificed so that they could have the skins. You had what ended up being a fatal conflict between Cain and Abel because Abel was giving an animal sacrifice and Cain wanted to offer a vegetative sacrifice, vegetable sacrifice.

So we have here at the top of the handout, we have Abel being an instance, Noah and Genesis 8.20, Abraham, and actually you'd look at Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, several instances there.

Then there is the account of Abraham being told to offer up his son Isaac as a sacrifice. In that account, the angel of the Lord stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac, and Abraham instead sacrificed a ram caught in a nearby thicket. Abraham had told Isaac, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. This serves as a picture of God the Father offering up his son as a sacrifice for sins. So the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob all offered sacrifices to God and built altars for sacrifice a number of times. Sometimes the sacrifice was part of making a covenant in which the sacrifice was the gesture confirming the covenant.

And we're going to be talking about that, in fact, in the next couple of weeks in the main service. You'll be looking at that. So Passover has a number of requirements that point to Christ as the lamb, specifically Christ. So we have Exodus 12, 1-7 and 43-47.

So now the Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, This month shall be the month of months for you. It is to be the first month of the year to you. Speak to all the generation of Israel, saying, On the tenth of the month they are each to take a lamb for themselves, according to their father's households, a lamb for each household. Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons in them, according to what each man should eat. You are to divide the lamb. Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old.

Why was that important? Why was that important that it's an unblemished male? It's a picture of Christ because some blemish on the lamb would not be the equivalent of Christ who is unblemished, right? So it was a physical blemish they were concerned about on the lamb, but its spiritual blemish would have disqualified Christ as a sacrifice.

Yes. So did the one year have any significance? Yeah, let's think about that. With lambs, there's actually two ages that they mark. And the lamb that is very small, as we're going to see here, that's the word that's used in Revelation. A tiny lamb. I'm talking like within the first few weeks. That's the word used repeatedly in the book of Revelation. A tiny lamb. So isn't it amazing? Here's a tiny lamb with a huge sword that comes out of its mouth. A tiny lamb that is the Lion of Judah. On the other hand, what John says, and what this is referring to, is a lamb up to about a year old. Up to about a year old.

And why would that be of any significance? Think about that. Why would that be of any significance? Yeah, Tom? Yeah, in other words, by that time it had grown up. It was still a lamb. Once it got beyond a year, then they could start calling it a sheep, right? But it had grown up, but was still young, right? And let's think what happens after the sheep starts aging, what happens? Yeah, there's greater risk of defect. So that's one reason for not letting this sheep get too old. The older they are, the greater chance of some kind of a defect. It can be from injury, disease, some kind of a blemish.

Okay, and it can be taken from the sheep or from the goats. In a lot of parts of the world they'll have sheep and goats will be pastured together and then only later might they be separated. What's the difference between having a sheep and having a goat? Yeah, you shear the sheep. There are some breeds of goats that you can shear but most of them not that much, right? But in fact, the sheep that are brought up to be sheared, if you don't shear them after a couple of years, they look ridiculous. They're bred to grow a lot of wool, and they really need to be sheared. Anybody done that? Yeah, okay, cool.

Now, so then we go, and you shall keep until the fourteenth day of the same month, and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight. And what became the custom was to take it to the temple and have them do it. But moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. And so we have the picture there. Here's the blood on the doorposts. And so the doorposts and on the lintel makes a cross configuration. Now, let's take a look at the top of page 2. And this starts verse 43.

Why not break a bone? Yeah? Is that because it's a picture of Christ and the bones not being broken? Yeah, I think what happened, the thief on each side had their bones broken, they came to Christ, and he had already died. By the way, he died voluntarily. Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. He died voluntarily at the time he had finished paying the price for our sins. So he's already dead, he didn't break his bones, and so this Passover, command not to break the bones.

Not only is it an unblemished lamb, like Christ, but the bones are not broken. It's also a picture of completeness. Is it not? Or wholeness? Unbrokenness? Yeah. He gave his life. His life was not taken from him. The thief on each side of Jesus Their lives were taken from them because the bones were broken. Jesus' bones were not broken. He didn't have His life taken from Him. He gave His life voluntarily.

As John 3.16, Galatians 2.20, Ephesians 5.2 and 25 say, He loved and He gave, He loved and He gave, He loved and He gave, and He loved and He gave. He gave His life for us. He was not a victim.

