Your Only Son

Sovereign Grace Family Church

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October 3, 2021

00:02: Want to invite you to take out your Bible and turn with me to Genesis chapter 22 Hold your place at verse 1 we're going to read the chapter in just a moment, but I have a few preliminary words I want to give down in Mexico City There is a Terrifying sight there are towers Which were uncovered back in 2015 they were discovered And they are made out of human skulls They have now found one tower that has a 603 human skulls That have been mortared together to make a tower and it's one of seven structures like that and archaeologists believe That the tower was constructed somewhere between 1482 and 15 or 1486 and 1502 and and that the skulls belong to the victims of Ritual sacrifice in fact one archaeologist is quoted as saying this they were all made sacred Turned into gifts for the gods Or person personifications of deities themselves Six hundred and three skulls and one of the seven Towers human sacrifice is dreadful But it is also a very common part of Human history if you look through the pantheon of the ages, and you read the history of men You will find human sacrifice and almost every culture in one way or another in fact as we studied and have been studying through Genesis we find our way back to the earliest part of Abraham's life back at the end of chapter 11 and into chapter 12 and we find that Abraham himself had come out of Mesopotamia and In Mesopotamia they have found many ziggurats And we talked about what a ziggurat was a ziggurat was basically like a tower shaped Place of worship where the people would go and they would worship the different gods and it's likely based on the names of Abraham's family and based on where he came from and the Places that he traveled through it's likely that the God that his family worshipped and Joshua does tell us he was a worshipper of false gods that the God that he probably worshipped was Nana the the moon God and What they would do is they would sacrifice to these gods Sometimes to the point that near the ziggurats have been found Cemeteries filled With these human sacrifices.
03:26: I remember one I told the story a few months ago about the one where they found the Queen and she was buried with all of the Sacrifices around her because when she died her servants were sacrificed as part of her Ceremony and they were buried encircling her And I think that's the worst job, right You you hope that she stays healthy.
03:48: You don't want to be her servant So I tell this simply to remind us that Abraham Would have been all too familiar with human sacrifice In fact, he probably would have seen it in Those 75 years prior to the calling of God on his life 70 years ish that he was in Mesopotamia Abraham would have known what human sacrifice looked like He probably would have known the pain of What it felt like in one sense of seeing it in the faces of others and when we read through the Bible We find many places in the Bible where God absolutely forbids the act of human sacrifice I'll give you four passages.
04:46: You don't have to turn there because these are not the focus of the study today But just so you know, there are at least four passages where God forbids the taking of human life on behalf of sacrifice Leviticus 18 21 says you shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech Molech was the God It was a stone statue that people would lay their infants on and it had a burning Fire within it so that when they laid the infants on it It literally cooked the child as they laid it on there and burned it and consumed it Leviticus 18 says you are not to give any of your children to offer them to Molech and profane the name of your God Deuteronomy chapter 12 you shall not worship the Lord your God in that way for every abominable thing that the Lord hates They have done for their gods for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods Leviticus, I'm sorry Deuteronomy 18 there shall be found No one among you who burns his son or his daughter as an offering anyone who practices? Divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens or a sorcerer So he it combines the act of human sacrifice with witchcraft and then in Jeremiah 7 Much later, of course than the writing of Deuteronomy and Leviticus Do Jeremiah 7 says this says they have built the high places of Topheth which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire Which I did not command nor did it come into my mind.
06:23: That's an interesting phrase for God to say For God to say something did not enter his mind now.
06:29: That is not God denying his own omniscience But it is God saying this is such a tremendously Terrible act that such a thing is so powerfully awful that it it's beyond even the ability to imagine so we know God has Disfavor at the very least for human sacrifice yet Prior to Moses and the writing of the Mosaic legislation God Uses this act of barbarism as the ultimate test of the faith of Abraham By the way, it does not become normal In fact, it's never repeated No one else Is called to this test? Save Abraham himself only one Who we will see Ever is again really brought to this and it's got himself Abraham's called to give his son and then at the last moment He's held back God Gives his son and as RC Sproul said When God laid his son on the altar of sacrifice There was no angel to say stop so that's the thought Leading us into the text today And I do want to invite you to stand because we're going to read the text and we give honor to God's Word as we read after these things God Tested Abraham and said to him Abraham and he said here I am here am I rather He said take your son your only son Isaac Whom you love Go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you So Abraham rose early in the morning Saddled his donkey and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and rose and went to the place of which God had told him on the third Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar Then Abraham said to his young men stay here with the donkey I and the boy will go over there and worship and come to you again Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and said and laid it on his son and he took in his hand the fire and the knife Then they went both of them together and Isaac said to his father Abraham my father and he said here am I son He said behold the fire and the wood But where's the land for the burnt offering Abraham said God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering my son So they went both of them together and when they came to the place of which God Had told him Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son But the angel the Lord called to him from heaven and said 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 I know That you fear God Seeing that you have not withheld your son your only son for me and Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns and Abraham went and Took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering and instead of his son So Abraham called the name of that place The Lord will provide and it is said to this day on the mount of the Lord.
