The Test Has Arrived Genesis 22:9-12

A number of years ago, I used to do evangelism to Somali Muslims in South Minneapolis.

That's where there's a large population of immigrants from Somalia who came over here probably about 20 years ago.

And I enjoyed having conversations with Muslims because they were willing to talk about deep spiritual things.

To have spiritual conversations, for example, in the business district of Minneapolis with white collar workers is much more difficult.

People typically aren't thinking that deeply. But I noticed that the Somali Muslims that I came across deeply cared about their relationship with their understanding of God, even though, of course, our understanding is that they believe in a false

God and not the one true God of the Bible. This past spring at our Wednesday night

Bible study, we looked at how Islam got started and where it goes wrong. And one area where Islam goes wrong is with the character of the

God they worship. As I had conversations with many different Somalians, I heard the same story on several different occasions.

The story said, so you could tell that this was a story that was circulated by how often they told it.

There was a man who, during his lifetime, he murdered 100 people. And at the end of his life, he was talking to an

Islamic leader and he asked him, can I be forgiven? Can I go to heaven?

And the Islamic leader told him, well, it's up to Allah. He can forgive you.

He can let you into heaven. As I thought about this for a little bit,

I noticed there was a fatal flaw in the character of the God of Islam. What is wrong with the

God of Islam is the ability to let sinners into heaven. And what's wrong with this is that there is no justice.

Because every sin needs to be paid for. Every sin ever committed will be accounted for.

And it's paid for either at the cross of Jesus Christ or in hell. Those are the two places where it is paid.

And of course, with Christianity, there's an answer to how God can let sinners into heaven.

There has been a payment. So he can forgive us because his justice has been satisfied.

The God of Islam described in the Quran is not the

God of the Bible. Because he's an unjust God by letting people into heaven by just saying they can come in.

According to their tradition and their scriptures, he's a forgiving God. But of course, the

God of the Bible says he can only forgive you if there's been a payment. And that happened at Calvary through Jesus Christ.

And what's interesting too is, as I mentioned, the God of Islam is not a God of justice because according to the

Quran, he lets sinners into heaven without there being a payment. The idea of substitutionary atonement is not taught in Islam.

Yet the Quran traces their origin to the same place that scripture does. They trace it to Adam and Eve.

In the Quran, they have as one of their stories the story of Abraham's near sacrifice of his son.

The only difference is they say that it's Ishmael and not Isaac. As I went down to Minneapolis to share the gospel with these

Somali Muslims, they had a holiday that celebrated the day that the Lord stopped

Abraham from sacrificing his son, Ishmael, and sacrificing an animal in his place.

But I found this interesting, as I mentioned above. Muslims do not believe that there needs to be a payment for sins.

So they do not believe in substitutionary atonement, which is the center of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That we are able to go to heaven, to be forgiven, because there's been a sacrifice in our place.

Our sins have been punished, and we don't have to face that punishment because Jesus paid it for us.

But Muslims do not believe that there needs to be a payment for sins. They believe that Allah can just forgive people and let them into heaven.

The sacrifice that we are going to see in this sermon today points ahead to the once -for -all sacrifice of Christ.

You can see why the Lord gave Abraham this specific test. The test of a sacrifice and the replacement of that sacrifice with another.

The story of Abraham's near sacrifice of his son, it doesn't fit in the Quran. Because what's the point of sacrifices?

All these stories in the Old Testament, what are they pointing ahead to?

The Bible has an answer to that. Because it all points ahead to Jesus Christ.

And we are going to look at that as we continue our sermon series through Genesis today. This sermon is on Genesis 22, verses 9 through 24.

And I encourage you to turn there with me. If you're using a red Bible in the pews, it's on page 19. And there's so much meat in this passage, so much theological meat in this passage, that I'm going to take two

Sundays on this sermon. We're just going to do point one today, and we're going to do points two and three next

Sunday. Otherwise, we'd be here way too long today. This sermon is titled,

The Test Has Arrived. The test has arrived. And our big idea, our proposition, is the near sacrifice of Isaac holds eternal truths that we must clearly see.

The near sacrifice of Isaac holds eternal truths that we must clearly see. And we're going to see three biblical truths.

