The Faithful Sacrifice

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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Genesis 22:1-24

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Well, this morning we look to begin chapter 22 and also complete chapter 22, which will take us within 100 yards or so of the end of the
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Abrahamic cycle, functionally, within the narrative of Genesis, when we get to the death of Sarah, his wife, and the purchase of the burial plot at Machpelah.
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And so it's important to think through how significant this chapter is as we come to the very end of the
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Abraham cycle and the beginning of Isaac's cycle. And so that's why
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I included in the bulletin a little blurb at the bottom of the left -hand page on the inside, just to show you the literary structure of what we've been through over several months now.
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When you look at how the, as you remember, the Toledoth, the generations, how these little genealogies become the sort of thread that runs across Genesis and organizes the narrative, and that's easy to miss because we've been through a lot of material from chapter 11 to chapter 22, but when you put it together in this structure, in what we call a chiasm, it's very easy to see that there's this incredible literary skill that's gone into how the story has been told, what's been included, and why it has been included.
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And so I hope you can see that, see the parallels between what's going inward toward the ease and then what's coming out, how they each are paired.
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And then, of course, where we began is where we end, with a genealogy, this time with Nahor.
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And the sermon today, we're not going to get into that genealogy, and there won't be a sermon next week on the genealogy of Nahor, but I'm so glad we read it, especially to hear
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Tony pronounce some of those names. That was my joy this morning. What we do want to focus on in Genesis chapter 22 is, of course, the sacrifice of Abraham.
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And it's very important that we think of it that way. So often you hear the sacrifice of Isaac, meaning he's the one being sacrificed, but that's not the focal point of chapter 22 at all.
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Isaac is completely passive in chapter 22. The focal point is Abraham's sacrifice, the sacrifice that he makes.
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Last week, we saw Abraham and Abimelech make a covenant over a parcel of land, particularly a well.
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There was a dispute, and they make a covenant to settle it. This is very significant in the storyline, because Abraham, from the time he was called out of Ur of the
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Chaldeans and entered into the promised land, has been a sojourner. He's been the equivalent of a vandal or a subway graffiti artist in that he's built altars in all the places that he's dwelt.
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And yet he had no formal, proper recognition of a dwelling place until he makes a covenant with Abimelech.
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And now this well belongs to him. It's part of his inheritance. This is a major step forward in terms of the fulfillment of what
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God had promised. This is, as it were, this tiny little well is the down payment of the fact that he has an inheritance in this land, and his progeny will inherit this land according to God's promise.
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He has his little boy, Isaac, the child of promise, bouncing on his lap year by year, getting bigger and stronger, learning more about the
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Lord God, hearing more about the stories from his mom and his dad about the life they left behind and what the
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Lord God has done, how He's appeared, that dark dream that fell upon him and gave him horror, but how the
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Lord passed through between the animal parts. And as we'll even see in this chapter, since the Lord could swear by nothing greater than Himself, He swore by Himself that God would bless
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Abraham and Sarah. And this child knows that he has been the result of 25 years of prayer and struggle and sacrifice and trust and patience and inheritance.
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He is the down payment, the deposit, the earnest proof that God will do what he said.
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Things are going wonderfully. Years are rolling by, Abram and Sarah enjoying their boy, watching him grow in wisdom and in stature, watching him go from strength to strength, and in a profound way, as a result of that,
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Abraham is going from strength to strength too. I can imagine how close his walk with the
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Lord had been. And then we come to this fateful chapter, and with it, a trial.
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There's four points I want to focus on. Each of these will guide us through this passage and help us reflect on faith.
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Faith, that's key with Abraham, of course, and we'll see that again and again.
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So the first point is the trial of faith. That introduces us to the passage. Then we'll consider the evidence of faith, third, the object of faith, and then lastly, the devotion of faith.
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So the trial of faith, the evidence of faith, the object of faith, and the devotion of faith.
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Beginning in verse 1, we see the trial of faith. It came to pass after these things that God tested
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Abraham. Now if you just pause there, there's a whole sermon just within that sentence, isn't there?
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It came to pass that God tested his servant. It came to pass. Now this is the narrator speaking.
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This is not something that Abraham found in his Gmail inbox, what a test is coming.
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This is something that the narrator tells us, Abraham has no idea it's coming. Just as you or I often don't know that there's a subtext, there's this invisible reality that's taking place in our life, the
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Lord God is testing us. It comes to pass, and it will come to pass in the
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Christian life that God tests his people. Abraham by now has gotten accustomed, we don't have all the details of how this worked, but clearly
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Abraham is able to know when the Lord God is revealing something to him, whether by vision, by utterance, by divine appearance,
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Abraham knows the Lord. God is his friend. God says to him,
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Abraham, and he said, here I am, and he said, take now your son, your only son,
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Isaac, whom you love. This is all strung together to make it so much more impactful and enigmatic.
