In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Our Scripture Readings today speak of the blessed truth that Christ’s saving mission is for all people … both Jew and Gentile. In the Gospel Reading, we hear it in John the Baptist’s witness to the fact that Jesus is truly the promised Messiah … “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (Jn 1:29). By saying this, John makes it clear that Christ’s saving mission isn’t just for God’s Old Testament people, but for the world … for all people.

By divine inspiration, the Prophet Isaiah also describes this universal aspect of Christ’s saving mission.

He makes clear that the Messiah’s saving work goes beyond Jacob’s descendants to all the peoples of the earth, saying, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth“ (Is 49:6).

Likewise, in today’s Epistle Reading, St. Paul refers to Christ’s holy Church as “all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord” (1 Cor 1:2).

Christ our Lord came to accomplish His saving mission for all people as the once-for-all sacrifice for our sins. So, on this Second Sunday after Epiphany, let us consider, hold fast to, and rejoice in the blessed reality of John’s proclamation that Jesus is – beyond all doubt – “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

John is making a connection for his hearers by proclaiming that Christ is “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” … a connection to the Old Testament and the Temple sacrifices. Because they lived before the birth of our Savior, God’s Old Testament people would have understood the Temple to be the place where God met with them … the place where God’s Mercy Seat was set atop the Ark of the Covenant. Moses describes it for us:
“And he made a mercy seat of pure gold … And he made two cherubim of gold. He made them of hammered work on the two ends of the mercy seat, one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end … The cherubim spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, with their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat were the faces of the cherubim.” (Ex 37:6-9).

In that place, God promised to meet with His people. So, the people came. They made their pilgrimage to that holy ground … to the place where God was present with His grace and mercy. Why did they go? They went because their souls were troubled … restless … uneasy. As with us, God’s holy Law drove them to seek the help they needed … the help that only comes from outside ourselves. And that help was only offered at the Temple from the Mercy Seat of God.

But also like us, the sins that made their souls troubled, restless, and uneasy prevented them from being able to pass behind the veil … to enter into the Holy of Holies. It’s our sins that hold the veil in place and prevent us from being able to enter into God’s presence … from approaching His Mercy Seat. As God said to Moses, “you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live” (Ex 33:20). We are sinful, and, as the Prophet Habakkuk describes it, God is “of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong” (Hab 1:13).

Sin separates us from God and its wages is death. But often we don’t even recognize our sins. They’ve been with us for so long that we’ve become comfortable with them … even becoming dismissive of them with the many excuses we come up with in our hearts that are corrupted by original sin. But every sin … the outward ones, the secret ones, the ones against our neighbors … all sins are sins against God no matter how much we try to trivialize them, dismiss them, or excuse them.

God’s Old Testament people went to the Temple, but their sins kept them from entering behind the veil to the place of God’s mercy. But God also placed His priest in the Temple … to go behind the veil … to pour out the blood of the sacrificial lamb in our place. Just as Abraham said to Isaac, “God Himself will provide the lamb” (Gen 22:8). Abraham believed this … he had faith in this … “and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Rom 4:3).

The blood of the sacrificial lamb was a promise from God of the greater sacrifice … the perfect sacrifice … the once-for-all sacrifice that was yet to come. That’s why we read in Hebrews that “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb 10:4). So why did God institute the sacrifices of old? He did so as a constant reminder of the promise that He would “provide for Himself the Lamb.” And the Old Testament saints received God’s mercy … received forgiveness and salvation … in the same way we receive those gifts: by grace, through faith … faith in the promised once-for-all sacrifice.

Enter John the Baptizer: the last of the Old Testament Prophets and the Forerunner of Christ. He lifts his finger and points us to Him who is that once-for-all sacrifice and the fulfillment of our salvation: “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” Behold Christ: the One in whom our weary hearts find peace … the One in whom our troubled consciences find rest … the One who comes to bear your sin and the sin of the whole world.

In Hebrews we read that “when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb 9:11-12). Behold Jesus who is both Priest and Sacrifice. On the altar of the cross, He offered up Himself … pouring out His atoning blood for the sins of the world.

We know that, as Scripture says, “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). But, out of God’s abundant grace and mercy, it is the death of Jesus – the only-begotten Son of God – that satisfies this payment. And His death satisfies the payment for your salvation in full. Jesus is the promised Lamb that God has provided … the final Sacrifice. And since Jesus accomplished this once-for-all sacrifice, the Old Testament sacrificial system has come to an end … the veil of the Temple has been torn in two.

And having offered Himself up as the once-for-all Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, Christ now intercedes for us as our Great High Priest and comes to us in His very Body and Blood from the Mercy Seat of His altar. In this place, God has promised to meet with His people. Why do we come? We come because our souls are troubled … restless … and uneasy on account of our many sins. In Christ’s Word our weary hearts find peace. In Christ’s Sacraments our sin-troubled consciences find rest. “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Behold Jesus.

I leave you this day with a passage from the 19th century Norwegian Lutheran Bishop Nils Laache whose devotional book has been a comfort to me for many years:
“[Christ] takes away the sin of the world, which is laid on Him at Baptism and since that time weighs heavy upon Him so that He feels the weight more and more. The wrath and judgment of the Righteous One for our unrighteousness, all our weakness, all our sickness of body and soul unto the pain of death and condemnation, lies upon Him. He bears it and carries it away, takes away the punishment and takes away the power of ungodliness, so that sin should neither condemn us nor rule over us. He bears the sin of the world, of Jews and Gentiles, from the first soul on earth to the last. What a burden! But what grace for us! This is for us! Praise to the Lamb: now God does not see my sin on me anymore, for my sin too is taken away, the many and the great sins which otherwise should press me down into hell!

“Now we know where our sins are laid; the Law lays them on our conscience and sticks them in our chest, but God takes them from us and lays them on the shoulder of the Lamb. ‘I know your sins are too hard for you to bear,’ God says, ‘so look, I lay them on My Lamb and take them away from you.’ This you should believe; for when you do, you are free from sin … (Luther)”. (Laache, Book of Family Prayer, 188-189).

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Pr. Jon Holst