"Your Only Son" (Sermon on Genesis 22)

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Would Abraham be willing to obey God in the most extreme of ways — to take his son, his only son, whom he loves… and offer him as a sacrifice? Would Abraham be willing to trust God enough to give up the thing he loves the most?

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I want to invite you to take out your Bible and turn with me to Genesis chapter 22.
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Hold your place at verse 1.
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We're going to read the chapter in just a moment, but I have a few preliminary words I want to give.
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Down in Mexico City, there is a terrifying sight.
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There are towers which were uncovered back in 2015.
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They were discovered and they are made out of human skulls.
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They have now found one tower that has 603 human skulls that have been mortared together to make a tower.
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And it's one of seven structures like that.
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And archeologists believe that the tower was constructed somewhere between 1486 and 1502 and that the skulls belonged to the victims of ritual sacrifice.
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In fact, one archeologist is quoted as saying this, they were all made sacred, turned into gifts for the gods or personifications of deities themselves.
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603 skulls in one of the seven towers.
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Human sacrifice is dreadful, but it is also a very common part of human history.
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If you look through the pantheon of the ages and you read the history of men, you will find human sacrifice in almost every culture in one way or another.
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In fact, as we studied and have been studying through Genesis, we find our way back to the earliest part of Abraham's life back at the end of chapter 11 and end of chapter 12.
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And we find that Abraham himself had come out of Mesopotamia and in Mesopotamia they have found many ziggurats and we talked about what a ziggurat was.
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A ziggurat was basically like a tower-shaped place of worship where the people would go and they would worship the different gods and it is likely based on the names of Abraham's family and based on where he came from and the places that he traveled through, it is likely that the god that his family worshipped, and Joshua does tell us he was a worshipper of false gods, that the god that he probably worshipped was Nana, the moon god.
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And what they would do is they would sacrifice to these gods sometimes to the point that near the ziggurats have been found cemeteries filled with these human sacrifices.
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I remember one, I told the story a few months ago about the one where they found the queen and she was buried with all of the sacrifices around her because when she died, her servants were sacrificed as part of her ceremony and they were buried encircling her.
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I think that's the worst job, right? You hope that she stays healthy, you don't want to be her servant.
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So I tell this simply to remind us that Abraham would have been all too familiar with human sacrifice.
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In fact, he probably would have seen it in those 75 years prior to the calling of God on his life, 70 years-ish that he was in Mesopotamia.
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Abraham would have known what human sacrifice looked like, he probably would have known the pain of what it felt like in one sense of seeing it in the faces of others.
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And when we read through the Bible, we find many places in the Bible where God absolutely forbids the act of human sacrifice.
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I'll give you four passages, you don't have to turn there because these are not the focus of the study today, but just so you know, there are at least four passages where God forbids the taking of human life on behalf of sacrifice.
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Leviticus 18.21 says, you shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech.
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Molech was the God, it was a stone statue that people would lay their infants on and it had a burning fire within it so that when they laid the infants on it, it literally cooked the child as they laid it on there and burned it and consumed it.
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Leviticus 18 says, you are not to give any of your children to offer them to Molech and profane the name of your God.
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Deuteronomy chapter 12, you shall not worship the Lord your God in that way for every abominable thing that the Lord hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods.
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Leviticus, I'm sorry, Deuteronomy 18, there shall be found no one among you who burns his son or his daughter as an offering.
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Anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens or a sorcerer.
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So it combines the act of human sacrifice with witchcraft.
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And then in Jeremiah 7, much later of course than the writing of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, Jeremiah 7 says this, says they have built the high places of Topheth which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire which I did not command nor did it come into my mind.
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That's an interesting phrase for God to say.
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For God to say something did not enter his mind.
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Now that is not God denying his own omniscience but it is God saying this is such a tremendously terrible act that such a thing is so powerfully awful that it's beyond even the ability to imagine.
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So we know God has disfavor at the very least for human sacrifice.
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Yet, prior to Moses and the writing of the Mosaic legislation, God uses this act of barbarism as the ultimate test of the faith of Abraham.
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By the way, it does not become normal, in fact it's never repeated.
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No one else is called to this test save Abraham himself.
