God Will Provide a Lamb

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Don Filcek, Beginning with God: A Walk Through the Book of Genesis; Genesis 22 God Will Provide a Lamb

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Welcome to the podcast of Recast Church in Madawan, Michigan, where you can grow in faith, community, and service.
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This message is by Lead Pastor Don Filsack and is a part of the series Beginning with God, Walking Through the
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Book of Genesis. If you would like to contact us, please visit us on the web at recastchurch .com.
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Here's Pastor Don. Good morning. Welcome to Recast Church.
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We're going to go ahead and get started here. So if you can find your seats, it is 11 o 'clock, so it is that time.
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Welcome to Recast. I'm Don Filsack. I'm the Lead Pastor here and just want to say I'm glad that you came out on a really great sunny summer day to worship
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God together. Be sure to fill out those connection cards that you received when you walked in.
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You can turn those in in the black box back there. If it's your first time with us and you turn in one of those connection cards, then we ask that you also please take a free coffee mug that's back there on that desk as well.
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Just our way of saying thanks for joining us. And then also remember that the connection card is the primary way that you get connected with what's going on in the church.
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We send out a weekly email. The stuff that you find in the worship folder that you received when you walked in is just kind of scratching the surface of the different things that are going on.
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And so primarily the way we communicate with you is by those emails that are sent out every week.
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You can unsubscribe yourself from that if you choose to. And then also remember that there's a place to put prayer requests on the back of there or any comments or suggestions.
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We really do value significantly the feedback that we get from you guys. Occasionally somebody will put a comment or a suggestion on there that's helpful.
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And then also any prayer requests that you put down in there, we do pray for those. And those don't get published or anything.
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Those end up just being shared among the elders and we pray for you. Also remember any offerings that you would choose to give, go in the black box back there.
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And then also anything that's marked expansion fund on it, whether that's a check or an envelope, that's going to go directly towards the future expansion of the church.
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And obviously we bought property, most of you know that. And then we're in the process of raising funds to build that through that expansion fund.
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And a couple of highlights on that. You may be wondering where that is and we have a spot in the e -cast email that highlights that.
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But I just wanted to state a couple of things from up front first. We've been waiting for asbestos removal from the building.
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And so when you drive by, it's an eyesore. We're doing the best that we can to try to get that taken out. Right now we're about three days into a 10 day
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EPA waiting period where the state has the right to go in and check out the house and validate what asbestos is in there or not before they go in and remove it.
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So we're about seven days out from them going in and removing the asbestos. And as soon as they remove the asbestos, then the fire department can come in and start doing their practice burns on that.
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So it'll probably be about a week, a week to 10 days before they'll actually start burning. And then they'll burn it six or seven times before they finally bring it down to the ground.
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So that's where we're at on that. And then one other thing, and this is not, there's no red, you know, no whistles or sirens going off on this, but we do want you to be aware so that you can pray for the future of our church.
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We found out about three weeks ago, right at the end of the second service, a lady approached me who had not been in the service and she served us papers.
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And I was like, oh, why am I getting served papers? This is awkward. So don't be scared. It was just notifying us that our landlord is in the process of foreclosure.
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So this property here that we rent, the owner has gone into foreclosure.
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And it's actually up for auction on August 1st. So our building is for sale to the highest bidder.
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If anybody wants to put a bid in on that, it's going to be August 1st over at the county building over there at the county clerk and any offers are entertained.
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But so that's where we're at. We are hopeful. Our lease goes through November. We've had some verbal interactions with our current landlord saying that he'll continue it month to month.
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And we're just, just be in prayer that whoever ends up buying the building ends up being amenable to us continuing on month to month after that.
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Otherwise we're just going to end up finding out what God has for us after that point. So just be in prayer.
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That's all that I'm saying about that. But God is moving, God is doing some things. And so we're just kind of keeping our eyes on him and trusting him for what our future looks like.
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So with that out of the way, Genesis chapter 22 is where we're going to be. This morning, the story of God's work with Abraham reaches a breaking point, a climax, a high point.
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In our text today, we have the greatest test Abraham faces in the pathway to following God. So we've been following his life through the book of Genesis and we're getting near the end of the account of Abraham in the book.
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And it's going to be a crazy test that God is going to ask of Abraham. He's going to ask something that just seems like so out there that it's going to need some explanation and some discussion.
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But I think if we think about it from this standpoint, we all can to some degree acknowledge that God wants us to worship him first, right?
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Would you agree with me on that? He wants to be first in our place. And yet he gives us blessing and he gives us good gifts.
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And then our tendency as humans is to worship the gifts that he gives us rather than worship him as the giver of the gifts.
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Can you relate to that? Where he gives you good things and you're like, the good things are so awesome,
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God. Thank you. And you begin to like mine down into the gifts and the stuff.
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And that's our tendency. And so God gives us wealth, so we worship the stuff and the leisure that money can buy.
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God grants us children and we place all of our focus and our hope and our joy in these kids. And if you can relate to anything like what
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I've seen and observed and even seen as a tendency, we can almost strangle the life out of our children, making them into little gods.
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Things that they were not intended to be, things that they can't bear up under. But we put all of our hope and our trust in them and we live vicariously through them and their sports and this and that and the other.
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And we can end up just pouring so much into our kids that they become our expectations and our hope.
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Are you getting what I'm saying on that? Can you relate to how that could be the possibility of our worshiping our kids? Well, we're going to see a little bit of a challenge to Abraham about whether or not he was worshiping his son,
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Isaac, and that God's going to call him out directly on that. God also gives us good things.
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He gives us good things like sex and we twist it into idolatry instead of thanking the God who made it and then using it the way that he intended it to be used.
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God knows that that's our propensity and in our text he will put Abraham to the ultimate test answering the question, did
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Abraham love Isaac, his son, more than he loved God?
