Good Friday: Jesus the Lamb of God

Today is Good Friday—the day we remember Jesus’ death on the cross. Most Christians understand the importance of this day, for clearly, Jesus’ death on the cross is the most significant event that takes place in Scripture. This is why we have crosses in our homes or wear one around our neck. We want to remember what Jesus did for us when He died: His death purchased our salvation. And because of His sacrifice, we are eternally indebted to Him and continually thankful for the forgiveness of sin He offers all who believe in Him. The cross is the foundation of our faith.

Usually, for Good Friday, my sermon texts have focused on one of the crucifixion narratives. This time, though, I want us to look at how Jesus’ death is told about, not just in the Gospel accounts, but all throughout Scripture.

The text I’ve chosen for today is only one verse: John 1:29. This is the moment that John the Baptist sees Jesus walking toward him and he declares, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (CSB)

Did you realize that this moment is the beginning of the culmination of everything the Old Testament was building toward? I think if we can truly understand what was happening in this moment, then we are on our way to having the mystery of the Bible come into focus for us. If we don’t understand this moment, then we will struggle to understand God’s Word.

This is because Jesus, as the sacrificial Lamb, is the lens through which we must read the Word of God. If we miss this, if we get it wrong, then our whole understanding of the Bible risks being out of alignment.

But what does it really mean when we say that Jesus is the sacrificial Lamb? Why is this moment so important to understand? Let me explain.

John saw Jesus and knew Jesus was the promised Messiah. He understood that Jesus was the One whom the prophet Isaiah was describing in Isaiah 53:6-7, which says, “We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and 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 and like a sheep silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth.”

John saw Jesus and said, “There He is! That’s the One! That’s the Lamb who will take away the sin of the world.” The 700-year-old prophecy was finally being fulfilled. Yet, the plan for a Messiah to come and be the Lamb of God goes back even further than Isaiah, and it’s clearly seen- if we have eyes to see it. For God has laid out all the clues and we need only to follow the trail.

Starting from the very beginning of time, God had determined to send His Son Jesus to be the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world. The first clue He gives us, is in the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve sin. Genesis 3:15 records God saying to the serpent who had deceived Eve, “I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.” This offspring who will strike- or crush- the serpent’s head, He is Jesus.

Then the next clue is given in Genesis 3:21, which says, “The LORD God made clothing from skins for the man and his wife, and he clothed them.” Now, Scripture doesn’t tell us that this was the first sacrifice—but it certainly points in that direction. An animal had to die for Adam and Eve to be clothed. It’s a powerful image: their shame was covered by the shedding of blood. This is symbolic of how Jesus’ death covers us. He doesn’t just hide our sin, though; He removes our guilt and clothes us in His righteousness. Romans 13:14 tells us, “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires.” Jesus is our covering and His righteousness becomes ours.

Right after this, another clue of God’s plan to send the Lamb of God is seen in the story of Cain and Abel. Genesis 4:3-7 says, “In the course of time Cain presented some of the land’s produce as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also presented an offering—some of the firstborn of his flock and their fat portions. The Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, but he did not have regard for Cain and his offering. Cain was furious, and he looked despondent. Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you furious? And why do you look despondent? If you do what is right, won’t you be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.’”

Why did God accept Abel’s offering and not Cain’s? In her book, L’Abri, Edith Schaeffer writes about this. She says: “They would clearly have been instructed by their parents as to how to approach God in worship. They were told immediately of One who would be coming, someone who would be born of a woman who would have victory over the ‘serpent’ or Satan. We also know that they knew something of coming to God with a lamb, used as a sacrifice. Abel brought a lamb, Cain brought vegetables and fruit he had raised, and offered these. Why was Abel’s sacrifice acceptable, and Cain’s not? Cain came in defiance…Abel came believing what God had said, that the worship must be with a lamb. It was simply believing God. This is Biblical faith.”

Abel’s offering was accepted because he brought his offering in obedience. Cain tried to bring an offering on his own terms. This early event indicates that blood sacrifice was already seen as more appropriate. So right there, so early in the story of humanity, we see another clue: God has always been pointing us toward a Lamb, a sacrifice.

Again, if we miss these clues, if we miss these examples that point us to the Lamb of God, then it’s difficult to understand why God would ask people to make these sacrifices or bring Him these offerings. But when we see that they are foreshadowing the Cross, then we can understand the purpose they serve.

