June 3, 2026 • 42 mins
Isaac asks a question on a mountain that still hits like a punch: “Where is the lamb?” Pastor Ryan and Pastor Tim follow that question through the entire storyline of the Bible until it finally gets answered in John 1:29, when John the Baptist points at Jesus and says, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Not a vague symbol. Not a religious nickname. A claim that the whole thread of Scripture has been pointing to one substitute.
Along the way, we talk honestly about why sacrifice shows up in virtually every ancient culture and why that matters for understanding biblical sacrifice, sin, and guilt. Then we trace the Lamb theme from Genesis (covering in Eden) to Abraham on Moriah (God provides the substitute) to the Passover lamb in Exodus (blood applied, judgment passing over) to the daily offerings that never seem to be “enough” until Isaiah 53 paints a stunning portrait of a coming Servant “like a lamb led to the slaughter.” This is substitutionary atonement explained through the Bible’s own story.
We also take it all the way to Revelation, where the risen Jesus is still called the Lamb on the throne, scars included. That flips our instincts: the Lamb looks weak, yet Jesus lays His life down by choice, and His wounds become the eternal proof of love. Then we make it practical with one question you can carry into every conflict and crisis: “Where’s the Lamb in this?”
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(00:08):
Welcome and thanks for joiningus on this episode of the
Midweek Podcast, brought to youby a Fresh Wind Church.
Each week, our team brings younew content to help you take
steps towards Jesus and discovermore in Christ.
Today's episode is hosted byPastor Ryan.
Hey, welcome back to the MidweekPodcast.
(00:29):
Pastor Ryan joined as alwayswith Pastor Tim, and we are in
week three of our sermon series,Signs and Glory, where we're
walking through uh the gospel ofJohn.
And uh man, having a great timeuh going through this series.
I told everybody in church onSunday, make sure you tune into
the Midweek Podcast because uhwe're gonna try to dive into all
(00:50):
the stuff we don't get a chanceto cover in the sermon today, is
no exception to that.
Uh this week we're in Johnchapter one.
Uh you know, Tim, uh I think Igave you 18 verses in week one
or week two, I took 19 through51.
So and I still got done almoston time.
(01:11):
I I probably went a littlelonger than you did.
But uh, when John uh the Baptistsees Jesus walking up, um, he
could have called him a lot ofthings, could have called him
prophet, rabbi, son of God, sonof man, the king of Israel.
Um, all of those would have beenright.
They they they all would havebeen true, but he chose one.
He called him the Lamb of God.
(01:34):
And so in uh the sermon, I Idove into that very surface
level.
Um, but on the podcast today, Iwant to I want to dive a little
bit deeper into that becauseevery book of the Bible, from
Genesis to Revelation, followsthat same thread, this this lamb
that shows up in the garden andgoes all the way to to the book
of Revelation.
(01:54):
So I want to kind of trace thatthread across those uh across
scripture until why the lamb umis such a big deal.
And so John 1 29, uh John theBaptist looks out and he says,
Look, the Lamb of God who takesaway or who picks up and carries
off the sin of the world.
(02:14):
And so uh let's dive into tothis uh idea about this lamb
today.
Sometime around 2000 BC, an oldman named Abraham was climbing a
mountain.
It was in the land of Moriah,and he had his only son with
him.
On his shoulder was a bundle ofwood for a sacrifice, and in his
(02:37):
belt was a knife, and in hishead was the burning question of
his life.
Was God really gonna make him dothis?
Halfway up the mountain, Isaacasked his father a question that
uh hits the Bible like a meteor.
Um He says, The fire and woodare here, but where is the lamb
(03:03):
for the burnt offering?
Where is the lamb?
Abraham answered him with one ofthe most prophetic sentences in
the Old Testament, though hedidn't know it was prophetic at
the time.
He said, God Himself willprovide the Lamb.
The Bible spends the next 2,000years answering that question,
(03:25):
where is the Lamb?
And the answer doesn't show upuntil John 129.
When a wilderness prophet namedJohn the Baptist steps in stops
in his tracks and points to aman walking toward him through
the dust of the Jordan Valleyand says four words that change
history.
(03:45):
Behold the Lamb of God.
The Lamb.
Not prophet, not king, notMessiah, not teacher.
Like I said earlier, all thosewould have been true.
We could have said any of thoseabout Jesus, and and John
wouldn't have been wrong.
But John reaches deeper and hepicks this one title that the
(04:06):
man it runs uh all the waythrough scripture and he hangs
hangs it on this one word forJesus as he's walking towards
him, the Lamb of God.
That's such a you know, just uhputting together this podcast
and and seeing how it all comestogether, it's something that we
(04:28):
forget because we read the Biblein snippets, you know.
Uh read a psalm here, read thisthere, but the entire Bible
follows this thread, like yousaid, the Lamb.
The Lamb.
You know, uh every ancientculture sacrificed something,
and a lot of people will say,What is this big thing about
(04:50):
sacrifice in the Bible?
It's not just in the Bible.
Uh you go to uh any ancientculture, anything they wrote
down, they all had sacrifices.
And uh we think, isn't thatprimitive?
Don't you think God would havewent in a different direction?
And it's something that you'veheard a lot of people talk
about, right?
(05:10):
Like, well, why did we need asacrifice?
What was the whole point inthis?
Well they weren't the only ones,let's put it that way.
The ancient Egyptians, theysacrificed bulls, the
Babylonians offered grain, oil,and sheep and oxen to Marduk.
The Greeks burned animals on thealtar to Apollo and Zeus, and
(05:32):
the Romans had their ownsacrificial cults.
Um the Ninevehes, uh, evenSolomon was accused of
sacrificing people.
Uh the Bible doesn't say he did.
I'm praying that he didn't, butuh at the advice of his nine
hundred wives and concubines, hehad put up new altars to
(05:56):
different gods, and some ofthose gods were like Melech, the
detestable god of the Ammonites,who demanded um a child.
And even the Canaanites, umbefore the sins of the Ammonites
had come in, as God had had putit, um they were sacrificing
(06:20):
their children.
They would put 'em in jars andbury them outside in front of
their house so that they wouldbe blessed.
Um then the Aztecs, we know herein in in North America or
Americas that they weresacrificing human beings to the
gods twenty thousand at a timesometimes.
(06:41):
And uh even up until the timewhen the first European contact
with uh Papua New Guinea, theywere sacrificing pigs.
Uh so it didn't stop until then.
Now we wonder why.
What is what is the reason why?
Well, there was a Catholicanthropologist named Renal
(07:04):
Girard, and uh he spent hiscareer studying this, and his
conclusion is this whether youbelieve him or not.
Human beings carry an unbearableawareness that something is
wrong with us between us andbetween us and whatever higher
power there is.
(07:25):
We feel the weight of guilt andthe threat of judgment.
And sacrifice is the universalattempt to say to say it without
saying it, I deserve death.
Let this Lamb take it for me.
Now, he's Catholic, so that thatlittle statement he just made
(07:46):
there is phrased in a way thatfits right into our doctrinal
statement.
Um we're sinners in need of asavior.
Yeah.
Uh we're we're in need of asacrifice.
It's interesting though, becauseit's not just the Jews doing
this, right?
Right or every every differenttribe, you know, all these
(08:07):
different nations, they're allinvolved in this.
Uh there's sacrifice all across.
We've we've got to do somethingto appease the gods.
And so one after another,whether it's a lamb, whether
it's a bull, um, grain, orsometimes even children, um,
they're all being offered.
(08:28):
And you know, God uh was verymeticulous when he gave the law
to uh the Israelites.
This is way, way, way afterAbraham, um, about six, seven
hundred years after Abraham,that we get the Exodus and God
gives him the law.
And what God was doing there, hewas showing the people he was
(08:54):
showing Abraham in the beginningthat I'm not like it.
And that's this is not the onlything he was saying, but he was
saying to Abraham, look, I amnot like all these other gods.
This insatiable altar.
You know, if you think about it,you sacrifice something on the
(09:15):
altar and you had a good crop.
And then so the next year you'rethinking, I'll sacrifice the
same thing, but your wife says,We should probably sacrifice a
little more just in just just sohe knows that we're grateful.
And then a little more, and thena little more, and then a kid,
and then what?
(09:36):
What are we doing here?
Right.
Uh it's insatiable.
But when God laid out the the umlaw on on how to be right with
me, he said, You don't have toworry about everybody else, you
don't have to worry about whatthe altar's claiming they want.