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And that's going to be a challenge to us as we think about what idols God might be pointing out in our lives this morning.
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The text is going to answer that question, did Abraham love Isaac, his son, more than he loved God, in a very gut -wrenching, emotionally -driven account of the sacrifice of his son,
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Isaac. And so I want you to open your Bibles to Genesis 22. You can turn over to page 14 in the paperback
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Bible in the seat back in front of you, page 14, but I'm going to read Genesis 22 in its entirety.
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Follow along with me and your Bible as we go. After these things,
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God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, here am I. He said, take your son, your only son,
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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
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I shall tell you. So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son
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Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose 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. Then Abraham said to his 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. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife.
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So they went, both of them, together. And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father, and he said, here am
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I, my son. He said, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Abraham said,
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God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So they went, both of them, together.
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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 top, 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. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said,
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Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here am I. 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 you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. 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 sacrifice, a burnt offering, instead of his son.
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So Abraham called the name of that place the Lord will provide. As it is said to this day, on the mount of the
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Lord it shall be provided. And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, by myself
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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 heaven, and as the sand that is on the seashore, and your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemy.
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And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice. So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beersheba, and Abraham lived at Beersheba.
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Now after these things it was told to Abraham, behold, Milcah also has born children to your brother Nahor, Uz his firstborn,
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Buz his brother, Chemuel the father of Aram, Chesed, Hazo, Pildesh, Jidlaf, and Bethul.
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Bethul fathered Rebekah. These eight Milcah bore to Nahor, Abraham's brother. Moreover, his concubines, whose name was
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Ruma, bore Teba, Gaham style, no it doesn't say that,
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Teba, Gaham, Tahash, and Maka. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship.
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Father we see in here a text that can be confusing to our hearts and confusing to our minds. We maybe have even some semblance of notion that this is supposed to be a reflection somehow of your son
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Jesus Christ, and yet it can be confusing and a little bit muddy. And then there's also this crazy element of human sacrifice that occurs in the text that can be just mystifying to us and a little bit difficult and grabs our attention immediately that God would ask a man to sacrifice his own son, and yet we recognize that there are things in our lives that we are unwilling to yield up to you.
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And father there are legitimate, honest idols in our hearts and in our lives in places that we have no fly zones for you.
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And father I pray that you would open our eyes to the reality of that in our lives and to recognize that you have provided a sacrifice, that what you have asked of Abraham you were not willing to, you were willing to do yourself.
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So you did not ask him to do anything that you would not do, but rather you actually did put your son on the altar for us.
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And you did not allow anything to stay your hand, but your mercy carried that forward for us.
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So father I ask that as we have an opportunity to praise you and to worship you, we would worship you as those who are saved by you, that are under the umbrella of your protection, and that your wrath has been diverted to a substitute for us.
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Father that that wrath that we deserved has been poured out on him, and that we would be a people who rejoice, that recognize how awful that sacrifice is, but also how beautiful that sacrifice is, that our sin was so bad that it required the sacrifice of the son, but that you loved us so much that you did sacrifice your son.
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So may we operate out of freedom in Christ this morning in our worship, and would you allow our hearts to genuinely be open to you,
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I ask this in Jesus' name, amen. I encourage you to keep your Bibles open to Genesis chapter 22, remember at any time during the message you can get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts or whatever, but I do want you to have your
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Bibles open, because we want to talk about truth this morning, and truth is really found in the pages of scripture.
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I recognize that, and this weight is on me each week, I recognize that only what I say that agrees with the text of scripture really has the power to change or to transform your lives.
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Obviously my goal in every sermon every week is to explain what the text means, but I've had people tell me from time to time, you know like, hey
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I got caught up in that, I was reading through Genesis 22, and then pretty soon you were talking and I got to 23 and I just kept reading, and I was like, so you weren't paying attention, you weren't listening to me?
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But then it struck me, in all honesty, that's awesome, I mean if you're reading the word of God and you're studying the word of God, that's what this is really all about, but obviously my goal is that we would understand it and get down in and dig in.
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So we see in context that last week Abraham lost his first born son and his second wife.
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Some of you were here, some of you weren't, by the way these are all recorded and you can go back in online at recastchurch .com
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or even subscribe on the podcast and you can hear all these sermons, so if you missed last week, but it was a messed up family with hostility and vengeance from Sarah particularly, and in the end it resulted in the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael, ultimately the divorce of Abraham and Hagar and the disowning of his own son,
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Ishmael. And so now our text begins with after these things, you see that right at the beginning, after what things?
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Well all those things that have preceded, the parting of ways. But some think as many as 10 years have passed since those events when
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Ishmael and Hagar were kicked out. Part of the reason, if you look down at the text, go down to verse six with me just briefly real quick, we're not going to skip verses one through five, but, and Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son, and his son is going to carry enough wood for a whole burnt offering up a mountainside, okay?
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And so how old was Isaac last week when we saw that he was moving over from nursing to solid food?
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So he was about three years old according to ancient customs and things like that, so he's about three. Would you strap enough wood to burn an offering on a three -year -old's back and tell him to hike up a mountain?
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Probably not. So we think that some time has passed, he's probably 12, 13 -ish, that's what they're guessing and stuff.
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I think it might be even hard for some 12 -year -olds today to carry enough wood on their back to make a whole burnt offering.
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We're talking about poundage here. But on the other hand, I'm guessing that we don't make boys like they used to.
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And so, maybe he's nine or ten and able to carry it, I don't know. But regardless, time has passed, and I want to point that out just to set the context in your mind of what's going on here.
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Isaac is no longer a little boy toddling around, he's able to carry the wood up the hill.
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And time has passed, and the text prepares us as readers for what's about to happen.
