I’ve heard my dad use this story several times while preaching and it brings tears to my eyes every time. I know I won’t do the story justice or may not even get it all right, but I wanted to share it.
There was a man many years ago who had gotten a job at a slaughter house. His job was to stand at the end of a conveyor belt type machine and kill the animals as they passed. They would then be processed and prepared for market. The job never bothered the man before: he would kill the animals, knowing that it would feed hungry families and his job wasn’t in vain.
One day as he was doing his job, a lamb came through on the conveyor belt. It was snow white. As he took his knife and put it through the lamb’s heart, blood spilled everywhere, on the creature’s snow white coat, on the machine, and on the man’s hands. The lamb didn’t die immediately. The man stood watching the lamb writhe in pain and suffering. The little lamb heaved itself up, as good as it could in the condition it was in, moved closer to the man and began to lick the blood off the man’s hands. The lamb, gasping for air, licked and worked until the man’s hands were clean. The blood was still pouring from the lamb, and what was once snow white, was now scarlet red. The man stood with tears streaming down his face, surely wishing that the lamb would just lie down and stop. The lamb finally took its last breath and died. The man left the slaughter house and that job with tears flowing.
I know another lamb whose blood was spilled. I wasn’t present that day and I didn’t physically put the nails in, but while He gasped for breath and writhed with pain, He thought across the years and knew that a simple, small town girl named Amy had blood on her hands all the same. He didn’t care that His once snow white coat was stained scarlet with my sins. Gasping for air and in pure agony, that lamb licked until I was clean. His hands were scarred, bloody, and mutilated, but all He cared was that mine were clean.
“…Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”
John 1:29 KJV
