Jesus as the Spotless Lamb

This free Bible lesson, Jesus as the Spotless Lamb, will teach elementary students about how Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice, and He paid the price for our sins.

FOCUS BIBLE PASSAGE: Matthew 4:1-11; Galatians 3:22-27; Hebrews 4:15, 9:14, 1 Peter 1:19, 1 John 3:5, Revelation 5:6

This lesson comes from the Seeds of Truth Elementary Bible Curriculum that is free to anyone looking for ideas to "plant seeds" into the hearts of children as they are learning about Jesus. Find more details HERE.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Seeds of Truth podcast, where seeds of biblical truth are planted into the hearts and minds of listeners so they can grow into a relationship with Jesus. I'm your host, Miss Dana. Thank you for joining me today. Let's get started. Welcome back, friends. Today's lesson from the Bible is called Jesus as the Spotless Lamb. And I want to start out by saying that this lesson is kind of a difficult one to understand. So to get started, I'm going to give us kind of an illustration or like an example of something to be thinking about. So I want you to imagine that you have received a report card giving you your grades about how well you are doing with your kindness, with your sharing, with your honesty, and with your overall attitude. And I want you to imagine that your report card has all F's, meaning that you have failed in all of those areas. Now, the reason that I want you to think about this is that I want you to understand that without Jesus, we all fail because we are all sinners. And overall, if it were left up to us alone, we would always receive failing grades or a bad report card. But there is good news. I want you to imagine now that instead of receiving all Fs, all failing grades on your report card, that now you have all A pluses on all of those things. Kindness, sharing, your honesty, and your overall attitude. You are passing in all of those areas. But you know what? These are not your grades. These grades are someone else's grades. They replace your grades. So these new grades of all A's are covering up and taking the place of your failing grades. You didn't earn these grades. They are someone else's grades. Your grades were failing because you're a sinner. So let's think about these grades on your new report card are Jesus' grades. His perfect passing grades replaced your bad failing grades. He took away your failing grades. Now, Jesus doesn't really have a report card, right? This is just a way to show you to help us remember that without Jesus, we are just sinners and we need him to take away our sins because we can't do it by ourselves. It is a way to show that Jesus is a substitute for us. Remember to sin is whenever we are doing things our own way instead of God's way. And sin entered the world because the first people, Adam and Eve, disobeyed God. Because of their disobedience, all humanity after them are born sinners, sinners. And this includes you and me. Sin separates us from God. In the Bible, it tells us that the price for sin is death. So when we sin, the punishment that we deserve is death and to be apart from God. But the amazing news is that God made a plan for us to be able to live with Him forever. He sent Jesus to live on the earth, die on the cross, and then raise back to life. And when we choose to believe in Jesus and turn away from our sins, he saves us. So today, during our lesson from the Bible, we are going to learn about the people who lived before Jesus came to earth and about the price they had to pay for sin. So we are living on the earth after Jesus came and died on the cross and rose back to life. Remember, Romans 6.23 tells us when you sin, the pay you get is death. And that means separation from God. But God gives you the gift of eternal life. That's because of what Christ Jesus our Lord has done. So this means that we can trust in Jesus because when he died on the cross and came back to life, he paid the price for our sins. And when we believe that he did that for us, he will save us. That means we will live forever with him in heaven after we die. So before Jesus came to live on the earth, people did not have the option to be saved by believing in Jesus because he had not died on the cross for their sins yet. But the people still sinned, right? Of course they did. So God had to make a way for them to be forgiven for their sins. Now remember that our Bible is divided into two big sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament teaches us about the time before Jesus came to earth. And the New Testament teaches us about the time of Jesus' life on earth and after he died, rose back to life and went back to heaven. During the time of the Old Testament, the people made sacrifices to God. To sacrifice means to give up something that is very valuable, to show love. A sacrifice is like an offering of something that we really love and that we feel is very valuable. The people who lived before Jesus came to the earth gave offerings and sacrifices to God by giving him their most valuable possessions. And a lot of those valuable possessions that the people had were animals like lambs, goats, and bulls. And some people sacrificed birds. So remember the price for sin is death. Let's think about that. Jesus paid the price for our sins when he died on the cross and rose back to life. Our sins have been paid for by Jesus. But the people who lived before Jesus died on the cross had to pay for their sin in a different way. Since the price for sin is death, the people during the times of the Old Testament offered sacrifices of their animals to God to pay for their sins. So the death of the animal paid the price for the sin of the people. This is sometimes hard for us to understand, but the people who lived at that time knew that it had to be done. It was part of their culture, and God had commanded them to do so. In fact, animal sacrifices or animals dying to pay for sins actually started at the very beginning in the Garden of Eden. So remember in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve disobeyed God and sinned when they ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The Bible tells us in the book