Following the clues, the next example is Genesis 8:20–21. It says, “Then Noah built an altar to the Lord. He took some of every kind of clean animal and every kind of clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. When the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, he said to himself, ‘I will never again curse the ground because of human beings, even though the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth onward. And I will never again strike down every living thing as I have done.’”

God is clearly pleased by this sacrifice, so much so, that He promises never to flood the world again. It’s yet another example that points us to the future sacrifice of Lamb of God.

Then, in Job 1:5, we see that Job was making animal sacrifices to God. It says, “Whenever a round of banqueting was over, Job would send for his children and purify them, rising early in the morning to offer burnt offerings for all of them. For Job thought, ‘Perhaps my children have sinned, having cursed God in their hearts.’ This was Job’s regular practice.” Job lived long before the Law was officially given, and yet he, too, was making burnt offerings or sacrifices. How would Job have known how to do this except that God had instructed him? Somehow, Job knew that the burnt offerings would bring forgiveness for his children. Job was acting as their priest on their behalf, for he knew the truth of what Hebrews 9:22 tells us, “According to the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”

Moving to the final clues in our overview of Scripture, we get to Moses. In Exodus 5, Moses tells Pharoah that the Israelites must go to the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord. By now, it’s clear that people in the Old Testament were making sacrifices to God long before Moses received the official laws and instructions on Mount Sinai. Yet, it isn’t until the Law is written down that we see the specifics of these sacrifices. Leviticus 4:35 gives the instructions for priests, and Moses records God’s words: “He is to remove all its fat just as the fat of the lamb is removed from the fellowship sacrifice. The priest will burn it on the altar along with the food offerings to the Lord. In this way the priest will make atonement on his behalf for the sin he has committed, and he will be forgiven.”

If we don’t understand what these sacrifices were signifying, though, it probably seems really strange to us that God would want anybody to sacrifice an animal to Him. But as we’ve looked at all these clues, we can see that it has never been about sacrificing animals. God was pointing all these people toward something greater. The sacrifices point to the need for atonement, for these sacrifices represent the sacrifice that Jesus, the Lamb of God, would make on the cross. Every lamb, every burnt offering, was showing us what was to come.

But have you ever wondered why there needs to be the “shedding of blood”? Why is that the way God offers forgiveness? Have you wondered about this?

These are important questions to ask, for we have to understand this in order for the Bible to make sense. As Hebrews said, without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness, but that’s not because God delights in death. Blood is required because sin is serious, and forgiveness is costly. Shed blood means a life has been laid down. That’s why today is called Good Friday: it’s good because we remember with immense thankfulness, that Jesus laid down His own life for us, in our place.

But why does a life need to be laid down? Why couldn’t God forgive our sins some other way? Let’s start again at the foundation:

Blood represents life. As Leviticus 17:11 says, “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have appointed it to you to make atonement on the altar for your lives, since it is the lifeblood that makes atonement.”

Sin brings death. As Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

God uses blood to show us the cost of sin and the depth of His love. As John 15:13 says, “No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends.”

All throughout the Old Testament, God used the shedding of blood to show that sin brings death, but to bring forgiveness for sin, a blood offering could be made. And in Exodus 12, we see perhaps the greatest clue that the Lamb of God was going to be that ultimate blood offering. God instructed the Israelites to place on their doorposts the blood of a lamb. Exodus 12:13 says, “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.” This act wasn’t just a ritual, it was a sign that a life had been given to save their lives.

That lamb’s blood didn’t have power in itself. It was pointing forward to Jesus, the true Lamb of God. For when Jesus’ blood was shed, it wasn’t just symbolic. God sees the blood of Jesus and passes over our sin, because life was given for life. Remember what Hebrews 9:22 says, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”

Does that mean that, before the Lamb of God died on the cross, people only needed to make a blood offering in order to be saved? No. They were saved by faith, the same as we are. It’s the same way as, when Jesus died, His death didn’t give universal salvation to all people. When they offered animal sacrifices, they were proving their faith in God’s promises.

