Jesus, the Lamb of God
Jesus, the Lamb of God
The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. Joh 1:29
Who Is This Lamb of God?
Who is this man that all of heaven bowed down before and declared to be Worthy? Who is He? Why has He made such an impact on the human race? How has He shifted the entire course of history? Just what kind of a Man is this Man they called the Carpenters’ Son? What kind of man is this who spoke and all of creation’s ears heard and heeded His voice?
One day the disciples were at Ceserea Phillipi and Jesus asked, “Who is that men say that I am?” The disciples said that “some say that you are Elijah and some say that you are John the Baptist and some that you are teacher or a prophet raised from the dead…” then Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?” Remember what Peter replied? Do you? He spoke up and said “Thou and the Christ the Son of the Living God…” And Jesus got excited when Peter said that… He said “Simon Barjona flesh and blood hath not revealed that unto thee but my Father which is in Heaven…” “God has told you that I am the Messiah, the Anointed One, The Messiah promised in the Old Testament, the Prophet, the Priest and the King.” That’s Who He is. That’s Who Jesus is. John, the Gospel writer received a revelation of Who He is when He wrote in Chapter 1 and verse one:
“and the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory the glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of Grace and Truth…” (John 1:14)
Who is this Lamb of God? Who is this Lion of the Tribe of Judah? Who is this Root of David? Who is this Person that all the inhabitants in heaven bow down to and cry out in voices filled with praise; “Worthy is the Lamb… Worthy is the Lamb…Worthy is the Lamb…?”
Do you believe what Jesus says? Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life.” Do you know what bread does? Bread fills us up. Bread satisfies our hunger. Bread keeps us alive. Bread nourishes our physical body. Jesus is Heaven’s Bread sent from God to nourish our spiritual bodies and keep us alive. Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life.”
Then in John chapter 8 Jesus said, “I am the Light of the world.” Now, what does light do? Light reveals and illuminates… what does Jesus do? He reveals the character and nature of God to us. He illuminates our way by the anointed spoken Word of God. He guides us by His Presence. He shows us the pitfalls of life. He protects us from the snare of the enemy. I say to you… Worthy is the Lamb! Worthy is the Lamb!
Who did Jesus say He was? In John 10 He said, “I am the Door.” What is a door good for? A door is good to go in and to get out that’s what a door is good for. And do you know what Jesus meant when He said I am the door? He meant that “ by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.” Jesus Christ is the Door. He is our access into the very presence of God. He is our High Priest. He is our representative in Heaven. Worthy is the Lamb.
In John chapter 10 He said, “I am the Good Shepherd.” What does a good shepherd do? A good shepherd takes care of his flock. He makes certain that they are in the fold and out of harm’s way at night; He is certain of their number. He is certain of their safety. He knows where they are and He takes care of their every need. He never leaves them. He never forsakes them. He cares for them and keeps them secure and safe.
In John chapter 11 He said “I am the Resurrection and the Life” and John chapter 15 He said “I am the True Vine, If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.”
He gives us Resurrection Life. Not just ordinary life, but supernatural life. Resurrection life is the God Kind of life. It is not psuche but it is Zoe. It is the same kind or quality of life that God has.
As we “abide in Him” or take up our residence in Him and live in His Word, then He says we can ask what we will and it shall be done unto us. Abiding in Him assures us of asking the for the right things. And we ask for the right things the right way, we have what we ask for.
Let me tell you how the world saw Him. The world saw Him as a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a dirty smelly barn. But I see Him as King of Kings and Lord of lords. The world saw Him as a carpenter’s Son Who would never amount to anything. But I see Him as the Living Son of the Living God. The world saw Him as a defeated Dreamer hanging lifeless on a cruel criminal cross. But I see Him as Victor over death hell and the grave.
Worthy is the Lamb! The heart of Old Testament Scripture is Messianic in purpose. You can hardly find a chapter anywhere from Genesis to Malachi but what there is some glimpse of Jesus. The very heart of revealed scripture is Messianic in nature. Jesus is like a scarlet thread woven into the fabric of every page of the Old Testament. And that tapestry comes to a full and complete revelation when we get to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
He was foreshadowed in the Garden of Eden shortly Adam’s miserable fall when God spoke to the serpent and said;
“I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise His heel.”
