This message explores the biblical portrayal of Jesus Christ’s dual nature, emphasizing that He is both the sacrificial Lamb of God and the powerful, righteous Lion of Judah. We should move beyond a simplified, domesticated view of a “meek and mild” Savior to fully worship Him as the true King of Kings.
Transcript
Well, we can complain, I suppose, about the theology of that hymn [And Can It Be], but it’s pretty theological. It really is. The theology behind that phrase that Jared was commenting on is technically called the hypostatic union of Jesus. And what that means is that Jesus is absolutely fully God and He is absolutely fully man, and He is one person. One person. And so when we talk about the death of Jesus, there’s a verse in Acts where it talks about what God has purchased with His blood. It’s interesting, isn’t it? So you have that idea. It’s not a stretch for Charles Wesley to use that language when he wrote this hymn at all. It’s a real powerful and wonderful truth that our Savior, the great Lord that He is, came to bring and work redemption for us. That’s really the theme I want to talk about this morning.
Reflecting on God’s Law and Grace
I wanted to pick up from 1 Timothy where we were reading, mainly because I want you to see how my mind was working through this week. Because I’m reflecting on what we’ve been teaching and getting ready to move to, and we have learned a great deal in this chapter about the purpose of the law of God, the abundant grace that we’ve received in Jesus Christ which comes to us like a flood, overflowing, which is capable of removing all our sin. We’ve looked at these truths. We’ve looked at truths about the nature of Christ, who is our hope. At the very beginning of this, Jesus Christ is our hope. And three times in this chapter, He is our Lord. And then we move into some difficult things.
The Importance of Doctrine for a Healthy Church
One of the focuses of this chapter, and one of the things I’ve emphasized as we’ve looked at this over the past several weeks, is that the teaching of the Word of God, doctrine, is how you have a healthy church. And the situation in Ephesus that Timothy is left there to address is that heretics have entered and have taken leadership positions in the church at Ephesus. They’re teaching a strange doctrine. They’re not teaching the truth of the Word of God. And that has to be countered. Before Paul left Timothy there, he dealt with some of the people there himself. And so last week, the last part of what we were looking at in chapter 1 was this beautiful transformation of the Apostle Paul that led him from being the worst of sinners into a true worshiper of God.
And we have just read about this wonderful doxology that Paul addresses to the Lord, to the Father.
Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.
The Redemptive Purpose of Church Discipline
And then it continues. And this is where we continue. Now, one of the objections to doctrinal teaching, or teaching of the biblical truth, people do object to it a lot in churches. People who pastor churches sometimes and people who sit in pews. And the major objection we came up with in the lesson this morning is that it causes division. Well, it does. The truth is, too often, teaching the truth of God’s Word causes a division between those who put their trust in the Word of God and those who reject it. And that’s an inevitable problem. Sometimes when you’re pastoring a church, or if you’re part of any church in any capacity, over time you have people in the church who stop believing. Sometimes they turn apostate or they stop living it. They don’t believe it in reality even if they say they do. And when that happens, something has to take place in the church.
Jesus gave the prescription in Matthew 18 for such a situation. And what you see next, that’s coming up, which I’m not going to go into today, next week we’re going to talk about this doxology and this passage that I’m about to read, but I wanted to read this before we talked about the Lord Jesus this morning because it helps lay the foundation.
This command I entrust to you, Timothy, my son, in accordance with the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you fight the good fight, keeping faith and a good conscience, which some have rejected and suffered shipwreck in regard to their faith. Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, so that they will be taught not to blaspheme.
Now, I’ve had the unfortunate experience before of being part of church situations where you had to deal with discipline with people who were no longer living the faith. And they were doing that in such a way that it was detrimental to the health of the church. And I want you to notice, this passage in particular is salvific. The purpose of all of this is the preservation of the church, but also to give hope to these people who are being disciplined. We’ll talk about that next week. But I wanted to say that when you deal with discipline, a passage like this, wherever it occurs—and it occurs several places in the New Testament—and if you have to put it into practice in an actual situation, you always have people who are troubled by it or have real problems with it. I’ve seen people leave the church because someone was disciplined in the church, who was rightly disciplined. And I’ve had people terribly upset because of the practice of church discipline, but it is a biblical practice, and it is prescribed.
