Joh 1:29 The next day
John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which
taketh away the sin of the world.
In our last post, which also dealt with this text, we talked about the
part that said, "Behold the Lamb of God." In this one I want to talk about the part
that said, "...which taketh away the sin of the world." Again we need to understand that it is the same
Jew speaking to the same Jews who understood what he is talking about.
This takes us back to the Jewish Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. On this day, once a year the Jewish People
would go to the tabernacle and later to the temple. As recorded in the 16th chapter of Leviticus,
the High Priest would dress in his best regalia prescribed by God. He would go to the tabernacle and offer a sacrifice
of rams and bullucks to make an atonement for himself. Those Jews were definitely acquainted with
the happenings that I shall describe, but they were ignorant of its fuller meaning. This High Priest was a type of Christ. He would carry out this agenda once every
year. This was to signify that Christ
would make His sacrifice once and for all.
Then the people would bring two goats.
One of those goats would be offered on the altar by the High
Priest. There had to be the shedding of
blood. In Leviticus God had said that He
had given them the blood, the life of the flesh, to offer on the altar. This was to make atonement for their
sins. So the High Priest would offer
that goat and take the blood thereof with him
into the tabernacle, where he would sprinkle the blood on the different pieces
of furniture in the tabernacle.
When this was completed, he would go again into the court where he would
take the live goat that was left. He
would lay his hands on the head of that goat and make confession of sin. Whose sin did he confess? He confessed the sin of those whom he represented. Whom did he represent? Was it all the world? Of course not. He would confess the sins of those people who
were identified by the stones on his shoulder, the twelve tribes of Israel. This is a picture of
particular redemption or absolute atonement.
This having been
completed, another man would take that goat out into a wilderness. There he would be let go, never to be seen
again. It was said of him that he took
away their sins.
John said of Jesus that day, which taketh away the sin of the
world. The High Priest was limited to
atonement for Israel. When John said Jesus was
taking away the sin of the world, he did not mean every sin of every individual
in the world either. What John was doing
here was to open up the atonement made by the Lamb to not Jews only, but to
every nation under Heaven. At Calvary He
took our sins on His on body and suffered as the substituted sacrificial Lamb. Having done so, He took away our sin just as
the angel told Joseph. He said, you shall call His name Jesus for He shall save His people from
their sins.
How wonderful! "Behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment