Why does God afflict us? Because He loves us, and wishes to make us holy as He is holy, and happy as He is happy. For, as it has been well said, “Fiery trials make golden Christians!” God had one Son without sin—but He never had any son without sorrow. God chastens purposely and lovingly. Affliction comes from Him; and He afflicts, not as a stern Judge, but as a Father and a Friend!

Dear Brother or Sister, I have come into your sick-room, as it were, and wish to tell you a few things for your comfort and profit. God has seen fit to stop you in the midst of your busy life, and to lay you aside for a while. It is not by chance that His afflicting hand has fallen upon you. It is not at random that He has chastened you. It may seem to be a mere accident that you are afflicted, and not another. But no; God has done it purposely!
Learn this then—that your present sickness or affliction is from God. It is His doing. He it is, who has brought this present chastisement upon you. Not even a sparrow falls to the ground without our heavenly Father’s ordering, and He prizes His redeemed children more than many sparrows.
Sickness usually comes as a messenger of divine love—it is sent to be a blessing, and may be made, by God’s grace, a very great blessing to the soul. God afflicts His children, because He desires to do them some great good.
The gardener cuts and prunes his tree, to make it grow better, and bear more precious fruit. In the same way, God often uses His sharp knife for some gracious purpose. The wise and loving father thwarts his child, and sometimes scourges it, for its good.
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We have witnessed one of the myriad of ways God unfolds his plan of redemption in salvation-history. This pattern of redemption is not God’s backup plan but his “plan for the fullness of time” (Eph 1:10). Indeed, before the foundation of the world, John speaks about “the book of the life of the Lamb who was slain” (Rev. 13:8). We worship the Lamb especially at Easter, not only because he died in our place as the lamblike Servant, but also because he is “standing after having been slain” (Rev. 5:6, my translation). 

The apostle John’s title for Jesus as “Lamb of God” (John 1:29) has caused interpreters to puzzle, as Dr. Seuss once put it, “till [their] puzzlers were sore.” They puzzle because there are many possibilities to which this phrase may refer.[1] Is this the lamb of Genesis 22:8, the Passover lamb of Exodus 12:21, or some other lamb? Rather than saying that John created a novel composite metaphor, I suggest that he just read his Bible well. I propose in this article that in John 1:29, the apostle John evokes a pattern of redemption in the Old Testament that culminates in the Servant of Isaiah 52:13–53:12 (esp. v. 7) understood in his proper canonical context.
To explain this, I will highlight key developments in the pattern depicted below before returning to John’s Gospel.
Genesis 22: A Substitutionary Type
In Genesis 22, the Lord tests Abraham by commanding him, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Gen. 22:2). The language of “only son” (Gen. 22:2, 12, 16) accents how Isaac is Abraham’s firstborn child from Sarah, his only child of promise, the one he had waited over 25 years to meet. In route to obey God’s command, Abraham responds to Isaac’s query about why they didn’t bring a lamb for the sacrifice: “God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son” (Gen. 22:8). God would see to it that there was a lamb, and Abraham’s faith was rewarded by the sight of a ram, which he offered “as a burnt offering instead of his son” (Gen. 22:13). In this episode, we see the expectation for God to provide a lamb which would die in the place of Abraham’s firstborn child of promise—a clearly substitutionary sacrifice.
Two details merit additional comment: (1) Why might Moses insist so repeatedly that it was a burnt offering (Gen. 22:2, 3, 6, 7, 13)? And (2) What significance may the Lord intend in appointing a ram (ʾayil)? First, the burnt offering is consumed entirely by fire upon the altar before the Lord, that is, it is completely devoted to him. This suggests what the Pentateuch confirms, namely, that the Lord intends for the children of promise to be wholly devoted to him. Second, the provision of a ram is intriguing for at least three reasons: First, the Lord will later prescribe a ram for priestly ordination offerings (Lev. 8:22). Since the Lord intends for his people to be wholly devoted to him and the ram is later employed this way, perhaps this foreshadows the Lord’s declaration of his people as a “kingdom of priests” (Exod. 19:6). Second, a ram is the prescription for the guilt offering (ʾāšām, Lev. 5:16), which Isaiah says is the kind of offering that the Servant is (ʾāšām, Isa. 53:10). Third, the term ram is also used metaphorically in the OT for a ruler or leader (e.g., Exod. 15:15; 2 Kgs. 24:15; Jer. 25:34). Taking this observation in hand with the previous, Gentry observes, “Since this same word for ram is often used metaphorically of community leaders, the ʾāšām [=guilt offering] is perfectly suited to describe a sacrifice where the king suffers the penalty on behalf of his people.”[3] Therefore, we are warranted to see in Genesis 22 the seeds of future sacrifices.
The significance of this event is far-reaching in the OT. After observing that Mount Moriah is the place the temple was built at the direction of the Lord (2 Chr. 3:1; cf. 1 Chr. 21), Michael Morales writes, “the entire cult of Israel—that is, the temple system of priesthood and sacrifices—was built on an event, narrated in Genesis 22, where Yahweh God had provided a substitute, an animal replacement, for the seed of Abraham whose utter consecration to himself he had commanded.”[4] Yet, before the temple was built on that mount—before even the tabernacle service was instituted—God would again see to it that a lamb would die in the place of his firstborn.
Exodus 12: Variation on God’s Provided Lamb
The exodus from Egypt was determined in the mind of God before Isaac was even born (Gen. 15:13–16). Likewise, while Moses was still in Midian, God disclosed his plans beforehand that he would harden Pharoah’s heart until the plague on the firstborn liberated God’s firstborn Israel (Exod. 4:21–23). Specifically, it would be by the blood of the lambs upon the doorpost (Exod. 12:13, 22–23) that God would bring about Israel’s redemption.
But why require blood?
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Jesus knows temptation and testing.  Jesus fights to obey his Father’s will.  And so when we’re struggling to obey we can run to him for help in prayer because he knows what it is to fight to obey. Because Jesus knows and overcomes temptation and testing we can let go of our pretended heroism and run to him which wins for us. It is liberating. It is where rest is found.

