Advent: Behold the Lamb of God! (John 1:19-34)

Hello, I'm Pastor Creighton, and thank you for tuning in to New Sun Churches Podcast.

We're a gospel center church in Port Perry, Ontario, proclaiming the true and life-giving word of Jesus as we love and serve our neighbors.

May God bless you today through his life-giving word.

The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to John, Christ.

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.

Who do you s what do you say about yourself?

He said, I am the voice of 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 neither 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 strap of whose sandal 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 me, on him.

I myself did not know him, but he sent me to baptize with water.

Oh, sorry.

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.

I have seen him, have borne witness that this is the Son of God.

This is the gospel of Christ.

Praise you, Lord Christ.

And let's just bow our heads in prayer.

Heavenly Father, we now come to hear you speak to our hearts and our minds.

Lord, we thank you that you are the author of peace, that you give the peace that surpasses all understanding.

And Lord, now just speak to our hearts.

Please take away all distractions from this week, whether they're good or bad, and just help us to be present with you.

I praise in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Please be seated.

Me and Amy did a stint uh living in Perth, Ontario, not Perth, Australia, where we built a house.

I've mentioned it before.

And uh we lived there for about just over a year.

And it was right at the bit at the end of COVID.

So when we moved there, COVID was still in full swing.

No one was meeting, nothing was going on.

And then right when we were starting to leave, COVID was ending and they started opening up things.

And we got to go to a couple of the town's festivals that they have there.

They have one that's very popular.

It's called Maple Fest.

If you never if you ever get a chance, I would recommend you go to Maple Fest in Perth.

It's just a couple hours from here.

I highly recommend it.

But something that's interesting about Perth, I don't know if Port Perry has it, but they have a town crier.

I'm sure you can correct me if I'm wrong if per if uh Port Perry has one.

But the thing that's interesting, what I found interesting about Town Crier, is that their role is to make prop proclamations and announcement for the town or community.

And they dress all funny and they have a bell and they ring the bell whenever they're gonna make an announcement.

Obviously, they're just a novelty now.

I'm sure they played more of a unique role back in the day.

But also I found that interesting that we still hold this tradition of someone who comes and proclaims something about the town or something that's going on within the town.

We are uh this is the last Sunday of our mini-series that we're doing, uh, looking at who Jesus is through the eyes of John, who walked with Jesus, who was a disciple of Jesus, who was a close friend of Jesus.

He would have ate with Jesus, saw what uh maybe annoyed him, what uh made him happy, and he got to see him in his when he was tired and when he was energetic.

This is a close friend, and we're looking at his gospel, just the beginning of it very briefly.

And now we come to the point in the in this gospel where he's talking about John the Baptist.

He does a very brief section of John the Baptist here in the Gospel of John.

And we've got to remember that this gospel is an eyewitness account, it's a historical document, it is an eyewitness biography, which is very important to always keep in the back of your mind when you read this, that we are reading the words of someone who knew Jesus and saw Jesus.

This isn't secondhand.

So if you haven't already, please turn in your bulletins or in your Bibles to John chapter 1, verses 19 to 34.

John 1:19–34

It's always helpful to have uh your Bible with you, not just the bulletin, because you can see what happened before and you can see what happens after.

And it's really good for keeping the flow of the text and understanding the flow of the whole book that you're reading within the Bible.

So here we are, uh chapter 1, verse 19.

And just before we read it, we need to take account of who John the Baptist is.

Luke gives a better description of the early days of John the Baptist.

His parents were Zechariah and Elizabeth.

Zechariah was a priest.

They were both holy, holy people.

Um Elizabeth was barren.

And this is something that it makes note of, and it's something that the Bible constantly makes note of women throughout it, from the Old Testament into the new, that there is barren women.

And that is something that has a deep longing for people.

And you can see it here in the text when you really reflect on it, that they came to old age and they they came to the moment where they have to realize they can never have children again.

And Zechariah, Zechariah was the priest, and he was the selected priest of that moment, where he would go into the holy of holy area and light incense and pray for the people.

In the temple, there's two sections.

There's the section that the priest would only go in once a year, and then there's the section of where they would do all the ritualistic stuff and like that.

And then as Zechariah was in the holy of holy area, the separated area, an angel visits him and says, Your wife will become pregnant, and you will call him John.

And he doubts instantly.

Right away, he starts to doubt, and then he becomes mute until he names their baby John.

