The Lamb of God

Adult Sunday School - Part 15- The Lamb of God 

The story of Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God runs through the whole Bible. It is not as if God suddenly realised he made a mistake by making man, and now he has to redeem him. He made plans for the redemption of man when Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. I will therefore talk very little about the manifestation of the Lamb in the New Testament and take the prophecies in the Old Testament to turn your eyes on the Lamb of God.

However, we start with the New Testament.

John the Baptist was sent before Jesus Christ to prepare His way and the first day he saw Him, he said: Joh 1:29  The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

So where did it all start?

It starts with the first sin and we are so well acquainted with the story that unfolded in the Garden of Eden where Satan gets Adam and Eve to the point where they were disobedient to God's word - His only commandment - not to eat from that tree. God talks to everyone there and to the serpent He says: Gen 3:15  And 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. He refers here to the crucifixion. He says to Satan that you will bruise my Son's heel by taking Him to Golgotha, but there He will be crowned King of Kings and thereby crush your authority for ever and be victorious over all you stand for: Death Hell and Grave.

The next time we meet the lamb, he is prophesied by Abraham to his son Isaac: Gen 22:8  And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. Here Abraham tells Isaac that they are going to offer a lamb at Moriah (Golgotha), after two thousand years: Gen 22:4  Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. In the spirit Abraham does not look at his own offering of Isaac in three days' time, but he looks forward from his own time (2000 years B.C.) to the crucifixion two thousand years later. And when they come to Moriah, God tells them to offer the lamb which they found nearby caught in the thicket: Gen 22:13  And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. This thicket stands for the sin of the world and for the crown of thorns, in which Jesus Christ got embroiled. And Abraham utters this prophecy when he sees this: Gen 22:14  And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD (Golgotha) it shall be seen.

We next pick up the story in Egypt, where Moses instructed the people that every family shall take a lamb (from the sheep or the goats - Exo 12:5  Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:) without blemish, and keep it from the tenth to the fourteenth day, and then kill it in the evening and strike its blood on the doorposts to save their first born. These four days are the four thousand years which Christ awaited crucifixion, from the time of Adam to His crucifixion, which was 4000 years. I wrote about the destruction of the earth in Part 2, and said that there were people before Adam. This is further proof of it. What does the ten days quoted above refer to, if it is not to the ten thousand years before Adam?

Later we find this lamb carrying the sins of Israel into the wilderness: Lev 16:21  And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness. It was not yet time to kill the lamb, and he had to die outside the camp: Heb 13:12  Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. v:13  Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.

I conclude with the clear and wonderful prophecy of our redemption by the Lamb. It has two very touching aspects - one of excessive jubilation (by us) in Isaiah 52 and one of intense suffering by the Lamb in Isaiah 53.

Isa 52:1 Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion; put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city: for henceforth there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean. v:2  Shake thyself from the dust; arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bands of thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion. v:3  For thus saith the LORD, Ye have sold yourselves for nought; and ye shall be redeemed without money. v:4  For thus saith the Lord GOD, My people went down afore time into Egypt to sojourn there; and the Assyrian oppressed them without cause. v:5  Now therefore, what have I here, saith the LORD, that my people is taken away for nought? they that rule over them make them to howl, saith the LORD; and my name continually every day is blasphemed. v:6  Therefore my people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak: behold, it is I. v:7  How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace; that bringeth good tidings of good, that publisheth salvation; that saith unto Zion, Thy God reigneth! v:8  Thy watchmen shall lift up the voice; with the voice together shall they sing: for they shall see eye to eye, when the LORD shall bring again Zion. v:9  Break forth into joy, sing together, ye waste places of Jerusalem: for the LORD hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. v:10  The LORD hath made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God. v:11  Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the LORD. v:12  For ye shall not go out with haste, nor go by flight: for the LORD will go before you; and the God of Israel will be your reward. v:13  Behold, my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. v:14  As many were astonished at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men: v:15  So shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him: for that which had not been told them shall they see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider.

Isa 53:1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? v:2  For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. v:3  He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. v:4  Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. v:5  But 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. v:6  All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. v:7  He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth. v:8  He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. v:9  And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. v:10  Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand. v:11  He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities. v:12  Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

These scripture were so beautifully written into the libretto of 'The Messiah' by Jennens, and the music was composed by Handel. Handel was asked by Jennens in 1741, to write the music for this libretto. He locked himself up for twenty four days and came up with one of the most beautiful spiritual pieces of music  ever written (259 pages).

- by P.K.Odendaal - October 2012