To listen to this sermon use this link:
Sermon for Sunday, January 18th, 2026, the Second Sunday after Epiphany
The Lessons: Exodus 12:21-28; Psalm 40:1-11; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42
The Text: John 1:29
INTRODUCTION
If you go to Scotland or anywhere there are a lot of sheep, sooner or later you will see a little lamb running around the field with what looks like an extra fleece tied onto its back. There are little holes in the fleece for its four legs and usually a hole for its head. If you see a little lamb running around like that, that usually means its mother has died.
Without the protection and nourishment of a mother, an orphaned lamb will die. If you try to introduce the orphaned lamb to another mother, the new mother will butt it away. She won’t recognize the lamb’s scent and will know the new baby is not one of her own lambs.
But thankfully, most flocks are large enough to have an ewe that recently lost a lamb. The shepherd skins the dead lamb and makes its fleece into a covering for the orphaned lamb. Then he takes the orphaned lamb to the mother whose baby just died. Now when she sniffs the orphaned lamb, she smells her own lamb. Instead of butting the lamb away, she accepts it as one of her own. In a similar way, we have become acceptable to God by being clothed with Christ, Lamb of God.[1]
JOHN 1:29: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TITLE “LAMB OF GOD”
“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29b, KJV).
This statement by John the Baptist when he saw Jesus coming to him introduces his testimony to Jesus, in which he recounts his vision of the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus like a dove. God, who sent John the Baptist to baptize, adds that the one on whom he will see the Spirit descend and remain, is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit (John 1:33). John the Baptist concludes this testimony with the statement that he saw and bore witness that Jesus is the Son of God (John 1:34).
The next day, John the Baptist is standing with two of his own disciples, and when he sees Jesus walking by, he says, “Behold the Lamb of God!” (John 1:36b, KJV). The two disciples, hearing this, immediately follow Jesus. One might ask why they did so. For us, the designation of Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God has become familiar from the use of the phrase in our service of Holy Communion (Agnus Dei and Gloria in excelsis) and in the Litany.
The most important reason for this was the Jewish Festival of the Passover which was instituted in Exodus 12 when God commanded that each family of the Israelites had to slaughter a lamb on the night of the final plague in Egypt. They had to sprinkle the blood of this lamb on the two side posts and lintel of the front door to their house. This lamb had to be roasted and eaten that night, with nothing left till the morning (Exodus 12:7-10). Then the destroying angel would see the blood of the sacrificed lamb on their door posts and pass over that house without destroying the firstborn in it.
The Passover became the principal Festival of the Jewish nation, celebrating their redemption from bondage in Egypt and their salvation from destruction. The lamb was also one of the animals offered as a sin offering to secure forgiveness from sins committed in ignorance or deliberately (Leviticus 5). It would have been a novel idea for a Jew of the first century to associate a person with a sacrificial lamb in the symbolic description John the Baptist used. However, there was a prophetic reference in Isaiah 53 to the Messiah being led like a lamb to the slaughter:
He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.
(Isaiah 53:7, KJV)
Because of this prophetic reference to the Christ brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and because of the Passover lamb, Jesus Christ could be referred to as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. The two disciples of John the Baptist realized that his statement was profound. It must mean that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world, redeeming from destruction all who would believe in Jesus. It must mean that he had come to save people from bondage and bring them into God’s kingdom. Here was no ordinary rabbi, no ordinary religious leader or teacher, but the Son of God. Therefore they followed Jesus.
APPLICATION AND CONCLUSION
What does it mean for us today when we address the Lord Jesus Christ as the Lamb of God? For one thing, we are expressing our faith in Jesus Christ as the only means of atonement, of reconciliation with God. This fundamental function of the Lord Jesus Christ is confirmed in the Book of Revelation, when the only One found worthy to open the book with seven seals is the Lord Jesus Christ referred to as “the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David” (Revelation 5:5b, KJV). In the very next verse, Revelation 5:6, the Lord Jesus is depicted as the Lamb. When God gives him the book with the seven seals, the four living creatures around God’s throne, and the twenty-four elders, fall down in worship before him. Each elder has a harp and a golden vial full of incense, representing the prayers of the saints. This is the new song they sing:
Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open the seals thereof: for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation; And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth.
(Revelation 5:9-10, KJV)
This song declares that the Lamb was killed and He redeemed all God’s people from all nations by his blood, effectively reconciling them to God, and making them kings and priests for God who shall reign on earth. There is no other way to be reconciled to God, as the Lord Jesus himself stated in John 14:6 (KJV): “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” To redeem in this sense means “to buy back.” Christ paid the price with his blood to regain possession of mankind for God’s kingdom, so that no-one is compelled to live in bondage to Satan and to sin anymore. By renouncing sin and believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, one receives forgiveness of sins (Acts 2:38; 10:43), adoption as God’s child (Romans 8:15-17), and the gift of the Holy Spirit as a guarantee of the inheritance of eternal life in God’s kingdom (Ephesians 1:14).
The message of the Gospel is urgent, and we must bear in mind that from all who believe or think that there are other ways to peace with God besides the Lord Jesus Christ there may be possible opposition, mockery, or persecution. Christians in many parts of the world have already paid a heavy price for testifying to their faith.
John the Baptist may have realized that two of his own disciples would leave him and become disciples of Jesus Christ as soon as he referred to Jesus as the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. The revelation given him by the Holy Spirit had already prepared him for that.
For us as Christians to address Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world means that we acknowledge there is no other means of reconciliation with God except Jesus Christ. Further, there is no other means of reconciliation with fellow believers except through Jesus Christ, for we all have been reconciled to God by the death of Christ. Jesus, the Lamb of God, has saved all the faithful from eternal death, just as the blood of the Passover lamb on the doorposts of Israelite homes in Egypt saved every family from the final plague of the death of the first-born.
Since we know these things, let us pay attention to the Gospel of salvation, and obey God, as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews warns us:
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?
(Hebrews 2:1-4, KJV)
[1] Peter Grant, in the sermon “In What Way Is Jesus Christ Different?” quoted on p.110, Craig Brian Larson & Phyllis Ten Elshof (General Editors): 1001 Illustrations that Connect. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, Christianity Today International, 2008.