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One of the most important phrases in the entire text comes in verse 1, and it's very, very vital that we as readers are keyed into this early on.
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Look at what it says, after these things, God tested Abraham. We know as readers, we're included in the back scene, okay?
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We're basically, get to see what's going on behind the scenes, and we know as readers, we're told up front that what comes next is a test.
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Is that valuable to us as readers? Otherwise we might be reading this whole thing going, is this what
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God demands of us? Is this what he wants of us? He wants us to perform sacrifices like this?
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And so it's valuable that we see it as a text. Now it's important to also note, Abraham does not know that this is a test.
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That's not revealed to him, that's told to us as readers, the narrator, the author is including us in that, but we don't really know that.
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I mean, he doesn't know that, we do. So Abraham has to live this event straight up without any sense of softening.
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Now he did know God, right? He knew the promises of God, so there's a sense in which I think he had enough information to probably surmise that this is a test, and we're going to see some things to indicate that.
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But the fact that it's a test shows us a couple of things. First is that it isn't routine.
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This is not a routine thing. That God just regularly comes to people and says, hey, could you slaughter your child for me?
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Okay, that's not normal, that's not routine behavior, that's not something that we should come to expect from God on a regular basis.
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Even some sense from this idea of it being a test is that what God asks isn't going to end up being fully carried out.
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Now I think probably a lot of us, have you heard this story before? Do you kind of have something to kind of know how it's going to end?
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So that we don't experience the tension that would have been there for the first time that you read this.
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As a matter of fact, probably for many of us, the first time we heard this story or this account, we were children. And so we didn't have maybe the capacity to really process this the way that...
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But I think if you were an adult reader, reading through this for the very first time, no notion of how the story ends,
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I think when you get to this point that what comes next is a test, that you might already know that this isn't going to turn out the way that it starts.
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So he's going to ask for a burnt sacrifice, and you might be going, I'm not sure if that's going to happen or not. There'd be tension, right?
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Would there be tension in this account? Yeah. So God calls out Abraham's name, and his reply is a common phrase that's used throughout scripture to indicate attention or readiness.
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When Abraham says, here am I, he's not identifying geographical location. It's not like God speaks from heaven and he's like,
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Abraham, where are you? And he's like, I'm over here. And that's... So here am I is a phrase of attention.
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I'm ready. It's a state of Abraham's heart. When God speaks, he's like, yes, what do you need?
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I'm here. And what a good posture towards God. What a good example of a posture towards God.
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We should come to the word of God. We should come to prayer with this attitude. Here am I, Lord, speak, for your servant is listening.
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You hear the attentiveness to Abraham. But I'm not sure. I think in his head, he was ready.
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In his head, he was like, yeah, God, okay, you're speaking to me. This is awesome. What do you need? But do you think his heart was prepared for what
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God is about to ask him? Have you ever had that encounter with God? Have you ever had one of those quiet times that didn't quite go the way that you thought it was going to go?
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And you're digging into scripture and you're like, oh, this is going to be fun. This is going to be delightful. I'm going to walk through this day with joy. And then all of a sudden,
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God goes, boom. And you're like... And it's... Well, you're not asking that, God. You're not asking.
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You're not asking for me to give that up. You couldn't. I must be... I must have misunderstood you.
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I must have heard something wrong here. Have you ever had that encounter with God where he calls out something in your life and you're like, ah, can we deal with that some other time, right?
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You guys are... Some of you are looking at me blank. So, I mean, maybe... Has anybody experienced that before? That conviction of God where it's like he...
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What he says wasn't what you were thinking and you started out thinking you were ready to hear from him. And then all of a sudden, it's like maybe
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I wasn't so ready to hear from him. And I think that's Abraham's experience here. I'm sure he was not ready for the request of God in this.
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Because what God tells him is radical. He says, take your son to the land of Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering.
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Take your son to the land of Moriah and offer him as a burnt offering. A pretty weighty thing that God is asking for here?
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Do you think? Pretty heavy? I think so. And although many leave it untranslated because of the desire to preserve the sense of God's authority.
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So, we don't like to... The authors and, I mean, the interpreters or the translators sometimes don't like to soften the command, if you will.
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But there's two letters in the Hebrew language, N and A, Nah, that ultimately are conciliatory.
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God literally says in this text, please take your son. Now there's no option in this.
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It's not like, well, you know, if you want to. If you want to. I mean, it's a command. But he says, please.
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He's pleasant about this request. He has a relationship with Abraham, though, and I want to point that out.
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Abraham has a relationship with him and he knows God has come to know him, has come to interact with him.
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And there is an actual relationship between the two of them and he comes to him and he says, Abraham, please, please do this thing.
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Take your son and offer him as a burnt offering. And look at how God describes Isaac in the text.
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He knows the intensity of love that Abraham has for his son. Isaac is first in the text declared to be
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Abraham's son. Take your son, but not just your son, but your only son. So there's modifiers to this.
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It's not just take your son, but take your only son. Now, remember, he lost Ishmael last week. And so in the text last week, and not just his only son, but then
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God defines this, the son that you love, Abraham. Take your son, your only son, the son that you love.
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God knows exactly what he's asking of Abraham. He knows that this is going to hurt and he's the one who, in a sense, is attacking an idol of Abraham's heart.
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And when God gets down to the business of rooting out idols from our hearts, we find that the surgery can be quite painful.
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Have you experienced that in your life, where God identifies something that you hold higher than him, and that process of detaching you from it is not easy?
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Have you encountered that in your life before? And that's what's going on here. Sometimes we find that our lives have been wrapped up and entangled with our idols.
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And when God begins to pry that apart, it feels like a tearing, doesn't it? We realize that our lives have been.
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Now, I want to point out, is it a good thing that Abraham loves Isaac? I just want to get that out on the table.
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This isn't a trick question. Is it good that Abraham loves Isaac? Yes, that's a good thing.
