The Lamb of God (John 1:19-34)

John chapter 1 starting verse 19.

John 1 · chapter mention

This was John's testimony when the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him, Who are you?

He didn't deny it, but confessed, I am not the Messiah.

What then?

They asked him.

Are you Elijah?

I am not, he said.

Are you the prophet?

No, he answered.

Who are you then?

They asked.

We need to give an answer to those who sent us.

What can you tell us about yourself?

He said, I am a voice of one crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord.

Just as Isaiah the prophet said.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.

So they asked him, Why then do you baptize if you aren't the Messiah or Elijah or the prophet?

I baptize with water, John answered them.

Someone stands among you, but you don't know him.

He is the one coming after me, whose sandal strap I'm not worthy to untie.

All this happened in Bethany across the Jordan, where John was baptizing.

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

This is the one I told you about.

After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me.

I didn't know him, but I came baptizing with water, so that he might be revealed to Israel.

And John testified, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he rested on me.

I didn't know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me, The one you see the Spirit descending and resting on, he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for the Gospel of John, that we get to hold it in our hands and go through it verse by verse.

Lord, I pray today that you would open our ears, that you would open our eyes, that you would open our minds and our hearts to all the things that you have for each one of us here.

That you would speak to us, that you would change us, and that you would mold us and conform us to be more and more like Jesus.

Lord, so I pray that you would have your perfect will in us and that you would use your word to do that here this morning.

We pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So we recognize that we've been moving pretty slow so far through the book of John, but things are gonna pick up a little bit.

You know, John was really spending those first 18 verses setting things up for us, telling us what he's going to tell us as we go on through this book.

And in these verses today, we'll get into a bit more of a narrative, but at the same time, he's still setting things up for what is to come.

Today we'll get into a bit more about John the Baptist, but we're also talking about John the Author.

These are two different Johns that we're talking about.

And John the Author is going to continue to contrast John the Baptist with Jesus.

And for the sake of ease today, because as I was going through this, it was even confusing me a little bit.

We're gonna call John the Author John A and John the Baptist John B.

Just for sake of clarity.

If you use those terms outside of these walls, people will think you're crazy.

So it's just for today.

John A is the author, you could use the A for apostle, even if you wanted to, and then John B, the baptizer, the Baptist.

So today we'll see John A start to contrast water baptism with being baptized by the Holy Spirit as well.

So John the Baptist and Jesus is our first contrast.

John the Baptist, I mean, uh, and then baptizing with water and baptizing with the Holy Spirit is the second contrast that we're gonna be looking at.

And we know from last week that John B.

came as a witness to testify.

And today we're gonna get to see, starting in verse 19, what John's testimony exactly was.

And one thing that we will learn about John B.

is that he is a man of a few words, at least from what from what we get to see.

And in some cases, it's almost comical.

But the most verbose that he gets is when he's quoting scripture or pointing to Jesus.

I think it's a great lesson for all of us to learn.

That's when we should be the most excited and talking the most.

You know, he's a guy, John the Baptist, is this guy that lives in the wilderness.

He wears camel hair and a leather belt, he eats locusts and honey, and he doesn't seem to want to say a whole lot unless he needs to.

And what I hope we can all leave here with today when we finish these verses is that to an extent, we are all called to what John the Baptist was called to: pointing people to Jesus and telling them, look, this is Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

It's the gospel message that we are all called to.

We're called to share the good news of who Jesus Christ is.

So let's jump in with verse 19.

And it says, this was John's testimony when the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him, Who are you?

You know, as Ben mentioned last week in the last couple verses, testimony, the word testimony is a big word in the Gospel of John.

John's gonna use it over 30 times in the CSB translation at least, in this Gospel alone.

John A is using John B as a witness to prove that what he is writing is true.

And then takes it one step further, now showing how John B testifies to corroborate his own proof of Jesus being God and being the only Son of God and being the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

And we see this group of priests and Levites sent from Jerusalem to question John the Baptist.

So this is a group of religious leaders that hear about this crazy guy that's out in the wilderness that's baptizing people and taking on disciples.

And John B is not a part of their group.

He's not a part of their inner circle.

He didn't come from those religious leaders from Jerusalem.

So this delegation gets sent out to check things out.

So John B will spend some time telling them who he is, but I think more importantly, he's gonna spend some time telling them who he is not.

Look at verse 20.

He didn't deny it, but confessed, I am not the Messiah.