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Not just your son, not just Isaac, but your son, your only son, Isaac, the one that you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which
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I shall tell you. And that's all that's revealed to us. We don't even have recorded
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Abraham's reaction, but it must have been utterly devastating, incomprehensibly shattering.
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This was the command of the Lord, and Abraham knew it. I can imagine a cold sweat,
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I can imagine him turning white, I can imagine his heart pumping deeply, feeling that in his feet, feeling nauseous, blocking out the thought from his mind.
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There's no way that that's what was just communicated to me. The sacrifice of the son that we've been waiting 25 years to receive, the product of week after week and month after month and decade after decade of walking with you, and now you want me to bring him to a mountaintop and slay him before you and burn his corpse.
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It becomes one of the most poignant, gripping scenes in the Scripture up to this point.
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I don't know if there's anything from Genesis 1 to now that even comes close. And we've lost something of the shock value of this because it has become so familiar to us.
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If we could approach it for the first time, if you had never read the book of Genesis and you're doing what you ought to do when you read the
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Bible, which is your understanding, okay, what is this telling me about God? What is this telling me about the purpose of God?
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His mission in the world? How does this point me forward to the fulfillment that is presented in the person and work of Jesus?
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If you're doing all that, you might have some good hints, but think of the readers back then where so much was yet unknown, unrevealed about the one they were to look for, and as much as you've seen the intimacy and the care of God, how do you understand this?
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How do you wrestle with this? We know that the infant sacrifice was practiced by Canaanites.
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Perhaps it was practiced by other people groups ahead of that. Abraham's dwelling among Canaanites and proto -Canaanites, they may have been relatively familiar with child sacrifice.
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Of course, God utterly condemns it. It is an abomination in his sight, utterly forbidden for his people to participate in.
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Leviticus 18, Deuteronomy 12, and given his unchangeable character, we recognize that God is not seeking the sacrifice of Isaac as though that's an acceptable sacrifice.
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He's not seeking it as though it would please him. What God desires is not an unacceptable sacrifice of Isaac, but rather how this event in God's intention will point forward to the sacrifice that will be accepted.
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And God is also plainly seeking to prove the faith of Abraham so that he can bring to pass all that he has promised.
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It's been a while since we've been there in Genesis 17, but there's some conditional language about the necessity of Abraham walking in the statutes and decrees of God so that God can bring to pass all that he had promised.
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Was the call, was the covenant in 15 completely unconditional? Yes. But then as God began to cultivate his grace in Abraham's life, he, as it were, enforces conditions upon the fulfillment of the covenant.
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He, as it were, ratifies it and says, walk before me, be blameless in my sight, obey all that I command and I will bring these things to pass.
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And so over the years, we've seen God slowly strip Abraham of his earthly schemes, his fleshly effort to find an alternative route to the promise being fulfilled.
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And God has stripped all of that away. And as he strips it away, he gives increase and he blesses and he fortifies and he presses and he tries and he answers and he comforts, he assuages, he embraces.
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And all of this is his cultivating of grace and faith and confidence and assurance in the life of Abraham.
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So that when the test comes, Abraham will be able to stand and not waver and not falter.
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Perhaps Abraham thought. But the 25 years of struggle had been.
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The hardest and that separating from Ishmael was the final test, Lord, this is not my heir, as you've said, and if he must depart, though I love him, he must depart.
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That that was the last mess Abraham had made that needed to be cleaned up. Now, of course, he can sit back, content, resting in the promise, live out his old age and watch
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Isaac become the heir of the fulfillment. Surely he thought the hardest is behind him.
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But this is rarely the case in the life of faith. I don't want to discourage anyone in the
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Lord. But if you're yourself, statistically half of your life left to live, you have not been through the hardest.
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It struck me reading Pilgrim's Progress that that's how John Bunyan lays out the life of Pilgrim. There's no downward coast toward the end, right?
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There's difficulty after difficulty and there's never the cruise control. In fact, when he faces the last enemy, it's the most devastating.
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He's at his wit's end, as it were, and he barely makes it through. What is Bunyan portraying about the nature of the
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Christian life? As an old preacher said, Beloved, expect your trials to multiply as you proceed toward heaven.
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Do not think that as you grow in grace, the path becomes smoother beneath your feet.
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The heavens become serener above your head. On the contrary, God reckons that you're a soldier and as you gain greater skill, he sends you on more difficult missions.
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He more fully fits your boat to brave the tempest and the storm. And so he'll send you only further and longer in more difficult seas so that you may honor him and increase in assurance.
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This is a norm for the Christian life, right? He's not cultivating grace for nothing when he's building faith and confidence and assurance.
