The Lamb of God in Scripture

“Again the next day John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked upon Jesus as He walked, and said, ‘Behold the Lamb of God!’” (John 1:35-36).

You all know the old, old story. The world was lost; God must punish sin; He sent His Son to take our sin upon Him that He might honor the law of God and establish God’s government by being obedient to the law and yielding Himself up to the death-penalty. He whom Jehovah loves beyond all else came to earth, became a man, and, as a man, was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. It is He who is called in our text “the Lamb of God,” the one sacrifice for man’s sin.

There is no putting away of sin without sacrifice; there is only one sacrifice that can put away sin, and that is Jesus Christ the righteous. He is divine, yet human; Son of God, yet son of Mary. He yielded up His life, “the just for the unjust,” the sinless for the sinful, “that He might bring us to God,” and reconcile us to the great Father. That is the story, and whosoever believeth in Him shall live. Any man, the world over, who will trust himself to Christ, God’s great sacrifice, shall be saved, for this is our continual witness, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

When John saw Jesus Christ on that memorable day, he, first of all, beheld Him himself, and then said to others, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Brethren, we cannot preach what we have not practiced. If these eyes have never looked to Jesus, how can I bid your eyes look at Him? Beholding Him, I found peace to my soul; I, who was disposed even to despair, rose from the depths of anguish to the heights of joy by looking unto Him; and I therefore dare to say to you, “Behold the Lamb of God!” Oh, that each one of you might believe our testimony concerning Jesus and look on Him and live!

What did John mean by saying, “Behold the Lamb of God?” Behold, in the Latin, ecce, is a note of admiration, of wonderment, of exclamation. There was nothing of greater wonder ever seen than that God Himself should provide the Lamb for the burnt offering, that He should provide His only Son out of His very bosom, that He should give the delight of His heart to die for us. Well may we behold this great wonder. Angels admire and marvel at this mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh; they have never left off wondering and adoring the grace of God that gave Jesus to be the Sacrifice for guilty men. Behold and wonder, never leave off wondering; tell it as a wonder, think of it as a wonder, sing of it as a wonder; even in heaven you will not cease to wonder at this glorious Lamb of God.

I think that John also meant his disciples to consider when he said to them, “Behold the Lamb of God!” So we say to you, “Think of Him, study Him, know all that you can about Him, look Him up and down. He is God; do you understand that He stood in the sinner’s stead? He is man; do you know how near akin He is to you, how sympathetic He is, a brother born for your adversity?” The person of Christ is a great marvel; how God can be in one person, it is impossible for us to tell. We believe what we cannot comprehend, and we rejoice in what we cannot understand. He whom God has provided to be your Savior is both God and man; He can lay His hand upon both parties, He can touch your manhood in its weakness, and touch the Godhead in its all-sufficiency. Study Christ! He is most learned in the university of heaven who knows most of Christ. Behold Him, then, with wonder and with thankfulness.

But when John said those words, he meant more than wondering or considering. “Looking” is used in Scripture for faith: “Look unto me, and be ye saved.” Beholding is a steady kind of looking. Take your eyes off everything else, and behold the Lamb of God! “Look and live” is now our message; not “do and live,” but “live and do.” If you ask how you are to live, our answer is to look, trust, believe, confide, rest in Christ, and the moment you do so, you are saved.

But once more, when John exhorted his disciples, it was a hint that they should leave off looking at John, and turn their attention wholly to Jesus and follow Him. Hence we find that John’s two disciples left him and became the disciples of Christ. Beloved, we who preach long to have your attention, but when you give your attention to us, our longing then is to pass it on to Christ our Lord. Look on Him and follow Him, not us. What can we do, poor creatures that we are? Look unto Him, mark His footsteps, and tread in them. Do as He bids you, take Him for your Lord, become His disciples, His servants. Behold the Lamb of God, and always behold Him. Look to Him, look up to Him, and follow where He leads you.

Thus I have put the text before you pretty simply. Now, I want to talk to you a little about beholding this Lamb of God, taking a hasty run through various Scripture references to the Lamb.

The Lamb for One Man        
How was the Lamb of God first seen in the world? It was the case of the lamb for one man, brought by one man for himself, and on his own behalf. You all know that I refer to Abel, who was a shepherd, and brought of his flock a lamb for himself, on his own account that he might be accepted of God, and that he might present to God an offering well-pleasing in His sight. Cain brought of the fruit of the ground as an offering to God. I think that there was a difference in the sacrifice, as well as in the man bringing it, for the Holy Ghost says little about the difference of the man, but He says, “By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain,” and he was accepted because of it. The one sacrifice was bloodless, the fruit of the ground, the other was typical of Christ, the Lamb of God, and was therefore accepted: “and the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering.”

