During Old Testament times, worshiping idol gods was rampant. God chose the people of Israel to be His very own people. They were commanded to worship Him, the One True Living God, and to worship Him only. In Deuteronomy 7:6(NLT), Moses told them, “For you are a holy people, who belong to the Lord your God. Of all the people on earth, the Lord your God has chosen you to be his own special treasure.” God loved them, but they were not always true to our Heavenly Father and would abandon their commitment to Him. Their disobedience to God caused them to be enslaved by the Egyptians, and the Egyptian taskmasters brutalized them and worked them to the bones. God heard their cries, and He chose Moses to lead His people out of slavery.
Although society and the world try to get us to believe something different, there is a definitive line between good and evil, love and hate, and truth and lies. There isn’t a place in the middle where an individual may think he or she can be comfortable or safe. God has made it as clear to us, as He did to the Children of Israel, that we must have no other god other than Him. It is impossible to commune with both light and darkness, and God commands that we must totally abandon any fellowship or friendship with the darkness of idolatry in order to be covered under His provision, protection, and care.
As God prepared His people to be delivered from slavery by Him through Moses, God gave Moses and Aaron, Moses’s helper, a set of instructions. He told them in Exodus 12:3,5-7(ESV), “3 Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 6 and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. 7 “Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.”
Our Blessed Heavenly Father set a precedent or pattern in the deliverance of His people in Old Testament times. Just as they desperately needed to be delivered from Egyptian slavery and needed to prepare for it, we desperately needed to be delivered from the bondage of satan’s darkness as well. Because of Adam’s and Eve’s sin, everyone born after them were born in sin as well, but God had a plan of redemption for us through the Lord Jesus Christ, and through him, we have been rescued and redeemed!
John the Baptist was sent by God to prepare the hearts and minds of people to receive the Messiah. John the Baptist said of himself in John 1:23(NLT), “I am a voice shouting in the wilderness, ‘Clear the way for the LORD’s coming!’” In the New Testament, God sent John the Baptist to prepare the way for Christ. In the Old Testament, in Exodus 12, God instructed His people to prepare as well. They had to prepare for their deliverance through Moses, and they did this by preparing the Passover meal. For this meal, they had to choose a male lamb that was without blemish or imperfection. They were instructed to roast the lamb on the fire and eat it with unleavened bread—which is bread without yeast. The whole lamb, with all its parts intact, had to be roasted and not boiled or eaten raw.
They were commanded to put the blood from the lamb on their doorposts, and this would be a sign to God. When the terrible curse of the plague came to pharaoh and the Egyptians for refusing to release God’s people from slavery, the curse would pass over the homes and dwellings of the Israelites if they had been obedient to God’s instructions, which was to place the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. He said in Exodus 12:13-14(ESV), “13 The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. 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. 14 This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast.”
Jesus Christ is the Messiah, and his coming was prophesied in the Old Testament, thousands of years before he was born. John the Baptist was sent by God to prepare the people for the coming of Jesus Christ. Matthew 3:1-2(NLT) says, “In those days John the Baptist came to the Judean wilderness and began preaching. His message was, “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” John preached that Jesus Christ would be separating those who denied the sovereignty of God and those who will follow Him through His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, the one He sent to save the entire world.
Matthew 3:13 also tells us that Jesus Christ traveled to the Jordan River to be baptized by John the Baptist. At first, John tried to talk Jesus out of this. In Matthew 3:14-15, John told Jesus that he should be the one doing the baptizing, but Jesus Christ told him that things had to be carried out just as God requires. So, John, agreed and baptized our Master Jesus.
One day, when John saw Jesus Christ walking toward him, John 1:29-30(NLT) tells us he said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! He is the one I was talking about when I said, ‘A man is coming after me who is far greater than I am, for he existed long before me.’” John didn’t recognize Jesus Christ as the Messiah initially, but he was baptizing with water so that the Messiah would be revealed. God had told John the Baptist that the man on whom he would see the Spirit descending and resting like a dove is the one that God had sent to save the world.
God’s Word demonstrates that animals symbolize very important truths. In Old Testament times, God instructed His people to offer a sacrifice of a lamb so they would be saved from the curse. John the Baptist called Jesus Christ the ‘Lamb of God’ because Jesus was that Passover lamb. Through his sacrifice, he saved us from the curse of sin, darkness, and death. 1Peter 1:18-19(NLT) declares, “18 For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver. 19 It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God.” Jesus Christ is the Chosen One of God. He gave his life on the Cross of Calvary, and our hearts should swell with gratitude for all that God has done for us through His beloved Son, the Lamb of God!■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
English Standard Version (ESV)
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001, 2007, 2011, 2016 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“The Lamb of God!”, written for 4theChristianman.com. Copyright© 2023. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.