Jesus: The
Sin Removalist
“The next day John saw Jesus coming towards
him, and said, ‘Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’” John 1:29.
Introduction
Jesus
is referred to by various descriptive names in the Bible. In one place the
Apostle Paul refers to Jesus “Our Passover.” In another place Jesus refers to
Himself as the bread from heaven. He calls Himself the Vine and also the Good
Shepherd who lays down His life for His sheep. He says elsewhere, “I am the
door.” We see in the verse of Scripture before us that Jesus is called the Lamb
of God. Therefore, it would be good to do what John Baptizer is inviting us to
do. There’s Jesus walking towards you. Look at Him as He draws nearer to you.
Now,
if you’re anything like me, you’ll have a load of sin you’ll be wanting rid of.
And, since Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, who
better than Jesus is there to take away your sins from you?
The
general gist of what we’re looking at in the following is this: Keep on handing over your sins to Jesus
Christ the Sin Removalist.
The Pick-up
Each of us has a load of sin we need removed. According to the Bible we live in a
world full of sin[1]
and that each one of us is full of sin.[2]
Now, when the Garbos[3]
go on strike the garbage piles up in the street! Sometimes the garbage piles so
high the Government has to send in the army to remove it. Sin is the pile of
rotting Garbage that comes between us and God. And God won’t come near us until
the garbage and its stench is removed. Therefore God sent His Son Jesus Christ to
remove the sin of the world. God loaded the sins of His people onto the back of
His Son. Then God incinerated our sin. The incinerator is Calvary’s cross. God
poured out His fiery wrath upon His Son as He hung on a cross with all our sin.
Jesus Christ, then, is the Sin Removalist!
Now
then, since each one of us contributes to the sin of the world, each of us has
a load of sin that needs to be incinerated on Christ’s cross. We know that
Christ died for the sins of His people some 2000 years ago. I wasn’t around
then and neither were you. However, Scripture tells us that Jesus Christ is the
same yesterday, today and forever.[4]
Therefore we today can look to Him and seek Him to take away our sins for us. Otherwise,
at the end of your life you’ll be left with a pile of rotten sin on your back
with no one to remove it. And, according to Scripture, the God who hates all
sin will pour His fiery wrath upon you. Horrible as it sounds, this means that
you will be incinerated forever, which means eternal conscious torment in the
fires of hell!
Now,
I know that hell is not a popular subject nowadays. And who likes talking about
a place about which Jesus says, “It is
better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes,
to be cast into hell fire – where their worm does not die and the fire is not
quenched.” Mark 9:47. It’s a picture of the dump outside of the city of
Jerusalem. The carcasses and the offal of the sacrificed animals were thrown
into the dump and burnt. Those carcasses around the edge of the fire were full
of worms and maggots. It’s a horrible thought and who in their right mind would
want to spend an eternity there, especially those who have seen the Lamb who takes
away the sin of the world! But it’s all to do with sin, isn’t it? – the sin of
unbelief which is prevalent today.
Think
about it, every time you break even the least of God’s commandments you are
throwing another piece of rotten garbage on the street! And, just as you can be
fined if caught littering on the street, so God holds each one of us accountable
for every one of our sins. However, the penalty is not a slap on the wrist. And
what is sin? “Sin is the want of
conformity unto, or transgression of, any law of God, given as a rule to the
reasonable creature.”[5]
I’m
sure you reckon that you are reasonable creature. You have the God given
ability to reason whether something’s right or wrong. And of course we apply
our reasoning in light of what the Bible says is right and wrong. We measure
whether a thing is right or wrong against what God says in His Word.
Now
let’s test our ability to reason: Is it right or wrong to murder your next
door neighbour? Instead of borrowing sugar, you kill him for no reason, is
that a right or wrong thing to do? It’s a wrong thing to do, isn’t it? But what
makes it wrong? If you are one of those who been brought up to think we were
not created by God to be His image but that we all evolved accidently from
slime you’ll have some troubling answering that question. How can it be morally
wrong to rearrange a bunch of chemicals, i.e., murder someone – if that’s all
we are? Well, the Bible says God designed and made us in His own moral image. So,
we’re not a bunch of atoms and gases that accidentally bumped into each other
one dark night Therefore it’s wrong to murder your neighbour because God who
made us says so!
So,
let me state again that sin is ANY failure to measure up to whatever God
requires, or any disobedience to any of His commands given as a rule for
creatures with reason. Does that sound reasonable to you? We all know about the
sins we see each other do outwardly. But what about those sins we commit
inwardly? What about those invisible sins, the ones that no one else can see?
