Behold the Lamb - John 1:19-34 (01.18.2026)

John 1, 19-34. After I finish reading, I'll say this is the word of the Lord.

Please respond by saying thanks be to God.

And this is the testimony of John. When the Jews sent priests and Levites from

Jerusalem to ask him, Who are you?

He confessed and did not deny, but confessed, I am not the Christ.

And they asked him, What then? Are you Elijah? He said, I am not.

Are you the prophet? And he answered, No.

So they said to him, Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us.

What do you say about yourself? He said, I am the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness.

Make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.

They asked him, Then why are you baptizing, If you are neither the Christ,

nor Elijah, nor the prophet,

John answered them, I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not

know, even he who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.

These things took place in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and he 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.

And John bore witness. 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 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 the Word of the Lord.

Morning. How are you doing? All right, go ahead and be opening your Bible to

John chapter one. If you got a Bible, if you didn't bring one today,

that's okay. We're going to have it on the screen.

And it should also be in your bulletin that you got when you came in the door.

So we just started a series in the gospel of John last week and covered the

first 18 verses. We're picking back up with that today.

As you're turning to John chapter one, I'm going to go ahead and pray for us one more time.

Lord, thank you for this morning. Would you teach us today through the example of John the Baptist?

Would you show us in greater detail who Jesus is?

And would you give us the kind of freedom and power that John the Baptist enjoyed,

that we might glorify you with our lives as he did with his? Amen.

All right. So, as I said last week, we started in this gospel, the gospel of John.

We covered the prologue, the first 18 verses of the gospel, which I said last

week is kind of like a table of contents to the rest of the book.

And so we weren't able to go into detail into every single thing that those

18 verses covered, but that's okay because John is going to keep revisiting

those things again and again throughout the book of John.

And so today we're looking at John the Baptist.

And he mentioned John the Baptist in the prologue in verses 6,

7, and 8, and then again in verse 15.

But now we're going to look at this character in greater detail.

And then also last week, we talked about how he came to his own.

Verse 11 said, He came to his own and his own did not receive him.

Well, we're beginning to see that play out now with the religious rulers.

So to understand John the Baptist, you've got to kind of imagine him in our own day.

So imagine that there's this preacher who's meeting out in the fields in Kentucky

or somewhere like that, right?

And he didn't go to seminary, wasn't seminary trained. and he's just gathering

large crowds of people and he's preaching and people are driving out to him

from all over the country, they're taking, you know.

Day-long, two-day-long trips to go and hear him preach, and they're being changed

by what they hear, and everyone's talking about him.

That is what was going on with John the Baptist in his day.

People were traveling sometimes two or three days on foot to go out into the

wilderness, out in the middle of nowhere, to hear this guy teach,

and they were being baptized by him, and they were coming back,

and they're talking about him, and everybody was talking about John the Baptist,

this guy who wasn't trained by the rabbis of the day.

He was very unconventional. He didn't wear the normal clothing of the day.

And so he was a bit of a problem, an outlier for the religious establishment.

You may have noticed at the very beginning there, it said in verse 17 that the Jews sent priests.

We're going to see that term, the Jews, come up again and again throughout the book of John.

And it typically is going to refer to the religious leaders,

the establishment, but it's not always going to refer to them.

But out of the 70 or so times that it shows up in the book, that's majority

of the time what it's going to be talking about.

And so they send out to find out who this guy is.

And the reason is because he's causing a stir.

His influence at this point has grown to the point that it seems that everyone's heard him preach.

And so John's gospel doesn't get into it quite as pointedly as the other gospels,

but you can still see in this passage that John the Baptist is a bold,

powerful preacher who isn't afraid of anyone.

And that's a big part of the draw to him.

He's fearless. He has a weightiness to him, an authority with which he preaches.

And because of that, people, not only do they want to hear him,

but when they hear him, they're changed.

The thing that I want to show you today is that John the Baptist's fearless, bold, weighty witness,

his confidence came not from something that he found within himself.