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Only one who we will see ever is again really brought to this and it's God himself.
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Abraham's called to give his son and then at the last moment he's held back.
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God gives his son and as R.C.
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Sproul said, when God laid his son on the altar of sacrifice there was no angel to say stop.
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So that's the thought leading us into the text today and I do want to invite you to stand because we're going to read the text and we give honor to God's word as we read.
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After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham and he said, here I am, here am I rather.
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He said, take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, 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.
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So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac and he cut the wood for the burnt offering and rose and went to the place of which God had told him.
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On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.
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Then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey, I and the boy will go over there and worship and come to you again.
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And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and said, and laid it on his son and he took in his hand the fire and the knife, then they went both of them together.
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And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father, and he said, here am I, son.
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He said, behold, the fire and the wood, but where's the land for the burnt offering? Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.
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So they went both of them together.
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And when they came to the place of 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.
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Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
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But the angel, the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham.
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And he said, here am I.
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He said, do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him for now.
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I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son for me.
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And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns.
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And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.
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So Abraham called the name of that place.
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The Lord will provide.
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And it is said to this day on the Mount of the Lord, it shall be provided.
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And the angel, the Lord called a second time from heaven and said by myself, I have sworn declares the Lord because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son.
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I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of the heaven, as the sand of the seashore.
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And as the offspring shall and your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies and in your offspring, shall the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice.
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So Abraham returned to his young men.
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They arose and went together to Beersheba and Abraham lived at Beersheba.
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And after these things, it was told to Abraham, behold, Milka also has born children to your brother, Nahor, Uz, his firstborn, Buz, his brother, Kemuel, the father of Aram, Hesed, Hessa, Pilsda, Jedlaf, and Bethuel.
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Bethuel fathered Rebecca.
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These eight, Milka bore to Nahor, Abraham's brother.
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Moreover, his concubine, whose name was Rahema, bore Tebah, Gahem, Tehash, and Micaiah.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I pray that you would keep me from error as I preach.
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I pray that you would fill me with your spirit.
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I pray that you would open up hearts to believe.
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And I pray that through all of this, your spirit would have the open door here to do what only he can do.
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In Christ's name, amen.
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One of the greatest sermons that I ever heard was from Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul.
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Dr.
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R.C.
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Sproul, as I've said many times, is my favorite expositor, favorite teacher.
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I could listen to him teach for hours, and I still do at times.
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Sometimes I just turn on his sermons on my iPod or iPhone, whatever, and just listen.
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He was a wonderful teacher.
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And the sermon that I heard him preach, as I still put down as the greatest sermon I ever heard, was R.C.
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Sproul's exposition of Genesis 22, the passage we just read.
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And I had an opportunity to hear him preach it in person.
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I was about 25 years old, and I was going to the pastor's conferences that Ligonier would hold, and it just so happened that that year that R.C.
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preached this text, later I would hear his son tell the story that this was the text that his father would preach every time that he went on the road to preach.
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They called this his road sermon.
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Like if he was going on the road to preach, pastors sort of have that.
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And if we're going somewhere where it had never been heard before, you can repeat a sermon because they've never heard it.
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This was his road sermon.
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So this was a sermon that he had preached over and over again throughout the years and sort of honed it to a fine edge.
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I only tell this to begin because I don't want anybody to think that I would ever steal a sermon from someone because I honestly don't do that.
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But if there was ever a sermon that was fully influenced by someone else because of how many times I've listened to it so many times over the years, I can't not say the things I've heard.
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It's just in there.
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And so if you hear me preach this and then later you hear R.C.
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and you say, hey, that's where I'm admitting right now, that's where some of it came from.
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And I'm I hope that that's not a shameful thing for you to consider.
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You know, you know, it's R.C.
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was.
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He meant a lot to me.
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And one of the things he said about this text, which I do want to commend to your thought as we move into it, is he said this, he said, when you read this text, it is essential that you read this test, this text existentially.
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Now, what he meant by that, he did not mean according to the philosophy of existentialism .
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Existentialism is a philosophy that is not necessarily godly, but existentially.
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And I teach this in our hermeneutics class.