Again, it's been mentioned last week.

John's whole ministry was to point people to Jesus.

We never see him trying to lift himself up.

We never see him trying to promote his own ministry, we never see him trying to grow his following.

He simply points people to Jesus.

And that should be the goal and the purpose of every ministry on the face of this earth that claims to follow Jesus Christ.

And John, as you notice here, he has no problem saying, it's not about me.

And he says, and I am not the Messiah.

You know, and I think at this point it's important to point out as we get into this Gospel of John that we need to understand that the Jewish nation was in eager anticipation of the Messiah, of the Christ.

But as we're gonna see, the vast majority was not in eager anticipation because of their love for or their faith in God, but more so because of their hate for the Romans, that they were in eager anticipation of their Messiah.

You know, the the Romans had conquered Israel in the 60s BC, and though they left them some autonomy to practice their religion, they had ruled, they were ruled by the Romans harshly, and they were heavily taxed by the Romans.

And the Jews wanted nothing more than for the Romans to leave and to be defeated.

And at this time, we'll see the vast majority of Jews thought that the Messiah would come, would defeat the Romans, and then re-establish Israel as its own sovereign nation, and that's what they were hoping for.

So they were eagerly anticipating their Messiah, but really for all the wrong reasons.

And that's the vast majority.

Like I said, there were some people that knew what was going on and were truly following the Lord.

But the vast majority was looking for somebody to come and overthrow the Romans for him.

So these Pharisees send this delegation from Jerusalem to go out and to figure out who John is.

Just go figure out what's going on.

Find out if he is this Messiah that we're waiting for.

So John simply says, no.

So then they ask him in verse 21, what then?

They asked him, Are you Elijah?

I am not, he said.

So this delegation that's sent out is now most likely asking if John B is the fulfillment of Malachi chapter 4, verses 5 and 6.

Malachi 4:5

And that's the last two verses in the Old Testament.

This is how the Old Testament closes out.

It says, Look, I am going to send you the prophet Elijah before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes.

And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers.

Otherwise, I will come and strike the land with a curse.

So they were in eager anticipation of Elijah as well because they thought that their Messiah would be coming next.

Again, looking for Jesus, not realizing this is talking about his second coming.

You know, if you'd like some fun homework, go look up why the Jews have a place setting for Elijah at their Passover feasts.

It's a fun little addition thing that we're not going to get into here this morning, but go look that up on your own.

But Malachi is referring to what we see in Revelation 11 with the two witnesses.

So it's talking about before Jesus' second coming, which might very well be Moses and Elijah, you know, or two that come in the spirit of Moses and Elijah.

But that's for another day.

But this delegation is asking, are you the Elijah that comes before the terrible day of the Lord?

And John just simply says, Nope, I'm not him either.

A little side note, we do learn that John the Baptist came in the same spirit of Elijah, you know, a prophet that was pointing people to the Lord while Israel was in a really bad place and really far from the Lord.

But he was not the Elijah that Malachi was talking about in those last two verses of the Old Testament.

So he tells him, not the Messiah, I'm not Elijah.

So the second half of verse 21, he says, Are you the prophet?

And in his verbose language, he says, No.

Now in Deuteronomy 18, God speaks through Moses and tells Israel that there will be a prophet to come.

That, like Moses, would speak for God and would come out of the people of Israel.

So one of their own.

And we learn later in Acts that Jesus is this prophet that they are asking about.

So this delegation from Jerusalem asks him, Are you the Messiah?

He says, Nope.

You Elijah?

Not him either.

Are you the prophet?

And he says, No, I am not.

So he goes on in verse 22.

Or the they ask another question in verse 22.

They say, Well, who are you then?

They asked, We need to give an answer to those who sent us.

What can you tell us about yourself?

And so John tells them in verse 23.

He said, I am a voice of one crying out in the wilderness.

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

So John says, I'm not any of those three people that you're asking me about.

But I will tell you which prophecy I am fulfilling.

Wouldn't that be crazy to look in the Old Testament and say, hey, there I am?

That's what John's doing right here.

He's saying, Let me tell you about the scriptures that do talk about me.

So he's pointing them to Isaiah chapter 40, verse 3.

Isaiah 40:3

And that says, a voice of one crying out, prepare the way of the Lord in the wilderness, make a straight highway for our God in the desert.

That's John B right there.

That's being prophesied about.

And then we see another prophecy about John Malachi 3.1.