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We can be assured that the testing is coming and all of that grace that he has been reinforcing and sowing into our lives is going to be used.
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Assurance is likely the farthest thing from Abraham's mind in this moment. He finally thought,
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I got to this place, Lord, and my heart will always be whole before you and I'm never going to depart again. And wait, what was that test again?
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What was that? You can have anything but this. Sacrifice Isaac.
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It doesn't even make sense. Everything that you've promised me is now funneled through this boy.
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You will be a liar if you allow me to sacrifice him, how will
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I secure an inheritance in the land? How will the nations become blessed through my seed if you're telling me to sacrifice him, take my son, my only son,
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Isaac, the one that I love, and slay him on an altar? We learn here another principle about the trials of faith in the
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Christian life. God will never give us a trial that we can fully bear ourselves.
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God will not give us a trial that we can fully bear ourselves. God is not in the business of self -sufficiency.
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He does not pad his people up to go on their merry way and find that deep inner strength that the world often thinks of as what
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Christians are on about. Just dig deep in yourself and find that secret meaning and reservoir of power.
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And Christians are like, what are you talking about? I'm a dried up pot shirt. When that trial comes,
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I'm clinging to the Lord and I'm pretty sure that's his design. And so we come to exactly what
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Jesus said, the nature of the trial. If you seek to save your life, you lose it.
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But if you're willing to lose your life, you keep it. To put it in different terms, if you give up Isaac, you keep him.
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If you keep Isaac, you lose him. And so Abraham, he presses forward in faith.
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Here, perhaps more than any other moment in the narrative, here is why we call Abraham our father in the faith, the father of all those who have faith.
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This is the Mount Everest of exemplars of faith in the Old Testament. At every step,
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Abraham is hoping for the divine cancellation, for a change of plans, for some alternative course of action.
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Can you imagine the kind of intercession that Abraham would have been pouring out at every nanosecond between now, the time of the revelation, and the time that Isaac was being bound to the altar?
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I mean, when God made it clear that he was going to destroy Sodom, Abraham stood against him and implored him and negotiated all the way down to a handful.
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And that was just for a wicked city like Sodom, how much more would he be pouring out his heart in intercession at the thought of his son being sacrificed?
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May it not be, Lord. If we could put it in New Testament terms, Abraham would have been saying something like this, trembling, if there's any other way, let this cup pass.
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But Abraham presses forward by faith. In the travel and the provisions, in the gathering, in the building, in all of it, in grief, in torment, in prayer, until there was nothing left to do but hold the knife to his son,
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Abraham presses forward in this trial of faith. And thankfully, we're not left to speculate about the nature of that faith, because Hebrews 11 gives us the divine commentary on what's taking place here.
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Hebrews 11, beginning in verse 17, by faith. Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said in Isaac, your seed shall be called, concluding that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.
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Do you understand what the writer of Hebrews is saying? Abraham already understood how
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Isaac came to him, it was as though he received him from the dead, from the deadness of Sarah's womb.
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In other words, there's already been one resurrection. And he concludes, if the promise is sure that in Isaac, my seed will be called, then there's going to be a second resurrection.
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And therefore, I go and we get a sense of this, don't we?
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In verse three and following, Abraham rose early in the morning, he saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him.
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Isaac, his son, split the wood for the offering, arose, went to the place which God had told him.
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And on the third day, Abraham lifted his eyes and he saw the place far off. And Abraham said to his young men, stay here, the lad and I will go yonder and worship and we will come back to you.
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He doesn't say and I will come back to you, he says we. Is this
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Abraham up to his old tricks? Is this just an easy white lie so not too many questions are being asked?
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No, I think this is what Hebrews 11 is talking about. Even here,
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Abraham pressing forward in faith, he's concluding. God promised,
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God promised that in Isaac, my seed will be called. And therefore, if he calls me to sacrifice my son, my son will come back from the dead and we will come back and we will go home to the tent and God will fulfill all that he's promised.
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He knew God. He trusted God. And so by faith, he presses forward because he knows that it's in Isaac that this seed will bless the nations of the earth.
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And so Hebrews is right on to say he reckoned that God was able, not a question of ability.
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We often question whether or not God is willing. God forbid we ever question his ability.
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We often feel very sorrowful that our faith is so weak. We smuggle ability in there somewhere.
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Do you think God is able to heal you? Yes. Yeah, I don't know if he's willing.
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That's not what I asked. Do you believe God is able to heal you? Abraham, by faith, reckoned that God was able.
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Notice this is C .H. McIntosh, very good devotional writer. I would disagree with him on some of his larger views of things, but just devotionally just hits it out of the park.
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He says Abraham accounted that God was able. He never said Isaac was able. Isaac without God is nothing.
