Shadows to Substance Conference (Day 3 Andrew Rappaport) THE LORD PROVIDES

Well, thank you very much for having me. Pastor Jeff, I thank you very much for inviting me.

I know you needed a token dispensationalist, so I know my role. But no,

I do, for folks at the church here, I'll just say I love your pastor dearly.

I told someone earlier today, I'm trying not to look at him, so don't get emotional. But I really, really appreciate men that I can disagree with in such a loving way.

I mean, it may sound weird, but I love disagreeing with him, because he tells me exactly what he believes.

He doesn't hold back, but then he tells me exactly where he thinks I'm wrong. I love your friendship, brother.

Let me start before I get some introductory things. I'll just encourage you to take your song sheet out.

This would be a good thing just to meditate our minds on before I even give some introductory remarks. But the song that we sang the other day,

Yet Not I, But Through Christ in Me, I won't sing it. You don't want that. But I'm just going to read a couple of this, where you see

C2. I'm just going to read it, a couple parts of that to meditate our minds. To this

I hold. My shepherd will defend me.

Through the deepest valley he will lead. Oh, the night has been won, and I shall overcome.

Yet not I, but through Christ in me.

No fate I dread. I know I am forgiven.

The future, sure, the price has been paid. For Jesus bled and suffered for my pardon, and he was raised to overthrow the grave.

I hope we can all love this next chorus. To this

I hold. My sin has been defeated. Jesus, now and ever is my plea.

Oh, the chains are released. I can sing. I am free.

Yet not I, but Christ in me. May that be the overwhelming theme,

I think, that we've heard throughout this conference. And I would not be able to sing, so I'll leave that to those who can.

You know, I will say as I start, I was very upset with Michael. He's not here.

Someone should just videotape this part. Pastor Jeff, maybe you video this and send it to him so he knows how upset

I am with him. I was very upset with him. Yeah.

So I was really upset because if you heard Pastor Michael speak, you know, he spoke about no one looks to Abraham.

You know, to Aaron. You know, it's Moses. He's just Moses' brother.

Yeah, I got a real problem with that. That's my descent. I'm a descendant of Aaron. I'm a

Levite. I like Abraham. I like Aaron. What is he talking about Moses? Who cares about Moses?

Michael's got to get that straight. But, you know, at a reform conference,

I know there's been some questions here. Many of you have been asking. You know, I don't seem to fit in.

People have been wondering, you know, where's my beard? Look, I understand that not everyone can have such a beautifully short beard like I have.

I have one. I just, I don't want you all to be too overwhelmed. So, and so what

I want to do is just, I'm going to also ask forgiveness. I won't be as passionate as the men before me. There's some great preaching here, has there not?

Man, I'm sitting there going, I've got to follow all these guys? Man. But, in the tradition we've had where we rise for the reading of the word,

I was very tempted to ask us to rise and we'll read through Genesis 12 to 22.

But then we wouldn't have time. I would sit down. So we will be going through Genesis 12 all the way through 22.

Yes, I do it in an hour. I told Brother Greg, I preach through the entire book of Leviticus in an hour.

I do it in churches and I tell people they will love it afterwards. They are surprised but they do. You'll never read

Leviticus again the same way. But if you turn to Genesis chapter 12, that'll be where we're going to start.

I'll just say this for my LSB only brothers, I'm sorry, I will be using the English standard version.

I'm sorry, but I was tempted to use like, you know, the

King James. Alright, let's start with the word of prayer, shall we?

Heavenly Father, we do love the fact that we can have such sweet fellowship.

This week is just a foretaste of what heaven will be like.

Oh Lord, I can't wait for the day that we can sit and have this sweet fellowship that we've had this week, though without all the theological debate because you'll correct all of us.

We won't be ever be so happy to be corrected than when you correct us, Lord. But we enjoy the fellowship.

We enjoy the humor we can have. As you say, it's good medicine to the bones. I ask

Lord that you might help that my voice would, as it's raspy, that it would not be a distraction. And that as Pastor Haps had said,

Lord, you are the great I am, and I am the great I am not.

We ask that you in the personal Holy Spirit in this hour would take your word and illuminate it to our minds, give us the application thereof so that we would leave this building knowing you more, loving you more, and living for you more.

We ask this in your name. Amen. My topic is The Lord Provides, Jehovah Jireh, or we say

Yahweh Jehovah, Yahweh Jehiva if you have the, you know, LSB.

But it is found in Genesis 22, 14.

We'll get there in about an hour. I do believe I have both your session and my session, right

Pastor? Just checking. But as we look at this, this was a name of a place that was given by Abraham when he was offering

Isaac as an offering to the Lord, and we're going to look at that passage eventually.

But first I have a question for you, a question for us to think about, a question I'm going to challenge all of us with.

You know, being raised in Judaism, Abraham is known as the father of the faith.

And even many Christians will refer to him as the father of faith. So my question is, as we talk about shadows to substance, my first question

I want us to think about is, is Abraham even a man of faith? Let's examine that and see what kind of man of faith

Abraham was. Because we don't want to just read Scripture and ignore things, we want to engage with it and deal with what it says, and sometimes we have a tendency to just read things.

We don't think about Abraham as a person as much as this kind of shadowy figure of faith that we look to.