Why is it that we have so much trouble with a passage like this that causes a person to have to deal deeply with their sinfulness so that they will come back to the Lord? That’s the prescription. Remember in Matthew 18, the passage that deals with church discipline begins with the shepherd leaving the ninety-nine sheep and going after the one that’s lost. The idea is redemption and salvation, deliverance. And it’s the same thing here. We’ll look at it next week, but this terrible discipline, putting them out of the church, out of the protection of this grace that they’ve been talking about, is so that they would be taught something. And the idea is redemptive, looking for repentance and restoration. That’s always the case with discipline.
Understanding the Fullness of Christ
So keeping that in mind, the question is, why do we have trouble with this? And I think that part of it is because we grow up in a church, many of us, myself included, and we receive truth, but not all of it. We understand who Jesus is, but not all that He is. We have an outline in our mind that conforms to, but mostly, when we think about Jesus, for example, we think of Him in the very comfortable terms that we grew up with, whatever those are. And sometimes in our Sunday schools, they can be pretty shallow.
So as I was thinking about this this morning, we sang two hymns this morning by Charles Wesley, and they’re good hymns. He wrote some children’s hymns, and they are good hymns too. Here is one hymn, it’s a good hymn. You’ve probably heard it as a child:
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, Look upon a little child; Pity my simplicity, Suffer me to come to Thee.
Remember that hymn? It’s a beautiful little hymn, if you understand what meek and mild means. And meek and mild in the 18th century, when he’s writing this, doesn’t mean what meek and mild means today. And not the first thing that comes to our mind. And so we tend to think about Jesus as soft-spoken. There’s nothing wrong with any of these things, it’s not a wrong teaching, it’s just an incomplete teaching. It frames us to think about Jesus in one way, but we don’t understand who Jesus really is, which would definitely enrich our respect for Him and our love for Him if we understood who He really is better. And so the more we grow in who He is, the better we’ll appreciate it.
You teach the truths about Jesus, His gentle nature, His silence when He’s judged. We taught the truth of His dealing with healing many people and caring for people. And then you have preachers who take some of these things and they present Jesus as a moral teacher. And the most important thing that we can take from Jesus, in the way they frame it, is that He is an example for us to live up to. And so Jesus is sort of a life coach that teaches us to live the way we ought to, and His main job is really to help us feel a little better about ourselves and to do good. And so you end up, if that’s all you’re getting, with a very domesticated Jesus. Sort of like a kitten or a cat that you’ve domesticated. You want to train this cat to do your will, to make you happy, to give you the comfort that you want in those moments.
How dare I say it this way? Jesus isn’t that kind of a cat. Not at all.
God as the Mighty Lion
I’ve been thinking about cats this week. I’ve been thinking about some of the big cats. I noticed in the Old Testament that there are many places in the Bible, and when God uses a figure of speech to describe Himself, we should pay attention to that figure of speech. He’s teaching us something about God. And in the Old Testament, there are lots of passages that portray God as a mighty lion.
So I started looking up things about lions, just to help us with that. Let me give you a few verses so that you know what I’m talking about. God is the lion who brings judgment. In Hosea 5:14, God says through Hosea:
For I will be like a lion to Ephraim, and like a young lion to the house of Judah. I, even I, will tear to pieces and go away, I will carry away, and there will be none to deliver.
And again in Hosea 13:8:
I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs, and I will tear open their breasts; there I will devour them like a lioness, as a wild beast would tear them.
Jeremiah 49:19:
Behold, one will come up like a lion from the thickets of the Jordan against a perennially watered pasture.
If you read Psalm 76 very carefully, God is like a lion over Jerusalem, protecting Jerusalem from its enemies. He will devour the enemies.
So I was thinking about lions. We had one dog in our family lifetime, and he was a pretty good-sized animal. He weighed about 70 pounds. He was kind of fluffy, so he looked bigger than he actually was. And he had a pretty good bark. And when people came to the door, he would bark, and a lot of people wouldn’t want to have anything to do with him, even though he was a lot more like a lamb. A 70-pound dog is a pretty intimidating dog.