Edith Schaeffer talks about this, too. She says that throughout the Old Testament a lamb was used to point us toward the future moment of the cross, and because of that all these believers had belief that, “someone was coming who would be the Lamb.” Therefore, all who lived before the coming of Christ became children of God through belief in the coming One. She says, “It was the coming death of Christ that cleansed them from sin’s guilt before God, and the lambs were only a picture of that which would one day take place.”

Her logic lines up with Scripture, for we read in Hebrews that it wasn’t the blood itself that cleansed sin, but the faith in who it pointed toward- the coming Messiah- that gave forgiveness. Without faith, it would have been an empty ritual. It was only because of faith, in what those animal sacrifices represented, that the people were forgiven.

Hebrews 10:1-4 explains it further. It says, “Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come, and not the reality itself of those things, it can never perfect the worshipers by the same sacrifices they continually offer year after year. Otherwise, wouldn’t they have stopped being offered, since the worshipers, purified once and for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? But in the sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year after year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.”

These sacrifices were just a shadow of what Jesus would do; a clue to the Lamb of God who would die for us. If we keep reading in Hebrews 10:10-12, we see it’s, “By this will, we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time. Every priest stands day after day ministering and offering the same sacrifices time after time, which can never take away sins. But this man, after offering one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God.”

The animal sacrifices provided covering of peoples’ sin, but it was only temporary, and while they gave forgiveness, they couldn’t take away sin. Jesus’ death would not just bring forgiveness, but take away sin. Remember what John the Baptist said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

So, it wasn’t the animal’s blood that forgave their sin, but the fact that it represented the blood that the promised Lamb of God was going to shed. The sacrifices in the Old Testament were being made in faith. If they didn’t have faith, those sacrifices would have been meaningless.

Continuing on in Hebrews, we read examples of the Old Testament believers’ faith, then Hebrews 11:13 says, “These all died in faith, although they had not received the things that were promised. But they saw them from a distance, greeted them, and confessed that they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth.”

True faith, proven by works, has always been the means by which people are made right with God—even before the cross. As Romans 4:3 says, “For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him for righteousness.”

That means the Old Testament believers saw the promise of the Lamb of God from afar. They didn’t know all the details, but they knew a Redeemer was promised to come. Jesus Himself explains this. In John 8:56, when speaking with the Pharisees, Jesus says, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; he saw it and was glad.” Jesus, talking about the time when God told Abraham to sacrifice his son Issac, is offering us yet another Old Testament clue pointing us to the Lamb of God. Genesis 22:13 says, “Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son.”

When Abraham went to offer his son Issac as an offering, he had faith that the Lord would provide a ram. When he looked and saw the ram stuck in the thicket, he said, “Jehovah Jireh,” which means the Lord provides. Although Abraham didn’t know the name Jesus, he trusted in God’s promises. In the provision God gave him that day, he saw a glimpse of the future when God would provide the true Lamb of God, and he rejoiced.

All of that brings us to that moment when John the Baptist sees Jesus, and he exclaims, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” Now it all makes sense! Now we understand why God had set up that system of priests and sacrifices. It was all in preparation for the day when Jesus, the better high priest -the better lamb- would shed His blood for us.

Theologian Alexander MacLaren writes, “John the Baptist summing up the whole of former revelation which concentrated in Him, pointed a designating finger to Jesus and said, ‘That is He!’ My text is the sum of all Christian teaching ever since. My task, and that of all preachers, if we understand it aright, is but to repeat the same message, and to concentrate attention on the same fact-’The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.’ It is the one thing needful for you, dear friend, to believe. It is the truth that we all need most of all. There is no reason for our being gathered together now, except that I may beseech you to behold for yourselves the Lamb of God which takes away the world’s sin.”

MacLaren is correct. This is why we are gathered together: we have seen for ourselves that Jesus is the Lamb of God and He has taken away, not just the sins of the world, but our own. He shed His perfect, sinless blood, exchanging our life for His own. He did all this for us because of His great love.

What should our response be to such a love like this? Can our response be anything but thanksgiving and joy for all He has done for us? He suffered so much, and gave His life, so we could be, not only forgiven, but set free from sin.

Pray: Lord Jesus, on this Good Friday, we remember the great sacrifice You made for us. We bow our hearts before You and thank You for dying on the cross for us. Thank You for enduring the pain and suffering. Thank You for loving us so much. What can we say but this: we are in awe of Your great love, and we love You. In Your holy name we pray, amen.