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Existentially means that when you read a text, you read the text understanding that these people truly existed at a time and a place and they were flesh and blood, that these are not robots, that these are not automatons, that these are human beings, men and women who are living this moment.
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And the pathos that would accompany a moment like this cannot be ignored.
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And yet it's not in the text.
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When you read the text, nothing is said of Abraham's pain.
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Nothing is said of the tears that were certainly shed.
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Nothing is said of any of that.
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And so we cannot read into the text, we cannot impose anything onto the text, but we must not think for a moment that any of this was done without feeling.
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So there is a careful balance that we must strike between sanctified imagination and overindulging the imagination.
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Recently I watched a short film, a Bible film, and Jennifer and I watched it together, and it had the scene of Isaac taking, or Abraham taking Isaac up onto the mountain.
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And I was immediately taken out of the story by several things.
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One, while Abraham has Isaac tying him up, Isaac's fighting.
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And that's not in the text.
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And I'm going to tell you later, I don't think that that's true.
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I don't think Isaac fought his father.
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One, at this time, Isaac would have been a young man, not a little child.
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It's not like it's an infant.
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If he wanted to fight off the 120-year-old Abraham, he probably could have.
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But also, in the movie, it has Rebekah, I'm sorry, Sarah, thinking of Isaac's wife, has Sarah running to Mount Moriah screaming, Don't kill my son! And that took me totally out of the story.
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There's nowhere in the story.
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There's nothing in the story about Sarah at all.
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We don't even know that she knew.
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In fact, I kind of tend to think, probably not.
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I don't imagine Abraham got up that morning and had his morning coffee and said, Hey, honey, pass me the sharp knife.
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I'll be back alone.
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I don't think that that conversation occurred.
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I just don't think so.
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Don't know, but certainly the movie people didn't know.
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But they thought it was important enough to add to the drama by giving this extra weight of emotion.
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And I ask you, do you really need to add to the drama of this story? It's like Brian Borgman said when he was preaching on this.
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Brian said this.
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He said, this is why we don't do skits at our church.
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He said, why would we perform a skit of drama when we have so much drama right there? We have the text, which is filled with pathos, which is filled with the drama of history and truth.
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All we need to do is read it and try for a moment to feel what was being felt by those who were there.
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So that's what we're going to do.
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And as I mentioned to Brother Mike earlier, I plan to take three weeks on this.
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Today I want to give an exposition of the story.
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Next week I want to give an exposition of the theology of this text, which is even more than the story.
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There's a theology that undergirds it, the theology of substitution.
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And then in the third week we're going to look at the application that James makes in James 2 when he says this is a picture of what faith that justifies looks like.
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And so that's what we're going to do over the next three weeks.
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But today we're just going to read and we're going to walk through the text.
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We'll begin here in verse 1.
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It says, after these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, here I am.
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And some translations say, here am I.
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It's interesting that comes up three times.
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Three times we see Abraham say, here am I.
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It was when the angel calls him at the beginning.
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Or I'm sorry, when the Lord talks to him at the beginning.
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Then later when his son says, father, and he says, yes, here am I.
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And then when the angel calls again, he says, here am I.
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So we see this three times.
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But what's interesting about verse 1 is that it tells us what is happening from the outset.
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It says, and after these things, God did test Abraham.
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It tells us this is a test.
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Now here's the thing.
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Abraham doesn't know that this is a test.
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Abraham knows this is a command.
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You see, you understand the difference.
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We benefit so much in this story.
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One, we can run to the end.
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It's like the, you know, I don't know about you, but I used to enjoy reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
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But one of my worst things I would do when reading Sherlock Holmes was I would run to the end.
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I would get the heart of what's going on.
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I would flip to the end because I wanted to see how it would end.
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And we have that.
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We know that when he takes that blade to the throat of his son, that the angel is going to stay his hand.
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But Abraham doesn't.
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We know it's a test.
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But Abraham doesn't know that.
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Verse two.
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He says, 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 will show you.
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Now, interesting that we have here a fourfold designation.
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Take your son.
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Stop right there.
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How many sons does Abraham have? At this point, two.
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Unless you want to count Eleazar of Damascus as an adopted son, you could say three.