And so in Judaism you have three great men of faith. Abraham, the father, but two other pillars are

Moses and David. And as we consider Abraham, we would think of this idea of him being this great man of faith,

I think it developed over time. Because when we think about it, we'll start in chapter 12 of Genesis, and when we think of Abraham, we think of that command in Genesis 12, 1 -3, where God ends up commanding

Abraham to leave his town Ur and go to Chaldea.

And we think of that command. So he gives that command, and many of us think that he just up and obeyed. I'm not going to ask for a raise of hands if you think he just up and obeyed.

But he didn't actually up and obey. You see, Abraham did not fully obey

God when he was commanded. In fact, what it says here in Genesis 12, 1 -3,

Now the Lord said to Abraham, Go from your country and your kindred, your land of your father's house, to the land

I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be blessed.

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.

Now I want you to remember this, because this here, I want you to think about what he was just promised by God.

I know there's a lot of people that say they get direct revelation from God, they get phone calls, dreams, and visions.

Okay? That's not actually happening. This actually happened. Here you have someone that has a direct revelation from God of what

God is going to do in his life, and as we look at the rest of his life, go, what were you thinking? What he's thinking is he didn't have

Genesis 12 written down. Okay? It would be nice to have that. And so what we end up seeing, though, is if you go back in Genesis 11 and 31, you end up seeing that Abraham went as far as Huron until his father died.

You're going, well, Andrew, what's the big deal? That's kind of on the way. Actually, it's not kind of on the way. But there's an interesting thing with Huron. Huron has the same gods as the

God of his father. Same idols. So why is that important? Well, because in Genesis 11, 31, it says,

Tara, his father, Abraham's father, Tara took Abram, his son, and Lot, the son of Huron, his grandson, and Sarai, his daughter -in -law, his son

Abram's wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the

Chaldees to the land of Canaan, but they came to Huron and settled there.

So he didn't go all the way to where he was commanded to go. He kind of went halfway.

He kind of was obeying the Lord, but not fully obeying the Lord. He's going so far, but what

I believe, this is sanctified imagination, I can't prove it in scripture, but what I believe happened is that he went, but he wasn't, he wanted to obey

God, but he still had some fear of his father. He still felt he had to go only so far, so he goes with his father and goes to a land where they would have spoken a similar language and have similar gods, and only after his father died do we see that he actually fully obeyed and went to Canaan.

So I think early on, one of the things we end up seeing is Abraham may have had some fear of men.

Now I'm saying may have, but later we'll prove that. So what we end up seeing is it could be that he had more of a fear of his earthly father than he did his heavenly father.

It was only when his earthly father was gone that he was willing to fully obey his heavenly father.

Now let's not be too hard on Abraham, because many of us have had the same thing.

Many of us even as fathers or grandfathers still have fathers that we want, that we're looking to honor and still feel like we have to prove ourselves to them.

I had a friend of mine, he was 52 years old, and I remember we were talking, I actually, what we did was we decided we were going to kind of cross exchange and I wrote a letter to his father to share the gospel, and he said, the reason we did it, he's 52 years old, and this is what he had said to me, he goes, even though I'm 52 years old,

I'm still a child in my father's eyes. He couldn't share the gospel because his father didn't respect him enough, he still saw him as a child.

I think that Abraham may have had that. That was very part of his culture. Not only does

Abraham not fully obey the promise, but what we ended up seeing, I believe, is he's going to show a fear of men, specifically, in this case, his own father.

But this is going to be a pattern we're going to see, that he fears men. He not only fears men in not fully obeying when it comes to his father, but we also see that he also avoids conflict with his nephew

Lot. When Abraham and his nephew were on their way, they left Egypt and there became some strife between them.

The two of them had some issues because there was this land, and they were trying to have for their flocks.

And so Abraham, being the older member of the family, was the one who should have made the decision on what happens.

That is the culture. And yet, what did he do? We see in verses,

Genesis 13, 8 -9, he ends up deferring his right, as the older one, to his nephew.

Avoids the conflict. I think he was, he just, I don't want to deal with any, I don't want to have to deal with issues. Any of us have conflict avoidance issues?

Don't raise hands. But Lot was the one who made the decision for both of them, and Abraham submitted to Lot.

Now, we know Lot's decision was basically made out of selfishness. You can see it's Genesis chapter 13, verses 8 -9.

When Abraham said to Lot, let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, for we're kinsmen.

Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then

I will go to the right. If you take the right hand, I will go to the left. Now, my thinking when

I read this is, if all the land is before you, then why do you need to separate in the first place? There's lots of land. Right?

But, but the strife, he just, let's avoid it. Conflict, he just wanted to avoid the conflict and the strife.

Instead of having faith as God promised him. Remember, God promised him he would be a great nation.

Okay, whatever you want, Lot. And then, so we end up seeing that instead of having faith in what

God had provided for both of them, he lets Lot make the decision.

Now, in our day and age, that may actually seem like a noble thing. I mean, he's, he humbled himself.

He, he sat and allowed someone else to make a decision for him. And that, that seems like something in our culture that would, we'd say, oh, he's preferring preference of others.

Seems good. But that's a dishonor in his culture. To have the, someone who is a descendant, in this case his nephew, giving instructions to the older generation, it would be a dishonor.

And so, he's willing to take a dishonor, in this case, to avoid the conflict.

