On the front of a building in the north of England a lamb is carved, and there is a story told about it.
Many years ago when that building was being built, a workman stepped back on the scaffold to look at his work. He stepped back too far and fell. Workers at a distance saw the fall and rushed to pick him up, expecting him to have been killed instantly. To their amazement, they found him sitting up and apparently only shaken by the fall.
One of the workers, a friend, helped him to rise and walk away. “Now, Tom,” he said, “tell me what happened—why weren’t you killed? What saved your life?”
“Why, that lamb, to be sure,” he answered.
It was true. Just where the accident occurred, some sheep were lying down, and he had fallen upon a lamb. The lamb was killed on the spot, but the man’s life was saved.
“Tom,” said his friend, “if you had not fallen on that lamb—if you had been killed—where would you have been now?”
“Ah,” said Tom, “what has happened today has opened my eyes to the danger of waiting to get right with God.”
Then said his friend, “You may thank God there is another Lamb, the Lamb of God, who suffered death upon the cross. He died that you may live.”
By the mercy of God, Tom was able to see that the way in which he had been saved from death was a picture of the only way in which he could be saved from eternal death. That day he trusted in Christ, the true Lamb of God, as his Saviour, and could say, He “loved me, and gave Himself for me” (Galatians 2:2020I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)).
A lamb was carved in stone outside that building, and for many years afterwards, whenever Tom looked at that lamb, it reminded him of the day on which he had been saved from death twice—from physical death and eternal death.
“Behold the Lamb of God,
which taketh away the sin
of the world!”