Lions don’t weigh 70 pounds. A male lion weighs 570 pounds. They are 7 feet from nose to tail. That’s a big animal. They stand about 4 feet at the shoulder. Can you picture a lion up here today? If there were a lion up here today, what would you be thinking about? Leaving. That’s truth. That’s right.
A Close Encounter with a Lion
Philip Ryken is currently the president of Wheaton College in Chicago. Years ago, I clipped a story he related because he had done a preaching tour in South Africa. And while he was there, he got to visit a lion park near Johannesburg and see the wild lions up close and personal. He says he drove into the first enclosure, and suddenly there were the lions with their whole pride. They drove off to see a male lion, just sort of laying down on the mountain. So he describes what he experienced there:
He was no more than 10 feet away from us, and the only thing separating him from us was the thickness of the windshield. And he looked absolutely magnificent. His tawny mane glowing in the late afternoon sun. His large brown eyes expressing a depth of character, almost it seemed a wisdom. His stately expression conveying a sense of quiet strength, a king among beasts if ever there was one. Suddenly he stood up, and I felt the tingling thrill that only comes in the presence of something that’s truly awesome. Even the simple act of standing up showed the lion’s powerful athleticism. Every muscle of the great beast was alive, and every nerve ending was alert. One had the sense that at that moment, anything might happen. That the lion could do anything he wanted to do, absolutely anything. We were in the presence of greatness, and also danger, and we knew that.
Lions are powerful creatures. And if you were in the presence of a wild African lion, you would pay attention to it.
The Roar of the Lord
The Bible says in multiple places that the voice of the Lord is like the roar of a lion. Amos 3:8:
The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy?
Amos 1:2:
The Lord roars from Zion and utters His voice from Jerusalem.
The roar of the lion is the roar of the Lord. Lions have a mighty voice. When I looked that up this week, I was surprised about two things. One is that creatures and people are often frozen with terror at the roar of the lion. And why is that? Well, for one thing, their range is extremely low, and some of the sounds they voice are below what a human ear can hear. But it is so loud and vibrating so much, it causes your body to vibrate. It gives you the sense that something terrible is wrong. But then you hear the roar itself. And it’s at 113 decibels. If you know what a lawnmower sounds like, multiply the sound of a lawnmower 25 times. That’s the sound of the roar of a lion. You can hear it 5 miles away.
The voice of the Lord is powerful. That’s what that imagery is teaching. We need to pay attention to God and who He is.
The Lion of the Tribe of Judah
There’s another figure in the Old Testament, and that is the symbol of the lion is the symbol that declares the right to rule. You find that in Genesis chapter 49, when Jacob is giving the blessings to his twelve sons. And he comes to Judah. I’m going to read just part of what he says to Judah in Genesis 49:9:
Judah is a lion’s whelp; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He couches, he lies down as a lion, and as a lion, who dares rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until Shiloh comes, and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.
Jacob’s sons would submit to the rule of Judah. The lion that proceeds from Jacob flows through Judah. And this prophecy absolutely comes true. You remember the great kings of Israel beginning with David comes from the line of Judah. All of Israel bowed to them. They listened and bent their will to the king’s will. And then you have the Lord Jesus, who is the ultimate Son of Judah.
The Scroll and the Seals
I wanted you to turn with me to the Book of Revelation, and we’re going to begin reading in chapter 5. This is God’s holy, inerrant Word. Verse 1:
I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a book written inside and on the back, sealed up with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the book and to break its seals?” And no one in heaven or on the earth or under the earth was able to open the book or to look into it. Then I began to weep greatly because no one was found worthy to open the book or to look into it.
What is going on there? What you see with that scroll and the seven seals is the unfolding of future history and the judgments that follow. God is going to bring judgment on this earth. And there’s nobody worthy to do it. John is weeping. Why is he weeping? Wouldn’t you want to not see a judgment? That’s human nature. But you see, if there is no ultimate future judgment, that means that ultimately evil wins. The wickedness of this world wins.