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So, God comes to him.
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Take your son and sacrifice him.
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Oh, Abraham might have said, okay, Eleazar, let's go.
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Or, let me go see if I can catch up to Hagar.
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She's been gone for a little while, but maybe she's wandering around the desert of Beersheba.
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Maybe we can find her and we can certainly...
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He doesn't mean Isaac.
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Couldn't mean Isaac.
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Because Isaac is the promise.
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Isaac is the one that we've been waiting for, for all these years.
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Isaac is the one through whom the covenant will continue.
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Can't be Isaac.
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But God makes sure there's no opportunity to misunderstand.
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Take your son, your only son.
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And you said, wait a minute, didn't he just say he had other sons? Yes, he only has one son who is legitimately through his wife, Sarah.
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His only son.
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And by the way, I titled the sermon, Your Only Son.
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Because later in the Bible, the Bible says this.
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For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.
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See, even though Abraham had an adopted son and Abraham had a son through the handmaiden, he only had one son from God's perspective.
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The son that he'd been promised since he was called out of Mesopotamia, since he was called out of Ur of the Chaldeans.
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He only had this one son.
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Take your son, your only son.
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And then just in case you don't know who I'm talking about, I'll name him.
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The third designation, Isaac.
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Isaac.
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Not Ishmael, not Eleazar, no one else.
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Isaac.
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And then what I consider to be just the stab to the heart.
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And this was almost the title of the sermon.
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Whom you love.
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Because that's what it says.
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Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love.
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And offer him as a burnt offering.
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So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac.
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And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and rose and went to the place of which God had told him.
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Now I want you for a moment to consider the fact that it says that he rose early.
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Many people have taken to see what does it mean that he rose early.
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And a lot of people settle on this interpretation.
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And if this is your interpretation, I'm absolutely fine with it.
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The interpretation is that he rose early because Abraham was so obedient that he was going to get on with it.
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And I talked about that in the weeks ahead.
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I said Abimelech rose early because he wanted to be obedient to getting Sarah back.
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Right? And we've seen other places in the text where rising early does indicate obedience.
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So I'm okay if that's the interpretation.
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However, there's a little book.
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It was written by a Danish philosopher.
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And it was entitled Fear and Trembling.
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Now I don't believe this man was a believer.
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But he does give an interesting insight into the emotional side of this text.
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He writes about the Abraham-Isaac story.
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And he says that perhaps the reason why Abraham rose early was because he couldn't sleep, knowing what he was about to do.
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It's an interesting thought.
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And it says he took and went out and cut the wood.
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He saddled the donkey.
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He made preparations.
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And think about this from the perspective of Isaac.
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And honestly, when I was a kid and I'd hear this story told, I would always think of it from the perspective of Isaac.
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Now that I'm a father, I think of it from the perspective of Abraham.
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But when I was a kid, I always thought what it would be like to have my dad, you know, come into my bedroom and say, You know, we're going to go offer an offering to God today.
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Which would not have been odd, by the way.
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Think about that from the perspective of Isaac.
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For Abraham to come into his room and say, Today is the day of offering, son.
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We're going to go and we're going to make an offering.
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Certainly, Abraham had probably done this with Isaac before.
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In fact, I tend to think that that's almost absolutely necessary to believe.
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Because later, Isaac is going to ask the question, Where's the lamb? Because he knows he's done this before and there's something missing.
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Right? There's always things that we have to have.
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Got to have wood.
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Got to have a knife.
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Got to have fire.
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Because you don't get up there and do that, you know.
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You got to have the fire and take it with you.
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You know, you don't want to get up there and do the whole boy scout thing.
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Right? You want to have it ready to go.
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So, got to have the wood.
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Got to have the knife.
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Got to have the fire.
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But you got to have the lamb.
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The fact that Isaac knows this indicates he's probably been here before.
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Okay.
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We're going to go make an offering.
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Three days journey.
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Notice that.
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It says in verse 4, On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.
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That means for three days.
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Isaac walked next to his father.
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Now, again, we don't know how old he was.
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Probably a young teenage boy.
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Nice, strong boy.
