Behold the Lamb of God

There was a man named Abraham. He was a follower of the one true God, and God was pleased with him. One day God spoke to Abraham and God told him to go to a certain mountain and sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham did not understand why Goid told him to do that, but he obeyed. They travelled for three days-a little group of four-Abraham, his son Isaac, two servants and a donkey. At last they had come to the place to which God had sent them. The two servants and the donkey had remained at the foot of the trail while the old man and his son had together begun to climb the mountain. The boy carried wood for a burnt offering. The old man, Abraham his father, carried in his hands the fire and the knife.

"But my father", exclaimed the boy as they neared the mountain top, "behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham look at his beloved son and answered him with the words, "My son, God will provide Himself a lamb for the burnt offering."

Yet at this moment, Abraham with a broken heart was obeying God's strange command to him that said, "Take now thy son whom thou lovest, and get thee to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering." Then came the moment when the lad lay bound upon the stone altar he had helped his father build, and Abraham's knife was raised to slay his son. "Abraham, Abraham." A cry from heaven came. The angel of God spoke. "Lay not thine hand upon the lad!" And Abraham looked and saw a ram caught by its horns in the thicket. This he took, and offered it up in his son's stead.

Many hundreds of years later a prophet stood upon the streets of a city in the country of Abraham. This prophet, John, saw a certain man approaching him, and pointing to this one, he said to the two disciples, "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." At that instant, the two disciples turned to follow this sinless One. His name was Jesus Christ.

Andrew was one of the two disciples who followed Jesus Christ on that day. Three years later Andrew looked, and behold Jesus Christ walked beneath a heavy wooden cross and climbed the hill Calvary outside the city. Different from the sacrifice of Abraham, God spared not His Son. Jesus died as did the ram. There He was crucified, dying in the company of two thieves who were punished for their crimes. Jesus Christ died; His blood had been shed as God's sacrifice for man's sins.

Then Andrew remembered the prophecy, "Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He, His ownself, bare our sins in His own body on the tree." The Gospel further brings the good news that "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. God spared not His own Son but gave Him up for us all." After three days Jesus Christ was proved to be God with power, by His resurrection from the dead. Now "He is able to save to the uttermost all them that come unto God by Him, because He ever lives. He is the One that lived and was dead, and is alive forevermore."