This is a direct Messianic Promise declaring that there would be One coming Whose heel would crush the serpents’ head. In turn the heel of that Coming One would be wounded and bruised by the serpent. He was clearly seen by the prophets in the Old Testament. They did not know Him in the flesh but they knew Him by the miracle of divine revelation. Every prophet of God in the Old Testament had a glimpse of the coming Messiah. In Isaiah chapter 7, the prophet wrote;
“A virgin shall conceive and bear a son and call His name Immanuel”
That Name means “God with us.” In Isaiah chapter 9 and verse 6 the same prophet by divine revelation foresaw Jesus and said;
“His Name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace.”
In Isaiah Chapter 53, which was written nearly 800 years before Jesus was born, is the wonderful chapter portraying Jesus as the suffering Servant.
“He was wounded for our transgressions He was bruised for our iniquities the chastisement of our peace was upon Him and with His stripes we are healed….”
All through the Old Testament there are glimpses and foreshadows of the coming Messiah. David, Israel’s great singer, sung in Paslms about Him before He was born.
“The Lord is shepherd I shall not want He maketh me to lie down in green pastures He leads beside the still waters He restoreth my soul…”
We find Jesus in every book on every page in practically every verse and every word; the Old Testament is an arrow pointing unerringly to the coming time when all the world would recognize…
Worthy is the Lamb of God! Hallelujah.
I see Him typified in many ways it the Old Testament. I see Him in Noah’s ark because Noah’s ark was God’s provision to keep safe a faithful few who believed in the word of God. The Ark was God’s miraculous provision for safety and deliverance for the believing family of Noah, the builder of the ark. When the rains came and the judgement of God fell, those huddled in the safety of the ark were spared. They inherited a New World. A Fresh World. A Purged World. This typifies the Redemptive Work of Jesus Christ in the Grand Plan of Father God. The Ark of Safety is a type of the One Who is Worthy.
I see Him as the Passover Lamb. When the Hebrews were held in the grip of Egyptian bondage, they prayed for God to look upon their affliction and deliver them. And God heard their prayer. One by one the plagues were sent and finally Pharaoh let the people go… but not before the Passover was perfected. I see the father in the Hebrew household as he goes out and slays that little sinless paschal lamb. I see him as he takes the blood and catches it in a basin and take a branch of hyssop and dips it in the blood and then goes to his house and strikes the blood across the top of the door and on each door post. I see him as he goes in his dwelling knowing that God said;
“when I see the blood I will pass over you… When I see the blood I will pass over you.”
This Passover Lamb is a type of Jesus Christ.
I see Jesus personified and typified in the Old Testament tabernacle. I see Jesus pictured as the promised Son and Seed of one hundred year old Abraham and ninety year old Sarah. I see Jesus typified in the House of Israel and the intricate sacrificial system of the Jews. Don’t you see that God has moved heaven and earth since Creation in order that we can know…
Worthy is the Lamb! Worthy is the Lamb!
Where is your heart today? What is your attention set upon? Where is your life headed? Is it to know and proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord of All? Is it to know that He and He alone is Worthy? All other things in this life are secondary to the central fact that Jesus Christ is Lord of All… Lord of all!
Who is He? Who is this Jesus? I’ll tell you Who He is… He is God in the Flesh. He is Very God Who condescended and took on human form and human flesh. He is God clothed in humanity. He is God wearing a human suit. Philippians 2:7 declares that He made Himself of no reputation… that is, He laid down (took off) His deity and put on humanity. He vacated His God Form and God Power and God authority and then left heaven that he might walk on and in this earth and redeem us from the curse of Adam’s disobedience. He became Man in order to redeem mankind from spiritual and eternal death. Deity put on humanity so that we could walk in forgiveness and divine healing and health and be delivered from every power of the devil.
Where are you today? Do you know that Jesus is Worthy? This is the day when all humanity needs to bow at the feet of a Risen Ascended and Glorified Lord. This is the hour when we ought to recognize that we are the visible, tangible body of Christ on earth and we are to carry out the commission that He gave us by going throughout the earth and preaching and teaching and baptizing in His Name… by telling the world that Jesus is Worthy.
Everybody who has ever had a personal confrontation with Jesus Christ knows that Jesus Does Something. The Savior I serve is not a god placed on a shelf who never does anything, never breathes, never feels ,never sees, never knows; but the Jesus I’m preaching about is Worthy and He is a Savior Who does things.