I mean, after all, you think about all that Abraham ends up doing for Lot, right? He ends up, when Lot gets captured, this is

Genesis 14, he ends up, it's Abraham that comes to rescue him. It could be that the, with the rest of the way we see

Abraham, that it is just as easy for us to avoid conflict.

We, we, we, we sometimes will act weak, even when we have God's Word to trust upon, to say, you know what?

It's just easier to avoid this. I, I counsel dozens, if not hundreds of pastors over the years in church discipline issues.

I know, I don't know how many men I have to try to strengthen up and say, brother, say what needs to be said, because the

Word of God says to do it. And men are just like, ah, but, you know, just be easy.

And then, months or years down the road, they deal with the ramifications of that.

Avoiding conflict, when we have God's Word, doesn't make it easier. Okay?

It, it, as we're gonna see with, with Abraham, it only creates more conflict. So, we can look at Abraham and just see him as this, this weak man who has no faith, avoiding conflict, letting others make decisions for himself, dishonoring himself.

But one of the things we end up seeing is, he ends up, and this is, kind of becomes a character of his, not as he seemed to fear men rather than God, but he seems to be a guy who relies on himself rather than God.

I'm not gonna ask any of you how often you go to God in prayer about a situation after everything you could do.

I, I know it's just me who does that. You guys are spiritual. I understand that. I don't want to put my sin upon you.

But, but when we look at Abraham, I can identify with him. When God promised that he would have a son of his own body, he doubted the

Lord's words. When God told him this, what does he do? He hatches a plan with his, with his wife.

You know what, maybe, maybe we could kind of obey, you know, even though Abraham believed the

Lord and accounted to him for righteousness, Abraham didn't fully obey the promise yet again.

Why? Because even though he, he wanted some sign from God, he didn't rely upon God.

And he and his wife hatch a plan, Genesis 16. We end up seeing

Genesis 16, 1 through 3, this is their plan. Now, now Sarai, and you do realize

I hope Sarai is Sarah and Abraham, Abram is Abraham, okay? Their names got changed.

Now Sarai, Abram's wife, had borne him no children. She had a female

Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said to Abram, behold, now the

Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go into my servant. It may be that I shall obtain children through her.

And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So after Abraham had lived 10 years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram's wife, took

Hagar, the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram as her, her husband, as a wife.

Now I know in our culture we're going, what in the world? This is a culture that has a lot based on the fact of having a next generation.

And this is surrogacy that would be common. But there's something more here. Remember the promise that was made.

The promise of a child from Abraham's body. Why do

I emphasize this? Because, you know, I think Abraham is guilty of things that you and I do often.

We kind of obey God. We make ourselves sound really spiritual, but we know we're not fully obeying

God. We go as far as we can without being fully submissive.

So it's like, look, Lord, it's from my body. I mean, can you picture Abraham saying that? Like, I'm listening to my wife.

She's got a pretty good plan. It is my child. Yeah, that's the fulfillment of the promise. We're just being impatient,

God, because you're taking too long. I mean, we never suffer with that. Any hunters here?

Okay, so hunters, you guys know, we go out real early so the deer, our smell disappears. Okay, this is how pathetic this preacher is.

I'm up in a tree. I'm waiting for a deer to come by. I'm just sitting. I'm just, just thinking about, you know, areas of my life, praying to the

Lord, thinking about things I need to work on. And unfortunately, this is my, was my prayer. Lord, I really struggle with patience.

Would you be able to help me with this now? Lord, will you forgive me for having impatience with my impatience?

Well, I think that's Abraham. He's been waiting years and sees no fulfillment.

Could he have been questioning, you know, Lord, I know you made me this promise, but, but,

I mean, was it real? Maybe what you meant was I have a child through Hagar. Maybe that's what it was.

And one of the things is you're gonna, we're gonna see as we go through this, when we try to fulfill

God's will with our will, it never ends well. And so we see here that even though Abraham is trying to have this promised sign of a child, and even though he's so many years of not having a child, he probably justified it in his mind.

And ladies and gentlemen, aren't we good at justifying our sin? We, we can come up with all kinds of amazing ways to disobey the

Lord. And that's what Abraham was doing. The Lord wanted him to be patient, to wait upon him.

And he was stringing him out. You know, there's, there's three ways

God answers prayer. Yes, no, and we don't want to hear it.

Because the last one's wait, and that's the one we hate. Wouldn't it be better to say no, get it over with? What we end up seeing is

Abraham listened to the advice of his wife. I'm not saying that that's a bad thing to do, man.

But it does seem to get some people in trouble. But no, the idea that we end up seeing though is this, is we see is

Abraham listened to his wife over God. And that's the importance.

See, if his wife was saying a godly thing, he should listen to her. But she was coming up with some way of fulfilling

God's plan without God. Doing it naturally here. You take Hagar, you take her as a wife, and produce a child, which they did.

They did not trust God's plan, but instead developed one of their own.

This plan of theirs may have something to do with them justifying themselves. They feel that they could still be fulfilling

God's law. They knew what God's promise was. They were just too impatient to wait upon it.

And when we know God's will, but seek to fulfill it only partially, or seek to fulfill it in a way that allows us to do things we know are disobedient, then we are not following God's will.

It displays a lack of faith to attempt to fulfill God's will with man -made plans, even if we can make them seem spiritual.

