The Lamb of God and the Sin of Rebellion

It's not often that bad things happen, but somebody stole my clock down here. I don't know who did that, but it's gone. And you should pray for them, because that means that I don't have a clock to watch, so I know when the time is. So, I'm going to take this off and try to remember to look at it every once in a while, so you'll not be here till supper time. Because anybody here that could afford to be here till supper time, you're one of them, so I wouldn't be so sorry about that one, if you were the only one. Some of them are a little thinner, though. They might not make it to supper. I want to read a passage from John chapter 1, if you'd like to find that in your Bibles. You know, you never need to be rescued until you're in desperate trouble, and then you need to be rescued. Fall off the mountain, get in a boat out in the whirlpool, then you need someone to rescue you. You never really need somebody to save you until you have problems, and then you need someone to come and save you. So, whenever we talk about Jesus being a Savior, it's really a message for those of us who find ourselves at different times and places and circumstances where we need to be rescued or we need to be saved. In the passage we're reading today, you've already heard it, read it this morning, yourself said it, it's about the story of Jesus and his baptism and early in his life. This is a little bit ringing. You can turn it down just a little. Chapter 1 of the book of John, and I want to begin reading at verse 29. The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is the one I meant when I said a man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel. Then John gave his testimony. I saw the Spirit come down from heaven, and a dove remained on him. I would not have known him except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God. I want to focus first of all on a single word at the beginning of this story. Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It's singular. I suppose I would have said takes away the sins of the world because there are so many people and so many sins everywhere we look, but he focuses instead on the word sin. Now I don't know what was in the mind of John the Baptist. I don't know if he was simply summarizing all the sin that there was in the world to say it's one big sin to everybody, or if he was talking about really the root of all these things that come to be individual acts and thoughts of sin in our own lives. I'm not sure about that. But I want to look at that and focus on that part of it. For what we find in the world is every single thought that's opposite of what God wants, every single act that we do that we know is contrary to His will, starts with one single attitude. It's shown in the beginning of the Bible. Adam and Eve placed in a garden everything they could do, but don't do this. And what happened to them as they were there, they began to think about this. I don't know if it's weeks, days, months or years, but they began to think about what they couldn't do according to God, what they shouldn't do according to God. And as they thought about it, they rationalized all kinds of ways in which they could see that this was not exactly what they wanted to do. And as they thought about its attractiveness, they thought about why God was wanting them to not eat it, all of these things came to their mind, and what happened was they began to think, God really doesn't have our best interest at heart. I'm not sure that I can rely on Him. He's told us what not to do, and it seems to me as if it would be rewarding, tastes good. It seems to me as if it would be fun, I would enjoy it. It seems to me that it would satisfy a desire that I have. So I weigh my wishes against the instructions of God. And then I decide what is going to control my behavior. And in that moment, they said, we are going to do what seems right to us. Now the Bible calls this idolatry. We don't often think of doing something contrary to what the Bible says as idolatry, but that's what it is. For when you worship and serve God, you allow Him to direct your life, you allow Him to control your behavior. You do what He tells you to do. But when you decide that you're going to do something contrary to the written Scripture, to the words of God, you're saying, I trust myself over trusting God. And then you place yourself in the position of ultimate authority over your life. This is idolatry. Now we don't have very many examples of how this works in our culture today, but I think maybe the military is one of the best examples of how this structure that God wants to have exist in the world really is. So you have people who are under authority. When you go into military service, you go through boot camp. They teach you all the skills that you're going to need, the things you need to learn, but the primary focus of what they do is to tell you and teach you to be obedient to the commanding officer whatever takes place. That you're to have ultimate trust in your commanding officer. So that when He tells you to do something, you do it immediately without questioning it, without asking, without trying to figure it out. You just obey. They