The Word: John Talk 4 (1:29-34)

0:00 Good morning, everybody. We are continuing this morning to look at John's introduction to his life of Christ, his gospel in the New Testament. And we've got to what we call verse 29. Of course, in the original there weren't any verses, but we have them in just to help us find our way around. So if you have a copy of the New Testament, please make use of it. The words will come on the screen behind me as well. So this is verse 29 of John chapter 1. The next day, John saw Jesus coming towards him.

0:49 And he said, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is the one I meant when I said, a man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel. And then John gave this testimony. I saw the spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, the one on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God. One of the features of John's introduction so far is the presence of John the Baptist throughout.

1:52 John mentions him in each of the three previous paragraphs, in verse 4, in verse 15, and then what we looked at last week, verses 19 to 28. And on each occasion, the emphasis is on his witness to Jesus. And we see that again here in this next paragraph, this fourth paragraph of the introduction. But there is a major change, which you've probably spotted, because this time he sees Jesus walking towards him. So Jesus is now there, right in front of him. John is no longer talking about him in his absence. He's right there. So now what John needs to do is to point him out and introduce him.

3:00 I wonder if you've ever had the task of introducing an important person, a speaker or whatever, to an audience. It is an important task, and it's one that you can get spectacularly wrong on occasions. I have a vivid memory years ago of someone in church introducing a speaker with these immortal words. And now Fred Bloggs, not his real name, I should say, is going to bore you to death with God's word. Well, I find it funny. And of course, when I speak in various places, I'm often on the other side of it and sitting there wondering, what are they going to say about me? Will I even recognize myself in the description? Am I going to have to explain or explain away what is said?

4:01 And if it had been you introducing Jesus to the world, what would you have said? Based on what you know of him, what would you have picked out as the most important things to emphasize at this stage? Here's the first introduction of Jesus in person to the world. So what do you say? Well, I was reading up about how to give introductions, and according to the best I could discover in my brief research. This is what they say. The best introductions are short. Good to remember that.

4:53 They often will include an anecdote of some kind that link the introducer to the person being introduced. And they highlight what sets this person apart so that we should give him or her our attention. And often they will provide a kind of personal assessment. And when I compare that with John, that's precisely, in fact, what he does. It's short. He explains, there is an anecdotal element to it because he explains the remarkable way that he came to recognize that this Jesus is the one, the word become flesh. And then he gives us two major statements that highlight what Jesus has come to do. This is what you can expect.

5:52 This is the point. These are the core things. This is why you should pay attention to him. And then at the end, He provides his own dramatic assessment of who Jesus is. So with that in mind, let's take a closer look, particularly at the two big statements that highlight what Jesus had come to do. And bear in mind again, the question I asked you, is this what you would have said? And if not, then why not? What's going on here?

6:29 that differs perhaps from the way that you've heard Jesus talked about by others. Because all kinds of people have all sorts of views about Jesus and the things that they want to emphasize about him. But here's the official introduction by the official forerunner appointed by God to prepare the way for Jesus and to introduce him to the world. And the first thing he says, Luke, pointing to Jesus as he walks towards him, this is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Now again, pause for a moment. If you've been brought up in a Christian background, in a church background, you probably have a kind of an understanding of what that might mean. But let's suppose you tried this out on one of your colleagues at work who had no such background.

7:36 And they ask you, why are you so keen on Jesus? Well, because he's the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. What would they understand by that? It'd be interesting to ask, actually, why not try it this week? What would you understand by that? but it's important to think it's true. John is introducing Jesus in a particular context, in a Jewish context. He didn't pluck the idea of the Lamb of God at random.

8:10 Let's think of a metaphor, something that would sum him up. I know, God's Lamb. No, there's nothing random about this. The image of Jesus, or of the Lamb of God, or of the Lamb, was etched in the history of the people's dealings with God. And particularly, probably the main thing in mind here is the annual Passover festival. It was the first festival in the Jewish year because it celebrated their beginning as a nation. It celebrated their deliverance from slavery in Egypt, but it celebrated something else that happened actually before their deliverance. Because before they were taken out of their slavery in Egypt, there was a deliverance from the angel of God's judgment come against the entire nation where they were living.