And we do this often, folks. This plan of theirs did not lead to God's pleasure.

Instead, it actually led to conflict within the family. You could see that in Genesis 16. Some of you are afraid

I was actually gonna go through every verse of these 10 chapters, 11 chapters. No. But when when

God came to Abraham and clearly promised him that he would have a son by Sarah, you know what her reaction is in Genesis 17?

She laughed. Instead of trusting in God's ability, the

God who created the universe out of nothing, oh, but he can't put a child in my womb.

I'm 99 years old, 100 years old. Instead of trusting

God's ability, Abraham doubted that a hundred -year -old man and woman would be able to bear a child.

When God made Abraham promises, instead of relying on God, he actually begs

God to accept Ishmael as the promise. Look, God, here's my man -made plan.

Why don't you accept this? I'm too old to have a child with Sarah, but I have

Ishmael over here. Accept him. We sit there and say to God, like, okay,

I've made a mess of this situation, but can you still work with it? Can you still use what I created, what

I did? I used to work in an addiction recovery center. We had a saying with all the guys that, you know, you get into the addiction recovery center because you already made a mess of your life.

And then they would sit here as a counselor and they would try to tell us with their plan for how to fix things and how to get things right.

And we had a common saying, we'd say, your mess got you in here. You really think you can fix this?

You get out of here with Christ. You got in here because of self. Well, that's, that's

Abraham here. He got into his mess by self and he's going, but, but God, I still, I still got my plan, doesn't it?

Just do this. Now, God was being very, very specific with Abraham with his promise.

He referred to Isaac as being from Sarah, not Hagar. And Abraham still wants his man -made plan over God's plan.

He still thinks, maybe, you know, maybe God, you could use my disobedience. People often disobey the very clear will of God for half measures.

And when it produces conflict, instead of repentance, we like Abraham, try to negotiate with God for him to accept our situation on our own terms.

We do see some faith with Abraham. There's, there's a bright light here in Genesis 17, 23 to 27.

I won't read that, but you end up seeing some, something. Because we, we end up seeing that the, the faith of this promise, after Abraham gets, after he leaves the area, he, he obeyed

God in getting circumcised. So he did something, right? Maybe that's all it was, right? Just, he got circumcised, so that's why he's a man of faith.

Well, we'll see. But I want you to think about the fact, what it must have been like for a 99 -year -old man to be circumcised.

We'll get to that. That's, that, that couldn't have been an easy task. But we see

Abraham still being a man who fears men and not God. But there is a worse situation.

Abraham prostituted his own wife. Abraham was married to his stepsister.

We know this in, in, earlier in, in Genesis 12, but it says he headed to Egypt, and there was a famine.

This is what says Genesis 12, talking about the situation. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to Sarah, his wife,

I know that you are a beautiful woman in appearance. Now stop and think about that. I mean, this, this, she's got to be in her 70s, 60s, 70s, at least by this time.

And he's saying, you know, she's beautiful. How beautiful? Well, here's how beautiful she is. Beautiful in appearance, and when the

Egyptians see you, they will say, this is his wife. Then they will kill me, but let you live.

Say you are my sister. It may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared because of your sake.

So she was so good -looking, he, he assumed that when he enters into Egypt, the men would want to kill him to take his wife.

Now she's, she's not of childbearing years, so in that culture, that wouldn't have been, you know, that wouldn't be something that would typically happen.

They would want young, young women, but he's so desperate to save his own life during this famine, that he was afraid, so much so of the

Egyptians, that he would let them take his wife as their own.

He's still trying to fulfill the promise of God by relying on himself, isn't he? He has such a great fear of men, and that always leads us into trouble.

Many people do this. Let's not be too hard on Abraham. Many of us will, will justify our sin by deceiving others, and, and maybe, maybe we'll say things that are true, but we're not given the whole truth.

But when you say something that's true, for the purpose of deceiving someone, and not telling the full truth, that's called a lie.

Even if all the little details are true, and that's what

Abraham's doing. Is it true that his, that Sarah is his sister? That's true. Is that the whole truth?

No, it is not. It is not the whole truth, and he knows that, but he's so worried about men.

What ends up happening, as we look at this, is he is deceiving others, so that he could live.

Did God already promise that he'd be a great nation? Is he trusting in that? No. He's relying on himself.

He hatches his own plan again. People do this often, but they feel they're being spiritual, because I'm telling the truth.

Everything I'm saying is true. I'm just deceiving in the process. However, in Abraham's case, it was even worse, because Abraham, not wanting, not only wanting to deceive the

Egyptians, but he expected that someone might take his wife, and he seems okay with that.

Look in Genesis 12, verse 15, it says, "...and when the princes of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and the woman was taken to Pharaoh's house."

Abraham, this great man of faith, allowed his wife to be taken into Pharaoh's harem.

What kind of husband allows his wife to be taken to another man to marry, and well, if they're married,

I'm assuming consummating it as well. What kind of man does that? Is that the man of great faith that we think?

It says in 12, 16, "...and for her sake he dealt with Abraham, and had sheep and oxen, male donkeys, and male servants, and female servants, and camels."

So basically, Pharaoh paid Abraham for this wife of his, thinking it's his sister.

Abraham got paid. He got rich off of Pharaoh, because Pharaoh married his sister?

