Jentezen Franklin - The Lamb Is More Than Enough
I'd like for you to open your Bibles with me to the Book of Exodus 12, and I want you to read with me beginning with verse 3, "Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: 'On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small," notice this, this is what I wanna preach on. "If the household is too small for the lamb, let him share with his neighbor next to his house taking it according to the number of the persons; according to each man's need you shall make your count for the lamb".
I love that phrase, "And if the household, or your home, or your family is too small for the lamb". We never find Him saying, "If your house is too big for the lamb". Because the lamb, which is a type of Jesus, there's nothing in your home and in your family too big for the lamb to take care of. And He said, "As a matter of fact you're going to find out", and this is what I'm preaching on, "That the lamb is so powerful that He is more than enough". And what he gives in this chapter is instructions for the Passover meal. The plagues had ended. It was over, and Pharaoh had agreed to let God's people go. And He says, "Now, I want you for the first time", God Himself instituted the Passover meal, what we call and under the New Covenant, Communion or Holy Communion.
And He said, "What I want you to do is, I want you to prepare this meal". And He gave such specific instructions all the way through that chapter. He says, "Now I'mma tell you how to cook it. I don't want you to salt it. I don't want you to water down the lamb". That's literally what He said. "Don't water down the lamb". Don't start talking this universal stuff of all roads lead to heaven, and whatever religion you pick, eeny, meeny, miney, moe, they'll all get you there. No, they will not. There's only one lamb. There's only one lamb and His name is Jesus. He is the way, the truth, and the life. And we're not gon' water down the lamb. And He said, "As a matter of fact, you roast it on the fire".
When you serve the lamb, serve it hot. Praise God. Preach the word with fire and let the chips fall where they may. And then He even told 'em what to do with the bones. But what caught my attention is if...He said, "If your house is too little, and after you've eaten", and He actually tells them in the chapter, "You take the blood of the Lamb," listen carefully, "And you put it on the doorposts of your home, so that when the destroyer passes through, he'll have to pass over your home because you have applied the blood of the lamb over your house". And then He said, "You are to take the lamb, and you are to eat all of it, none of it is to be wasted".
And that's where the verse comes in. "And if you can't eat it all, if your family is not big enough that you can consume," and He said, "Make sure that you eat the lamb, and when your belly is full of the meat of the lamb, don't you dare waste it". They didn't have refrigeration back then. They didn't have, you know, I don't know about you, but we should, we all know what leftovers are. And He said, "When you eat all that you can eat of the lamb. When you get the blood on your house, and don't you dare think that the lamb is not big enough for your family. I don't care what kind of situation you face. I don't care how bad your marriage is, I don't care what challenges you face with a child, or situation". He said, "The lamb is enough, and more than enough. And I want you, once you get full of the lamb, and the blood on the doorpost, it is the way out of Egypt".
You gotta understand, they had been in Egyptian bondage for 470 years, and God said, "This night, when you eat this meal," listen to the words. He said, "You keep your shoes on your feet because what I'm about to do is going to astound you, and shock you, and it's going happen so quick that when I say, 'We're moving out of Egypt.' I know you've been in this situation, this bondage, this addiction, this slavery to something. They enslaved you, it bound your grandparents, your parents, for generations it might have been going on, it was going on. But what I'm about to do, through the lamb, is so powerful that it'll happen suddenly".
And the Bible said that, "They came out through and by the blood of the lamb, full of the lamb. Full of the lamb". And then He said, "But before you leave, I want you to get some of that lamb, if you can't consume it all, it's too good to keep to yourself, and go and share the lamb with your neighbor. Go and share the goodness and what the blood did for you and what the meat in your belly did for you. And the power of this meal to bring you out of the bondage of slavery and sin in Egypt. A type of sin in the world". He said, "I want you to not keep it to yourself, and not waste it. But I promise you that same lamb that got you out and blessed you, it'll get your friends out, it'll get your neighbors out, but you've got to share it with them. You've got to take it to 'em and make sure that they have lamb in their house because the same thing that brought you out, and your family out, will bring them out".
I'm old fashioned, I still believe that God can set people free from vaping, from drunkenness, from alcohol, from drugs, from immorality, from sexual immorality. God can do it. The way out, the only way out of a messed up life is by the lamb. I'mma preach it until I die. I still believe there's power, power, wonder working power in the blood of the Lamb. The blood of the Lamb can get your marriage out of defeat. The blood of the Lamb can set your family free. The blood of the Lamb can bring you out of shame, and condemnation, and failure, and a wasted life. Hallelujah.