And I just want to take a time out here because this is something that we can we can see that we can we can put our trust in that we can be in seasons of of doubt, we can be in seasons of suffering, we can be in seasons of great joy, but there's always hope in God.

He is always with us, he is always listening, and he always provides.

It just might not be what we expect it to be.

A wise person said to me recently when you pray for things, you need to pray with open hands.

You need to go into when you're your prayer closet, your prayer room, or wherever you do your prayers.

Is that your hand has to be open?

Because we so often go into the prayer room or wherever you do it with closed hands, not expecting, well, we want to go into the prayer and we want our prayers to be answered in the way we want them to be answered.

But God normally answers them in the complete other way.

So that's why we need to go in open hands, ready for what He will do in our lives, not what we want Him to do in our lives.

And here you see in the text that Zechariah and Elizabeth wanted children, and then it was answered to them late in life, and they doubted it.

Well, Zechariah doubted it.

It's a great hope, though remember in the text, as we read the Bible, there's always these moments of great hope that we can hope in.

That God will, God knows us, He knows our wants, our deepest needs, and He is there with us always.

Now, John, now when we think about John the Baptist, or when I personally think about John the Baptist, I always think about this dude in camel skin, this dude that ate locusts, and this dude that ran off into the desert.

It's kind of uh, my skeptical part of me right away immediately thinks, this guy is crazy.

Like, why is he in here right at the beginning?

But he's not crazy, and he is a very key person at the beginning of the Gospels.

So, how are we gonna work through this?

We're gonna work through it in three ways.

Uh, one is the humble messenger, two is the Lamb of God, and three is the baptism of the heart.

So let's go.

Point one, the humble messenger, verses 19 to 21.

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?

He answered, No.

Now, the Jews, there's been a common critique on John's gospel that when he ever says Jews, it's like an anti-Semitic tone that he's giving, but it's not.

When he says the Jews, he's just, it's a way for him to bundle up all those who oppose Jesus.

So that's the everyday Jewish person or the religious leaders.

That's the people who opposed him.

And the priests and the Levites, sorry, I'm losing my voice.

The priests and the Levites would have been like a temple police.

They could have been people who were involved in the musical functions of the temple.

They were just involved in all the elements of the temple worship.

And that's who they are.

And now they also understand this.

You have to do a lot of backstory when you read when you read the Bible.

Another thing you have to understand about John the Baptist is that from the end of the Old Testament, the book of Malachi, to when John appears in the desert crying out is around 400 years.

The Jewish people, the people of Israel, would have been waiting for God to send the next prophet.

Because there's no prophet, there's no one speaking for God in those times.

There's no prophet, no word, nothing to indicate God was speaking to them.

And they would have been holding on to the promises in Malachi.

I'll just read them very quick, because it's good to have in our minds.

What Malachi says.

He says, in two verses, he says, Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.

And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.

And the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

And then he also says, Behold, I send you Elijah, the prophet, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.

See, this would have been in their minds constantly.

They would have been constantly looking for these signs that God has sent his messenger before the Messiah.

And that's why they send a delegation to talk to John the Baptist, because he has come out of nowhere, in a sense, and has a following, and he's baptizing.

So they send teachers to him to ask, Who are you?

And they go right for the direct question.

Are you the Christ?

Are you the Elijah?

Are you the prophet?

And he confesses.

It says he confessed two times.

And that means it's in his whole being he denies it.

He doesn't want anything to do with those titles.

The Christ is the Messiah of Israel.

It would have been this figure that they thought was going to be this great warrior.

Elijah in 2 Kings 2, he is taking, taken up into the into heaven.

He was a great prophet.

And you might be thinking, I know I thought of this when I was doing them some study on this.

Is that doesn't Jesus say that John the Baptist is Elijah in one of the other Gospels?

Isn't this a contradiction?

How can we trust the Gospels when there's contradictions?

See, it's that element of that when you have a closed fist with God, you think it has to go a certain way.

The Jewish people would have expected were expecting this Elijah figure to come back in a fiery chariot back.

But he comes in a different way.

And Jesus saw it like that.

That he comes as someone crying out in the wilderness, wearing camel skin, eating locusts, something that the leaders would not have expected to be.

And the prophet is one of the prophets.

That's why they asked them these very direct questions, because they have this great hope that is finally this moment that's happening.

But he denies them all, and this perplexes them.