tell you that if you don't do that, you could actually lose your life. They tell you that if you don't do it, that you could actually cause your squad to die, be killed. Even your company or even the whole war could depend on one person doing the right thing that they're supposed to do at the right time. There are terrible consequences, potentially, for refusing to obey the one in charge. So God came to the world and He said to the people He made, I've made this world. Here's what I want you to do. Everything you can take part of, everything you can do, but one thing you can't do, do not do this. And they rebelled against the instructions and authority of God and the whole world has paid for that ever since. We come on the scene and all that has been done. But the same thing faces us. What God asks of His people in this world is, I want you to listen to me and I'm going to tell you what you need to do. And if you look in the Bible in the beginning, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, there are detailed instructions about what God wants us to do and what He doesn't want us to do. You look at the beginning of Jesus' ministry in the Sermon on the Mount, there are clear instructions about what He wants us to do and what He doesn't want us to do. They match, incidentally, with those in the Old Testament. They're simply developments out of those ideas in the Old Testament. But everything we face in life, God has given us instructions about. What do you do? How do you handle it? How do you act? How do you think? What happens to us all the way through the Bible, over and over, the story is told. People come to God and they say, God, we're ready to do anything you tell us. Whatever you want, we'll do it. And God blesses them. He gives them everything He promised He'd give them. And then, as prosperity sets in, they begin to think, well, you know, we've got everything we want. I don't know that we need to depend on God like we used to. After all, our neighbors don't do that. They seem to have a better life than we do, more fun, enjoyable than ours, and so they begin to take other gods as an addition to the God of the universe, the creator of everything. Saying to God, we're not sure that you can give us everything we really need and desire. How do they make that decision? God said, I want you to recognize that I'm the only God in all the universe. The only one. There's no other one. Why did you decide that there was someone else? Your judgment and your wisdom is better than mine. And so you say to yourselves, we're going to do what we think is right instead of what you think is right? You see, the action of Adam and Eve to rebel against God was what we would call in our country treason against the government. It's what in the military they would call you, they would say you were a traitor. You turned against your own people. God sees this as a very, very serious act. So serious that when his people did this, he took away all the benefits he gave them. He didn't tell them what to do anymore. He didn't protect them anymore. He didn't provide their needs anymore. And story after story in the Old Testament, they find themselves after a while invaded by the enemy, their crops taken away, their children taken away, their wives taken away, and many of them killed. In the middle of all this disaster, they stop and say, God, what's happening to us? Why has this taken place? God would send a man, a messenger. The messenger would come and say, what's happened to you is because you've turned against the Lord, the God, the ruler of heaven and earth. Admit that you've done this. Confess your failure to follow him and renew your devotion to him and he will come again to you and he will guide you so you'll make the wise choices. He will give you wisdom so that you'll know what to do so that he can provide for you and protect you. And when they did, God would come back and he would rescue them again. Over and over and over again this story is told in the Old Testament. It's the story of all mankind. You've seen it yourself. Maybe even in yourself. If you look back at the time when you committed your life to Christ and he saved you and forgave you of your sins and you had the blessings that came from all that and you saw maybe your family change, you saw your own life change, you saw your finances change, you saw peace in your life and then as things go along and life takes its toll, you begin to think, well, maybe I don't have to read the Bible every day. Maybe it's really not necessary to pray so much. After all, a lot of people don't come Sunday morning, Sunday night or Wednesday night. They just kind of come whenever it's convenient for them and they seem to be doing good too. And so you begin to slack off from what the promise and commitment you've made to God in the past and your life begins to get cold, indifferent to God. The story is the same one everywhere. Rebellion against God, rebellion against His authority creates desperate circumstances. Sometimes even death in the minds and hearts of people. It was this need on our part that prompted God to say, what can we do to help? We've given them the instructions and the message. We've told them what's