Marcus Mecum - Easter 2024
If you got your Bibles, turn with me to John 1. I'm gonna read one verse and then we're going to do our best to walk through the primary plot line in the Bible. If you could find a theme in the Bible, we're gonna do our best to look at that together. Let's look at verse 29, John 1:29. "The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, 'behold'". Everybody say, "Behold". Remember that. We're gonna come back to it. "'the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world".
The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. That's what we're going to do today. We're going to look at that story of the lamb. The plot line or the theme of the Bible really could be boiled down to the lamb. We go back to Genesis, in the very beginning, you have Adam and Eve. They sinned. God had given very clear instructions to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They disobeyed God. They ate of that tree. The consequence was death, spiritual death occurred, which is, they were disconnected from their life source, they were disconnected from God as a result. And when that happened, they immediately knew that there was wrong. They immediately knew there was something that they had to try to do to fix it.
And so, they went and grabbed some fig leaves, they sewed those fig leaves together, they covered themselves, God showed up, and he could not accept their efforts. He couldn't accept them covering themselves. The law says to you and I that the person that sins has to pay. If any man sins, the Bible says they shall surely die. Like a fish that's out of water, like a tree that's out of its soil, like a moon without its sun, you and I are made in the image of God. We reflect him. Jesus said it like this, "I'm the vine, you're the branches". You disconnect the vine from the branch, it's not that it ceases to exist, it ceases to have life. It ceases to know what it's all about, what its reason for existing is. Can't produce fruit. It has no life within it.
Romans 3:23 tells us all that we're all in the same boat, that we've all sinned, we've all fallen short of the glory of God. And that sin has to be paid for. That sin has to have a judgment made on it, that there's a holy demand by God for the payment of all sin. Now, maybe you're here today and you'd say, "Marcus, I'm not really here for that. My wife, you know, drug me here. You know, my husband made me come. Or my kids, you know, got mad at me and they've been begging me to come". Or whatever your reason for being here is, you're here and you would say, "I don't even believe in any of this. I don't believe that there's a transcendent moral authority". And that's okay. That's why we're here. And what I wanna say is at least make an informed decision about that kind of a statement.
And so, let's go not on the God side of things. Let's just go on to the places that we live and how we look at sin when it happens to us. Forget how God sees it, 'cause he's perfect. But let's look at how we see it. Someone sins against you, someone hurts you, someone damages you, someone does something that negatively affects your life. And then you immediately have a distance in your relationship with that person. Immediately, there is a gap with that individual. And that person has to begin to work to make up that gap. They have to, if they want to, they have to rebuild that bridge back to you. They have to make some level of payment, if you will, to have relationship with you. Because you no longer are sure what their reason for being in your life is. You no longer feel that connection, that confidence in the connection. So, that sin has to be paid for.
Now, many people say, "Well, just let it go. It's no big deal. It doesn't matter. Why is it even, just move on". But you just can't do that. Even if someone tells you, "Just do it," it's not the way that it works because there's a debt that's occurred and that debt has to be made up. So, we know this on a psychological level. We also know this on a sociological level. If somebody commits some grave crime of some type, maybe they murder someone or it's just something horrific, and then they go before the judge, they're found guilty, maybe they even confess to their guilt.
And the day of sentencing comes, and the judge just says, "You know what? Let's not worry about it. You're free to go". Well, the victim is undervalued at that moment. The victim's not considered, how the victim feels, what's best for the victim is not considered. What's best for society is also not considered. Society is put at a greater risk. Society is even maybe put at danger because that person did not appropriately pay for their crime. So, what I'm saying is we understand on a psychological level and on a sociological level, that wrong must be paid for.
Now, let's go even to where we're at personally. Not one person in here has ever had anyone completely and perfectly live up to your moral code. If you don't believe that, then you're not married yet. You don't have any kids yet. Because even the people that are closest to us, our own family, the people we love the most, they disappoint us, and they let us down. You could have the most corrupt moral code on the planet and people would still let you down and disappoint you.
