Bible study was good last night.
We continued our "The Real Jesus" study.
In case you missed it here's what we talked about:
John Testifies About JesusThere's this part of the book of John that says:
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, 'A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel."
Then John gave this testimony: "I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, 'The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.' I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God." - John 1:19-34
After Jesus was baptized by John, He went off by himself into wilderness to fast and pray for forty days.
When he returned from his time of prayer and fasting, He ran into John.
John, who had been telling people to "repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is coming", makes a very serious claim about Jesus.
John calls Jesus the "Lamb of God" who "takes away the sin of the world".
This is incredibly important for two reasons.
First, it connects the Old Testament and the New Testament in Jesus.
The idea of a lamb taking away people sins was very familiar to the Jewish people John was talking to.
Every year at Passover, Jewish people would kill the Paschal Lamb, or passover lamb. Before killing the lamb, they would place their hands on it and, by doing so, transfer their sins to the lamb. Then, they would kill and eat the lamb and sprinkle it's blood around the temple.
They did this ritual to be cleansed from their sins.
John is calling the Jesus the Paschal Lamb.
All of the lambs that the Jews sacrificed for generations we're only to point the way to the true "Lamb of God" who would take away the sins of the whole world.
Just as the Paschal Lamb's blood was sprinkled about the temple to cleanse the people from their sins so the Lamb of God's blood cleanses our sins.
The second reason that John's statements are important is that they mark a turning point in the story of Jesus of Nazareth.
Before John makes these statements we could possibly say that Jesus was "just a good guy". But, after Jesus doesn't dispute these audacious claims, he is either a lunatic, an evil man, or the Son of God.
C.S. Lewis said it very well:
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -- on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg -- or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
This chapter in the story of "The Real Jesus" is crucially important because it ties the Old and New Testaments together and because it marks the turning point in the life of Jesus from "normal man" to "extraordinary man".