And it says, See, I am going to send my messenger, and he will clear the way before me.

That's John.

Then the Lord will seek, the Lord you seek will suddenly come to his temple.

The messenger of the covenant you delight in.

See, he is coming.

So John B is saying, That's me.

I'm that guy.

You're looking for fulfillment of prophecy?

Look at these verses, because that's who you're talking to.

And he's just telling them, the Messiah is coming next.

Let me point you to him.

Let me show you the fulfillment of the Messiah, of the Christ, and who the prophet is that Moses was telling us about.

Look at verse 24 with me.

Now they had been sent from the Pharisees.

So they asked him, Why then do you baptize if you aren't the Messiah or Elijah or the prophet?

Really, I think what this comes down to is this Jewish delegation is asking for the Pharisees, whose authority are you doing this under?

Who gives you the authority to do this?

You see, up until this point, baptism was a ceremonial washing that God laid out for the priests.

And we see instances of this in the Levitical law.

And it was a purification process before priests would serve.

And then later it was adapted, not biblically, this is not a biblical law, but it was adapted by the Jews as part of the process of Gentiles that wanted to become Jewish.

So they added to their laws that you had to be baptized into the Jewish faith.

So these Jews are asking, who gave you the authority to do this?

Regardless of what you're doing or how you're doing it, who gave you the authority to do this?

And think about this.

These are priests and Levites that know all about this stuff.

And they're so they're saying, you know, who gave you the authority to do this?

So they ask, What are you doing?

Verse 26.

John simply says, I baptize with water.

John answered them.

When John says, I baptize with water, it's almost like this confession of his own limitations.

He's really saying, I only dunk people underwater and I lift them out.

I'm not the one with power.

I'm not doing anything powerful here.

I'm just dunking people in water.

He's just simply a guy doing what God called him to do.

You know, we have no record of John B performing any miracles.

We have no record of him giving any famous sermons in Scripture.

John was simply saying, the king is coming.

This was his ministry.

The king is coming.

Get ready.

And as a symbol of getting right with God, he physically helped people show their inward repentance by physically washing.

So he's just saying here, I baptize with water.

But now he's gonna get into who Jesus is, the one that does hold the power.

Look at the second part of verse 26.

Someone stands among you, but you don't know him.

Jesus didn't look like what they thought God should look like.

No one looked at Jesus' physical appearance and said, that has to be the Messiah.

You know, Isaiah tells us quite the opposite, and I want to read that to you, Isaiah 53, too.

He grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground.

He didn't have an impressive form.

He's talking about Jesus here.

He didn't have an impressive form or majesty that we should look at him, no appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was.

He was like someone people turned away from.

He was despised and we didn't value him.

Jesus wasn't much to look at.

He did not meet the expectations that Israel had placed on him.

He was standing among them.

Their Messiah, their long-awaited Messiah, was standing among them and they didn't know.

Partly because he wasn't doing what they expected him to do.

He appeared to be a regular guy that knew suffering and sickness, that held some very unpopular opinions, and he didn't go along with the crowd.

He didn't go along with Jewish leadership.

And Isaiah says, and we didn't value him.

You know, so often we can sit here and say, Man, I can't believe how dense the Jews of this day were, right?

We read through the Old Testament, we read through the gospels, and like, oh my gosh, like how could how could they not see?

But we do the same thing all the time in our own life.

We put God in this box, and then we become angry when we find out that he won't stay in that box that we try to put him in.

When he doesn't do things the way that we thought he should have done things, when he doesn't meet our expectations of who we've projected him to be in our ignorance.

And so often he's standing right in front of us in our everyday life.

And we just keep walking by him because we don't recognize him.

Because he's not the God that we thought fit nicely into our expectations box that we made by ourselves.

So we fail to recognize him every day.

This is yet another reason that we need to stay in Scripture.

So that we can recognize God for who he says he is, and not based on our expectations of who we want him to be, or someone else's expectation that maybe we listened to, including me.

But John the Baptist, he listened to what God told him and he identified the Messiah based on what God said.

And that is exactly what we need to do as well.

John goes on in verse 27 with a further description of Jesus.

He says, He is the one coming after me whose sandal strap I'm not worthy to untie.

So untying a sandal andor washing somebody's feet were the job of the lowest servant in this society.

And you can imagine why.

Imagine how dirty and funky your feet would be if you wore sandals all day and you didn't have pavement or landscaping or, you know, probably had dirt floors in your house.