9:17 That happened before they moved out. And I know that Passover has become a real motif, particularly the famous words, let my people go. And that's become a very important phrase down through the years for various liberation groups and all the rest of it. But it's so often overlooked that the first stage of that liberation was liberation through a lamb. And you say, well, how did that work out? Well, God said to each household to take a lamb, to kill that lamb, to take the blood, to put it on the doorpost and the lintel over the door. And that was so that when the angel of judgment executing God's righteous judgment came, they would see, he would see the blood and would pass over and not bring judgment down on the firstborn in that house. Deliverance by a lamb.

10:24 It was etched into their history. They Passover, the Lamb of God. It wasn't a random image. So when John calls Jesus the Lamb of God, the people he's talking to have a category for understanding what he's referring to, for thinking it's true. It's like a prototype that God has built into their history so that when the one who is the Lamb of God would come, they would understand what's meant by it and what he's come to do, at least begin to understand it. That somehow this person coming was going to act like that ancient lamb was going to perform a similar function, but obviously at a much higher level, because this is not an animal. This is a human being, one who is the word, the Son of God, divine human who is now the Lamb of God. So at a much higher level, but at least we can have the outlines of an understanding that it's something to do with deliverance.

11:43 It's something to do with liberation. It's something to do with setting us free. From what? Well, the other part of the explanation is here, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So it's that connection then between Jesus as the Lamb of God and the sin of the world. And perhaps some of them, as they listened and thought about what John said, They were thinking of the famous words in the prophet Isaiah about the one who was to come. He was pierced because of our rebellion. He was crushed because of our iniquities or our sin.

12:28 The punishment for our peace was on him. We are healed by his wounds. We all went astray like sheep. We have all turned to our own way. The Lord has punished him for the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth like a lamb. led to the slaughter. It was part of their history.

12:52 And John the Baptist has now been given to see that this Jesus walking towards him is God's answer to the world's fundamental problem that is summed up in one simple word. sin now how popular a word is that these days perhaps not particularly and certainly most people don't see it as the world's fundamental problem I watch occasionally discussions on television or read through articles and so on and very few of them you'll not find BBC correspondence saying here's another evidence of sin. They may call it something else, but it's not a word that people like. And to suggest it is, for many people, an insult to humanity. And many mock the idea, following the footsteps of Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, where he writes, the Christian focus is overwhelmingly on sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, sin. What a nasty little preoccupation to have dominating your life. That's what he wrote. Well, you don't have to be an Oxford professor or even live very long before you realize that there is something wrong with people, with us, with me.

14:39 I love my children dearly, but sadly, it didn't take them very long to discover that there was something wrong with me. They had the right to expect consistent love and kindness from their dad, but try as I might, they discovered that I could be grumpy. Never, you think. And sometimes I didn't listen as I should, that I could get cross, that I could get the discipline wrong, that I wasn't always consistent. What helped me most in the end was when they grew up a bit and discovered that there was something wrong with them as well. And to a greater or lesser degree, there is something wrong with everyone. So against Professor Dawkins, it's sin that is nasty. It is everywhere.

15:50 You see it everywhere. If only. Think of the world if the nations could trust each other. What a difference it would make. Think of the world if businesses could trust each other. Think of hospitals if doctors and nurses and administrations could trust each other. Or a school. Or a family.

16:17 the neighborhood. But we don't. Indeed, we can't because of this thing that the Bible calls sin. And the cost of it is overwhelming. Look at the news headlines on any given day. This is from the Times on Friday. So now you know the kind of highbrow literature that I read.

16:48 Just Friday, here are the headlines. The war in Ukraine. Horrific killings in the Middle East. Knifeman kills two at synagogue. Prime Minister warns of anti-Semitic hatred rising once again. The Met chief refuses to resign despite toxic culture of racism, misogyny and violence. Corruption over PPE contracts. Journalists' unlawful information gathering.

