This Lamb is Our Life
The Bible calls Jesus the Lamb. Not just any lamb, either, but our precious pet Lamb to whom we are bonded forever in loving companionship. Revelation 7:14b-17 shows us that this Lamb does more than touch our lives. This Lamb is Our Life. April 29, 2007.
Chances are good that your life has been touched by an animal. A childhood pet, for example. The turtle that helped you come out of your shell and interact with people to tell them about this unusual pet. The cat who taught you to land on your feet. The bunny that developed your knack for tender, loving care. Or how about Animal Assisted Therapy? A dog can help an accident victim improve wheelchair skills. A bird can help a stroke victim regain vocal strength and even improve vocabulary. I visit a nursing home where a good-sized dog roams the halls; each resident knows him, and better yet, he knows each resident. That’s the thought behind the Bible’s number one choice when comparing Jesus to an animal. The Bible calls Jesus the Lamb. Not just any lamb, either, but our precious pet Lamb to whom we are bonded forever in loving companionship. And this Lamb does more than touch our lives; This Lamb is Our Life.
His death is our forgiven life
The parents stood over the hole in the backyard with their two young children and some neighborhood kids. Dad lowered the airtight Rubbermaid container into the ten gallon grave. Through streaming tears, each of the family members eulogized Ninja, their cat, who had been run over by a car. The death of a pet can really hurt. Especially the indiscriminate and unnecessary death of a pet like being hit by a car or eating pet food laced with rat poison. The Bible reacts to the death of our Lamb, however, not with regret but relief. It’s not that our Lamb’s kidneys were failing and he needed to be put to sleep so that we’re relieved he’s free from pain. What relieves us is that our Lamb did experience pain. Lots of pain. Our pain. Our neighbor’s pain. The whole world’s pain. And we know pain, don’t we?
This section of Revelation confronts pain when a heavenly being points to the glorified believers in heaven and tells John that they are “coming out of the great tribulation.” One by one, as believers die, they escape the pain of this world and their souls enter the bliss of heaven while their bodies remain in the grave – until the bodily resurrection on Judgment Day when the dead bodies will rise and be reunited with their souls in heaven. So the great tribulation is not some seven-week catastrophe or a climactic surge of evil in the last few hours before Jesus returns on Judgment Day. The great tribulation is now. It’s here in Milwaukee. It’s in your home. In your heart. In your relationships. In your behavior. In your memory. It’s pain. The pain of guilt recognizing that I have hurt the ones I love and failed Jesus. The pain of regret wishing the words could be snatched out of the air or the situation rewound to the beginning with some magic remote control. The pain of worry dreading a head on collision with tomorrow. It’s also the pain of being hurt by others. This world is filled with hurt and pain. Our lives are filled with hurt and pain. But our Lamb once said, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). He knows our pain and cures it.
Guilt, regret, hurt, and pain are all overcome in our lives by the death of our Lamb. “Who is a God like you?” we ask with the prophet Micah. “Who pardons sin and forgives the transgression” (Micah 7:18)? The answer is here in Revelation: our Lamb is the God who pardons and forgives. The guilt, and regret, and hurt, and pain all crash down on our Lamb like a 40-ton truck rolling over a pet. Our guilt. Our regret. Our hurt. Our pain. Crushing him with their judgment in one, final act of death on the cross. “God, our heavenly Father, has been merciful to us, and has given his only Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” Do you remember hearing those words in the absolution earlier? Do you believe those words? Powerful, Biblical words from 1 John chapter 2. “Atoning sacrifice.” That means our Lamb experienced the spiritual death of God’s judgment in our place so that we will never experience such a curse. Our sins have already been judged on the cross in the death of our Lamb. Our precious pet has suffered and died and been buried, but his death is not a mistake. His death is our forgiven life. The heavenly being now describes us this way: “they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
In case you missed it, yesterday was “National Bulldogs are Beautiful Day.” A group of Milwaukeeans and their bulldogs (with names like Droopy and Stinky) got together to celebrate the true beauty of these animals which is not so obvious from their smashed faces and sloppy appearance. In this world of trouble our beauty is not so obvious unless we look in faith at what true beauty really is. And we see that we have no stains on our white robes of forgiven purity. Washed in the blood of the Lamb our presence in God’s sight radiates with perfection right now. His atoning sacrifice for our sins gives us a forgiven life right now. Any sins we commit are tread underfoot by the stomping of God judgment already pronounced when he had the soldiers pound those nails into the hands and feet of our Lamb. Any guilt we deserve has already been hurled into the depths of the sea – drowned in the flood of our Lamb’s sweat and tears and lost there forever never to be found. Ever. We live a fully forgiven life. This Lamb is Our Life.
