FBC Morning Light –1/6/2024

Good Saturday morning, people of faith. It's good to be here with you on the first Saturday of the new year. And I want to tell you that I am personally very excited about our reading plan for this year as we're going to be going through the Bible chronologically.

And from my wife and I's perspective, this has been something that's near and dear to both of us from our training back many years ago. She was with, and I was in training with, a missions agency that specialized in taking the gospel to places that had never heard the gospel, and they found the chronological approach to be very, very beneficial in helping the people who had never heard about anything of the Bible to understand the Bible.

So today we're going to be looking at chapters 16 through 22 of the book of Genesis, and I'm going to just give a brief synopsis of each chapter and maybe read just a couple of verses here and there. Chapter 16, the main idea there is about the child of Abraham and Sarai's mistress, and that would be Ishmael.

And I'm going to read to you verses 11 and 12 of chapter 16. And the angel of the Lord said to her, Behold, you are with child, and you shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has heard your affliction.

He shall be a wild man. His hand shall be against every man and every man's hand against him, and he shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren. Okay? And that would be certainly something we could see to be true even to this day.

Chapter 17, Abram and Sarai are renamed Abraham and Sarah. Also, in chapter 17, the ritual or the rite of circumcision is established for the male children of the Jews.

All right?

Genesis 18: The Promise of a Son and Abraham’s Intercession for Sodom

Chapter 18, chapter 18, we have the promise given to Abraham that they would have a promised son. Also, judgment is pronounced on Sodom in chapter 18, and Abraham tries to intercede for Sodom, and he starts with, if you remember, he starts with 50 people.

If there's 50 righteous men in Sodom, will you save Sodom? And he keeps going down and down, and finally, he gets down to if there's 10 righteous men in Sodom, he'll spare Sodom. And well, we know the end of that story, that there were not 10 righteous men found in Sodom.

And Sodom and Gomorrah is eventually destroyed, and we get the start of the Moabites and the Ammonites from the wrongful relationship that Lot had with his daughters. Chapter 20, in chapter 20, we see the story of Abraham, Abimelech, and Sarah.

And so, Sarah and Abraham were half-brother, half-sister, but they were also married, and so Abraham lied about his...he misled Abimelech about the relationship that they had. And Abimelech was ultimately very upset with Abraham and how he handled the situation and felt misled in a number of things.

But that's another example of a pattern that started with Abraham and carried on to his sons, and I'm sure you'll read about that later this year. In chapter 21, chapter 21, Isaac is born, and the name Isaac means he makes me laugh.

Or laughter.

And if you can imagine being 99, 100 years old, and your wife 90-something years old, and having a child, it would certainly bring joy to your heart. And that is what happened with the birth of Isaac.

Genesis 22: Abraham, Isaac, and the Ram in the Thicket

And then I'm going to pick this up again in chapter 22. Chapter 22, I think, is one of the most important chapters in, certainly, the book of...in the book of Genesis, if not the entire Old Testament.

So I ought to read a passage here, starting in verse 7. But Isaac spoke to Abraham, his father, and said, My father, and he said, Here I am, my son. Then he said, Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

So the Lord has told Abraham to take his son to a mountain that he'll let him know about and there to sacrifice his son, Isaac. And so Isaac is being faithful to what the Lord has commanded, and Isaac questions Abraham, where is the offering?

And so in verse 8, Abraham said, My son, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt.

Offering.

So the two of them went together. Let me continue reading here. It says, Then they came to the place of which God had told him, and Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order. And he bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. So he said, Here I am. And he said, Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him.

For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son from me. Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns.

So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. And we see here that the Lord did, in fact, provide a ram in place of his son, Isaac. A brief story about relating this to modern day life.

A few years ago, my son had an injury to his hand that required a surgery, and he came out of surgery in such pain that he was just moaning in pain very loudly and arching his back and just in absolute misery.

So they gave him a shot of morphine, and it didn't work. And so he did all those same things again, and he gave him another shot of morphine, and it didn't work. And this happened four times. And he went from just screaming at the top of his lungs at how much it hurt to just not breathing at all.

And they had to give him the antidote, and he was fine. But in those moments, I realized that I would much rather be in his place than to have my son die. And so I have to say to you that I firmly believe that it takes a divine father who could give up his only son.

And so let us consider this story of how Abraham offered his son, and God provided a ram in his place. And yet God, when it came time, in due time, will provide the lamb for all of us, his one and only son.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for what you have revealed to us in your word, the beginnings of so many different peoples in the book of Genesis, and the beginnings of what you did on that cross in giving up your only son to die in our place.

May you be glorified in us and through us as we not only consider this but share that truth with others this day. It's in your son's name, Jesus, we pray.

Amen.

Have an excellent day, people of faith.