Lamb of God

Well, it's good to be with you. All of you is. Mary and I had a wonderful night to be much observed at Bruce and Vicki Willover's house last night, but it looks like you had a wonderful time here, and we certainly would have liked to have been here with you, but we had a wonderful time too. So with that said, I'm going to get on to the sermon. I look at my watch. Okay, make sure I have the time.

The title is The Lamb of God. Will you recognize that as describing the life and the coming and the death of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior?

But I must tell you I did not understand this analogy, this metaphor if you want to say that, of a lamb, until I was about 20, 21 years old, and I then got the opportunity to be a shepherd of sheep. I had an uncle who something went wrong with the property in which he was holding sheep, and so he then sent them to our farm, my father's farm, and of course, me being the oldest son, I got a chance to learn how to handle sheep. I had been around swine by the hundreds and thousands, been around cows, goats, but nothing is like a sheep. I didn't really enjoy it. I spent about a little over a year, year and a half, taking care of the my uncle's sheep, at which afterwards I was to be paid. As I soon found out, it wasn't much for all that it involved. I don't know how many people here have ever raised lambs. There's one.

It is unique, is it not, Jeff? It's unique. The problem I was confronted with is that it takes a tremendous amount of care. It isn't like your dog that you just throw some food out once a week, and once a day in the country, once a week, yeah. No one like my dog runs off now, but a lamb. Similar to this one. This one, as you can see, personifies the lambs that I had the opportunity to work with. One in particular was named Browning, because it had, similar to this one, it had kind of a white head but a brown body.

When it was born, in the first 24 hours, its mother decided that she didn't want it, and so she left it. Left it to die in a cold, and I found it, as it could barely make a sound, that little gutter sound.

Just this little sound, and once you hear it, you never forget it, because it doesn't stay that way. Because as the lamb, we took it in, and we had to bottle feed it. I had to find some milk that it would drink, find stuff that would keep it alive, and we took it inside our house and kept it by the heater, because it was cold. And Browning then, within the first 48 hours, began to, eyes opened, became more alive, and it began to try to walk with those spindly little legs. And then it was no longer that pathetic little sound, but it was more of a, bah, bah, bah! You could miss it. We had to keep it in the house for about two or three weeks in a box to make sure it was going to be okay, because out by itself, unless it got bigger, the other sheep would knock it over, run over it, treat it with disrespect, because it didn't have a mother that would protect it. And Browning became part of the family. During that time, my older sister spent more time with Browning than I did, because I had other sheep to look after. But Browning used to just wake us up every morning while he was in the house with that sound you could not forget, and then it would let you know when it was hungry. Until finally we felt it was strong enough, big enough, to turn it outside and get it used to the our yard before we turned it outside a little later with the rest of the sheep. Well, Browning in the yard just loved it. Browning would run around and wouldn't go out by the other sheep yet. The sheep would come by, but it would stay in our yard. It waited for my sister, Bonnie, to come by and bah bah bah! And even if you started to walk, you would hear that sound. And so later on, we finally decided it was time for Browning to join the rest of the herd. The flock, I guess you call. I'm going to get that wrong. The flock.

Well, Browning never stopped coming to the house when you would feed all the other sheep, all the other lambs down by the barn. Didn't matter. Browning came back up. Remind you, there was a song. Mary had a little lamb, a little lamb, a little lamb, and then wherever she went, this lamb would go! That's how Browning was. They become very attached to you. And the thing about a precious little lamb like this is you become very attached to them because they don't really bite or suck on your finger when they're young. They will, you know, curl up with you. Even on a chair, they will come over. You're sitting down and just sit and lay down right beside you and look up at you like you're the greatest thing they've ever seen in their life.