So now let's go to God's standard. God's standard is perfection. God requires perfection. And God has the right to expect that of us because he created us, he sustains us, and we should, as a result of that, live completely and fully for him. But we don't. We don't live as we should. And what happens? In the same way it works relationally or in society, there's a debt that occurs between us and God. So, one day you'll stand before God, you'll answer to him for your life, to the life that he gave you, the breath that he gave you, and on that day, you'll acknowledge that you've not lived completely and fully for him, that you're guilty. And the sentencing will be, if you pay for your sin, the payment is this is the payment for your sin. No matter how mild it is, the debt, you can't pay for it.
So, the consequence or the sentencing is that you live in eternal separation from God, eternal damnation. Now you're saying, "That's just overwhelming. That's just crazy". I know that's the point. You cannot afford to pay the debt on your own. You cannot afford to spend the rest of eternity, like making a minimum payment on a credit card with a high interest rate. You cannot afford to go at eternity like that. So, the question becomes, how can God receive the payment for sin for wrong so we can begin to have a relationship with him, how can he be just and also be gracious? How can he do this? How can he accomplish that? So, he creates a solution to the problem. And it's not our solution. This is not man's idea. This is God's solution.
He says, "I'll allow a substitute or a substitutionary atonement," which is just one word, grace. God said, "I have to judge sin because I'm just. I have to receive payment for sin, just like you do, just like society does". He has to receive it. "But I'll accept a substitute. I'll allow something or someone to take your place".
So, Genesis 22, Abraham is gonna go offer up Isaac. This is the very first mention that we have of this idea of a substitute or grace. It's the first time it's primarily mentioned, and in this text, we begin to hear about the idea of a lamb. So, Isaac's going up the mountain with his father Abraham, and he has a question in his heart. He's watching and he sees that there's the wood for the sacrifice that represents or would be a picture of Calvary and the cross. He sees that his father has a knife for the sacrifice, which would represent the nails and the sword that pierced Jesus aside.
So, he says, "Dad, I see the wood, I see the knife, but where is the lamb"? Where is the lamb? That's the question of the Old Testament. You could boil the entire Old Testament down to that one question. They're constantly asking, "Where is the lamb"? Notice not a lamb, because there were a lot of lambs in the Old Testament. He says, "Where is the lamb"? So, we're gonna take Genesis 22 and we're going to walk through this plot line in the scripture about the lamb. Let's check it out.
The waiting room is sometimes the most difficult place to be, where you're just in that time of uncertainty, things aren't making sense. Maybe you're even a person who loves God, but sometimes it just doesn't all come together, and you can't even comprehend maybe what he's up to. John, the beloved, in Revelation 5 is caught up in heaven and he's asked to write about what he sees. And he talks about there's a sealed document that no one was worthy to break the seal. This would be the title deed of the earth and all of its inhabitants. In Bible days, if you were to purchase an important piece of property, the legal document would be written on a piece of lamb's skin rolled up and then sealed with wax. The only person that could ever open or break the seal would be the person that paid the price to purchase the piece of property.
And so now, go to John, he's caught up in heaven, and he's looking. And it says he saw no man that was worthy to break the seal. That was the dilemma was he knew that there was the title deed. He knew that the earth needed to be repossessed, if you will, the inhabitants of the earth. But he's weeping and he's crying because he could find no man worthy. Now, John kNew Heaven had a plan. That's what he's saying. Heaven has a plan to redeem. The problem was they were in the waiting room. Jeremiah 32, the prophet Jeremiah is prophetically hearing from God that the nation of Israel is about to be taken into 70 years of captivity in Babylon.