Now, beloved, our first view of Christ is usually here, to know Him for ourselves. I am a sinner, and I want to have communion with my God; how shall I obtain it? I am guilty; I am sinful; how shall I draw near to the holy God? Here is the answer. Take the Lord Jesus Christ to be yours by faith, and bring Him to God; you must be accepted if you bring Christ with you. The Father never repelled the Son, nor one who was clothed with the Son’s righteousness, or who pleaded the Son’s merit. Come, as Abel came, not with fruits of your own growing, but with the sacrifice of blood, with Christ the holy victim, the spotless Lamb of God, and so coming, you shall be acceptable before God by faith.

The Lamb for the Family
Now turn over the pages of this grand old Book, and you will find the Lamb in another connection. Israel was in Egypt, and there they had the lamb for the family. “In the tenth day of this month, they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house.” Oh, I wish that you would all go on to behold the Lamb of God for your households! “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” Why do you stop before you finish the verse? What said the apostle to the trembling jailer? Not merely all that I have quoted, but more: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.”

Are there not many believers who do not believe for their house? Come, now, and believe in this provision of the Lamb for the house. Pray that the Lamb may be for the house. Grace does not run in the blood, but grace often runs side by side with it, so that Abraham is loved, and Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, and Ephraim, and Manasseh. Thus the covenant blessing goes from one to another. Plead with God, tonight, that all in your house may be beneath the sprinkled blood of the Lamb, and be saved from the destroying angel, and that all with you may go out of Egypt to have a possession in the land of the promise.

The Lamb for the People
A little further on, following the Scripture, and asking you still to behold the Lamb, in Exodus 28:38-39, we come across God’s command for the lamb for the people: “Now this is that which thou shalt offer upon the altar; two lambs of the first year day by day continually. The one lamb thou shalt offer in the morning; and the other lamb thou shalt offer at even.” Here is the lamb for all the chosen people, the lamb for Israel. It began with the unity, it went on to the family; and here is the Lord, who “loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob,” makes His tabernacle to be the central place where a lamb shall be offered for the whole nation. Think of it with delight, that Christ died for all His chosen people. He hath redeemed them from among men. Though they be as many as the stars for number, or as the sand on the sea-shore innumerable, yet that one sacrifice has redeemed them all. Glory be to God for the blood of the Lamb, by which the whole of Christ’s people are redeemed!

The Lamb for the World
Then let your mind take wing right out of the Old Testament into the New. Come now to John, saying, in the 29^th verse of this chapter, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Now you have gone beyond the bounds of Israel, and have come to the Lamb for the world. You have come to the Lamb of God, who dies for gentiles as well as for Jews, for men in the isles of the sea, for men in the wilds of Africa, for men of every color, and every race, and every time, and every clime.

Oh, glory be to God, wherever there are men, we may go and tell them of Christ! Wherever there are men born of Adam’s race, we may tell them of the second Adam, to whom looking, they who look shall live, and in Him they shall find eternal life. I love to think of the breaking down of the bounds that shut in the flow of grace to one nation. Behold, it flows over all of Asia Minor, at first, and then over all Greece, and then to Rome, and Paul talks of going to Spain, and the Gospel is borne across the sea to England, and from this country, it has gone out unto the utmost ends of the earth.

The Lamb for All Heaven
Well, now take your flight, if you can get beyond that, away to heaven itself, and there you will see the Lamb for all heaven. Look at Revelation 7:14. All the saints in heaven are standing in their glittering ranks, white-robed, pure as the driven now. They sing and praise one glorious name; when one of the elders first asked the question, “What are these which are arrayed in white robes, and whence came they?” He Himself gave the answer, “These are they which came out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

The blood of the Lamb has whitened all the saints who are in heaven; they sing of Him who loved them, and saved them from their own sins in His own blood. I have often wondered why that second word was not brought into our translation, for it so beautifully fits the language of the Apostle John: “Unto Him that loved us, and saved us from our sins in His own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and His Father; to Him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen.” There is no whiteness in heaven but what the Lamb has wrought, no brightness there but what the Lamb has bought; everything there shows the wondrous power and surpassing merit of the Lamb of God.

If it is possible to think of something more glorious than I have already described, I think you will find it in Revelation 5:13: “And every creature which is in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, ‘Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be to Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and ever.” The day shall come when, from every place that God has made, there shall be heard the voice of praise unto the Lamb; there shall be found everywhere men and women redeemed by blood, angels, and glorious spirits, rejoicing to adore Him who was, and is, and is to come, the Almighty Lamb of God.

I think I have given you something to consider if you turn over the pages of Scripture, and follow the track of the bleeding Lamb.

            Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892), “the Prince of Preachers,” was a renowned pastor and author who served as pastor of London’s Metropolitan Tabernacle for 38 years. His works are still widely read today.