It wasn't something within himself that gave him that courageous spirit,

but something that he found outside of himself as he looked to Christ.

In contrast, we tend to be self-conscious, we tend to be fearful,

because we tend to look to ourselves and into ourselves, or we look to others

for our significance and our identity,

instead of looking away from ourselves to Christ.

My outline this morning is really simple. The first thing we're going to do

is look at John the Baptist's view of himself.

Then we're going to look at his view of Christ, of Jesus, and then we're going

to look and see what would happen to us if we had the same kind of a view of

ourselves, the same kind of view of Christ, okay?

So, first let's look at John the Baptist's view of himself. Verse 19,

this is the testimony of John when

the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, who are you?

Who are you?

So, like I said, the religious establishment, they've heard about John the Baptist.

They send a delegation of priests and Levites to learn more about him.

Verses 19 through 28 are all about this question. Who does John the Baptist say he is?

Who does he himself claim to be?

It's an identity question. Who are you?

How does this famous, powerful preacher with an enormous influence view himself?

They wanna know if this guy thinks that he's the Christ.

That's the question they're trying to get at. We see that in verse 20.

He confessed and did not deny, but confessed, I am not the Christ.

So he says, I'm not the Christ. I don't in any way claim to be able to save anyone.

Is essentially what that statement means. So then in verse 21,

they ask him two other questions.

Does he think he's Elijah or does he think he's the prophet?

These are end time figures that have been prophesied in scripture.

So they think, okay, does he think that he is one of these big time characters

that scripture has told us is coming?

Does he think that he is Elijah or the prophet?

They ask if he's Elijah because of a prophecy in Malachi.

Malachi 4:5

4 verse 5 says, behold, I will send you Elijah, the prophet before the great

and awesome day of the Lord.

They ask if he's the prophet because of a passage in Deuteronomy 18,

where Moses says that after him, there's going to arise another prophet like him.

Another prophet like Moses. So I want you to pay attention to this part because

this is really important.

He actually says no to both of these questions, which is really,

really fascinating because John the Baptist is the one that the prophecy in

Malachi 4, 5 is talking about.

So when Gabriel comes to Zechariah and Zechariah is in the temple room,

you know, the story comes to Zechariah and he tells him, your wife, Elizabeth,

is going to have a child in her old age, right? You're going to have this miracle child.

And Gabriel references that prophecy.

He's going to be this guy, the guy that Malachi prophesied about.

Not only that, but Jesus says in Matthew 11, 13 through 14, for all the prophets

and the law prophesied until John. and if you are willing to accept it,

he is Elijah who is to come.

So he is the one that the scriptures foretold.

So when they ask if he's Elijah, maybe he says no because they're assuming he

thinks maybe that he's like a reincarnation of Elijah or something like that, which he's not.

He's just an Elijah-like figure. But the point is still the same.

He could have answered the question differently. He could have said,

well, no, I'm not, I'm not Elijah the way that you think or the way that you're

asking, but I am the guy that that prophecy is about.

Yeah, that is me, right?

He could have said, the Lord has given me the same kind of bold.

Unconventional spirit that he gave to Elijah. He could have said that, right?

And that would have, that would have been fair, but he doesn't. He just says, no,

not me. That gives us a helpful picture of John the Baptist that we're going

to see again later on in the book of John as well.

And that is that John the Baptist is not focused on justifying himself or his ministry.

Are you the Christ? No. Are you Elijah? No. Are you the prophet?

No, just not at all interested in justifying himself, which is pretty astonishing.

I mean, these people that are ultimately wanting to know this about him are important people.

They're important people. I mean, I can't imagine being in his shoes and just

being so unconcerned with explaining myself,

especially knowing that there are several prophecies.

If you're John the Baptist, there are several prophecies that clearly and directly

speak about him, not only in Malachi, but also in Isaiah, the call to worship

this morning. That's him.

