Rev 12:10+11, And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night.” And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even to death. 
Please bear with me as we are viewing the contents of this passage for several more weeks. We have regarded, for a number of Sundays, the fact of Jesus Christ as the Victor. The Church, as we saw, needs to consider our every action, our every thought, our every circumstance, and our every tribulation in the light of the established truth of the set in stone triumph of Christ over all the powers of this age. That victory can never be overthrown. Jesus Christ is now the declared Lord of Heaven and earth. The spiritual powers already recognize Him in that place of sovereignty. The battle that rages now is the one which will end with Him seen in that position of authority and glory by this entire realm of creation. 
As we know, concerning Christ, every created thing in heaven and on earth will bow before His Lordship. Phil 2:8-11. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. This is a given fact in our heart that will be manifested in the day of Jesus Christ. 
	Now we turn our attention to the other magnificent depiction which is declared to us in this passage of our concern. As I previously mentioned, the two presentations that we are given of Christ in these verses must not be passed over with haste. It is imperative to see Him both as the Victor and as the Lamb of God. This is where we continue this morning. With regard to this entire Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, He is most often presented as the Lamb. This is most appropriate because it is as the Lamb that the victory was secured to God’s glory.
	But, before we delve into those passages of Revelation, let us look at the view of Christ as the Lamb that was given centuries earlier. It is at this point, that we will have our second reading of scripture this morning. Please turn to Isaiah 53, and follow along as we view Christ described in this most familiar passage.
Who has believed our message? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For He grew up before Him like a tender shoot, And like a root out of parched ground; He has no stately form or majesty That we should look upon Him, Nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him. He was despised and forsaken of men, A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; And like one from whom men hide their face, He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He did not open His mouth; Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, And like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, So He did not open His mouth. By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered That He was cut off out of the land of the living, For the transgression of my people to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, Yet He was with a rich man in His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was there any deceit in His mouth. But the Lord was pleased To crush Him, putting Him to grief; If He would render Himself as a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, He will prolong His days, And the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in His hand. As a result of the anguish of His soul, He will see it and be satisfied; By His knowledge the Righteous One, My Servant, will justify the many, As He will bear their iniquities. Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death, And was numbered with the transgressors; Yet He Himself bore the sin of many, And interceded for the transgressors. Amen.
	What a glorious depiction that transcends our understanding or comprehension as to the depth of the work of God to provide for our salvation. Throughout the Old Testament, we have the fore-shadowing of the sacrifice that will save us unto God. The Passover lamb, the sacrificial, yearly offering that was needed for the sins of the People of God to be taken from them is relayed in passage after passage. Over and over again, throughout the Pentateuch, we are given the ritual practices that had to be observed by the priests in order for the sacrifice to be properly prepared. 
Yet, in this Isaiah passage, the every instance of proper preparation is completed in the manner in which Christ, the perfect Lamb of God, was offered up for our sakes. This is the complete portrait of what Jesus had to undertake for the wrath of God to be absolutely and forever satisfied. Our sins were laid upon Him. In His willing offering of Himself, our salvation is accomplished. The victory is assured as the prophet’s testimony was fulfilled on the cross at Calvary.
	It was not just the prophet Isaiah, and the many other prophets of the Old Testament, who had the vision of the sacrificial work of the Christ. As we read in John 1:29-36, John the Baptist also saw the true depiction of the work of Jesus of Nazareth. The next day he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” This is He on behalf of whom I said, 'After me comes a Man who has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.' "And I did not recognize Him, but in order that He might be manifested to Israel, I came baptizing in water." And John bore witness saying, "I have beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out of heaven, and He remained upon Him.” And I did not recognize Him, but He who sent me to baptize in water said to me, 'He upon whom you see the Spirit descending and remaining upon Him, this is the one who baptizes in the Holy Spirit.' "And I have seen, and have borne witness that this is the Son of God." Again the next day John was standing with two of his disciples, and he looked upon Jesus as He walked, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God!" 
	It is imperative that we see Jesus, not only as the Victorious Lord, but as the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world. Our basis of standing, our very inclusion in the Church is set on the reality of Jesus being the perfect Lamb of God. Without this knowledge cemented into place in our hearts, we cannot understand what our lives mean on this earth. We are caught with insufficient resources to face the daily walk that is our portion. We will merely stumble along, hoping in desperation for some manner of making it through each day. This will be based on our meager efforts to fulfill some mental and cultural code of conduct. 