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So what we need to recognize is we're talking about a level of allegiance or priority. Is it a good thing if Abraham loves
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Isaac more than he loves God? No. And so that's what we're dealing with here. It is not ultimately that it's a bad thing to love your children or to love your spouse or to love those near you, it's a good thing.
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But to love them more than God is another issue altogether. That's what the text is dealing with. So God tells
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Abraham to go to Moriah, which later, there's two things that you need to understand. Moriah is a district, it's an area, but it's also the name of a specific mountain.
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Moriah as a district is the site of modern -day Jerusalem. So that's where Moriah is.
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Now there's a mountain in the district of Moriah that's near Jerusalem called Mount Moriah, and Mount Moriah is the exact specific location where the
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Temple Mount exists today. The temple where millions of sacrifices have been offered down through the ages, millions of substitutionary sacrifices offered, are you getting me?
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In the area of Moriah, where is God telling Abraham to take his son to sacrifice him?
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Moriah. And then he says, I'm going to tell you which mountain to do so on when you get there.
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Now I'm not convinced that it's Mount Moriah, the actual location of the temple, where Isaac is sacrificed.
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I actually have a guess that, I'm pretty sure that when we get to heaven, if we were to ask God where's the exact location,
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I think we'd find it's a hill just across the valley from Mount Moriah, a place where another son was offered in view of the temple, a place where another beloved only son carries wood up the hill to his own execution.
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I think that is the place where God says, Abraham, take your only son, the one that you love, and sacrifice him there to me, a picture of our
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Lord and Savior. That's the place. I mean, is this just some cosmic irony that, oh,
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Moriah happens to be Jerusalem, and happens to be the place where Abraham tells him to take the sacrifice, is that irony?
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Is that just, are there any chances, any just kind of like, oh, that's just coincidence. God tells him to go to the place where his own son is going to be sacrificed, and says go there.
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Now, it might be within a mile of there, it might just be in the vicinity. I have a gut level that, studying the text and just thinking through this and seeing how
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God works, I think it's the place. Well, what's being asked of Abraham has received a lot of critique over the years, maybe even some critique from some of us here in this room, maybe right now.
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He's being told to sacrifice his son as a burnt offering, anybody? Just if you're honest, you have a little bit of a struggle with that. Three of us.
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Okay, a couple more, a couple more are joining in now. Yes, it's a struggle. So it would lead us to ask the question, a logical question in this.
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Is God into human sacrifice? Is that how he rolls? He just wants us to go and offer up a person to him once in a while.
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Is that the way he is? I mean, is that a logical question from the text though? Is it?
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Yeah, I mean, we should kind of be curious about this. And I would suggest to you that the answer in a sense is yes.
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It is yes. That in the sense in which Isaac is indeed offered in this text, carry it from beginning to end, by the end of this text when we're done talking about it,
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God wants that of us. God desires sacrifice. He wants you to love him more than your spouse.
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He wants you to love him more than your children. He wants you to love him more than your parents, more than your best friends, more than anything.
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So in that sense, yes, but it's a figurative sense, isn't it?
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Is Isaac going to be literally sacrificed? No. Figuratively, yes.
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In a sense of Abraham demonstrating, I'm willing to give you all God. There is nothing above you in my life.
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Do you see that sense of sacrifice in the text? It's figurative. That's where it is.
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As the text is made clear, this is a test of Abraham's allegiance.
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This is not primarily a text about human sacrifice. And as a text about allegiance and worship,
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God never intended Isaac to be sacrificed literally, but figuratively. But he calls for the literal sacrifice to draw out what is going to end up being a figurative sacrifice.
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In other words, I hope this isn't getting confusing with literal and figurative and all this, but without the literal request, without him saying to Abraham, go and sacrifice your son, can he ever really get down to the heart of Abraham and determine whether or not the figurative sacrifice can happen?
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Are you getting where I'm at on that? Without the request, go and sacrifice your son as a burnt offering, he can never really test the heart of Abraham until he carries this forward.
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In our text, God met with Abraham. Abraham knew it was God making the request of him, the very
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God who had blessed him, the very one who called him, the very God who gave him Isaac. Remember the celebration over Isaac?
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Abraham 100 years old, Sarah 90 years old, and she has a baby. And Abraham also knows he's the very
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God who has promised that Isaac would become a great nation. Do you think there's sufficient information here?
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Now there's the gut level emotional response. God has just asked him to sacrifice his son. How many of you think it might be hard to get to his head from that place?
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But if he gets to his head and he's able to get in here and think of what he logically knows that God has already told him, then do you think he has sufficient information to go, this isn't going to end up the way that, this isn't going to end up with Isaac dead on an altar and that's the end of it?
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Do you think he has sufficient information from God, from the promises of God? This is the child who's going to carry the promise forward.
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This is the hope. God said he's going to become a great nation, so now he's got a choice.
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Am I going to trust and believe that what God has said is true and believe that the outcome of this is different? Do you see what a significant test this is of Abraham's faith?
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It is pretty major. And we see that he's not told that it's a test.
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And so it is a huge, huge, huge test of his faith. We see
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Abraham, though, right away, rising early in the morning in obedience. How often does he get a command from God?
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He gets an interaction with God in the night. The next morning, boom, he is up preparing and getting things together to obey.
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I'm amazed by this. Abraham here is a blazing example of faith. If we're honest, I think many of us would fall away right here, right here.
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You wake up in the morning and you're like, I'm done with God. I mean, I think if we're honest, if we're honest,
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I mean, without grace, without his movement in our heart towards faith, we'd be done. I mean, you guys should be grateful that your salvation is not dependent upon me sacrificing my son.
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I'm being serious. I mean, just cut your losses, okay? Are you getting what
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I'm saying on this? God has been faithful to carry forward the promise. And Abraham here, showing intense, amazing faith in God.
