Review of Behold the Lamb of God

In Psalm 79:8-9, the psalmist cries out,

Oh, do not remember former inquities against us!
Let Your tender mercies come speedily to meet us,
For we have been brought very low.
Help us, O God of our salvation, For the glory of Your name;
And deliver us, and provide atonement for our sins,For Your name's sake!

Atonement. Regardless of time, location, and race, men and women have been seeking atonement. Seeking to make right what they have wronged. Whether they realize it or not, seeking to satisfy the wrath of an angry God. In his article From Kali to Christ, Nathan Zacharias describes visiting the Kali temple located in Kolkata, India, "one of the remaining sites to still perform animal sacrifices." It is here that he witnessed an animal sacrifice -- an Indian family's attempt to pacify an angry god. Whether it is a family in modern day Kolkata performing animal sacrifices, a people group in ancient Hawaii providing human offerings to their volcanic goddess, "civilized" members of society trying to make amends with their good deeds, or the Israelites crying out, "Deliver us!", we all have the same thing in common: the need for atonement.

I'm a firm believer that Christmas music shouldn't be reserved strictly for the holiday season. And, this morning in March, I found myself listening to what has become one of my favorite Christmas albums -- Andrew Peterson's 2004 release Behold the Lamb of God.

The project took Peterson, a singer and songwriter reminiscent of Rich Mullins, five years to complete. It was truly a "labor of love." An album that, as he told Christianbook.com, he wanted to approach "from the tradition of the old bards who traveled from town to town telling stories with their music and recording history that way. I thought it would be really neat to make a record that did that, one that was lyrical in its content, and whose songs followed the progression of the Christmas story through the Old and New Testaments. " In doing so, Peterson beautifully captures the need for atonement. The need for, as Psalm 79 addresses, mercy and deliverance. In the song Deliver Us, he sings:

Our sins they are more numerous than all the lambs we slay/These shackles they were made with our own hands/Our toil is our atonement and our freedom yours to give/So Yahweh, break your silence if you can/Deliver us, deliver us/Oh Yahweh, hear our cry/And gather us beneath your wings tonight

While the song Passover Us cries:

So the years went by and the people they whined and they wandered/And only sacrifice atoned for the sins of the land/So you see the priest he placed upon the holy altar/The body of a spotless lamb/And he prayed, "Lord, let your judgment Passover us/Lord, let your love hover near/Don't let your sweet mercy/Passover us/Let this blood cover over us here"

Yet, he doesn't stop there. On the remainder of the album, he goes on to paint a lyrical masterpiece of God's response to the cries of His people: Jesus. The once and forever atonement for our sins.

So sing out with joy/For the brave little boy who was God/And made Himself nothing/Well He gave up His pride/And He came here to die like a man

By far, my favorite song on the album is Labor of Love. Of the track, Peterson told Christianbook.com, "I try not to write songs that have already been written. So, in this case, the song 'Labor of Love' is about Mary, but not the peaceful Mary we see in nativity sets holding Baby Jesus. I have three kids, and I was there when my wife gave birth to each of them. Now, if my wife had given birth in a barn, in the dark, in the middle of the night, there is no way she would have looked as nice as Mary looked in these scenes. Childbirth is violent and painful, and so the first line of this song is 'It was not a silent night/There was blood on the ground.' I think there’s significance in the fact that God chose to come into the world that way –- bathed in blood and pain." Jill Phillips provides the vocal on this song. A song that never ceases to bring me to tears.

God's gift of atonement. A "brave little boy," as Peterson calls Him, sent to sacrifice Himself for the sins of the world. Let us now, not only at Christmas, celebrate "the maker of the moon ... the Author of the faith," Jesus, the baby born to save us all.

All lyrics included on this post written by Andrew Peterson