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God without Isaac is everything. This is a principle of the most importance and one that comes to our heart most keenly.
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Does it make any difference to you to see the apparent channel of blessing all dried up?
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Am I dwelling sufficiently near the fountainhead? That's a capital F near God to be able with a worshiping spirit to behold all of my creaturely streams dry up.
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You see what he's saying there, this is the way this is the only way and it's drying up, it's coming to nothing.
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Do I have faith that God is able, am
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I willing to hold fast? To follow through, to walk with God when every earthly scheme, every creaturely effort shrivels and dies.
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When we look at Psalm 46 and we say, God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in a time of trouble.
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When we actually embrace that by faith, not as a token, not just as a refrigerator magnet or something that we want to put on our checkbook, but actually something we believe deeply in our heart,
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God is a refuge. He's a help in a time of trouble, in a time of terror, in a time of difficulty,
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God is a refuge, he's a shield. And when you believe that, then you follow on with verse two, therefore, we will not fear, though the earth be removed, though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.
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Do you see what the psalmist is saying? Though the world is falling apart, though earth is being removed, whatever that means, though the mountains are being lifted and dropped into the
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Pacific, God is our refuge and our strength. He's present in that time of cataclysmic trouble.
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Do you believe that by faith? Abraham believed that by faith. Abraham's earth was, for all intents and purposes, falling apart.
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If Abraham's soul had not been stayed on the Lord, he never would have yielded obedience like this.
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Truly, the Lord was all of his hope and all of his stay. Whom do I have in heaven but you? Who else could give me this promise?
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Who else has been faithful throughout my whole long life? My heart, my flesh may fail, but God, you're the strength of my heart, you're my portion forever.
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That's the kind of faith that Abraham has. And so we don't forget that, though we're talking a lot about Abraham's faith, we're really talking about the
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God of Abraham who's been faithfully sowing grace into Abraham's life.
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And it's even now in chapter 22 when he says, your son, your only son, the son you love, he's supernaturally upholding
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Abraham's heart so that in that day of trial he will not falter. Abraham is able to surrender his will, and God wants to bring all of his people to a place in their life where they're willing to surrender their will to his will, to trust him completely, to say, my life is in your hands.
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My home is in your hands, my children are in your hands, my provision is in your hands,
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Lord. I'm surrendering my will, my schemes, the things that seem apparent to me,
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I'm surrendering that to you. I'm walking by faith in what you've promised. Earlier in Hebrews leading us forward to chapter 11, the exhortation was to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
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And in verse 13 and following, Abraham is again the poster boy. God made a promise to Abraham and he could swear by no one greater, so he swore by himself, saying, surely
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I will bless you and multiply, I will multiply you. And so after, not before, not even during, after Abraham had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.
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Not before, not during, all right, you know, meet me halfway,
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Lord. Put myself out here, putting some skin in the game, meet me halfway, because if you don't,
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I'm turning back. I made it a day and a half's journey and I'm not setting a foot further toward Mariah until you give me some comfort that I'm not,
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I'm not having to go all the way. He had patiently endured.
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He obtained the promise. And so Abraham is the model, the paradigm, the pattern of us walking by faith in what
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God has promised. It's why he's called the man of faith in the New Testament. I know what it's like, you just feel,
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God, meet me halfway. If anything, we pat ourselves on the back. I took a big step of faith.
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And now you're waiting for everything to come flooding in so you can keep taking another step of faith. But nothing comes flooding in.
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In fact, there's more difficulty, more opposition, more self -doubt.
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And this is why Abraham is the man of faith, the man of faith.
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He presses on and he presses on and he presses on and by patient endurance, he obtains the problem.
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I love what Paul says in Romans four. I'm not even on point number two and I'm losing my voice.
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That's never a good sign. In Romans four, Paul says,
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Abraham did not waver at the promise through unbelief. He doesn't say he never wavered, period.
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If you've been following along on Sunday mornings, Abraham's wavered a lot. But Paul says he never wavered at the promise through unbelief and it's never been tested quite like this.
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He's walking after God. And God is blessing him and sanctify him and working out his failures, showing him his sins, drawing him in close, and we read in Romans 420, he was strengthened in faith.
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So you can waver and you can get to a place where you're not wavering in unbelief and yet you still need to be strengthened.
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I'm just amazed at that. If you put verse 16 and verse 20 together, I'm not wavering in unbelief or I'm going to go through with it, but strengthen me.
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This is the Abrahamic equivalent of Lord, I believe, but help my unbelief because there's both going on in my heart.
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And so this is the trial of faith. He was strengthened in faith, giving glory to God, being fully convinced, fully convinced that what he had promised he was able to perform.
