"This Is the Son of God" John 1:29-34 Sunday Morning Worship Service

This morning, John chapter 1.

John 1 · chapter mention

And our text is in verse 29 through 34.

So let's begin by reading from God's Word.

Look down at your Bibles, follow with me as I read.

John chapter 1, verse 29.

John 1:29

The next day he that is John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

This is he of whom I said, After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.

I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.

John bore witness.

I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.

This is God's word.

Sometimes we don't know what we really need in life.

Publication from the Johns Hopkins University Hospital recently told the story of a man who, while he was rearranging some photos on his wall, slipped, fell down half a flight of stairs, and wound up in an emergency room.

During the course of the examination, it was discovered that he had a much greater problem than the lump on his head, that he had a brain tumor.

Publication goes on to say that more than a third of brain tumors are discovered in the like manner, incidentally, accidentally, as people fall and wind up in a hospital.

It's a basic reality that sometimes in life our deepest problems lie below the surface, lurking unknown to us until something or someone uncovers them.

And I think one of the ways to understand John the Baptist's ministry is that he had a ministry of uncovering people's greatest problem.

God uniquely suited him, God uniquely fitted him, God uniquely called him, this person who lived this crazy life.

We were introduced to him last week, in which he was on the banks of the Jordan with tens of thousands of people surrounding him out in the wilderness to be baptized and to hear his message.

And what he was uncompromisingly focused on was uncovering people's greatest need, their need to know God through his only appointed Savior, Jesus.

We saw last week that the hubbabaloo that John had caused around Israel had instigated a delegation sent by the leaders in Jerusalem to interrogate John and ask him, Who are you?

And we saw repeatedly he answered that question by saying, You're asking the wrong question.

Instead of asking, who am I?

You should be asking who is he?

Because your real problem is that there's a holy God who will judge you for your sin, and there's only one Savior who can remove that sin, and you need to know him.

John was repeatedly, incessantly, always pointing people to their greatest problem.

Their need to know God through Jesus Christ.

And what we find as we look at John's life at this day, this morning we're looking at the second of four consecutive days in the life of ministry of Jesus.

Last week, John was telling the Pharisees and the scribes and the priests to look for Jesus.

They came and asked him, Who are you?

And he said, He's coming.

Today, Jesus finally steps onto the scene.

You see in verse 29, it says the next day John the Baptist saw Jesus coming towards him.

So finally, Jesus steps onto the pages of John's gospel.

And the first thing that John the Baptist says about him is, Behold, the Lamb of God, look at him.

He's been saying he's coming, and now he's saying, Here he is, look at him, and next week we'll look at the last day, the last incident of John the Baptist's ministry, and we'll find him telling everybody who'd been following him, Leave me and follow Jesus instead.

Before we go any further in our study of this passage, I think we should just notice what John is doing.

This whole little paragraph that we just read is all about John saying, This is Jesus.

What he's doing is he's redirecting the question away from who are you, John, to who is Jesus?

And we should notice nobody even asked him that question.

But John knew that the greatest need of every man and every woman is to know God through Jesus Christ.

This morning the passage that we have is a testimony from the scriptures, specifically from the mouth of John the Baptist, God's appointed witness, to tell us who is Jesus.

I think the way that we can begin to the paradigm that we can have for looking at this text is to ask ourselves our question, do I know Jesus truly?

And if I know Jesus truly, how much more of him is there to know and enjoy?

So let's look at this passage together.

We'll look at it under this heading.

This is John the Baptist, witness to Jesus.

It's a fourfold witness.

He tells us four truths about Jesus that we need to know and apply to our lives.

And he begins by telling us this.

First, John the Baptist says that Jesus is the Lamb of God.

Look at verse 29.

29, John says, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

The very first thing when John the Baptist encounters Jesus in the flesh is what springs from his lips is, This is the Lamb of God.

Now that is a very common expression in Christianity at Emmanuel Bible Church.

We have songs about the Lamb of God that we sing on Sunday mornings, and so it becomes something of a stock phrase that we use to describe Jesus.

But it's worth asking for a second, what does it really mean to say that Jesus is the Lamb of God?

What did John the Baptist intend for us to understand?

At this stage in John the Baptist's life, we know that Jesus has already been baptized by John.

