Greetings in the Name of the Lord, Jesus Christ!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and friends. I was blessed to be with my mother, brothers, and eight nieces and nephews, and it was such a joyful time! God is good!

As we look toward the second Sunday of Advent, we are considering what it means to call Jesus the Lamb of God. That image has profound implications. We are reminded of the story of Abraham as the Lord told him to offer his son as a sacrifice. Isaac figured out something must be wrong, and he asked his father where the sacrifice was to come from. Abraham prophetically said, "God himself will provide the lamb." As the Lord provided the ram in place of Isaac, he has provided Jesus Christ in place of us.

In Exodus 12, during the time of the Ten Plagues, God instructs Moses to have the people mark their doorposts with the blood of the lamb so that the angel of death would pass over their houses. Each household marked by the blood was saved, but every household without the blood lost their firstborn sons.

John the Baptist leaves no doubt exactly who this lamb is. As soon as he sees Jesus in John 1:29, he proclaims, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!" Jesus, the Lamb of God, was crucified during Passover, becoming the lamb whose blood covers all our sins.
In Revelation 5, the Lamb of God is no longer victim, he is victor. When the Apostle John wails that no one is worthy to open the scroll, he sees a vision of the Lamb "looking as if it had been slain." The hosts of heaven sing, "You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth" (Rev. 5:9-10).

During the Christmas season, it is easy to focus on the sweet little babe in the manger. But the sweet little babe in the manger did not come to bring us a cheerful holiday season once a year. He came to die. He came to die because our world and we ourselves are broken. We have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. He came because he loved us too much to leave us there. He came to pay the price, to purchase us to "be a kingdom and priests to serve our God." We were not just purchased from something, we were purchased for something. Jesus paid the ultimate price so that we could be called the children of God, sent to proclaim the Good News to the world.

Brothers and sisters, God has provided the Lamb, the Lamb who was slain and the Lamb who will reign forever. May the Lamb of God, the Prince of Peace, reign in our hearts this season and every season as we long for his return.