If we do not know Jesus as the Lamb of God, we will never know the peace and certainty that our sins have been utterly removed from us. Apart from Jesus as the Lamb, we will never accept that we are now enveloped in the loving arms of Our Heavenly Father through the sacrifice that He prepared in the giving of His Only Begotten Son. 
	This is no small thing! It is the heart of God delivered up for us, for you and for me, in the deliberate act of our salvation. This was foreordained in the counsel of God from before the creation unto all of eternity. That is why our lives need to be lived in the continual remembrance of Christ as the Lamb. That is what we celebrate and commemorate, each Sunday, in our communion together. We remember His death and His resurrection which lifted up our souls into the heavenlies in His glory.
	The importance of the communion remembrance of the saints is two-fold. First, as we often remind ourselves, it puts the sacrifice of Christ, the perfect Lamb of God, at the forefront of our consideration. We, as His redeemed Church, acknowledge in our supping together, that His atoning work is our salvation. That it was nothing other than the body and the blood of Christ that could perfectly pay the required price for our sin. We are now alive unto God only because Jesus, as the Lamb, died for us, in our stead, in all the manifested love of God. 
	Second, we rejoice in the power of God that raised up Jesus Christ from that death and seated Him on the throne above all creation. We identify ourselves, in all humbleness and humility, seated with Him on high. This is nothing that we could have earned over the millennia of eternity. We could never accede to any inkling of thinking that we deserved anything but death. That is the only thing that was our right by birth, the just sentence of death. All that we have now in life, in our true spiritual life, is only in place because of the willingness and the obedience of the Lamb of God. This is what we offer in our remembrances around the table of His communion. As He deserves all credit and honor and praise and adoration, so do we join our hearts in order to present that glory unto Our God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  
	And this offering is not just in our hearts and minds. As we read in 1 Cor 5:7+8, Clean out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, just as you are in fact unleavened. For Christ our Passover also has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 
The fact of Christ being our Passover Lamb should have a very dramatic effect on our day to day walk on this earth. We should be living in newness of life. We should be characterized in a manner that is worthy of the sacrifice that it cost to purchase us unto the Father. Notice that we should be unleavened. We should be free from the pervasive yeast that infests this realm, the yeast of sin. There should be a distinguishing quality of sincerity and truth that we manifest because of Christ living His life in us. We are to be free of malice and wickedness, not through our works of perceived righteousness, but because of the perfect nature of the Lamb, the nature of Christ Jesus living His life out from us. 
	Rom 6:4-10, Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 
We are to live our lives unto God. We often make this statement, trying to justify our actions, trying to soothe our consciences, trying to will ourselves into obedience. But this is not something that is based in our efforts whatsoever. It is based in the reality that the life that Lamb of God lived on this earth is, in its every detail and fact, now our life! We are alive unto God, now,  Without any other requirement on our part! If Christ lives in you and in me, we are alive to God in Him! Our earthly lives are more and more coming into line with this reality, and that is something that we constantly need to remember. His life is our life! 
	That is why we rejoice with all the reminders that we receive from God in His Word. It is our guidebook and our source of reassurance as to what is really, really the truth of the fulfilled and manifested work of the Lamb of God. 1 Peter 1:14-21, As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, "You shall be holy, for I am holy." And if you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each man's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay upon earth; knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God. 
	We will continue, next time, Lord willing, as we begin to delve into the verses in this Book of the Revelation of Jesus Christ with regard to the detailed vision that is presented to us of the Victorious Lamb of God. There is very, very much in it that will affect the manner in which His Church learns to see the truth of our accurate placement into the heart of God by the perfect work of His Son. This will, Lord willing, have a remarkable effect as to the manner in which we bring our offering and sacrifice of prayer and worship unto Him. To His glory Alone, so be it!
And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, "Now the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them before our God day and night.” And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even to death. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is 2 Tim 2:19. Nevertheless, the firm foundation of God stands, having this seal, "The Lord knows those who are His," and, "Let everyone who names the name of the Lord abstain from wickedness." Amen.