The Lamb Eternal

CHAPTER 1

THE Lamb of God

From the Foundation of the World

Lambs are important to God. We see the stories of lambs woven throughout Scripture. This is because Jesus is “THE Lamb of God.” Jesus is not any lamb, but THE Lamb.

Where does this story begin? It begins before time began, in God’s eternal past. Revelation 13:8 states that Jesus is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” This means He always has been THE Lamb. Before God created man, Jesus was “THE Lamb.” When man fell through Adam’s sin in the garden in Eden, Jesus would have to be “slain” to bridge the gap now created between man and God. God the Father knew this from the eternal past, and Jesus became that Lamb also in that eternal past. God the Father knew this even before He created man. What God showed to man regarding lambs, lamb sacrifices and the blood of the lambs was a revelation of His Son, Jesus. God the Father used these symbols and sacrifices to reveal Jesus and His redemptive plan to mankind.

Even before He created man, God knew that man would fail and that He needed a plan to redeem mankind. Redeem, or the process of redemption, means “to free from captivity by payment of ransom” (Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary). God had to free man from the captivity of eternal separation that he would have due to Adam’s sin, since his sin applied to all mankind. “When Adam sinned, sin entered the world. Adam’s sin brought death, so death spread to everyone, for everyone sinned” (Romans 5:12).

Pastor Rod Parsley, in his book, The Cross, explains it like this. “One exposure to Satan’s corruption carried the communicable disease of sin and infiltrated the bloodstream of all humanity” (2013, 103).

God needed a “ransom plan” for man from the beginning.

The Garden in Eden

For mankind’s earthly understanding, this story begins in Genesis Chapter 3, after God created Adam and Eve to live with Him in the Garden in Eden. Eden was God’s place, and the garden was a place within it where He put Adam and Eve to live. God had given them a command that they could eat the fruit of any tree in the Garden, except one – the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Satan tempted Eve and she lured Adam to eat the fruit with her.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves coverings (Genesis 3:7; author’s emphasis).

Then they heard the sound of God walking in the Garden and they hid because they were ashamed and naked. Adam and Eve lost their robes of righteousness, which is what made them feel naked before the Lord God.

Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent.

The Lord said to the serpent:

‘All the days of your life.

And 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.’ (Genesis 3:15; author’s emphasis)

He told Eve that she would have pain in childbirth and her desire would be for her husband but he would have authority over her. To Adam, because he heeded the voice of his wife, He said:

Cursed is the ground for your sake;

In toil you shall eat of it

All the days of your life.

Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you,

And you shall eat the herb of the field.

In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread

Till you return to the ground,

For out of it you were taken;

For dust you are,

And to dust you shall return. (Genesis 3:17–19; author’s emphasis)

Then the Lord did something most important for them.

Also for Adam and his wife the LORD God made tunics of skin, and clothed them. Then the LORD God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of Us, to know good and evil. And now, lest he put out his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever”— therefore the LORD God sent him out of the garden of Eden to till the ground from which he was taken. So He drove out the man; and He placed cherubim at the east of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. (Genesis 3:21–24; author’s emphasis)

The Word “lamb” is not used to explain that the Lord made tunics to clothe them, but it says that the Lord made “tunics [clothes] of skin” for Adam and Eve before they were banished from the Garden in Eden, after they sinned against God. It was God who first killed an animal to make a “covering” for man because of his sin. It was God who made the first animal sacrifice. The shed blood of an animal sacrifice was needed to “cover” the sins of mankind that had begun with Adam. The skins were probably “still moist with blood when God used them to cover Adam and Eve…God’s first sacrifice covered Adam and Eve’s sin with animal’s blood” (Hinn, 1996, 36). This shedding of animal’s blood became the pattern for man that was fully specified later in the Books of Moses.

Here is where God begins the revelation of Jesus to man. The animal God killed to clothe them was surely a lamb. The lamb became a symbol of God’s atonement or “covering” process since it represented Jesus. Remember that Jesus was already “THE Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8; author’s emphasis). The lamb in the Garden was slain to cover Adam and Eve to begin this atonement process and bridge the gap now created between man and God. Because of the fall of Adam, man was separated from God. A way back was needed because God did not want to lose fellowship with mankind forever.

In one of his television programs This Is Your Day (2/15/13), Benny Hinn said that the Father reveals Jesus in every book of the Bible. The Lord spoke to my heart when he said that, and it helped me understand what the Father did even further. When the Father clothed Adam and Eve with the skins of the lamb, He was revealing Jesus to them. They had only known the Father in the Garden. Now they needed a Savior, whereas they had not before. God the Father (LORD) revealed His Son to them in the “blood covering” with the skins and as “the Lamb that was slain.” Jesus was already slain from the foundation of the world, so this had already occurred.

John Hagee explains it this way in his book The Revelation of Truth. “In clothing them, God preached the first Gospel sermon – not with words, but with action. Innocent blood was shed to cover the guilty” (2000, 47–48).