My message today will be taken
from the book of John. I'm going to be reading a passage
of scripture found in the first chapter. If you'll take your
Bible and follow along with me, I think that you'll appreciate
the message and perhaps benefit more from it. In John, the first
chapter, verse 29, the scripture says, The next day John seeth
Jesus coming unto him, and saith Behold the Lamb of God which
taketh away the sin of the world. And my first thoughts when I
read about the ministry and the message of John the Baptist were
these. What a day of glory and grace
and goodness this would be if every minister of the gospel,
if every preacher, pastor, evangelist, and missionary was a true minister
of Christ in the mold of this man, John. Now, we have many
preachers today. Somebody said the woods are full
of preachers and promoters and religious politicians and what
we call religious cheerleaders. But there aren't many prophets
of God. John was a prophet of God. It
says in John, the first chapter, verse 6, there was a man sent
from God, a man sent from God, whose name was John. Let's look
at two things. There are two things that I think
are especially important when we consider the ministry of John
the Baptist. First of all, the man. The man
whom God sent. And then secondly, the message
that he delivered. Now, these are the two important
things, I think, that we'll see in this first chapter of John's
Gospel. The man whom God sent. There
was a man sent from God whose name was John. And then we want
to look at the message that this man delivered to those who heard
him. First of all, the man whom God
sent. Now, the true messenger of God,
and John was a true messenger of God, the true messenger of
God must first of all see Christ for himself. John said in verse
34, when you look at verse 34, I saw, I saw, and I bear record
that this is the Son of God. I saw him myself, and I bear
record that my heart is fully persuaded that this Jesus of
Nazareth is the Son of God." The Apostle John, three times
in his first epistle, in the first three verses, makes this
statement, "...that which I have seen and heard declare I unto
you." That which we have seen and which we have heard and which
our hands have handled of the Word of God, we declare unto
you. Abraham saw my day. Christ said, Abraham saw my day. And Moses wrote of me. And our
Lord Jesus Christ said, He that seeth the Son and believeth on
him hath everlasting life. Now, there's a sense in which
salvation is by sight. I know we walk not by sight,
but by faith. I know that salvation is by faith.
But I'm not talking about a physical sight. There were many people
who saw Christ physically. who never saw him spiritually. There were many people who looked
upon his flesh and bones, but who never looked upon Christ
as the Son of God, as the Redeemer, as the Consolation of Israel,
as the Messiah who was promised. So John saw, he said, I saw,
I saw, and I bear record, this is the Son of God. So faith really,
he that seeth the Son, it is by sight, it's by a spiritual
sight. We see by faith who Christ is. We see by faith what Christ did. And we see by faith, thirdly,
where Christ is. We know who he is. He said, I
bear record. I saw this. I understood it in
my heart. This is the Son of God. And I
bear record that Jesus Christ is the Redeemer. I saw him. Now,
the true minister of Christ, if he's going to preach the gospel
to you, He's going to have to have the heart experience himself
of the grace of God, see Christ and understand who he is and
what he did and where he is now, the mediator at God's right hand.
Now, secondly, this true messenger of God, he must not only see
Christ for himself, but he must secondly see the glory of Christ
and his own unworthiness. Look at verse 27. John says in
verse 27, I am not worthy to unloose his shoe latchet. They
said, who are you? He said, I am a voice of one
crying in the wilderness. They said, are you the Christ?
He said, I am not the Christ. I am sent to bear witness or
record of the Christ. I am nothing. This true messenger
of God, when he sees the glory, when he beholds the glory of
God in the face of Christ Jesus, his own glory and his own honor,
fades into nothing. He sees his unworthiness. Paul's
an example of this. Paul said, I am the least of
the apostles. I am not meet or fit or worthy
to be called an apostle of Jesus Christ because I persecuted the
church of the Lord Jesus Christ. Isaiah said, when I saw the Lord,
when I saw the Lord, I said, woe is me. I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips and
I dwell in the midst of a people. of unclean lips. But when Isaiah
saw his glory, he spake of him. Isaiah didn't speak of himself.
