He is the Lamb / Isaiah 53:3-6; Exodus 12
Introduction: Expanding Our View of Jesus
Well, hello. My name is Christian Warren. I’m the student ministries director here at The Well for both junior high and high school, and I get the opportunity to teach with you guys today. If you have a Bible, please turn to Isaiah 52:13.
If you are just joining us and this is your first time in this series that we’ve been doing over the last couple of weeks, we have been in a series called He Is. If you’ve driven around this building and wondered why somebody spray-painted the campus, there is a reason behind that, and we will talk a little bit about it today. The whole point of this series is for us as a church, as a congregation, to really understand that this “He”—this Jesus—is God. He has existed since the beginning. All throughout the Old Testament, Jesus pops up. He isn’t just in the New Testament; He appears all throughout Scripture. That’s really the point of this series: to help us expand our view of who Jesus is in both the context of the New and the Old Testament.
If you’ve been here over the summer, you’ve probably seen a bunch of different teachers. It is an exciting time for us as a staff because we love teaching about Jesus, and we especially love teaching about Jesus in the context of the Old Testament. Over the last couple of weeks, we have looked at names like Immanuel, and tonight we are going to be talking about how He is the Lamb.
In John 1:29, Jesus is referred to as the Lamb of God.
John 1:29 (NASB)
The next day he saw Jesus coming to him and said, ’Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
Sometimes we question: Why is He called the Lamb of God? Why is He given this title, “the Lamb”? John says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” The people at that time would have understood exactly what that meant, but we today probably wonder, What is a lamb all about? That is what we are going to dive into today.
The Suffering Servant Foretold
We are going to camp out in Isaiah 52:13 through Isaiah 53:9. There is language in here that might not immediately make sense to us, so instead of going strictly verse by verse, I want to give an overview of a few verses at a time. These passages are a foretelling of Jesus Christ who is to come in the New Testament. Here in the Old Testament, in the book of Isaiah, is the prophecy of the Servant. Jesus is described here, along with the life and ministry He would have on earth, focusing on His death, His burial, and His resurrection.
Let’s look at Isaiah 52:13 through Isaiah 53:3:
Isaiah 52:13-15 (NASB)
Behold, My servant will prosper, He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted. Just as many were astonished at you, [My people], So His appearance was marred more than any man And His form more than the sons of men. Thus He will sprinkle many nations, Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him; For what had not been told them they will see, And what they had not heard they will understand.
Isaiah 53:1-3 (NASB)
Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no [stately] form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
These verses give us a glimpse of Jesus before He appeared in human form in the New Testament. When He comes, He will grow up like a young plant, like a young boy. He is the root of David, the offspring of David. He was born in a place that wasn’t paradise—He was born in Israel, in a little town called Bethlehem. His earthly father was a carpenter, and Jesus worked as a carpenter in Nazareth. He looked like a normal guy. He had no majestic physical form that would make people naturally worship Him; He was a normal Jewish man who possessed the fullness of the deity of God.
The Gospel in the Old Testament
When we get to verses 4 through 6, we find what is essentially the gospel message in the Old Testament.
Isaiah 53:4-6 (NASB)
Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being [fell] upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.
This is the gospel message right here in the Old Testament: an innocent servant would die as a sacrifice for our sins. When words like “sacrifice” were used in the Old Testament, the original audience understood it immediately because they were immersed in the animal sacrificial system.
Isaiah says this man would bear our griefs, our sorrows, our iniquities, and our transgressions. We are the ones who have sinned and continue to sin, yet this innocent Servant dies on a cross for our sins. He was pierced with nails, crucified, and because of His wounds, we are healed and saved. Verse 6 reminds us that all of us, like sheep, have gone astray. It is human nature to sin, and that is why Jesus died—not only for our past and present sins, but for our future sins as well. God placed all of that upon Him to save us.
Then we come to verses 7 through 9, and this is where the lamb imagery appears.
Isaiah 53:7-9 (NASB)
He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living For the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke [was due]? His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth.