The first truth is that the Lord desired to show his trustworthiness through Abraham's obedience.

The Lord desired to show his trustworthiness through Abraham's obedience. We'll see this in verses 9 through 12.

But before we jump into that, let's get a little recap of where we were last week. We saw

Abraham meet the greatest test of his life. The Lord commanded Abraham, take your son

Isaac, this precious son of yours, and take him to this place to offer him up as a sacrifice.

What we saw is that the Lord has a specific roadmap for the life of faith, detailed in verses 1 through 8 of this chapter.

We saw two plans that we should expect in our faith journey. Because the Lord sent these things across Abraham's path, and we should expect to see these same things come across our path as well.

The first plan is that he will test you. The Lord will test you. The second plan is that he will strengthen your faith so that you can endure more.

Abraham is tested greatly in this narrative, and Abraham was ready to meet the test because his faith was strong.

The Lord had brought him to a point where he was ready to meet this test.

We should strive to grow in our faith by God's grace so that we can be strong to endure the trials the

Lord brings our way as we go through the life of faith. Of course, in prayer and praise, we see all these trials that people face, and what helps you endure those trials is a strong faith in a rock -solid

God. That's what helps you endure those trials. What we will see in verse 9 is that they arrived to the location where the sacrifice would take place.

So please look with me at verse 9. When they came to the place at which God had told him,

Abraham built the altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound

Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Abraham and his son

Isaac left the two servants behind and went up to the mountain that the Lord had told Abraham to sacrifice his son.

Remember, this took place in what would later be called Jerusalem. This site is where Israel's future sacrifices would be offered when the temple was built under Solomon and the priests did their work there.

This place would become known as the Temple Mount. So you see why the

Lord chose this specific place where this would happen. There's a historic significance to this, where the future history would happen.

Abraham builds the altar and lays the wood on the altar. The wood is where Isaac would lay.

Abraham bounds him or ties him up and lays him on the wood as it is rested on the altar.

This is where Abraham is ready to follow the Lord's instructions exactly. We have seen him follow the

Lord's instructions exactly before. We've also seen him do some very foolish things, but we've also seen him show his faith as well.

He has done this many times since chapter 12. The Lord tells him what to do and he obeys precisely.

But of all the commands the Lord has given him, this is by far the most difficult act of obedience that he has to follow.

Let's look at verse 10 where Abraham is in the act of doing what the Lord told him to do.

Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.

Can you imagine the faith it took to do what he's doing right here? Abraham grabs the knife and is about to slaughter his son

Isaac. He's fully prepared to end his life. He trusts that the Lord knows what he is doing.

Remember last week, the author of Hebrews in Hebrews chapter 11 said that Abraham believed that if indeed he actually killed his son here, that the

Lord would raise him up. It had to be that way because it's through Isaac that this offspring is going to come that's going to be as many as the stars in the heavens, as many as the sand in the sea.

So Abraham knew, he's thinking, okay, I have to trust the Lord here. Isaac is going to be alive in the future.

I just don't know if it's going to be through a resurrection or if the Lord's going to stop me. But he finds out right here that the

Lord never intended to have him go through with this. He was just testing him. And as you walk with the

Lord, you might wonder what the Lord is doing. Abraham certainly was perplexed as he was facing this.

You may go through some head -scratching experiences. You may wonder from your narrow, earthly perspective that it does not seem like he is taking you down the right path.

The life of faith can feel like a fog at times. About five years ago,

I did a half marathon up in Duluth, and it was a very foggy morning.

Some of you maybe on the North Shore have seen those days where there's so much fog that you can hardly see in front of you. It was one of those mornings for this race.

It was really a fascinating race because the runners who were ahead of me, you couldn't really see them.

If they were 100 feet ahead of you, you couldn't see them because of the fog. They would be taken away in the fog.

And so you just had to keep running and keep going and say, OK, well, we don't know where the end destination is here, but let's just keep going through the fog.

And what's interesting is that in Duluth, on a clear day on this race, Rob knows what I'm talking about because he's run this, you can actually see the finish line from about 10 miles away, the canal park in Duluth.