It's an interesting verse, in the Book of Genesis when Joseph was meeting with his brothers, who had tried to kill him, and he forgave 'em. And he said, "Now, you're about to come to Egypt and live because the famine is going on. And God's gonna to really bless you, but when you go before Pharaoh for your interview, I want you to tell him, when he asks you, 'What is your occupation?'" He said, "You tell them that you are herdsmen, don't you dare tell them you're shepherds".
Even though they were shepherds. He told 'em to tell a story. He shouldn't have done that, but that's what he told 'em. And he said, "You tell 'em". Because to the Egyptians, every shepherd is an abomination. Egypt, a type of the world hates shepherds. And He said, "I want you to understand that you need to kind of conceal. We're gonna be shepherds. There'll always be some lambs, because one day the only way out of Egypt will be through the blood of the lamb. And so, I gotta keep some shepherds, but don't think that Egypt, the world, is gonna appreciate shepherds. They hate shepherds, it's an abomination for anybody to be a shepherd, they only want herdsmen".
And you know, I'mma preach just a minute, because we're living in an environment that hates preachers. The Egyptians, the world, hates shepherds. Now I'm gonna tell you why. Because when it says, they're only after this, or they're a bunch of charlatans, or they're this, or they're that, you have to make up your mind whether or not you think a shepherd is important to you and your family. And when you understand that the only way, the reason that the Egyptians hate the shepherd is because the shepherds are the ones who connect the people to the lamb. You can look at me, and you can live in your defeat, and in your bondage, or you can let me connect you to the answer that can get you out of there. You can break the curse off your family that has been for generations, you can see God do what you thought was not possible to do, even in your children, and grandchildren.
I believe this book above what I see, or what I feel. And I'm gonna preach it into your family and connect you to the lamb. The answer is still the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ that takes away the sins of the world. Clap your hands and praise the Lord. The voice of the Egyptians says, "Don't go to church". The voice of the Egyptians says, "Oh, you don't need that". But when you understand the power of the Lamb, that's why we do outreach, that's why this church is full of the lamb. And so, we don't keep it to ourselves. We take the lamb to rest homes, 30 services a month. We take the lamb to prisons. And it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy the equipment, and we make donations to the prison system, and bless them, and bless those people that work in there, and do what we can do.
But you know why? 'Cause the Lamb's too good, we got to share the Lamb with our brothers, and our neighbors, and our sisters. Turn to somebody and say, "You're my neighbor... and if you're in Egypt, I know the way out. Let me offer you some lamb". Praise God. He's the leftover lamb, and He's always enough, and more than enough. There's enough lamb in Free Chapel this morning, in this service to bring you out. Hallelujah, you don't have to do it anymore, you don't have to live it anymore, you don't have to be defeated anymore. You can come out of that, in Jesus' name. When Adam and Eve messed up in the garden, the Bible said, "God slew an animal, and He took the covering, and He covered their nakedness".
And that lamb that covered them, I want you to understand, it didn't just cover Adam and Eve. But that lamb was more than enough because the next generation in their family, Cain and Abel, they had a fight, and Cain slew his brother. And the Bible said that, "God was in a society and in a time under the Old Covenant, that it was an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth". In other words, if you murdered someone, you were to die and you were to be slaughtered right there. But God, because the lamb wasn't just enough for Adam and Eve, Mom and Dad, it was enough for the sons that had messed up. And Abel was slain, and God should have killed Cain, but He didn't do it, because the blood of the Lamb was more than enough. And God said, "I'll mark him, but I won't kill him. I'll give him mercy. He deserves judgment because there's a lamb in that house".
Abraham's taking little Isaac up the mountain called Moriah, and they get to the top and the little boy says, "Dad, I see the wood and I see the fire, but where is the lamb"? And Abraham said, "God, Himself will provide the lamb". And I want you to know that God provided what they needed. And the scripture said that that wasn't just enough lamb for Abraham and Isaac, his son, and Jacob, his son. But there came a moment when one of the nephews, named Lot, got in a terrible mess and shouldn't have been in Sodom and Gomorrah. Had no business being there and couldn't get out, and was doomed, and was headed for judgment. Fire was about to consume him and his family because of the stench of sin in that community. And God, because the lamb isn't just enough for Uncle Abraham, and Isaac, my nephews, but it's enough for the for the nephew, Lot, and his family. And God sent an angel and led them out of that place.