10:44: It shall be Provided and angel the Lord called a second time from Heaven and said by myself I have sworn declares the Lord because you have done this and have not withheld your son your only son I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of the heaven as the sand of the seashore and as the Offspring shall and your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies And in your offspring shall the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice So Abraham returned to his young men they arose and went together to be air Shabbah and Abraham lived at beer Shabbah And after these things it was told to Abraham behold Milka also has born children to your brother Nahor Who's his firstborn booze his brother Kim UL the father of Aram? Hesed Hessa Pills the Jed laugh and Beth UL Beth UL fathered Rebecca These eight milka bore to Nahor Abraham's brother moreover his concubine whose name was Rayma bore Tiba Gaham Tay hash and Micaiah Let us pray Father I pray that you would keep me from error as I preach.
11:58: I pray that you would fill me with your spirit I pray that you would open up hearts to believe and I pray that through all of this your spirit would have the The open door here to do what only he can do in Christ's name.
12:11: I'm in one of the greatest sermons That I ever heard was from dr.
12:35: R.
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12:35: Sproul Dr.
12:38: R.
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12:38: Sproul as I've said many times it was my favorite expositor favorite teacher I could listen to him teach for hours, and I still do at times sometimes I just turn on his sermons on my iPod or iPhone whatever and just listen he was a wonderful teacher and The sermon that I heard him preach as I still put down as the greatest sermon I ever heard was R.
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13:02: Sproul's exposition of Genesis 22 the passage We just read and I had an opportunity to hear him preach it in person I was about 25 years old and I was going to the pastors Conferences that Ligonier would hold and it just so happened that that year that R.
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13:19: preached this text Later, I would hear his son tell the story that this was the text that his father would preach Every time that he went on the road to preach they called this his road sermon Like if he was going on the road to preach this was you know pastors sort of have that you know if we're going somewhere Where it never been heard before? You know you can repeat a sermon because you know they've never heard it So he had this was his road sermon so so this was a sermon that he had preached over and over again Throughout the years and sort of honed it to to a fine edge and I only tell this to begin because I Don't want anybody to think that I would ever steal a sermon from someone because I I honestly don't do that But if there was ever a sermon that was fully influenced by someone else Because of how many times I've listened to it so many times over here.
14:20: I can't not say the things I've heard you know it's just in there And so if you hear me preach this and then later you hear R.
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14:27: And you say hey, that's where that you I'm admitting right now That's where some of it came from and I'm I hope that that's not a shameful thing for you to consider.
14:37: You know you know it's R.
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14:40: was He meant a lot to me And one of the things he said about this text which I do want to commend to your thought as we Move into it as he said this he said when you read this text.
14:53: It is essential that you read this test this text Existentially now what he meant by that he did not mean according to the philosophy of existentialism existentialism is a philosophy that is not necessarily godly, but Existentially and I teach this in our hermeneutics class Existentially means that when you read a text you read the text Understanding that these people truly existed at a time and a place and they were flesh and blood That these are not robots that these are not automatons that these are human beings men and women who are living this moment and the pathos that would accompany a moment like this cannot be ignored and Yet it's not in the text when you read the text nothing is said of Abraham's pain Nothing is said of the tears that were certainly shed Nothing is said of any of that and so we we cannot read into the text we cannot Impose anything on to the text, but we must not think for a moment that any of this was done without feeling So there's a careful balance that we must strike between sanctified imagination and overindulging the imagination Recently I watched a short film Bible film and Jennifer and I watched it together and it had the scene of Isaac taking or Abraham taking Isaac up onto the mountain and I was immediately taken out of the story by several things One While Abraham has Isaac tying him up Isaac's fighting and that's not in the text and I'm gonna tell you later I don't think that that's true.
16:56: I don't think Isaac fought his father One at this time Isaac would have been a young man.
17:02: Not a little child It's not like it's an infant if he wanted to fight off the hundred and twenty year old Abraham.