I will never change my mind.
(09:57):
Give me a lamb in the morning,you give me a lamb at night, and
we're good.
And uh so one of the things hewas telling Abraham at that
time, I am not like all theseother gods, I will sacrifice for
you, I'll provide the sacrifice.
I remember you preached a sermonum it was probably a couple
(10:18):
years ago, but on on thatpassage of scripture, and one of
the things you brought out inthat was you know, God's asking
Abraham to come and sacrificehis son Isaac.
And so Isaac, or Abraham takesIsaac and starts walking up
Mount Moriah.
And when Isaac asked thatquestion, where's the lamb?
(10:38):
And Abraham looks at him andsays, The Lord will provide.
But Abraham believed God wasable to do something because
(11:01):
Isaac was the son of promise.
And so Abraham went as far as totake the knife and lift it over
his head, preparing to sacrificehis son, and the Lord steps in,
and one of the things you saidwas, God in that moment is
proving what you're saying here.
I'll never ask for this.
Right.
I'm not like those other ones.
(11:21):
That's a great point.
And he provides in that moment asubstitution.
There's the ram who's caught inthe thicket, and Abraham gets to
offer that as a sacrifice inplace of his son.
And so God in that moment doestwo things.
He provides a substitute andthen also says, I'm not like
these other gods.
(11:42):
You're not gonna have to wonderwith me what I want.
And then, like you're saying, inthe law, he just lays it out.
Here, here's what it is.
If you do this, this is whatwhat's required.
You don't have to do more nextyear.
You I'm not, I'm not gonnachange my mind.
You don't you don't have tobring something different to try
to you know get a better result?
No, it's this and this, and it'salways gonna be that way.
(12:05):
And you can know how to be rightwith me, and you can trust.
Yeah.
Man, that's a a heavy, a heavyburden on a God who changes his
mind all the time.
How do I trust you?
And at the end, when I've doneeverything right, will you
change your mind then?
And uh, so I love it how Goddoes that.
(12:26):
You know, the Bible is um it'snot random in its themes, you
know, it's it's not a it justyou know, a book of the Bible
here, a book of the Bible there.
Even in Ruth, um you guys werepreaching on it on uh Mother's
Day.
Even in Ruth, it's it's aboutbeing redeemed.
(12:50):
Right.
And uh so the Bible is about onething from Genesis to
Revelation.
It is one story, and it is astory about a lamb.
Track the lamb, and you havetracked the gospel from the
beginning of creation till theend of time.
And I you you I'm gonna leave itup to you.
(13:13):
You need to talk about thatfirst lamb that was.
Yeah, it starts right rightthere in the very beginning,
right?
In the Garden of Eden after umAdam and Eve sin.
What's the very first thing thathappens?
Is God has to they go intohiding, God comes down, you
know.
Adam, where are you?
And Adam says, Here I am, but Iwe were naked, so I hid because
(13:34):
I was afraid.
And what does God have to do?
He has to provide clothing forthem, and so a sacrifice is made
so that he can provide um skinsfor for Adam and Eve, Eve to
clothe them, and an animal hadto die for those very first
sinners to be covered.
Um, and then we just we starttracking this sacrifice that
(13:57):
covers sin throughout history.
So we just talked about Moriah,uh, where God provides a lamb in
place of Abraham having tosacrifice his son Isaac.
Um, and so Abraham just namesthe place right there.
He said he called the Lord WillProvide.
Right.
Um, and like we said, we didn'tknow exactly what that would
(14:18):
look like.
Abraham wasn't sure either, buthe believed that God would do
something.
And uh 2,000 years later on ahill not far from Riah, God did.
Um and then you go to Egypt, andI talked about this a little bit
in my sermon on Sunday, but youknow, God is trying to bring uh
the nation of Israel out ofEgypt.
They've been slaves there forhundreds of years, and over and
(14:39):
over, Moses goes to Pharaoh andsays, Let my people go.
Moses' like, no, I'm not doingit.
And so finally it gets to thepoint where God says, Okay, if
if you're not gonna, if you'regonna not gonna do this, your
heart is gonna be hardenedtowards me, it's gonna cost, and
it's gonna cost the firstbornson of everyone in Egypt, um,
including Pharaoh.
(15:00):
And the only way that theIsraelites were protected from
that is they had to take a lamb,sacrifice it, and take the blood
of the lamb and put it over thedoorpost of their house.
Um, and this lamb was veryspecific, right?
It had to be a lamb withoutblemish, meaning it had to be
perfect.
Uh, it had to be slaughtered,meaning you couldn't just, you
(15:20):
know, give it a little cut.
You had to slaughter the lamb.
It was a substitute had to die,and then the blood had to be
applied.
Um, knowledge about what wasgoing on was enough.
You had to actually put theblood on your house.
Yeah.
And when that happened, when thedeath angel came that night, he
would pass over uh theIsraelites' houses because there
(15:41):
was a substitute.
Blood was on the doorpost oftheir home.
And so every Jewish family forthe next 1500 years would relive
that Passover meal once a year,every year.
Um, it's something that we'veeven uh, you know, uh Dave and
Nancy have let us through thisthe Seder dinner, that Passover
meal, what they would have umwent through that night.
I love, I I love you can alreadyfeel where Jesus comes in.
(16:05):
You know, there's thesesacrifices happening that has to
do with your relationship withGod.
And um and now um we're we'reseeing this sacrifice and the
substitutionary sacrifice ofJesus already, and we haven't
even we haven't even got toExodus, we haven't even got the
(16:27):
law yet.
Right.
Well, and very specific, right?
I mean, even as he's laying itout, lamb without blemish, well,
we know Jesus is the perfectspotless Lamb of God.
Uh he had to be slaughtered, andJesus hung and crucified on that
Roman cross.
The blood had to be applied.
Yeah, all these things.
Uh it's very specific, andyou're seeing these hints of
(16:50):
what is to come.
And then you get to thewilderness tabernacle.
Uh, you you mentioned thisearlier, but um, every single
day, two unblemished year-oldmale lambs had to be offered as
a regular burnt offering, one inthe morning, one at night.
And I and imagine that everyyear or every day of every year
(17:10):
this had to be done.
For 1,500 years, roughly onemillion lambs slaughtered,
burned, their blood splashed onthe altar.
And it was never enough.
You used the word earlier,insatiable.
It felt that way.
It's never enough.
And the truth is, it was nevergonna fix the problem, right?
(17:31):
Mankind was gonna go on sinning,and so that meant more
sacrifices had to be made.
If we could just stop sinning,you know, maybe, maybe all these
lambs wouldn't have to die, butwe couldn't.
We can't.
We're slaves to sin, scripturesays.
And so one after another, dayafter day, morning and evening,
a lamb was slaughtered.
(17:52):
And the author of Hebrews justsays it this way.
He's he said it was impossiblefor the blood of bulls and goats
to take away sins.
It was impossible.
It was insatiable.
The system was a placeholder,but it was pointing to something
else.
And what was it pointing to?
Well, the prophet Isaiah tellsus about 700 BC, he writes one
of the most stunning chapters,um, I think in all of scripture.
(18:16):
He's he's describing someone whohasn't even been born yet.
And so he sees this vision andhe writes this He was pierced
because of our rebellion,crushed because of our
iniquities.
Punishment for our peace was onhim, and we are healed by his
wounds.
He says, We all went uh astraylike sheep, and we all have
(18:36):
turned uh to our own way, andthe Lord has punished him for
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted,yet he did not open his mouth
like a lamb, there's that word,led to the slaughter, and like a
sheep silent before his shears,he did not open his mouth.
A lamb pierced, crushed, silent,carrying the iniquity of us all.
(19:00):
And he says it's it's like a aperson, but he's describing it
like a lamb.
And this was 700 years beforeJesus ever shows up on the
scene.
And so you read that, and if youif you didn't know that that was
written in 700 BC, you'd belike, oh, he's talking about
Jesus.
But nobody had ever heard ofJesus then, right?
(19:20):
You know, none of those eventshad happened.
I mean, Roman crucifixion wasn'teven invented at this point.
That's true.
And he's describing all of thesethings 700 years before it
happens, and he sees somethingthat the priests serving in the
temple haven't even quite seenyet, that the Lamb is going to
be a man.
(19:41):
And then you fast forward 700years, and then there's JB, I
called him John the Baptist inthe Jordan Valley, and there's
people all over the place.
He's he's teaching, he'sbaptizing the people, the
religious leaders come out,they're asking them all these
questions.