He's gone out into the wilderness for 40 days, in which he's tempted by Satan, and after conquering Satan and the temptations, he comes back across the Jordan, is going to begin his messianic ministry, and the first thing that John the Baptist says about him is, he's the Lamb of God.

It must be important.

So we should ask, what does he really mean?

And as you study what the phrase Lamb of God means, there's actually pretty complicated.

One of the commentaries I was reading this week says, there are at least ten possible interpretations of the Lamb of God.

I won't run you through ten interpretations, but I want to distill this down to four images that we should have in our mind if we're going to conceptualize Jesus as the Lamb of God.

Four images from the Old Testament that fill out the picture of what it means to say that Jesus is the Lamb of God.

So let's do a little Bible study together.

I want you to turn in your Bibles all the way back to the beginning to Genesis.

Turn to the first book of the Bible, turn to Genesis in chapter 22.

And I want to run through four images in the Old Testament that help us to understand what the scriptures mean by calling Jesus the Lamb of God.

And the first one is in the life of Abraham.

Abraham, of course, is the first person that God calls to establish a line through which will come the Messiah.

He gives Abraham a threefold promise.

I'm going to make you into a great nation, I'm going to give you a land, and through that nation will come the Messiah who will bring a blessing to all the peoples of the earth.

But Abraham doesn't have any children.

And he waits years and years and years.

And finally the son of the promise is born.

His name is Isaac, and Abraham is really excited.

And then God poses to Abraham a very strange task.

Let's pick up the story in Genesis 22 and verse 1.

After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, Here I am.

And God said, Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I shall tell you.

It's a radical task that God has assigned Abraham.

Take your only beloved son, the one that you have waited for for years, and go offer him as a sacrifice.

And perhaps even more radical than the challenge that God posed to Abraham is the obedience Abraham displays to the challenge.

Look at verse 3.

So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac.

He cut the wood for the burnt offering of rose and went to the place which God had told him.

He just did exactly what God told him.

And the text tells us for three days he rode and rode and rode until they finally arrived at the mountain designated by God for this task.

And then he begins to climb the mountain with his son Isaac.

And finally, Isaac says something.

Look in verse 7.

Isaac said to his father, My father, and he said, Here I am, my son, and he said, Behold, the fire in the wood.

But where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

And Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.

So they went, both of them together.

The reason is revealed here why Abraham was willing to obey God.

He didn't understand how, he couldn't possibly conceive of why God was doing this, but he knew that God would provide.

One way or another, though it be beyond my conception, God will provide what he commands.

And so, look at verse 10.

Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.

But verse 11, the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham, and he said, Here I am.

The angel said, Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.

And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by its horns.

And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

See the lesson that God is teaching Abraham in this incident.

God's testing Abraham.

That's the heading of the whole section.

Why?

God's not testing Abraham because he needs to find out what's in Abraham's heart.

We're talking about God.

God already knows what's in Abraham's heart, but he wants to pull something out of Abraham's heart and teach him a lesson right at the very beginning of God's redemptive program to save his people from their sins and to make a new heavens and a new earth inhabited by redeemed creatures.

He's going to make a very, very emphatic point.

He will provide for his promises.

That's the lesson you see it in verse 14.

Abraham called the name of that place.

The Lord will provide.

And God follows this incident by re-emphasizing the promise he'd originally made to Abraham.

Look at verse 17.

God says, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore, and your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.

The absolute emphatic point that God must make at the outset of his redemptive program is whatever is necessary, whatever is required, in order to fulfill my promise, I will provide it.

Is it a son?

An only son?

A beloved son?

I will provide it.

Is it a lamb that is necessary?

I will provide it.

Then this motif of the lamb just continues as a thread through the rest of the Old Testament.

We'll pick it up again with the next major picture.

Go to Exodus and chapter 12.

Exodus, the next book in your Bible, Exodus and chapter 12.

And here in the story, Abraham's descendants have multiplied.

His son Isaac has a son who has sons who have many sons, and after hundreds of years, they've multiplied to become large enough to be a nation, but they've been enslaved in Egypt.

And God is going to act to redeem his people out of Egypt and constitute them as a nation.

But to do that, he sends plagues upon the Egypt and their Pharaoh.

The culminating tenth plague is a terrible plague.