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Fully convinced, oh, that God would give his people hearts that are fully convinced that what he has promised he is able to perform.
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And secondly, we see this faith worked out. We see the evidence of faith.
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So we see the trial of faith. And if you're a Christian, these trials are going to come. It's the nature of the
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Christian life. We see Christians, brothers and sisters, endure trials and their faith seems to be weakened and they seem to be clinging and they look around and they begin to envy believers who don't seem to be going through such trials at that particular time.
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And they wonder, am I just so sinful, so completely under the wrath of God that I'm being chastised and chastised and punted out of God's will?
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And these other people, they just, their whole lives are in order and God is pleased with them. And I'm just that misfit child that never could actually receive his blessing.
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And it's those people that we look around and we feel that they're a lot closer to God. And if you've been living the
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Christian life for any length of time and you haven't faced trials, I have to ask, are you actually living the
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Christian life? God chastens whom he loves.
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Those who seek to live a godly life will suffer. That's a maxim for Paul.
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Not a good thing to go through decades in the Christian life and never be tried and never struggle and never face trials.
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There should be alarm bells in your conscience. Am I a Christian? Because it doesn't seem like God is actually refining me.
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He's not cultivating and testing what he's planted in my life. In other words, there must be an evidence of faith.
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There must be faith work out. And look at this faith worked out.
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He rises early in the morning. That's amazing to me.
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He doesn't sleep in. He doesn't do what I would do, which is take like a week -long depression nap.
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And basically, as long as I'm in bed and I'm asleep, I don't have to think about and I don't have to do anything. He is such a man of faith that he wakes up early to go do this.
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He loads up early, crack of dawn. He starts saddling up.
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There's wood to cut. There's three days of travel. And every time he stops to take a little rest break or they make a campfire and set up the tent for the night, and he embraces his little boy.
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And the shuddering horror of what has to take place hours and hours closer than when they left.
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And he has to build the altar, and he has to watch his boy help him drag the stones to the place.
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This is real work. This is real evidence of faith. It's not the kind of faith that says, just take
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Lord and I'll be passive. It's the kind of faith that he's actually working to bring about that which is the hardest, the most impossibly difficult thing to do.
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And he's up early working at it so that he might prove his faith and obedience to God, to show
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God that he loves him and he trusts him. And that is faith. Macintosh, again, it's easy to make a show of devotion when there's no demand for it.
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Easy to show devotion when there's no opposition, no pressure, no sacrifice.
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It's easy to say, even if I have to die with you, I'll never deny you until you're surrounded with people that are kind of intimidating, you know, little slave girls by the campfire.
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And then you actually deny him three times. Faith stands the trial.
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Faith stands the trial. Easy to say when there's no pressure.
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Peter fails in his faith. Peter stumbles in his faith. Peter has a lack of faith.
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He breaks down. Faith isn't talk. Faith doesn't talk about what it will do, what it would do.
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Faith is what it does. By God's grace, what it does, that's faith.
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God was not testing Abraham in this cruelly abrupt way. He was testing him in light of grace that he had been building into his life over decades, and he's seeking to do this in order to bring out the good that he has planted and watered.
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And so we get to Philippians, work out your salvation with fear and trembling.
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Why? Because it is God who works in both to will and to do his good pleasure.
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It's evidence of faith. We know that every good gift comes from above, and we know that even our faith is a gift.
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And God is working that in. No wonder the trial must come so that there's an evidence of that grace in our life.
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There's an evidence of our faith in God. In other words, we're working out what
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God has been working in. I don't know if this is necessarily great reading.
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I'm a fan to some extent of Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, kind of father of existentialism.
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One of his great works is called Fear and Trembling, in part quoting Philippians. And the whole theme throughout that whole book is
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Abraham's faith, the leap of faith, that's a buzz word for an existentialist, the leap of faith in his sacrifice, his willingness to sacrifice
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Isaac. And what always grips me, if you find the
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Penguin paperback edition of that, I mean, painters have been painting this imagery for centuries, but Penguin publishers chose,
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I think, the greatest. A lot of them are this elderly man holding a knife, somewhat removed, and Isaac's confused, but the
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Renaissance painter Caravaggio, just stunning. Pitch black, his technique, it's called chiaroscuro, and there's this little boy, and it's the most horrified look you've ever seen, and Abraham's thumb is pressing into his cheek as he holds the knife and looks to see the angel in almost as much terror as Isaac reaching out to stop the scene.
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It's just a stunning image. It's gripping. And what strikes me about that is not the horror of the angelic stop sign, not the horror of Isaac bound to the altar, it's the resolution of Abraham.
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He's the only one in the scene with almost no expression. He's gone into such a state of obedience that if you notice in a text, the angel has to say,
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Abraham, Abraham, Abraham! It's like he can't just say it one time, calmly. It's a real interruption.