But on this day, you could barely see in front of you because of the fog. The life of faith can feel like a fog sometimes, and Abraham feels this.

But you know what? When you are in the fog and things don't seem clear, the key is to keep going and trust the

Lord. He is to be trusted unlike anyone else. We saw that verse from Isaiah this morning.

He is that everlasting rock. He says, trust in the Lord forever. We have the narrow picture while he has the big picture.

And that's why it can be scary for us when we're in the fog. He knows exactly what he is doing. The Lord's design for us is to be faithful to him through the test he throws our way.

Remember, why does God test us? He tests us because he wants to produce something in us.

He wants us to grow in our faith, and he wants to show himself trustworthy. That's what we're seeing in this point.

We're about to see here now what the Lord is doing with Abraham. The fog is about to clear. Remember, the

Lord is not going to go through with this. Verse 11 and 12, we'll see that right here. But the angel of the

Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here

I am. He said, do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him.

For now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.

The angel of the Lord calls out from heaven. Okay, we know that the angel of the

Lord is God, right? An angel of the Lord is an angel that God sends. And we don't know if he saw this as this theophany or if he just heard the voice.

The text highlights that he heard the voice from above. You can see the urgency of the voice from heaven.

The Lord says, Abraham, Abraham, with an exclamation point. Remember, Abraham had the knife in his hand.

He was up like this, probably, as the Lord stopped him. He was ready to carry out the sacrifice.

And a few seconds later, his son would have been dead. It would be like a parent yelling to their child.

As they're about to cross a busy road, you would say, stop, immediately, right? You would shout at them and say, don't go across the road.

Actually, just yesterday, Brianne and I did that to Aletheia. Stop. And the

Lord does this to Abraham. He says, don't do this. Don't go ahead with this. And we can see the

Lord's design is to test Abraham here. And we can see that Abraham has passed the test. At the end of verse 11,

Abraham responds in relief. He says, he's probably thinking, I hope you were going to say something.

He says, here I am. We must realize how soothing this would have been to hear the

Lord's voice, preventing him from doing the unthinkable of putting his own son to death. He was so close to ending the life of this boy that he and Sarah had waited so long for.

Remember, they waited decades for this child to be born. Abraham felt so relieved.

When I was in the seminary, I would arrive at the school early in the morning.

And I went down to the lounge area where there was a bunch of students down there who had been studying all night for a church history exam.

Right next to the lounge, there's another study room with a whiteboard. And on the whiteboard, it was church history stuff, filling every square inch of the whiteboard because these students had been studying all night.

They wanted to get a good grade on this exam. And the professor came in that morning, and he was so impressed that they stayed all night to study.

And they put so much diligence of study in that he told them, you don't have to take the exam.

I'm going to give all of you an A. Of course, when I took church history, he never did that for us. But he did that for them.

But what this shows is the relief that the students had when he said, you don't have to take this because the professor considered their diligent study enough that they had already passed the exam in his mind.

They didn't actually have to take it in order to earn his approval and to earn a good grade.

They were ready to take it, but they didn't have to. And he considered their diligent study to be enough.

Abraham was fully prepared to go through with the test, trusting that the Lord knew what he was doing.

And the Lord told him, you've done enough. You trusted me. You don't have to go any further.

Abraham passes the test through his obedience of preparing his son to be sacrificed.

The Lord desires for you to be obedient with the test he throws your way. One thing we must understand is the

Lord does not enjoy the pain that you face in trials. But he knows to get you to where you need to be, this is the way it has to be.

So the Lord is going to send these your way. Our Heavenly Father puts his children through trials so that their faith would increase through it.

Now in verse 12, the Lord tells him, you do not have to put him to death. And then he praises

Abraham for his obedience. We'll see this in the second half of verse 12. He says,

I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your only son from me.

The Lord tells Abraham, because you did not go through with this, I know that you fear God.

I know that you trust me. I know that you love me. As we see this, we must understand that God always knew that Abraham would be faithful to him.

It was not as if God was saying, is Abraham going to be obedient to me? I'm actually,

I'm quite interested to find out if he's actually going to go through with this. Of course, that's not the way this played out.