It's a plague of execution, of death to the firstborn and every family.

But in order to spare the people of Israel from his judgment, he institutes a sign for them.

It's the Passover.

He calls every head of the each household to take a lamb, to slaughter it, and to paint the blood of the lamb on the doorposts of the house.

Notice just a few details about this Passover.

Then chapter 12 and verse 5.

In verse 5, God instructs the people to take a lamb that will be without blemish.

A male, a year old, you can take it from the sheep or from the goats.

In verse 7, you shall take some of the blood and put it on the doorpost of the lentil of the houses in which you eat it.

Then the purpose of this is down in verse 12.

And in verse 12, God says, I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments.

I am Yahweh.

The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

That's what the sign of the blood on the doorpost symbolized, that a substitute had been put forward, had been provided to endure the judgment in your place.

And that Passover meal is supposed to be repeated year after year as God redeems his people out of Egypt and then brings them into the promised land Israel and constitutes them as a nation and gives them a law so that they can know who the true God is and how to approach him on his terms.

And at the heart of that law are a lot of sacrifices.

So for the third picture, turn to Exodus in chapter 29.

Exodus in chapter 29.

At this stage in the story, God has brought Israel out of Egypt and He's giving them a law.

He's described a tabernacle where God's presence will dwell, and he has described a lot of sacrifices to symbolize the reality that for God to dwell with the sinful people, a substitute must endure judgment in our place.

There's a lot of sacrifices we could point to, but one in particular I think is worth noting to understand what God is teaching his people and through them to us is in Exodus chapter 29, verse 38.

Exodus 29:38

Look at verse 38.

Now this is what you shall offer on the altar.

Two lambs, a year old, day by day, regularly or continually.

Verse 39.

One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight.

This is the meat offering, the continual offering, morning and night, day by day, by day by day, every single day, every single moment there was to be a lamb delivered up on the altar to symbolize to the people that this God is absolutely, exclusively, only, always holy, and for you to enter into his presence, there must be a substitute, bear the judgment in your place, to remove God's wrath so you can come into his presence.

And this isn't the only sacrifice of the lamb.

As you read through the rest of the book of Exodus and Leviticus, there are a lot of sacrifices.

And you when you get to Numbers in chapter 28 and 29, you get a summary of the sacrificial system, and there's a lot of them.

We won't read it, but you could read it on your own.

But let me give you an overview of the sacrificial system in Israel.

This is from Numbers 28 and 29.

There are sacrifices every single day.

There are Sabbath sacrifices, there are monthly sacrifices, there's the Passover sacrifice, sacrifices at the festival of weeks, the festival of trumpets, the day of atonement, and the festival of booths, again and again and again and again.

And what is the thread that runs through the entire sacrificial system?

In every single description, there is to be sacrificed a lamb.

Again and again and again, 33 times.

In Numbers 28 and 29, in the summary of the sacrificial system, 33 times the lamb is described.

What is the purpose of all of these sacrifices?

Well, it's told to us very explicitly in the text you're looking at, Exodus 29.

Look at verse 42.

It shall be a regular burnt offering throughout your generations at the entrance of the tent of meeting before Yahweh, where I will meet with you to speak to you there.

There I will meet with the people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by my glory.

Drop down to verse 45.

I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God.

Your sin must be removed by a substitute.

But is this God's eternal plan?

Every single day, every Sabbath, every month, multiple times a year in the festival, sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice.

And as you read through the Old Testament story, you see gatherings theme, this reality that there is going to come a culmination to the sacrificial system with a better lamb, a lamb that will bring all of the sacrifices to a climax.

And that really comes to the forefront in the prophetic book.

So turn in your Bibles to one last image, the image of the servant in the book of Isaiah.

I want you to begin flipping to Isaiah and chapter 53.

Isaiah chapter 53.

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

And as you're turning to Isaiah, we should remember that John the Baptist introduced himself as the one who is a voice crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight, as Isaiah the prophet said.

So the book of Isaiah describes a day in the future in which God will come, manifest himself to his people, and save them, deliver them, redeem them.

And John says he's the one preparing the way for that deliverance.

And as you read through the book of Isaiah, you find that God is going to accomplish this deliverance through a servant, through a very special individual, who's first introduced to us in Isaiah 42, verse 1.