And then he sees Jesus, hiscousin, Yeshua, walking by, and
(20:02):
every thread that we justtraced, Eden, Moriah, Egypt, uh,
Numbers, Isaiah, it all comesdown here into this one moment.
Behold, the Lamb of God whotakes away the sin of the world.
So John the Baptist had to bepretty studied in his Old
Testament prophets and uh tounderstand who he was uh making
(20:25):
the way for, and and called himby name, the Lamb, the Lamb.
And not a lamb, the Lamb, right?
Not a substitute for one familyor for the the nation of Israel.
He said, This is a substitutefor the whole world.
And he's not this temporaryplaceholder like the uh
sacrificial system in the templewas.
(20:46):
This is one sacrifice for alltime.
The altar is no longerinsatiable.
We don't have to show up dayafter day and offer another
sacrifice.
He was the perfect ultimatesacrifice, the fulfillment of
every lamb that ever bled beforehim was all fulfilled in Jesus.
And so Jesus walks toward thatcross.
(21:07):
He is the Passover lamb, he isthe daily sacrifice fulfilled
forever.
He is the lamb that God himselfprovided, and he is the lamb
that takes away, not covers ordelays or partially atones, he
takes away the sin of the world.
And then we come all the way tothe book of Revelation.
(21:27):
And John, the same John who wasthere with John the Baptist when
he heard John say, Hey, look,behold, or look, the Lamb of
God.
John, the author of that book,is taken up to the throne room
of heaven and he's weepingbecause no one has been found
worthy to open the scroll ofGod's plan.
And then one of the eldersaround the throne says, John,
(21:50):
don't weep, look.
The lion of the tribe of Judah,the root of David, has
triumphed.
And so John looks up and he'sexpecting.
You would expect to see a lion,because that's what the elder
just said.
The lion of the tribe of Judah.
But then in verse 6 ofRevelation chapter 5, it's one
(22:10):
of the most stunning lines.
John looks up and he says, ThenI saw one like a slaughtered
lamb standing in the middle ofthe throne, in heaven, glorified
in the seat of highest authorityafter the resurrection and the
ascension, after everything.
Jesus is still the Lamb.
He still carries the scars.
(22:32):
He's still called by that titlethat he earned at Calvary,
hanging upon the cross, theLamb.
And he has taken away the sin ofthe world.
Twenty-eight times in the bookof Revelation, Jesus is called
the Lamb.
And in heaven, he's notaddressed as teacher or king or
his prophet.
The angels and the redeemed allcall him the Lamb.
(22:52):
Worthy is the Lamb who wasslaughtered to receive power and
riches and wisdom and strengthand honor and glory and
blessing.
This is our God.
This is Jesus forever, the Lambof God.
Sixty-six books written over aperiod of time, fifteen hundred
years.
(23:12):
And uh now since the beginningof it, it's been uh thirty, five
hundred years.
All of it points to one thingforty different author authors
and different time settings, andum all points to Jesus being the
Lamb of God.
It's one thread, it's the gospelof Jesus Christ runs all the way
(23:36):
through the substitutionaryatonement of the death of the
Lamb.
And he's gonna be the Lambforever, and he'll that's a
title that he'll never give up.
And it should it should shockyou that the as I preached um
(23:57):
the uh first chapter that thislamb was the creator God.
He spoke the world intoexistence.
But he will always be this Lamb.
I told I told them that Sundaythat he'll always be a man.
He loved us enough that he wouldbecome a man for the rest of
(24:17):
eternity to be with us.
See, a king who wins a battlecan shed his army when the war
is over, and a general who winsa campaign can hang up his
uniform, and a prophet whodelivers his message can quit.
But Jesus, the conquering Lordof all creation, never sheds the
title Lamb.
(24:40):
Not in glory, not at the righthand of the Father, not at his
second coming, and not ineternity.
Why?
Because the scars he bore on thecross outside Jerusalem are the
marks of the deepest love in theuniverse.
The cross is not Jesus'embarrassment, the cross is his
(25:02):
crown.
And the lambs, the wounds arethe eternal proof that God loves
you, people.
Um even Thomas, when he wouldn'tbelieve in the resurrection and
he spouts off, he didn't know hewas gonna get called to the
test.
He said, I'll have to see hiswounds in his hand and put my
hand in his hand.
(25:22):
Yeah, and put my fingers rightin there.
Yeah.
And Jesus shows up and says, Allright, dude.
Here you go.
Well, I hold on.
I get it, I get it, I see it, Isee it.
No, put him in there.
The lamb title means that youcan never outsend God's grace.
He's the Lamb forever, and thatmeans his grace goes on and on
(25:45):
and on.
Like John said in the firstchapter, he said, Grace upon
grace, grace like on the beachwhen the waves come in.
I loved how you describe it,because you can just picture it,
right?
Just sitting there on the beach,just watching wave after wave
after wave.
That's that's the grace of God.
It just keeps coming in.
It's endless.
It's endless.
(26:08):
You know, I I think it'simportant for us to step outside
of humanity for a minute.
Because we struggle with thisstuff and we look in the Bible.
I know there's a lot of peoplesaying, You guys are just
putting this all together, andit's like, listen, it's not just
us.
It's not just us.
It's the angels.
It's the um rulers and theauthorities and the powers that
(26:34):
run our root uh universe.
They call him the lamb who wasslaughtered.
The lamb on the throne forever.
That's what they call him.
And if I I think that's a prettygood I don't see a lot of
t-shirts about the lamb.
There should be more t-shirtsabout the lamb.
(26:55):
We got we got a lot of t-shirt.
Yeah, we got a lot of we got alot of t-shirts uh about Jesus
being magnificent and all thatkind of stuff.
And he is.
But it's kind of it's it's hardfor us to call him the lamb.
But if he wasn't the lamb, thenyou couldn't have eternal life.
(27:16):
The lamb, it I mean you just pyou picture a lamb and it seems
meek, right?
Um it just doesn't carry thepunchline like the lion of the
tribe of Judah.
You're like, all right, I can Ican get behind a lion, let's do
it.
Yeah.
And then you're like, lamb?
Well, golly, what am I gonna dowith that?
(27:37):
This lamb changed everything.
And I love that, like you said,John must have known.
Uh he must have been pretty wellstudied up because when he sees
the the spirit descend andsettle on Jesus, he knew right
away this is the lamb.
Everything that we've beenlooking forward to, everything
(27:58):
that the Old Testament law, thesacrificial system, all of that
was built on, it's here.
It's it's fulfilled in this man,Jesus, the Lamb of God.
And he's gonna be that wayforever.
There's never gonna be a timewhen he's he's not the Lamb.
(28:19):
And when we get to heaven andand look at him, he's still
there, the Lamb.
And I just I can I'm trying toplace myself in John's shoes
there in Revelation when he, youknow, the the elder comes and
says, Hey, you don't gotta weep,man.
The lion is is conquered.
(28:41):
And he looks up, expecting tosee that roaring lion and sees
the slaughtered lamb.
And the picture just doesn'tlook like what we thought it
would.
Right.
It it it looks so different andyet this is this is what it's
been about, that thread thatgoes all the way back to the
garden when God had to make thatsacrifice to create those that
(29:04):
covering for Adam and Eve andwinds its way all the way
through scripture here to sayhere here he is, the Lamb of
God.
I think one of the problems withour viewership or or the way we
picture this when we think ofthe lamb is that um the lamb is
(29:24):
weak.
And it is weak.
Um you can uh they say you canslaughter fifty lambs and one
right after the other and andthe one at the end of the line
still don't know what's goingon.
Hey, what's going on, guys?
And and that's that tempts mento think, you know, I don't want
(29:48):
that to be me.
But we gotta remember when Jesussaid, Um, nobody takes my life
from me, I lay it down.
And that's something that weneed to get a hold of in our
brains, that Jesus did not haveto do this.
He did not have to save theworld.
(30:08):
He didn't have to, he chose to.
He chose to lay his life down.
Um there's there's no um versein the Bible that talks about he
could have called for support,but um he could have called ten
(30:30):
thousand angels to destroy theworld and set him free.
And I bet that I bet there werelegions and legions of angels in
um sitting in heaven when he wasbeing cruciflogged and
crucified.
How long are we gonna let thisgo on?
(30:50):
Um Matthew 26, 53 says, Do youthink I cannot call on my father
and he would at once put at mydisposal more than twelve
legions of angels?