So he knows that. He knows that Gabriel announced his birth.

He knows that he has this massively important calling on his life.

He knows the spirit is with him and he's just not interested in justifying himself.

So finally, they ask him to give them something more than just denials.

They're like, we can't just go back to the people that sent us with nothing,

but that you're not any of these people. So who do you say you are?

What does he answer? Verse 23, what does he answer?

He says, I'm the voice crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord. I'm just a voice.

I'm just a voice. I'm just a pointer to someone else. That's who I am.

You want to know who I am? I'm a voice telling people to get ready for the Lord.

That's John the Baptist.

I'm just a voice. And listen, if anyone had a right to think that they were

somebody great, it was John the Baptist.

Listen to what Jesus said about him in Matthew 11. Matthew 11, 11.

Truly I say to you among those born of women, there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist.

That's a pretty big statement. And Jesus doesn't, he's not in the business of

flattering people or exaggerating.

He's saying, no, this is the greatest guy born of a woman.

That covers a lot of people. That covers Abraham. That covers Samuel.

That covers Moses. That covers David. That covers Elijah.

I mean, this is an unbelievable statement.

So John the Baptist is the greatest, and yet he seems so utterly unimpressed with himself.

Even though he's got arguably the most important role to play in all of redemptive

history up to that point.

Even though he is this one that's been prophesied multiple times,

even though the Lord's spirit is on him and he has an incredibly,

quote unquote, successful ministry.

So they ask him, he says, I'm just a voice. I'm a pointer to one that's greater than me.

Look at verses 25 through 27. They ask him why he's baptizing people.

Baptism wasn't all that strange of a practice in their day, but it was something

that was only done for those that were Gentiles converting.

So as people would convert to Judaism, they would be baptized like a sort of

a cleansing ritual to cleanse them of all of their idolatry.

But John the Baptist wasn't just, he wasn't just baptizing converts to Judaism.

He was baptizing everyone, right?

So John's message was every, it doesn't matter. You can't be just born into

this is what John's message was.

It doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter who your parents are or your

lineage. You can't be just born into this.

Every single person must turn from their sins in personal trust in God.

And so he's baptizing people and they want to know where he gets the authority to do that.

But even in the way that he answers that question, he's not justifying himself.

Once again, he points to Jesus. Look at verse 27.

He says, the one that I'm here to prepare people for, I'm not even worthy to

untie his sandal. What's he saying there?

So In this culture, feet were considered just a nasty thing.

They wore sandals everywhere. The roads were dusty.

Animals are traveling along those roads. So there's dung all over the roads, right?

At the end of the day, there was nothing that was considered more disgusting

than to take off someone's sandal.

And so even Jewish servants were not allowed to untie a Jew's sandal.

The only ones that were allowed to untie your sandal would have been a Gentile

slave, a Gentile servant.

And disciples of rabbis would do everything for their rabbi that a servant would

do, except this, they would not touch their rabbi's sandal. They wouldn't do that.

And so what John the Baptist says, he doesn't say, the only thing I'm worthy

to do is untie his sandal.

He says, I'm not even worthy to do the lowest possible task for him.

That's what he says. So yet again, he is pointing away from himself to Jesus.

He's showing how high above him Jesus is.

So that gives us a lot of insight into the way that John the Baptist thinks of himself.

Now let's look at John the Baptist's view of Jesus.

We've already seen some of this, right? Just in the way that he's talking about him.

He's a voice telling people to prepare the way of the Lord, pointing people to him.

I'm not worthy to do the lowest possible role in the service of this man.

So now I want to look at three more things that he says about Jesus in verses 29 through 34.

First, we're going to look at the fact that he says Jesus is the Lamb of God

who takes away the sin of the world, verse 29.

Then we're going to look at, he says, he saw the Spirit descend and remain on Jesus, that's verse 32.

And then third, we're going to see that he says Jesus baptizes people with the

Holy Spirit. That's verse 33.