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He saddles up his donkey, calls a couple of young servants. What did that conversation look like? I don't know.
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They don't know what's going on, though. They don't know. It's not like, hey, could you two come along? I'm going to sacrifice my son and it's going to, you know, sacrifice him as a burnt offering.
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Could you come along and prepare the food along the way? I don't think that's the conversation that happens.
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But these two young servants are probably responsible for carrying food. It's a three -day journey. They're there for probably that reason.
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He cuts the wood for the fire. The detail in verse 3 slows down the narrative, causing us to, as we read, to consider the slow and methodical preparations of a man who is heavy with a very dark task ahead of him.
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He's obeying. He's chopping wood. He's getting the servants around. He's saddling up his donkey.
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But all the while, and you see him shuffling a little bit under the weight. He's moving slowly. He's not moving fast in this preparation.
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Things are kind of going slower for him here. I imagine that Abraham's heart is in his throat.
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His stomach is in knots. His head is spinning at this request of God. But he is there, nonetheless, obeying and getting prepared for the journey.
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It's about 50 miles from Beersheba to Moriah, and that fits well with them arriving in the vicinity on the third day by donkey, with the rugged terrain and such.
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That's about right. Any discussion, though, is lacking from the text. What did the conversations look like on the way to the area of Moriah?
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We don't know. Did they talk? Was it just in silence? What had he said to the servants?
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We don't know. Conspicuously absent from this entire text is Sarah. You ever thought about the fact that Isaac has a mom?
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Did you know that? He has a mom who loves him. Where is she? It's very interesting just to note this.
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I don't know how valuable it is. I get into these little nuances of things that I study. Once in a while, I share them with you.
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Jewish tradition has Abraham coming to Sarah and saying, God met me in a dream and told me that I'm supposed to sacrifice
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Isaac, and she dies immediately. That's what Jewish tradition says. She dies of a coronary.
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She's done. Jewish tradition actually places the death of Sarah, which is in chapter 24, we're going to get there next week, in conjunction with this.
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Ultimately, then, Isaac would have to be 37 when this happens. We know his exact age. He'd be 37 when the sacrifice happens.
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Again, that's Jewish tradition that's not found in Scripture. Did you know that there's a whole body of Jewish traditions that they've written and kind of thought up and kind of makes the story interesting, but it's not biblical or scriptural.
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So don't quote me on it. Pastor Don said that Sarah died when. That's what the
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Jews say. In verse 5, Abraham and Isaac leave the two servants behind in order to climb up to the summit of the mountain.
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They've arrived. God has indicated. We don't even know how, but God has indicated which mountain they are to do this on. God's chosen, and the key feature of verse 5,
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I want you to look down with your eyes on the text for just a second. Then Abraham said to his 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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Abraham says, we're both coming back. He says that to his servants. We're both coming back.
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We're going to see some of the causes for his faith here, and they might not be what you're thinking, and we're going to see that actually scripture, other scripture tells us exactly what
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Abraham was thinking was going to happen, and we'll get there here in just a second. But some scholars recently have, more recent scholars have said, well, in verse 5, at the end, when he's talking to his servants, and he says, we're going to go over there and worship, and we're going to come again to you, that Abraham is kind of trying to deceive them.
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He's like, well, we're going to go over there, and both of us are going to go over there and worship, and both of us are going to come back, because he knows that his servants would stop him if he was to tell them exactly what he's doing.
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I think that's a poor understanding. I actually believe that Abraham is finally broken down to a place where he genuinely trusts
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God. He genuinely is hoping in the promises. He believed that he and Isaac would indeed return to those two servants.
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He believed that by faith, but what he thought was going to happen is very different than what happens. According to the book of Hebrews, the
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New Testament describes the faith of Abraham, describes these events revealed by the Holy Spirit.
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Hebrews 11, 17 through 19. You don't need to turn there, but I'd encourage you to jot that reference down. You can look it up later if you want.
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Hebrews 11, 17 through 9, I think shows exactly what was going on behind the scenes in Abraham's mind during this event.
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This is what it says. Listen carefully. By faith, Abraham. So we know right away in the book of Hebrews, in this account of what's going on in the
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Old Testament in Genesis 22, we know that Abraham expressed what? Faith.
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By faith, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises,
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Abraham, 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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So far the text is bending over backwards in Hebrews to emphasize Abraham understood the promises of God.
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He knew Isaac was the one. By faith, he was being tested, and he knew that Isaac was the one that was promised.
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And then verse 19. He, Abraham, considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which figuratively, there's my word, figuratively, this is a figurative sacrifice, from which figuratively speaking, he did receive him back from the dead.
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Is Isaac gonna die? No, but figuratively he has. Okay, symbolically, it's as if he died and indeed did come back.
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But what does that tell us about Abraham's understanding? What's going on in Abraham's mind then? What's his hope placed in?
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Resurrection. He's actually thinking in his mind that he is going to have to slay his own son.
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Are you gathering that? Are you getting? Abraham is going to this mountain thinking that he's going to have to kill him, and then
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God is indeed going to raise him up to new life. But he thinks he's gonna have to follow through on it.
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Do you realize how dicey this is for Abraham? His hope is placed in resurrection. He's like, even if I have to go through with this, which
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I think I'm going to, I think I'm gonna have to do this thing, but God will raise him up.
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How firm was Abraham's hope in the promise of God that he would use
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Isaac to make a great nation and to be a blessing to all nations? Enough that he even believed if Isaac were slain, that he would be raised again to be the child of the promise.
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Pretty extreme. It's intense faith that Abraham is expressing here. Abraham only needed four things moving onward.
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He leaves the two servants behind, Isaac, wood, a knife, and fire.