With the giving of the Law of Moses, we find that there are a number of changes in the way that sacrifices are done. Sacrifices may only be offered by those who are descended from Levi through Aaron. So, all the sacrifices that were done previously, example, here's Abraham, here's Isaac, here's Jacob, all the sacrifices done previously, this was not a requirement, now with the Law of Moses, must be done through those who are descended from Levi and through Aaron. The next one, sacrifices must be offered in front of the tabernacle or temple. What you find with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is they just built altars wherever they went, right?

No more. You must do it here in front of the tabernacle or the temple. Got to do it. That's the place. And definitions as to what that altar looks like. Specified. An annual pattern of sacrifice was established. And then we have, in addition to that, Hanukkah and Purim.

So you see this calendar here in the middle of page two that we've been looking at off and on. It starts with Passover. That is, as this command, this is the first month, right? And so you see Passover marked in the first month. That's according to the Law of Moses. That starts the Jewish calendar.

And then it goes on after Passover is, actually the way it works is Passover is celebrated the first night, and after that it's a week of days of unleavened bread. And the way the Jews called it, they called it the Feast of Unleavened Bread, or sometimes they called all those days just Passover, the days of Passover. So they got called both ways. So Passover is two things. One, it's the very first night of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. That's what Jesus celebrated with the disciples as the Last Supper. And Passover is also used to apply to all the days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. So they're used interchangeably. Okay, then you have the Feast of Weeks, which is Pentecost. That was the event of the beginning of the church in Acts 2, right? And then you go around the Feast of Trumpets, the Feast of Atonement.

This is where the high priest goes in and offers a sacrifice for himself first, and for the people. Now, did Christ, as our High Priest, did He have to sacrifice for Himself? And why not? Yeah, one is He was the sacrifice, and two, the High Priest had to sacrifice in the Jewish system because in fact the High Priest was a human being with all the issues and problems and everything else. So sacrifice first for him and then for the rest of the people. So that's the Day of Atonement.

And then Feast of Tabernacles and then you have added to that Hanukkah, which is a holiday that came in the second century between the time of the New Testament. It's recorded in John 10, 22 and 23. Jesus celebrated Hanukkah, about that. It was at the temple of the Feast of Lights or Festival of Lights. And then Purim is based on the Book of Esther. So those two were events that took place after the Law of Moses was given. So those were holidays added on. Yes? Are these all still celebrated in the Jewish community? Yes.

The difficulty is they don't have the temple to carry it out. The Jewish New Year actually starts at the beginning of the month of Nisan. And it's on the 14th day, and that's something about which they're real particular, the 14th day after the beginning of that month. And it's a solar slash lunar calendar. And so they've got real tight definitions, and in fact there was some disagreement as to how you define it.

Yeah, Tom? I've heard over the radio that 200 odd years ago, this particular thing coming up was a trap in the mechanical, and then later, 74,000 years from now will be the next time that happens. Oh, boy. An unusual event. I somehow doubt that's ever going to happen.

Okay, since it's only 360 days, so is it every so many years then that they add a month? Yeah, what they will do is add on a 13th month. See, what we do is every four years we add, you know, an extra day, right? Well, they didn't do that. What they had is an extra month. And so when this thing would get out of sync, then they'd add in an extra month to get things back in sync.

Was that every so many years? Yeah, every so many years and it was irregularly determined. Irregular, okay. What was the name of that month, do you know? I forget offhand, but I can look it up. Never mind. Yeah, I can look it up. So they add on an extra month to keep the lunar calendar in sync with the solar calendar at intervals. So it's not listed on here.

But that is why you'll see Hanukkah occurring anywhere from like the end of November all the way into, you know, close to Christmas. And where we have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Hanukkah is this eight-day event. And what it celebrates is, you know, they're not supposed to use just any old oil to light the lamp in the temple, and they had just gotten the temple back under the control of the Jews, away from the Greek Empire and so miraculously, so the story goes, miraculously the oil which they didn't have enough of lasted all eight days. So that's the basis for adding Hanukkah. Okay, let's look on here to the bottom of the page.