That was twelve thousand.
But I I remember that song.
He could have called tenthousand angels, but he didn't.
(31:12):
He gave himself up for us.
Not because God made him do it,he had a choice, he proves that
in the garden, right, when he'spraying.
And but this is this is the thetruth about the one you call
King Jesus.
He is the Lamb because he choseto be, he didn't have to be.
(31:35):
Yeah, it looks like weakness,but it's actually strength, you
know.
You said earlier the the crosswasn't embarrassment, it was the
crown.
The whole thing looks upsidedown, man.
Um here he is, the the lamb ofGod.
And I you know, I love John inRevelation.
(31:56):
He's he's talking about the 144,and there's a lot of speculation
on who those 144,000 people are.
Right.
Um, I remember I had a Jehovah'sWitness guy trying to convert me
one day, and I was like, heyman, listen, only 144 are
getting in.
What are you doing?
You guys need to wrap this up.
Stop it.
The ones that are getting in arein, buddy.
(32:19):
Right.
You know what you're doing.
Uh you guys have the wrong uhevangelism strategy here.
I'd make sure I was in, and thatwould be, I'm not telling
nobody.
Right.
I think, you know, again, a lotof speculation.
I think it's just saying thefullness of the 12 apostles, 12
disciples.
Um, you multiply that andmultiply it by a thousand number
(32:40):
of completion, and it's okay,144.
I think he's just sayingeverybody, all those who are in
Christ.
But in Revelation 14, he saysthose ones are the ones he says,
not defiled themselves withwomen since they remain virgins.
These are the ones who followthe Lamb wherever he goes.
They were redeemed from humanityas the first fruits for God and
(33:04):
the Lamb.
Over and over again, allthroughout Revelation, as he's
talking about Jesus, it keepscoming back to this title, Lamb.
And so, as you as you readscripture, I want to encourage
you um trace, trace the lamb.
As you, I think you said itearlier, as you you follow the
lamb, you you follow the gospel,and you can it starts all the
(33:27):
way in Genesis and and goes allthe way through Revelation, and
you just keep following thatlamb, and what you'll find is
the gospel.
God's been hinting towards itfor those thousands of years
leading up to Christ, and thenJesus walks on the scene and
John sees him and says, Here heis.
This is what we've we've beenlooking for.
We got to go back to Isaac'squestion, where is the lamb?
(33:49):
So they where is the lamb allthe way till John chapter two,
right?
Where's the lamb?
And John said, John, JB, Johnthe Baptist said, He's right
there, guys.
He's right there.
Two thousand years later, um, weshould be asking the same
situation.
Every time we get in a situationat work and every circumstance
(34:10):
is where's the lamb in this?
Yeah.
Jesus, what do you want me todo?
Where where are you?
Where where's the lamb in this?
Um we need to be a people who islooking for the Lamb because
He's everywhere on this planet.
He's um sharing his gospel andthe Holy Spirit moves through
(34:32):
us, and we'll be able torecognize the Lamb when we see
it.
And he's promised that.
Uh we'll be in tune, or um we'lltestify with it, as the Bible
puts it.
So uh where is where's the lambin this argument with your wife?
Where is the lamb in thisproblem with your kids?
Where is where's the lamb withum your struggle with your
(34:56):
finances?
Where is he?
Where do I find him in this?
They ask it for thousands ofyears, where's the lamb?
And uh sometimes even asChristians today, we know he's
our savior, but where is he?
Where is he trying to save me inthe situation I'm in right now?
And he's there to do just that.
(35:16):
Where's the lamb?
Isaac, that's that's acatchphrase there.
There's that t-shirt I wastalking about.
Where's the lamb?
Where's the lamb?
Here he is, the lamb of God whopicks up and carries away the
sin of the world.
This is uh it's been fun uhdiving in.
(35:37):
We're only one chapter in intothe book of John.
And last week on the midweekpodcast, we covered seven core
doctrines.
Here we trace seven different uhspots where we see the lamb
showing up throughout history.
I don't know if the numberseven's gonna keep showing up,
but it does make a you know anappearance in scripture.
Don't go weirdo.
(36:00):
But I want to encourage you,keep uh keep showing up on
Sundays, keep tuning in uh todive into these things because I
think it's gonna expand ourappreciation of scripture.
Because we read these things,you know, you said you know,
John the Baptist must have musthave known.
He must have been pretty studieduh to know.
Well, John, the author, to toput this all together the way he
(36:22):
did and weave all these themesin like he does, he smart guy,
man.
You know, and well, if you getthree years with Jesus alone,
you should you should be prettysmart.
At least, at least on spiritualthings, anyways.
And so 40 plus authors, 60 plusbooks, 66 books written over,
(36:44):
you know, 1,500 years indifferent uh parts of the world,
and it's all been pointing toone guy.
Hasn't changed, passed down tous 2,000 years later, and we're
doing the same thing that theydid.
Where is the land?
Right, right.
And so as you you studyscripture this summer, I want to
encourage you um expand youryour thinking.
(37:06):
I was talking with Larry thisweek, and he's like, Man, I just
feel like God is calling us asChristians to to go deeper.
Go deeper this summer as as wewalk through the the gospel of
John, go deeper.
Look for these theseconnections.
And I think you know, there'sthere's also a danger.
We we try to find somethingunder every every rock, every
(37:26):
word, you know, what's thesecret meeting here?
Sometimes the Bible just meanswhat it says.
Jesus said I was hungry.
Oh, what's that?
What does that mean?
You probably wanted some food.
Yeah.
So I'm not I'm not sure.
Number one, now we got to figureout the other six things we
know, right?
Right.
(37:48):
But there are there is thiscall, you know, and and I feel a
little bit like you know, theapostle Paul here, like, let's
let's move on past milk.
Like, let's start chewing on onsome of these deeper things of
God.
Let's let's dive deep.
Um, you know, just right intothe deep end this summer and and
let's just swim around in in allthat God has for us here.
(38:11):
Yeah, I think it's importantthat you do this.
Look, you're not gonna find umthe all these answers that you
want and connect it like youwant, and then be able to put
that in your memory and be ableto pull it out anytime.
God wants you to wrestle withhim and what he's done for you.
He wants you to wrestle with it.
And it's the only way you'llever learn to appreciate it.
(38:34):
And if you push yourself awayfrom the scriptures or the
deeper things of God, you'llnever truly come to appreciate
what the Lamb has done for you.
You end up at this the place, ifyou'll do this, where John the
author was, where he says, I Idon't even need to name myself,
(38:54):
I'm just the one Jesus loved.
And that's enough for me.
And you'll get there.
If all I can say about my lifeis I'm the one he loved, it's
enough.
He did it for me.
All this sacrifice talk and allthis talk about the Lamb, and he
was for me.
I'm the one he loved.
And what a privilege it is to beknown as a friend and a child of
(39:17):
God.
The Lamb who comes and picks upand carries away not just the
sin of the world, he carriesaway your sin, he carries away
my sin.
Some of you will pick this upand put it in your pocket and
love it and pet it, and it'll bethe greatest thing.
But I know there's some of youout there who struggle with who
(39:37):
you were before you're aChristian, what you've done
since you've become a Christian,and you're struggling.
And uh you're wondering ifyou're worthy.
Well, let me answer that for youstraight up.
You're not.
And that's he loved you so muchto become your lamb.
He is your personal lamb whodied for you for the rest of
(40:01):
eternity.
You need to believe it.
I know it's it's tough towrestle with it, but it's okay.
The more you wrestle, the moreyou'll love him.
Well, what did Adam and Eve do?
When they sinned, first thingthat is they try to cover it up,
right?
I gotta hit, hide, and I'm gonnamake these fig leaves.
We're gonna cover it up.
Quit trying to hide it, man.
(40:21):
Just bring it to the Lamb.
He he's the one.
First John uh 1 7 says, Theblood of Jesus his son, or the
blood of the Lamb cleanses usfrom all sin.
Bring it to him.
Over and over and over again.
I know you've prayed about it athousand times.
Bring it to him the thousand andfirst time.
Do it again.
The blood of the lamb's enough.
(40:42):
It's always been enough.
Lord, I pray that the cry of ourheart will be where is the Lamb?
Every situation we findourselves in, where is Jesus in
this?
What's his side?
What's his uh view of what'sgoing on here?
(41:04):
And how would he respond?
Lord, I pray that you'll you'llgive us that desire in our heart
to look for you in everysituation.