right and wrong and we've left a message of what happens when you do and we've left a message about what happens when you don't. What more can we do? So now Jesus comes and John the Baptist looks at Him and said, Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The sin is the sin of rebellion. Resisting the authority of God. Doing what seems right to you as opposed to what is the Word of God. Doing what you think is okay even though it's in the Bible, even though the Bible says it's wrong. You trust your own judgment instead of the wisdom and judgment of God. It is this sin for which Jesus came. And it's a sin that has tragedy all around it. You look at the stories of the Bible, you look at the people around you and you see people who have ignored God and lived exactly the way they want to and the disaster that covers their life. You look at any tragic story on television, in the news, and you find behind most of those stories someone who's done something contrary to what the Bible says a person should do. The Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of people. The sin of rebellion against God. Now the phrase that He uses here, to take away, doesn't really describe exactly what God did through Christ. We see a couple of things that the Bible over and over tells us He did. One is that He can forgive us of the sins that we've committed. So that He comes to us to say, no matter what you've done, if you will come to Me and ask for forgiveness and pledge yourself to live in obedience to Me again, I'll forgive you for what you've done. I'll erase what's taking place. I won't change the consequences, but I will erase the judgment I bring on you and I will start over with you. That's the story throughout the Old Testament. And Jesus came to do it in person. He walked around to people who were caught in circumstances of sin and He said to them, you are forgiven, just change your direction, go and live in obedience to what God wants and you will find forgiveness. The Lamb of God who took away the sin of the prostitute, who took away the sin of the adulterer, who took away the sin of the enemies of God, He simply said, I forgive you. Go and change your life. Don't do this anymore. Live by the authority of God. He can do that for you. The phrase, the Lamb of God, is familiar to us. We sang a song with that in there. But it's really only mentioned two places in the Bible. In this passage, verse 29 and then in verse 36. We don't really know exactly what John the Baptist was thinking when he used this phrase. Because in the sacrificial system of Israel, there wasn't a lamb offered to remove the sins of people. There were goats and there were grain offerings and there were bulls and there were rams. But a lamb offered was not necessarily a sin offering. But here, Jesus is presented as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of people. We often times associate what happened with Jesus on the cross as the prediction here that's made. He's going to die on the cross and His sacrifice for us allows our sins to be covered or paid for. That's another way in which the Bible describes He takes away the sins of the world. So you come to Him with your life and you say, I haven't lived the way you want me to. I've lived the way I thought I wanted to live. I've made choices based on what I would like to do. And I confess to you that I've lived in rebellion to you. I don't know any way that I can ever pay this back. But instead, Christ says, I have paid for your sin. We know of circumstances where people have taken the punishment of others when they didn't deserve it. Sometimes it's an accident. Sometimes it's miscarriage of justice. Even some rare times we see in the world where people say, I know what's happened to you and I know what you're guilty of. But I know you need to be with your family. I don't have any family. I will take the punishment that was due to you. We see those as rare acts of courage and love. What Christ did was He went to the cross, suffered the grievous and painful death, His blood shed on the cross as payments for your choices to live as you wanted to instead of living as He told you to. There is no way, God says, for you to be able to pay me back for what you've done. For your act was treasonous. And for treason, the only proper satisfaction is the death penalty. But there is someone who's volunteered to take your place and receive the punishment that is due to you. So in the Bible, the forgiveness of sin is one way that God takes it away. Paying the price for our sin is another. Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the earth. Now it's not enough for a person to find forgiveness and a new start. I suppose you've met people who said they were going to change their life. It may have been something as simple as a pledge to eat less. It may have been a pledge to not drink as much. It may have been a promise that they were going to eat properly. It may have been a promise they were going to exercise. And it's difficult to change your lifestyle. To live one way for a long time and then all of a sudden change to a different direction. It doesn't do a lot of good for a person to be forgiven and for a person to find forgiveness for the things they've done in their life either to be forgiven or for it to be paid for if they can't change. What Christ did was He came not only to make sure that we had a new start, but that the new start was not a new start to do the same old stuff. For what John describes here in Jesus' life was he said, when I would baptize Jesus, I saw the Holy Spirit of God come down and light on Him. This way I knew that He was the Son of God and that He was the Lamb of God that had come to take away the sin of the world. I knew that because of the presence of the Spirit of God. What John saw was the Spirit that the Bible tells us is the power of God. Whenever the creation story is told, it's the Spirit that hovers there. And when God said, let there be light, it was the Spirit that created all the light that we see. When He asked that the earth be created, it was the Spirit that did that. The animals and everything was here by the power of the Spirit. The Spirit of God has power that no one in the world ever had or no force ever has. Power beyond and above anything that we can do. The Spirit of God has the very mind of God. And so He can talk to us about what God wants us to do. And the Spirit of God guided Jesus so that every choice that He made was right. Even in the most difficult times, He knew what God wanted. In every circumstance of His life, the Spirit provided for Him. When He needed money, they caught a fish. Money inside the fish. When they needed food, a little bit of food, multiplied to fill multitudes. The provision of God was given by the Spirit of God. The wisdom of God was given by the Spirit of God. The protection of God was given by the Spirit of God. Jesus was in a circumstance one time where they were going to stone Him because of His preaching. And Scripture says He walked right through them and they weren't able to touch Him. That's the Spirit of God protecting. Guides us, provides for us, protects us, and makes our life powerful, influential, and meaningful. Now, Jesus comes. You say to Him, I've sinned so many times in so many ways, I don't know what I can do with my life. It's just torn apart and bound by sin and the choices I've made. He says, come to Me. I will forgive you. And I died on the cross that My blood would pay for your sin. But that's not all. I want you to start over. And so John says, this One on whom the Spirit came has come to baptize you in the Spirit. Now, the word baptize is not really an English word. It's just a made-up word. It's a transliteration from a word in the Bible, a Greek word. And that word meant to immerse something. He will immerse you in the Holy Spirit. It's like filling a jug full of water and dropping something in it, surrounded by the water. He will take you when you come to Him and ask for forgiveness, not only to forgive you, but He will immerse you in the Holy Spirit. So the Holy Spirit surrounds you. And nothing can get to you unless it goes through the Spirit of God. And what can penetrate the very nature and character of God? Nothing. He will stand between you in danger so nothing can hurt you. He will give you the wisdom that you need in every circumstance that you're in. All you have to do is to say, I don't know what to do. God, what do you want me to do? And the Spirit of God, right there surrounding you, you're immersed in it, will tell you, whisper in your ear, this is the right thing to do. He will protect you, provide for you, and give you wisdom. God doesn't redeem us and say, okay, you're forgiven. Now start over. Go out and do your best. He says, now that your life is changed and the sin is forgiven, washed away, taken away from you, I don't want you to ever live that way again. I'm going to surround you by my Holy Spirit so He will protect you and guide you and provide for you. Everything you need will be right there. You don't have to send off for it. You don't have to wait for it. It will be all around you everywhere you go like you're in a bubble surrounded by God. And now you can make right choices. Now you'll have the strength when you make the choices to do them. Now you'll be able to do what's right without any fear of anything hurting you. Your life will start over. This is the work of the Lamb of God. He not only comes to bring us the message of God's great forgiveness, but to forgive us and to pay the price for our sins and to give us a new start. We sang a song earlier in our service about the Lamb of God and I noticed a phrase in it that we were asking God to keep working with us until we became a Lamb of God. I don't know if you sung that or not, but that's a pretty dangerous thing to sing. What that's really saying is I want to do the work that Jesus Himself did. It's sacrificial. It's self-denying. It's costly. And it can even be deadly. For the Lamb of God was not a sweet little creature nestled between its mother's legs. Here, it is the object of the greatest wrath of God, of Satan, ever. But Jesus did ask that. If you want to follow Me, deny yourself, take up your cross, and live the way I've lived. Live a life of self-denial service for other people around you. You will be this Lamb of God when you surrender yourself to God's authority and control. You may