10 The Lamb of God
X JOHN LOOKING UPON JESUS AS HE WALKED, HE SAITH, BEHOLD THE LAMB OF GOD
Both the Baptist’s birth and all his upbringing had prepared him to preach Christ. The Baptist’s birth was only second to the birth of the Savior Himself in its wonderfulness and in its grace. And not even the Virgin Mary herself was a better mother than Elizabeth was, nor was Joseph a better father to the child Jesus than Zacharias was to the child John. For Zacharias and Elizabeth were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. And what more could be said of Joseph and Mary themselves? And then such were the wonders connected both with the birth and the circumcision of John that all who heard those wonders laid them up in their hearts, and said, What manner of child shall this be? Had Zacharias’s son not been predestined to be a preacher he would have been a priest. For Zacharias himself was a priest of the order of Abia, and his son would have succeeded to his father’s office in the priesthood had he not been foreordained of God to the far higher office of the pulpit. At the same time it must always be remembered about John the Baptist that he was born and brought up in the house of a sacrificing and interceding priest. All the conversations that the child heard at his father’s table would make him familiar from his very infancy with the names of all the saints of God in Israel, and with all the names and all the offices of the coming Christ. Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, Moses and Aaron, the Pascal lamb and the Passover supper, the sprinkling of the peace-speaking blood, and the salvation that would come to himself also by means of that blood; little John heard little else from his father and his mother and from his tutors and governors. The twelfth of Exodus, and the fifty-third of Isaiah, would be the Sabbath-day lesson of Elizabeth’s little son, just as the twenty-third Psalm and the Shorter Catechism are the Sabbath-day lesson of our little sons. Take this child, and bring him up for Me, and I will give you your wages. And Zacharias and Elizabeth faithfully earned and abundantly received their promised reward.
Just what it was that drove John away from his father’s house and made him a solitary in the deserts of the Dead Sea, we can only guess, we do not know. John is totally lost to us from the day of his circumcision till thirty years after we suddenly discover him with his raiment of camel’s hair, and a leather girdle about his loins, preaching to his immense congregations and always taking this for his text: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand! Repent and flee from the wrath to come! And it was when he was preaching repentance to one of his immense congregations one day that John saw Jesus coming to him, and stopped his sermon and proclaimed and said, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world! Nothing came of that sermon, nor of his announcement of the Christ that day, but the next day John stood and two of his disciples, and looking upon Jesus as He walked, John said again to his two disciples, Behold the Lamb of God! Every man has his own walk, and the Son of Man had His. We know men by their walk, and John and his two disciples knew the Christ that day by His walk. "It is a good thing," writes Seneca to one of his disciples, "to walk modestly and gravely, to carry a thoughtful and a reverential countenance, and to bear about with you the gait and the gestures of a good man." Now Jesus, you may be sure, bore about both the gait and the gestures of a good man as He walked that day. The thoughtfulness and the gravity that John saw in Jesus of Nazareth that day completely became the new name that John gave to Jesus that day, and completely became the Messianic office that John that day proclaimed to be His office. For Jesus walked that day, and every day, like who He was, and like what He had come to do. He walked till all who had waited for Him took knowledge of Him that He must be the Lamb of God. He walked as no one else has ever walked, before or since, for He walked as one who bore on His head the sin of the world. He walked already as He walked long afterwards when, as He went before them on His way to Jerusalem, His disciples were amazed, and as they followed Him, they were afraid. Now it was with something of the same amazement and the same fear that John and his two disciples saw Jesus as He walked that day at Bethabara, and knew Him to be the Lamb of God. And his two disciples heard John speak, and they followed Jesus. Then Jesus turned and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto Him, Master, where dwellest Thou? He saith unto them, Come and see. They came and saw where He dwelt, and they abode with Him that day. I know that the world itself could not contain the books that should be written were all the things that Jesus said and did to be written every one. At the same time a new world could not have been created for a better purpose than to contain such things as were asked and answered in that humble dwelling at Bethabara that night. What seek ye? demanded our Lord. And they answered: "We seek to know more about the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." All the water of the Jordan had not washed those two disciples clean. All that John and his Jordan, taken together, could do for Andrew and that other disciple was to throw them all the more, them and their load of sin, on the Lamb of God. Art Thou indeed the Lamb of God? they asked. Then, if Thou art, may we come and see where Thou dwellest? And He said, as He always says, Come and see!
Now whatever may have been said and done in that Bethabara dwelling that night, when all taken together, it could not possibly come near what has been said and done in this house of God this day. Much as we would have enjoyed to have been in that house all that night and to have heard from our Lord’s own lips all He had to say about Himself as the Lamb of God, we are a thousand times better to be here. For His hour was not yet come. And those two disciples were not yet able to bear the half of what has been set before us in all its fulness this Communion day. Let us close this Communion day then with an adoring meditation on that most timeous and most appropriate hymn, "O Lamb of God, I come." Andrew and the other disciple had no psalm nor hymn nor spiritual song put into their mouth that night at all to compare with the hymn that has been put into our mouth all this day and all this night :- Just as I am, without one plea But that Thy blood was shed for me, And that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee, O Lamb of God, I come.