At the same time, I'm gonna bethe voice of a fresh win here,
and we're gonna lift up ourpraises, and you are worthy.
(41:29):
You didn't have to do what youdid.
And you're worthy of all ourpraise, all our gratitude.
You're worthy.
Thank you for being you.
In your name I pray.
Amen.
Amen.
(41:50):
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Podcast.
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(42:13):
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Midweek Podcast.
Be blessed and have a greatweek.
Welcome and thanks for joiningus on this episode of the
Midweek Podcast, brought to youby a Fresh Wind Church.
Each week, our team brings younew content to help you take
steps towards Jesus and discovermore in Christ.
Today's episode is hosted byPastor Ryan.
Hey, welcome back to the MidweekPodcast.
(00:29):
Pastor Ryan joined as alwayswith Pastor Tim, and we are in
week three of our sermon series,Signs and Glory, where we're
walking through uh the gospel ofJohn.
And uh man, having a great timeuh going through this series.
I told everybody in church onSunday, make sure you tune into
the Midweek Podcast because uhwe're gonna try to dive into all
(00:50):
the stuff we don't get a chanceto cover in the sermon today, is
no exception to that.
Uh this week we're in Johnchapter one.
Uh you know, Tim, uh I think Igave you 18 verses in week one
or week two, I took 19 through51.
So and I still got done almoston time.
(01:11):
I I probably went a littlelonger than you did.
But uh, when John uh the Baptistsees Jesus walking up, um, he
could have called him a lot ofthings, could have called him
prophet, rabbi, son of God, sonof man, the king of Israel.
Um, all of those would have beenright.
They they they all would havebeen true, but he chose one.
He called him the Lamb of God.
(01:34):
And so in uh the sermon, I Idove into that very surface
level.
Um, but on the podcast today, Iwant to I want to dive a little
bit deeper into that becauseevery book of the Bible, from
Genesis to Revelation, followsthat same thread, this this lamb
that shows up in the garden andgoes all the way to to the book
of Revelation.
(01:54):
So I want to kind of trace thatthread across those uh across
scripture until why the lamb umis such a big deal.
And so John 1 29, uh John theBaptist looks out and he says,
Look, the Lamb of God who takesaway or who picks up and carries
off the sin of the world.
(02:14):
And so uh let's dive into tothis uh idea about this lamb
today.
Sometime around 2000 BC, an oldman named Abraham was climbing a
mountain.
It was in the land of Moriah,and he had his only son with
him.
On his shoulder was a bundle ofwood for a sacrifice, and in his
(02:37):
belt was a knife, and in hishead was the burning question of
his life.
Was God really gonna make him dothis?
Halfway up the mountain, Isaacasked his father a question that
uh hits the Bible like a meteor.
Um He says, The fire and woodare here, but where is the lamb
(03:03):
for the burnt offering?
Where is the lamb?
Abraham answered him with one ofthe most prophetic sentences in
the Old Testament, though hedidn't know it was prophetic at
the time.
He said, God Himself willprovide the Lamb.
The Bible spends the next 2,000years answering that question,
(03:25):
where is the Lamb?
And the answer doesn't show upuntil John 129.
When a wilderness prophet namedJohn the Baptist steps in stops
in his tracks and points to aman walking toward him through
the dust of the Jordan Valleyand says four words that change
history.
(03:45):
Behold the Lamb of God.
The Lamb.
Not prophet, not king, notMessiah, not teacher.
Like I said earlier, all thosewould have been true.
We could have said any of thoseabout Jesus, and and John
wouldn't have been wrong.
But John reaches deeper and hepicks this one title that the
(04:06):
man it runs uh all the waythrough scripture and he hangs
hangs it on this one word forJesus as he's walking towards
him, the Lamb of God.
That's such a you know, just uhputting together this podcast
and and seeing how it all comestogether, it's something that we
(04:28):
forget because we read the Biblein snippets, you know.
Uh read a psalm here, read thisthere, but the entire Bible
follows this thread, like yousaid, the Lamb.
The Lamb.
You know, uh every ancientculture sacrificed something,
and a lot of people will say,What is this big thing about
(04:50):
sacrifice in the Bible?
It's not just in the Bible.
Uh you go to uh any ancientculture, anything they wrote
down, they all had sacrifices.
And uh we think, isn't thatprimitive?
Don't you think God would havewent in a different direction?
And it's something that you'veheard a lot of people talk
about, right?
(05:10):
Like, well, why did we need asacrifice?
What was the whole point inthis?
Well they weren't the only ones,let's put it that way.
The ancient Egyptians, theysacrificed bulls, the
Babylonians offered grain, oil,and sheep and oxen to Marduk.
The Greeks burned animals on thealtar to Apollo and Zeus, and
(05:32):
the Romans had their ownsacrificial cults.
Um the Ninevehes, uh, evenSolomon was accused of
sacrificing people.
Uh the Bible doesn't say he did.
I'm praying that he didn't, butuh at the advice of his nine
hundred wives and concubines, hehad put up new altars to
(05:56):
different gods, and some ofthose gods were like Melech, the
detestable god of the Ammonites,who demanded um a child.
And even the Canaanites, umbefore the sins of the Ammonites
had come in, as God had had putit, um they were sacrificing
(06:20):
their children.
They would put 'em in jars andbury them outside in front of
their house so that they wouldbe blessed.
Um then the Aztecs, we know herein in in North America or
Americas that they weresacrificing human beings to the
gods twenty thousand at a timesometimes.
(06:41):
And uh even up until the timewhen the first European contact
with uh Papua New Guinea, theywere sacrificing pigs.
Uh so it didn't stop until then.
Now we wonder why.
What is what is the reason why?
Well, there was a Catholicanthropologist named Renal
(07:04):
Girard, and uh he spent hiscareer studying this, and his
conclusion is this whether youbelieve him or not.
Human beings carry an unbearableawareness that something is
wrong with us between us andbetween us and whatever higher
power there is.
(07:25):
We feel the weight of guilt andthe threat of judgment.
And sacrifice is the universalattempt to say to say it without
saying it, I deserve death.
Let this Lamb take it for me.
Now, he's Catholic, so that thatlittle statement he just made
(07:46):
there is phrased in a way thatfits right into our doctrinal
statement.
Um we're sinners in need of asavior.
Yeah.
Uh we're we're in need of asacrifice.
It's interesting though, becauseit's not just the Jews doing
this, right?
Right or every every differenttribe, you know, all these
(08:07):
different nations, they're allinvolved in this.
Uh there's sacrifice all across.
We've we've got to do somethingto appease the gods.
And so one after another,whether it's a lamb, whether
it's a bull, um, grain, orsometimes even children, um,
they're all being offered.
(08:28):
And you know, God uh was verymeticulous when he gave the law
to uh the Israelites.
This is way, way, way afterAbraham, um, about six, seven
hundred years after Abraham,that we get the Exodus and God
gives him the law.
And what God was doing there, hewas showing the people he was
(08:54):
showing Abraham in the beginningthat I'm not like it.
And that's this is not the onlything he was saying, but he was
saying to Abraham, look, I amnot like all these other gods.
This insatiable altar.
You know, if you think about it,you sacrifice something on the
(09:15):
altar and you had a good crop.
And then so the next year you'rethinking, I'll sacrifice the
same thing, but your wife says,We should probably sacrifice a
little more just in just just sohe knows that we're grateful.
And then a little more, and thena little more, and then a kid,
and then what?
(09:36):
What are we doing here?
Right.
Uh it's insatiable.
But when God laid out the the umlaw on on how to be right with
me, he said, You don't have toworry about everybody else, you
don't have to worry about whatthe altar's claiming they want.
I will never change my mind.
(09:57):
Give me a lamb in the morning,you give me a lamb at night, and
we're good.
And uh so one of the things hewas telling Abraham at that
time, I am not like all theseother gods, I will sacrifice for
you, I'll provide the sacrifice.
I remember you preached a sermonum it was probably a couple
(10:18):
years ago, but on on thatpassage of scripture, and one of
the things you brought out inthat was you know, God's asking
Abraham to come and sacrificehis son Isaac.
And so Isaac, or Abraham takesIsaac and starts walking up
Mount Moriah.
And when Isaac asked thatquestion, where's the lamb?
(10:38):
And Abraham looks at him andsays, The Lord will provide.
But Abraham believed God wasable to do something because
(11:01):
Isaac was the son of promise.
