5.17.26 – Behold the Lamb of God, Part 1

We have spent six weeks chasing greater depths to the cross. Thanks for staying with me. We still have more to uncover. 

Tradition teaches about the death penalty—that death absorbs God's wrath, that death satisfies punishment, and that the resurrection is like a stamped receipt that says, "OK, the transaction worked." That is what I am challenging. Oh no, I am not in any way minimizing the resurrection or the cross. I am not saying that Christianity ignores the resurrection. It does not. Easter is the highest day on the Christian calendar. The resurrection is central to the Christian faith: worship, faith, hope, and proclamation. But consider how much Christian devotion has been shaped by the suffering itself—the hymns, the altar, the passion plays, God forbid, The Passion of the Christ. I understand that the suffering is very real, the brutality is real, and the love is out of this world. But when death and suffering occupy the largest part of our devotion, we may miss what the Gospels are actually showing us. The Gospels are giving us something bigger. They are showing us that the resurrection is not just a "paid in full" receipt. His holy life proved stronger than death itself.

Here is the stage. Here is the agent in John 1. He dances in the wilderness and says, "I immerse in water, and there is One among you that we do not know. Coming after me, whose sandals I am not worthy to loosen. These events occurred in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where John was baptizing... The next day, John saw Yeshua coming to him and said, 'Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world'" (John 1:29).

Picture that moment in your mind for just a second. John is doing all this work and speaking of repentance. You can just picture it. It is like out of nowhere, the next day, John stopped, made eye contact, and said, "Here He is." Here He is. "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (kosmos). This is the one I told you about." As he speaks, I can imagine the excitement and even some nervousness and maybe some tears. "This is why I told you about Him: He comes after me, but He is above me because He was before me. I don't know His ministry yet, but... I came immersing with water so that He might be revealed to Israel."

That is the moment we ended last week at the threshold, where we learned that the prophets did not place Israel's ultimate hope in the ordinary sacrificial system, although they knew that system was holy. They knew how much it mattered. They knew that when the deepest corruption was in view, that kind of sin (pesha) polluted the land and brought exile. They looked beyond the system to God forgiving, God washing, and God placing His Spirit within His people. And then he sees Him and says the line that has become famous: "The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." For most people, it is almost impossible to hear that line or think of that story without importing an entire finished theory into it.

Actually, most people have been taught to hear this thought as a death announcement: "Here is the final sacrifice, the atoning victim, the One, the Lamb who will absorb all punishment so God can finally forgive." When John announces that Yeshua will baptize with the Spirit and fire, he uses Ezekiel's language. That is cleansing language. That is water washing: "I sprinkle clean water on you."

"Then I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean: from all your filthiness, and from all your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them."
(Ezek. 36:25–27)

God says through Ezekiel, "I will cleanse you from all your filth. I will put my Spirit within you..." And what is about to happen is that Yeshua is going to show in the land that He is the answer—that He can and will do what the prophets promised God would do. So when John points, stops, and stares, "Behold the Messiah"—this is not one who talks about purification; it is the One who brings it.

We have explored this principle of ritual impurity and contamination, asking ourselves: what happens when contamination moves from the unclean to the clean, or from the impure to the pure? Death contaminates the living; sickness contaminates the healthy. A corpse contaminates an entire room or house. A person with tzara'at cannot enter the camp because of their contamination. Their impurity would spread to everyone that they touched. This is how the system works.

Impurity flows outward, and holiness within sacred spaces must be guarded. But what happens in the Gospel reverses this. When Yeshua walked through the land, at every encounter with a major form of ritual impurity, the direction flips. Impurity does not stick to Him; holiness spreads out to them. Life moves outward from Him, and the current runs backwards.

Let me show you what this looks like in three escalating, related cases. The first one, which we discussed last week, I will touch on briefly: the metzora—the one afflicted with tzara'at, the man with the scaly disease in Mark 1. Remember, he comes to Yeshua desperate. He is socially isolated. He is a picture—literally a picture—of disintegration. When He touches the man, instead of the impurity spreading, cleansing goes out to the man. Something was being revealed. We have seen it before when tzara'at is healed.

The prophet Elijah instructed Naaman to wash in the Jordan. Moses interceded for Miriam when she contracted a disease. But Yeshua does not stand back and pray. He does not. You see, the priest could diagnose. The prophet could intercede. But Yeshua purifies at the very source of the issue. He sends the healed man to the priest and offers what Moses commanded because He honors the established order. He is not bypassing the priesthood. He is doing something the priesthood was never able to do.

More to come tomorrow!

Our Messiah, Yeshua, reverses the flow!

Shalom,
Alan