I had no idea at the time why I was given this job to raise these sheep and to spend time with browning our lambs until it made me realize just how precious little lambs are. And now I realize because Jesus Christ was called the Lamb of God, of all the animals in the world, could have been chosen as a metaphor for Christ. None fit better than a little lamb, than a lamb, an innocent lamb. Because as Jeff referenced earlier from Revelation 13.8, that slain from the foundations of the world, the Lamb of God. And as attached as I got to browning, and especially my sister Bonnie, did, we then, as brownie got older, brownie never forgot us. We never forgot brownie. Even when it started then blending with the flock. And it just, it would always look at us when the feeding came. There was a bond, and there was a bond for us because next thing you know we would find us, as sheep would sometimes, whether when the food, we would feed them, they would kind of try to push each other out of the way. And we would find ourselves even pushing them out of the way so that the brownie could get a fair share of food. Can you imagine way back in time, billions of years ago, way back then, the God and the Word put together this plan that there would have to be a Lamb who was slain. A human Lamb to be slain for the entire world.

You look at this Lamb and you think, okay, I didn't, wasn't a round sheep. I probably wouldn't form that attachment. I think you would. I think most of us in here would. Like you turn with me in Exodus 12 and verse 2. Exodus 12 and verse 2. It's 12 and verse 2. It says, And from now on this month will be the first month of the year for you, announce to the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each family must choose a Lamb or a young goat for a sacrifice, one animal for each household. If a family is too small to eat a whole animal, let them share with another family in the neighborhood. Divide the animal according to the size of each family and how much they can eat. The animal must, you select, must be a one-year-old male, either a sheep or a goat with no defects. Take special care of this animal until the evening of the fourteenth day of the first month. Then the whole assembly of the community of Israel must slaughter their Lamb or young goat. At twilight, they are to take some of the blood, smear it on the side and the top of the door of the houses where they eat the animal. That same night they must roast the meat over a fire, eat it along with bitter salad greens and bread made without yeast. Do not eat any of the meat raw or boiled. The whole animal, including the head, legs, and internal organs, must be roasted over a fire. Do not leave any of it till morning burn whatever is not eaten by morning.

Read those scriptures. Do you grasp the gravity of those scriptures? God, ask! Ask! Over a million people, thought to be even two million people, to take a lamb, to take a lamb like brownie, and take it in for four days and defeat it and take care of it, and then take it out and take a knife to its juggler and cut its throat.

And you will hear the gurgling, BAH! BAH!

as it's dying and the blood is running out and its life is leaving its body. Can you imagine that? I think now. I don't know that I've God told me to do it. I would do it. I guess I've been so far removed from farm life because then life came and went. You become hardened to life. Imagine having something that looked up at you and knew you were taking care of it for four days and drew a bond and were close and then you kill it. And your family there is where they're with you and the young children are coming up and they're playing with it and petting it and it's running around and everything and then you kill it and then you are commanded to eat it.

God commanded the family to eat it.

Sounds a little harsh, doesn't it, to us. More civilized people, I guess you could say. But God had a purpose. And its purpose was to make people realize that when the Lamb of God came and was slain, that's a serious matter. Something so much greater than the love of a little lamb. Because God saw whether people did or not, very few people on earth in 31 A.D. realized or recognized the innocence, the sweetness, the gentleness, the compassion of Jesus Christ on this earth. And to God and to all of us, it should be like this lamb. But it wasn't, was it? Because you remember that dreadful day. People even came and mocked. Where's your God? Where's your Father? Why doesn't He get you off that piece of wood?

What did God see? The Lamb of God. Sweet, innocent. And you would too. If you did that today, we would too have such a greater understanding of Jesus Christ and the love that He had for us.

Because you have to realize, Jesus Christ, when He walked on this earth, He had the power to say no. He could have just walked away. Remember He told the disciples last night, I had the power to take it up. I had the power to lay it down. He was telling Him, I have the power to walk away from this at any time.

He didn't do it. He didn't do it because of us.

Because He looked at humanity like we were little. Lambs. He was willing to be sacrificed for us.

God wanted to make sure that mankind had a picture of that. How really special, precious. The attachment, the bond that was laid out for us.

And it had to be taught to the children. That night, many nights after. I don't want to eat it. No, you have to eat it.

You think that ever left them?

No, it probably wouldn't leave me. One of the most interesting perspectives is when the Lamb of God was this little child.