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That's evidence of Abraham's faith. This wasn't kind of waiting for it, antsy.
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He had woke up early, loaded everything, built the altar, everything was moving forward. That's the kind of faith
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Abraham had. Let's get this over with so you can bring him back and we can go home.
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But someone's gonna say, you have faith, I have works.
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Show me your faith without your works. I'll show you my faith by my works. Do you want to know, oh foolish man, that faith without works is dead?
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Was not Abraham, our father, justified by works when he offered
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Isaac his son on the altar? Don't you see that faith was working together with his works?
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And by works, his faith was made complete, mature.
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And so the scripture is fulfilled which says Abraham believed God and it was accounted to him as righteousness and he was called the friend of God.
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And so you see, a man is justified by works and not by faith alone. James 2, 18 and following.
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James 2 quotes two episodes in the Old Testament that if you follow
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Richard Bauckham, he argues these are the only two episodes in the Old Testament where a character's faith is explicitly said to have been justified by works.
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Rahab and Abraham. And James clearly agrees with Paul.
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He quotes Genesis 15 6 to show that it is indeed true, it is indeed true that Abraham was justified by faith apart from works.
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That's Genesis 15 6. And then James elaborates and says, amen, yes.
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Paul and I preach the same gospel and we see things the same way. And I know
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Paul would agree with me also that it's easy to say you have faith, but the kind of faith that actually matters to God is a faith that has evidence.
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It's a faith that has been substantiated. It's a faith that is on display. And so you can say you have faith, but I'm going to show you,
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I'm going to show you. Do you want me to proof text? Abraham showed his faith.
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That's what James 2 is saying. And look at the response of God through the angel of the
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Lord. Verse 12, now I know, now I know that you fear
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God. Of course, God is omniscient. He knows all things, but there's something that's being stated here about the purpose of God in the life.
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Now I know, and now you know just how much you fear me.
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God speaks as though it had never been proven before, even though God foreordained it for Abraham to walk it out, even though God is the one who had been cultivating it, it was necessary for Abraham to have the evidence of that faith.
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Now I know, faith is always proven by action, always, always.
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And this makes genuine faith so incredibly rare. We live in a day when people claim they have faith even though it's not attached to any specific object.
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They just, oh, I have faith. You got to have faith. In what? Faith, joy, family, friends.
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It's like all these buzzwords. Faith in what? Some things are not worth having faith in.
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Paul says if you have a certain kind of faith that denies the historical resurrection, your faith is foolishness.
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It's worthless. You should be pitied. Faith is not a virtue in and of itself.
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Faith is only virtuous depending on the object of faith. What do you have faith in? We live in a day still where faith is a rare gem.
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Abrahamic faith, faith on display, faith substantiated, faith surrendered, faith obedient, faith resilient.
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So let's talk about, thirdly, the object of faith. Abraham lifted his eyes and looked and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns and Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering.
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Key word, instead. Instead of his son. Here we are in Genesis 22 and we're starting to put together a theology of atonement.
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We've gotten bits and pieces when Abel was offering the first things of his flock unto the
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Lord, when altars were being built and men were calling upon the name of the Lord, but this is the most significant step forward into an atonement theology, that there's not just sacrifice as well -pleasing to the
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Lord, but there's a sacrifice instead of. That's the key.
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And because there is a sacrifice that God provided instead of, Abraham calls the name of the place the
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Lord will provide. And so he deposits in Genesis 22 a promise that takes us all the way to the passion narratives of the gospel.
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The Lord will provide in instead of sacrifice. At the end of chapter 21,
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Abraham calls God the everlasting God and he's clinging by faith to the everlasting promise that God has made.
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He trusts God, he proves his trust in God, he proves that he has faith that God will follow through and turn him into a great nation and give him a seed which will occupy the land by way of inheritance and through that seed the nations of the earth will be blessed.
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And yet, this faith now seems so threatened by God's command.
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God himself almost seems to cut off the promise. As Conrad Schmid, an
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Old Testament commentator, says, Abraham not only has to sacrifice his son, in sacrificing his son he also has to give back every promise
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God had given to him because every promise God had given to him is fully dependent upon Isaac.
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And so he has to struggle with the apparent reality that God is taking from him everything he had granted.
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Have my sins finally caught up with me? Lord, you cannot be blamed, but I must be blamed.
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Gerhard von Rad, another Old Testament commentator, and the only reason I quote him, he's not worth quoting, he's a higher critic, but he uses a word that I think is so significant.
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He says this narrative concerns something far more frightful than child sacrifice. It has to do for Abraham with a road leading toward God -forsakenness, a road on which
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Abraham does not know if God is only testing him. And so this is where, in this threshold, is this my failure, my judgment?