17:13 smart devices used to abuse, monitor, and control old people, hackers demanding ransom from kiddo schools, and on and on and on and on and on. Why should we not be preoccupied by the damage that we do to one another? And what hope is there of finding the right solution, the right cure, if we fail to diagnose the disease? The Bible calls it sin. And that list I give you from the newspaper are all evidences of it, but they're symptoms of the disease of sin. And as any good medic knows, dealing with symptoms isn't a solution. If you have consistent headaches, paracetamol can help with the symptoms, but it's not a cure. You need to work and find what is the root cause.

18:14 And we all face this issue of sin, not just outside us, but inside us. New Testament provides us with a number of lists of these damaging symptoms. Jesus gave one when he said that it's out of the human heart that come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander. They're symptoms. We all have them. Not that we are as bad as we could be. There is much that is noble. There's much that is good.

18:43 As Jesus himself said, even though you are evil, you know how to give good gifts to your children. But we are all flawed. But these are symptoms. The underlying cause goes deeper. Notice that John the Baptist did not say, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. but the sin. He's come to deal with the underlying problem. Jesus has not come into the world to help us to manage the symptoms better, to help to improve our lives so that we can be less selfish and more loving.

19:24 Those are good things in themselves, but that doesn't answer the basic problem. He has come to deal with the underlying problem, the root cause, which is sin. And if we allow the Bible to speak, it will take us back to the very beginning to tell us where things went wrong, because if we are going to know how they can be put right, we need at least to face where they went wrong. And it wasn't through some gross evil action such as murder or immorality or whatever. We went wrong when we refused to trust God, refused to be dependent on him and decided to go our own way. When we decided for ourselves us how we should live, what's right and wrong. We decided in the end to be our own God. And that instinctively led to a breakup in the relationship with God, to an instinctive sense of alienation from God, and awakened in us guilt and shame and made us run and hide from him.

20:48 God is now the enemy. Of course, we dress it up as striking a blow for freedom, that it is actually living according to unreality, according to the fantasy that somehow we created ourselves or gravity or something else created us. And we went against the most basic principle of our existence, that we are creatures of God. And you know very well what happens when you live in defiance of the natural laws, the physical laws that govern the universe. Try it with electricity next time. Just ignore the laws and enjoy the fry. But it's more serious when we go against the moral and spiritual laws that are built in because the universe has a moral governor. We walked away from him and we became separated from him in sin, guilty before him and under the judgment of God.

22:03 now I say that to try to get us to understand how big an announcement this is because if you don't understand how serious an issue sin is then you'll never understand how important this is when John the Baptist stands and says behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world people should have been erupting with joy. And we should also. Because this is not just the world's problem. It's my problem. How does Jesus do it? How is he the cure? Well, the whole of the rest of the New Testament is going to expand this for us.

22:53 The Bible calls this cure, or this lovely word, salvation. and John's adding his voice to the ancient prophets. There's an answer and it is found in a person. God's lamb deals with it. We don't. He does. This is not something that we can deal with. I mean, we've had thousands of years to attempt.

23:19 Has it got better? Human nature somehow improved. Technology has improved. but it just gives us more and more sophisticated toys to employ badly and damage one another with. Human nature has not changed. And it matters. God is never going to say sin doesn't matter. Otherwise, why send his son as the Lamb of God to take away sin?

23:51 It matters because we matter. We live in a moral universe. Our actions matter. They have moral value. We are guilty before the holy God who created us. But God has not simply abandoned us. He has come in person. Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

24:17 He has come not into the world not to condemn us, but that the world through him might be saved. He has come to uphold the moral laws that undergird the universe. Because if God simply turned a blind eye to the way we live, then the universe itself would fall apart. There would be no ultimate justice. There would be no heaven. God has come in person, the perfect man. to give his life, the Lamb of God, like that ancient lamb, blood taken, so that when I see the blood, I will pass over you. It's a big story.

25:05 The rest of the New Testament is going to expand that story for us. But what a wonderful announcement. Let me apply it simply this way. forgiveness is real in Christianity forgiveness is real in Christianity here is a solution in Jesus that deals with our guilt our weakness our sin our shame and releases us as God's gift to us from the chains of fear and shame and guilt that hold us down. Forgiveness based on what Jesus was going to do as a lamb, setting us free. It is fantastic.

