John 1 (part II)

All I know about sheep you could put on the back of a postage stamp. As a matter of fact, I think I must have been in my forties before I had any contact with the gentle creatures at all. I had been living in a rural area of North Florida for about three years when a man and his son bought the land next to my house. Everyone else in the area raised cattle or hogs. Imagine my surprise, will you, when I awoke one morning to see fifty or sixty sheep grazing in the pasture next to mine.

There I was, minding my own business at six o'clock in the morning when all of a sudden ... Baaaaaaaa. It sounded like thousands of them right outside my window. Of course there weren’t literally thousands, but I knew right away that we were dealing with something surreal, otherworldly.

So here's what little I know from observing sheep from the other side of the fence:
• sheep don't bite grass like cattle do; they pull it up.
• sheep are harmless
• sheep are vulnerable to predators
• sheep are almost childlike
• Sheep aren’t all that smart.
Personally, I couldn't imagine taking any one of those trusting souls in my hand and slitting their throats with a knife. But that was the life of most of my neighbor's sheep: he sold them to a merchant in Miami who sold them to members of the occult to be used in animal sacrifices. Even though animal sacrifice is disgusting to us post-modern types, the practice of sacrificing sheep for one religious reason or another goes back thousands of years. Most of the time people did it to atone for sin or appease some deity.

As a matter of fact, the ritual sacrifice of innocent animals began the biblical narrative that ended with Jesus. You remember the story, of course: Adam and Eve violate the one-law legal code. The ensuing guilt awakens a certain never-before-felt awareness that they are naked, so they hastily prepare a new wardrobe of fig leaves and hide out in the bushes from an approaching creator. He finds their apparel unacceptable and fashions new clothing made of animal skins.

So for the first time in human history, man sins and an innocent animal pays the price. Blood was shed to cover sinful man.

Fast-forward a few years. Moses is doing God’s bidding on that captivity thing. I don’t know why God wanted to choose those whining, complaining, fickle Israelites for his people, but he did. So he chooses a reluctant leader in Moses and begins to work his miracles. Flies, frogs, bloody water … all kinds of revolting plagues befall the Egyptians in an effort to persuade Pharaoh to let his people go.

Pharaoh stood his ground. You have to respect him for that. But then the mother of all plagues was thrust upon Pharaoh and his people: all the firstborn in all of Egypt died in a single night. The only ones to escape this calamity were the undeserving Jews who killed an animal and sprinkled the animal’s blood on their door posts. Once again, man sins and an innocent animal pays the price.

Perhaps the most riveting story of sacrifice is found in the narrative of Abraham. Remember that he was a hundred years old and his wife was ninety when messengers from the Almighty appeared to him to bring the “good news” that his wife was pregnant. Never mind the fact that this message would by anything but good news to me, it was a different time and a vastly different culture. Abraham was ecstatic.

But as God so often does, he throws what at first appears to be a wet blanket on Abraham’s joy. The only details the Bible gives of Abraham’s response is that he went about the business of doing what God told him to do. It (his response) seems almost matter-of-fact, if you want to know the truth. But surely, something must have been bouncing off the inside of Abraham’s skull, don’t you think.

I don’t know, maybe he was thinking something like, “What? I’ve waited all these years for a son, praying, pleading with God, and now he wants me to take him on the mountain, slit his throat, and offer his body as a burnt offering?”

To make matters worse for Abraham, God’s language seems to be carefully chosen to make certain that Abraham and we get the full personal cost of the sacrifice he is demanding of Abraham – “Take your son, your only son, the son you love…”

To the worldly, it might appear that God is working overtime to make sure that Abraham grasps the enormity of the pain and sense of loss he is about to experience. Unless you are a father, you cannot fully comprehend the sense of panic that begins to take root in your heart when you contemplate the loss of a child. And to entertain the thought that your only child, a child that was given to you in your old age after years of waiting, would be taken away from you is almost unbearable. But to visualize Almighty God commanding you to cut his throat and burn his body?

Of course, God stopped him before he went too far. I’m glad he did because it would be a hard story for me to read.

But the truth is an even greater travesty occurred a couple of thousand years later. John the Baptist says of Jesus, “Look, the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” In John’s account of Jesus’ life, we will see a story of a father who sacrifices his own son. He sends him away from home knowing full well that he will be killed. Furthermore, he will be assassinated by the very ones he is visiting the planet to save. So not only does the father know that the son will die, the son knows it too.

The only problem is, there will be no ram in the thicket this time. This time the son really dies. But just like Abraham received his son back from the dead in a figurative sense, this time the son really is resurrected from the grave. The son dies, but he defies death and bursts forth from the tomb three days later.

So here’s the story: the son accomplishes two things in his appearing on Planet Earth. First of all, he dies and provides for our purification. To all who believe that he is the son of God and that his blood will erase the guilt of every nasty, rotten, vile, evil thing one ever did in life, he gives the right to call oneself a child of God. Freedom from the guilt and penalty of sin. That’s what his death means to us.

Secondly, and this is the really good part, he’s sitting at the right hand of his father right now preparing a place for you to live after you breath your last breath. Get this – he’s paved the way for you to do just what he did – get off the planet alive.

Sometimes I feel so guilty about his death that I can hardly stand it. But I’m glad, on the other hand, that he did die because his blood washing away the filth of my sin was my only hope. If God had not loved me enough to pay the penalty for my sin, I would be in a tough spot.

His mercy is the only shot I have at eternal life. Either he makes me presentable, or I’m toast.

Thank you, God!