Here, the Servant is compared to a lamb, which is one of the most frequent symbols of the Savior. In fact, if you read the book of Revelation, Jesus is referred to as a Lamb 28 times. You might think, They are really serious about this whole lamb thing. But why? Why a lamb?
Western Thinking vs. Hebrew Imagery
To understand why a lamb is so significant, we have to recognize something we often miss from our Western mindset. When John said, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” everyone in that culture instantly understood and responded to the imagery.
A while back, I had the opportunity to go to Israel with Brad and with Chris Schultz, our AM spiritual formation director. We went with Hume Lake’s Joshua Wilderness program. If you’ve ever been to Israel, you know it is an amazing trip. In Israel, you are surrounded by a completely different culture. Before we even got on the airplane, the tour company required us to watch several preparation videos to help us understand the context of Hebrew culture and thought.
As the three of us watched these videos, things started to click. I began to realize that the Hebrew mind processes things very differently from the way we are taught in our Western society. In the West, we are taught in school and college to think in terms of abstract words, outlines, and rational, linear thoughts. The Hebrew mind, on the other hand, is very concrete. They think in terms of pictures, imagery, stories, poetry, and symbolism.
For example, if I were to explain Jesus using a Western mindset, I might say, “Jesus is almighty. He is my Savior. He is my comforter. He is perfect. He is compassionate.” But someone with a Hebrew mindset would say, “Jesus is my rock. He is my fortress. He is my shepherd. He is living water. He is eagle’s wings.”
If you walk around our building and look at the graffiti art on the walls for this series, about 90% of the tagging reflects Western ways of thinking—“He is compassionate,” “He is my Savior,” “He is mighty.” About 10% reflects that concrete Hebrew imagery. This distinction is vital. The biblical writers used concrete pictures to explain who God is. If you’ve ever wondered why Jesus constantly taught in parables, this is why. If someone asked an abstract question, Jesus answered with a story because that is how the culture processed truth.
The Bible is full of word pictures. If we don’t understand how the Hebrew mind works, we miss the depth of what is being taught. In Western culture, when we think of a lamb, we think, Oh, lambs are cute, fluffy baby sheep. We remember the stuffed animals or mobiles in our cribs. So when we hear Jesus is the Lamb, we might imagine a gentle, fluffy creature. But to a Hebrew mind, a lamb carried far greater weight and solemn esteem.
A lamb is mentioned over 200 times in the Bible, and nearly every single time it appears, the lamb has to die. An innocent lamb is killed even though it has done nothing wrong. Lambs were continually offered within the sacrificial system. They served as a constant foreshadowing of the ultimate Lamb of God who was to come.
The Passover Lamb in Exodus 12
To see where this deep connection began, we have to look back at Exodus 12, where a defining event in Israel’s history took place.
Exodus 12:1-13 (NASB)
Now the LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, ’This month shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you. ’Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying, ‘On the tenth of this month they are each one to take a lamb for themselves, according to their fathers’ households, a lamb for each household. ’Now if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his neighbor nearest to his house are to take one according to the number of persons [in them]; according to what each man should eat, you are to divide the lamb. ’Your lamb shall be an unblemished male a year old; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. ’You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month, then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to kill it at twilight. ’Moreover, they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. ’They shall eat the flesh that [same] night, roasted with fire, and they shall eat it with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. ’Do not eat any of it raw or boiled at all with water, but rather roasted with fire, [both] its head and its legs along with its entrails. ’And you shall not leave any of it over until morning, but whatever is left of it until morning, you shall burn with fire. ’Now you shall eat it in this manner: [with] your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it in haste– it is the LORD’S Passover. ’For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments– I am the LORD. ’The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy [you] when I strike the land of Egypt.
In Exodus, millions of Israelites were preparing to escape slavery in Egypt under Moses’ leadership and head toward the Promised Land. Before they could leave, God sent a series of plagues to demonstrate His power to Pharaoh and demand the release of His people.