When Jesus Christ was a young boy, personified by the picture we have here. You have to understand at that time, there were no real schools. You were basically taught at home until you became at the age of 12, a young man would then begin to take on his father's trade. Be an apprentice and learn. But during these times of learning when a child was very young, it was the mother's job to teach the young children from Scripture. They didn't have, they couldn't afford to have scrolls. It was only for rich in the synagogues, temples. But they memorized large parts of Scripture. And they would teach these to their children as they were growing up. Climb up on your lap.

And they would say these, a lot of times, hymns. That's why we have such a large 150 hymns in the book of Psalms. Many of those were learned and sung all through the year. It's how they learned Scripture. It's how they were to be able to memorize big parts of Scripture. It's amazing how you can hear a song and you can remember the words. And you haven't heard the song in what, 30 years? But you've heard it in it. And the melodic tone just sets, and you can remember the words. These, this is what was done back at Christ's time. Mothers would teach their young children what went through Christ's little mind. When did he begin to realize what Psalm 22 was talking about?

Was he there on his mother's lap when these verses came on? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

You know he learned it. It's what he said when he was hanging on that piece of wood. Did his mind go back and reflect to the time that his mother taught him? Psalm 22. As he yelled and Aramaic, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? When did the child begin to realize what this was about? When you read 2 and 3 and 4 and verse 11 and 12 and you go through there, turn there to Psalm 22. Everybody remembers Psalm 23, right? Psalm 23.

Psalm 22 and verse 12. Many bulls have surrounded me, strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. They gape at me with their mouths as a raging and roaring lion. I am poured out like water, all my bones are out of joint, my heart is like wax, it has melted within me.

How old was he when he began to be and he was born full of the Holy Spirit? How old was he when this really hit home? One, two, three, four, five, six.

For dogs have surrounded me in 16, the assembly of the wicked have enclosed me. They pierced my hands and my feet and I can count all my bones. They look at me and stare, they divide my garments among them, and they cast locks for my clothes. So, was this the catless?

When he was 12, he went to the temple to talk to the leaders. You think he asked some of these questions? Who is this? Who is this talking about? And by the age of 12, he was on the threshold of being a young man. He would have known. He would have known these scriptures.

It was his destiny to fulfill Psalm 22. You know, when you're age 12, you worry about things. You worry about the first zit you get on your face. You worry about all these various things you have growing up. Your voice begins to crack. You will sometimes start to cry for no reason at all as your body and life is changing. And we all kind of look at that, and we can relate to that.

For some reason, I think the child, Jesus, had something else on his mind.

Could he have gone through Passover? Every year when he was a child and brought to his mind, this pictures me.

Talk about an incredible weight, incredible burden on a young person. Today it's, I don't have the latest cell phone. I don't have the latest Game Boy.

This was our Savior, and it was about us.

And all he asks is what?

Follow me. Follow me. Every year he would hear that, even before he started his ministry. When's he going to be? He knew. Go to Exodus, if you will, with me. Exodus.

Exodus chapter 11. How much, what we're about to read is 10 or 11 verses, how much did the young child, did the young man, did the 12-year-old, 13-year-old remember? Because spiritually, he was there. He was there at the original Passover.

Did these verses mean so much more to him than to us, even today, as they're written for us? Hebrew 11. Exodus 11, verse 1. And the Lord said to Moses, I will bring yet one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt, and afterward he will let you go. When he lets you go, he will surely drive you out of here altogether. Speak now in the hearing of the people and let every man ask from his neighbor and every woman from her neighbor, articles of silver and articles of gold. And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servant, and in the sight of the people. Then Moses said, Thus says the Lord, at midnight I will go out into the midst of Egypt, and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die.

How many tens or hundreds of thousands of people, young males, died that night?

From the firstborn of the Pharaoh who sits on the throne, even to the firstborn of the maid servant who is behind the handmill and the firstborn of the beast. Then there will be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as what's not light before or no ever shall be. You'll imagine the cry. If you've never heard an animal even cry for its young one that they've lost, it happens. But imagine the people. Well, it wasn't a house it said, but one did not die.