26:11 This is the core of the message. In Acts 13, the apostles were preaching And let it be known to you, therefore, that through this man, Jesus' forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you. That is announced as you would announce a public proclamation. This is gospel. This is the good news announcement. And Jesus told his disciples before he left them, you make sure that forgiveness, repentance leading to forgiveness is at the core of your message. Fantastic. I'd love to talk more about it, but I need to rush on here.

26:55 Then comes the personal anecdote. And it answers the basic question of how did John know that the person walking towards towards him was indeed the Lamb of God, Messiah, the Word become flesh, because he didn't know him. He knew of Jesus, of course. He knew of him as the son of Mary, a relative of his own mother, but he didn't know that Jesus was the Lord, the one who outranked him because he was before him, the Word, the light of the world, Messiah, Son of God. So how was he so sure? Because at this stage, as far as we know, Jesus had done nothing that John would have known of to indicate that he was anything other than the carpenter's son. John was given the task of preparing the way.

27:45 I don't know what's happening to microphones or whatever, but I'm getting shot, I think, here. Is there something I'm doing, Andy, no? You don't think so? Well, that's good to know. Never mind. John was given the task of preparing the way, and he did it by preaching a message of repentance and getting people ready for the coming king. And as a mark of the genuineness of people's response, God told John to baptize them in water. And he also told him that one day when he was baptizing people, something remarkable would happen.

28:23 A dove would descend and remain on a man he was baptizing. Highly unusual, unnatural. And that would indicate to him that this was the person, the Messiah. That baptism, of course, had already happened, as the other gospel writers tell us. God had promised and had already given that sign to John. And now John sees the person that he baptized walking towards him. But notice that the sign itself was very significant. It was in the context of baptism.

29:08 John baptized people in water. Because that's what you do in baptism. You baptize people with water. nothing special about that. What else would you use? That's the normal thing. But God had revealed to John that the person on whom the dove would remain would not simply be Messiah, but he would be the one who would, now get this, baptize people in the Holy Spirit. And now John's anecdote leads to the second great statement about who Jesus was and what he had come to do.

29:48 He'd come not only to be the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world, but he had also come to baptize people in the Holy Spirit. John could never do that. He could only baptize in water. No one who is merely human, however holy they are, could ever do that because the Holy Spirit is God. It takes one who is himself God baptize people in God's Spirit. So no wonder John concludes, I have seen and testified that this is the Son of God. Who else could he be? So what an introduction.

30:36 Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus, the one who baptizes people in the Holy Spirit. And when you stand back from it, you realize that this is the double solution to our need, to our rebellion, to our fallenness, to our going our own way. The first, Jesus, the Lamb of God, deals with the problem of our guilt before a holy God, provides a basis for forgiveness as a gift, which we can then know and enjoy in this life. The second deals with the problem of our weakness. We need not simply to be forgiven people, but to be transformed people. We need a new dynamic. We need a new power.

31:31 We need a new principle of life. And that principle of life, amazingly, is the Holy Spirit himself. Christianity is not some self-help religion that gives you forgiveness and then says, now you're on your own. Have a go. Do your best. Christianity says, The Lamb of God takes away sin. The guilt delivers you from the wrath of God.

32:11 The Spirit provides the new life, the very life of God himself now dwelling within you. These two things, both fantastic announcements, something happened at Calvary that had never happened before. God's lamb in the person of his perfect son laid down his life for our release from guilt and sin and judgment. But something also happened after that on the day of Pentecost that had never happened before. The now risen Lamb of God. Jesus, the Son of God, took human beings who had trusted him and baptized them in the Holy Spirit, bringing them into both a new individual life and a new corporate life. Say, what do you mean by that? Well, when we trust in Jesus as God's Son and our Savior, Not only do we receive the gift of forgiveness, but the gift also of new life in the Spirit.