17:07: He probably could have But Also in the movie it has Rebecca.
17:14: I'm sorry Sarah thinking of Isaac's wife has Sarah Running to Mount Moriah screaming don't don't kill my son and I was that took me totally out of the story There's nowhere in the story.
17:27: There's nothing in the story about Sarah at all We don't even know that she knew in fact.
17:34: I kind of tend to think probably not I Don't imagine Abraham got up that morning and had his morning coffee and said hey, honey pass me the sharp knife I'll be back alone.
17:47: I don't think that that conversation occurred.
17:49: I just don't think so Don't know but certainly the movie people didn't know but they they thought it was important enough to add to the drama by giving this Extra weight of emotion and I asked you do you really need to add to the drama of this story? It's like Brian Borgman said when he was preaching on this Brian said this he said this is why we don't do skits at our Church, he said why would we perform a skit of drama when we have so much drama right there? We have the text which is filled with pathos which is filled with the drama of history and truth all we need do is read it and Try for a moment to feel what was being felt by those Who were there? So that's what we're gonna do and as I Mentioned brother Mike earlier.
18:49: I plan to take three weeks on this Today I want to give an exposition of the story next week I want to give an exposition of the theology of this text, which is even more than the story there's a theology that undergirds that the theology of substitution and Then in the third week, we're going to look at the application that James makes in James chapter 2 when he says This is a picture of what faith that justifies Looks like and so that's what we're going to do over the next three weeks But today we're just going to read and we're going to walk through the text.
19:24: It will begin here in verse 1 It says after these things God tested Abraham and said to him Abraham and he said here I am And some translations say here am I? It's interesting that comes up three times Three times we see Abraham say here am I it was when the angel calls him at the beginning or I'm sorry when the Lord Talks to him at the beginning then later when his son says father and he says yes here am I and then when the angel? Calls again, he says here am I so we see this three times, but what's interesting about verse 1 is That it tells us what is happening from the outset.
20:10: It says and after these things God did test Abraham it tells us this is a test now.
20:20: Here's the thing Abraham doesn't know that this is a test Abraham knows this is a command You see you understand the difference We we are we benefit so much in this story one.
20:36: We can run to the end It's like the you know, I don't know about you, but I used to enjoy reading sir, Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes But one of my worst things I would do when reading Sherlock Holmes was I would run to the end Right, I would I would I would get that the heart of what's going on And I would I would flip to the end because I wanted to see how it would end and we have that right we have We know that when he takes that blade to the throat of his son that the angel is going to stay his hand But Abraham doesn't We know it's a test But Abraham doesn't know that verse 2 he says take Your son your only son Isaac Whom you love And go to the land of Moriah and offer him there is a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will show you now Interesting that we have here a fourfold designation Take your son Stop right there.
21:51: How many sons does Abraham have at this point to? Unless you want to count Eliezer of Damascus as an adopted son you could say three so God comes to him take your son and Sacrifice him Oh Abraham might have said okay Eliezer.
22:12: Let's go or Let me go see if I can catch up to Hagar she's been gone for a little while But maybe she's wandering around the desert of Beersheba.
22:22: Maybe we can find her and we can certainly he doesn't mean Isaac Mean eyes because Isaac is the promise Isaac is the one that we've been waiting for for all these years Isaac is the one through whom the Covenant will continue It can't be Isaac, but God makes sure there's no opportunity to misunderstand take your son Your only son and you said wait a minute didn't you just say he had other sons? Yes, he only has one son who is legitimate legitimately through his wife Sarah His only son and by the way, I titled the sermon your only son because later in the Bible The Bible says this for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son See even though Abraham had an adopted son and Abraham had a son through the handmaiden.
23:23: He only had one son From God's perspective the son that he'd been promised since he was called out of Mesopotamia since he was called out of Ur of the He only had this one son take your son your only son and Then just in case you don't know who I'm talking about.
23:44: I'll name him the third designation Isaac Isaac Not Ishmael not Eliezer.
23:52: No one else Isaac and then the what I consider to be just the the the the stab to the heart He said and this was almost the title of the sermon Whom you love Because that's what it says take your son your only son Isaac Whom you love and offer him as a burnt offering.
24:31: So Abraham rose Early in the morning Saddled his donkey and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and rose and went to the place of which God had told him now I want you for a moment Consider the fact that it says that he rose early many people Have taken to see what does it mean that he rose early and a lot of people settle on this interpretation and if this is Your interpretation.
