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FIX YOUR EYES UPON JESUS: His is Our Passover Lamb….JOHN 1:29
INTRO: Our perspective of Resurrection Sunday, for many is marked by candy, a Santa-Claus imitating bunny, and bright new clothes. Even in our churches, very little of the ancient, Middle Eastern backdrop of the Resurrection surfaces in our churches.
Instead of a candy-carrying bunny, Resurrection Sunday is ore about another animal. Resurrection Sunday was all about a lamb. Brothers and Sisters, when Jesus lived, lambs were a central part of the spiritual life of Israel.
If you were Jewish, there was no need to explain the significance of something so commonplace. WHY - because for centuries, lambs had died for the sins of the nation. Inside the walls of the temple two lambs died every day, one at 9AM and the other at 3 PM.
When the lamb died, a priest would sound a ram’s horn, and even people who didn’t witness the event would realize that a lamb had just died for the sins of the people. It had been a sacrifice marked by blood.
As shocking as a single sacrifice might be from our perspective, could there have been an opposite impact 2000 years ago? Could the death of a lamb become so common that it had lost its punch?
Could so many lambs have become in a sense invisible to the people who were so used to religion? The lambs weren’t invisible on Passover.
1) ENTER THE LAMB: Maybe that is why Passover was such an important holy day for the people. This was the most personal connection between people just like us and the blood sacrifice God required for sin.
Step back in time with me and imagine, if you would, a family preparing for Passover, some 2000 years ago. Most families didn’t have flocks of sheep. Most families would depend on the shepherds to bring the lambs to Jerusalem each spring.
What made the Passover so different? Unlike the daily sacrifices, which most people didn’t see, everyone lived with the Passover lamb for a few days, and everyone realized why this would die when the hour came.
“This lamb” a child could understand would die for their sin. It was quite an object lesson those Hebrews were taking home with them.
2) EXIT THE LAMB: Jesus Christ died while the entire nation of Israel was celebrating Passover. That’s not a mistake or a coincidence. It was the most remarkable object lesson in all history, and it shouldn’t have surprised those who witnessed the crucifixion of Jesus.
Isaiah the prophet had written about the Messiah. The Christ, he said would be like a lamb led to the slaughter. John the Baptist had proclaimed it down at the river: “Behold the lamb of God, who comes to take away the sins of the world.”
After the resurrection, as the early Christians changed their perspective. Peter called Jesus “the Lamb” in his first letter. And the apostle Paul called Jesus the ultimate Passover lamb. In Revelation, John refers to Jesus as the lamb an astonishing 28 times.
The apostle Paul says in First Corinthians 5:7b “For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.”
Now, the Lamb of God sits at the triumphant right hand of God the Father. Jesus is powerful, He is majestic, and He is completely worthy of worship. The some of heaven in Revelation 5:13 proclaims: “To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!
SO! I ASKYOU! What made the difference?
What transformed this image of a lamb from a silent, defenseless, small lamb dying for the sins of the world…to a suddenly powerful, unstoppable, worth-of-worship Lamb of God in heaven?
The resurrection made the difference. It’s resurrection Sunday that made the difference! Consider the truths that Bible tells us about the Lamb of God.
1. Through the death of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, God communicated His love for us. In God us so much, God actually gave His only Son to die, and whoever believes that message shall have eternal life.
2. Through the death of Jesus, the Lamb of God we understand the high cost of our sin. You see. Jest at the right time, when were still powerless. Christ died for the ungodly.
That’s you and me. Jesus was convicted by a Roman ruler, and carried away by a mob intent on blood shed. But the reason Jesus died, exactly when He died and exactly when He died was to pay for our sin.
3. The resurrection of Jesus, the Lamb of God, can make the ultimate difference in life. Brothers and sisters, there’s a sense that the rules all changed with the resurrection. Never again would a Lamb die for the sins of people. The Lamb of God died, and it was truly, forever finished.
INCLOSING: The tomb was empty on resurrection Sunday morning. God the Father loved the Son so much, that not one second of morning sunlight would be wasted.
When daylight came, the earth shook, the stone moved away from the entrance. Sleepy soldiers fell down as if they were dead, and angels waited for the first of the believers to come and see the difference a resurrection would make.
It would make a difference of joy. Mary’s tears of heartbreak turned to speechless celebration because of the resurrection. Each one of the disciples was transformed, because of the resurrection. Jesus Christ Has Risen! He’s Alive! | 