So first of all, he says, he's the lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

Verse 29. What's that talking about?

So all throughout scripture, there's been a foreshadowing of a coming removal

of sins through some kind of a final sacrifice.

And I'll give you a couple examples. There's many more, but in the garden,

when Adam and Eve sinned against God, the Lord kills an animal,

makes skins of clothing to cover Adam and Eve.

He does this to cover their shame. It represents the shame.

Then another story when God tests Abraham and he tells Abraham,

will you offer to me your only son on the altar?

And right as he's willing to do this, the Lord provides for him a ram caught in the thicket, right?

And so the ram dies in the place of Abraham's son, Isaac.

Perhaps the most clear picture of this is in the Exodus story.

So the Israelites had gone into Exodus or gone into Egypt, sorry,

during a famine and stayed there and then became enslaved to the Egyptians.

And so the Lord rescues Israel out of their slavery, out of Egypt by bringing

10 plagues of judgment on the Egyptians so that finally Pharaoh allows them to leave.

And it's not until the 10th plague, the final plague is a judgment on every family's firstborn.

And so the Lord says, okay, if you're not going to let my people go,

then the firstborn of every family will die.

The problem is that Israel was also guilty of sin.

And so they were also worthy of having that judgment being brought upon them.

So the Lord makes a provision for them. And he says, okay, here's what you're going to do.

You're going to, each family in Israel is going to sacrifice a lamb.

And you're going to spread the blood of that lamb on the doorposts.

And that lamb is going to be the one that dies in the place of the firstborn in your family.

So that when the Lord passes through the land and he sees blood on the doorposts

of the home, he would pass over that house instead of bringing judgment on them.

So that's the Passover lamb.

All of these places in the Bible that it talks about an animal taking on the

sins or taking the sins and the punishment for sin instead of a person,

they're just foreshadowings of another sacrifice because an animal cannot pay the price for human sin.

So in Hebrews 10, chapter 10, verse 4, it says, for it is impossible for the

blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

The blood of animals was never meant to take away sins. The animal was simply there as a placeholder.

There were pointers. Every single lamb that died was a pointer to a sacrifice

that was coming that really would take away sins.

And that's what John the Baptist is saying when he says, behold,

the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

He's saying Jesus is the lamb of covering that was slain for Adam and Eve.

He's saying he's the ram caught in the thicket that died in Isaac's place.

He's the Passover lamb that died to take the judgment that Israel deserved.

And he's the lamb that would die not only for Israel, but for the sins of the world.

All the peoples in the world. His death would be a sacrifice that would truly

take away sins once and for all for anyone in any nation who would turn to him

and put their trust in him as their Passover lamb.

So that's the first thing John the Baptist tells us about who Jesus is.

The second thing is he tells us that he saw the spirit descend and remain on Jesus.

Verse 32, because of the other accounts in the other gospels,

we know this happened as Jesus was coming up out of the water is baptism.

And this is an important detail because the scriptures foretold of a coming Messiah.

The Hebrew word Messiah and the Greek word Christ are the same meaning.

And they mean the anointed one.

Anointed one. So all throughout the Old Testament, kings, priests,

and prophets would be anointed with oil as a sign of their anointing with the

Spirit for the job, the assignment. that God had given to them.

But all throughout, there was prophecy of a coming one who would be the anointed

one, not just anointed for an assignment, but ultimately anointed,

who would carry the power of the Spirit upon himself.

Isaiah 11, 1-2 says, There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse,

and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him,

the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might,

the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

So with people like David, with people that God anointed with his spirit,

the spirit of God would come and rest upon them for a particular task,

for a job, for an assignment.

But here, there's this prophecy in Isaiah 11 that there's one coming that the

Spirit of the Lord is going to rest upon him. And that's what John says.

That's his testimony of Jesus. He's saying, I saw the Spirit of God descend and remain on him.

What he's saying is Jesus is the anointed one.

