Glad to have all of our sights and services present as we
worship this morning. Worship our King.
May I have you turn in your Bibles to John chapter 1.
Some of you are thinking right now, Derek, did you forget what
holiday we're actually celebrating today?
Because often times we turn to John chapter one at Christmas,
right? It's where we go to think about
and marvel AT and wonder at the incarnation where we hear the
words of John 114 that the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
And we, we just stop and we saturate ourselves that we sit
in that. But today we're going to move
another 15 verses ahead of verse 14.
We're going to go to verse 29 because John one, I would argue,
doesn't just point us to Christmas, it points us to the
cross. It points us to Good Friday.
In verse 29, John the Baptist sees Jesus.
This is really the first interaction that we have
recorded of Jesus and John the Baptist in John's Gospel.
And he says, look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of
the world. And if you just not been
thinking about it, that is a very weird way to introduce
somebody. Look, there's a sheep.
Not just any sheep, a baby sheep.
It's a strange declaration if you don't understand the context
that the audience at the time would have understood, because
this is a declaration that is deeply about who Jesus is and
what he came to do it. It looks back to the Exodus and
how God has saved his people in the past, but it is looking
forward to Good Friday and how God will save his people, all
people, for all times on the cross.
So if you want to understand who Jesus is, you've got to go back
to that Exodus 12 story. You've got to go back and see
what he's talking about when he talks about the Passover lamb.
And so invite you to flip over to Exodus chapter 12 with me
now. And let's look at that in the
context here as you flip is that God's people in Exodus chapter
12 are in slavery. They've been in Egypt now for
400 years and things have gone from bad to worse.
And it is a time of oppression. It's a time of bondage.
It's a time of waiting, but the waiting is almost over.
God has heard the cries of his people and He is responding and
He is about to deliver them. But before He delivers them He
gives them some instructions and some things that need to take
place for this deliverance to happen.
In Exodus chapter 12, it says starting at verse one, the Lord
said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, this month is to
be the beginning of months for you.
It is the first month of year. This is going to be the starting
point for everything. This is the month of your
salvation. Tell the whole community of
Israel that on the 10th day of this month they must each select
an animal of the flock according to their father's family.
One animal per family. And then if you skip down to
verse 5, we get some realities about this animal.
You must have an unblemished animal, A1 year male.
You must take it from either the sheep or the goats a year to
keep it until the 14th day of the month, and then the whole
assembly of the community of Israel will slaughter the
animals at twilight. They must take some of the blood
and put it on the two doorposts and the lentil of the house
where they eat them. And then in verse 12 we see what
will happen that night. I will pass through the land of
Egypt on that night and strike every first born male in the
land of Egypt, both people and animals.
I am the Lord. I will execute judgments against
all the gods of Egypt. And the blood on the houses
where you are staying will be a distinguishing mark for you.
When I see the blood, I will pass over you.
No plague will be among you to destroy you when I strike the
land of Egypt. That's the context that the
people have as they hear this declaration.
Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, that
there was a time of deliverance, the time of deliverance, the
time of salvation in Israel's history.
And at that time, each household had to take a lamb, not just any
lamb, spotless, unblemished, perfect, they have to take it
and they have to kill it and slaughter it.
And then they take its blood and they place it on the doorpost
and they place it on the lentil. It's all around the door.
And if they do that, if they take that spotless, perfect,
unblemished Lamb of God, they slaughter it, kill it, put the
blood on the door frame. Then, on the night when God
comes to execute His judgment, that judgement would pass over
those homes. The first born sons in those
houses would live wherever the blood is present, not because
the people in those homes are morally superior or better, not
because those first borns are more deserving of life, but
because a lamb has died in their place.
And John the Baptist sees Jesus and he says that's him.
Behold the Lamb of God, the one who's come for your salvation to
be a sacrifice for you. He's saying this is the one, all
of that that took place. It's actually pointing to him to
a greater salvation that is coming.
And so today, in the rest of our time together, I want us to see
that Jesus is the true and greater Passover Lamb, the one
who is sacrificed on the cross so that judgment could pass over
us and freedom could be ours. Now, why is Jesus the great over
past our lamb? How?
How does he fulfill that? Well, first of all, he's the
greater Passover lamb because he's the Lamb that was without
blemish, right? The Passover lamb had to be
perfect. No spots, no defects, no flaws.
Peter in first Peter 118 to 19 tells us it's exactly who Jesus
was and he had an up close and personal view of Jesus and his
life. He says this.
You were redeemed. You were, you were set free.
You were purchased. Not with perishable things like
silver or gold. There's no money in the world,
no, no stuff, nothing that could be done to purchase you except
the precious blood of Christ like that of an unblemished and
spotless lamb. Now here's the reality that I
know with 100% certainty there is no one in this room, there is
no one watching online who can make the claim that they are
without blemish and spotless, perfect and without flaws.