Additional sacrifices required based on various life events, such as when a baby was born, which called for a lamb to be sacrificed. A dove was allowed, however, if the couple could not afford a lamb, and that's what happened with Joseph and Mary. So you had to come in, and it may be one reason why they didn't just hightail it back to Nazareth, because they have to come back anyway to do the sacrifice. So, it seems like they hung around a little while, and that may be at least one of the reasons why, is because they had to make the sacrifice. A lamb was required, but if you can't afford it, you can use a dove. Page 3.

So the sacrifices required by the Law of Moses never really dealt with sin. Sacrificing and sacrificing and sacrificing. How many years do you keep doing Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement? You keep doing it, right? It never stops, because the sacrifices never get it done. The sacrifice is pointed to the ultimate sacrifice offered by God Himself, God's Lamb. And I think as you look at these, that's what the sacrifices do. They're pointing devices. The sacrifices are pointing devices.

Isaiah 52.13 to 53.12 prophesies about Christ being crucified for our sins, buried and raised. And by the way, another really good chapter to look at that talks about the crucifixion is Psalm 22. That's a heavily prophetic psalm. So, Isaiah 53, who has believed our message? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? And by the way, how are you saved? You believe the message, right?

And so then he says, for he grew up before him like a tender shoot, like a root out of parched ground. He has no stately form or majesty that we should look upon him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to him. He was despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And like one from whom men hide their face, he was despised and we did not esteem him. Surely our griefs he himself bore, and our sorrows he carried.

Yet we ourselves esteemed him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was pierced through for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The chastening of our well-being fell upon him, and by his scourging we are healed. All of us, like sheep, have gone astray, and each of us has turned to his own way. But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on him. So verse 7, I bolded here. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before it shears, so he did not open his mouth. I experienced this myself.

I was helping a neighbor who had quite a number of sheep. You have to go through and do various things with sheep to keep them healthy and keep track of them and all that. corralled all the sheep into the barn and it's the weirdest thing they'd get up in a corner and have this conveyor belt of sheep and they'd climb to the top of the heap and then they would sink down and then they'd back out because that was awfully uncomfortable and then they'd get up and it was just this conveyor belt just going up and down and bleating and making a huge racket but then we'd pick one of them We pick one of them and then do our various cropping the tail and cropping the ears and marking them and putting medicine on different things.

And all the while, as soon as you grab them, they're just quiet. And then also in the shearing, they just quiet right down. It's amazing. They'll make lots of racket and you grab them and do something with them and they quiet right down. Even if all the rest of them are screaming.

So, by oppression and judgment, he was taken away, and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, and yet he was with a rich man in his death, because he had done no violence. By the way, who is the rich man?

Joseph of Arimathea, a fresh grave. And by the way, Jesus was given a king's burial. Having a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes and wrappings was phenomenal. Only royalty got that kind of a burial. So a rich man in his death, because he had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in his mouth.

But the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief, If he would render himself a guilt offering, he will see his offspring, he will prolong his days, the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper his hand. Now wait a minute, I thought he was dead. What is this talking about? He will prolong his days? This is resurrection.

As a result of the anguish of his soul, he will see it and be satisfied. By his knowledge, the righteous one, my servant, will justify the many, as he will bear their iniquities. Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he will divide the booty with the strong, because he poured out himself to death and was numbered with the transgressors. Yet he himself bore the sin of many and interceded for the transgressors.

So Isaiah 53.7 is quoted in Acts 8.32 where Philip is talking to the Ethiopian eunuch who was holding the scroll of Isaiah. Paul wrote to the believers in Corinth that Christ was our Passover lamb.

This is 1 Corinthians 5.7, for Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. And then verse 9, you said the rich man was Joseph of Arimathea? Yes.

Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were two men who were believers in Christ, but were a part of the Sanhedrin, but they had to be quiet about it because any attempts to try to defend Christ was met with severe opposition. So they were secret believers, but they went and got the body of Christ by permission and gave Jesus a king's burial. So here he was, he died as a criminal, which was only for the worst of the worst, the scum of the earth. He died as a criminal, but was given a king's burial.

An astounding 100 pounds of wrappings and aloes, and especially, and very expensive, the spices, the myrrh that they put on there. So on the top of page 4 we have 1 Peter 1 17-19 If you address his father, the one who impartially judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay on earth, knowing that you are not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your feudal way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ."

So this is this unblemished lamb, right? The blood of Christ. the blood that was applied on each side of the door to the top, that made a cross. Only in John's writings is Christ called the Lamb. So, here is 1 John 129, the next day he, that is John the Baptist, saw Jesus coming to him and said, Behold the Lamb, and this is a lamb up to a year old. So there's an older Lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Now, let's talk about takes away. Does He make everybody's sin just go away?

Is that what that means? This word for takes away, it's important to understand something. It means to lift up. He lifts up the sins of the whole world and what does He do with it? He puts it on Himself. That's the other half. So when it says He takes away the sin of the world, it doesn't mean He just makes it go away. It means He takes it up off of everybody's shoulders and puts it on His own. So it's the first half. So it takes away, it doesn't mean it disappears. It means He takes it up to put it on Himself. And we'll see that, by the way, further on in Hebrews. So then we have in John 1, 35-36, just a few verses later. In fact, it should be John, it scraps out the dash 36, should be just 35.

Again the next day, John was standing with two of his disciples, and verse 36 there, he looked at Jesus and he walked and said, Behold the Lamb, and this is again, he uses the same word, up to a year old, the Lamb of God, God's Lamb. And then Revelation 5, 6, which begins the first in a long series, and I saw between the throne with the four living creatures and the elders a lamb, a lamb, a little lamb up to a few weeks old.

And throughout the book of Revelation, Christ is the lamb up to a few weeks old. A tiny lamb, one that's just barely got its legs. I've seen them, you know, they just, they get out and they're stumbling around and almost look clumsy. So that's the word that's used for Christ the Lamb throughout Revelation. From chapter 5 here, and I have the list, all the way into chapter 22, the very last chapter, in the new heavens and new earth. Christ is the little tiny lamb. But then when you see the other thing, the marriage supper of the little tiny lamb. The lamb who has a five foot long, see there's two words for sword. There's the machaira, which is the short sword.

This is what the Roman soldiers would use. This is what Peter basically got out when he was ready to start fighting there in the Garden of Gethsemane. And then there's the long sword that was a barbarian battle sword, and it was also used by the Roman cavalry.

Big, five foot long sword. That's the word that's used for the sword that comes out of Christ's mouth. is a huge, long, five foot long, heavy sword. So here you have a tiny, tiny lamb with a five foot long sword. The word picture, if we try to take it literally, is kind of stunning. But then we start to see, as we taught, and some of you may remember, as we taught in Revelation, intensive this last summer, that the book of Revelation is Jewish symbolism, it's not what it looks like, it's what it means. So instead of thinking about this tiny, tiny lamb with a five foot long barbarian battle sword coming out of its mouth, think of, okay, what does that mean?

Here is Christ who offered himself, made himself deliberately weak for us, and gave himself who has immense power of judgment. Could it also be a picture that he's the firstfruits? The firstfruits, what do you mean? Well, it talks about Christ being the firstfruit.

Oh, yes. So that would be kind of a picture, being small and tiny would be kind of like the first presentation of the firstfruit, so to speak. That might be. I'll give that some thought. Okay, so here is in Revelation, this little lamb, a few weeks old, standing as if slain. Isn't that something? Standing but as if slain. How do you do that?

By itself, the word picture, you try to put it together, it's like, whoa. So here's this little tiny lamb, standing as if slain, and You also see descriptions of this little tiny lamb, who is also the Lion of Judah, and also has this five foot long barbarian battle sword. So the word pictures, if we try to put it together in sort of a Greek mindset, where how does this look, it's kind of stunning and puzzling. But when we say, OK, what do these things mean, then it makes sense, which is the Jewish way of looking at symbols.

Standing as if slain, having seen seven horns, and seven eyes. What's the number seven mean? Perfection or totality, completeness. And a horn is what? Power. It's power and strength that comes out of the Old Testament repeatedly. And then how about the seven eyes, what's that talking about? Complete seeing. It has complete insight and vision, right? Complete and total insight and vision. So if you look at the physical description and try to picture it, it looks ridiculous. But when you look at it with the understanding that Jewish symbolism is what does it mean, not what does it look like, then it makes good sense.