No, his wife. However, God protected not only

Abraham's life, but also Sarah's. The Lord provided an escape for them. Let's look in chapter 12, verses 17 to 20, it says, "...but

the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues, because of Sarai, Abram's wife.

So Pharaoh called to Abram, and said, What is this you've done to me?

Why did you not tell me she is your wife? Why did you say she is my sister, so that I took her for my wife?

Now then, here is your wife, take her and go. And Pharaoh gave men orders concerning them, and sent them away, sent him away with his wife, and all he had."

Pharaoh took Sarah as a wife, and God ended up bringing plagues upon them.

And he had to realize, oh, this is because of Sarah. Which probably means it wasn't a short thing, it wasn't overnight.

How, like, we have to assume that they consummated that relationship, and Abraham let that happen.

What was Sarah thinking? I mean, you want me to say what?

Go into town, and you're okay with Pharaoh taking me away? I don't think that she thought of herself, man,

Abraham, you are a great man of faith. I'll go do this.

Genesis 13 to 2 states that Abraham was very rich in livestock and silver and gold.

Where did he get that from? Well, we saw Pharaoh gave him some of that. We would like, we would like to think that this horrible incident seared in his mind a lesson that he would learn from.

Now, Abraham may not be like you, but he's more like me. One lesson is just not enough. Need multiple lessons, and that's

Abraham. I'm glad it's not just me. We end up seeing that through it, though God protects both of them.

And one would think that Abraham would learn from this mistake of the earlier years, this is many years later, that Abraham, who could have trusted

God, who could have trusted what was said in Genesis 15, 15, as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace, and you shall be buried in a good old age.

It's good to know you're gonna die of an old age when you go into yet another town. And in Genesis 20, verses 1 and 2, we read this, from there

Abraham journeyed toward the territory of Nebib and lived between Kadesh and Sirr, and he sojourned in Gir, and Abraham said of Sarah his wife, she is my sister, and Abimelech, the king of Gir, sent and took her.

And we read this and go, what? Do you not remember? Did you not learn the lesson?

But this time, what did, he's afraid of men killing him when he has a promise from God that he would live till old age.

Is he trusting God? Is this how we think of faith? But this time

God protected them from, before consummation of the relationship, and Abimelech, who actually seems to have more faith than Abraham, when you read the account, because Abraham thinks, he says to Abimelech, oh

I was afraid of you because you're, you're an unbelieving people and you might kill me. He, Abimelech is the one that seems to have more faith in this, in this situation.

Because Abimelech is the one that says, in Genesis 29 and 10, that Abimelech called

Abraham and said to him, what have you done to us? And how have I sinned against you that you have brought on me and my kingdom a great sin?

You have done to me things that ought not be done. And Abimelech said to Abraham, what did you see that you did this thing?

Abraham thought that Abimelech had no faith, when it seems that he had more.

Because though Abraham says that he thought, you know, they would just kill him for his wife, Abimelech is the one that is called, that realizes that Abraham is a prophet, according to God.

Abraham claims that allowing his wife, though, this is crazy to think about, when he talks to his wife about this plan, he said to Sarah, that do me this kindness.

This deception that he planned, he convinces his wife that this is a kindness to him.

How did he explain what he was doing at this time with Abimelech?

How do you explain that to his teenage son, Ishmael? Like, Ishmael's watching this go on.

Ishmael's sitting there and knows his mother, Hagar, is kind of the woman that when

Sarah wants to get rid of her, it's gone. He knows that Sarah is the one that Abraham really, that his father really loves, and yet his father's willing to let his wife go be taken by another man.

But here's an interesting thing I was thinking about. This is how I engage with Scripture. Don't ever just read

Scripture, engage with it. This is not a book just to sit and read because we have our devotional time.

This is a book we engage with because I hope you're seeing Abraham, yeah, we're a lot like him, aren't we?

What in the world was Abraham's escape plan? Your wife is now

Pharaoh's wife or Abimelech's wife, but in both cases, a king. How are you getting out of that town?

When the famine's over, do you just go into the Pharaoh and go, hey, she's actually my wife. We're gonna get out of here now.

If he was so afraid for his life to let someone marry his wife, do you really think he was gonna take his wife and leave town?

I mean, is the king gonna allow that or just say, well, you know what, now I will kill you because I'm happy with my wife. I just,

I cannot figure out what his escape plan is. The only way I can make sense of this is that Abraham didn't quite think ahead.

He was so afraid of men that he just, one step, okay, I don't know what I'm gonna do when she's married to the king.

I'll figure that out when that time comes. There was no way for him to get out of this except from God.

It's more likely that he just sat there trying to figure out, let me stay in the country until I could figure something out.

Abraham behaved much like the nation of Israel though. He's almost a shadow of the nation because what you end up seeing in the nation of Israel is that they too had a promise of God and they too sold themselves as prostitutes to the gods of the other nations.

Oh Lord, give us a king like the other nations, worshiping their idols, taking their own children and sacrificing them to those idols.

You know, when we're talking about this message, I was talking to Pastor Jeff and we were discussing some of this and what

I might say and Pastor Jeff had this comment, Abraham would not be the kind of man that we would invite to this conference.

Why do we call him though a man of faith? It seems with everything we've looked at, he doesn't seem like the man we would look at as being a great man of faith, a man we'd want behind a pulpit preaching.

