Behold the Lamb of God

Last year, I attended my daughter's college graduation ceremony, and after that, we went out to have lunch and celebrate. And the very next day, I was riding an ambulance with a heart attack. When the doctors ran tests on me, I learned that all four of my main arteries were 90% blocked.

I sat on the brink of death while they performed a successful quadruple bypass surgery on me. But prior to that event, I had no clue that I was that close to death. What the eye does not see, the heart cannot grieve over.

You don't know you have cancer until it shows up on an x-ray. Having that knowledge can be devastating. Like I said, what the eye does not see, the heart cannot grieve over.

And this applies to spiritual things as well, friends. In Proverbs 28, 13, we read, He that covereth his sins shall not prosper, but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. Well, how do you know if you are covering up sins if you are not aware of them? Those who have not been touched by the Holy Spirit are not aware of sin.

Jesus spoke of the work of the Holy Spirit in John 16, 8. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment. A lost sinner has no knowledge of his sin until the Holy Spirit comes and awakens him to see his sins. And those who are not aware of sin cannot accept salvation of the Lord.

This stuff we call salvation today won't pass mustard on judgment day. Those who miss Holy Ghost conviction, miss repentance and faith. And if you miss repentance and faith, you miss Christ altogether, and are yet in your sins.

In John 1, 29, it declares, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world. Christ left heaven to suffer and die on a bloody cross so we can have forgiveness of sin. Christ was the sinless sacrifice.

He was our sin substitute. He bore the curse so we wouldn't have to. That spotless Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world.

He takes away the penalty for sin. He takes away the power of sin. He came to take away our sins and die for sinners.

And he did just that. God has an absolute intolerance of sin. He will not tolerate sin in the life of a believer.

He will use his chastisement and corrective measures to deal with our sin and cleanse us from our sin. But first, we have to see our sin, acknowledge our sin, and then turn and forsake that sin. Our text in Proverbs speaks of confessing and forsaking them.

So in order to do that, we must first be aware of it so we can grieve over it. Second, we must acknowledge it. And that's what confession is.

Then we must exercise repentance and forsake sin. That means to leave sin behind, to put it aside, to abandon it. The Holy Spirit must shine his searching spotlight of purity on our life and expose our sin so we can confess and forsake it.

I wonder how many in our church today are yet strangers to this. We must ask ourselves, is God the agent of salvation or is man? Are men saved as a result of a decision they make or as the result of the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit? Like I said before, those who are not aware of sin cannot accept salvation from the Lord. If we want to prosper spiritually for God, we must smoke out the sin in our life and deal with it.

I used to live in the South in a forest, and every year I had to go out on my property and kill snakes. That property was just crawling with deadly copperheads. They loved to get in my rock bed down in front of my house, and I'd have to put my boots on and go out on that rock bed and stand there with a can of gasoline in one hand and a shovel in the other.

I would pour the gasoline over the rocks to smoke out the snakes, and soon here they came squirming and crawling over my boots, and I'd take that shovel and slam it down on their head and then cut their head off. That's how you kill snakes, and we have to do the same in regard to our sins. We have to cut the heads off them.

We must hike up our bootstraps and get serious with God about sin and ask him to expose the sin areas in our lives that hide beneath the surface that we are blind to. Then when he brings those sins to light, we must do what our text says and confess and forsake them. The Apostle Peter didn't hang on to his sin of denying Jesus.

He didn't go through life denying Jesus here and there every once in a while and still call himself a follower of his. No, he made a clean break with sin. He never denied Christ again.

We must kill the sin snakes in our life before they kill us. We must expose them and turn them over to God so their head can be cut off. Jesus wants to take all our sins away and cleanse us so we can be fruitful to God in a life of usefulness to him.

For behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world.