I like coffee. But, I don’t like the way coffee tastes. That might seem contradictory, but let me explain. I like caffeine, I have found that it has become a necessary thing in my life as I go through life answering the calls the Lord has placed on my life: pastor, wife, and mother of four. Caffeine is my little energy boost that I find myself wanting throughout the day. See, I don’t actually like coffee. I cannot drink coffee black. It could be the best coffee in the world, roasted and brewed just perfectly and I couldn’t drink it black. I have to put cream and sugar and drink what I call “froofy” coffee because I don’t actually like coffee, I like caffeine.
But really, aside from my want of daily caffeine, I like coffee because of what I associate coffee with. You see, when I was in college, my friends and I would often meet at local coffee houses to drink coffee and study for class, and naturally, as we were meeting to drink coffee and study, we would talk and form deeper relationships with each other. So after four years of doing that, I came to associate drinking coffee with having deep, meaningful, and bond-forming conversations with other people.
So, if I ever have coffee with someone, I associate that with really getting to know that person.
Now, what does that have to do with the Bible? Well here it is. As I was reading and praying this week, reading in the book of John, I thought, “Gee, wouldn’t it be great if we could sit down with Jesus face to face and have coffee with Him?” And of course, by coffee, I mean a deep conversation with Him about who He is. Now, if you’ll recall through my sermons the last year or so, I believe that we can actually do this. I believe we can have a sit down, face to face conversation with Jesus. I believe that’s what He wants us to do with Him.
One of the ways that we can do this is through prayer of course, just sitting down with Jesus and reflecting on who we know He is, but those conversations with Him can be informed by knowing who He says He is in His Word. In other words, we’re going to sit down with Jesus and read His Word and have a conversation with Him through His Word so He can tell us who He is.
I know this may seem like an odd thing to do with those who are already believers, to learn about who Jesus is, but I believe that we don’t hear it enough. I believe that if we’re going to be true disciples of Christ, we need to not only know who He says He is, but we need to know who He is so well that when the opportunity arises to tell other people who He is, we know exactly who He is and can tell them without hesitation or uncertainty.
So, join me please in John 1:29-34 as we have our first conversation with Jesus.
“The next day he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is He in behalf of whom I said, ‘After me is coming a Man who has proved to be my superior, because He existed before me.’ And I did not recognize Him, but so that He would be revealed to Israel, I came baptizing in water.” And John testified, saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon Him. And I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.” NASB
One thing we want to remember as we’re reading these conversations with Jesus is that Jesus tells us who He is in two different ways: He either tells us DIRECTLY who He is (like “I am the way, the truth, and the life); or He tells us INDIRECTLY who He is through what others say and He affirms. This passage in John that we’ve just read is one of the times Jesus tells us who He is through someone else, and Jesus just affirms that what has been said about who He is, is correct.
In this instance, it’s John the Baptist who, verse 32 tells us, testified who Jesus is. That word, “testify”, in the Greek is martyreō. You might recognize that word in some way, it’s the word we get our word “martyr” from, and for good reason. What martyreō means is that you are bearing witness to something that you have seen first-hand. It’s usually used in the context of one person assuring a second person that what a third person says is in fact true because the first person saw it with their own eyes and heard it with their own ears.
In the context of someone being a martyr, dying for their faith, they’re saying that they died because they gave witness to Christ in such a profound way that it was as if they saw, heard, and experienced Jesus first-hand.
Here though, what the apostle John was writing was that John the Baptist said these things about who Jesus is because he saw, heard, and experienced who Jesus is first-hand. John the Baptist didn’t just hear these things about who Jesus is from someone else, he saw them. He experienced Jesus.
What did his experience, his own “conversation with Jesus”, teach him about who Jesus is?
John the Baptist recognized Jesus when he saw Jesus coming to be baptized. “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
Jesus is the LAMB of God.
As we continue to have this conversation with Jesus about who He is, we have to ask Him this important question now: Jesus, what does it mean that you are the Lamb of God?
Let’s look at 1 Corinthians 5:7, “Get rid of the old yeast. Then you can be like a new batch of dough without yeast. That is what you really are. That’s because Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been offered up for us.” NIRV
Here Paul calls Christ our Passover Lamb, and in so doing, brings to mind the passage in Exodus 12 when the Angel of the Lord went through the land of Egypt and for the tenth plague to be brought on Egypt, took the life of every first born to be found in the land.