Even the seven spirits of God, you say, wait a minute, I thought there was just one Holy Spirit. It's the seven-fold Holy Spirit, and the way it makes sense is with a menorah. And that reference is something we won't get into, but that's from Isaiah. So, unlike the sacrifices of Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the Law of Moses, the sacrifice of God's Lamb is fully effective, final, and once for all. You don't do it year after year after year after year, and another guy does it, and another guy does it, because they keep dying.

John 19.30, therefore when Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, it is finished, actually in the Greek, one word. He said, Tetelestai! It's all paid, right? It's all paid, and it's in the perfect tense, so it was with permanent effectiveness. It's all completely paid with permanent effectiveness.

And he bowed his head and gave up his spirit. Romans 6.10 says, for the death he died, he died in relationship to, and this is the sin nature, the sin nature. Once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.

Hebrews 7.27, Jesus who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this he did once for all when he offered up himself. When He offered up Himself, what role was that? See, the Romans thought, you know, I'm just going to nail this guy because he's gotten a crucifixion sentence, and they thought they were just doing their job, right? But what role did Christ have when He offered up Himself? Intercessor. He was the High Priest. He was the High Priest and the Lamb. He was the High Priest and the Lamb.

Yes. You said he died in relationship to sin. You said that was sin nature, right? Yes. In Romans, from Romans chapter 5 starting with verse 12 on into chapter 7, it's the sin. And the reason I say it's the sin nature is because as you look at the context, the sin has an inclination to think and act in a specific way. And that specific way is described in that context. So that's why I carry it across when we studied through Romans 5-8. I carry it across as the sin nature and not just the sin.

Because it has a nature. A nature is an inclination to think and to act. Let me give you an example. You would be very surprised if you heard this twittering and chirping. and you looked up in the tree and it was a crocodile up there jumping around and twittering and chirping, right? Why don't crocodiles do that? It's not their nature, okay? Their inclination to think and to act is not that way.

So the sin nature, we use the word nature, even though the Greek has explicitly the sin, because of the context, it says there's an inclination to think and to act, and Romans 5 through 7 describes what that inclination is. Described, and it's multiple.

Romans 6.23 is not the wages of sinning is death. It's the wages that the sin nature pays. So that's one of the things that the sin nature does. It's inclined to pay a wage. Yes. So then is Romans 1 and 2 the acting out of the sin nature? What you have up to that point is sins.

Starting at Romans 5.12 it breaks out into the sin and gives you the inclination of the sin to act and to think and therefore that gives you the sin nature, right? So then the death actually took the power away from the sin nature, right? That's right, because previous to that, as an unbeliever, the sin nature is enthroned. It calls the shots flat out. Once you become a believer, the sin nature does not go away, but the sin nature is now dethroned.

Some of you may remember the Philippine dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, or Idi Amin in Uganda. They both got dethroned. And they were other places around the world. And they could make noise and holler and scream and yell, but they had no right to the throne.

That's the position we are as believers. The sin nature can holler and scream and pull us around and say, hey, remember me? And do all kinds of things. But the sin nature has no right to the throne. So that's the significance. And it's important that Christians don't forget that. There are Christians who teach that we don't have a sin nature as a believer, and that's a mistake.

And the reason is because then you don't have a good biblical valid reason as to why a believer sins. And that's a problem. Because then you come up with, oh, it must be Satan's fault. I've got to go find Satan. Or you think, you know, it must be I just have bad habits. I need counseling. And the reality is, Romans 6 tells you what to do with the sin nature. But if you don't believe you have one, you can't do anything about it.

So, let's take a look at Hebrews 9.12, And not through the blood of goats and calves, but through his own blood he entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption.

Hebrews 10.10, by this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And by the way, that have been sanctified, perfect tense, it's done. Here's the Apostle Paul, he's right into this church that is really messed up. He's going to tell them in chapter 3, you guys are fleshly. You guys are really, really in trouble. But guess what? He starts off before he says anything. In the first few verses of chapter one, he says, you have been sanctified. Perfect tense.

Our position in Christ is we've been made fully and completely holy. The issue always lies with our condition. But Christ's work of sanctifying us is already done. It's one reason why I like to put it this way. We become a believer, God does a whole bunch of things to us in our position, and we spend the rest of our lives running to catch up to what He's already done. We spend the rest of our lives running to catch up with what He's already done. And that's learning about it, it's growing into it. But He's already done everything that needs to be done. It's all complete. It's all complete.