And so Abraham went as far as totake the knife and lift it over
his head, preparing to sacrificehis son, and the Lord steps in,
and one of the things you saidwas, God in that moment is
proving what you're saying here.
I'll never ask for this.
Right.
I'm not like those other ones.
(11:21):
That's a great point.
And he provides in that moment asubstitution.
There's the ram who's caught inthe thicket, and Abraham gets to
offer that as a sacrifice inplace of his son.
And so God in that moment doestwo things.
He provides a substitute andthen also says, I'm not like
these other gods.
(11:42):
You're not gonna have to wonderwith me what I want.
And then, like you're saying, inthe law, he just lays it out.
Here, here's what it is.
If you do this, this is whatwhat's required.
You don't have to do more nextyear.
You I'm not, I'm not gonnachange my mind.
You don't you don't have tobring something different to try
to you know get a better result?
No, it's this and this, and it'salways gonna be that way.
(12:05):
And you can know how to be rightwith me, and you can trust.
Yeah.
Man, that's a a heavy, a heavyburden on a God who changes his
mind all the time.
How do I trust you?
And at the end, when I've doneeverything right, will you
change your mind then?
And uh, so I love it how Goddoes that.
(12:26):
You know, the Bible is um it'snot random in its themes, you
know, it's it's not a it justyou know, a book of the Bible
here, a book of the Bible there.
Even in Ruth, um you guys werepreaching on it on uh Mother's
Day.
Even in Ruth, it's it's aboutbeing redeemed.
(12:50):
Right.
And uh so the Bible is about onething from Genesis to
Revelation.
It is one story, and it is astory about a lamb.
Track the lamb, and you havetracked the gospel from the
beginning of creation till theend of time.
And I you you I'm gonna leave itup to you.
(13:13):
You need to talk about thatfirst lamb that was.
Yeah, it starts right rightthere in the very beginning,
right?
In the Garden of Eden after umAdam and Eve sin.
What's the very first thing thathappens?
Is God has to they go intohiding, God comes down, you
know.
Adam, where are you?
And Adam says, Here I am, but Iwe were naked, so I hid because
(13:34):
I was afraid.
And what does God have to do?
He has to provide clothing forthem, and so a sacrifice is made
so that he can provide um skinsfor for Adam and Eve, Eve to
clothe them, and an animal hadto die for those very first
sinners to be covered.
Um, and then we just we starttracking this sacrifice that
(13:57):
covers sin throughout history.
So we just talked about Moriah,uh, where God provides a lamb in
place of Abraham having tosacrifice his son Isaac.
Um, and so Abraham just namesthe place right there.
He said he called the Lord WillProvide.
Right.
Um, and like we said, we didn'tknow exactly what that would
(14:18):
look like.
Abraham wasn't sure either, buthe believed that God would do
something.
And uh 2,000 years later on ahill not far from Riah, God did.
Um and then you go to Egypt, andI talked about this a little bit
in my sermon on Sunday, but youknow, God is trying to bring uh
the nation of Israel out ofEgypt.
They've been slaves there forhundreds of years, and over and
(14:39):
over, Moses goes to Pharaoh andsays, Let my people go.
Moses' like, no, I'm not doingit.
And so finally it gets to thepoint where God says, Okay, if
if you're not gonna, if you'regonna not gonna do this, your
heart is gonna be hardenedtowards me, it's gonna cost, and
it's gonna cost the firstbornson of everyone in Egypt, um,
including Pharaoh.
(15:00):
And the only way that theIsraelites were protected from
that is they had to take a lamb,sacrifice it, and take the blood
of the lamb and put it over thedoorpost of their house.
Um, and this lamb was veryspecific, right?
It had to be a lamb withoutblemish, meaning it had to be
perfect.
Uh, it had to be slaughtered,meaning you couldn't just, you
(15:20):
know, give it a little cut.
You had to slaughter the lamb.
It was a substitute had to die,and then the blood had to be
applied.
Um, knowledge about what wasgoing on was enough.
You had to actually put theblood on your house.
Yeah.
And when that happened, when thedeath angel came that night, he
would pass over uh theIsraelites' houses because there
(15:41):
was a substitute.
Blood was on the doorpost oftheir home.
And so every Jewish family forthe next 1500 years would relive
that Passover meal once a year,every year.
Um, it's something that we'veeven uh, you know, uh Dave and
Nancy have let us through thisthe Seder dinner, that Passover
meal, what they would have umwent through that night.
I love, I I love you can alreadyfeel where Jesus comes in.
(16:05):
You know, there's thesesacrifices happening that has to
do with your relationship withGod.
And um and now um we're we'reseeing this sacrifice and the
substitutionary sacrifice ofJesus already, and we haven't
even we haven't even got toExodus, we haven't even got the
(16:27):
law yet.
Right.
Well, and very specific, right?
I mean, even as he's laying itout, lamb without blemish, well,
we know Jesus is the perfectspotless Lamb of God.
Uh he had to be slaughtered, andJesus hung and crucified on that
Roman cross.
The blood had to be applied.
Yeah, all these things.
Uh it's very specific, andyou're seeing these hints of
(16:50):
what is to come.
And then you get to thewilderness tabernacle.
Uh, you you mentioned thisearlier, but um, every single
day, two unblemished year-oldmale lambs had to be offered as
a regular burnt offering, one inthe morning, one at night.
And I and imagine that everyyear or every day of every year
(17:10):
this had to be done.
For 1,500 years, roughly onemillion lambs slaughtered,
burned, their blood splashed onthe altar.
And it was never enough.
You used the word earlier,insatiable.
It felt that way.
It's never enough.
And the truth is, it was nevergonna fix the problem, right?
(17:31):
Mankind was gonna go on sinning,and so that meant more
sacrifices had to be made.
If we could just stop sinning,you know, maybe, maybe all these
lambs wouldn't have to die, butwe couldn't.
We can't.
We're slaves to sin, scripturesays.
And so one after another, dayafter day, morning and evening,
a lamb was slaughtered.
(17:52):
And the author of Hebrews justsays it this way.
He's he said it was impossiblefor the blood of bulls and goats
to take away sins.
It was impossible.
It was insatiable.
The system was a placeholder,but it was pointing to something
else.
And what was it pointing to?
Well, the prophet Isaiah tellsus about 700 BC, he writes one
of the most stunning chapters,um, I think in all of scripture.
(18:16):
He's he's describing someone whohasn't even been born yet.
And so he sees this vision andhe writes this He was pierced
because of our rebellion,crushed because of our
iniquities.
Punishment for our peace was onhim, and we are healed by his
wounds.
He says, We all went uh astraylike sheep, and we all have
(18:36):
turned uh to our own way, andthe Lord has punished him for
the iniquity of us all.
He was oppressed and afflicted,yet he did not open his mouth
like a lamb, there's that word,led to the slaughter, and like a
sheep silent before his shears,he did not open his mouth.
A lamb pierced, crushed, silent,carrying the iniquity of us all.
(19:00):
And he says it's it's like a aperson, but he's describing it
like a lamb.
And this was 700 years beforeJesus ever shows up on the
scene.
And so you read that, and if youif you didn't know that that was
written in 700 BC, you'd belike, oh, he's talking about
Jesus.
But nobody had ever heard ofJesus then, right?
(19:20):
You know, none of those eventshad happened.
I mean, Roman crucifixion wasn'teven invented at this point.
That's true.
And he's describing all of thesethings 700 years before it
happens, and he sees somethingthat the priests serving in the
temple haven't even quite seenyet, that the Lamb is going to
be a man.
(19:41):
And then you fast forward 700years, and then there's JB, I
called him John the Baptist inthe Jordan Valley, and there's
people all over the place.
He's he's teaching, he'sbaptizing the people, the
religious leaders come out,they're asking them all these
questions.
And then he sees Jesus, hiscousin, Yeshua, walking by, and
(20:02):
every thread that we justtraced, Eden, Moriah, Egypt, uh,
Numbers, Isaiah, it all comesdown here into this one moment.
Behold, the Lamb of God whotakes away the sin of the world.
So John the Baptist had to bepretty studied in his Old
Testament prophets and uh tounderstand who he was uh making
(20:25):
the way for, and and called himby name, the Lamb, the Lamb.
And not a lamb, the Lamb, right?
Not a substitute for one familyor for the the nation of Israel.
He said, This is a substitutefor the whole world.
And he's not this temporaryplaceholder like the uh
sacrificial system in the templewas.
(20:46):
This is one sacrifice for alltime.
The altar is no longerinsatiable.
