Getting To Know The Lion

In Matthew 11 we encounter a surprising moment: John the Baptist — the greatest of the Old Testament prophets — sends word to Jesus from prison asking, “Are you the Coming One, or should we expect someone else?”  How does the very prophet who declared “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” end up questioning whether Jesus is really the Messiah? In this message, Tim unpacks the prophetic tension behind John’s question. John had seen something real in the Spirit — a Messiah who would come with a winnowing fork in His hand, separating wheat from chaff and executing the justice of God. Yet the Jesus he was watching seemed very different: eating with sinners, touching lepers, extending mercy where John expected judgement. What John was experiencing was the tension created by prophetic compression — when two realities that appear side-by-side in prophecy are actually separated by time. John saw the Lion of Judah. But in that moment he was encountering the Lamb. The challenge for us today may be the opposite. We are deeply familiar with the Lamb — the healer, redeemer, and friend of sinners. But Scripture reveals another dimension of Jesus: the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the King who brings justice, confronts corruption, and vindicates the oppressed. As the world and the Church move through a season of shaking and exposure, this message calls us to know Jesus in the fullness of who He is — Lamb and Lion — so that we are not offended when God moves in ways that stretch our expectations. Because if we only know the Lamb, we may struggle to recognise the Lion when He begins to roar.