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Probably at times maybe ran ahead of his father to show his strength and youth and vitality in the face of the 120-year-old, you know, Abraham or some, you know.
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Just running around and moving about.
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Dad, see what I can pick up.
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Because later it says Abraham lays the wood on him to go up the mountain.
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So this kid's strong and he's going along with his father.
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Three days.
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You know, when you have to do something hard, you often like to get it over with.
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But God makes Abraham wait three and they go together.
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On the third day, he lifted up his eyes and he saw the place.
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Verse 5, Then Abraham said to the young men, Stay here with the donkey.
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I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.
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You wonder why leave the guys behind.
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Well, there's a lot of different reasons why he may have wanted them to stay behind.
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One, he may not have wanted them to see what he was going to do for fear that they might try to stop him.
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Thinking that he was maybe going a little senile in his elderly condition and say, We can't, when he lifts the knife to his throat, they run in to grab him.
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So he says, no, you stay behind.
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The boy and I are going to go.
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And he says, we're going to go worship.
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That's what sacrifice is.
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Sacrifice is worship.
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And they're going to go worship together.
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And by the way, do you know what the word worship, you know where we get that word? The word worship comes in English.
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This is not the Hebrew or the Greek, but in English, it comes from the word, the same idea of the word of worth.
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So worship, in a sense, is like worth ship.
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It's something of which you ascribe worth to something.
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So when you talk about worshiping something, it means that you're ascribing value to that thing.
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You're ascribing, and worship really is the ultimate value.
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This is the ultimate thing of importance.
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And that's really what this test is about.
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Abraham has been called by God to answer one question.
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Am I worth more than anything? Even your son, your only son, is my worth greater than his? We have a lot of idols.
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And the reason why we have so many idols, John Calvin said our minds are factories of idols.
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The reason we have so many idols is because we ascribe worth to things higher than God.
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Sometimes it's our money.
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Sometimes it's our reputation.
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Sometimes it's our comfort.
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Oftentimes it's our comfort that we put in a place of higher worth than God.
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Sometimes it is our family.
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We can worship family by putting them above God.
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So God says to Abraham, am I worth more than anything? Even your son, whom you love.
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So Abraham says to the men, we're going to go and we're going to worship.
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So then verse six.
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And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son.
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And he took in his hand the fire and the knife.
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So they went both of them together.
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And by the way, this is an interesting just side note, historical fact.
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There is a Jewish commentary on Genesis that was written prior to Christ.
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Keep that in mind.
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That's very important.
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It's called the Bereshit.
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And it was dated around the sixth century A.D.
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I'm sorry, it was written after Christ, but it was written by Jewish people, not by Christians.
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But it says this.
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It says that when Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, it was like one who was carrying his own stake to be impaled on.
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And that was something that was done to Jews during the Roman time.
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They were impaled on stakes.
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And he says, by putting the wood on his shoulders, it was like carrying his own cross.
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So in this moment, Isaac is a picture of Christ.
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And Abraham, in this sense, is a picture of God himself, who is going to give his son.
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And he lays upon the back of his son the very instrument of his demise.
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Just like Christ would, thousands of years later, carry the very instrument of his own demise up the hill of Golgotha.
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In fact, in the same place.
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If you go right now to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount is overshadowed by a Muslim mosque.
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But where that mosque is, there once stood the Temple.
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And the reason why the Temple was raised there is because they believed that was the place where Abraham offered Isaac.
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And right on that same vicinity, right outside the city walls, was where Jesus was taken and hung from a tree.
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So as Isaac carried that wood up the mountain to be burned upon himself, so Christ carried the wood to be impaled upon.
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So we see the picture here.
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Verse 7, And Isaac said to his father, My father, and he said, Here I am, my son.
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He said, Behold the fire and the wood.
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But where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Where is the lamb? John Currid, in his commentary, said this.
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He says, Was Isaac being inquisitive or suspicious? I like that question.
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As he's looking around, he's saying, You know, I'm used to there being a fourth part to this activity.
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I'm used to the fire, I'm used to the knife, I'm used to the wood.
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I'm not used to there not being a lamb.
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Father, where is the lamb? And I think in my heart that question may have made Abraham's stomach turn for a moment.