We told you that the purpose of the law is to expose our sin and show us our need for Christ. There’s another purpose, though. It is the standard of future judgment. God is going to bring justice. How can that take place? Where is the person who is worthy to render judgment? The judgment that is absolutely necessary and must be done. If there’s no one, then the unfolding of justice can never happen.
The passage continues. John is weeping:
And one of the elders said to me, “Stop weeping; behold, the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals.”
One is worthy. Only one. The one who lived perfectly in obedience to the Father’s will every moment of His life. The one who took upon Himself all the wrath that is due the sinner and paid for it. The one who rose from the dead. One is worthy, and only one. And that’s the Lion of the tribe of Judah. And that is obviously the Lord Jesus.
The Right to Judge
Jesus has the right to rule. He is the Ruler King. In Revelation 17:14:
They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings.
Revelation 19:16:
On His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, “King of kings, and Lord of lords.”
He says, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” Jesus is the one who has the right to bring judgment. In John chapter 5, Jesus explains that God has given Him life in Himself, and that God has given all judgment to Him. The Father says He’s given over all future judgment to the Son. What does that mean? It means the Son is equal to the Father, and that’s exactly the problem that the Jews had with Jesus. That’s why He went to the cross.
When Paul was preaching on Mars Hill, he was explaining to these people who knew nothing about God and the Lord Jesus at all. He’s explaining who God really is. In Acts 17:30:
Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead.
When we talk about the resurrection, one of the things that puts on clear display is that Jesus Christ is the future judge of this world. And He will judge with perfect justice.
The Lamb Standing as Slain
And when John looks to see the Lion of the tribe of Judah, he doesn’t see that imagery, he sees another symbol. And it was a Lamb, as if it had been slain, standing.
Let me just briefly explain this passage. The Lord directs John to use a perfect participle. The perfect tense describes an action that has taken place in the past that has continuing results in the present. So that’s the description that you’re getting when you’re talking about the lamb, standing as though it had been slain. Slain was the marks of the crucifixion. The imagery is that you see a lamb with its throat slit. But it’s standing, it’s living. It’s resurrected. He’s not a dead martyr. He’s the living Christ who passed through death and emerged victorious over death.
He is the lamb. He’s the one we celebrate today because He is not only like a mighty lion, but He is the greatest wonderful display of the might of God. Jesus, as the Lamb of God, offered Himself on the cross in our place, took upon Himself the wrath of God, the infinite wrath of God, and because He was true, God raised Him from the dead. His redemptive work He accomplished. Your salvation is real in Him.
If He offers salvation to us, having paid that price, and it’s rejected by people, then it’s no wonder later on in this book that they’re crying out, afraid of the wrath of the Lamb.
A Kingdom from Every Tribe and Tongue
Right now, in this age that we’re living, God is doing a work of grace. His grace is flowing over us like a mighty flood, bringing salvation to many. In this age, God’s building His kingdom. He’s calling a people to Himself. And they are people of every kind you can imagine:
- People of great authority in this world, like judges on the throne, some of them are going to be believers in Jesus Christ.
- People that they judge and who are in prisons, God is calling to Himself.
- People from the city dwellers and those who live in wealthy, luxury apartments.
- Country people like some of us.
- People who work and those who have no work.
- People in the jungles of Africa and the Philippines, and people who live very well in this nation.
He’s calling out a people for Himself. The time is coming when that will be complete, and judgment will come. We need to be able to be among those who can rest in the comfort of the Lamb. Let me pray for us.
Father, we thank You for the extraordinary blessing. We thank You, Father, that Jesus is more than we can imagine. He is like a lion with all power. He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He is like a lamb who laid down His life for us and brought about the sacrifice that we could not make. He lived the life that we could not live in perfection. And Father, because of that, we have experienced the extraordinary flood of grace from Christ and His love. Thank You, Lord, for all of that. We praise You, Father, for the work that You’ve accomplished, the salvation that we have received. We pray this in the name that is above all names, the name that conquered death, the glorious name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