Isaiah 42:1

Behold, my servant whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights.

I've put my spirit upon him.

And if you look closely at those words, it may sound familiar to you.

If you're familiar with the New Testament story of Jesus' baptism, the language that God uses to mark out Jesus at Jesus' baptism is language from Isaiah 42.

God says in Jesus' baptism, This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

And God marks out his son that way, not only because that's a true statement, that God has eternally and infinitely been overflowingly enjoying his son, he is pleased in his son, but he's also marking out his son as the servant of the book of Isaiah, who's come into the world to achieve the deliverance God promised to his people.

God marks him as this is the one in whom my soul delights, and the Holy Spirit comes and rests on Jesus, marking Jesus as the Isaianic servant.

He's the one Isaiah said is coming to redeem God's people.

And the culmination of the servant's work is shown to us in Isaiah chapter 53.

Isaiah 53 · chapter mention

Before we get into 53, the text really begins in chapter 52 and verse 13.

And in chapter 52, verse 13, Isaiah says, Behold, my servant shall act wisely, he shall be high and lifted up, exalted.

That's divine language.

This servant is going to be exalted like God.

But verse 14, as many astonished at you, his appearance was so marred beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of man.

So he will sprinkle many nations, and kings will shut their mouths because of him.

So simultaneously there's this juxtaposed image of the servant who'll be exalted and humiliated to the point you can't even recognize him as a man.

How's that possible?

Read the rest of the prophecy, and you come to verse five, and you find that this exalted servant is going to offer himself as a sacrifice in the place of sinners.

Verse 5 describes his death as he was pierced for our transgressions.

He was crushed for our iniquities.

Upon him was the punishment that brought us peace, and by his wounds we are healed.

This servant dies as a substitute in the place of sinners, bearing the judgment, not he, but they deserve.

Which is why the prophet summarizes the picture of this servant in verse 7 this way.

Look at verse 7.

He was oppressed and was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shears is silent.

So he opened not his mouth.

So the end of the text summarizes the accomplishment of his work at the end of verse 12.

The servant bears their sin, dying in their place, like a lamb.

That's the culmination of the sacrificial system.

So if you go back to John 1, with these four images in your mind, back to John chapter 1 and verse 29.

John 1 · chapter mention

When John the Baptist sees Jesus emerge on the scene to begin his messianic ministry, of course, the first thing that he directs our attention to is that this Jesus is the Lamb of God.

All of those images coalesce in Jesus Christ.

God has promised that he's going to bring redemption, deliverance for his people.

He's going to remove their sins and bring them into his presence.

The way he's going to do that is he's going to do it through a sacrifice.

And whatever sacrifices require, God will provide it.

Is there a son, an only son, a beloved son?

God will provide it, and he's providing it in the person of Jesus Christ.

Is there a Passover lamb necessary to bring a new Exodus, a new redemption?

That's exactly what John the Baptist is foreshadowing by doing his ministry on the banks of the Jordan, the Jordan River that the Israelites crossed to come into the promised land in the Exodus, and now John is saying there's a better Exodus, a better deliverance, a better salvation.

And you need a better Passover lamb.

You need someone to stand in your place and bear the judgment of God so that you can safely pass through God's judgment into the promised land to enjoy God's presence forever.

You need someone else to endure that judgment in your place.

All of the sacrificial systems culminate in Jesus, which is a perfectly appropriate way for John to begin describing Jesus after just having had a conversation with the priests and Levites who were in charge of the entire Israelite sacrificial system.

The first thing that John says to them is, look, there's the better lamb who'll bring an end to everything that has been anticipating his arrival.

He will be slaughtered, and when he is, there'll be a final deliverance, a final removal of all judgment, a final separation of sin from God's people.

All of this because Jesus is himself the servant.

The first thing that John wants us to see is this Jesus, he is the Lamb of God.

When we contemplate Jesus, you know, when you come to faith in Jesus Christ, some of the most basic bottom shelf truths are so electric to you.

Jesus died for me.

And yet somehow in our fallenness, there are simple things like Jesus is a Lamb of God that over time we get used to.

And one of the purposes of the testimony of John at the very beginning of John's gospel is to call your mind, if you are a disciple of Jesus Christ, what does it mean to know Jesus Christ?

It means to know him as the Lamb of God.