To say this is silly. What we see here is, this is a big word, it's an anthropomorphism.

And what this means is that human traits are applied to God. As finite creatures, humans learn things, right?

Obviously we do. We learn something every day. And we'll always be learning. We'll never be infinite. The Bible is a book written by humans, inspired by the

Holy Spirit. And for humans, and for humans. So we should expect it to be written in a human way.

So that's why it's written in this way. But God knew all along, he knows all things. He knew that Abraham was going to be faithful to him.

All this is saying is the Lord knows that Abraham is faithful. As we have followed the life of Abraham, what we saw earlier on was that Abraham was saved the same way we are.

By grace, through faith, alone. But a true faith will always have works as evidence that the faith is real.

Martin Luther once said that even though the faith is alone, the faith is never truly alone because it's always evidenced by works.

So the works aren't the ground of our salvation, but they are the fruit that we were saved in the first place.

I think if we were to count up all the times I've said that since I've pastored here, we would be rich people if we added a quarter to every time

I said that. Because I want that to be crystal clear. That we are saved by grace, through faith, alone.

That's what the Bible teaches clearly. But we should see works in our lives. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

Which means that you will be different. You will have change in your life if you've been saved and the

Holy Spirit has been given to you. So there will be works. In the New Testament, James highlights the greatest test in Abraham's life to show his true faith.

James 2 .21 -23 says, Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son

Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works. And faith was completed by his works.

And the scripture was fulfilled that says, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.

Now if you just read this out of context, you would say, well the Bible is contradicting itself, right? Because Paul said we're justified by grace through faith alone.

And James just said we're justified by works. But of course, what

James is talking about, and the point he makes in his whole epistle, is that faith always has deeds.

And that's the point he's making here. Faith without works is dead. So true faith will always have works.

So in other words, in Abraham's case here, the works proved that he was justified by grace through faith.

His works proved that he had a saving faith. Now in verse 12, the

Lord says to Abraham that he knows that he fears him. We see the phrase, fear

God, show up many times in the Old Testament. To fear God, for the believer, does not have in mind the fear of judgment, like you're afraid of God because he's going to judge you.

Rather, for the believer, it's a much more positive thing, fearing God is.

Theologian R .C. Sproul, explaining Luther's understanding of this, said, it refers to the fear that a child has for his father.

In this regard, Luther is thinking of a child who has tremendous respect and love for his father or mother, and who dearly wants to please them.

He has a fear or an anxiety of offending the one he loves, not because he's afraid of torture or even punishment, but rather because he's afraid of displeasing the one who is, in that child's world, the source of security and love.

If you've ever had a good dad or mom in your life, you've experienced this. You want to please them.

They're the source of security and love, and you want them to say, well done.

You want to please them, and that's how it is with our relationship with God. That's what it means to fear God. You love him so much, and you don't want to let him down.

And when you sin, it hurts, because you feel like, I just let down the one I love the most, and that's painful.

With this act of trust and obedience, we can see that Abraham has truly feared the Lord, and that's what the

Lord says to him. He has pleased the one whom he loves the most. This probably brought

Abraham so much joy. We could spend our lives desiring to please the wrong people, when at the end of the day, the one we should aim to please is the

Lord. What you find is that man's praise is very fleeting. It's fitting that our

Sunday school lesson this morning, I didn't even plan on saying this, but it fits right in. Paul and Barnabas heal a crippled man.

And the Greek people, you know what they do? They say, these must be Greek gods. Look what they were able to do.

So they called Barnabas Zeus, and they called Paul Hermes, because he was the chief spokesman. And they said, look at what they were able to do.

These are gods. Of course, the Greeks are saying this with their understanding of what they understand of the world.

And it's fascinating, because not too long after that, the same people who said these great things about them were trying to kill them.

So you see how short -term man's praise is. But God's praise is forever.

If he says well done to you, he's not going to take that back. It's a firm commitment to you.

It's a firm opinion of who you are and where you're standing is with him.

His love towards you is a steadfast love. It should be our aim that the Lord would say to us, this man or woman fears me.

Or this boy or girl fears me. Would the Lord say this of you? Would the

Lord be able to say to you that I sent this difficult trial upon you so that you would trust me through the fog?