He didn't speak of his accomplishments. He didn't speak of his own honor
and glory. He spoke of Christ's glory. So that's the second thing,
true of every minister of Christ, it's sent of God. He sees Christ
for himself. He understands in his heart,
by the revelation of God's Spirit, who Christ is. And when it comes
into his heart, the glory of Christ and the beauty of Christ
and the redemptive work of Christ, he fades into nothingness. He
sees his own unworthiness. He sees his own guilt. John said
on the Isle of Patmos, when I saw him, when I saw him in the fullness
of his glory, I fell at his feet as a dead man. So that's the
second thing about a true messenger of God. Now thirdly, The true
messenger of God calls upon men to follow Christ. He does not
call upon men to follow him, but to follow the Lord Jesus
Christ. Look, if you will, down at verse 35 through 37. John
1, 35 through 37. The next day, John stood with
two of his disciples. Now, these were men who had heard
John and who had followed John and listened to John and benefited
by his teaching and his ministry. And they were standing one day
with John. And the Lord Jesus Christ came
by and it says in looking upon Jesus, John said, Behold the
Lamb of God. Behold the Lamb of God. And these
two disciples, followers of John, friends of John, disciples of
John, left him and followed Jesus. The men who heard John did not
become followers of John or followers of a man, but they followed the
Lord Jesus Christ. Listen to Paul over in 1 Corinthians
1, verse 4 through 5. My preaching was not with enticing
words of man's wisdom, but my preaching was in demonstration
of the Spirit and of power, that your faith, that your confidence
should not stand in the wisdom of men, or the logic of men,
or the doctrines of men, or the traditions of men. We don't want
your faith to stand in us, or in our wisdom, or our traditions,
or our systems of theology, but that your faith should stand
in the power of God. My friend, do not follow me,
follow Christ. And this true messenger of Christ,
this is his object and his goal to point men to Christ, that
they should become followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
as John stood and talked with these two men, they'd been with
him a long time, I'm sure. They'd listened to him, they'd
learned from him. And when he saw Christ, he said
to them, Behold the Lamb of God. And they left John and followed
Christ. They left John. You know, I see
mothers sometimes who just resent their sons growing up. They don't
want to have their hair cut. They don't want to see them go
to the barber shop. They kind of, when they put on their first
pair of long pants, mother cries. They just don't want them to
become men. They don't want them to grow up. And I fear that many
preachers They hold on to their followers and to their disciples,
and they hold on to men, and men hold on to them. And when
something happens to the preacher, their faith just falls apart.
When something happens to the minister, their confidence just
falls apart. I've seen people go to church,
and something happened in the church, a split or a division
or a conflict or trouble, and people quit, and they go home,
and they never go back again. They never hear the gospel again.
They just seem to lose their confidence in people. Now, you
can cure that by not putting your confidence in people. The
Scripture says, put no confidence in the flesh. John pointed his
disciples to Christ, and they left John. They still loved John. They still appreciated John.
But they left John. And they followed Christ. We
must not be followers of men. And this is the thing that troubles
me about so much religion today and so many denominations and
churches and organizations in the name of religion. They seem
to be followers of men. They take the names of men. Men
put their pictures in the Bible. They autograph the Bible. They
have their special Bibles that they produce themselves, they
have their special literature, and people become disciples of
these men. Now, there was a problem in the
church at Corinth with this thing. And Paul called them, he says,
you're acting like carnal men, you're acting like natural men.
He rebuked them. He wrote to them and he says,
I'm troubled about you. He said, some of you say, I'm
of Paul, and I'm of Apollos, and I'm of Cephas, and somebody
else says, well, we're not of any of them, we're of Christ.
He said, who is Apollos? Who is Paul? Who is Cephas? Were
we crucified for you? We're nothing but ministers by
whom you heard the Word of God. We're nothing but ministers by
whom you heard the Gospel. Don't follow me. I'm nothing.
Apollos is nothing. Cephas is nothing. Christ is
everything. Be a follower of Christ. So now these three things
are true of every true messenger of God. Now, as I said, the woods
are full of preachers. We don't need any more preachers.