Jesus is your substitute.

God's been orchestrating your redemption thousands of years before you were ever born.

He's been weaving the threads of history so that finally it could culminate in the person of Jesus, who would stand in your place and bear the infinite wrath of God that you should drink forever.

Jesus would gulp it down to the dregs, turn it over, and bring you into the presence of God.

This lamb, and this lamb alone is the Lamb appointed by God to deliver you from your sin and to bring you to God.

And John is eager for you to say, you need to believe in him.

You need to look at him, behold the Lamb of God.

But before we move on to the next thing that John's going to tell us, because he has a lot to say, and we'll see how much we get through this morning.

I think we should dwell just for a second on this little phrase, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

What does it mean that this Lamb takes away the sin of the world?

We've been speaking about it already, but what does it mean specifically to say takes away the sin of the world?

Does that mean that everybody on earth has already had their sins forgiven because of what Jesus did on the cross?

And of course, the biblical answer to that would be no.

There is a reality of judgment.

You must turn from your sin and embrace Jesus' death in your place, and your sins will be forgiven.

But what does the word world mean?

Well, it's contrasted with what John says at the end of verse 31.

Look at the end of verse 31.

John says that he came that this Jesus would be revealed to Israel.

He's the promised deliverer of Israel.

But even from the beginning, when God promised the Savior to Abraham, it was always going to be through Israel to the world.

That's the point that John the Baptist is making.

He's the only appointed Savior for the world, the only name under heaven by which we must be saved.

This is the only one who can bring you to God.

And he can take away your sins, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Sin is what separates you from God.

But here, John uses the singular, the sin singular of the world.

What he's talking about is he's speaking collectively, all of it.

He can remove all sin.

When he delivers his people, he will remove all their sin.

If Jesus is your Lamb, he takes away all your sin, past, present, future.

He removes all of it because he takes it away.

The last word in this little phrase, who takes away the sin of the world.

And this word takes is not the normal word that's used for forgiveness.

Usually there's a word for forgive.

It's much more common.

But here John uses this expression to take away.

It's a common Greek word, ero.

I looked up the hundreds of usages of it in the New Testament, and I concluded it means takeaway.

There's an interesting usage of it though in John chapter 19 and verse 15 when the crowds are crying out for the blood of Jesus and they're urging Pilate to deliver him to crucifixion.

John 19 · chapter mention

Do you remember what they say?

They shout out to Pilate, away with him! Away with him.

Speaking more than they knew.

Because by his death, Jesus as the Lamb of God takes away his people's sin.

So let me ask you this question.

What sin has Jesus taken away from you?

If you can't clearly answer that question, Jesus won't be precious to you.

What sins has Jesus taken away from you?

This text says the answer to that question is that he's taken away all of it.

Jesus has taken all of your sin.

Everything in your past, everything you battle with in the present, everything in the future.

Jesus has even taken away the sins you aren't even yet aware of in your life.

He has taken them away and borne them himself in his body on the tree, thereby ending the hostility between you and God and bringing you to him.

Jesus is the Lamb of God, has taken away all your sins.

That's the very first thing that John the Baptist points out.

If you're going to understand who Jesus is, you have to see that Jesus is the Lamb of God.

Now he's going to tell us three more things about Jesus, but the next three things he's going to tell us are more about Jesus as a person.

This you could say is Jesus and his work for us, but if you're going to really understand the magnitude of that work, you have to understand even better the person who did it for you.

So the next three truths are very specifically about who Jesus is as a person.

The next thing he says is, Jesus is not just the Lamb of God, but he's the possessor of eternal life.

The possessor of eternal life.

Look down to verse 30 in the text.

Verse 30, this is he of whom I said, after me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.

It's kind of a tongue twister.

Now when he says that this person comes after me, John is speaking of Jesus, and he says, Jesus comes after me in two senses, both chronological.

One is in terms of his ministry, Jesus comes on the scene after John the Baptist, obviously.

John the Baptist is the forerunner, Jesus comes after him.

But also in terms of their birth order, John the Baptist, Jesus are first cousins.

And John the Baptist is born six months earlier.

So then when he says there is a person coming after me who ranks before me because he was before me, and with that little verb, he's speaking of existence.

He's saying because he existed before me.