Then look at the response in verse 22.

He says, 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 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 then why are you baptizing if you are neither the Christ nor Elijah nor the prophet?

See, John is pointing to his role that was prophesied about in Isaiah 40, verses 3 to 5.

Isaiah 40:3–5

This is where it's coming from when he says that he's a voice crying out in the wilderness, make straight the path.

And he's baptizing, and they question it.

And the reason why they question it is because baptism then was a sign for non-Jewish people who wanted to become Jewish people.

They would baptize.

But here he is baptizing Jewish people.

So it actually would have been kind of, they would have been like, they would have not understood why he's doing this, because he's already, he's baptizing already Jewish people.

It's they would have been just kind of mind boggling for them.

But the thing he's doing is because they relied so heavily that they were Jewish, they thought they were saved, they were good to go.

His role is to point the people to the one who saves, to make straight the path, to remove all the obstacles of the pedigree of being a Jewish person, that they do all the right ritualistic sacrifices that they relied on to think that they were made right with God.

He's done that, he's come to flatten the road, to take away all the objects before Christ comes, for them to see him as the to see Christ as the one who's truly saves.

But look at his response to their questions in verses 26 to 28.

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

Even he who comes after me, the strap of whose sandal I am not worthy to untie.

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

Here we see the true heart of a follower of Christ.

And the thing is, if you're here and you put your faith and trust in Jesus, you have this calling over your life.

You are now a messenger of the gospel.

And here we see John the Baptist is the humble messenger.

And this is something for us to always take note in and to reflect on.

Because what he does here is he shows the heart of a messenger.

They ask him all these titles of who he is, and he denies them.

If he said one of these titles, if he was he, he would have been given all this glory, all this status, but he denies it.

He denies striving for a higher position or influence.

He denies anything that will give him a reputation because he points to Christ.

He says he's the one called to point to the next.

And when he says he's not even worthy to untie the sandal, the thing that's interesting here is that the Jewish teachers didn't get paid.

So they had interns in a sense.

They had people who walked with them that learned from them.

And these interns would provide for them because they were the great teachers of the law.

And the interns, the only thing that they didn't have to do was untie the teacher's sandal, because that was in the place for a slave.

Only a slave could do that because it was so lowly.

But John says he's not even worthy to do that for the one who's coming.

See, that's the heart of a messenger of the gospel, is that they consider themselves so lowly and they only point to Christ.

They don't ever point to themselves.

Church history shows this.

If you reflect on church history, you see that there's all those, we always talk about the great heroes of the faith, that through the years, they all had different personalities, different tempers, they all specialized in different things.

But the one thing that they all had was the heart of a humble messenger.

That they never pointed to themselves, they always pointed to Christ.

And that's something to ask ourselves.

That are we like that?

Do when we go out into the world, do we point people to Christ or do we point people to ourselves?

And there's a warning in the text, too.

Because John says to them, the one who you what is it?

He says, the one who you look for stands among you.

You don't even know him, and he's standing there with you.

He's indicating that Jesus is standing in the crowd with them.

Don't, this is a this is the call for us to not let our egos, our status, our popularity, our ceremonies blind us from seeing Jesus, who's standing among us always.

It's very key to reflect on this.

Point two, the Lamb of God.

Verses 29 to 31.

The next day he saw Jesus coming, so we're on to the next day.

He 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.

Now why would he say, Lamb of God?

In one sentence, John proclaims the one who will fulfill all of God's promises.

It says in one sentence.

And to quote J.

C.

Ryle, who's this a great Anglican bishop, he says this.

He points to Christ.

He was the true Lamb of Abraham when Abraham told Isaac that God would provide.

We all remember the story of Abraham bringing his one and only son to, because God commands him to sacrifice, and then God at the last moment intervenes and provides.

He's the fulfillment of that.

Then there's also that he talks about he was the true lamb for morning and evening sacrifices because they continue that ritualistic sacrifices continually.

Jesus fulfills that.

He was the true lamb prophesied about the world before being about about being brought.

Sorry, he was the true lamb prophesied about that he would be brought to the slaughter in Isaiah.

He was the true lamb of the Passover of Egypt.

If you remember in Exodus, that when the people of Israel are leaving Egypt, they do a Passover sacrifice of the lamb to be protected.

Jesus is the true lamb of that.

He is the one who stands in our place condemned for our sins.

And God provides that lamb.