And think of the manure that was probably all over every single road.

This is why this was a job reserved for the lowest of servants.

This is why it was shocking that Jesus would wash his own disciples' feet.

The rabbi washing his disciples' feet was not something that was done in this day.

It was all out of order in their society for that to happen.

So this is John the Baptist's way of saying, I'm not the Messiah.

And I'm so not even on his level that I don't even deserve to be the lowest of Jesus' servants.

I don't deserve to be that person that undoes his sandals.

And this is John the Baptist, called by God to pave the way for his son.

And he felt unworthy to be Jesus' lowest servant.

Have you ever felt worthy to be God's servant?

Well, you know, compared to others, it would make sense that he would choose me to serve in this way, you know, so talented and extremely humble.

You know.

John the Baptist didn't feel worthy to be Jesus' lowest servant.

That should be very humbling to us.

But here's the amazing thing.

Even in our sinful state, where our flesh gets in the way and it makes us fail, Jesus still invites us into his ministry to serve.

In our weakness, he is made strong.

What does Jesus tell Paul in 2 Corinthians?

My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.

And John knew that he might not feel worthy, but God still wanted to use him.

And so he went out and did what God asked him to do.

Verse 28.

All this happened in Bethany, your translation might say Bathabra, across the Jordan, where John was baptized.

The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Remember, as we talked about, Israel was waiting for a Messiah that would be a lion, that would be a warrior.

They were looking for Jesus' second coming.

But what does John say here?

Look, behold the Lamb.

The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

You know, remember, Israel is still in full sacrifice mode at this time.

Bringing the sin offerings to the temple to be sacrificed in the person's place for the covering of their sin.

And every one of those animals was pointing to Jesus, a precursor to the ultimate sacrifice.

But those animals never took away the sacrificer's sin.

It covered it until the person sinned again.

And then they had to bring another animal, and there's this endless cycle of animal sacrifice.

So notice that John doesn't say here, behold the Lamb of God that covers the sin of the world.

No, he says, takes away.

There is a big difference.

John is saying, look, the Lamb of God who lifts up your sin, who bears it and carries it away for good for all time.

And I have a question for you.

What's easier to walk up to a nasty pile of garbage and cover it with a tarp?

Or to pick up that nasty pile of garbage and carry it away?

That's the difference of animal sacrifice and what Jesus did for us.

He carried our sinful garbage away.

He bore it and it's not there anymore.

And not just for our most recent sins, and not just for our past sins, but all sin.

The entire guilt of the whole world was placed on him, making forgiveness of sin a free gift to humanity.

If we will only accept that gift that Jesus is freely trying to give us.

We just have to accept it.

He already died for our sin.

It is just a matter of if we accept his gift.

The gift is already bought.

Jesus wrapped it in beautiful paper and even put a little bow on it for us, and he's trying to hand it to us.

We just need to reach out and accept that gift and take it as our own.

And think about this.

John the Baptist understood all of this at the onset of Jesus' ministry.

Jesus' own disciples didn't understand this until after Jesus was sacrificed and rose again, and he had to tell them.

John's a special guy.

He had an understanding at this point that probably only a few people on the face of the earth had.

And he didn't consider himself worthy to untie Jesus' sandal.

That is how great he knew the Messiah to come would be.

John B.

goes on pointing to Jesus in verse 30.

Look at what it says.

After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.

So just the day before, as we just read in verse 26, John told this group about who he was sent by God to testify about.

And here they are the next day.

And he says, There! There he is! He's right there.

He's the one that I was telling you about.

He ranks ahead of me.

He has authority over me.

He's my headship, is really what he's saying.

He was born, though John the Baptist was born before Jesus.

His ministry started before Jesus.

Yet John says, He ranks ahead of me because he existed before me.

And if you were with us when we did the intro to this book, you'll remember in the first two verses of this chapter, John chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, we looked at the word was.

John 1:1

There's four instances of that word was.

That's the same word for existed that we have right here.

And that means continually exist.

You know, back to that awkward Greek imperfect tense that we were talking about.

That doesn't really quite make sense in English.

But what he's saying is, after me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he continually exists before me.

From eternity past to eternity future, he always existed.

Look at verse 31.

I didn't know him, but I came baptizing with water so that he might be revealed to Israel.

Though Jesus is John the Baptist's cousin, we know, John didn't know that the one God had called him to prepare the way for was Jesus until he baptized Jesus.