God lays out the requirements for moral perfection in
Scripture. We often go and look at the 10
commandments as the encapsulation of of the heart of
God's moral will in reality. And I could do a test today and
show that every single one of us fail at the heart of the 10
Commandments. But even if you don't believe
the Bible, even if you think it's dubious or you question its
moral authority, I've never met a person who, in their most
honest state, wouldn't admit that they've failed to even live
up to their own moral compass and standards.
None of us are perfect. We've all got blemishes.
Sin has marked every single one of us.
It's left spots. It's not just what we've done.
It is ultimately who we are. We sin because we're sinners.
They go hand in hand. And yet Jesus comes and he lives
sinless life. He lives a spotless life, a
blemish free life, the life that you and I, we just can't live.
It's not in US, it's impossible for us.
But he lives in perfect obedience to the Father's will.
He lives in perfect righteousness.
Every action, think about this. Every action Jesus ever took,
every word He ever spoke, every motive of His heart was always
the perfect thing. It was always right, it was
always good. None of us can make that claim.
He's the only one who is qualified to stand in and to be
the perfect spotless lamb. You don't need to clean yourself
up to come to God. In fact, you can't.
It is simply impossible for you. There is no amount of scrubbing
in moral goodness and acts of righteousness that you can do
that will erase the flaws on your resume from the past.
But Jesus came clean, perfect, spotless, flawless for us, for
you and for me. The spotless, unblemished lamb
that was required for God's people to be saved.
Jesus is the greater Passover lamb because he alone is the
lamb who is spotless and unblemished, but also because
he's the Lamb that had to die in order for us to live.
See that? That spotless lamb, that
innocent lamb that was selected by the family and brought into
their home, That lamb didn't just get to live with the family
and hang out. No, ultimately that lamb had to
be killed. It had to be slaughtered.
It had to die. If the people, that first born
son in that house was going to live without the death of the
lamb, there was no deliverance. That's because sin's not minor.
Sin is a big deal. It's not a small issue.
The ultimate reality is that sin leads to death always, every
time. In Romans 623, Paul makes a
statement that we rush past a lot of times.
Some of you will be very familiar with Paul's words when
he says the wages of sin is death.
To not pay the wages to a worker is unjust.
A worker deserves his wages, but the wages of sin, the wages of
our work is death. That's the payment that sins,
demands of us. Your sins, my sins, they deserve
that payment. Those wages, They deserve death.
But instead of us receiving the payment that we're due, Jesus
steps in and takes it for us in first.
John 49 and 10, the same John who wrote the Gospel, writes
these words later in his life. He says God's love was revealed
among us in this way. God sent his one and only Son
into the world so that we might live through him.
Love consists in this not that we loved God, but that he loved
us and he sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
Don't miss this. In John's words, the cross is
not God reacting to your love. The the cross is not something
God went and did because you had earned it or deserved it.
The cross is God initiating his love towards you in spite of the
state that you're in. Love consists in this, John says
not that we loved God, we didn't.
On our own we don't. It's that he loved us, that he
sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice, to be the
replacement, to take the death that we deserve on himself so
that we don't have to be cut off with him forever spiritually
dead. The sinless, the spotless, the
flawless, the blemishless. Lamb of God dies so that all of
our spots and blemishes and flaws and imperfections can be
forgiven and washed clean. The Lamb died on that first
Passover so that the first born son would live on Good Friday.
Jesus goes to the cross and Jesus died so that you and me
and anyone, anyone, anyone who places their faith in his
goodness and his grace and his mercy and His perfection can
live. I got a question for you.
What are you carrying? What did you bring in this
morning to Good Friday? Would you come here with?
Did you come here with guilt? Did you come here with shame?
Maybe regrets? Good Friday says Jesus paid for
it. Jesus has covered it.
It's all covered fully holy, completely.
The the the the Passover lamb. That first Passover covered.
It covered one household for one time.
But Scripture tells us that the death Christ died on that Good
Friday covers all sins for all people for all time.
The spotless Lamb of God came and died once for all so that we
could fully and completely and forever live.
That's why Jesus is the better, the best, the good, the true
Passover lamb. Why so much better than anything
else? The third reason is this.
It's his blood. Just like the blood of the Lamb,
it's his blood that saves and sets free.
See, on the night of the Passover, the people of God
weren't saved by knowing about the Lamb, by just knowing the
instructions of what to do with the lamb.
They had to apply the blood of the lamb to their household.
They had to take it. It had to be personal.
They had to act on it. And if they took what they knew
about the lamb and applied it, then judgment would pass over.
Not only that, by the work of God that night they would be set
free and taken out of bondage. In Galatians 51, Paul tells us
that it was for freedom that Christ went to the cross and set
us free. Jesus as the true, the better
Passover lamb didn't just die so that you and I could be
forgiven. He died so that we could live
free and not free in the shallow, callous ways that we
tend to think about it in western culture.
We have such a limited thought of what freedom truly is when
When Jesus died to set us free, he.
He sets us free from sins, power.
He sets us free from shame's grip on our lives.
