The Christmas Lamb

            How many lambs were in the manger scene at the Holy Birth in Bethlehem?

            Mary had to give birth in a stable, so there were probably sheep in there. No guarantees, because Luke never mentions any specifically.

            The shepherds were there at one point – but did they bring the sheep? I think it’s unlikely, but it’s a special occasion… Again, there’s nothing that says they did.

            But of course there was ONE lamb present, at minimum.

            The Lamb of God. The Baby Jesus.

            It’s amazing how many times God prepares us for the sacrifice of His Lamb in the Old Testament. Sometimes I struggle to understand how a Jewish student of God’s Law, and of the First Testament, could fail to acknowledge the messiah-ship of Jesus Christ of Nazareth – there are so many places in that set of 39 books, written over almost two millennia, where God “called His shot”, as my pastor puts it. Jesus’ birth, life, death, and resurrection were NOT the “back-up” plan because something went wrong along the way – Jesus’ arrival in Israel two millennia ago was Plan A from the Beginning – from Genesis itself!

            Even in the Garden of Eden, in Genesis 3:15, God tells Satan (in the form of a serpent) à

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed;
he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

            First of all, nowhere else in the Bible is the woman said to have seed; that’s always the man’s part of the equation. (If it's not clear why, check a basic anatomy book or ask your parents for the "birds and bees" talk again.) Who was the one child NOT born from a man’s ‘seed’? 
            Secondly, Satan may bruise Christ – kill him temporarily – but Christ will conquer death itself, and Satan with it. (Satan has yet to serve his sentence, by the way; that happens during the events of Revelation.)

            Yes, God WAS thinking of Christ’s arrival in Israel from the very beginning. Most Bible scholars know that already. But more than that, God was setting up the concept of the Holy Lamb of God from the very beginning as well. There are two stories, both from over a thousand years prior to Christ’s birth, where God showed the Hebrews how sacred this idea of the Holy Perfect Lamb would be.

           One is in Genesis 22. Abraham has finally become a father, and he was well past one hundred by now. His only son, Isaac, is a strapping young lad, capable of carrying firewood up a mountain for his father, so he must be a minimum of a teenager. And then – God moves to test his obedience:

1After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” 3So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. 4On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. 5Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” 6And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. 7And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8Abraham said, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.

9When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. 11But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14So Abraham called the name of that place, “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”

            There is so much within these two paragraphs to digest: the lack of hesitation in Abraham to obey his Lord, even at the cost of his long-prayed-for only son; the location of the sacrifice (Mt. Moriah most likely was also the site of Solomon’s Temple centuries later); the fact that God never intended for Isaac to actually be killed (read verse 2 again: “offer him there as a burnt offering”, not to actually burn him!), and that Abraham had such faith in God that he told the young men that both of them would ‘come again to you’. (It’s been suggested that Abraham thought God would either provide him a new son, or resurrect Isaac, or something else – but there’s no proof of any of that. He simply did what God told him to.)

            But we want to focus on our Christmas Lamb. Notice that God had Abraham prepare a young male (human) in his prime, blameless (as far as the story goes at least), who went willingly to his sacrifice – there’s no way the hundred-and-something year old Abraham was going to force his strapping young son onto the pyre! Isaac was the one carrying the firewood up the mountain – he could’ve defended himself against his father’s efforts with ease had he wanted to.

               Doesn't all of that sound like Someone Else you know?

            Beyond that…What was the answer to Isaac’s question about the sacrifice in verse seven? Abraham said, ‘God will provide for Himself the lamb’ – and He did. He literally provided Himself AS the Lamb, two thousand years later or so. But in the meantime, He provided another lamb: a male sheep, obviously healthy enough to climb the mountain and appear at such a coincidental time, ‘caught in a thicket by his horns’; and as far as we know, blameless and free of blemish.

            And the precedent was set.

            Now, take a look at the creation of Passover, in Exodus 12 à

       3”Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. 4And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. 5Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 6and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs between the evenings.

7“Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 

12”For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. 13The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.”

21Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. 22Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. 23For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you.

46”It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not take any of the flesh outside the house, and you shall not break any of its bones.”

            So: let’s take a closer look at what God’s actually setting up here:

            What’s the sacrifice going to be? “A lamb…without blemish, a male a year old (in the prime of life, in other words)...” Notice, too, that unlike virtually EVERY sacrifice demanded in the rest of the Torah (Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), the poor were NOT allowed to substitute a cheaper animal; instead, they were to pair up with another household if necessary (see v. 4). Oh, and glancing down at verse 46 tells us that we shall not break any of its bones. Psalm 34:20 foretells that the same will be true of Messiah, and John 19:36 notes that “For these things came to pass, that the scripture might be fulfilled, A bone of him shall not be broken.”

            When will the lamb be killed? “Between the evenings”, which means the time from when the sun starts to descend until sundown. Josephus, a historian from the second century AD, wrote that this traditionally meant about 3 p.m. – which ‘coincidentally’ was the same time that Christ died on the cross!

            Was everyone automatically saved? NO! 

          Even if you were Hebrew, you had to put the blood mark on your door with the hyssop branch, or else the Lord would NOT “pass over” your home when He went on His first-born killing spree. Don’t fall for this “we are ALL children of God – a loving God wouldn’t let ANYONE go to Hell!” baloney! If you’re going to choose NOT to tell Him you’re with Him, then you’re on your own, mister! God would prefer you were saved, but more than that, He will follow what YOU choose to do. If you choose not to walk with Him – if you choose not to follow the one instruction He gives you to let Him know you want to walk with Him – He’ll let you have your choice. To me, that’s even MORE loving than “everyone goes to heaven whether they want to or not”!

            And by the way, what WAS that symbol on the doorway? If you follow the directions Moses gives the Hebrews in verse 22 à Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. à by touching the “lintel” (top of the doorframe) and the two doorposts (one on each side), you’ve made a downstroke and a stroke across that, which makes a CROSS.

So, God told Moses to tell his people, Make the Sign of the Cross with the Blood of the Pure Lamb so I Know you want to be Saved.

And today, that is still His command of us. “If you want to be saved, it will take the Blood of the Pure Lamb on the Cross to save you.” It might take some help, as the poorer Hebrew families needed to partner up with someone to achieve it, but you can do it.

God told us, millennia ago, that the Messiah was coming. He knew it in the Garden. He told us through Abraham, and through the Passover.

And He told us at the birth of Christ, more than two thousand years ago. Who were the first people the angels told about the birth of the Savior?

Shepherds.