So until that moment, John was baptizing with water, not knowing who he was preparing the way for.

He's just a guy doing what God called him to do, so that Jesus might be revealed to Israel, as he says.

Now, John A.

John our author, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, will start to contrast water and spirit.

And this is a theme of water and spirit that we're going to see again when we get to the story of Nicodemus in chapter 3, saying that you must be born of water and of spirit.

So keep that in mind for when we get there to the story of Nicodemus.

Being baptized in water, being born of water, may even be referring back to Exodus and Israel crossing through the Red Sea.

But we'll get to all that when we get to that story of Nicodemus.

But just tuck that away for a little while and remember that when we get there.

Verse 32.

And John testified, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and he rested on him.

I didn't know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water told me, the one you see the spirit descending and resting on, he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God.

God had told John at some point, and we don't exactly know how, but God told him that the one you see the Spirit descending and resting on, he is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

And we get a little clearer picture of this in Mark's account.

So I want to read that to you.

Mark 1, verses 9 through 11.

Mark 1:9–11

He says, In those days, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized in the Jordan by John.

As soon as he came up out of the water, he saw the heavens being torn open, and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.

And a voice came from heaven, You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.

God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

All right there in that account.

One God, three persons.

Remember, John told his delegation, what did he tell him?

I baptize with water.

Anyone can do that.

Even false prophets and false teachers can dunk people underwater and claim whatever they want.

But here, John tells them one more distinguishing factor between him and the one that he paves the way for.

John baptizes with water.

Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit.

That's going to be a part of that free gift that we're talking about that he gives anyone that will accept it.

Immersion into the Holy Spirit.

You know, the Holy Spirit was at work in the Old Testament.

But he would do a work for a time or for a season or through an individual for a specific time and season.

But the idea of being baptized in the Holy Spirit would be this brand new concept to any Jew in this time.

Because God's presence was typically only found in the Holy of Holies, either in the tabernacle or in the temple, at the center of their place of worship.

But Jesus came to make us the temple of the Holy Spirit, the presence of the Lord inside of us.

That's why God tore the veil in the temple when Jesus died on the cross.

It was a quite literal symbol of God coming out of the Holy of Holies to dwell in those that Jesus had given rebirth to.

Now remember that what Jesus told Nicodemus, and if you don't, we're going to be there shortly in chapter 3, but Jesus will tell him, he who is born of water and the Spirit is saved.

So John the Baptist was pointing to the one that would baptize with the Holy Spirit.

And that's something only God can do.

And John was not that guy.

And he knew that he was not that guy.

And it seems that he was eager to let people know that he was not that guy.

He just continually pointed people to Jesus.

And like I said in the beginning, we are all called to that same ministry that John the Baptist was called.

Jesus said in the Great Commission, go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

The Great Commission is all about pointing people to Jesus.

And it's the ministry that Jesus has left to each and every one of us.

Sharing the gospel, pointing people to Jesus.

It's not something that Jesus only calls church leaders to and ministry leaders to.

He calls each and every one of us to that ministry.

And we get to be a part of that ministry and even get to be a part of baptizing people in water.

But it's only Jesus that can do the work of baptizing them in the Holy Spirit.

And that is what John was doing, pointing people to that.

So for us today, let's go point people to Jesus.

Let's go point people to Jesus, like our neighbors and our coworkers, our classmates, our friends, our family, whoever that might be, we have good news to share, just like John the Baptist.

And we can tell all those people look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

Will you please pray with me?

Jesus, you are so much greater than even what we can imagine.

John understood this so well.

Help us to understand it on a deeper level.

How great you are and how unworthy we are, apart from the work that you did for us.

That we're not even worthy to untie your sandal strap.

We're not worthy to be the lowest of low servants because you are so great and so wonderful.

Lord, I pray that we would take the Great Commission seriously, that we would realize that we have a very similar calling to John the Baptist, to point people to you.

To say, look, behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

So Lord, I pray that you would give us opportunities to do that, that you would show us how to do that, and that you would give us a love for the people that you want us to show that to.

Lord, we realize that we are nothing without you.

We realize that we are weak, but that your power is perfected in weakness.

So Lord, help us to realize that your grace is sufficient, that we don't have to be some eloquent scholar to tell people about you, but we just need to say, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

So Lord, would you do that work in and through us and show us how to do that naturally as an outpouring of our love for you, we pray.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.