But there seems to be a turning point for him with the birth of Isaac. When the promise that God made was fulfilled and he finally saw that, we start to see a change.

We saw a little bit with when he was circumcised, some obedience. But we can rejoice that God was not done with Abraham.

As Philippians 1 .6 says, he's not just the author of our faith, but he's the finisher of our faith.

I'm glad for that because if he was done with Abraham, we'd be in trouble.

Guess what, if he was done with us, we'd be in trouble. But the good thing is, he's not done with us.

As long as there's breath in our lungs and we know Christ, God is still sanctifying us.

Oh, we don't like it. No one likes that fire, but he's still working on us. And many of us are much like Abraham.

We too, in our younger years and maybe even our present years, lack much of the faith that we might need to have.

And even though Pastor Jeff did steal a lot of my thunder, just gives me more time to say other things, let's talk about circumcision.

So anything that I say that he said that seems opposite, you now know what the right one is.

I did say that I enjoy disagreeing with him. He is a man that just disagrees with people so graciously, doesn't he?

It's like you feel bad disagreeing with him because he's got such a smile on his face like, you're wrong brother. Yeah, you don't know the scriptures brother.

And you want to like yell at him, but it's just so hard. It's a good thing a beard covers up most of the smiles.

Genesis 17, we see the promise of the covenant that was sealed with the act of circumcision.

And so this 9 to 14, for the sake of time, I'm not going to read this. This was actually spoken of yesterday when

Pastor Jeff spoke. But this act of circumcision, this covenant sign that was required, was an act of great faith.

We already mentioned he's 99 years old. I do not remember my circumcision.

I remember my cousins and my nephews. And I could tell you as an adult man, ouch!

Watching it and hearing that scream. This is a 99 year old man who took his 13 year old boy and all of the servants with him and circumcised them.

Now you say, okay, that must have taken a little bit of faith, you know, on Abraham's part.

But what about, what about his servants and his son? Maybe he just commanded it, you know.

He just said, well, you're, you know, you must obey me. Go get circumcised. I don't think that's the case.

I think what happened was Abraham shared his faith so much, I think they willingly submitted to that. That he shared what the

God that made promises to him, and they became part of this covenant through the same sign that Abraham was given.

I think he ended up sharing that. We end up seeing later he'll circumcise Isaac. But the circumcision is the shadow.

And within Judaism, I could tell you, circumcision is a big deal. You see that throughout the Scriptures. And they missed the mark.

Because the circumcision was nothing but the shadow. The faith was the substance.

So we talk about shadows and substance, and we see Paul ends up referring to this in Romans chapter 4, when he talks about this circumcision.

And he says this is Romans 4, 3, starting in 3. For what does the

Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him as righteousness.

But now the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift, but as due.

And to the one who does not work, but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

Just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one whom God counts righteous apart from works.

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered.

Blessed is the man against whom the Lord is not counted in his sin.

Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness.

How then was it counted to him? Was it counted before or after he was circumcised?

It was not after, but before. He was circumcised. He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised.

The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness might be counted to them as well.

And to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised, but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father

Abraham had before he was circumcised. See, circumcision wasn't what saved him.

That was the sign of what already happened. This is the mistake that people make when we talk about baptism, as if baptism can save.

Baptism is after, just as circumcision was after. It's the sign, not the cause.

Circumcision is not the covenant. Baptism is not the covenant. It's the sign.

So as we've seen, the idea of an adult male being circumcised takes a great act of faith.

But that's just the sign. The circumcision's the sign. Paul recognized the act of circumcision was the shadow, and the substance was his faith.

Now having examined some of the life of Abraham here, we can start to see, begin to see that he's starting to trust

God. He's starting to trust in God and fear God more. But now we're gonna get, as often happens when we show a little bit of faith in our life, and those tests always get greater.

Well, this is the greatest test that Abraham probably ever had, as we get into chapter 22 of Genesis.

So all of this was introduction. I just like to say that so I can feel like John MacArthur. Fifty minutes into a message, you know, that's introduction.

The only problem is I can't be back here next week to finish. So I gotta finish up now. But one thing, it's one thing to have faith, but it's another thing to have it tested.

What was Abraham's biggest problem, as we've talked about? It's a fear of what?

Men, and not a fear of God. So God is gonna give him a test. You're gonna fear men, you're gonna fear

God. Greatest test he's gonna have. And yes, God does test people.

It says in the text that God tested them. That doesn't mean God tempts people.

There's a difference. God allows testing in our lives because he's testing us.

One of it, it's not for him. It's not so he could see what the result is. Guess what? He already knows. It's so that we could see the result.

This whole offering of Isaac was not for God. It's for Abraham and for Isaac.

Isaac, this long -awaited promise. God tests him by saying he wants him to sacrifice him to God.

It seems that God wants him to feel the full weight of this test because when he says it, he says take your son, your only son.

Is Isaac his only son? No. There's Ishmael. He wants the weight of this test.

This is the son of promise. This is the one you waited for, this miracle child.

The one you waited so long. The child of when you're outside of the childbearing years.

It's a miracle. Would you be willing to sacrifice your child, let alone a child you waited many years for?

Well beyond childbearing years? That's what he's being called to do. He's being called to do that even after decades of having this promise.

Having to force him to have patience. What in the world is Abraham thinking?