He is the Messiah. He is the Christ.

So John the Baptist says Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

He says Jesus is the anointed one who's been foretold for hundreds of years.

And third, he says Jesus is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit, verse 33.

What this means is that Jesus not only carries the power of the Holy Spirit

at all times, but he can give the Holy Spirit to others.

John the Baptist is saying, I baptize people. I immerse them.

That's what that word baptize means.

I immerse them or plunge them into water. but Jesus is going to immerse people

into the spirit of God, into the life of God.

I think this is a way of describing what every person who has been separated

from God because of our sin needs.

Our sin means that we have been spiritually dead.

But what John the Baptist is saying is that Jesus, the one who's coming after

me, is going to immerse people reconnect them to the life of God.

He will envelop people with the life and power of God.

When we believe the gospel, the Bible says that we receive the indwelling Holy

Spirit. He comes to live inside of us.

It's a kind of anointing with the Holy Spirit.

Not to the same degree that Jesus was anointed, but it is an anointing in a similar way.

The Holy Spirit then is upon and connecting every single believer to the life of God.

And what you need today, if you have never put your trust in Jesus,

is to have the Lamb of God take away your sins.

You need a new king, Jesus, to rescue you from darkness.

And you need to be immersed in the life of God by Jesus. That's how John the Baptist sees Jesus.

Finally, what happens if we have this kind of view, the same kind of view that

John has of himself and of Christ?

I've got to give Tim Keller credit because as I was studying this passage,

I was seeing these things, but there was something that wasn't clicking until

I heard the way that he described this.

That's what I want to share with you. John the Baptist is an example to us of

what can happen when we stop looking at ourselves for our identity and significance

and start looking away from ourselves to Christ.

So even though John the Baptist is the greatest to ever live,

to ever be born of a woman, except for Christ,

even though he had been prophesied and even though the Lord had given him great

power and success in ministry, he is obsessively pushing the focus away from himself to Christ.

And it's not, this is so crucial It's not that he's saying I'm the scum of the

earth All I do is fail I just, the worst Right?

That's still a preoccupation with self That's still the wrong perspective,

That's not what he's doing at all Instead, he's not thinking of himself at all,

Instead, he's just so utterly and obsessively focused on Jesus that he's free.

He's free. So it gives him a boldness. It gives him a confidence.

It makes him the kind of vessel that the spirit of God wants to use.

How do we do that? And the answer is right here in the passage.

We just, I don't know about you, but I find it so hard not to think about myself.

The answer is right here. Verse 29, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

That word behold, it just means look at him.

John sees him coming. He's going to do it again in a few verses. Look at him.

The one who came, the lamb who takes away the sin of the world.

Would John have told other people to do what he himself wasn't already doing? I don't think so.

I think John the Baptist was the kind of person that he was because of this

right here, because I think this is what he made a practice of doing.

I think his preaching demonstrates it.

I think his life demonstrates it.

He was telling everyone to do what he himself was already doing Look at him,

He was turning his attention constantly to the lamb of god who takes away the

sin of the world The anointed one who came to save his people the one who baptizes into,

People into the spirit of god You and I can do the same And if we do the same

thing, I think we'll see the same results How does a person become truly great before the Lord?

It's not by constantly thinking about how bad you are, but by not thinking of yourself at all.

We become great as we are caught up by the greatness of God in Christ.

Then we too can be a voice that is constantly pointing people to one who is

infinitely greater than us.

We can be a voice pointing people to one that we can't even believe that we

have the privilege of serving.

Will become truly great in the kingdom of God when we forget about ourselves

and look to the lamb who died to take away our sins. Let's pray together.

Father in heaven, I do pray that this would be true of us.

We confess that we have such a tendency to be self-focused and self-absorbed.

And because of that, we become fearful.

Because of that, we are held back or we become puffed up with pride.

But Lord, we see in John the Baptist a man who glorified you with his life because

his life was all about Jesus.

Would that be true of us? We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.