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I think it's interesting, just in the text here, it's kind of funny, verse seven, he said, behold,
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I'm sorry, no, verse six. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. Do you picture them during this era in this time in the
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Old Testament walking around carrying fire? Ugh, fire. But not quite that.
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We're not talking about cavemen, but we are talking about them taking fire with them. They didn't have a zippo. They didn't have a bick lighter.
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What's that little thing that you use to light the grill? I don't even know. What do you call that thing with the flame that comes out at the end? Anybody know what
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I'm talking about? A grill lighter. Or those things, what are those things? Matches? They didn't have any of that stuff, right?
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None of that stuff. So he's here carrying the fire and the knife, and they got the wood. We have in our text here an image, an intentional image by God of Isaac carrying the wood up the hill to his own execution, the method of his execution on his back.
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Not an accidental image, but a purposeful, intentional image of God, of one who would carry wood on his back up a hill in Moriah to his own execution.
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Isaac being a picture of Christ here in our text. Isaac isn't ignorant about how burnt offerings operate, and so he asks a couple questions, logical questions.
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I think it's a pretty interesting question if you really think about it, whether he's 10, 13, whatever, however old he is, he's knowledgeable.
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So what he asks is akin to you going out hunting with your dad on opening season or whatever.
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You go out hunting with a buddy, you go out hunting with your dad, and you're like, as you're out walking towards the blind, you look over at your dad and you're like, dude, dude, you forgot your gun.
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Okay, your gun isn't here. It's like you need a gun to go hunting, and you don't have it with you. Like maybe you want to go back and get that.
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I mean, it's that necessary to have like the animal for sacrifice if you're going to make a sacrifice, right?
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Like this is like, okay, he's kind of connected. What are we here to do? We're here to make a sacrifice. Dad, you forgot the lamb, okay?
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You getting what I'm saying? And it's an innocent question.
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It's an honest question. Where's the lamb, dad? What's this? The answer is a little bit interesting, right?
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God will provide himself a lamb, my son. There's terms of endearment in this.
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There's the notion of a gentle father interacting with his son, the son asking questions of his dad as they walk along.
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I'd imagine it's a painful question to Abraham. And his answer and his reply,
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I'm not sure how fully formed the theology of substitution was at this point, whether he understood that God indeed is going to provide a lamb, but I'm not sure he really fully got that.
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I think he was looking at his son with the whole concept of resurrection and going, God will provide a lamb, and he's thinking in the back of his mind, and it's you.
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He's thinking, and it's you, Isaac. Just couldn't bring himself to say it, but it's you.
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The text is moved slowly, and then all of a sudden, snap, verse nine, just boom, boom, boom. They came to the place which
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God told them, built an altar, laid the wood in order, bound Isaac, laid him on the altar, and snap, snap, snap, everything, boom.
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And all of a sudden, we're at the point of decision just like that. Have you seen how slow the text has moved up to verse nine?
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There's been all kinds of interaction and just different things going on, and then all of a sudden, just quickly, they arrive at the location, and everything is set up.
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Things happen without much detail, and so we're left with a lot of blanks, right? Many suggest that Isaac must have been a willing sacrifice.
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His dad is about 113 years old. Pretty old. Do you guys agree with me on that?
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You guys aren't working with me here this morning. I don't know. 113 isn't that old or is old? I don't know.
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113 is pretty old, and he's got a 13 -year -old son. How many of you think that if Isaac doesn't want to be sacrificed, he can get out of there?
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Do you think he could avoid that? Probably. Thank you, yes. Jamie, yes. I'm bored.
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I agree, but I wouldn't draw too many conclusions by that. How many of you ever heard a message or a sermon or a lesson that was ultimately about things that Scripture didn't say?
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That's the primary point, and a lot of people have made a major point about Isaac's willingness to be the sacrifice, and I'm not comfortable making that a main point of this text because the text doesn't say that.
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It's implied, and I think there's some logic to that that if he wanted to get away, he could have, but he is bound, and now the climax of the story.
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Abraham pulls out the knife, ready to slaughter his son, and the knife is poised in high position because of dramatic effect, right?
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That always makes the flannel graphs look more dramatic and all that stuff, and it's like the knife is way up here gleaming in the sun.
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I don't want to get too graphic, but that's not likely where the knife was positioned at this point.
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He is about to slaughter his own son. He raises up the knife, and it's in position, and the word that's used for slaughter, he is about to slaughter his son, the word in Hebrew here in the text is a word that is used in prohibitions for human sacrifice.
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Like if you were reading this in Hebrew, if you were one of the original readers of the writing of Moses, you'd go, this isn't right.
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What's about to happen here? God does not delight in this. A person is not to be slaughtered, that term, a human is not to be slaughtered like an animal is slaughtered.
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They would have recognized that what's happening is not permissible religious practice. Another clue in the text for the original reader that this is not going to happen, this is not going to go down.
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Readers in Moses' time would have recognized that. And once again, let me emphasize that this is not a text about human sacrifice, but about loving
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God above all else. And so in urgency, the angel of the Lord, ironically most often considered to be the second person of the
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Trinity, the angel of the Lord, often the son of God, he is the one who calls out to Abraham.
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When you see that designation, the angel of the Lord, it is most often considered to be the second person of the
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Trinity. And he calls out and he says, Abraham, Abraham! And imagine that Abraham's shaky hand with a knife near his son's neck drops the knife in response, here am
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I. You have my attention, Lord. Second time we've seen him say that, right? How many of you think
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God has his full and undivided attention at this point? He does. And Abraham has been stopped from doing what he was sure was going to be required of him.
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Can you imagine the relief in that moment? Can you imagine that? Abraham has passed the test.
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He has not withheld his only beloved son from God. He hears a noise and turns around and there in the thicket,
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Abraham finds a ram. He mentioned before that God would provide a lamb, a lamb just by definition is a young sheep.