not even know it because we become used to ourselves. You don't recognize that maybe until you see a picture of yourself thirty years ago and you say, I'm a different kind of person than I was back then. My shape is not the same. My face is not the same. My hair is not the same. I have changed. It happens so subtly we don't even really know it. When you give your life to Christ and you read the Bible and you pray and you're faithful in worshiping God and faithful in serving Him, you begin to change. You don't become the same person you were in the beginning. You change to a new person, a person controlled by Christ. When people around you see it subtly happen, they may not recognize it, except one day they may remember what you were like twenty years ago and start telling stories about what you used to be like. And all the people around you will say, I can't believe that person used to do those things. Then you know that He's done this in you. Transformed you. The strangers around you can sense the Spirit of God around you. Remember, you're baptized in the Spirit. When they come up against you, they touch the very Spirit of God surrounding you. Your attitude, your actions, the way you think, they're all controlled by God now. And the Spirit of God is evident in your life. That's why it's so important in our Sunday school classes, that our teachers be faithful followers of God. Why it's so important for you to be a faithful follower of God because the people around you, when they're around you, they may not know why, but they say, this person is the kind of person I want to be. And you have an opportunity to present them Christ so that He can take away the sin of their life. Rebellion against Him. Jesus Christ came into this world for a purpose. The purpose was to be able to change the lives of people. I am here to forgive you of your sin. And I'm here to pay the price for your sin. And I'm here to change your life. Just give it to me. Would you bow your heads, please, for a moment to pray. I think most of you would say, if you were asked to say out loud, Where is Christ in your life? You'd say, I've given my life to Him. I want to ask you to look back on your life. Would God say that you're the most faithful person to Him now? Or when you first started this journey? Has the vitality of your promise to God dwindled over the years? Have you gotten accustomed to religious things so that they're no longer passionate to you? Have you sort of learned that you can coast instead of being dedicated and faithful? You're a dangerous place if that's where you are. When the Israelites began to do that, disaster was always ahead. I want to ask today, if the Lamb of God lives in control of you, maybe you're here and you've never trusted Christ in your life and you're one of those places where you think there is not anything in your future that's going to work right. Seems like life is caving in on you. Jesus came for you. He wants to rescue you. He wants to save you. He wants to change your life. He wants to surround you with His Spirit so that nothing in this world can destroy you. But He needs one thing. He needs you to say, Lord, here is my life. I'm not ashamed to openly and publicly give myself to you. I want to say what John the Baptist said. Behold, take notice. Here present among you is the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of people. Will you receive it? In this moment of quietness, I want to ask you to face yourself and God. If you know that God wants you to make some kind of promise to Him today, we're going to give you an opportunity to do that. In the quietness of the moment, you may feel that God wants you to join this church. You may feel that He needs you to come and say publicly, I want to recommit my life to Christ. You will know that because the thought will come to your mind, this is what I need to do. If you come and make that publicly, it allows us to pray for you, encourage you, and support you. But we want you to obey Him. So in this moment of quietness, tell Him what you're ready to do, and do it. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Would you stand please for a moment of prayer? Do you have something you want to sing? You guys want to sing a final? Let me pray and then you can have a quiet closing song. We receive the Lamb of God in our lives for His forgiveness. We receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit for our guidance and protection that we might live the life of the Lamb in the world in which you've placed us. To the honor and glory of God, for those who've made promises to you this morning, I ask that your spirit would control them, remind them, possess them, guide them, that they might discover the power you have to overcome anything that this world has to offer. In the name of Jesus Christ, I pray, amen. We're going to sing the third verse of the Battle Hymn of the Republic for our closing. ♪♪♪♪ He has sounded forth a trumpet that shall never sound repeat He is lifting out the hearts of men before His judgment seat Oh, be swift, my soul, to answer Him Behind my feet our God is marching on Glory, glory, hallelujah Glory, glory, hallelujah Glory, glory, hallelujah His truth is marching on