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Has everything been cut off? Is God forsaking me or can
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I trust him? Even though it all seems to be annihilating the promise, can
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I trust him? This is where the narrative begins to point beyond Abraham, beyond Isaac, beyond Genesis, beyond the immediate sense of fulfillment to the ultimate end.
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Abraham's promised seed, remember the seed is called an Isaac, is here in chapter 22 facing extinction.
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The hope of the world that was promised in Genesis 315 is about to be destroyed on the mountaintop of Moriah.
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How will God keep his promise? How will sinful man that was cast into Edenic exile ever be brought into a land where he may dwell with God forever?
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All, all of the promises are at stake. Not just specific promises to Abraham, but all of redemptive history is at stake on the altar on the top of Moriah.
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How will God bring forth his promise, the seed of the woman, the serpent -crushing seed that will deliver a people to be restored to communion with God?
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How will sinners stand at God's judgment? And the answer is given when
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Isaac is spared, because when Isaac is spared, God is providing a substitutionary death.
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And then in Exodus this is repeated when God cuts the life down of every firstborn son in the land of Egypt, but of the firstborn sons of his people that are under the blood of the lamb, they're all spared.
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And then in the dynasties on Mount Moriah where the temple is built and every year on the
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Day of Atonement, every Israelite household brings a lamb to be slain and the blood flows down the
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Kidron Valley hundreds of thousands of gallons a year, and every year.
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Not a drop can take away a sin, but without the shedding of blood there's no remission of sin.
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And so substitutionary sacrifices continue on Mount Moriah century by century, year by year, season by season, even daily offerings until finally the true seed comes in the fullness of time and here all of the questions that would have been swirling around in Abraham's mind, troubling his conscience, making him weak in his legs, they all become one massive echo.
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Where will we find redemption from the judgment that will come to us? When will a sinless man appear that will be acceptable?
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Who else can deliver us? Who else would be the seed of the woman? How will God fulfill his promise?
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Where is there a man who's sinless but infinite, human but divine?
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What kind of man could exist that will redeem us? How will a sinner stand at the judgment of God?
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All of these questions become one in the mouth of Isaac when he says,
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Father, where is the lamb? The questions that would span redemptive history at this crossroad on Mount Moriah essentially boil down to one question, where is the lamb?
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We have the wood, we have the knife, we're building the altar, but where's the lamb? God will provide.
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Where's the lamb? God will provide. So the temple cult every year, essentially, the day of Passover is kicking forward the question, where's the lamb?
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Where's the lamb? Where's THE lamb? Not all of these lambs, not the high priest that can never sit down and take a break, not this endless procession of sacrifice that's not enough to take away the least of our sins, but where's the lamb?
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God said he would provide him, and in the fullness of time, Jesus steps forward like Isaac and he says, here
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I am, and a prophet is sitting in the moving current of the
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Jordan, and any Israelite that is repentant comes to him, and he immerses them in the water, and his camel hair is running with this river water, and the day comes when he sees from afar
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Jesus coming toward him, and he says, behold, who takes away the sins of the world, here is the suffering servant.
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Here's the one who's come to do the will of the Father upon Calvary, and to quote
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Von Raad again, there's something far more frightful than child sacrifice. It has to do with a road of God -forsakenness.
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Remember in verse 7 how Isaac called out to Abraham and said, Father, and Abraham immediately said, here
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I am, my son, and so we have the beloved son calling out to the father, and the father, of course, is gripped with love for his son.
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It's not necessarily for Abraham's sake that he says, your son, your only son, your beloved son, the son whom you love, sacrifice him.
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Otherwise, the covenant can't be fulfilled, and of course, the father,
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Abraham's gripped out of love for his son, he immediately responds, here I am, my son. In light of what's about to take place, he would have moved a mountain.
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Father, he would have moved a mountain. He would have been some viral YouTube video for some supernatural feat of strength to embrace his son and scoop him up.
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Here I am, my son. Here I am. Do not be afraid. Trust in the Lord. But when the fullness of time comes, we read, at the ninth hour,
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Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Father, Father, Father.
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You can picture him only being able to take short breaths. His voice wouldn't be loud for that long as he's asphyxiating over the nails, and there's no response, and there's no here
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I am, my son, and the heavens don't break open with light, and there's no divine embrace.
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There's just a cold, silent darkness, and he's on the road of God -forsakenness.
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Father, why are you forsaking me? There's no here
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I am, my beloved son, my only son, the son I love, the son in whom I'm well pleased, the perfect son, the obedient son, the son that has never done anything wrong in his entire life, the son who is the perfect image of my perfections, and my love, and my holiness, and my glory, my beloved son, your iniquities have separated you from your
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God, your sins have hidden his face from you. He will not hear you because the son is no longer the beloved son.