I mean, he knows God doesn't want human sacrifices. That's known by this point.

What might he be thinking? Do you think he's thinking that God's gonna stop him? No, I don't think that's the case.

Well, how do you know that? Because Paul in his sermon that's recorded in Hebrews. Thank you.

Just want to see. Hey, Pastor Jeff and I agree on something.

Is that recorded? What we have in Hebrews 11 says this, by faith

Abraham when he was tested offered up Isaac and he who had received the promise was in the act of offering up his only son of whom he said through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

He considered that God was able to raise from the dead from which figuratively speaking he did receive him back.

So what did he think? Oh God must be able to raise him. He's, I'll sacrifice him and God's gonna raise him back from the dead.

So he was willing to actually kill his son. Now it says if you read in Genesis 22 3, so Abraham rose early in the morning.

Oh I hear so many people preach this passage. Abraham rose early because he was excited to obey the

Lord. He was anxious to obey the Lord. No. Any of you guys have a great testing in your life?

Are you anxious to go and take that test? No, you toss and turn all night and you're anxious to get it over with.

I think he woke up early because he hadn't slept all night and he knew the time was coming and it's I gotta go do this.

Why wait any longer? And so he just get, let's go. Isaac grab two guys, let's grab the wood, let's grab everything we need.

They're going on their way and what does Isaac say? I see the wood, I see the fire.

Where's the offering? Just picture as they they do a three -day journey, the discussion.

Think about what Abraham's going through. Three days. We just read that and read right over that.

Three days he is walking with his son that he anticipates killing.

How much did that affect him? To walk those three days and sit there and then his son is asking him where's, where's the offering?

And he just says the Lord will provide. Genesis 22 7 and Isaac says to his father, my father, and he said here

I am my son. He says behold the fire and the wood but where's the offer, where's the lamb for the burnt offering?

He doesn't, he just says the Lord will provide. He doesn't tell him. He says to servants you guys stay here, the lad and I'll go further.

And as they go up the mountain, this at a minimum 110 year old, more likely probably 150 year old man, with a at least 10, more likely 15 year old boy, go up on mountain.

What happens? I mean at some point Abraham's got to tie Isaac up and put him on the pile of wood.

When does he tell him? I have no idea. But just picture what is going through Abraham's mind.

He gets all the wood ready, gets the fire ready. At some point turns to Isaac and starts to explain to Isaac what

God has called him to do. Did Isaac fight it? Might have been held to overpower dad.

I believe that Isaac too believed that God could raise him from the dead because Abraham believed.

I think Isaac had faith and submitted himself to his father and we end up seeing in Genesis 22 8,

Abraham said God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering my son. So they go together.

They go up there. The provision that is in Abraham's mind is his son.

He's not thinking, because he doesn't have the rest of the story, he's not thinking God's gonna stop him and have a ram in the thicket.

He's thinking the son is the lamb. Maybe you're starting to see a shadow that's something.

We'll see. But I think they both trusted in Yahweh Jireh, the

Lord that provides. Now Abraham needed a sign to trust.

Do you believe God will provide for your needs? In everything?

You know when I was homeless, I was a deacon in the church. I had access to thousands of dollars in our deacon's fund for the needy.

And I was too prideful to let the elders know I had no place to live. I had no job.

I had no food. But I trusted that God would provide. It was probably one of the most, in all my life, the time

I grew the most in the Lord, my sanctification. Because I had no idea where anything was coming from.

And food just kept being provided for me. I never went more than two days without food. Provision was there.

But a lot of times we sit there and just say, well maybe I could do this. You know,

I don't have a job, I'll cheat and do something. No. I just trusted God. I would like to say that that was always the case with me, but I've already given plenty of examples of where I fail.

I only have one that I did well. So that was it. Nothing more. But this offering of Isaac and God's provision,

I think was for a market reason. To mark in Abraham's mind, to sear in his mind, this faith that he had.

So that all this past stuff that he was doing, was gone. This is an event they would never forget.

They being both Abraham and Isaac. I don't think either one of them would ever have forgotten this event.

Because every time I think that Abraham was tempted to fear men over God, I think he went back to this event and looked at the faith and said,

Lord you'll provide. You provided that lamb that ram in the thicket, and you'll provide him whatever else comes his way.

And they remembered this, I'm sure, to the day they died. Do you have something in your life that God has seared in your memory?

For your faith that you can go back to? To say, you know what? I remember this. I trusted

God at that time, and he led me through it. I could trust him for anything else.

The Lord will provide. We got some dark days coming in our country. I'm not a

Post Mill guy, you know. But, but the reality is, there's a lot of people that, man, a lot of Christians I see, and they're watching the news and going, oh my, what do

I do? Got to stock up my guns and food. Okay, stocking up guns is not so bad.

I could say that now that I'm out of New Jersey. But do we really trust

God? Do we sit there and watch the news and go, what's

God gonna do? Or do we watch the news and go, what am I gonna do to protect myself?

Brothers and sisters, I'm gonna tell you right now, this is the best time in the world to be alive. We can evangelize like never before.

Everybody is afraid. They're either afraid of a virus, or they're afraid of socialism. But everyone in our country is afraid, except us.

