The Lamb of God
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2020 · 5 July 2020
The gospel of John’s purpose is to present the proof that that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, so that you might believe and by believing have eternal life in His name. So in the opening eighteen verses we see a declaration of the deity of Christ. And then starting in verse 19, the evidences proving that declaration to be true. John opens the gospel speaking of the Lord Jesus as the Word.
Then he identifies Jesus as the Word with God and the Word being God, which is a Trinitarian understanding. The members of the Trinity are fully God and yet separate persons. He then introduces Him not only as the Word, but as the Life, the very life source of all that lives, and then as Light. That is to say He is God penetrating the darkness of a fallen world both physically and spiritually.
And with the introduction of John the Baptist in verse 15, John the apostle uses his first witness to the deity of Christ. And this first witness to the deity of Christ was introduced in verse 15 by name. Why is this so important? Because John was not only a forerunner, but also a prophet. And there hadn’t been a prophet in Israel for 400 years. And all Jews understood John to be a prophet.
So, if you’re going to have a human testimony of the Messiah, it needs to come from the most credible source. And the most believable witness to the person of Christ would be the one who was called by God to be a prophet and therefore spoke the word of God, and that’s John the Baptist. He came from a priestly family, which gave him extra credibility because the priests were all respected.
And his birth was miraculous because his parents were in their senior years and unable to have children. His mother Elizabeth gives birth in her old age to this son. And his birth was prophesied by an angel who showed up to Zacharias, the father, when he was doing his sacrificial work in Jerusalem. That angel told him that they would have a child that would be the forerunner of the Messiah.
He would be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb, that he would come in the spirit and power of Elijah to turn the hearts of the people back to God and prepare them for the arrival of Messiah. John lived completely apart from the religious system of Israel. For thirty years he lives like a hermit in the middle of the desert and eats whatever he can find and wears camel’s hair.
This is the man that John draws on for the initial testimony. He’s not a product of their system religiously. He’s not simply a product of a human life. He is a divinely prepared child. He is not a man who found a career because he sort of had a bent that way. He was ordained by God and so prophesied to do what he did. And he was before all people a true prophet.
The nation of Israel acknowledges John the Baptist as a spokesman for God and so John draws on his testimony and rightly so. This is the most credible, believable, trustworthy voice in Israel. And the people have come to know it and they’re flooding his wilderness location, tens of thousands from all Jerusalem, Judea, and the surrounding places to hear and to be baptized by him.
Now to get this testimony, in verses 19 - 37 John the apostle focuses on three days of the enduring ministry of John the Baptist. And so John the apostle gives us a picture of the ministry of John the Baptist. There are three points here and John has three messages to give. He gives one on day one, another on day two, and another on day three; and they’re sequential testimonies.
On day one he says, “He is here.” On day two he says, “Look at Him.” And on day three he says, “Follow Him.” And that should be the message that any preacher should give regarding Christ. And the three messages are given to three different groups. On day one it is a hostile delegation from the Sanhedrin. On day two it is the mass of people that are there. And on day three it is John’s own disciples.
We’ve already looked at day one the last Sunday. Day one, was the Jewish delegation that had come from Jerusalem, to confront John and ask him the questions that the religious leaders wanted answered. The people in power in the Sanhedrin is a council of seventy plus the high priest who ran Judaism. That council is predominantly made up of Sadducees, the religious liberals who don’t believe in miracles.
But with them were the Pharisees who were much devoted to the law. They were less political. They were the ones who studied the law, who applied the law, who taught the law to the people. This delegation from the Sanhedrin is mixed with both. John uses the expression “the Jews” seventy times in his gospel. He’s not using it ethnically, or racially, he’s using it to identify those people hostile to Jesus.
Verse 19, “Who are you?” What is implied in that question is, “Are you the Messiah?” Verse 20, “He confessed and didn’t deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.” What then? Verse 21, “Are you Elijah?” And his answer is the same. “I am not Elijah.” This is not Elijah taking on another name. In Luke 1:17 the angel said to Zacharias he will come “in the spirit and power of Elijah.”
So there will be two comings of Elijah. At the first coming of Christ there will be one in the spirit and power of Elijah. And at the Second Coming of Christ there will be the actual Elijah. So John says I’m not Elijah who returns prior to the coming of Christ. Remember, Elijah didn’t die; he was taken to heaven by God in a chariot of fire. And he will return in the future, before the Second Coming of Christ.
So another question. “Are you the Prophet?” In Deuteronomy 18, Moses talked about a prophet who would come and speak the word of the Lord. And the Jews knew he was talking about Messiah. You can read the sermon of Peter in Acts 3:22-23 and the sermon of Stephen in Acts 7:37, where both say that Deuteronomy 18 is referring to Messiah. So that was a common Jewish understanding.
And the real question is, “What gives you the authority to be baptizing these people?” Their issues were always about power and authority. They were hostile to Jesus because He had authority in what He said and what He did. He hadn’t come through their religious system. Jesus always acted on His own authority. He said in Matthew 28:18, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.”
He took authority over the Sabbath. He took authority over death. He took authority over demons. He took authority over creation, nature. He took authority over diseases. And this issue of authority especially irritated them when He took authority to interpret the Word of God and declare for God what God would say. It was all about authority because Jesus was a great threat to their religious authority.