The Baptist is saying that Jesus pre-existed me.

He's eternal.

He wasn't just born in the womb, he eternally existed before his conception in the womb by the Holy Spirit.

Now, another one of these things that is pretty basic.

I've taught my four-year-old the Apostles' Creed, and she can recite it with compassion.

But pause for just a second here.

John the Baptist has a little cousin from Podunk Nazareth with all of about 46 people.

He swings a hammer for a living.

And at this moment, John the Baptist has tens of thousands of people, the entire nation, flocking around him, egging him on, asking him to declare himself the Messiah.

And the Baptist says, Stop asking about me, follow my little cousin, because he existed before me, because he is eternal.

That is the kind of testimony that you would only give if it were true.

When somebody gives testimony about something, a basic question to ask is, what does this person stand to gain from what they're saying?

So what did the Baptist stand to gain from what he said about Jesus?

Losing everything?

Read the rest of the story, he ends up in jail with his head locked off.

He didn't have anything to gain.

That's the kind of testimony you give about your little cousin to say he's eternal, he pre-existed me, only if you know it's true and you're prepared to suffer for it.

So here's the testimony of the Baptist.

He says, This person was the Lamb of God isn't just any person, he's the eternal one.

He's agreeing with the testimony of verse 1 of the beginning of this gospel.

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, eternally with God, and the word was God, God himself.

Jesus is the possessor of life himself.

He's uncreated.

No one made him for eternity.

He has possessed life in and of himself.

In fact, this is what Jesus says with his own lips.

In John chapter 5, verse 27, Jesus says, For as the Father has life in himself, God is self-existent eternally, possessing life in himself, so he is granted to the Son also to have life in himself.

John 5:27

So the Father and the Son sharing eternal life for eternity past, uncreated, ungenerated, ever eternal, sharing life in and of themselves.

And so, here's an implication of that, is he has given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man.

Which leads us into the second part of verse 30.

John and Jesus both make an application about the reality that Jesus is himself the possessor of life, the fountain of life, and that is he's preeminent.

That's why John says, He ranks before me.

He has to be preeminent in my life.

And you should ask yourself the question: if you believe, if you confess that Jesus is the uncreated one, Jesus is the possessor of eternal life, is it evident that he is preeminent in my life?

No one created him, nothing changes him, nothing can move him, but he gives himself to all things, life and breath and everything, then of course he must have preeminence in my life.

Let me make a second application from that, and that is that if Jesus has preeminence in your life, it would be really good for you.

I work with students and uh it is uh endemic in Gen Z to ask yourself the question, who am I?

And to have an identity crisis and to be told by our society that if you want to understand who you are, you need to look inside your heart, find out your deepest desire, pull it out and identify with it.

And that's not good advice for a number of reasons.

One of the basic reasons is that that's chasing a mirage.

Try and look inside your heart and find what your desires are, your desires are always shifting and changing.

And whatever desire you find, it's gonna change in some years.

Kids don't believe this, but it's true.

And whatever that desire is, within a few years, society is going to change, and pretty soon they might begin condemning the desire that you identify with.

This is basic reality that everything in existence is always changing.

Nothing is static, everything is becoming, always changing, always fluid, except Jesus.

Jesus alone is the uncreated one.

Jesus alone is the I am.

Jesus alone is the one who was and is and is to come.

He will never change.

And so if you identify your life in him, if you anchor yourself in him, if you lock yourself into him, the possessor of eternal life, and find your life in him, you will have an anchor for your soul.

You have something outside of time and space that identifies you, that defines you, that describes you, that gives you rock solid stability to live your life in this world.

But you know, this isn't just a problem for Gen Z teenagers flipping through Instagram.

It's a a human reality.

Everything is changing, and if you identify or you put your hopes in anything in this world, it'll flush through your fingers like water on a seashore.

My wife and I are going to celebrate 10 years of marriage this coming fall, and I'm really excited about it.

But if I look back on the last 10 years, one of the really obvious things to see about us is that we've changed.

Ten years ago, I was no less handsome, of course.

But we were a lot younger, we had four fewer kids, both of us had fewer college degrees.

Life was really different.

And it's not just the external things, it's the internal things.

It's our desires and our hopes and the way we process things, our thinking process, our goals for life, where we want to go in the next 10 years.