We don't have to show up dayafter day and offer another
sacrifice.
He was the perfect ultimatesacrifice, the fulfillment of
every lamb that ever bled beforehim was all fulfilled in Jesus.
And so Jesus walks toward thatcross.
(21:07):
He is the Passover lamb, he isthe daily sacrifice fulfilled
forever.
He is the lamb that God himselfprovided, and he is the lamb
that takes away, not covers ordelays or partially atones, he
takes away the sin of the world.
And then we come all the way tothe book of Revelation.
(21:27):
And John, the same John who wasthere with John the Baptist when
he heard John say, Hey, look,behold, or look, the Lamb of
God.
John, the author of that book,is taken up to the throne room
of heaven and he's weepingbecause no one has been found
worthy to open the scroll ofGod's plan.
And then one of the eldersaround the throne says, John,
(21:50):
don't weep, look.
The lion of the tribe of Judah,the root of David, has
triumphed.
And so John looks up and he'sexpecting.
You would expect to see a lion,because that's what the elder
just said.
The lion of the tribe of Judah.
But then in verse 6 ofRevelation chapter 5, it's one
(22:10):
of the most stunning lines.
John looks up and he says, ThenI saw one like a slaughtered
lamb standing in the middle ofthe throne, in heaven, glorified
in the seat of highest authorityafter the resurrection and the
ascension, after everything.
Jesus is still the Lamb.
He still carries the scars.
(22:32):
He's still called by that titlethat he earned at Calvary,
hanging upon the cross, theLamb.
And he has taken away the sin ofthe world.
Twenty-eight times in the bookof Revelation, Jesus is called
the Lamb.
And in heaven, he's notaddressed as teacher or king or
his prophet.
The angels and the redeemed allcall him the Lamb.
(22:52):
Worthy is the Lamb who wasslaughtered to receive power and
riches and wisdom and strengthand honor and glory and
blessing.
This is our God.
This is Jesus forever, the Lambof God.
Sixty-six books written over aperiod of time, fifteen hundred
years.
(23:12):
And uh now since the beginningof it, it's been uh thirty, five
hundred years.
All of it points to one thingforty different author authors
and different time settings, andum all points to Jesus being the
Lamb of God.
It's one thread, it's the gospelof Jesus Christ runs all the way
(23:36):
through the substitutionaryatonement of the death of the
Lamb.
And he's gonna be the Lambforever, and he'll that's a
title that he'll never give up.
And it should it should shockyou that the as I preached um
(23:57):
the uh first chapter that thislamb was the creator God.
He spoke the world intoexistence.
But he will always be this Lamb.
I told I told them that Sundaythat he'll always be a man.
He loved us enough that he wouldbecome a man for the rest of
(24:17):
eternity to be with us.
See, a king who wins a battlecan shed his army when the war
is over, and a general who winsa campaign can hang up his
uniform, and a prophet whodelivers his message can quit.
But Jesus, the conquering Lordof all creation, never sheds the
title Lamb.
(24:40):
Not in glory, not at the righthand of the Father, not at his
second coming, and not ineternity.
Why?
Because the scars he bore on thecross outside Jerusalem are the
marks of the deepest love in theuniverse.
The cross is not Jesus'embarrassment, the cross is his
(25:02):
crown.
And the lambs, the wounds arethe eternal proof that God loves
you, people.
Um even Thomas, when he wouldn'tbelieve in the resurrection and
he spouts off, he didn't know hewas gonna get called to the
test.
He said, I'll have to see hiswounds in his hand and put my
hand in his hand.
(25:22):
Yeah, and put my fingers rightin there.
Yeah.
And Jesus shows up and says, Allright, dude.
Here you go.
Well, I hold on.
I get it, I get it, I see it, Isee it.
No, put him in there.
The lamb title means that youcan never outsend God's grace.
He's the Lamb forever, and thatmeans his grace goes on and on
(25:45):
and on.
Like John said in the firstchapter, he said, Grace upon
grace, grace like on the beachwhen the waves come in.
I loved how you describe it,because you can just picture it,
right?
Just sitting there on the beach,just watching wave after wave
after wave.
That's that's the grace of God.
It just keeps coming in.
It's endless.
It's endless.
(26:08):
You know, I I think it'simportant for us to step outside
of humanity for a minute.
Because we struggle with thisstuff and we look in the Bible.
I know there's a lot of peoplesaying, You guys are just
putting this all together, andit's like, listen, it's not just
us.
It's not just us.
It's the angels.
It's the um rulers and theauthorities and the powers that
(26:34):
run our root uh universe.
They call him the lamb who wasslaughtered.
The lamb on the throne forever.
That's what they call him.
And if I I think that's a prettygood I don't see a lot of
t-shirts about the lamb.
There should be more t-shirtsabout the lamb.
(26:55):
We got we got a lot of t-shirt.
Yeah, we got a lot of we got alot of t-shirts uh about Jesus
being magnificent and all thatkind of stuff.
And he is.
But it's kind of it's it's hardfor us to call him the lamb.
But if he wasn't the lamb, thenyou couldn't have eternal life.
(27:16):
The lamb, it I mean you just pyou picture a lamb and it seems
meek, right?
Um it just doesn't carry thepunchline like the lion of the
tribe of Judah.
You're like, all right, I can Ican get behind a lion, let's do
it.
Yeah.
And then you're like, lamb?
Well, golly, what am I gonna dowith that?
(27:37):
This lamb changed everything.
And I love that, like you said,John must have known.
Uh he must have been pretty wellstudied up because when he sees
the the spirit descend andsettle on Jesus, he knew right
away this is the lamb.
Everything that we've beenlooking forward to, everything
(27:58):
that the Old Testament law, thesacrificial system, all of that
was built on, it's here.
It's it's fulfilled in this man,Jesus, the Lamb of God.
And he's gonna be that wayforever.
There's never gonna be a timewhen he's he's not the Lamb.
(28:19):
And when we get to heaven andand look at him, he's still
there, the Lamb.
And I just I can I'm trying toplace myself in John's shoes
there in Revelation when he, youknow, the the elder comes and
says, Hey, you don't gotta weep,man.
The lion is is conquered.
(28:41):
And he looks up, expecting tosee that roaring lion and sees
the slaughtered lamb.
And the picture just doesn'tlook like what we thought it
would.
Right.
It it it looks so different andyet this is this is what it's
been about, that thread thatgoes all the way back to the
garden when God had to make thatsacrifice to create those that
(29:04):
covering for Adam and Eve andwinds its way all the way
through scripture here to sayhere here he is, the Lamb of
God.
I think one of the problems withour viewership or or the way we
picture this when we think ofthe lamb is that um the lamb is
(29:24):
weak.
And it is weak.
Um you can uh they say you canslaughter fifty lambs and one
right after the other and andthe one at the end of the line
still don't know what's goingon.
Hey, what's going on, guys?
And and that's that tempts mento think, you know, I don't want
(29:48):
that to be me.
But we gotta remember when Jesussaid, Um, nobody takes my life
from me, I lay it down.
And that's something that weneed to get a hold of in our
brains, that Jesus did not haveto do this.
He did not have to save theworld.
(30:08):
He didn't have to, he chose to.
He chose to lay his life down.
Um there's there's no um versein the Bible that talks about he
could have called for support,but um he could have called ten
(30:30):
thousand angels to destroy theworld and set him free.
And I bet that I bet there werelegions and legions of angels in
um sitting in heaven when he wasbeing cruciflogged and
crucified.
How long are we gonna let thisgo on?
(30:50):
Um Matthew 26, 53 says, Do youthink I cannot call on my father
and he would at once put at mydisposal more than twelve
legions of angels?
That was twelve thousand.
But I I remember that song.
He could have called tenthousand angels, but he didn't.
(31:12):
He gave himself up for us.
Not because God made him do it,he had a choice, he proves that
in the garden, right, when he'spraying.
And but this is this is the thetruth about the one you call
King Jesus.
He is the Lamb because he choseto be, he didn't have to be.
(31:35):
Yeah, it looks like weakness,but it's actually strength, you
know.
You said earlier the the crosswasn't embarrassment, it was the
crown.
The whole thing looks upsidedown, man.
Um here he is, the the lamb ofGod.
And I you know, I love John inRevelation.
(31:56):
He's he's talking about the 144,and there's a lot of speculation
on who those 144,000 people are.
Right.
Um, I remember I had a Jehovah'sWitness guy trying to convert me
one day, and I was like, heyman, listen, only 144 are
getting in.
