(We began the sermon by singing the hymn: “O Lamb Of God”)
“Your only Son no sin to hide, but You have sent Him from Your side; To walk upon this guilty sod and to become the Lamb of God; (2nd vs) Your gift of love they crucified, they laughed and scorned Him as He died; The humble King they named a fraud, and sacrificed the Lamb of God. (Chorus) Oh Lamb of God, sweet Lamb of God, I love the holy Lamb of God; Oh wash me in His precious blood, my Jesus Christ the Lamb of God.”
One day when John the Baptist saw Jesus approaching - he said to his followers “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” John 1:29
And I got to thinking… why was Jesus the LAMB of God? I mean… lambs are nice and all that, but they’re not particularly imposing. They’re innocent, gentle, friendly, and vulnerable. By contrast, bulls… now that’s a symbol worthy of God. They’re big, powerful and dangerous. You don’t mess with bulls (just like you don’t mess with God).
Over the centuries, various cultures have worshipped gods they symbolized as bulls. Egyptians worshipped Apis and Osiris; the Canaanites (Baal); Sumerians (Marduk); and there were Hindus; Greeks, Romans and numerous other nations and cultures who had gods made to look like bulls. It seemed like everybody saw bulls as being worthy of their god.
Well… everybody but our God. The Israelites were surrounded by nations who symbolized their gods as bulls. But in the Bible God NEVER portrayed Himself as a bull or ox. Instead, Jesus was presented to us as being the LAMB of God. As portrayed in Isaiah 53, the Lamb of God was not something that would impress us. “He had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” Isaiah 53:2-3
And then, in verse 7 we’re told: “He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” Isaiah 53:7
Now we should understand that THIS symbolism of the lamb began centuries before in the land of Egypt. The people of Israel had been slaves in EGYPT for 100s of years (pause) and then God sent Moses to free them. And on the night before they were freed from Egypt, God declared: “Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household…. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats… the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it…. In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD’s Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.” Exodus 12:3-13
The lamb was central to the celebration of Passover. It had to be sacrificed at twilight, and its blood was to be painted on the doorpost and lintels of their homes. The blood of the LAMB had protected them from judgment in Egypt.
Then (in the Gospels) we read that the last meal Jesus had with His disciples was the Passover, and during the meal Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. Luke 22:19-20
Just as the Passover lamb’s blood saved the Israelites from slavery and death - so also the body and the blood of Jesus saves US from our slavery to sin and our fear of death. That’s one of the main reasons that Jesus was called - The Lamb Of God!
But that brings me back to my original question: Why wasn’t Jesus the BULL of God! I mean, the Israelites did sacrifice BULLS to God. In Hebrews 9:12 (for example) we’re told that Jesus entered into the Heavenly Holy of Holies “… not with the blood of BULLS and goats (like in the days of Temple worship) but with His own blood having obtained eternal redemption for us.”
So why make ALL THIS about a LAMB (which is gentle, innocent, and vulnerable) as opposed to bulls (which are big, powerful, and dangerous).
Well, a couple reasons came to mind. First, when it comes to sacrifice, lambs tend NOT to struggle. “Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” Isaiah 53:7
You’ve heard the phrase - “gentle as a lamb.” Apparently, that was true of lambs when they were offered for sacrifice. They were literally as GENTLE AS A LAMB.
ILLUS: But you don’t say that about bulls. Dad once told me of the days he worked as a meat inspector. He’d go to all different sizes of slaughterhouses and one day he was in the section of the plant where the live cattle were kept (pause) and one of the bulls got loose. Somebody had left the gate unlatched to his pen… and now he’s out in the alley between the pens AND HE’S NOT A HAPPY BULL. He may not have understood that he was there to be slaughtered, but he was pretty sure he didn’t want to be there. And now he was one dangerous animal.
Dad said the other two workers scurried up the sides of a couple pens and had gotten up as high as they could. But dad… well, he wasn’t as young and agile as they were, and he began to look around for something to use against the bull. That was when he saw a nearby water hose. He picked it up and turned it on the bull’s face. The bull shook its head, not liking the water in its eyes… and began to back up. Dad just kept pouring the water on and walked that bull right back into its pen.
My point: bulls are not gentle when it comes to being slaughtered. They can become very dangerous if they feel threatened.