25:05: I'm Absolutely fine with it The interpretation is that he rose early because Abraham was so obedient that he was going to get on with it, right? He was he was and when I talked about that in the weeks ahead, right? I said Abimelech rose early because he wanted to be obedient to getting Sarah back Right and we've seen other places in the text where rising early does indicate obedience So I'm okay if that's the interpretation, however There's a little book it was written by a Danish philosopher And it was entitled fear and trembling now.
25:39: I don't believe this man was a believer, but he does give an interesting insight into the Emotional side of this text he writes about the Abraham Isaac Story and he says That perhaps the reason why Abraham rose early Just because he couldn't sleep Knowing what he was about to do the interesting thought and it says he took and went out and cut the wood He saddled the donkey he made preparations and Think about this from the perspective of Isaac and and honestly when I was a kid and I'd hear the story told I would always Think of it from the perspective of Isaac now that I'm a father I think of it from the perspective of Abraham But when I was a kid, I was always thought what it would be like to have my dad You know Come into my bedroom and say, you know, we're going to go offer an offering to God today Which would not have been odd by the way Think about that from the perspective of Isaac for Abraham to come into his room and say today is the day of offering son We're going to go and we're going to make an offering certainly Abraham had probably done this with Isaac before In fact, I tend to think that that's almost absolutely necessary to believe because later Isaac is going to ask the question Where's the lamb because he knows he's done this before and there's something missing Right.
27:07: There's always things that we have to have gotta have wood gotta have a knife gotta have fire Because you don't get up there do that, you know, you gotta have the fire and take it with you You know, you would get up there and do the whole Boy Scout thing.
27:18: All right, you want to have it ready to go? so Gotta have the wood gotta have the knife gotta have the fire But you can't have a lamb the fact that Isaac knows this indicates.
27:33: He's probably been here before Okay, we're gonna go make an offering three days journey.
27:38: Notice that it says in verse 4 on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar that means for three days Isaac walked next to his father Now again, we don't know how old he was probably young teenage boy Nice strong boy probably at times maybe ran ahead of his father to show his strength and youth and vitality in the face of the 120 year old, you know Abraham or some you know You know Just just running around and moving about to look dad see what I can pick up Look what I you know, cuz later it says Abraham lays the wood on him to go up the mountain So this kid's strong and he's going along with his father three days You know when you have to do something hard you often like to get it over with but God makes Abraham wait three And they go together On the third day lifted up his eyes and he saw the place verse 5 then Abraham said to the young men Stay here with the donkey.
28:53: I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you And you wonder why leave the guys behind? Well, there's a lot of different reasons why he may have wanted them to stay behind one He may not have wanted them to see what he was going to do for fear that they might try to stop him thinking that he was Maybe going a little senile in his elderly condition and say we can't when he lifts the knife to his throat They run in to grab him So he says no you stay behind the boy and I are going to go and he says we're going to go worship That's what sacrifice is sacrifice is worship and they're gonna go worship together And by the way, do you know what the word worship, you know where we get that word? The word worship comes in English.
29:43: This is not the Hebrew or the Greek but in English It comes from the word the same idea of the word of worth So worship in a sense is like worth ship.
29:55: It's something of which you ascribe worth to something So when you talk about worshiping something, it means that you're ascribing value to that thing You're a scribe and worship really is the ultimate value This is the ultimate thing of importance and that's really what this test is about Abraham Has been called by God to answer one question Am I worth more than anything? Even your son Your only son is my worth greater than his We have a lot of idols And the reason why we have so many idols John Calvin said our minds are factories about the reason we have so many idols is Because we ascribe worth to things higher than God Sometimes it's our money Sometimes it's our reputation Sometimes it's our comfort.
31:05: Oftentimes.
31:06: It's our comfort that we put in a place of higher worth than God Sometimes it is our family We can worship Family by putting them above God So God says to Abraham am I worth more than anything even your son Home you love So Abraham says to the men we're gonna go And we're gonna worship God.
31:44: So then verse 6 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 so they went both of them together And by the way, this is an interesting just side note historical fact.
32:02: There is a Jewish Commentary on Genesis that was written prior to Christ Keep that in mind.
32:11: That's very important.
32:12: It's called The bearer sheet and it was dated around the 6th century ad So that would I'm sorry written after Christ, but it was written by Jewish people not by Not by Christians But it says this it says that When Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and Laid it on Isaac.
32:40: It was like one who was carrying his own stake To be impaled on and that was something that was done to Jews during the Roman time They were impaled on stakes and he says he says by putting the wood on his shoulders.