He sets us free from the patterns, the habits, the
addictions that have broken our relationships and and diminished
our lives. He sets us free from those
things. Jesus isn't just a lamb who
saves us from judgment. He sets us free from bondage.
Some of you, you know what it is and you have received the
forgiveness of Christ in your life.
You've applied the blood for that, but you haven't stepped
into the fullness of the freedom that He offers.
You're still living like you're in bondage.
You're still living like you're in chains because Jesus is the
true and better Passover lamb. I just want to tell you, you
don't have to stay in those chains.
You know, if you chain down by shame and sin and addiction, if
you've been forgiven, if the blood of Christ has been applied
to your life, then you've also been set free.
And so here's here's the question for us today.
What do we do with this? Again, in Exodus, they didn't
just observe the lamb, they responded, they trusted, they
applied the blood of the lamb. They stepped into what God was
doing by faith this morning. That's what we're invited to do.
It's the invitation that Jesus has made possible for us to
trust and believe that He truly is a true and better Passover
lamb, To really believe that His sacrifice is enough for all of
it, and to receive with fullness all that He has done and
accomplished for us. So.
We're going to have a time of reflection here.
In a moment, I'm going to ask the people who are going to be
distributing the Communion elements, our Communion host, to
come down to the front in a moment.
Zach and Stephanie are going to come out and they're going to
sing a beautiful piece for us. And as those Communion elements
get passed out around this auditorium, I want to just
invite you to invite God to speak to you today.
Invite the Holy Spirit to prompt you today.
You might want to hold out your hands.
Maybe you need to bow your head, but just just invite him to
come. And, and consider this, first of
all, consider, have you ever responded truly to the reality
that Jesus is the Passover lamb? Have you applied his blood to
your life? Is your faith in the fact that
you belong to God, not because of anything you've done, but
because of what Christ accomplished for us on the cross
on Good Friday? If that's where you are, if
that's the the claim that you would make, then you are saved.
You've been set free. So we're then do you need to
apply that forgiveness in your life, maybe in your own life,
maybe in your relationships with others?
Where do you need to be released from guilt?
Where do you need to step into freedom?
Maybe just today, maybe you just need to hear from the Lord
again. He loves you.
You are deeply, deeply loved by God.
And after we have this time of reflection, we're going to take
communion together. None.
The. The.
At the Last Supper day before his crucifixion, he was in the
upper room with his disciples. They took the Passover meal
together, and Jesus redefined that Passover meal around
himself is the ultimate Lamb of God.
That He is the Lamb. The bread represents His body
broken for us. The cup, he said represents his
blood poured out for the forgiveness of our sins.
We take communion together. We are not just remembering, we
are declaring. We're saying his sacrifice.
It was for me. He was the spotless lamb that
was without blemish, and I was the one who deserved death.
But he died for me. He died to save me from the
judgement, from the death, from the destruction that I was due.
He's the one who sets me free. And that means ultimately, that
these elements are only for those who declare that, who
believe that. And so I would just invite you,
if, if this is not where you're at in your spiritual journey,
that's OK. But this is not just something
that we walk through. It is a declaration of a truth
that we believe, and if you do believe, then as we take it
together, let it be that declaration.
I live, I'm forgiven, I'm free because of Christ and Christ
alone. He died in the place for my
sins. He's my Passover lamb.
Let me read from Matthew 2626 to 28.
That moment in the upper room as they were eating, Jesus took the
bread He blessed and broke it. He gave it to the disciples and
said take and eat. This is my body.
So we're going to take the wafer from the top.
We're going to hold on to that. I'm going to pray over it, and
then we're going to eat it together as a declaration.
Father, we thank you. Thank you that you saw us in our
need. You saw us in our desperation.
You saw us in our bondage. You saw us in our slavery, and
you sent Jesus as the perfect, as the true Passover Lamb for
his body to be broken so that we could be set free.
Father, thank you. The spotless, the unblemished
Lamb of God offered himself up out of love for you.
He died so that you could live. If you believe this take and eat
it as a declaration. In verse 27, Matthew says he
took the cup and after giving thanks, he gave it to them and
he said, drink from it all of you.
For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out
for the forgiveness for many, for the forgiveness of sins, the
Lamb of God, whose blood purchased your forgiveness on
the cross through His death as it was smeared on the wood of
that cross, on those two pieces of wood.
That is the only way that we can stand forgiven, set free.
Let me pray over the cup. Father, thank you that Christ
was willing to have His blood spilled on the cross for us,
that he allowed the nails to Pierce his hand, the spear to
Pierce his side, a crown of thorns to be placed and pushed
down on his head. He breathed his last breaths on
those cross so that we could breathe.
Breath with you forever in the new heavens and the new earth.
God, thank you, we love you. If you believe that the Lamb of
God poured out his sins on the cross to purchase your
forgiveness and freedom and salvation, then take and drink
this as a declaration. Behold the Lamb of God, who
takes away my sin and your sin, and the sins of the whole world.