We need some prophets. The woods are full of promoters.
We don't need any more promoters or religious hooksters or men
to make merchandise of the souls of God's people. We need some
prophets, some men who have seen Christ, seen Him in His deity,
seen Him in His glory, seen Him in His beauty, seen Him in His
redemptive work. They've seen Christ themselves.
And they've seen themselves in their sin and their unworthiness.
They're undone, and they dwell among a people of unclean lips.
And they're exhorting people to follow Christ. Look to the
Lamb of God. Trust in the Lamb of God. Walk
with the Lamb of God. Believe in the Lamb of God. Do
not put your confidence in your flesh, my flesh, or anybody else's
flesh. All of us are nothing but sinners
saved by the grace of God. There's no good in our flesh.
There's no good in us. The good's in Christ. The glory's
in Christ. The grace is all in Christ. Now
here's the fourth thing about a true messenger of God. And
you'll recognize a true messenger of God by these characteristics.
The fourth thing is this. He does not seek, nor does he
expect, nor does he demand honor from men or recognition from
men. He actually expects to decrease. To decrease, that's right. He
doesn't expect to climb and be promoted and be honored by men
and recognized by men. He expects to decrease. He expects
to become less. He expects to become nothing,
and Christ to increase, and Christ's glory to increase. Listen to
John in verse 30 of John chapter 3. Turn over in your Bible to
John the third chapter verse 30. And this is what John said. He must increase and I must decrease. They came to him, some of his
disciples, and he said, You know Jesus, to whom you pointed a
few days ago down to the River Jordan and said, Behold the Lamb
of God? Well, they said, He's out there preaching and everybody's
following Him. Everybody's gone to hear Him.
And John said, That's fine. That's the way it's supposed
to be. He said, The friend of the bridegroom rejoices in the
joy of the bridegroom, and that's my joy fulfilled in the glory
of Christ. He must increase. He must increase. and I must decrease." This is
one of the condemnations that our Lord brought against the
Pharisees, the religious people of his day, the leaders. He said
in John 5, 44, you receive honor one of another, and you do not
seek the honor that comes from God only. A true messenger of
Christ is not seeking the honor of men. He's not seeking the
praise of men. Actually, Paul said, If I seek
the praise of men, I'm not the servant of Christ. That's one
way you can recognize that a man's not the servant of Christ. If
he seeks the praise and honor of men. When Paul departed from
the elders, in Acts chapter 20, he was going to Jerusalem, or
rather to Rome, to Jerusalem, and he knew that he would not
see them again. And before he left them, he said
this to them. He said, now remember, I kept
back nothing profitable unto you. But I have not shunned to
declare unto you the whole counsel of God, and I'm leaving you,
and you'll see my face no more." But he said, brethren, I commend
you to God, and I commend you to the word of his grace that
is able to build you up and able to give you an inheritance among
them that are sanctified. I'm not seeking your honor and
your praise and your recognition. I commend you to God. You're
God's children, you're God's servant, and I commend you to
him and to his word. My friend, these are the four
marks of a true messenger of Christ. There are many characteristics
and there are many more marks of a true servant of God, but
these are four. Number one, he's seen the Lord.
He's seen the Lord in his glory and in his beauty and in his
redemptive work. And he's seen himself in his
unworthiness. I'm not worthy to be an apostle.
I'm not fit to be a disciple of Christ. Paul said, I'm less
than the least of all the saints, but I am what I am by the grace
of God. I sat where you sat. I'm dug
out of the same pit, and hewn out of the same rock, redeemed
with the same blood. And another thing, he exhorts
his disciples to follow Christ. Don't follow me, and follow Christ.
And then he knows this, he must decrease, because all the glory
and the honor and praise is to Christ alone. All right, now
let's look at his message. That's the true messenger. But
a messenger has a message to deliver. A messenger is not a
messenger if he doesn't have something to say. There was a
man sent from God, whose name was John, and he was sent to
preach something. He was sent to declare a message.