32:53: It was like carrying his own cross so in this moment Isaac is a picture of Christ And Abraham in this sense is a picture of God himself who is going to give his son And he lays upon the back of his son the very instrument of his demise Just like Christ would thousands of years later carry the very instrument of his own demise up the hill of Galgatha in fact in the same place If you go right now to Jerusalem the Temple Mount is overshadowed by a Muslim mosque But where that mosque is there once stood the temple and the reason why the temple was raised there is Because they believed that was the place where Abraham offered Isaac And right on that same vicinity right outside the city walls was where Jesus was taken and hung from a tree So as Isaac carried that wood up the mountain To be burned upon himself.
34:01: So Christ carried the wood to be impaled upon so we see the picture here Verse 7 and Isaac said to his father my father and he said here I am my son He said behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Where is the lamb? John Currid in his commentary said this he says was Isaac being inquisitive or suspicious.
34:31: I Like that question as he's like looking around he's saying, you know, I'm used to there being a fourth part to this to this activity I'm used to the fire.
34:42: I'm used to the knife.
34:43: I'm used to the wood.
34:44: I'm not used to there not being a lamb Father, where is the lamb? And I think in my heart that question may have made Abraham's stomach turn for a moment again I'm I don't want to read too much into the text, but a little sanctified imagination never hurt Nobody and if I can imagine what he's getting ready to do and his son says daddy, where's the lamb? And he doesn't say It's you He says God will provide In fact, if you're familiar with the phrase Jehovah Jireh That's where it comes from The phrase God will provide Jehovah Jireh.
35:33: This is the text.
35:34: In fact later As we already read Abraham names this place Jehovah Jireh.
35:40: God will provide and Again, I can't help but continue to make the connection to the New Covenant where God did provide the lamb in the same place God provides the lamb So Isaac Asks, where's the lamb? God will give us the lamb.
36:01: God will provide when the but when they reach the place which God told him verse 9 Abraham built the altar there laid the wood in order and Bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood now It tells us nothing else about this scene And again the movie I saw had Isaac pulling away from his father saying no father.
36:24: Please don't do this to me and Some people think that that's what the binding is The binding was the was Isaac trying to get away and and Abraham pulling him in and tying him up and saying, you know This is we got to do this But understand this binding the sacrifice was part of the ritual of Sacrifice it was part of the ceremony.
36:54: I Don't believe Isaac was bound that he would not run away However, I could see this I could see Isaac's hand and feet bound For the reality that he might in the last moment of his life flinch or Try to protect himself as a natural instinct might be so perhaps his father bound him so that he would not out of sheer natural instinct of self-preservation Try to stay his hand and so he binds him and he ties him up And he lays him on the altar in a moment that none of us can imagine I've known I've known many people who have lost have ministered as best I know how to in those moments and It is something that is it is a robust feeling of Brokenness.
38:07: It's the only way I can describe what you see in the faces of people who are hurting And yet I've never sat around with a person who was responsible for their child's death You understand the difference Abraham is about to be responsible for the death of Isaac He's going to be the one to administer the death blow most of us picture Abraham's hand Raising high and the angel Grabbing his hand, you know, we've seen drawings Where the hand is up and the angels grabbing and saying no, but the sacrifices were not Given by plunging a knife through the heart They were given by severing the throat so Isaac Is laying there with his neck exposed to the blade of the father who is prepared To take that sharpened edge Perhaps even the same blade that had circumcised his son just a few years before to take the same sharpened blade and run it across his throat and As he goes to place the knife The angel the Lord Jesus Christ the angel the Lord called to him from heaven and said Abraham Abraham The twofold use of the name in Scripture is almost always used in a sense of urgency Simon Simon But Satan has sought to sift you like we remembered it's urgent that the use of the double term of the name Abraham Abraham and the third time he said here Here I am lay not your hand on the boy do nothing to him For now, I know that you fear God Seeing that you have not withheld your son your only son notice again the stressing of the unique relationship of Isaac to Abraham your Only son you have not withheld your son from me People sometimes take issue with the fact that it says now I know that you fear God as if God did not know before we must understand that when God speaks in Scripture, sometimes he speaks in such a way that we would call the language of the the Condescension or the reaching down to us so that we might be able to relate to him and God is saying you've passed the test That's what he's saying You have been brought to this moment of testing and you passed and understand this as Brian said Brian Borgman said he said Abraham has been in the school of faith since he left er of Calde's right he's been in the school of faith, and he's gotten some bad marks All right There's a few times where he took home a few F's when he was going to class in the school of faith But right now he's graduating with honors Because now I know and notice he says I know that you fear God not that you love God or that you trust God But that you fear God, you know, who is most You know who I am You know So Abraham calls the place The Lord will provide and what we see in the following verses is We see God Re-establishing with Abraham the promises of the covenant He re-establishes that his son is going to be the one through whom the nations will be blessed because his son is going to bring birth to more sons and those sons are going to finally and Thoroughly bring forth the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ through whom all the nations will be blessed and Then you might wonder why I read verses 20 to 24 because all it is really is just a little miniature Outline of Abraham's brother and his children.