Did the youth, Jesus, could you still hear the cries? Every year when they would read this and go through this, when they would meet on a day like today? Because He did. He did keep the days of Unleavened Bread. And this was read every year. But against none of the children of Israel shall a dog move its tongue, or against a man or a beast, that you may know that the Lord does make a difference between the Egyptians and Israel. And all these your servants shall come down to you and bow down to you saying, Get out! All of you people will follow you, and after that I will go out. Then He went out from Pharaoh in great anger. But the Lord said to Moses, Pharaoh will not heed you, so that my wonders may be multiplied in the land. So Moses and Aaron did all that the Lord, all these wonders before Pharaoh, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he did not let the children of Israel go. But go over to verse chapter 12, verse 21. Verse 21. Then Moses called all of the elders of Israel and said to them, Pick out and take lambs for yourself according to your family, and kill the Passover. And you shall take a bunch of hissah, dip it in the blood on the basin, and strike the lentil on the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. And none of you shall go out of the door till morning. Verse 23. For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, where he sees the blood on the lentils and on the doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door, and I allow the destroyer to come into your homes. And you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for you and your sons for ever. It shall come to pass when you come into the land which the Lord will give you, just as it promised you shall keep this service. And it shall be when your children say, What do you mean by this service? And you shall say, It is a Passover sacrifice of the Lord, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel and Egypt when he struck the Egyptians and delivered the household. And it says, So the people bowed their heads and worshipped.

Year 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. This is red every year. First day of unleavened bread. Sometimes a Passover. What went through that young mind?

Was it that, yes, I was the one.

They killed all the firstborn.

Or was it, this is all set up for me. I've got to take on all the world's sins, all the burdens, and I've got to be sacrificed like that lamb. Do we really know? No. Can we speculate and talk about it? Sure. Should we think about it? I think we should. Maybe that's what the days are about.

That somebody did so much for us, willing to do so much for us. We sing a song in our songbook. I don't remember which page it is now, but I like it. Twyla Paris wrote it. If you might know it, it's called We Will Glorify. Do you remember that song? You sung it today? Oh, I was going to say, I must have been sleeping.

So, Jeff, I didn't sleep through your song.

She is an amazing songwriter and singer. She really feels it. Page 127. We will glorify. I think all of us enjoy singing it. You see the words, and she has great understanding as a poet.

She wrote an incredible song called The Lamb of God, and she performs it. As she took the phrase that came from Jesus walking towards John the Baptist. And John the Baptist, I don't know if he even planned it. He just, I think it came out because of the Holy Spirit. He said what? Behold the Lamb of God.

Probably if he didn't say it, the rocks could have said it. It's that big a deal. And it's such a moving statement because he realized, and it should be to us. So for a few minutes here, let's listen to Twyla Paris sing The Lamb of God.

The Lamb of God.

And to be your father of God, O Lamb of God, sweet Lamb of God, my God, that holy Lamb of God, my watching, His precious Lord, till I am just a Lamb of God, O, His precious Lord, my Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God. I wanted to play that because from Nashville, Tennessee, Mary and I have had the opportunity to go to a writer's night and hear the songwriters of some of the top hits that have been written in country music and other music. We had the opportunity to sit and listen to them play their own songs recorded by other people, but it was the ones who maybe sold millions, but nobody knew their name, but they composed this. You could tell when they were Jeffrey Steele and some of those that we saw that wrote these songs, and when they sang them, it just, it was just, it filled them, unlike the singers who were singing them that made the millions. They felt every word of these songs. That's what I like about Twyla Paris. I could see she feels it. She felt it. So much so that even we will glorify, there's no royalties to be gained. That's why we can sing it. We have permission. You don't see that from many of the songs that are out now. Everybody wants their BMI cut. Everybody wants this, but it was personal to her. I had the opportunity to work with and do some work for some songwriters, built them special rooms just so they could write songs, and to hear them tell me, as I got to spend some time with them, how they were inspired by this. I said, what made you write that song? And those songs are special to me, because now I understand exactly where the man was coming from, whether he was by his son's hospital bed, as he wrote this song, or by his father's death bed. And so it pulls the emotion, as this one does, because we realize what the Lamb of God did for us. And we cannot stop giving thanks when the days of Unleavened Bread are over.