33:27 We share in God's eternal incorruptible life, but not simply as individual Christians. As Paul explains it further in 1 Corinthians 12 that we've looked at recently, Jesus takes people and baptizes them, believers, in his spirit so that not only does the spirit live in them and they live in him, but so that each individual is joined not just to Jesus, but to every other genuine believer in what is known as the body of Christ, the church, a brand new spiritual creation that began at the day of Pentecost. Now, I know that's a lot to take in one morning. The rest of the New Testament will explain. Both will expand on this twin solution to the human problem, dealing with our guilt and dealing with our weakness and bringing us into sharing in the very life of God. How much did John the Baptist himself understand of this?

34:47 I ask as I finish. Well, I don't know. I hope I can ask him one of these days. It's unlikely he understood very much. The prophets were given the message. They weren't always provided with the full explanation, as Peter later tells us. This is going to take years of the teaching of Christ and the teaching of his apostles to fill it out, to explain what is going on here. John doesn't try to do that.

35:16 What he does is to say just enough to awaken the attention I need to find out more about Jesus this is astounding what does it mean perhaps we could learn from that as we share and introduce Jesus to others we can't give the whole explanation of everything can we well it's rare that people would listen to us that long, even if we did understand everything. But at least to whet people's attitude as Jesus himself did. Lady, the water that you got here, you're going to dry up. You'll be thirsty again. But the water I give, it's going to spring up like a well into everlasting life. Did he explain it? No.

36:15 That explanation would come. But wow, was it not attractive. Wouldn't you just love that experience of something within that was eternal, refreshing, couldn't be corrupted? That's precisely what we receive when we trust Christ by the coming of the Spirit into our lives. It's fascinating when we step back and just look at this introduction so far. Because what John talks about here hadn't yet happened. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, the one who baptizes in the Spirit, it hadn't yet happened. This was John speaking as a prophet.

37:02 This is John predicting what Jesus was going to do. Referring, in fact, to the events at Calvary on the cross and referring to the events on the day of Pentecost. I find it really interesting because when I stand back from where we have gone over these past Sundays and think of the whole sweep of the introduction, there is a sweep of history here. John begins in the beginning. In eternity past, as sometimes we call it, if that means anything. The word already was. And the next stage then is the creation.

37:55 And the next stage is the time of witnesses, particularly John the Baptist. But as a symbol, if you like, of all those lights that came. They weren't the light, but they bore witness to the true light coming into the world. And then we have the coming, the incarnation. and still in that timeline then the focus is on the life of Christ on earth we saw his glory as of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth what's next? well what's next is what we've seen this morning John now speaking about the future when he was speaking it of course it's past for us we can look back on this he was looking forward to it about Calvary still to come and then about Pentecost. Fascinating you got it in the right order, isn't it? Well, it fascinates me anyway, I can say.

38:51 What happens after Pentecost? Well, historically we know that it's the age of the church, the gospel going out, people coming to know Jesus. What happens next in John's introduction? Well, you'll have to wait till next week. Of course, you can always read on. Let's pray together. Father, thank you again for such an amazing introduction to Jesus, The Son of God. And to the purpose of his coming.

39:38 To what he was going to achieve. That no one has ever achieved. Or could ever achieve. To be God's lamb. The one that hundreds of years of history had pointed forward to. That he would come as the fulfillment of the picture in the Passover. As the Lamb of God who would take away the sin of the world. And that includes us and me.

40:19 Thank you for this magnificent gospel that doesn't spend its time trying to manicure the symptoms. but goes right to the heart of the problem which is the problem of our hearts rebellion against our creator. And thank you for Jesus. He stood a perfect man, perfectly in sync with the Father, perfectly expressing him and expressing his heart. And thank you for that time when he laid down his life voluntarily on the cross to uphold the moral standards and character of God our creator. And to make it possible for us to receive forgiveness, not as something we work for or earn or merit because we never could but as a free gift we say the things, the words so easily and yet this is the biggest thing in the universe and in this introduction we come to the center point of human history the self giving of the Son of God and the coming into our world of the Holy Spirit we thank you for this double solution

42:02 to our sin and weakness Lord use your word in all of our lives help us to see and look to Christ as John pointed to him look behold look at him he's the one and may it become true for us in our experience knowing his forgiveness and knowing the presence of his spirit in our lives we pray in Jesus name Amen