That's why sometimes I'll say, don't do something, stand there! Right? Don't just do something, stand there. I can't remember where in John when we were studying, but when I looked it up, it's either the word faith or a version of that word that meant to take hold of. So all these things have been done, right? But we are supposed to appropriate them, or we're supposed to take hold of them, or we're supposed to receive them, right?

Because he died for the world. Here's what Paul writes to the Philippians. He says, work out your own salvation. Does that mean work for? No, it doesn't mean work for your salvation. It means work out the salvation that's already been accomplished. So what are we doing We've already had all the salvation we need here on this planet, right? And so it's the working out of it, our understanding what that means, and our living by faith in what He's already done. That's the working out of our salvation. Not working for anything, but it's first learning about what has God already done in us, What has He already done for us?

And we'll be looking at this morning again. We have position and we have possessions because of our position. In Christ we have redemption. So in Christ is our position, we have is our possession. See the difference there? We have possessions because of our position. We have possessions because of our position.

Okay, so here is 1 Peter 3.18, for Christ also died for sins once for all. Here's that once for all word again, hapax. He died for sins, once for all, that just for the unjust, Christ who is just, declared righteous, for the unjust, us, so that he might bring us to God. This word bring is a word that means a royal introduction. A royal introduction. We've explained in the main service this.

In biblical times, and it's true even now, you could not just run into the king's throne room and say, Hey, King, you old buddy, old boy. What's going to happen to you? Go do that. You're going to get run through and cut to pieces and all sorts of things if you just start running in there like that.

What you had to do was go to the royal introducer and talk to him, and if he thought that you had good standing and a good reason to go before the king, he would introduce you. But you're not getting into that room alive, and you're not getting out of that room alive, unless you have the royal introducer introduce you.

That's this word right here. That he might bring us to God is, this is the royal introducer, Christ, He takes you to the Father and says, hey, here is Vern, and I died for his sins, and it's okay for him to be here because of that. He has my righteousness. So that's what this word means here.

Bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit. So when Christ died on the cross, was that the end of Him? No, his body died, and that was wrapped and put in the tomb. But spiritually, he was still alive. And let's ask this question, when he died, did he go to hell? Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. He said to the thief on the cross, around noontime, today you'll be with me where? In paradise. Today you'll be with me in paradise. Christ did not die and go to hell.

So Christ, the long-promised, greatly anticipated by word and symbol, Lamb of God, was given because while we were yet sinners, God loved us and gave Him, and He loved us and gave Himself, with the joy set before Him, that we might have relationship and fellowship with Him for eternity. The difference between relationship and fellowship? Relationship is permanent.

Fellowship, as long as we're here on this planet, fellowship is something that is moment by moment. The example that I give from time to time is, suppose here's Randy my son, he will always be my son, I'll always be his dad. That's the relationship. But it's possible that I might do something that really offended him or his family, and he might talk to me over the phone and say, Dad, I love you, but what you did or said was so offensive, we just have to ask you to stay away for a few weeks. That's breaking fellowship. The relationship is still there, right? But the fellowship can be broken, not the relationship.

See the difference? that we might have a relationship with Him, which we always will for eternity, and fellowship with Him, that here on planet Earth, that's my choice whether I have fellowship with Him or not. Is He always ready to have fellowship? Yeah, He's always ready to have fellowship. But from our standpoint, we need to decide to have fellowship with Him. That's a decision on our part. Once we walk through heaven's gates, that will never again be in question. We will always have fellowship and relationship with Him. Right now, we will always have relationship with Him.

Fellowship is moment by moment. By the way, if I get out of fellowship, do I have to wait several weeks? No. How do I restore fellowship with the Lord? Yeah, we say confess, and there's something very important about that word, because we tend to think, oh, I've got to go list my sins. No, the word is homologeo, and it means to agree with God about them. So it doesn't mean sitting there meditating on your sins and feeling really, really bad and going through some big rigmarole.

An analogy I use, Nancy and I used to live in a 12-story apartment building that had a garbage chute. And you just open the door and go, and drop it down. So when Nancy and I came to a point where it was time to take the garbage out, we didn't take the garbage out and lay it out on the table and say, hey, remember this eggshell? This is kind of cool. And this little butter wrapper over here, and this little bottle here.