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There's no gender to that, but here God provides a ram. Some people have made much of that.
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A male lamb is provided. And picturing another sacrifice where a male would be sacrificed.
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And it is offered, and this is a key word, it's a beautiful and glorious word.
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Not an intensely theological word until you put it in this context, but it is the word instead.
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The ram is sacrificed instead of Isaac. Is that a meaningful word to any of you?
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The word instead? Think about the cross. Does that word become meaningful to us?
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It is a substitutionary word. It is a word whereby one has been sacrificed instead of me.
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One has been sacrificed instead of you. Do you hear that?
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Do you feel that? The knife at our throat, and one has been sacrificed instead of you and I.
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What we deserved, no longer our lot, no longer our future, because he took it for us instead.
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And in that one little word here is the first record of substitutionary offering.
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The first record of one being put in the place of another and being sacrificed for them.
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Most of the pagans around this time, there was animal sacrifices going around during the time of ancient times, during when this was written.
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But the majority of them were literally considering that they were feeding their gods. They were offering food to them.
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This concept of substitution is a unique Jewish concept, that the lamb is taking the place of another who deserves to die.
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And that's the beginning of this substitutionary sacrificial system that ultimately results in the final ultimate substitutionary sacrifice of the
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Son of God on our behalf. Abraham then names the place.
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Notice that places get names when they're significant. Do you notice that? And the name of the place is a name that is ultimately going to be given later to God himself.
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It is Jehovah Jireh, God provided. Notice that the name of the place is not
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Abraham Shema. Abraham Shema would mean Abraham obeyed.
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Wouldn't that be the human perspective on the story? Wouldn't that be how we would want to name the place?
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If we were coming up with names for this location, would it not seem like it would be an appropriate thing to call the place
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Abraham obeyed? Does that not stand out as a stark amazing thing in the text,
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Abraham's obedience, all the way to the point of the knife on his son's throat? Is that stunning and shocking to us?
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And yet that is not the significance of the event. That is not the significance of the place. The significance of the event is not
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Abraham's obedience, but God's provision for him, that the Lord provides a sacrifice for him.
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And so substitution is the heart of the story. That one was sacrificed in his place happened to be a ram at this particular location in time.
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But the place is named after the concept of substitution, God providing one instead.
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In verses 16 through 18, God once again highlights the promises that we've talked about all through the book of Genesis, saying that Abraham's heart to trust him and to believe him and to love
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God first was shown by this act. How many of you know that for Abraham to go this far, it demonstrates something of his relationship and trust in God?
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Yeah, quite a bit. And in this act of not withholding his son,
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God is now going to surely, the text says for the first time, he is surely going to bless him.
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His offspring will be like the sands of the seashore. His offspring will be victorious. They will possess the gates of their enemies.
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And one of his offspring will bless all the nations on the earth. And not just merely irony, not just merely coincidence, but that one will bless all the nations of the earth through what?
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Substitutionary sacrifice by being the one who would be sacrificed in our place. They returned to the servants.
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Wonder what that conversation was like. Wonder if there was any conversations. Wonder what Isaac was like on the way back.
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Eyes huge. And they take the trip back to Beersheba.
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And the text immediately begins to set up the offspring of Abraham by sharing a quick genealogy of the woman who is going to end up being
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Isaac's wife. We might find it anticlimactic after a text like this launched right into a genealogy.
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Like, woo, okay, now let's do some genealogy, right? Let's study some people's names and some ancient people who we don't even know and aren't even mentioned later in Scripture.
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Like, awesome. But if you consider that, what's the promise to Abraham?
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That he's going to have offspring and his offspring are going to have offspring and they're going to become a great nation. So is it significant that Isaac has a wife?
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And then, boom, right away. Abraham obeying, God providing, faithfulness all around, and boom, well, let's talk about offspring then.
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Let's get there. That's exciting. We're driving towards the fulfillment when we're starting to talk about Isaac and Rebecca.
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All of a sudden, Rebecca's name appears in our text. Okay, this is moving. This is going somewhere. And hopefully you see as clearly as I do that human sacrifice is not an application of this text.
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Do you guys see that? Please tell me that you do not think that sacrificing another human in a physical way is an application of this text, right?
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That's scary if you're struggling with that. Let me know immediately before you leave here.
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We're not going to set up an appointment this week. Now, some of you are reading this text and you're like, sacrificing my 13 -year -old son?
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Hmm. Okay, God, yeah. Yeah, thinking that might not be such a bad idea.
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No, none of you. No, there are some applications to this very significant text that we do need to take on.
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First, I want to state what's probably obvious to all of us in our heads, but maybe not obvious in our hearts.
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Have you ever noticed that some things can be like, I can ask you a question, you could all answer the same, but then all of a sudden when
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I take that down from your head to your heart, it's going to be like, ooh, this is getting shifty. Okay, who should we worship above all?
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Easy to answer from here? Is that easy from here? How's that do down here?
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How are you doing on Monday morning with that? Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday? Is he first?
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Is he always first? Do you hear? We know where he should be in our lives, but then where the rubber meets the road, that gets tough very fast.
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Do you agree with me? God deserves first place, and the text presupposes it is okay for God to test a man's devotion to him or a woman's devotion to him.
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That's his prerogative. Does he have the right to test our devotion to him? Yes, he does. He is the
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Almighty. He is the one worthy of praise. He has every right to demand our complete and utter devotion as our
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Creator, our Maker, the Almighty One, the Holy One. Some of us in the text are so caught off guard by the notion of human sacrifice that we miss the basic point here of wholehearted devotion to him.
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I confess that I agree it's an extreme example of devotion that's required of Abraham, right? So that does have a tendency to stick with us.