Would he be able to say, well done. You have been obedient to me through the tests.

I have sent your way. If you were to die today, would the Lord say that you feared him as you stood before him?

If this is so, you would be able to say I experienced the Lord's trustworthiness through the trial.

As I obeyed, I trusted him. Because the works here that Abraham is doing and that we do when we truly fear the

Lord, what we're showing is that God is trustworthy. That is something we must understand in these four verses.

While the Lord complimented Abraham, the Lord is the one who is glorified here. What did

Abraham show here? He showed that God is worthy of his trust. He risked his son's life to show that God is trustworthy.

He alone is the one you can always trust. This is a good time to quote

Proverbs 3, 5, and 6. Let me say it here. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.

In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your path straight. I think I learned that when I was like six years old and it's never left.

That verse is so wonderful. Isaiah 26, 3, and 4, the verse we looked at for the call to worship this morning.

You keep him in perfect peace whose mind has stayed on you because he trusts in you. Trust in the

Lord forever for the Lord God is an everlasting rock.

How much do you trust God? Do you trust him to do such a thing like Abraham did in this text?

He went through with all of this because his faith had increased through his life.

And he got to a point where he said, you know what? I know that the Lord is trustworthy. I know that I can trust him so I am going to do this.

If someone else told him to do this he wouldn't have done it. He would have said, you're crazy. I'm not going to do this.

But the Lord told him and so he did it. You trust the Lord with your whole heart because you are trusting in the solid rock.

This building that we're sitting in right now, think about it. We're putting a lot of trust in this building, aren't we?

This thing could collapse. And you probably didn't even think about it when you walked in. But years and years ago when this building was built in 1922, whoever built this place did a great job because it stood for 96 years.

This church building was built on a solid rock. The foundation is steady.

And the test of time has proved its steadiness and its trustworthiness. And the

Lord, he's proved himself. He's proved himself trustworthy. He's a solid rock that we can stand on.

It's not sinking sand. And the Lord is glorified through Abraham putting his whole trust in him.

Psalm 1831 says, For who is God but the Lord, and who is a rock except our God? This is a rhetorical question.

And the answer is obvious. Only the Lord is to be trusted 100%. He always comes through.

Abraham trusted him and God is glorified. So what we saw here this morning is that the near sacrifice of Isaac holds eternal truths that we must clearly see.

The first biblical truth is the Lord's desire to show his trustworthiness through Abraham's obedience.

And indeed, he did. And as I mentioned at the beginning here, so we still have two points left in this sermon.

And at this point you probably would have stopped listening anyways. So what we'll do is we'll stop right here.

A big sermon is like swallowing an elephant. It's too much at once. We need to break it up into shorter meals here.

And of course we're going on to Sconewood too. So with that, we'll close the book on today's sermon.

And we'll come back next week for points two and three. And what we'll see, just to give you a little preview, point two is the

Lord desires to show that a sacrifice was necessary. And then the last point that we will see is that the

Lord keeps his promises to those who stay with him. So we'll see the importance of us continuing to walk with the

Lord in order to inherit these promises that he has made to us.

So let's pray. Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.

I thank you for the trustworthiness of it. The reason we can trust the Bible is because we can trust the one who wrote the

Bible. All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness that the man of God or the woman of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

And Lord, may we understand that you are trustworthy. And the word of God is what we need.

We need you, Lord. We need your help. Life is difficult. And Lord, we need to trust you every step of the way.

You are the solid rock. And it's amazing, Lord, as we look at this history of this church. It's been here since 1881.

And you've been faithful the whole time to sustain it. And you're sustaining it to this day. And I thank you for that,

Lord. I thank you for what you're doing in our midst. I thank you for what you're doing in the individuals. Of course, the church is not a building.

It's the people. It's the individual people who make up the church. And so,

Lord, I pray for the people here that we would grow in our faith, that our faith would increase in you.

That we would realize that you are worthy of our trust 100 % of the time.

And as we go today, Lord, to Sconewood, Lord, may we have a rich time of fellowship. May we have a great time of eating and drinking.

the fluids there too? We ask for your blessing upon that time. In Jesus' name, amen.