ILLUS: But (PAUSE) lambs are different. I read of a man who’d worked for a meat packing firm and for years, and for years he’d butchered cattle, pigs and chickens and turkeys. But one day, a farmer brought a lamb to be slaughtered. The butcher hadn’t killed a lamb before, but (for him) it was just another animal. As he’d done so often before the man took his sharp knife and cut the lamb’s throat. But the lamb didn’t behave like other animals. It didn’t struggle or squeal or bellow like the cattle and pigs had. Instead, the lamb just stood there, silently in front of him. And as the blood flowed from its throat, the lamb stumbled toward its executioner and licked the blood from his hands and began to weave from side to side. Then, the lamb slumped forward and… quietly died.
For the remainder of the day the butcher couldn’t shake that scene from his mind, and it bothered him so much that he could hardly sleep for the next few nights. After about a month of this, the man went to his supervisor and said, “I quit! The death of that lamb was more than I can bear.”
It was almost as if the lamb had WILLINGLY allowed itself to die
And that’s the image that God wants you to have - about Jesus. He was: Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.” (Isaiah 53:7) Jesus willingly CHOSE to die for your sins. Jesus that He gave His life for you because you mattered THAT much to Him!
Now that ties in with the next reason Jesus was called the Lamb of God. Lambs are not animals that you would think about as being POWERFUL. They’re gentle, innocent and vulnerable. In many ancient cultures, folks worshipped bulls because bulls were powerful.
Ancient cultures often had a large pantheon of gods that they served, and each of the gods they worshipped had a particular function. There were gods that controlled the sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the mountains, crops, and rain and so on.
And when these pagan nations worshipped the god of (say) agriculture, and they prayed to him and offered sacrifices to him - what do you think they wanted THAT god to do? They wanted him to help them have abundant crops.
And when these nations worshipped the god of rain (prayed/sacrificed) what did they want THAT god to do? They wanted to have RAIN when they needed it… and no rain when it would hurt the crops.
Now, if they prayed to a god that symbolized power (prayed/ sacrificed) What would they want from THAT god???? They wanted Power. Authority. Control. Majesty, position, prominence.
But in the Bible, God presented Jesus as being the LAMB of God. It’s hard to imagine praying to the LAMB of God and think about receiving power from Him. Power is NOT what Lambs are about.
Now, with a bull you could easily SYMBOLIZE a powerful God, but God didn’t choose a bull to represent Himself because God didn’t want us to be driven by the desire for power. Our God didn’t want us to be power brokers. He wanted us to be humble servants. The focus of the cross was that Jesus became OUR servant. Jesus CHOSE to set His power aside so He could become OUR savior. And He did that when HE DIED on the cross for you.
In Matthew 20:25-28 Jesus told His disciples: “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and
their great ones exercise authority over them. IT SHALL NOT BE SO AMONG YOU. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave…”
AND HOW WILL WE KNOW HOW TO BE THAT KIND OF SERVANTS? “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Jesus was our example of how to be servants rather than how to be power brokers.
That’s why Philippians 2:3-8 tells us: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
CLOSE: I want to close with a story about sheep I read a long time ago. When a female sheep (called a Ewe) dies while giving birth to her lamb - her new-born lamb has a problem. You can’t just give that an orphaned lamb with just any ewe. Every lamb has its own unique scent… and every ewe recognizes her own lamb by its scent. If a lamb doesn’t have the right smell, the ewe will reject it AND THE LAMB WILL DIE!
So, what can you do? How can you save this hungry orphaned lamb? Well for centuries, shepherds have taken the skin of a lamb that has died in birth and wrapped it around the motherless lamb like a sweater. Then the “clothed” lamb would be presented to the mother of the dead lamb, and the ewe would smell the wool of her own child – and recognize the scent – and then accept the new lamb as her own.
The Bible teaches that OUR SINS make it so that we don’t smell right to God. Habakkuk 1:13 tells us that God’s eyes are too pure even to look on evil. Our sin separates us from God (Isaiah 59:1-2) and separate us from His love.
But God loved us so much that He gave His only begotten Son—His sinless Lamb - so that when we believed in Him we might not perish. JESUS DIED FOR US… so that we could wrap ourselves in His righteousness. Galatians 3:26-27 tells us that when we’re baptized into Christ we become clothed with Christ. (David A. Sargent, Mobile, Alabama)
We put Jesus “ON” so we can be accepted by God as His newborn child.
I recently listened to a preacher on the internet explain that many people believe that they’re Christians because of what they DO. They attend Church; Pray; Live by the Golden Rule; Try to keep the 10 commandments; and try to be nice people. And true Christians will DO those type of things… but that’s not WHY they’re Christians.
It's not about WHAT we do... it's about WHO we belong to. Have you wrapped yourself in Jesus? Have you depended on Him for your salvation?