Well, John was the same. The people were going to John by the tens of thousands. Typically in their history, they did have a baptism that they enacted for Gentiles who wanted to become Jews and become a part of their religion. They could go through a proselyte baptism. In other words, they wanted to be cleansed of their paganism and wanted to enter into the religion of the God of Israel.
Verse 22, “They said to him, ‘Who are you then, so that we may give an answer to those who sent us?’” And after saying, “I am not,” he finally says, “I am.” Verse 23, “I’m a voice.” He’s very humble. He said about Christ, “He comes after me but He is a much higher rank than I, for He existed before me.” Verse 27, “He comes after me, and the thong of His sandal I’m not worthy to untie.”
In verse 30 again he says, “He comes after me, but He has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.” John is selfless; he wants no titles, no honors, no money, no comforts, no followers and no disciples. He wants to point to Christ only. So he says, “I am a voice of one crying in the wilderness,” out of Isaiah 40:3. I am the fulfillment of that prophecy.
He is talking about the wilderness of Israel in the spiritual sense, their bankruptcy, their desert of hearts, Israel had become a wilderness with no spiritual life. I’m coming into that wilderness. I am a voice to cry out to you to make your heart a ready path for the King. The King is on the way; I’m telling you to get ready. John is a true preacher, but he’s only a voice, and he’s pointing us to Jesus Christ.
And he’s telling the Jewish people, “Make your path straight.” The low places, the base places in your life need to be lifted up. The high places, the proud places need to be brought down, the crooked part of your life, the perverted places need to be straightened out. The cluttered places need to be cleaned off to get ready for the One who is coming. I’m only the voice. I’m only the forerunner.
So verse 25, explains what motivated them, “Why then are you baptizing?” You’re not the Christ. You’re not Elijah. You’re not the prophet of Deuteronomy 18. Where did you get this authority? Verse 26, “John answered them saying, ‘I baptize with water, but among you stands One whom you do not know. 27 It is He who comes after me, whose sandal strap I’m not worthy to untie.’”
So John does what he always did, turns everybody’s attention toward Christ. He’s the One who deals with the heart. The Messiah is here in the land. At the very moment he says this, Jesus is walking toward where John is and will arrive the next day. That’s the first great message that John gives. That’s where all gospel preaching starts, doesn’t it? He is here; He has come.
That message would have gone immediately back to Jerusalem and would have made known this to the Jews in the Sanhedrin. The Jews had no excuse such as, “Oh, we’re surprised that Jesus has shown up and claimed to be the Messiah.” They are on notice before Jesus begins His ministry officially that the Messiah has arrived. And from that report, their hostility goes all the way to the cross.
Day two picks up the story in verse 29, John saw Jesus coming to him and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” This is group two, all the people that are gathered, and the message is, “Look at Him.” Message one: He’s here. Message two: Look at Him, He is the Lamb of God. Day one was kind of a private delegation. Day two is the public proclamation.
All through the centuries Israel knew about a sacrificial lamb, going back to Abraham and Isaac. And God providing a sacrifice for Abraham so he didn’t have to kill his own son. And then in Exodus, the Passover Lamb and every Passover after that, and every morning and every evening, there was a morning and evening sacrifice, and lambs were slain as sin offerings over and over, century after century.
They knew about sacrifice. But they didn’t know how it fit in, because they never saw themselves as a people needing a sacrifice. They assumed that the combination of their righteousness and their obedience in offering an animal was enough. But those animals couldn’t take away sin; they could only point to the one sacrifice that would take away sin, and that had not yet come until Christ.
And because they didn’t recognize their sinfulness, they didn’t recognize they were under judgment, under God’s wrath, needing a sacrifice. And that their Messiah was to be that sacrifice that Isaiah 53 was talking about. They did not understand that the Messiah would be a lamb. Every family chose its lamb. This is the lamb that God has chosen. He’s come to deal with sin, to be wounded for our transgressions.
He offered Himself as a sacrifice on the cross. He bore our sins in His own body. God made Him who knew no sin, sin for us. The Jews wanted a prophet. The Jews wanted a king. They got a lamb. They wanted a leader. They got a substitute. They wanted an exalted messiah. They received a humiliated sacrifice. They wanted one who could kill all their enemies, and they got One whom their enemies killed.
John says in verse 31, “I didn’t recognize Him at first.” John is just admitting that he didn’t recognize Him in the full sense. And John testified then in verse 32 saying, “I’ve seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained on Him.” I didn’t recognize Him.” That is a clear declaration that Jesus’ humanity was real humanity. There was nothing about Jesus that would tell you He was God.
Verse 33, “I didn’t know Him, but He (God) who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘Upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining on Him, this is He who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’” John at that moment knows. Verse 34, “I myself have seen, and testified this is the Son of God.” Here is the most believable and credible voice in Israel affirming that this is the Lamb of God.
Now its day three. Verse 35, “Again the next day John stood with two of his disciples. Verse 36 And looking at Jesus as He walked, he said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God.’ Verse 37 The two disciples heard him say that, and they followed Jesus.” Who are they? Two disciples of John. We know who these two are. According to verse 40, one of them is Andrew. Who’s the other one? That was John, the apostle himself.
And verse 38, “Jesus turned and saw them following Him, and said to them, ‘What do you seek?’” They said, “Rabbi, where are You staying?” In other words, this isn’t a short-term interest. Wherever you’re going and wherever you’re going to stay, that’s where we’re going to stay. That is a pure gospel ministry, modeled for us by this selfless, humble, meek man who is John the Baptist. Let us pray.