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Again, I don't want to read too much into the text, but a little sanctified imagination never hurt nobody.
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And if I can imagine what he's getting ready to do when his son says, Daddy, where's the lamb? And he doesn't say, It's you.
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He says, God will provide.
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In fact, if you're familiar with the phrase Jehovah-Jireh, that's where it comes from.
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The phrase God will provide, Jehovah-Jireh.
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This is the text.
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In fact, later, as we already read, Abraham names this place Jehovah-Jireh.
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God will provide.
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And again, I can't help but continue to make the connection to the New Covenant where God did provide the lamb.
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In the same place, God provides the lamb.
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So Isaac asks, where's the lamb? God will give us the lamb.
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God will provide.
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When they reach the place of which God told him, verse 9, Abraham built the altar there, laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.
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Now, it tells us nothing else about this scene.
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And again, the movie I saw had Isaac pulling away from his father, saying, No, Father, please don't do this to me.
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And some people think that that's what the binding is.
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The binding was Isaac trying to get away and Abraham pulling him in and tying him up and saying, You know, we've got to do this.
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But understand this.
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Binding the sacrifice was part of the ritual of sacrifice.
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It was part of the ceremony.
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I don't believe Isaac was bound that he would not run away.
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However, I could see this.
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I could see Isaac's hand and feet bound for the reality that he might, in the last moment of his life, flinch or try to protect himself as a natural instinct might be.
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So perhaps his father bound him so that he would not, out of sheer natural instinct of self-preservation, try to stay his hand.
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And so he binds him and he ties him up and he lays him on the altar in a moment that none of us can imagine.
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I've known many people who have lost children and have ministered as best I know how to in those moments.
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And it is something that is a robust feeling of brokenness.
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It's the only way I can describe what you see in the faces of people who are hurting.
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And yet I've never sat around with a person who was responsible for their child's death.
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You understand the difference.
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Abraham is about to be responsible for the death of Isaac.
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He's going to be the one to administer the death blow.
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Most of us picture Abraham's hand raising high and the angel grabbing his hand.
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You know, we've seen drawings where the hand is up and the angel's grabbing and saying no.
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But the sacrifices were not given by plunging a knife through the heart.
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They were given by severing the throat.
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So Isaac is laying there with his neck exposed to the blade of the father who is prepared to take that sharpened edge, perhaps even the same blade that had circumcised his son just a few years before, to take the same sharpened blade and run it across his throat.
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And as he goes to place the knife, the angel of the Lord, Jesus Christ, the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham! The two-fold use of the name in Scripture is almost always used in a sense of urgency.
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Simon, Simon, Satan has sought to sift you like wheat.
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Remember, it's urgent that the use of the double term of the name Abraham, Abraham! And the third time he said, Here, here I am.
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Lay not your hand on the boy.
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Do nothing to him.
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For now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.
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Notice again the stressing of the unique relationship of Isaac to Abraham, your only son.
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You have not withheld your son from me.
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People sometimes take issue with the fact that it says now I know that you fear God as if God did not know before.
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We must understand that when God speaks in Scripture, sometimes he speaks in such a way that we would call the language of the condescension or the reaching down to us so that we might be able to relate to him.
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And God is saying, You've passed the test.
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That's what he's saying.
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You have been brought to this moment of testing and you passed.
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And understand this, as Brian said, Brian Borgman said, he said, Abraham has been in the school of faith since he left Ur of Chaldees, right? He's been in the school of faith and he's gotten some bad marks, right? There's a few times where he took home a few F's when he was going to class in the school of faith but right now he's graduating with honors because now I know.
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And notice he says, I know that you fear God.
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Not that you love God or that you trust God but that you fear God.
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You know who is most valuable.
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You know who I am.
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You know.
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So Abraham calls the place.
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The Lord will provide.
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And what we see in the following verses is we see God reestablishing with Abraham the promises of the covenant.
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He reestablishes that his son is going to be the one through whom the nations will be blessed because his son is going to bring birth to more sons and those sons are going to finally and thoroughly bring forth the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ through whom all the nations will be blessed.
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And then you might wonder why I read verses 20 to 24 because all it is really is just a little miniature outline of Abraham's brother and his children.