We didn't do that, did we? We just said, hey, this is garbage, right? Ready to go out? Yep. Put it in the chute and on with life. We didn't sit there and meditate on it. It's simply a matter of, is this garbage? Yeah, okay, good. We're good to go. It's not a matter of sitting there meditating on our sins and listing them all. We don't need to do that. It's do you agree with God that this is garbage? That's all it is. It's that simple. Lord, this is garbage. I want to walk with you. I want to walk with you, not meditating on the trash. So we can return to fellowship in an instant.

He says we are righteous and Christ is righteous. Yeah, yeah. We have this reason to live. Yep. You make a big long list of that. Yeah. Think on those things. Yeah, here is Christ who says from the cross, to tell us to die, it's all paid. Do you believe it? Do you believe He paid for all those? Yep, okay.

Then I don't have to pay for it. I don't have to pay for it, I simply have to believe His payment for it, and agree with God, and back into fellowship. It's that simple. It's not a matter of, you know, I've got to feel really bad, I've got to wait three weeks, you know, I've got to wait until I feel clean again, or something. It is right that instant. Do I agree with God this is garbage? Yep. And turn to Him in fellowship. Wrecking yourself dead to that sin nature and alive to God. Okay, thoughts, questions, inspirations?

Well, what we have here is the theme is the Lamb. The reality is that we have other pictures of Christ in the Old Testament. One of them, the Apostle Paul, we went through 1 Corinthians 9 and 10 and Christ was the Passover, 1 Corinthians 5. He was also the rock. So there are other representations. Here's another one. Remember Moses had a cross and what did he have on the cross?

There was the serpent on the cross and from the serpent illness that the people got, they could be healed if they would simply look upon that. So there are other pictures aside from just explicitly the lamb. But it's one that's pretty consistent from the early chapters of Genesis on into the last chapter where Christ is the Lamb.

So it's a very consistent theme and well worth our taking a look at. And I touched on it because the Gospel of John first chapter starts with it twice. But there are other pictures of Christ and it's important for us to take a look at that. One of them, as a matter of fact, I didn't even touch on it. Let me do that first page.

The angel of the Lord is one, and I hear why the angel of the Lord is not the same as an angel of the Lord. An angel of the Lord appeared to Mary, that was Gabriel. But the angel of the Lord speaks as God, doing things that God does. We give some examples there in Genesis, Exodus, Judges, etc. As in the account with Hagar, many who see the angel of the Lord say that they have seen God. And then finally, since the appearances of the angel of the Lord, that is the angel of the Lord, end at Christ's birth, we take him to be the Son of God. So the angel of the Lord is deity, not just an angel, but since that completely disappears once Christ is born, and we take the angel of the Lord to be the Son of God.

Yeah, Roy? Or using your earlier statement, angel is a picture, behind it is a meaning. Meaning is messenger, right? Yes, yeah. Can you think of what are other things that are used as a picture of Christ? Christ himself used them in John, right? What are some of those things?

The door. He's the door. He's the bread. The vine. I'm the vine. Anything else? The Amen. A shepherd. Isn't it interesting that he's both the lamb and the shepherd? Both the lamb and the shepherd. So that shepherd picture, he says, I'm the good shepherd, but that shepherd picture is what God uses in the Old Testament. Psalm 23 is, the Lord is my shepherd.

And that's not the only place. So amazingly, there are a number of different pictures, just to kind of address Morgan's question a little bit more. There are a number of different pictures used in the Bible. There's an invitation in the last chapter of Revelation. People are invited to come and drink of the waters. Drink of the waters without cost. That means grace. So water, the rock.

A number of different symbols or pictures of Christ are brought out in the Bible in different places. Jesus is in the temple and he hollers out so everybody can hear. The temple courtyard is six football fields in size. He hollers out, if anybody is thirsty, come and follow me. Come and drink. If anybody is thirsty, come and drink. So he pictures himself as water, the living water. Okay, let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for this marvelous and really quite consistent symbol in scripture of Christ as the Lamb, and also for all the other symbols and what they marvelously portray. And that is with immense grace made available to us. And Lord, we thank you for that. We thank you for the things that you've revealed here because you love us so very much. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.