We must realize that he was for us 365, 24-7. That's what he wants from us. He did that, and all he wants from us, what does the Bible say? But a living sacrifice. We don't have to die. He just says, we want you to be a living sacrifice. As Paul left us, that means we get to live as a Lamb of God, representing God, just like he did. Are we willing to do it? See, the Lamb lived three and a half years after that amazing time when John the Baptist baptized him. And did he ever live the next three and a half years?

His teaching, his preaching, his healing, his personifying agape, his revealing the Father, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. An incredible teaching. But you see, he moved from the Lamb of God. And the writer of Hebrews tells us that. I believe it was Paul. Most theologians believe it was Paul. Paul wrote something. I'd like to go through some of our last scriptures we'll read here. And I'll be reading from the New Living Translation. Go with me to Hebrews 7, because the Lamb of God made a transition.

He came, he lived, he died, and then he became a priest. A high priest. Our high priest. The world's high priest. An advocate for each and every one of us to go right to the Father. He's at the right hand of God and says, I know what they're going through. What an amazing thing he was willing to do. Hebrews 7. Hebrews 7, verse 11. So if the priesthood of Levi on which the law was based could achieve the perfection God had attended, why did God need to establish a different priesthood with a priest in the order of Melchizedek instead of the order of Levi and Aaron?

Brethren, we are training for the priesthood. Do we realize the Melchizedek priesthood is our priesthood? It's an everlasting priesthood. We follow Christ. We're not following Aaron. And if the priesthood had changed, the law must be changed to permit it. For the priest we are talking about belongs to a different tribe whose members have never served at the altar as a priest. What I mean is our Lord came from the tribe of Judah and Moses never mentioned priests coming from a tribe. This change was made very clear since a different priest who is like Melchizedek appeared.

Jesus became a priest, not by meeting the physical requirements of belonging to the tribe of Levi, but by the power of a life that cannot be destroyed. Eternal, an eternal priest. As the Psalmist pointed this out as he prophesied, you are a priest forever in the order of Melchizedek from Psalm 110. Yes, the old requirement about a priesthood was set aside because it was weak and useless after he came. For the law never made anything perfect, but now we have the confidence and a better hope through which we draw near to God.

This system, this new system, was established with a solemn oath. Aaron's descendants became priests without such an oath, but there was an oath regarding Jesus for God said of him or to him, The Lord has taken an oath and he will not break his vow.

You are a priest forever. Because of the oath, Jesus is the one who guarantees this better covenant with God. There were many priests under the old system for death prevented them from remaining in office. But Jesus lives forever. His priesthood lasts forever. Therefore, he is able once and forever to save those who come to God through him. He lives forever to intercede with God on... Let's get this right...our behalf. He is the kind of priest we need because he is holy, is blameless, unstained by sin.

He has been set apart from sinners and have been given the highest place of honor in heaven. Unlike those other priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices every day. They did this for their own sins first and then for the sins of the people. But Jesus did this once for all when he offered himself as a sacrifice for the people's sins. The law appointed high priests who were limited by human weaknesses. But after the law was given, God appointed his son with an oath, and his son has been made perfect, a high priest forever.

Chapter 9, verse 11. So Christ has now become the high priest over the good things that have come. He has entered that greater, more perfect tabernacle in heaven, which was not made by human hands, and it was not part of the created world. With his own blood, not the blood of goats and calves, he entered the most holy place once for all time and secured our redemption forever.

Under the old system, blood and goats and bulls and ashes of a young cow could cleanse people's bodies from ceremonial impurities. Just think how much more the blood of Christ will purify our conscience from sinful deeds so that we can worship the living God. We shouldn't be bogged down with sins we committed ten years ago, five years ago, yesterday, if we've repented, because he did this for us. No baggage. No baggage allowed.

No need to carry any. He carried it all. For by the power of the eternal spirit, Christ offered himself to God as a perfect sacrifice for our sins. That is why he is the one who mediates a new covenant between God and the people so that all who are called can receive the eternal inheritance God has promised them. For Christ died to set them free from the penalty of sin they had committed under that first covenant.

We are under the new covenant. All those things, all those sacrifices done by priests and and all this stuff, it's done. It's over because the world will have to accept there is a new high priest.