And so, the scripture says, God tells the prophet, "I want you to go buy a piece of property. I want you to get the legal paperwork done, seal that legal paperwork, put it in a jar and bury it in that piece of real estate". Now, imagine Jeremiah's being asked to do this right before they're taken into Babylon for 70 years. But God says to do it, because after 70 years, God's going to let 'em come back to Jerusalem. God's going to let them come back. And at that point, Jeremiah is supposed to go dig up that jar, pull out those documents for that piece of real estate, break the seal and say, "This is my piece of property. I've owned it for the last 70 years".
And what he's really saying is this, in spite of our current conditions, in spite of 70 years by everything looking the opposite of what maybe we wanted it to, God's will will always prevail. God is faithful to fulfill his promises, not sometimes, all of the times. Sometimes we're just in the waiting room. And so, now you have this type, this picture in Jeremiah of what's happening in heaven. And the dilemma in heaven is earth is under a curse, and heaven is looking for the one to step up, who's worthy to redeem the earth and its inhabitants back. And they're searching all of heaven, they're searching all of earth trying to find a way, trying to find a substitute, trying to find a fix, trying to find a way to pay the debt.
Like Abraham would wait with Isaac wondering how is God gonna pull this off? So, heaven was waiting for the worthy one to step forward. Abraham didn't give up in the waiting. Heaven didn't give up in the waiting. And in our seasons of uncertainty, it's our faith that refuses to give up and keep fighting. No matter what you're up against, it's your faith that says, "Even in the waiting room, God's plans will at some point, in some way, even if I can't see it, prevail". Let's continue to watch Abraham and Isaac as they work through this season of uncertainty together.
The bloody death of a helpless victim. Why? It just doesn't feel right, and it's not supposed to. Exodus 22, numbers 3. It says, "The life of every firstborn, God said is mine". It must be redeemed. So, there's a debt of sin with every family on the earth. Abraham is not struggling with that debt. He knows there's the debt. We talked about it earlier. He understands there is a wrong that must be made right, and the only way it's made right is someone has to pay the price. God's demand for payment had to be met and God wanted the firstborn, and Abraham knew God must be satisfied.
So, Abraham is going up the mountain with Isaac. He's hoping that his son doesn't have to pay the price for his sins. He's hoping that judgment will be temporarily delayed. He's hoping that somehow it can be averted or avoided. And so, he says to his son, "God will provide a lamb. God will provide a substitute".
That's grace. According to the book of Hebrews, it was a short-term fix for a long-term problem with our sin. For 4,000 years. This is how they did it. They would every year bring a lamb. The lamb would be accepted if it was spotless and perfect, and that lamb would be sacrificed, the sin of the person would be placed on the lamb and the innocence of the lamb would be given to the person for one year and their sin would be pushed down the road and then another year it would be pushed down the road. For 4,000 years this happened, Moses, in Exodus 12, he's called by God to deliver the children of Israel.
And so, he's looking at Pharaoh and he's saying, "Let my people go". Plague after plague is hitting the nation. Finally, the firstborn is what God is going to require. This is the final plague. And he says, "What's gonna happen is the destroyer is going to show up, and this is going to have grave effects on your personal life, this is going to have grave effects on the entire home and family. Ultimately, this will have grave effects on the entire nation".
God says, "I'm gonna unleash the most powerful force in all of the universe, and it's going to bring the world's superpower in Egypt to its knees. There's only one way to stop it. And that's a lamb". A lamb. What does that have to do with anything? The weakest, mildest creature possible. God said, "Kill it, eat it, and put the blood on the doorpost". This wasn't just for the Egyptians. As a matter of fact, this was for God's people. God's people had to be under the blood. If they left the home, the destroyer would hit them. It would hit their family as well.
So yes, they're God's people. Yes, God gave them Moses, who would write the first five books of the Old Testament. All of that's clear, but yet their religion was not going to save them. The only thing that could save them was not their works, was not their efforts. The only thing that could save them was a substitute and being under the blood of that substitute. So in every house there was one of two options. You'd either have a dead son or a dead lamb, and the lamb paid the debt. The lamb was the substitute. The lamb made up the deficit.