His resurrection is our eternal life
While on a guided tour of the holy land a group of passengers on a bus had been told again and again by their guide that shepherds never drive the sheep like cattle but always walk in front, leading them. As the bus came around a curve they looked out the window and saw a flock of sheep being driven by a man yelling at them from behind. A few muffled chuckles perturbed the tour guide enough to stop the bus, get out, and investigate by means of an extended conversation with the man. The guide returned to the bus with a smile of triumph on his face as he announced to the tourists, “He’s not their shepherd, he’s their butcher.” Our pet Lamb was driven to the cross to be butchered by the sentence of our guilt and death, which he accepted as a willing sacrifice. Three days later he rose from the dead in his glorified body to show the world he had conquered sin and death, had opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers, and the victim had become the victor! With the same kind of transformation this section of Revelation switches metaphors so that Jesus our Lamb becomes Jesus our Shepherd – one moment led to the slaughter, the next moment leading us to eternal life. John describes this from his vision of believers enjoying heavenly bliss, “The Lamb at the center of the throne will be their Shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water.”
Ever since his bodily resurrection our Lamb is not on a cross but on a throne. Once the victim now the victor, ruling over sin and death by his resurrection power. With this power he leads us, his helpless sheep, to the waters of eternal life. In ten statements (the number ten indicates completeness and perfection, like getting a score of ten from a panel of judges) John paints for us the picture of heavenly perfection for believers in eternal life:
- “before the throne of God” – the best part of heaven is God’s approachability and his nearness to us
- and it’s not boring monotony, either, but believers in heaven “serve him day and night in his temple” with the very bodies we have now, perfected in glory, and the very skills we have now, but no mistakes
- “he who sits on the throne will spread his tent over them,” means that the ruler of all shares his space with us
- and at this heavenly feast we will never again hunger or thirst, and the sun will not beat down on us like it can do in the Middle East with its scorching heat, relentlessly burning its discomfort and pain into a person’s being, indicating that all the effects of sin, all its discomforts and evils, will never touch us again; nothing will be able to frustrate our eternal bliss
- after the 8th and 9th statements rejoice in the Lamb becoming the Shepherd and leading us to springs of living water, the perfect picture concludes, “and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” God’s gentle touch transforms the water of pain-filled tears into the always fresh spring waters of constantly flowing, eternal life.
You might be surprised that some animals known for their ability to hurt people are helping people. Scorpion venom kills cancerous cells, poison dart frog secretions can bring people out of cardiac arrest, and viper venom is a common ingredient in treating high blood pressure. God’s anger at sin is poisonous enough to punish anyone with painful torture now and a fatal sentence to hell forever. That same God became our pet Lamb, suffered the poison in our place, and then rose victoriously from the dead to win eternal life for us. We now live a fully forgiven life today and look forward to a constantly fulfilling eternal life in heaven. The Lamb is now the Shepherd. The victim is the victor. He lives, and so do we! This Lamb is Our Life. Amen.
Preached at Grace Lutheran Church, Milwaukee, WI (http://www.gracedowntown.org/) on April 29, 2007
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