All of that has changed.

Enough that you could wake up one morning and look at your spouse of X many years and say, Who the heck are you?

If you try and bank your marriage at the beginning on some feudal concept of you are the puzzle piece that completes me, you will find in a few years that puzzle piece has shifted and you don't interlock anymore.

But if you bank your marriage on the unchanging reality of Jesus Christ who was and is and is to come, you will have an anchor for your marriage.

You see, it is good for you to make Jesus the preeminent one in your life, for you to find your hopes and your dreams and your desires to be locked into his because he is the fountain of life.

He's the possessor of life.

He never changes.

And if you put yourself in him, your life will be anchored.

Here's the third thing that John tells us about Jesus.

He's the Lamb of God, He's the possessor of eternal life, and third, he's the giver of the Holy Spirit.

Look at verse 32.

John, in verse 32, bore witness and said, I saw the spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him.

I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, He in whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

Just a note on something I find interesting in verses 33 and 31, John says twice, I didn't know him, which seems strange because we know Jesus and John were cousins.

Their mothers hung out when they were in the womb.

Didn't he?

What do you mean he didn't know him?

Certainly must have known him personally, and he probably even knew that he was the Messiah.

And yet, we learn at the end of Luke's gospel in Luke chapter 1 that at an early age John went out into the desert and for years was waiting for the appearance of the Messiah.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

And he'd been told by the Father that it's the one who you see the Spirit descend on and remain.

That's who the Messiah is, and for years and years, 30 years, Jesus is swinging his hammer, and there's no sign of him acting like the Messiah John thought he was.

And sooner or later, there would have been a doubt creep into his mind.

In fact, it wasn't just at this stage in his life, but later in his life there were some doubts that crept into his mind.

Even after seeing Jesus marked out by the Spirit as the Messiah, you read the story in the Gospel of Mark, excuse me, in the Gospel of Matthew in chapter 11, and you find that John, having been arrested for his testimony of Jesus, sends some messengers to Jesus and says, I think you're the Messiah, but you're not really doing what I thought you would be doing.

Are you sure you're the one?

And I find that actually pretty comforting.

That John the Baptist, the witness par excellence, had partial understanding in his understanding of Jesus, was growing in his understanding of Jesus, and even occasionally perhaps had some doubts.

I think that's kind of par for the course.

But you can handle doubts in your walk with Jesus if you deal with them the way John did.

He banked on the promise of God.

He knew there was a Spirit coming who would mark out the Messiah, he knew that was true, even though he hadn't seen it yet, he knew God's word was true.

And when he had doubts, he went to talk to Jesus about them.

And Jesus didn't send him away and shame him, Jesus answered his questions.

I think it is encouraging to know that even John the Baptist has doubts because it indicates to us that we can approach Jesus the same way.

If you trust in God's word, God will provide, he will vindicate his word, and you can speak to him about your questions.

Well, John here has absolutely no doubts in this moment because he's just seen the Holy Spirit, as he says in verse 33, descend upon Jesus and remain on him.

Now, in particular, what John emphasizes here is not just that the Holy Spirit remained on Jesus, but that Jesus is the one at the end of verse 33, you see, who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

We should ask, what does that mean to baptize with the Holy Spirit?

Well, it means Jesus gives the Spirit.

This is what Jesus himself says in John 3, 34.

He whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure.

So Jesus is the one who gives away God's spirit, which by the way means that Jesus is God.

If you have listened, hung out with Jesse Johnson, you know that he likes his truck a lot.

But he's also pretty generous with it, and I've driven his truck a number of times.

But if I picked you up in his truck one time and I said, here, here are the keys, it's yours.

That's not the way this exchange works.

It's his truck.

That's the way this works.

Implicit in the teaching of Scripture that Jesus is the one who dispenses the Spirit of God is the obvious implication that Jesus himself must be God.

The only one who can dispense the Spirit of God is God Himself.

That's who Jesus is.

And in particular, why does the Scripture use this language of baptizing in the Spirit?

I think one verse that is curious for us to read is 1 Corinthians chapter 12, verse 13.

1 Corinthians 12:13

The Apostle Paul says, In one spirit we are all baptized into one body, Jews and Greeks, slaves are free, and we're all made to drink of one spirit.