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me… “
Jesus quoted this one day in Nazareth as He read in the synagogue. They gave Him the Scroll and told Him to read. He read from the prophet Isaiah and quoted this very passage which is found in Isaiah 61:11. This is what He said to those religious leaders:
“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord hath… (number one) anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek; (number two) He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted; (number three) He has sent me to comfort all that mourn; (number four) He sent me to give beauty for ashes; (number five) the oil of joy for the mourning; (number six) the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. (parentheses mine)
Isaiah 61 tells us what Jesus does.
He is the Anointed One Who preaches Good Tidings to the meek.
He has been sent to bind up the broken hearted.
He is here to comfort all who mourn.
He restores beauty to the disgraced and defamed.
He gives us joy in the place of mourning and
The Garment of praise in place of the spirit of heaviness.
I Jn 3:8 declares that Jesus has destroyed the works of the devil.
“For this purpose was the Son of God manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil…”
What does He do? He reconciles man to God.
Three things happened when Adam sinned in the Garden of Eden.
Number one, spiritual death came on the entire human race.
Number two, man was alienated from his Creator and
Number three, a Curse came on this world.
That’s what the devil did. That’s what happened when Adam sinned. But Jesus undid what Adam did. Jesus undid the mess that Adam made. Where man died spiritually through Adam’s disobedience, we are made spiritually alive by our faith in Jesus. When sin drove a wedge of division between the Creator and the creation, Jesus came and reconciled man to God… He reestablished our fellowship with the Father.
I’ll tell you what else Jesus does… Jesus delivers us from the Curse. Hallelujah.
Gal 3:13 We are redeemed from the curse of the law…
This is what He does. He reconciles man to God; He reestablishes our fellowship with God and then He justifies us and makes us righteous. Wow! Would you like to be Righteous? Faith in Jesus Christ makes us Righteous. According to the Word, our faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ produces the righteousness of God in us. Jesus takes up residence in our heart and trades our sin for His Righteousness.
Being Righteous means you have a right standing with the Father. It means you are justified. (Made Just-as-if-I’d never sinned) He sanctifies us. He sets us apart as His own creation and soon He will glorify us by causing us to put off the garment of this human flesh and put on the garment of our resurrection body. Then, we will live in perfection. We will think in perfection and we will be everything God ever created us to be. Hallelujah.
What does He do? He’s at the right hand of the Father in Heaven interceding for you and me. He is personally praying for the unity of His body. He is on His throne at the Father’s Right Hand. He is the Head of the Church and He is directing its affairs. He is supervising angels and spiritual authorities and powers.
What does He do? The Gospel of John shows us that He saves lost people. Lost people just like Nicodemus. He restores broken homes just like the woman at the well who had five husbands and who was living with a man who was not her husband. He heals the sick and afflicted just like the man who was lame for 38 years and who patiently waited by the Pool of Bethesda for his healing.
What does he do? He feeds the hungry and fills the empty just as He fed the 5000 with a few fishes and a few loaves of bread. He satisfies the longing heart with spiritual food that can and will sustain through times of great distress and disappointment.
What does He do? He forgives sinners. Check out the adulterous woman who was caught in the very act of sin in John chapter 8. So you think you are guilty? We all are. And Jesus is the Great Forgiver. Not only does He forgive, but He removes our sin from us as far as the east is from the west. In other words, to a place of infinity. To a place where they do not even exist anymore.
What does He do? He gives life to the dead just like He gave life to four-day-long dead Lazarus. At his tomb when they rolled the stone He said “Lazarus… come forth” and life came into that four day old corpse… a corpse that was already decomposing. The power of God exploded in it and gave that dead body life and brought it out of the grave. Jesus is our Guarantee, our Warranty that we too shall overcome death and the grave. At His voice, the dead shall be raised and those of us who remain at His Coming will be changed instantly… at the blink of an eye… and we shall be like Him. Hallelujah.
What does He do? He comforts the distressed… In John chapter 14 He gathered His disciples together and He said “let not your heart be troubled… you believe in God believe also in me…” What a profound Word! We have the capacity to “let not… ” to stop our heart from worrying and being stressed out; to prevent our heart from being afraid and from being filled with anxiety. When times are tough and impossible situations loom we can “let not” and prevent worry from overcoming us and rendering us helpless and hopeless.
I tell you what… this Son of the Most High God became poor… He was Heaven’s Prince… He was at the right hand of God… He was administrating all of heaven’s affairs …. He was in Ivory Palaces…. He was in charge of all creation…. But the Lamb of God became poor that we might become rich.
