“Agnus Dei” (Lamb of God)

Let’s go back to Genesis for a bit and revisit something that is still playing out in our world today.  Then in the same breath we’ll end up in the Book of Revelation.  It’s a long trip for sure, but here we go.   All creation has always been based on separation and that separation is for one purpose: clarification.  God created separation to put room between two contrasting things in order to show their difference, to help make our choices obvious so that, consequently, they should be easier to make.   That clarification shows us Reality, or more specifically- The Way, The Truth and the Light.

Fact is, the first thing God did in Creation was to separate.  In the first words of Genesis, God created the heaven and the earth and divided them from one another.  He separated light from the darkness, separated the day and the night, divided the waters from the waters and created heaven, and then God separated the water from the dry land, created plants and then separated an animal kingdom out of the waters.   And finally, they said ‘let Us make man’ out of the dust of the earth and proceeded to separate man in the Creation of Adam and Eve.  He even divided man and woman again being made of Body, Soul and Spirit.  Later, God found it purposeful to separate the Tree of Good and Evil and set a second tree in the Garden and called it the Tree of Life.  Separation is God’s plan for clarification: contrasting one to express, or make obvious, the other.  In God’s desire for us to see clearly what was best, he made light and dark, good and evil, Love and hate, all recognizable by their proximity.  And again, God separated our Story into two testaments to clarify further the purpose of God.   And now, these thousands of years later we read of the necessity to ‘rightly divide the Word of God’ (2Tim. 2:15), once again to contrast and reveal.  Today, Jesus Christ is that dividing line; He is that clarification of the purpose and character of God.  Jesus came to reveal and to change our understanding of The Father.  As Jesus reminded, no one knows the Father but the Son. (Luke 10:22, John 1:18, John 6:46)  Jesus came with a final authority on the Character and Will of God.  That’s a short Genesis narrative, and now the Revelation look.

For emphasis here, I’d like to use the lyrics to the new Andrew Peterson song. 

That song’s suggestive of the Book of Revelation, chapter 5, where all of creation focuses on one point in time, one man, One Son.  Jesus is/was the greatest of all men, the good Master, the most Wise.   He alone stands as Worthy of all men.  He alone is set apart by God to be seen as Worthy.   Sparing no one- Abraham, Moses, David, all the prophets, and the best of the disciples-He alone is Worthy.  All the other men and women called of God were announcers, pointing to this one man who would be the Way, the only Way.  All those other people surely are in our Hall of Fame, but Jesus Christ exists as the single reference of Faith.  This is the one man that we can never over exaggerate, and almost all the things we say concerning him under exaggerate him.  Our confession, our Life purpose, should be to say and believe those things about Jesus Christ without reservation, without constriction, that the Father says about him.  Measuring him or what he has done by anything we hear or see in the earth is simply shrinking back from the very Creator of all things, shrinking the influence of the One that holds the whole thing together.

This quote’s from The Message Bible, Colossians Chapter 1: ‘We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen.  We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created.  For everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels – everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him.  He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment.  And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together… He was supreme in the beginning—and leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end.’

‘His people’ were looking for a powerful King; what they got was a Lamb led to slaughter.  They didn’t recognize him because he didn’t come as they imagined.  However, He has done perfectly and exactly what He came to do.  Now the only question is (it’s the same one those people had to answer) what are we to do with Him?  That seems to be the most forgotten question in our journey.  Not simply what’s the world going to do about him, but simply what will we do with him individually.  He may have not, in his death, appeared to do so, but did this Jesus reconciled the whole cosmos to himself and reclaimed the Garden again for believers to walk and talk with God.  Is he alone worthy of such an accomplishment?

Look all around the world or scan the pages of history and no other man stands out as tried and true like this one does.  This is the Light of man, the Way, the one who offers all Truth to us.  He alone is the singular Hope for our futures, either on earth or after earth.  Simply let us trust in Him.  That’s the Gospel.  There will be no written test in the end, no required number of scriptures memorized, no hidden message that has not been revealed; the end will only find us Faithful to Who He was or unfaithful to all He was.  Who we say Jesus is challenges us each day to make Him the center of our belief system, the center of our Trust.   I’ve learned, at least from Jane’s and my experience, that knowing God’s more a matter of subtraction rather than addition.  By that I mean that the more I learn of Him the more I discover the simplicity of Him, the simple Love, the simple Hope.  Complications fall away, mysteries shrink, the accumulation of more and more facts and histories evaporate and I’m left with the simple: ‘Jesus Loves Me This I Know, because the Bible told me so.’

‘“I saw a scroll in the right hand of the One Seated on the Throne.  It was written on both sides, fastened with seven seals.  I also saw a powerful Angel, calling out in a voice like thunder, “Is there anyone who can open the scroll, who can break its seals?”  There was no one–no one in Heaven, no one on earth, no one from the underworld–able to break open the scroll and read it.  I wept and wept and wept that no one was found able to open the scroll, able to read it.  One of the Elders said, “Don’t weep.  Look- the Lion from Judah, the Root of David’s Tree has conquered.  He can open the scroll; can rip through the seven seals.”’ (Revelation Chapter 5)

Yes, there is but one worthy.   He is the one we call Christ, Lord, Savior, King.  The one with the only authority to say He’s the Son of God and at the same time be at home in our hearts.  He uniquely knows The Father and came specifically to share Him with us.