One of the things that always strikes me as I read the passion narratives in any of the gospel is the extent to which Jesus knows what he’s facing that week.  He’s repeatedly told his disciples what is coming in more and more detail.
And as he leads them to that garden again, a place they and Judas are familiar with, Jesus enters into a cosmic spiritual battle.  This is a battle on an epic scale – this is Jesus’ Marathon, Waterloo, Stalingrad, and D-Day.  In the garden Jesus fights for the salvation of every believer throughout all of time and for the kingdom of God and the faithfulness of God to his promises.
In an echo of Eden the Son of God enters a garden where he’s tempted to turn his back on sonship and doubt and disobey his Father’s will.  The consequences of this battle will be just as cataclysmic as the first.  But it isn’t a battle fought with sword and clubs, it’s not a battle fought, with joysticks or drone, with wealth or influence. This is a battle fought on his knees in prayer wrestling to obey his Father.
Of all the ways we think of prayer I think this is the one we miss most.  Prayer is a vital part of waging the war to obey God, it is a vital weapon in our arsenal for fighting temptation. Sometimes prayer is war! .
And as Jesus goes to battle he doesn’t want to go alone.  He takes all 11 into the garden, and then Peter, James and John a little further and begins to be sorrowful and troubled.
There are lots of good things that have flowed out of the focus in the last 30 years on personal times of reading the bible and prayer.  But one of the negatives is that we’ve lost the importance of praying together.  If you read the Bible with an eye to it I think you’ll find people praying together more than individually, especially in the early church.
Here Jesus in his hour of greatest weakness, when he feels the burden of what he is about to do most keenly, doesn’t withdraw alone to a mountain top, he takes his disciples with him.  When we’re fighting to obey God, when we’re in the white-hot heat of battle with sin, when we are feeling weighed down with the burden God has laid on us, we need brothers and sisters around us.  When we’re struggling to pray that’s not the time to withdraw from others but be with and around others.  Do you see that need?  If Jesus has it we have it to, it’s not a sign of weakness but how we are live as God’s people together.
But this is a prayer like no other.  (38)Jesus tells his 3 friends that he’s overwhelmed with sorrow.  Have you ever got in trouble swimming in the sea?
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