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Why would I read that? Well it's in the chapter, that's one.
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But the other reason why I read it is because what that tells us is Isaac has a future.
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And it's with a woman born of the brother of Abraham and her name is Rebecca.
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So in this chapter we have the moment of truth where Abraham's faith is tested and proven and then the promise that Isaac's life will continue on.
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And here's a picture.
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His wife has already been born.
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Now I want to finish by asking and answering a very simple question.
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Why was Abraham willing to go through with this? You might say, well he trusted God.
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He feared God.
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That's what the text says.
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I agree.
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But I want to show you one thing.
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Go back up to verse 5.
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Then Abraham said to the young men, stay here with the donkey.
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I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.
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Notice what he says.
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I and the boy will go and worship and will come again to you.
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Now some people think that Abraham was being somewhat coy with his companions trying to in that moment hide and deceive them for what he was about to do.
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But I don't believe that.
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And I don't because of one important reason.
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When the writer of Hebrews interprets this text for us, he tells us what was in the mind of Abraham.
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So turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11 and we will see the mind of Abraham in this moment.
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Why was Abraham willing to go through with it? We're going to see.
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Go to Hebrews 11 verse 17.
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My faith, Abraham when he was tested offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son of whom it was said through Isaac shall your offspring be named.
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He considered, notice this verse 19.
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He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead from which figuratively speaking he did receive him back.
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Notice the heart of Abraham and the mind of Abraham.
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As Abraham was walking up that mountain with his son, as he saw his son working to carry the wood on his shoulders, he believed that God's promises would continue and the only way for God's promises to continue would be for his son to live.
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So God, he said to himself, I will take his life and God will restore his life.
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Here's the powerful thing that had never been done before.
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You go back through all 21 chapters of Genesis.
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No one has yet risen from the dead.
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No one has yet risen from the dead.
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And Abraham as he walked up the mountain with his son said, if God forces me to go through with this, my son will live and I've seen God give life to my wife's dead womb.
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How much more difficult would it be for him to give life to my dead son? Abraham believed Isaac would live.
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He told those men, we're going to go worship and we will return to you.
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Understand this.
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The God of eternity does not require our sons to be burned on the fire.
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He does not require us to sacrifice our children to the flames.
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But he did give his only begotten son to die on our behalf.
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Consider again, John 3, 16.
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I know you know it, but consider it again.
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In light of the story of Abraham and Isaac, consider these words.
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In this way, God loved the world.
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That he gave his only begotten son.
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His only son, whom he loved.
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He gave his only son.
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That all who believe on him would not perish, but will have everlasting life.
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You see, what God did not require of Abraham, God was willing to give of himself.
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I want us to be this morning in awe of the love of God, who would give his only son for us.
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Romans 8, 32.
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He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all.
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How will he not also graciously give us all things? He didn't spare his son.
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He spared Abraham's son, but he didn't spare his own son.
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If you're a believer in Jesus, if you are saved this morning, and you have ever doubted God's love for you, I want you to say this to yourself.
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Remind yourself, God gave his son for me.
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You see, often we read this story, and we get so consumed with Abraham giving his son to God.
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And we think about the pathos of that, and all the pain that he went through, and walking up the mountain, and putting the wood on his son's shoulders, and all of those things, and we get so consumed in the heart of Abraham, that we forget that God took his son up a mountain.
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He laid a cross on his son's back, and by his stripes we were healed.
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And it says it pleased the Lord to strike his son for us.
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That's what we must see in this story.
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This story is not about the faithfulness of Abraham, it's about the faithfulness of God.
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And it's not about how much all of us would say, I don't know if I could do it.
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If that's what you take away, that's not what you're supposed to take away.
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It's not about whether or not you would do it, or could do it.
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It's about the fact God did it.
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That's the heart of the story.
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What God did not require of Abraham, he required of himself.
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For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for your truth.
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I thank you that you spared not your own son.
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And I pray, oh God, now, that as we seek to gather around the table of remembrance, the remembrance of your son, I pray, oh God, that you would use this time to draw us closer to you and to greater appreciation for what you have done through the cross of your beloved son.
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In his name we pray.