Then came the tenth and final plague: the death of the firstborn. God declared that judgment would strike every household in Egypt, but He provided a way of salvation. He commanded each household to take a lamb, sacrifice it, and apply its blood to the doorposts of their house. God told Moses that when He saw the blood of the lamb, He would pass over that house, sparing the firstborn from death. The people obeyed, the blood was applied, and their firstborn were saved.
This event was so foundational that the Jewish people celebrated it every single year as the Passover. While we often think of the parting of the Red Sea as the main event, the Passover was the annual feast they were commanded to observe for all generations. The lamb was the central element of that celebration.
God even reset their calendar around this event. For us, the new year starts arbitrarily in January. For Israel, their religious year began in the spring, in the month of Nisan (March or April), because that was the month of Passover.
The Cost of Sin and the Unblemished Lamb
God gave very specific instructions for how Passover was to be observed. On the tenth day of the month, each household was to select a lamb. They would keep that lamb in their home until the fourteenth day, when it would be sacrificed.
That tenth day became known as Lamb Selection Day. Families would travel to Jerusalem and select a one-year-old, unblemished male sheep or goat. Because Hebrew thought is full of imagery, this unblemished lamb pointed directly to the coming Sinless One who would die for our sins.
Travelers typically didn’t bring a lamb from hundreds of miles away, because after a long journey, the animal would likely be bruised or cut, making it ineligible for sacrifice. Instead, hundreds of thousands of lambs were brought into Jerusalem for families to inspect and purchase.
Once chosen on Lamb Selection Day, the lamb lived inside the home with the family for five days. Think about what happens when a small animal lives in your house: your children play with it, you feed it, and you grow attached to it. You develop a relationship with this lamb. Yet the family knew that on the fourteenth day, this beloved lamb would be slain for their sins. It was a heartbreaking, vivid reminder that sin carries a real cost, and an innocent life had to be given to cover their transgressions.
On the fourteenth day, families would bring their lambs to the temple. Priests stood by, carefully inspecting each animal to ensure it was a worthy, unblemished, one-year-old male. Once approved, the lamb was sacrificed. The family watched as the throat was cut and the lamb gave its life. The priest caught the blood in a basin and splashed it against the altar as an atonement for sin, while the fat was burned as an offering to the Lord.
Afterward, the family took the meat home to roast and eat during the Passover meal, joyfully thanking God for His deliverance and for the forgiveness of their sins through the worthy sacrifice.
Lamb Selection Day and the Triumphal Entry
This tradition continued faithfully for thousands of years. So when John the Baptist looked at Jesus and declared, “Behold, the Lamb of God,” he was declaring, Here is the ultimate sacrifice for the sins of the world.
Think back to Genesis 22, when Abraham was about to sacrifice Isaac. God stopped him and promised that He Himself would provide the lamb. That promise found its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ.
The connection becomes even clearer in Luke 22 during the final week of Jesus’ earthly life.
Luke 22:1-2 (NASB)
Now the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which is called the Passover, was approaching. The chief priests and the scribes were seeking how they might put Him to death; for they were afraid of the people.
Passover drew near. In the passion week, Jesus died on Friday, and Passover was celebrated on Thursday evening. If Passover was on Thursday, what happened the Sunday before?
We know it as Palm Sunday—the Triumphal Entry described in Luke 19. That Sunday was the tenth of Nisan: Lamb Selection Day. On the exact day when hundreds of thousands of families were entering Jerusalem to choose their Passover lambs, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, openly presenting Himself as the King and the Lamb of God.
Tragically, many in the crowd completely missed the imagery. Some worshipped Him, but many rejected Him. They were looking for a military conqueror who would overthrow the Roman Empire. They didn’t want a suffering servant; they wanted an earthly king. When Jesus saw the city, He wept over it because the Lamb of God had arrived to atone for their sins, and they did not recognize the time of their visitation.