43:27: Why would I read that? Well, it's in the chapter that's one, but the other reason why I read it is because what that tells us is Isaac has a future and It's with a woman born of The brother of Abraham and her name is Rebecca So in this chapter we have the moment of truth where Abraham's faith is tested and proven and then the promise that Isaac's life Will continue on and here's a picture.
44:04: His wife has already been born now.
44:12: I want to finish by Asking and answering a very simple question.
44:19: Why was Abraham Willing to go through with this You might say well he trusted God He feared God.
44:29: That's what the text says.
44:32: I agree But I want to show you one thing Go back up to verse 5 then Abraham said to the young men Stay here with the donkey.
44:51: I am the boy will go over there and worship and Come again to you notice what he says I and the boy will go and worship and Will come again to you Now some people think that Abraham was being somewhat coy with his companions Trying to in that moment hide and deceive them for what he was about to do But I don't believe that and I don't because of one Important reason when the writer of Hebrews interprets this text for us He tells us what was in the mind of Abraham So turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 11, and we will see the mind of Abraham in this moment Why was Abraham willing to go through with it? We're gonna see go to Hebrews 11 verse 17 my faith Abraham when he was tested offered up Isaac and He who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son of whom it was said through Isaac Shall your offspring be named he considered notice this verse 19 He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead From which figuratively speaking he did receive him back notice the heart of Abraham and the mind of Abraham as Abraham was walking up that mountain with his son as he saw his son working to carry the wood on his shoulders.
46:43: He believed that God's Promises would continue and the only way for God's promises to continue would be for his son to live So God's he said to himself.
46:57: I will take his life and God will restore his life.
47:04: Here's the Powerful thing that had never been done before You go back through all 21 chapters of Genesis No one has yet risen from the dead.
47:20: No one has yet risen from the dead and Abraham as he walked up the mountain with his son said if God Forces me to go through with this My son will live and I've seen God give life to my wife's dead womb How much more difficult would it be for him to give life? to my dead sir Abraham believed Isaac would live.
47:48: He told those men we're gonna go worship and we will return to you understand this The God of Eternity Does not require our sons To be burned on the fire.
48:10: He does not require us to sacrifice our children to the flames But he did Give his only begotten son to die on our behalf Consider again, John 3 16.
48:29: I know you know it but consider it again in light of the story of Abraham and Isaac Consider these words in this way God loved the world that he gave His only begotten son his only son whom he loved he gave his only son That all who believe on him would not perish but will have Everlasting life you see what God did not require of Abraham.
49:03: God was willing to give of himself I want us to be this morning in awe of the love of God who would give his only son for us Romans 8 32 he who did not spare his own son But gave him up for us all how will he not also? graciously give us all things He didn't spare his son.
49:43: He spared Abraham's son, but he didn't spare his own son if You're a believer in Jesus if you are saved this morning, and you have ever doubted God's love for you.
49:58: I want you to say this to yourself Remind yourself God gave his son for me You see often we read this story and we get so consumed with Abraham giving his son to God and we think about the pathos of that and all the pain that he went through and Walking up the mountain and putting the wood on his son's shoulders and all of those things that we get so consumed in the heart Of Abraham that we forget that God took his son up a mountain He laid a cross on his son's back and by his stripes We were healed and it says it pleased the Lord to strike his son for us That's what we must see in this story.
50:45: This story is not about the faithfulness of Abraham.
50:48: It's about the faithfulness of God And it's not about how much all of us would say I I don't know if I could do it if that's what you take Away, that's not what you're supposed to take away It's not about whether or not you would do it or could do it It's about the fact God did it That's the heart of the story What God did not require of Abraham? He required of himself For God so loved the world That he gave his only begotten son That whosoever believeth in him Will not perish But have everlasting life Let's pray father I thank you for your word I thank you for your truth.
51:38: I Thank you that you spared not your own son And I pray Oh God now That as we seek to gather around the table of remembrance the remembrance of your son.