Don't tell me your family is too far gone. The lamb is more than enough. There's more than enough to save. I don't care if they're in Sodom and Gomorrah this morning. I don't care how bad they're out of their mind on drugs or whatever, I'm telling you our lamb is mightier, our lamb is stronger, our lamb and His blood cannot be conquered. We are overcomers by the blood of the lamb, and the word of our testimony. Give Him a praise right now, if you believe it. Don't you give up on your home. Don't you give up on your marriage. Don't you give up on what God's told you He would do with that child, or that grandson, or that granddaughter. You need to say, "In the name of Jesus, the lamb is more than enough". Hallelujah.
I wanna conclude by telling you, that when you read the New Testament, you find this leftover lamb. Jesus is walking and He preaches and performs a miracle on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees grabbed stones and the people were so angry that they were trying to stone Jesus to death. And the Bible said, "He supernaturally passed through the crowd, and they couldn't kill Him and stone Him to death". And He goes to the next city, and they bring to Him a woman caught in the very act of adultery, right out of the bed. Scantily clad, barely clothed, thrown down at the feet of Jesus. She's ashamed, she's embarrassed, she's humiliated. And the Pharisees pick up the rocks and said, "Moses, and the law said stone him".
But watch the lamb. He said, "They tried to do that in the last city I was in. They couldn't stone me, and because the lamb is standing here, you're not gon' stone her either". And He says, "Let him that is without sin cast the first stone". And every one of them dropped the rock. And He said, "Neither do I condemn you". Neither do I condemn you. You better not condemn people. We need to drop our rocks and get off our little holy high horses, and we need to understand without the lamb you're nothing, without the lamb all your righteousness is filthy rags. Without the lamb you can't give your way into heaven. You can't buy your way into heaven, it's only one way, and one lamb and His name is Jesus. And John ends up on the island of Patmos all by himself, and He said, "I was in the Spirit and all of a sudden, I was caught up into heaven. I heard a voice say, 'Come up here.'"
In Revelation 5, he said, "They were searching frantically in heaven, saying, 'There's no one, no man worthy to break the seals and open the book.' 'What about David?' 'No, he's not worthy. He messed up.' 'What about Abraham?' 'No, he lied. He messed up.' 'What about Samson?' 'No, He messed up.' 'No man worthy.'" And then, he said, "And I saw a Lamb," in the midst of the elders. And there stood a Lamb, as though it had been slain. A lamb that was slain, and He was standing. So much of the Lamb that He's watching the end times. He's writing the Book of Revelation. He's seeing it all. He's seeing the plagues. He's seeing the great tribulation. He's seeing the rapture. He's seeing the lukewarmness. He's seeing evil. He's seeing the Antichrist. He's the one that gives us all those insights, He's seeing everything. But the one central message that He says is the most powerful is, "I see the lamb still standing".
There's still enough lamb. Legalizing everything that's sinful, but there's still enough lamb. I know you're beat up, I know somebody's listening to me, who's forsaken. I know somebody's listening to me, who you've been through it, and you just feel like giving up. But He said, "Do three things", and they can come. Oh, they're already here. "They can put the blood of the lamb on the doorpost, and then get the meat of the lamb in your belly". Folks, you better listen to this preacher. We're living in times now. What you thought you could get by doing, or not doing, a year ago, five years ago, pretty much all your life. If that's how you've done, neglecting this book, if you don't get full of the Lamb.
"In the beginning was the word, and the word became flesh". When you don't read this, you don't fellowship with the Lamb. You're not full of the Lamb. You know when they ate the lamb, the Bible said, "There was not a weak or feeble one among them"? They got healed. And there shouldn't be a weak or feeble marriage among us, if we'll get our belly full of the Lamb. Because what happens is He starts living through you, and you start forgiving, and you start having not just the gifts of the Spirit, but the fruit of the spirit love, kindness, gentleness, longsuffering, patience. The Lamb is enough.
I close with this. For every marriage, the lamb is enough. Your problem's not too big for the Lamb. Don't you worry about the Lamb being too small to handle your situation. He said, "The problem is, if your house is too little to handle all the lamb can do, you gon' to have to share it with somebody else and help them, when I get through with you". The lamb is enough for every family. The lamb is enough for every sinner. The lamb is enough for every backslider. He's enough to restore you, to change you, to transform you. Get full of the lamb, and then start giving it to your neighbor. There is enough lamb for you. The same lamb that brought us out can bring you out and your family out. Do you believe that this morning? Do you believe that this morning? There doesn't have to be one person under the sound of my voice that leaves, or that's listening that has to sit in the darkness anymore. The lamb is more than enough.