Don’t Miss the Worthy Lamb
Five days after riding in on Lamb Selection Day, Jesus—the unblemished Lamb without spot or sin—was led to the slaughter. He was crucified on Friday, bearing the penalty for all human sin. The wages of sin is death, and Jesus took that wage upon Himself.
In Revelation 5, John weeps because no one is found worthy to open the scroll, until the Lion of the tribe of Judah appears—standing as a Lamb that had been slain.
Revelation 5:6-9 (NASB)
And I saw between the throne (with the four living creatures) and the elders a Lamb standing, as if slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth. And He came and took the book out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne. When He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sang a new song, saying, ’Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood [men] from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
Throughout the New Testament, the early church understood this profound reality. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:7:
1 Corinthians 5:7 (NASB)
Clean out the old leaven so that you may be a new lump, just as you are [in fact] unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed.
Some understood the imagery, but many missed it. My prayer today is that if you are here and you do not know Christ, you won’t miss it. Don’t miss out on a relationship with Jesus, the only One worthy to remove our sins.
As 1 John 4:10 tells us:
1 John 4:10 (NASB)
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son [to be] the propitiation for our sins.
“Propitiation” means that Jesus was the perfect, wrath-absorbing sacrifice for our sins. He bore the full judgment of God on the cross in our place.
The Agony of the Cross
This past week, I read a commentary describing what Jesus endured during His final hours on the cross:
“Jesus is condemned to death. Innocent of any wrongdoing, tortured far past the point any normal man would have survived, He lives only by His divine will. United with all the sins of the world—past, present, and future—Christ humbly accepts the sentence to die.
Jesus then carries His cross. The beam is so heavy that a man named Simon of Cyrene is compelled to help Him carry it. When they reach Golgotha, His garments are stripped away, exposing His bruised and lacerated body for the entire world to see. Humbly, He accepts the humiliation.
He is laid upon the wood. His arms are stretched out, and the first iron spike is driven into His wrist. A second spike pierces His other wrist. Then His feet are pressed together and nailed through. When the cross is hoisted upward and dropped into the ground, the sudden jolt inflames the agony throughout His entire body. The weight of His body compounds the strain on His arms and shoulders, making every breath an agonizing battle. Yet, knowing He must fulfill the Father’s will, He wills Himself to continue breathing.
In the midst of unbearable torment, He looks upon those around Him and prays for their forgiveness. Even in His deepest suffering, His thoughts remain on those He came to save. Finally, Jesus yields up His spirit. A Roman soldier pierces His side with a spear, and blood and water flow freely from His heart. Even in His death, witnesses are moved to faith, acknowledging that He truly was the Son of God.
Jesus is taken down and laid in a tomb. But three days later, He rises from the dead, victorious over sin and the grave.“
Every detail of Christ’s suffering and triumph is the direct fulfillment of Isaiah 53.
A Call to Faith and Remembrance
If you are here with us today and you don’t know Christ, I encourage you to consider a relationship with Him. Stop waiting around for some vague sign or another answer—Jesus has already arrived. He is the sacrificial Lamb who died for your sins. Place your faith in Him today, the only One worthy to take away the sin of the world.
If you have already placed your faith in Christ, let this message serve as a fresh reminder of who He is. Tonight, we have the privilege of celebrating communion together. We get to remember that He entered Jerusalem on Lamb Selection Day and, just a few days later, gave His life on the cross out of profound love for us.
Just as the Israelites marked the start of their year celebrating the Passover lamb, may we live every day in joyful celebration of our Savior, the Lamb of God who was slain for us.
Let’s pray.
Lord, thank You for dying for us. Thank You for being the worthy Lamb who was slain in our place. You endured the brutality of the cross out of unfathomable love for us. While lambs in the Old Testament had to be sacrificed year after year, You offered Yourself once and for all for the sins of the world.
As we take communion tonight, help us reflect on Your sacrifice, celebrate Your grace, and never forget what You accomplished on the cross. We love You so much. In Jesus’ name, Amen.