"Just as I am." Now, a happier word than that is not in all the world. A better selected word is not in all the world. It was a stroke of evangelical genius to choose that word, and to lay it as the very first syllable in this song of salvation, "Just as I am." That is to say, simply as I am, exactly as I am, precisely as I am. Not in any other shape or form. Not in any other character or category. Not any better, but "Just as I am." And as no one else has ever been, or ever will be to the end of time. I am alone, and have no fellow, nor will ever have. My sins are my own, and my misery is my own. "Just as I am, I come." And "without one plea." If I had even one good and sound plea, you may depend upon it, I would plead it. But I have not one. I have no excuse, no exculpation, no gloss, no varnish. If I had, I would plead it like Adam. It was the woman that did it, was Adam’s plea. It was the serpent, was the woman’s plea. I did not think that one blow would have killed him, pled Cain. The wine was red, and it gave its color to the cup, and it so moved itself aright, pled Noah. I was faint with hunger, pled Esau, and the pottage was so savory. The woman was very beautiful to look upon, pled David. They all had or thought they had, their one plea. But I have no plea why God’s judgment against my sin should not be executed speedily. My mouth is stopped. I remember and am confounded, and shall never be able to open my mouth any more because of my shame, said the prophet. But when we have no plea; when our mouth is stopped, when we are confounded and condemned, then these two pleas are put into our mouth. "Without one plea, but that Thy blood was shed for me, and that Thou bidd’st me come to Thee." Thy blood, O Lamb of God, and Thy bidding. These are now my two all-prevailing pleas. With these two pleas I shall always come with boldness to the throne of grace. And I am sure that as often as I plead those two pleas I shall never be put to shame. Let us come then. Let us come and let us learn better and better in what way to come. In what way and with what manner of motion. We come, but not by locomotion as in all other cases of coming. We come, but not by removing ourselves out of one place and removing ourselves to another place. We come by a real locomotion, indeed; but it is by the locomotion of the mind and the heart. It is not by the locomotion of our feet, says Augustine, but by the locomotion of our affections. And Augustine could speak on this subject with the authority of an incomparable experience. Think you see the Lamb of God in all the situations in which He is set before you in the Gospels, and then come to Him in all those situations. Think you see Him as John Bunyan thought he saw Him. "Methought I was as if I had seen Him born, as if I had seen Him grow up, as if I had seen Him walk through this world, from His cradle to His cross; to which, also, when He came, I saw how gently He gave Himself to be hanged and nailed upon it for my sins and wicked doings. Also as I was musing upon this His progress, that Scripture dropped on my spirit, He was ordained for the slaughter. I saw also as if He leaped at the grave’s mouth for joy that He was risen again, and had got the conquest over our dreadful foes. I have also, in the Spirit, seen Him a Man on the right hand of God the Father for me; and have seen the manner of His coming from Heaven to judge the world with glory, and have been confirmed in these things by the Scriptures following." Think you see the Lamb of God in that way. You may not have such inward eyes as John Bunyan had. No other man ever had such eyes as the tinker had. But use the eyes you have on the best things, and your eyes will grow better by use. Only direct your eyes sufficiently often, and sufficiently fixedly, and sufficiently long at a time on the Lamb of God, and there is no limit to their increasing clearness and their increasing power. God gave your inward eyes to you in order that you might see His Son with them. And that, like the prophet, your eyes might then affect your heart. Look, then, till your heart is affected, and till with your whole heart you come to Him. And come at all times, and come in every way. Come from all your former ignorance and indifference, and come to the intensest interest and anxiety. Come from never thinking a thought about the Lamb of God to thinking about nothing and about no one half so much. Come from seeking your own pleasure in everything to asking what will please Him. Come from taking your own way in everything to taking His way in everything, and your neighbor’s way as often and as far as it is His way. Come from a hardness of heart like the nether millstone, to an utter brokenness of heart, and till your head is waters. Come from never taking time to pray in secret, to praying in secret in all places, and at all times. Come like old Bishop Andrewes. Come every fourth day of the week from pride to humility, and from envy to pitifulness, and from wrath to patience, and from gluttony to sobriety, and from lasciviousness to purity, and from covetousness to contentment, and from sloth to ready zeal. And in all that, and at the heart of all that, and as the true end of all that, say continually, O Lamb of God, I come. And waiting not To rid my soul of one dark blot.
Wait, said Satan to Teresa; wait, woman. Wait till you have washed away that dark blot in the holy water. Wait till you have done some decent penance for such a sin of self-indulgence. Wait till the pain is a little worn off your conscience. Wait, for shame, woman, and go not so foul-handed into the very presence of God. "Let no one," she says to us, "be tempted of the devil as I was to give up prayer on account of unworthiness. Let him rather believe that if he will only still repent and pray our Lord will still hear and answer." And the darker the blots, and the more recent, come all the more immediately, importunately, believingly, assuredly. And always say, o Lamb of God, I come.
"Sight, riches, healing of the mind." I like that line immensely. I repeat that line continually. I repeat it sometimes every day, and every hour. And this other line always links itself on to that line, till they run together, "Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased?" These two lines run in my mind continually. Do they ever run in your mind? If they do, let this confession of mine be some encouragement to those who feel so absolutely alone and desolate as they cry continually--O Lamb of God! Sight, riches, healing of the mind! And, O Lamb of God, canst Thou not minister to a mind diseased like mine?
Just as I am, Thou wilt receive, Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;
Because Thy promise I believe, O Lamb of God, I come.
Just as I am--Thy love unknown Has broken every barrier down —
Now to be Thine, yea, Thine alone, O Lamb of God, I come.
Just as I am, of that free love The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove, Here for a season, then above, O Lamb of God, I come.
Amen.