It's nothing that we do.

We so often try to get right with God by doing certain things that if we pray more, or if we try to become better people, or if we give more money, we'll be right with God.

But God says, No.

It's through my son that I freely give to you that you are made right with me.

And that's what John is proclaiming here: that this is the Lamb of God, that God provides for you and me, that He will provide the way for us.

Jesus is the Savior.

He did not come to conquer the earth.

He did not come to be a great philosopher.

He did not come to be a moral teacher.

He came to save sinners.

He came to do what man could never do for himself.

I think I've used this illustration before.

I asked Amy earlier in the week if I used this illustration already.

It seems like me and Creighton are starting to use our illustrations over and over again.

I think I used it, but it's just it's rare, it's in my mind because it was just such a profound moment in my life.

There's a time in my life before I came to faith that I was not a nice person.

And there's a time in my life that I stood before a judge facing five plus years of going to jail for something that I did.

And it was after the time I pleaded, I pleaded guilty for it, and I was waiting for the judge's sentence on my life to see what would happen.

And the thing is, at that time, I had a best friend growing up, from probably being like eight years old, and I knew his dad quite well.

And his dad at the time was a justice of the peace.

And he was there, he happened to be there that day.

And as always in court proceedings, there's always a break before they give the verdict.

And his dad went in and talked to that judge, and he vouched for me.

And when that when I went back in to get my sentence, I didn't have to go to jail.

I got let off in a sense.

But I was still convicted, and I still was on probation.

I still had all these rules to follow for two plus years.

The thing is, when Jesus, who is the Lamb of God, stands before the judge, God, he completely takes the judgment we deserve.

See, I left the court still a convicted criminal.

I just wasn't going to jail for it.

When we leave the court, when Jesus is there, we leave a child of God, completely pardoned.

Nothing.

Jesus is taking it all on us.

We are completely guilt free because of the faith that's freely given to us in Christ, in the Lamb of God.

See, God provides full stop.

Now look at the text, the next part, verses 32 to 34.

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

See, when he says the Spirit descending, God showed him that the one who is to come, that you would see the Spirit descend on him, and the Spirit stays.

See, the thing about the baptism of the Spirit that talks about here, it's not the Pentecostal moment that the Spirit descends and you start speaking in tongues.

What it's talking about here is that in Ezekiel it says, God will give a new heart for all his people.

So this is the baptism of the heart when the spirit enters you.

When you put your faith in Jesus, you become a new person through the Spirit.

And that is the true baptism.

That is the baptism of the heart.

You are given a new heart.

There's no other way for it to happen.

It is only through God, and only God can do this through his son.

No human means can save.

It's only what's freely given by God, and that's the Lamb of God.

See, everyone expected a warrior, but they got a baby that's helpless.

This helpless baby.

This baby comes into the world in a manger, surrounded by wood, and then this baby grows up and hangs on the cross of wood for us.

For each and every one of you here.

For anyone who's watching online, for me, this Lamb of God came into the world that John proclaims is the one who will take away the sins of the world.

See, this Advent season, let us reflect on the manger.

Let us reflect on the humble Savior, the Lamb of God, who was heralded into the world by the humble messenger.

And let us reflect that as we leave here, let us be humble messengers and proclaim that true hope that is found in the Lamb, that is found in Jesus Christ.

Let us take stock and ask ourselves, are we like John the Baptist?

And do we say to ourselves, He must increase while we must decrease?

Or do we say, He must increase and I must increase?

That is something we really need to ask ourselves.

And let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we give you thanks and praise for your Son, Jesus, your Son who takes away the sins of the world.

Lord, as we come to you and as we pray just about the calling you've put on each and every one of our lives.

Father, help us to always know that we can cling to Jesus through these moments of hardship, through the moments of suffering, through the moments of despair.

And help us to know that we can cling to Jesus when we know maybe we are doing a good job at being Christians sometimes, Lord.

But help us to know that there is true hope in Christ, that we are never guilty before you because of your son.

And I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

We hope that you've been blessed by God's word today.

If you live in the Port Perry area, we hope that you'll come and worship with us in person on Sunday at 10 a.m.

If you'd like to learn more about Newsong Church, we'd love to connect with you.

Please find our contact information at newsongportperry.ca and reach out to us.

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If you feel called to support our ministry with a financial gift, please go to newsongportperry.ca slash giving to make your contribution.

Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.