The Story of the Lamb

The sermon opens with Pharaoh's question, 'Who is the Lord, that I should obey him?' The preacher argues that no better answer exists than the Passover, because at the very center of biblical faith stands the bloody death of a helpless victim. No other religion places such an event at its core, and this is precisely what makes the Christian faith unique.

The preacher traces the 'story of the Lamb' through multiple chapters of Scripture. The first chapter is Abraham and Isaac in Genesis 22, where God's demand for the firstborn son signaled the debt of sin that rests upon every family. Abraham did not object on grounds of injustice but understood that God had the right to call in that debt. His anguished question was: 'How can God be both just and gracious?' The second chapter is the Passover in Exodus 12, where two principles emerge: spiritual egalitarianism (the Israelites were no better than the Egyptians apart from the blood of the lamb) and spiritual substitutionism (the lamb died in place of the firstborn son).

The third chapter is Jesus at the Last Supper. When he took the bread and said 'This is my body,' he placed himself in the role of the Passover presider. The absence of a lamb on the table was deliberate—Jesus himself was the Lamb. John the Baptist had already recognized this when he declared, 'Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!' Historical evidence also confirms this: no one fabricating a religion would invent a founder weeping in Gethsemane or crying out in desolation on the cross, so these events must have actually occurred.

The preacher addresses two common objections. First, many people deny that everyone carries a debt of sin. He argues that even by one's own chosen moral standards, no one lives up to them consistently. Second, many assume God can simply forgive without payment. The preacher counters this by showing that both psychologically and sociologically, no serious wrong can be forgiven without someone bearing the cost. Either the offender pays, or the offended absorbs the debt themselves.

The sermon closes with a call to 'behold the Lamb' in three practical ways. For seekers, this means acknowledging the real debt of sin and that Jesus paid it. For believers, beholding the Lamb transforms one's attitude toward others (you are no better than anyone else), toward glory and achievement (serving and giving rather than acquiring), and toward suffering (the most undeserved suffering in history produced the greatest good). The preacher emphasizes that this transformation happens in community, as believers gather together to eat the meal and reflect on what the Lamb means, until they are conformed to the likeness of God's Son.