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But I think it also becomes difficult because I recognize there are things in my life that I say,
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God, don't touch that. God, please leave that intact. Please don't mess with that.
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You recognize that in your own life? Things that you hold to that are like the no -fly zone for God.
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And so it becomes easy to kind of go, look at this text and go, God shouldn't ask for Isaac. God shouldn't ask for things like that.
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And so the text calls into question how we view the worthiness of God. How worthy is your
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God? Just think about that. How worthy is your
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God? Is he worth more than your son? Is he worth more than your daughter? Is he worth more than your wife?
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Is he worth more than your husband? Is he worth more than your parents? Your career? Your reputation?
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Your flat screen TV? Your car? Your house? How worthy is
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God? And that leads into my next application point. Even as Christians, we can love good things that are not
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God. Is it good for Abraham to love Isaac? We established that earlier, didn't we? Yes, that's good.
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That's really good. A father should love his children, right? And so it's a matter of priority that we're talking about here.
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You can fall in love with church. That'd be awesome. You can fall in love with the Bible. We can love worship music.
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We can love our ministry. But anything that we place above God is an idol. And we can place good things, good things above God, right?
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And then there's a whole host, a whole list of idols that are not acceptable to Christians, right?
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Materialism, pleasure, fame, sex, whatever. I'm convinced that each one of us has something in our lives that runs interference with the worship of God, that is producing static between us and authentic, real, wholehearted, full devoted worship of God.
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And if we were asked to sacrifice that thing on the altar, it would become offensive to us. God doesn't ask for us to give up that kind of thing, does he?
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We'd squirm. We'd find excuses to hold on to it. And so a good starting point on this is to identify the idols you find in your life and ask
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God to give you the grace to put those things to death. Root out the idols where you see them.
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John Calvin said, the ancient theologian in the 1500s said, that the heart, the human heart, is like a forge of idols.
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Some people have mistranslated that or misapplied it. I mean, it works in modern times.
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He said, the human heart is an idol factory. Some have said that. But I would say for as many people as there are on the planet, there's at least that many unique idols, right?
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We worship all kinds of things. We invent things to worship. Putting those things to death.
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In my last application, I never know quite whether to put this first or last because in all honesty, it's the foundation.
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It's the main point. Please don't fall asleep on me now. I'm almost done. This last application points to a savior.
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We can set our minds to slaying idols without the power of the spirit and that's called futility, okay?
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Have any of you ever played the whack -a -mole game? You played the whack -a -mole game? Boom, you're hitting those things.
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And what happens as soon as you hit one? Another one's up, right? You hit that one and the one that you hit before comes back up again.
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Have you experienced that in your own life of God dealing with stuff that's in your heart and that's in your life and it's like,
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I'm dealing with this and then something else pops up over here. Another issue to deal with.
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Another idol in your heart and boom, you whack that one and another one comes up. Have you experienced that? Am I the only one?
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I'm the only, oh, okay. I'm not the only messed up one in here. All right, good. Misery loves company.
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How many of you are just kind of like, could we just get some more people with hammers here and just totally own this machine, right?
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Like all of us just pounding on it at the same time. Or maybe we could get some help. Maybe we could get some help.
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Maybe we need some help. And without that help, it's just playing the game over and over and over again for our entire lives with no victory.
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We need help. And so a male offspring of Abraham was born. He lived a sinless life and ministered around the area of Moriah.
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And like Isaac, he had a father who loved him. And like Isaac, he had a father who sacrificed him.
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And his mercy stopped the sacrifice of Isaac and his mercy carried forward the sacrifice of his only son.
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Mercy stopped the one and mercy carried forward the other. Jesus is a double image in our text and I think it can be confusing.
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So let me clarify this in conclusion. He is like Isaac up to the point of sacrifice, but he doesn't duck it.
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He doesn't get out of it like Isaac did. And so the metaphor shifts at the point of sacrifice and we find that Jesus is the ram and the thicket.
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He is the lamb provided by God as our substitute instead of us. And so we cannot sacrifice enough.
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We cannot give up enough to be covered. We cannot battle enough with idols to overcome, but God has provided for us a perfect spotless lamb to be offered up in our place.
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And only in his sacrifice can we be forgiven and made whole and then be empowered to do battle with the idols that we find in our lives.
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Empowered by love to overcome in his immense power and strength by the spirit that is alive in us.
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If you're in Christ and you're doing battle with sin through the power of love given to you at the cross, then please take the juice to remember his blood that was poured out for us and take the cracker to remember his body that was broken for us.
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The Lord who is called Jehovah Jireh has provided a lamb and I rejoice that he has given us a sacrifice to take away our sins.
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Let's pray. Father, as we come to this time of our service to remember sacrifice and ultimately we do this every week, but to bring everything back to the center point of our faith and that is
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Christ crucified. That this is not just some routine or some ceremony, but it ultimately is our hope.
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And without this there is no hope, without the sacrifice of Jesus. And so we come together to remember it and as we take the juice,
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I ask that you move in our hearts to rejoice and delight and experience hope because the blood of Christ was spilled for us instead of us.
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And then for the cracker that we remember that his body was broken instead of us, that we could be made whole and brought into a right relationship with you.
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I praise you for Jesus Christ for his sacrifice and for the imagery we have in the Old Testament pointing to him.
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And it's in his name that I pray. Amen. With his own hand
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To be offered up A sacrifice
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So spotless and clean To take all your sin
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Where's the sacrifice? The questioning voice
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Innocent eyes Is the son of laughter Who you wait
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To take all your sin An accepted choice
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An angel's voice
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Doing battle with sin and with idols where we see him in our lives because of your great love for us out of and motivated from love because your spirit now resides within us.
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So would you let our step be light in the freedom that we have in Christ. Would you let us walk through this week with joy at the same time remaining engaged in the battle.