We have hope. We have faith. They got nothing. We're gonna be able to watch

God act in a marvelous way in our generation. Now, when you end up seeing that this test that he gives to Abraham, he says to Abraham, this just blows my mind to think about, this is in Genesis 22, 11 to 14, but he says, as he looks there, he says, he calls to Abraham, and Abraham says, here

I am. He says, lay, do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now

I know you fear God. What? He didn't know before? No.

He's omniscient. He knows everything. This was not because God needed to know

Abraham's faith. God did this so that Abraham would know

Abraham's faith. Abraham needed the substance. The offering was just a shadow.

It's not that he goes back and says, oh Lord, I remember that offering I was gonna do of Isaac.

No, he went, oh Lord, I remember the faith that I had when I was willing to do an offering of Isaac.

Abraham finally got the lesson. I'm glad because it took him a very long time to get that lesson.

Takes me a really long time. I get it. You guys, you're quick. I get it. I'm more like Abraham, all right?

But here's the question. So we're talking shadows and substance. So here's the question. Is Isaac a type of Christ?

I'm not gonna ask for a show of hands, but at a conference on shadows to substance, we have to ask, is

Isaac a type of Christ? I mean, there's so many similarities between the two, aren't there?

I mean, they're both being offered by their father. They're both, some would say, on the same mountain.

And I can wholeheartedly tell you that my answer to this question is, I don't know.

I cannot say what Scripture does not say. I say there's many similarities between the two.

But is he a type of Christ? I don't know. Now some of you, maybe some of the

Presbyterians here, would understand, right, when it comes to worship, we have this regulative principle.

The regulative principle would say that we don't do anything in worship that Scripture doesn't explicitly say we could do.

And I agree with that principle when it comes to interpretation. I might be inconsistent with it with worship,

I admit. But I don't say beyond what Scripture says. Is Jonah a type of Christ?

Yes. Why? Jesus said so. But Isaac isn't called a type of Christ, and so I struggle with it.

I think that Pastor Jeff wanted to watch me struggle with it, so he gave this to me. Passover would have been fine.

Give me the Passover. That's, yeah.

So we talked about this, and I asked, he was like, you're a dispy, man. He was hoping that I'd come to a different view in the end.

I said, is it okay if I say I don't know? He says, brother, you preach what you believe. I'll correct you later.

But I don't want to say what Scripture doesn't clearly say. So what do I say? I say there's a lot of similarities between Isaac and Christ.

But is he a type of Christ? I just, I don't know that I can say. I'd rather Lord tell me that I didn't say enough than tell me

I said too much. But there is a danger when we talk about shadows and substance.

I'll conclude with this. As we examine the life of Abraham, many focus on a circumcision.

We in the New Testament would focus on baptism, and many would make that the major area of discussion. And I'm not talking infants versus biblical.

I'm sorry. Hey, at least

I got to be, have some alignment with someone here. For those who were not part of the theological debates that went on all week, you know,

I got to hand it to Brother Greg in the back who just realized that there was too much going after the

Presbyterian. So he's like, hey, what about the dispute? Let's all get on him. And they all did.

And I left. But as we examine these, the shadows and substances we've been looking at all week, and I hope that each of us felt,

I hope that all of you felt that, you know, this week of preaching, that you've drank deep in the

Word. Because man, it's been some great stuff, except for this one. I don't know what

Pastor Jeff was thinking. Save the worst for last. That's not the way to do a conference. Oh, there's the debate.

That's right. That's the best. Okay. So, but many would rise the idea of baptism to a level of substance.

They'll raise the law as an issue of great importance.

I have to say, even some raise our Reformed theology a little too high.

These things are not the substance. There's a problem when people make the shadow the substance and the substance the shadow.

As Pastor Brandon stole my illustration. Am I right,

Pastor Haps? Okay, just checking. As he stole my illustration, when you have the idea of dating, that's the shadow.

When we have the substances of our marriage. It was a great illustration. I wish it was mine.

If I preached before him, it would have been. We forget the shadow once we have the substance.

The substance is so much better. Abraham didn't think, oh, I got my circumcision.

We shouldn't be saying, oh, we got our baptism. Those are the shadow. The law is a shadow.

The substance, both Old and New Testament, is our faith. One faith.

I'm gonna go long if this is okay. Got no way to stop me now. One faith found in Christ alone, by grace alone, in faith alone.

We have all sinned. We have sinned against an infinitely holy

God who's infinitely just and must punish all sin.

You and I deserve an eternal lake of fire, but God.

But God. God made a way of escape.

Do you meditate upon this? Jesus Christ, Almighty God, was in heaven where all the angels are singing his praises.

There is no sin. There is no starvation. There is no sickness. And he left heaven to come to earth.

We want to get to heaven. He left heaven to come to earth.

Not just to live a life on earth. He came to earth to die on a cross.

To be a slave of humanity. To enslave himself or humble himself as a man.

To sacrifice himself on that cross. To pay the eternal fine that you and I owe.

He paid the debt that we never could. He paid the punishment we never can.

That is the substance. He who knew no sin became sin that you and I may become the righteousness of Christ.

We are saved by the same that Abraham was saved by. The shadows do not save us.

The substance does. The shadow is the cross where the substance is the faith.

The cross itself doesn't save us. It's what happened on it. That both

Old and New Testament saints have one faith. There is one body and one spirit just as you were called to one hope that belongs to your call.

One Lord. One faith. One baptism. One God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.