Someday they will. But right now we have that honor and we have that blessing to know that it was him. Christ became a sacrificial lamb before he was a priest. They have a word in theology called substitutionary. A 15-letter word, substitutionary. It just means a replacement. A substitute, a replacement for that Christ for us. We don't have to die for our sins.

No dying. Just being redeemed day after day.

If you want to die for your sins, good, don't repent. Is that crystal clear?

Tell you less story as I finish this now. It's a true story from the Civil War.

And the Civil War, the South, was pretty much beating the North up and down for the first two and a half years of the war. They were better strategists. They didn't stick to the same old way of fighting a war, if you can call it the Civil War, civil. And one of the things that they were, they were, because the South did a lot more hunting, there weren't as many big cities as there was up North. And basically, the boys from the South, they were a very good rifle. They could shoot. They had to shoot well because they didn't have a lot of money when they went out to shoot to live, because they had to hunt. And so they didn't waste weapons. They didn't waste bullets. So when the war came, they were very good marksmen, superior by far. And they were not really as trained as, even though Robert E. Lee was the top of his class at West Point, they were not really trained per se. They did what it took to win the battle. They were outnumbered. The other side had more weapons. So they had to do other tactics. And one of the tactics that they did was, when they came out to fight, so many of the good marksmen in the South would climb up in trees. And they would take the glass and look and see who they were. And so when the shooting started, they would just pick off the officers. Because then the men didn't know what to do. Because next thing you know, an officer was killed here, killed here, killed here. It was happening time and time again. One battle took place in Tennessee. And the officers were going down like left and right. So finally the general from the North came and sent a message by courier to the South and said, if that happens the next day, for every of my men who was a lieutenant or higher was killed, I will take prisoners of war that I have here and I will line 10 of them up and I will shoot them by firing squad until it stops. But you will not take and shoot our officers. Ten to one. What happened next day? They shot the very first officer they saw. And so the general commanded them, bring out 10 men inside of the prisoners of war. Were brought out to a firing squad and they lined them up.

And as they were about to, they knew they were to die. One young man was there and an older man, he was old, 52 years old, old man, it was in war, came and said, you've got a life ahead of you. Let me take your place.

Young man put his head and walked away and the man stood there and he was shot and killed in place of the young man. Amazing part of the story was the young man made it through the war. Went on to have children and children's children. And it is known even to this day, or it was to the 1980s when this was done, that there is a grave site for that 52 year old man. And every year, the one who he took his place, the family comes and decorates that grave. Because none of them would have been there except for that one man willing to die. And for that one boy, and that boy had children and grandchildren, and that was kept up for over a hundred years. What would you think? Someone did that for you. Brethren, someone did. Someone did. Someone did for us. Christ came as the Lamb of God, lived so that we could have the Holy Spirit, could have eternal life. He came because of healing and he came because he could bring peace in our life. And the one thing that I have found this year more than any other time in my life, he lived so we could die in peace. Brethren, Christ lived so that we could die in peace, Dodie Foster. She could die in peace. I was there the last few hours before she finally went to sleep, and I left. A few hours later, she passed in the hospital. But I want to be sure I was there holding her hand while she was still there talking to her, reading her some scripture from the top of my head. Ninety-two years old.

She died in peace. My father-in-law, Dr. McElroy. I was there as he died this year. He would have been 98 years old last Friday. He died in peace. He knew what was going to happen after death. He knew the price that had been paid for him, and he knew what was promised by that same priest that will be in the kingdom of God as his king.

And then, Humberto Mojica, a father-like figure to me in Fort Lauderdale. And he knew him well. He died, and I was there up until the last few hours, the last six hours, with his sons and everybody gathered around the bed. He died.

He died in peace because he understood what was done for him and what was done for everyone. Brethren, let us not take for granted his calling. Be so thankful there was a Lamb of God, and be so thankful now that there is a high priest working for you, working for me.

We have an advocate, a high priest, the highest priest that will ever be, and ever will be, a Savior and a coming King named Jesus the Christ, who did it all for some little lambs that are sitting in this room today. Have a wonderful days of Unleavening, bread. Let's remember why we're here.