No one but God that is! There’s a spiritual dimension to sin then.
You’re
sinning inwardly by hating someone in your heart! You’re committing murder in
your heart. You’re sinning inwardly or spiritually by lusting after another’s
wife or husband! You’re committing adultery with him or her in your heart! I
can’t see what goes on in your heart, but God can! However, I know that I
sometimes pile up garbage in my own heart. How about you? I’ve got one or two old
banana skins in my heart. They cause me to slip from time to time. Therefore, I
need to watch out for the Sin Removalist and have Him take them away!
What was the first piece
of garbage to be produced in the world? It was a piece of rotten fruit, wasn’t it? It
wasn’t rotten when it was hanging of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil
in the Garden. But it started to rot when Adam sunk his pearly-whites into it! God
had told Adam not to eat the fruit of that tree. Did Adam listen? No! So the
rotten garbage of sin began to pile up.
As
Adam and Eve had children it began to pile up more and more in the streets of
the world. It was Adam then, who produced the first load of rotten garbage.[6]
And each one of his descendants all the way down to you and me have added to
it.[7]
The sin of the world, then, is the sin that separates us from God. And the
garbage dump is a place full of filth and disease. And so became the world
after Adam disobeyed God. However, God
sent His beloved Son into the world to remove the world’s garbage. So, Christ
is the Sin Removalist who takes away the stinking load. “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
When
I lived in Canada I had a friend who had his own garbage removal business. I gave
him a hand for a few days. It was nothing like what we now have here in
Brisbane Australia, you know, where the guy sits in his cabin and the big arms
pick up you wheelie-bin. No! Back then wheelie bins hadn’t caught on in Canada
yet. So what we had to do was run after the garbage truck and throw the garbage
bags into the back of it! I did this for three days one hot summer. Yuk! (And
the pay was even worse!) But anyway, he sometimes got called out at night to
pick up a dead deer or elk or even a moose from lying in the middle of the
road. I gave him a hand one night to manhandle a dead white-tailed deer into
the back of his wagon. I was thankful that it was the freezing cold winter and
not the roasting hot summer. For you know how terrible is the smell of rotten
carcass in summer! Well, the sin of the world has the stench of death clinging
to it! The trouble is that we’re so used the smell that we hardly even notice
it. However, the Son of God came willingly to take away the sin of the world. God
loaded the sin of the world onto His Son’s back.
Jesus
became the scapegoat for all those who lay their sins upon Him. The Bible illustrates
it like this: In Leviticus 16:6 we’re told that once a year, “Aaron the high priest, shall take from the
congregation of the children of Israel two kids of the goats as a sin offering.”
And according to Exodus 12:5 it was permissible to use either a young sheep or
goat. Sometimes it’s really hard to tell the difference between and sheep and
goat anyhow. Anyway, the sheep or goat had to be without a blemish on it. Then
lots would be drawn to decide which of the two would get to do what. One of the
animals would be sacrificed as a sin offering required by God, while the other
would be set free in the wilderness.
Now,
both the scapegoat and the sacrificial goat picture what Jesus did as the Lamb
of God. Take the scapegoat. Israel would confess her sins before God. Then the
high priest would lay his hands on the head of the goat. As he held its horns
the sin of the people would symbolically be transferred or imputed onto the
back of the goat. The young goat or sheep would be led into the wilderness. It
was the lamb that takes away the sin of the people. It was their scapegoat. Of
course, it didn’t really take away their sin. The scapegoat just reminded them
of their need to have their sins removed. And as for the other young sheep or
goat, well, after the sin of the people was symbolically transferred or imputed
to it, it was sacrificed.
Now
then, it’s not hard to see how this applies to Jesus. Think about the time when
Jesus was baptized by John. Mark 1:4-5 says, “John came baptizing in the wilderness and preaching a baptism of
repentance for the remission of sins. And all the land of Judea, and those from
Jerusalem, went out to Him and were all baptized by him in the Jordan River,
confessing their sins.”
So
get the picture, the people of God are confessing their sins. And having water
applied to them as a the picture of the washing away of the filth and stench of
sin. And then we read in John 1:29, “The
next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold! The Lamb of God
who takes away the sin of the world!” After Jesus was baptized with
water and the Holy Spirit, Mark in his gospel says 1:12, “Immediately the Spirit drove Him into the
wilderness.” Therefore Jesus fulfilled the role of the Old Testament
scapegoat.