What are you doing?
You guys need to wrap this up.
Stop it.
The ones that are getting in arein, buddy.
(32:19):
Right.
You know what you're doing.
Uh you guys have the wrong uhevangelism strategy here.
I'd make sure I was in, and thatwould be, I'm not telling
nobody.
Right.
I think, you know, again, a lotof speculation.
I think it's just saying thefullness of the 12 apostles, 12
disciples.
Um, you multiply that andmultiply it by a thousand number
(32:40):
of completion, and it's okay,144.
I think he's just sayingeverybody, all those who are in
Christ.
But in Revelation 14, he saysthose ones are the ones he says,
not defiled themselves withwomen since they remain virgins.
These are the ones who followthe Lamb wherever he goes.
They were redeemed from humanityas the first fruits for God and
(33:04):
the Lamb.
Over and over again, allthroughout Revelation, as he's
talking about Jesus, it keepscoming back to this title, Lamb.
And so, as you as you readscripture, I want to encourage
you um trace, trace the lamb.
As you, I think you said itearlier, as you you follow the
lamb, you you follow the gospel,and you can it starts all the
(33:27):
way in Genesis and and goes allthe way through Revelation, and
you just keep following thatlamb, and what you'll find is
the gospel.
God's been hinting towards itfor those thousands of years
leading up to Christ, and thenJesus walks on the scene and
John sees him and says, Here heis.
This is what we've we've beenlooking for.
We got to go back to Isaac'squestion, where is the lamb?
(33:49):
So they where is the lamb allthe way till John chapter two,
right?
Where's the lamb?
And John said, John, JB, Johnthe Baptist said, He's right
there, guys.
He's right there.
Two thousand years later, um, weshould be asking the same
situation.
Every time we get in a situationat work and every circumstance
(34:10):
is where's the lamb in this?
Yeah.
Jesus, what do you want me todo?
Where where are you?
Where where's the lamb in this?
Um we need to be a people who islooking for the Lamb because
He's everywhere on this planet.
He's um sharing his gospel andthe Holy Spirit moves through
(34:32):
us, and we'll be able torecognize the Lamb when we see
it.
And he's promised that.
Uh we'll be in tune, or um we'lltestify with it, as the Bible
puts it.
So uh where is where's the lambin this argument with your wife?
Where is the lamb in thisproblem with your kids?
Where is where's the lamb withum your struggle with your
(34:56):
finances?
Where is he?
Where do I find him in this?
They ask it for thousands ofyears, where's the lamb?
And uh sometimes even asChristians today, we know he's
our savior, but where is he?
Where is he trying to save me inthe situation I'm in right now?
And he's there to do just that.
(35:16):
Where's the lamb?
Isaac, that's that's acatchphrase there.
There's that t-shirt I wastalking about.
Where's the lamb?
Where's the lamb?
Here he is, the lamb of God whopicks up and carries away the
sin of the world.
This is uh it's been fun uhdiving in.
(35:37):
We're only one chapter in intothe book of John.
And last week on the midweekpodcast, we covered seven core
doctrines.
Here we trace seven different uhspots where we see the lamb
showing up throughout history.
I don't know if the numberseven's gonna keep showing up,
but it does make a you know anappearance in scripture.
Don't go weirdo.
(36:00):
But I want to encourage you,keep uh keep showing up on
Sundays, keep tuning in uh todive into these things because I
think it's gonna expand ourappreciation of scripture.
Because we read these things,you know, you said you know,
John the Baptist must have musthave known.
He must have been pretty studieduh to know.
Well, John, the author, to toput this all together the way he
(36:22):
did and weave all these themesin like he does, he smart guy,
man.
You know, and well, if you getthree years with Jesus alone,
you should you should be prettysmart.
At least, at least on spiritualthings, anyways.
And so 40 plus authors, 60 plusbooks, 66 books written over,
(36:44):
you know, 1,500 years indifferent uh parts of the world,
and it's all been pointing toone guy.
Hasn't changed, passed down tous 2,000 years later, and we're
doing the same thing that theydid.
Where is the land?
Right, right.
And so as you you studyscripture this summer, I want to
encourage you um expand youryour thinking.
(37:06):
I was talking with Larry thisweek, and he's like, Man, I just
feel like God is calling us asChristians to to go deeper.
Go deeper this summer as as wewalk through the the gospel of
John, go deeper.
Look for these theseconnections.
And I think you know, there'sthere's also a danger.
We we try to find somethingunder every every rock, every
(37:26):
word, you know, what's thesecret meeting here?
Sometimes the Bible just meanswhat it says.
Jesus said I was hungry.
Oh, what's that?
What does that mean?
You probably wanted some food.
Yeah.
So I'm not I'm not sure.
Number one, now we got to figureout the other six things we
know, right?
Right.
(37:48):
But there are there is thiscall, you know, and and I feel a
little bit like you know, theapostle Paul here, like, let's
let's move on past milk.
Like, let's start chewing on onsome of these deeper things of
God.
Let's let's dive deep.
Um, you know, just right intothe deep end this summer and and
let's just swim around in in allthat God has for us here.
(38:11):
Yeah, I think it's importantthat you do this.
Look, you're not gonna find umthe all these answers that you
want and connect it like youwant, and then be able to put
that in your memory and be ableto pull it out anytime.
God wants you to wrestle withhim and what he's done for you.
He wants you to wrestle with it.
And it's the only way you'llever learn to appreciate it.
(38:34):
And if you push yourself awayfrom the scriptures or the
deeper things of God, you'llnever truly come to appreciate
what the Lamb has done for you.
You end up at this the place, ifyou'll do this, where John the
author was, where he says, I Idon't even need to name myself,
(38:54):
I'm just the one Jesus loved.
And that's enough for me.
And you'll get there.
If all I can say about my lifeis I'm the one he loved, it's
enough.
He did it for me.
All this sacrifice talk and allthis talk about the Lamb, and he
was for me.
I'm the one he loved.
And what a privilege it is to beknown as a friend and a child of
(39:17):
God.
The Lamb who comes and picks upand carries away not just the
sin of the world, he carriesaway your sin, he carries away
my sin.
Some of you will pick this upand put it in your pocket and
love it and pet it, and it'll bethe greatest thing.
But I know there's some of youout there who struggle with who
(39:37):
you were before you're aChristian, what you've done
since you've become a Christian,and you're struggling.
And uh you're wondering ifyou're worthy.
Well, let me answer that for youstraight up.
You're not.
And that's he loved you so muchto become your lamb.
He is your personal lamb whodied for you for the rest of
(40:01):
eternity.
You need to believe it.
I know it's it's tough towrestle with it, but it's okay.
The more you wrestle, the moreyou'll love him.
Well, what did Adam and Eve do?
When they sinned, first thingthat is they try to cover it up,
right?
I gotta hit, hide, and I'm gonnamake these fig leaves.
We're gonna cover it up.
Quit trying to hide it, man.
(40:21):
Just bring it to the Lamb.
He he's the one.
First John uh 1 7 says, Theblood of Jesus his son, or the
blood of the Lamb cleanses usfrom all sin.
Bring it to him.
Over and over and over again.
I know you've prayed about it athousand times.
Bring it to him the thousand andfirst time.
Do it again.
The blood of the lamb's enough.
(40:42):
It's always been enough.
Lord, I pray that the cry of ourheart will be where is the Lamb?
Every situation we findourselves in, where is Jesus in
this?
What's his side?
What's his uh view of what'sgoing on here?
(41:04):
And how would he respond?
Lord, I pray that you'll you'llgive us that desire in our heart
to look for you in everysituation.
At the same time, I'm gonna bethe voice of a fresh win here,
and we're gonna lift up ourpraises, and you are worthy.
(41:29):
You didn't have to do what youdid.
And you're worthy of all ourpraise, all our gratitude.
You're worthy.
Thank you for being you.
In your name I pray.
Amen.
Amen.
(41:50):
Thanks again for joining us forthis episode of the Midweek
Podcast.
We'd love to hear from you.
Let us know how God is usingthis resource in your life or
send any podcast questions ortopic ideas to podcast at a
freshwind.org.
If you would like to supportthis ministry financially and
help us continue offering newresources that equip you to
discover more in Christ, simplytext any amount to the number
(42:13):
84321.
We're so grateful for yoursupport.
Make sure to tune in next weekfor a brand new episode of the
Midweek Podcast.
Be blessed and have a greatweek.
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