Well, let's listen to his message. Look at verse 29 of John 1. He
says, this is his message, and he said it twice in that first
chapter. Behold the Lamb of God. Behold the Lamb of God that taketh
away the sin of the world. The first word that arrests my
attention in this message from God's true messenger is the word
lamb. Behold the lamb. He called Christ
a lamb. Now, a lamb in the scripture
always signifies sacrifice. We meet with the lamb, first
of all, in Genesis chapter 4, verse 1. That's when we meet
with the lamb. Now, back in Genesis 3, 21, the Lord slew an animal
and clothed Adam and Eve and covered their nakedness, that
might have been a lamb, probably was a lamb. But I do know that
in Genesis 4, verse 1, that Abel brought a lamb. He brought a
lamb without spot or blemish, and he sacrificed that lamb before
God as a sin offering. That's where the law of first
mention, we meet with the lamb, and the lamb is associated with
the shedding of blood, with a sin offering, with an altar before
the Lord, and with a sacrifice. And then Abraham, when Abraham
was taking his son Isaac to Mount Moriah to offer him, according
to the command of God, as a sin offering. And they started up
the mountain. The boy Isaac turned to his father and he said, My
father, here is the wood, here is the fire. My father, where
is the lamb? This boy knew that a man could
not approach a holy God without a sin offering, without a sacrifice. And that sin offering and sacrifice
was a lamb. And then in Exodus chapter 12,
when God delivered Israel from Egypt, He said to Moses, Have
every house, and if the house is not big enough for a lamb,
then put two houses together. But every house is to sacrifice
a lamb, and take the blood of that lamb and put it on the doorpost
and the lintel. And when I see the blood, I'll
pass over you." So when John the Baptist said, Behold the
Lamb of God, he's talking about the sin offering. He's talking
about the sacrifice. He's talking about the atonement.
There is the atonement. There is the sacrifice. There
is the sin offering. Behold the Lamb. But this says
he's the Lamb of God. Now this is the all-important
point right here in his message. He's telling the people to behold
the Lamb, the sin offering, the sacrifice, the atonement, the
way to God that goes all the way back to the Scriptures, all
the way back to the Garden of Eden, all the way back to the
first death and the first blood of the first innocent victim
that was slain because of man's sin to cover his shame and guilt. He says this is the Lamb of God. All of the lambs that are mentioned
in the Bible, all of the lambs that had been sacrificed and
slain, all of the lambs that had been brought to altars were
but pictures and types, because we know, according to Hebrews
10, 4, that the blood of lambs and bulls and goats and bullocks
cannot take away sin. The blood of an animal cannot
atone for the sin of a man. But these lambs of the Old Testament
were pictures. They were types of the Lord Jesus
Christ. He says, this is the Lamb of
God. This is the Lamb of God. He's
the Lamb of God slain before the foundation of the world in
God's purpose. Back before the world began,
God in His purpose and in His sovereign plan designated and
ordained and appointed the Lord Jesus Christ to be His Lamb.
His one sacrifice for sin, His one sin offering, His one atonement,
the Lamb slain in the purpose of God before the world began.
And then our Lord Jesus Christ was a lamb slain not only in
the purpose of God before the world began, but he was the lamb
slain in the Old Testament in type and picture. Every time a lamb was brought
to an altar in the Old Testament, it was saying, Christ will come,
Christ will suffer, Christ will shed his blood, Christ will die,
he is coming. God's promised him, God's prophesied,
here's a picture of what he'll do. And when Jesus Christ came,
the Lamb slain in person on the cross, he was fulfilling all
of that Scripture. He was fulfilling every picture
and every promise. He said, this is done that the
Scripture might be fulfilled. He said, I thirst that the Scripture
might be fulfilled. His hands were pierced because
that the Scripture might be fulfilled. He died for our sins, was buried
and rose again according to the Scripture. Now, where is he now?
He's on the throne. He's on the right hand of the
Father. But he's the lamb slain. Now, listen to this scripture
in Revelations, if you will. Revelation, I believe it's chapter
5, I'm not certain. But it says, Worthy is the lamb
that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength
and honor and glory and blessing. I saw, as it were, a lamb in
the midst of the throne, a lamb that was slain. So my friend,
in this thing of redemption, this is the message of a true
messenger of God. The true message is not God wants
you to be healthy, and God wants you to be wealthy, and God wants
you to be prosperous, and God wants this, that, and the other.