But
what about the other young goat or sheep that was to be sacrificed? Well, Jesus
fulfilled that role too, didn’t He? The justice of God demands that our sins be
paid for, either by you or a substitute. Christ is our scapegoat who takes away
our sin. And He is our sacrificial Lamb who pays the debt we owe to God for our
sin. So then, we’ve seen that Jesus Christ the Sin Removalist. And each of us
needs Him to pick up our sins and take them away. Even as we have our garbage
picked up and taken away.
Now
we need to consider the place where Jesus went when He took away our sins.
The Delivery
Jesus took away our sins
upon the cross, didn’t He? My friend, the one who owned his own garbage truck had to go to the
city dump every time his truck was full. He would take the Perimeter Highway
which had to be the bumpiest road in Winnipeg! Before they would let him into
the dump they would get him to drive unto a platform. They would weigh the
contents of his truck and charge him certain dumping fees according to the
weight of his load. Jesus had the weight of the world’s sin upon Him. And the
price He had to pay to dump our sin was death (as per the wages of sin[9]).
The bumpy
road to the cross was slow and painful for Jesus. Behold! The Lamb of God
betrayed and arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane! Behold! The Lamb of God as
they took Him away to sacrifice Him. Behold Him as they paraded Him down the
street. Behold Him as they spat upon Him as he walked along the road to His
death. Behold Him as His legs buckled under the weight of our sin, your sin and
my sin. Behold Him as He set His face to take the muck and filth of our sin to
deliver it to the city dump.
If
you want to see what it’s like to be in hell then look no further than Christ
on the cross. Listen to a Man whose soul feels forsaken by God. Hear Him cry
out, “My God, My God why have You
forsaken Me? ... My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and My tongue clings to
My jaws; You have brought Me to the dust of death.” Psalm 22:1,15.
But
see if you can catch His eye before He goes there. See if you can catch His eye
as He walks along the road. See if you can get Him to take your sin with Him to
the dump too! If you can see Him you won’t be too late to catch Him. He won’t
race away. He’ll wait for you. That’s why He came. He came to take away the sin
of the world.
Confess
your sins and repent of them. Place them on the back of Jesus as He struggles
up Calvary’s hill. Only He can bear your sins. He can bear the sin of the whole
world! But you have to behold Him in order for Him to take away your sins.
What’s
it like when you forget to put out the garbage and you miss the garbage
collection? You’re left with a bin full of garbage and you have to try to dump
it by yourself, don’t you? I remember when we were out in Springsure (Central
Queensland) I missed the garbage collection. Of course it was about 40 degrees
Celsius in the shade. So I loaded the maggot infested garbage into the church’s
new car and drove along the dusty road to the village dump.
Jesus
Christ carried our sin on His back and He walked to the city dump. He made one
trip and one trip alone when He went to the cross with our sin. But let’s say a
person missed out on Jesus taking away his sin. Let’s say this person was you.
Would you be happy to deal with your own sin? What do you think will happen
when you get to the city dump? (For that is where God will send you.) What will
you do with all your sin when you are weighed on the weigh scales? What will
you use for money to pay to dump your sins when all you have with you is
garbage? What will you do when you’ve used up all the credit God has given you and
now at the end of your life He’s demanding payment?
God
demands the penalty of death for sin and there you and I are sitting with a
whole life full of it! So it’s a bit useless to say that you don’t have any sin
since God is weighing you on the scales. And the trouble is that God demands
payment for even the smallest of sins – the payment is death. Look at Jesus on
the cross if you don’t believe me – that’s the price of sin! And the sin He had
wasn’t even His sin for He was sinless! No, it was the sin of all those who
look to Jesus to be delivered from their sins. It’s better to catch the eye of
Jesus and have Him take your sins away now, because if you die without them
being removed, you’ll spend eternity paying for them. However, always remember that
God forgives those who have had their sin removed by the Sin Removalist.
What’s
it like then to have your sins forgiven? Well, Romans 8:1 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation to
those who are in Christ Jesus.” We know we are in Christ Jesus, and we
know our sins have been taken away, when we are beholding Christ. When you keep
on looking for Christ and keep on looking to Christ you know you haven’t missed
the Sin Removalist. For He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the
world!
Conclusion
Always remember that Jesus is The Sin
Removalist. He is the One who has picked-up the sins of those who keep on
keeping their eyes on Him . He is the One who has delivered us from our sins by
taking them to Calvary’s cross. So keep on beholding the Lamb of God who takes
away the sin of the world. And, to keep your conscience clear, as you become
aware of them, keep on handing over your sins to Jesus Christ the Sin
Removalist.
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