2Co 8:9 For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.
He chose poverty to give us prosperity. He chose to “have not” in order that we might “have.” He was the richest and wealthiest individual in all of creation, yet He willingly laid down His wealth and took on our poverty. “For our sakes” he became poor that we might, through His poverty, become rich.
He came down that we might go up. He became sin that we might become righteous. He was sent into the jaws of hell that we might ascend into the glorious boundaries of heaven. He had no home… no place to lay His head. He had no garment to call His own except those that were given to Him as gifts. He said the birds of the air have nests and the animals of the field have homes to go to but the Son of Man hath not a place to lay His head… a “homeless” Son of God is today, right now, at the Father’s side building extravagant and unimaginable mansions for us. Hallelujah.
Col 1:15 “for by Him were all things created that are in heave and that are in earth visible and invisible whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers all things were created by Him and for Him He is before all things and by Him all things consist…He is the Head of the Body the Church He is the beginning the firstborn from the dead that in all things He might have the preeminence…”
The Word of God says that Jesus holds all things together. There is only One Element that keeps all creation in perfect balance and harmony… and that is the influence and the Power and the Authority of the Lamb of God. Listen to me church… The planets are kept in orbit; the stars are set on fire and kept on fire, the suns continue to give forth their light, all the galaxies hang in perfect balance; and everything in creation consists and holds together because of Jesus. The Lamb of God. “Worthy is the Lamb.”
Why does He do it?
There is no explanation, none whatsoever, for the reason why He does it apart from His matchless, boundless, measureless, eternal love. There is absolutely no physical, visible, scientific, way or reason that He should do What He does other than the fact that He just loves us. Just like we are. With all the human limitations and imperfections and shortcomings, He just loves us. He just loves us. He just loves us. He is Love personified. He is Love demonstrated. He is Love manifested. He is Love illustrated. He is Love embodied. He is Love epitomized. He is LOVE. Worthy is the Lamb.
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life…
Why does He do it? That’s why He does it. Because He “so loved the world….”
For God comendeth His love toward us that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us…
The mystery is… He loves us. The fact is we as human beings will never be able to comprehend the “why” so there is no logical or reasonable explanation left for us to understand this demonstration of God’s compassion and care for us. Limited as we are in our darkened understanding… we cannot comprehend the measure of God’s love. If I stood here until Jesus came and until angels blew their trumpets and until the skies were rent in two and until every grave was opened and every saint in ages past were raised by the power of the Omnipotent God… if I preached constantly till that day I could not tell you nor explain to you the measure of God’s love.
Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade
To write the Love of God above
Would drain the oceans dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Tho stretched from sky to sky
I’ve always been amazed at what happened to people when they saw Jesus. They were never the same again. Never. They were changed. They were different. They were taken into a new place in the human experience. Not only were they changed, but the world as they previously saw it was also changed. God “became” evident everywhere. In all of creation. The grass was greener. The flowers were more spectacular. The birds sang better and the whole world became a demonstration of the Glory of God. Worthy is the Lamb.
The Prophet Isaiah saw Him high and lifted up and then he beat upon his breast and buried his face in his hands and he cried “Woe is me for I am man of unclean lips.”
Moses saw Him and he was told to take off his shoes because he was standing on holy ground.
John saw Him on the Isle of Patmos and fell at His feet as dead.
Thomas saw Him when He walked through the wall and appeared there in the midst of the disciples, and old doubting Thomas put his finger in the print of the nails in His hands and His feet and His side and he said “My Lord and my God…”
Paul saw him on the dusty Damascus road when a light as blinding as twelve suns shone in the middle of the day, and he fell on his face and cried out “Who art Thou, LORD?”
I saw Him one day when I was a 12 year old boy sitting about half-way back in a little country church… and after of years of fear and dread and frustration, anxiety, nervousness… I saw Him. I did not know a fraction of what Jesus had for me, the only thing I knew was that I was afraid and I needed some help. And I came in my own childlike way that night to the altar of a Baptist church and prayed a simple prayer… and I saw Jesus.
Jesus has been gracious to me through all these 60 plus years of ministry. He called me to preach. He has protected me from all kinds of satanic attacks. He lovingly gave me this ministry to share with you the Good News. I’ve never been more fulfilled in my life than I am right now. I am grateful to God. When you leave here today, I want you to leave with just one theme on your lips and that is…
WORTHY IS THE LAMB
dickbraswell 
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