The true message is behold the Lamb of God that taketh away
the sin of the world. Not the Old Testament lamb, the
four-legged lamb, the animal lamb, but God's Lamb of which
all of these were types. God's Lamb from before the foundation
of the world that was slain in the purpose of God. And God's
Lamb that was pictured in every sacrifice and sin offering in
the Old Testament. And God's Lamb that came in person,
born of a woman and died upon that cross. And God's Lamb that
right now is on the throne, in the midst of the throne. I saw,
as it were, a Lamb that was slain. And all about Him, the thousands
upon thousands upon thousands cried, worthy is the Lamb that
was slain. For he hath redeemed us to God
by his blood, out of every kindred, and nation, and tribe, and tongue
unto him." We have a Lamb. We do have a Lamb. And we don't
come before God without a Lamb. We dare not. It's God's Lamb
that we have. Our sacrifice, our sin offering,
our atonement is God's Lamb. And God says to us, just like
he said to Israel in Type, when I see the blood, I'll pass over
you. Now, what's the second part of
his message? That's the key to his message. That's the significant
part. Behold the Lamb of God. The Lamb of God. The Lamb of
God. We point men to Christ. And we
point men not to the Christ of Bethlehem's manger. The babe
can't save. It's the Christ of the cross
that saved. We point men to the Christ of the cross. The Lamb
that was slain. Alright, now watch this. He said, the Lamb
of God that taketh away the sin of the world. We preach an effectual
sacrifice. A sufficient sacrifice. He takes
away sin. You know what the word there
is? He beareth away our sins. He beareth away our sins. He
taketh them away. In Hebrews 9, there's a threefold
picture of Christ in three appearances. It says, Christ hath appeared
to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And then it says,
Christ hath appeared in heaven to intercede for us, to make
intercession for us. And then it says, unto them that
look for him, will he appear, will he appear the second time
without sin. He took it away. Just like the
scapegoat of old, he bore our sins away. And in Christ there
is no sin. In Christ there is no condemnation. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them who are in Christ Jesus. Though your sins be as scarlet,
he said, I'll make them white as snow. Though they be red like
crimson, they shall be as wool. With his spotless garments on,
I am as holy as God's Son, bearing away the sin of the world. Not
the Jews only, but believers of every tribe, kindred, nation,
and tongue unto heaven. He's a sufficient Savior for
any sinner. He beareth away the sin of the
world. Now, here's the third part of that true messenger's
message. He tells us to behold him, to behold him. Behold the
Lamb of God. look to the Lamb of God. Men
are not just saved by reading about the Lamb. They're not saved
by just hearing about the Lamb. Faith cometh by hearing and hearing
by the Word of God. But a man's not saved just by
reading or hearing or considering. He's saved by actually looking
to Christ. Romans 10 says this, If thou
shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus to be Lord, and believe
in thine heart God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt
be saved. For with the heart man believeth
unto righteousness, with the mouth confession is made unto
salvation." Paul talks in 2 Timothy 1 about knowing who he is, being
persuaded he's able to do what he says, and committing himself
to Christ. Behold the Lamb of God. Would
you be free from your burden of sin? Behold the Lamb of God. Would you be sanctified? Would
you receive a perfect righteousness imputed unto you, charged to
your account? Look to the Lamb of God. Would
you learn the grace of God to walk before Him in holiness and
beauty and truth? Learn to love by looking to Christ.
Learn to forgive by looking to Christ. Learn humility by looking
to Christ. Learn to give by looking to Christ.
Would you have assurance, confidence of your interest in Christ? Behold
the Lamb of God. Don't look within, look to Him.
Would you be raised in His likeness? One day we shall see Him and
we shall be just like Him. When we behold Him in His glory,
We're going to be changed into His image. Behold the Lamb of
God that taketh away the sin of the world.