of Genesis that before Adam and Eve sinned, they were naked and they weren't embarrassed about that. But after they sinned, they realized they were naked and they tried to hide by covering themselves with leaves. Then when God called out to them, Adam answered, I heard you in the garden. Because of their disobedience, God made Adam and Eve leave the garden. But before he made them leave, the Bible tells us the Lord God made clothes out of animal skins for Adam and his wife to wear. And that is in Genesis chapter 3, verse 21. So the Lord God made clothes out of animal skins for Adam and his wife to wear. How did God get the animal skins for Adam and Eve to wear as clothes? He, God himself, killed an animal to cover up the sin that the people had committed. So the very first animal sacrifice happened in the Garden of Eden. And it was God who sacrificed the animal to cover up the sins of the people that he loved so much. So Adam and Eve tried to cover up their own sin. They tried to cover up their own shame by making clothes for themselves out of leaves. But God is the one who covered up their sin and their shame by sacrificing an animal to make clothes for them. And so the sacrifice of the animal covered up the sin that Adam and Eve had committed. So shortly after that, Adam and Eve had two sons who grew up to be young men. And the Bible records the first animal sacrifice committed by a person. So our very first sacrifice of an animal was committed by God Himself. And now we're going to learn about a time whenever humans themselves, a person committed an animal sacrifice. So we know that since God created the animal sacrifice, that he had now commanded this from the people. So Adam and Eve's sons were named Cain and Abel. And their story is in Genesis chapter 4. The Bible tells us that Cain gathered some things he had grown. He brought them as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering. He brought the fattest parts of some animals from his flock. They were the first animals born to their mothers. The Lord was pleased with Abel and his offering, but he wasn't pleased with Cain and his offering. So Cain, we don't know for sure, but Cain was probably farming the land, and he decided to bring some of the fruits, vegetables, crops that he had grown out of the ground to give to God as an offering. But is that what God had commanded? No. So Abel decided to bring part of his flock, so animals from his flock. Okay. So that is the reason that God was not happy with Cain's offering, and he was happy with Abel's offering. Abel brought the best that he had. God had blessed him with his flock, so he was giving the best back to God. Cain gave what he wanted to give and not what God had asked for. God wanted Cain to give his very best, but he didn't. God wanted all of the people who lived during that time before Jesus came to earth to offer their very best, just like Abel did. So God made this act of sacrifice into a system that the people used to give thanks to God, to show him that they love him and to receive forgiveness for their sins. In the Old Testament book of Leviticus, God tells Moses to tell the people if someone brings an offering from the herd, they must offer a male animal. So when something doesn't have any flaws, that means that the animal has to be perfect. It couldn't have any imperfections. So an animal without any flaws is one that is healthy, it's uninjured, and has nothing wrong with it. And it is spotless. So when the person would sacrifice the spotless animal, that animal would die in the place of the person because remember the price of sin is death. So the animal would die instead of the person. The problem with this system during Old Testament times was that right after the animal was sacrificed, the person would be forgiven, but then the person would sin again. And then what would have to happen? Another animal would have to be sacrificed to cover the new sin that was committed. So it was a cycle that kept going and going and going. The person would sin, they would sacrifice an animal to cover that sin, then they would sin again, and then they would have to sacrifice another animal to cover that new sin. So God designed this system of sacrifices to teach the people that a price has to be paid for their sins through a spotless animal and to prepare them for the coming of the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate spotless lamb. The ultimate spotless lamb is Jesus. Jesus is the spotless lamb who died to pay for our sins. So how was Jesus spotless? What does that mean? Jesus lived a sinless life. He was the perfect sacrifice to pay for our sins. Because Jesus died as the perfect sacrifice for our sins, that system of animal sacrifices was not needed any longer. Jesus died once for every person. So unlike the system of animal sacrifices, Jesus' sacrifice does not have to be done over and over again. Jesus died one time for the sins of all people. The book of 1 Peter in the New Testament tells us you were bought with the priceless blood of Jesus. He is a perfect lamb. He doesn't have any flaws at all. And that is 1 Peter 1, 19. So animal sacrifices that we read about in the Old Testament were done to cover the sins of the people temporarily. It didn't last forever. But Jesus' sacrifice removed sin from all who believe in him forever. That's the difference. Animal sacrifices covered the sin. Jesus' sacrifice removed the sin or took it away. Animal sacrifices covered the sins temporarily. It didn't last forever. But Jesus' sacrifice took away sin from all who believe in him forever. That is the amazing, amazing news of the gospel of Jesus. Let's pray. Dear God, thank you for sending your son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins. We thank you that he rose from the dead and that he is now back in heaven. Help us to continue to learn more about you and grow as we learn. Please help us to make good choices and forgive us when we sin against you. We love you and we pray all of these things in Jesus' sweet name. Amen. Until next time, God bless. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Seeds of Truth Podcast. For more free Bible resources, visit Seeds of Truth Ministries dot com.