The Lamb Who Was Slain

Sequence 50 is the Nun standing alone — the fish, the letter of faithfulness and of the soul that lives in waters it cannot see out of. Fifty is the number of release: the jubilee, the year in which debts are cancelled, property returns to its owner and the enslaved go free. On the Sabbath the congregation stands at the cross, the number over the day is the number of purchase and release. Nothing is remitted casually in a jubilee; every release is paid for by someone, and this one was paid in blood.

The theme.

The vision in Revelation 5 turns on a devastating substitution of images. John is told to look at the Lion; he turns and sees a Lamb standing, as if slain. What conquers in the kingdom does not look like what conquers anywhere else. This is the doctrinal centre of the quarter. Take the congregation to the cross without hurrying to the resurrection, and let the price stand in view.

The School of Scriptures.

I.Look, the Lion — Behold, a Lamb

John hears one thing and sees another, and the seeing corrects the hearing. Teach the congregation that the kingdom's power is cruciform, and that every attempt to build the church on a lion the world would recognise ends in something that is not the church.

II.Purchased With Blood

The verb is commercial. Peter presses it further: you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold, but with precious blood (1 Peter 1:18-19). Ask the congregation what they habitually treat as more secure than that transaction, and why their sense of standing rises and falls with their performance if the purchase is complete.

III.Just and the Justifier

Romans 3:23-26 answers the question the cross exists to answer: how God can forgive without ceasing to be just. He did not waive the penalty; He bore it. Guard the congregation from a doctrine of grace that quietly implies God relaxed His standard.

IV.From Every Tribe and Tongue

The purchase is international by design. Close on the scope: CMI's worship joins a company drawn from every people, and a congregation that celebrates this Lamb cannot maintain private categories of people it will not sit beside.

The Table.