The only exception to that would be the houses that had the blood of a sacrificed lamb over each door and on the two doorposts. Exodus 12:6 says this about which lamb they were to pick, “Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.” NASB After the Exodus out of Egypt, the Lord commanded that His people celebrate the Passover every year with a sacrificial lamb, and that lamb’s sacrifice would be a reminder of how God saved His people. He would also command the day of atonement, where an unblemished lamb would be sacrificed to cover the people’s sins for exactly one year.
Unblemished male is the important distinction there. The male lamb had to be without any sort of defect, it couldn’t have one leg shorter than the others or a clipped ear, and it couldn’t even have any spots or patches of different colored fleece. It had to be completely and purely white, no spots, no defects, no blemishes. Perfect.
Now 1 Peter 1:18-19, “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” NIV
1 Peter 2:22, “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in His mouth.” NIV
Hebrews 4:15, “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” NIV
And Hebrews 7:26, “Such a high priest truly meets our need—one who is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens.” NIV
Jesus lived a sinless life. Even though He had opportunity to sin, was tempted in every way to sin just as we are, but did not sin. He is holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners. He is without blemish or defect.
Jesus being the Lamb of God means that He was sent by God, was without blemish or defect in every way, and was sent as a sacrifice to keep us from being claimed by death. Just like the first Passover lambs sacrificed to save the lives of the Israelites living in Egypt. Only when Jesus was sacrificed, because He was in the flesh, human, and He was without sin, His sacrifice would save us forever, not just for one year.
And that’s why John testified, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
Jesus is the Lamb of God.
John the Baptist also testified, “…saying, “I have seen the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon Him. And I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, ‘He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the One who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.’”
John the Baptist saw the Spirit of God descend upon and remain upon Jesus.
Genesis 1:1-2 tells us this about the Spirit of God, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.” God and the Spirit of God existed before anything was created.
Back to the book of John, John 1:1-2, 14, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. … And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” In addition to God and the Spirit of God being before the beginning, we also read about the Word who was there with God, and since we know He was with God, we know He was with the Spirit of God as well. We also see that the Word was not only with God, but is God. And then that Word became a person and lived among us, and the Word is the Son of the Father.
So we have God the Father, God the Spirit, and the Word, God the Son. These verses are where we get our theology, which are our beliefs, about what we call the Trinity, or Triune God, God who is three-in-one in nature.
John the Baptist testified that He saw the Spirit of God coming and staying upon Jesus. The reason that is important is because it tells us that if Jesus has the Spirit given from God it was a sign that Jesus is the Son of God.
Jesus is the SON of God!
John the Baptist said as much, “And I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.”
It’s important for us to know that Jesus didn’t claim to be a son of God, or the son of a god, but the Son of the Only, One True God. He is not one of many, He is the only one.
If this were all He is, it would be enough. But because He is the Son of God, He is the only one who could open the way for us to get to the Father. He made the way through His sacrifice as the Lamb of God, but the way is maintained through His gift to us as the Son of God.
He promised that He would send the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, who would continue to reveal the Father to us after Jesus left the world. When we come to Him, when we place our lives in His hands and say we will follow Him, He gives us His Spirit who continues the relationship that is begun upon salvation. The Spirit is the one who continues to guide us into all righteousness. The Spirit is the One who reveals the mind of the Father to us.
Jesus told us that it would be for our benefit that He leave so He could send us the Spirit. He gave us access to the Spirit because He is the Son of God.
This is who Jesus is, revealed to us by the interaction He had with John the Baptist when Jesus was baptized. As we have our own conversations with Jesus, it’s good for us to be reminded of who He is.
1. What difference does it make to your life every day that Jesus is the Lamb of God and the Son of God?
2. As the Lamb of God, Jesus has taken away your sins. Reread 1 Peter 1:17-19. How are you to live your life each day with the knowledge that Jesus has taken away your sins?
3. As the Son of God, Jesus gave us access to the Spirit of God. Read John 14:26. How do the Spirit of God and the Son of God work together in your life?