Paul's even mixing metaphors here.

We're baptized, which means immersed, so we're dunked into the spirit, and then we're drinking of the spirit.

We're made to partake of the life of the spirit.

The spirit of God is the eternally generated, eternal love that flows between the Father and the Son.

And Jesus gives his spirit to us, plunges us into the spirit, so that we partake of the life of the Spirit, so that to know Jesus is to know the very life of God.

That's what it means for Jesus to be the giver of God's Spirit.

But John still isn't done in describing who this Jesus is.

Lamb of God, possessor of eternal life, giver of the Holy Spirit.

And there's one more, Son of God.

Look at verse 34.

John's climactic testimony in verse 34 says, I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son of God.

Or some of you don't have the words son of God in your Bibles.

Some of you have the words chosen of God.

If you're reading from the NIV, the NLT, the NET, or there are footnotes in the CSV, the NRSV, you have the chosen one in your Bible.

Those are all good translations.

I know this because I read all of them.

I'm reading from the English Standard Version, and most English translations, and I checked French, German, and Spanish this week, they mostly have Son of God.

That's the dominant rendering in the history of Christian tradition.

So what's the deal?

What's the difference, and why does it matter?

The difference is it's a text-critical issue.

This is a little bit boring, so I'll give a quick explanation.

In our manuscripts, our ancient manuscripts of the New Testament, most of them have Son of God, but a few of the ancient manuscripts have the reading, the chosen one of God.

And so some of our English translations think that chosen one is the better reading, and so that's the way they translate.

Most of them think son of God is the better reading, that's the way they translate.

So we should ask the question: does it matter?

Well, if chosen one is the right reading, then that would be John pointing to Jesus and saying, He's the chosen one, specifically, he's God's chosen Christ, anointed Messiah.

Chosen one is synonymous with Christ.

I know this because this is the way people speak of Jesus on the cross.

Luke 23, 35.

The people stood by watching, this is Jesus on the cross, but the ruler scoffed at him, saying, He saved others, let him save himself if he is the Christ of God, his chosen one.

So the chosen would mean John is marking Jesus out as the Christ.

But if Jesus is the Son of God, he's speaking particularly of Jesus' function of revealing the Father.

The word son has appeared once before in John's Gospel.

It's in John 1.

Look at verse 18.

Look down in your Bibles, verse 18, where the Gospel of John says, No one has ever seen God, the only God, that's the only begotten, the only Son, who is at the Father's side.

He has made him known.

So if John points to Jesus and says he's the Son of God, he's saying Jesus is the fullness of deity in bodily form, and to look at Jesus is to look at God.

There's nothing hidden in God that is not revealed to us in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

So which is it?

Well, I think Son of God is the better reading.

If you have text critical questions, shoot me an email.

But I think that if you take Son of God as I think it's the better reading.

This is what.

By the way, I should mention this.

Either way, they both accomplished John's purpose in writing his gospel.

Because John says he wrote his gospel so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Both of your Bibles are the Word of God.

But if it's Son of God, look how this fits together.

This is John's testimony to who Jesus is.

He is the possessor of eternal life, the self-existent one who forever has existed in eternity past.

And he is the Son of God, the fullness of God.

He reveals all of God.

There's nothing obscure, there's nothing hidden behind Jesus' back.

He is the radiance of the glory of God, so that the fullness of all that God is is made manifest in Jesus.

And he's the giver of the Spirit who takes his people and plunges them into the life of the Spirit so that they enjoy the eternal Trinitarian life of the Father, Son, radiating joy in the Spirit before between one another and his people partake in that for eternity.

And all of that is because this Jesus humbled himself to make himself the Lamb of God, to be slaughtered in your place, to bear the wrath that you deserve, to take your sins away, so that forever and ever and ever you can be part of the people of God, enjoying the very life of God.

This is Jesus.

Lord, thank you that you've revealed yourself in your word.

We pray that you would as Paul said that you would give us hearts that have strength to comprehend something of the breadth and depth and height and width of the love of God that surpasses all knowledge.

Surely, God, your love revealed to us in your Son Jesus is beyond what we can grasp.

But we ask that you would give us strength to gain something more this week, to love you more this week, and so boldly witness as John did before us of the reality that there is life in Jesus Christ and in no one else.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with Jesus.