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The son is now constituted in our sins. Jesus puts himself in the place of our condemnation.
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He puts himself in the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. He puts himself under the curse of the covenant.
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He, in the language of the the creed, descends into hell, or as Calvin would say, hell launches upon him.
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He's in the place of the damned, the cut -off, utterly and completely forsaken from a fellowship he had enjoyed unrelentlessly for all eternity, and in that dreadful silence he is sustained by his perfect faith in God.
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That is the faithful sacrifice. We admire
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Abraham, we marvel at what God's grace did in chapter 22, but brothers and sisters, there's only one truly faithful sacrifice in Scripture, and Romans 8 .32
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says that God did not spare his own son. God spared
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Abraham's son, but God did not spare his own son.
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He gave him up for us all. No angelic call to cease, just the slumping body of God incarnate, and that was for us.
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Genesis 22 was for us. The Exodus Passover was for us.
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The yearly temple cult was for us, because all of it pointed to this which was for us.
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God did not spare his own son. He freely gave him up for us all.
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And that takes us lastly and quickly just to wonder at what is the centerpiece of our faith.
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It was a joy and a challenge this week, because as you can imagine in Genesis, if a preacher has been preaching through Genesis, he probably has ten sermons on Genesis 22.
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This is a very deep well, and so just looking at things that have been said and shared and prayed and praised,
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I think the most important application here is just to marvel at it, just to wonder at it.
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This is the center of our faith. I love what B .B. Warfield says in his book,
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The Person and Work of Jesus. He says, not only is the doctrine of the sacrificial death of Christ embodied in Christianity as an essential element, in a very real sense, it is
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Christianity. It constitutes Christianity. It is this which differentiates
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Christianity from any other religion. Christianity did not come into the world to proclaim a new morality or just to sweep away supernatural props by which men were wont to support their trembling guilt -stricken souls.
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It came to proclaim the real sacrifice for sin, that which
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God had provided, that which overcame all of the poor fumbling efforts which men had made and were making to provide a sacrifice of sin for themselves.
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It's in this that Christianity conquered. It's in this sign alone that it continues to conquer.
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It's the cross. It is our faith. And so, a few quotes.
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I just, I guess I organized it around this. I'm so struck in just the two simple words that come out of Romans 8 32, he gave him up for us, just for us.
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When you've been following this crisis in Abraham's life to give up the son that he loved so dearly, more than anything in the whole world, he loved his son.
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And to think that God, to not break his heart, spared
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Isaac and yet would not spare his own son, who he loved infinitely more, and it was solely for us.
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Are those not the two most amazing words when it comes to the gospel? For us.
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For us. And this has been recurring in some of the things that I've been reading.
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So Spurgeon says, I would to God that we all felt what a dreadful thing it is to be lost, for then we would truly value the giving of our
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Savior more than we do now. If we could really know the horror of being lost, instead of just all the comfort we have in already being
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Christians, then we would never take for granted the gift of the Savior. Oh, Spurgeon says, if no
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Redeemer had been provided, we might have gathered here this morning, and if you could have had the patience to hear me, all
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I would have been able to say would have been, brothers, let us weep together, let us sigh in chorus, we're all going to die, and dying we're sinking into the bottomless pit, and there we're going to abide forever under the righteous anger of God.
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It would have been so with us all if a substitute had not been provided, if the gift of the loving
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Father had not been bestowed, if Jesus had not condescended to die in our place, we would have been left out for execution by that law which by no means spared the guilty.
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Listen to this, we talk about our salvation as if it were nothing very particular.
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We've heard of substitution so often that it becomes commonplace. It should not be so.
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I believe it still thrills the angels with astonishment that man, though he fell from such high estate, had been banished from Eden, rebelled against God, should nevertheless be redeemed by the blood of the heir of all things by whom the worlds were made.
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And when death and hell opened their jaws to devour, then was this miracle completed, and Jesus was taken, as it were, out of the thorns to be offered up as a sacrifice for us.
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In George Whitfield, we're all fallen creatures, we do not love
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God or Christ as we ought. If you admire Abraham offering up Isaac, how much more ought you to magnify and adore the love of God, who so loved the world he gave his only begotten son?
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May we not well cry out, now we know, O Lord, that you have loved us since you've not withheld your son, your only son, from us.
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See how he's quoting? Now I know that you fear God. Whitfield's saying, now we know that you love us, now we know, because you didn't withhold him.
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While we were enemies, God sent forth his son, born of a woman made under the law, that he would become a curse for us.
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Oh, the freeness as well as the infinity of the love of God our Father, it is unsearchable. This is Whitfield preaching.
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I am lost in contemplating it. It is past finding out. Think, believers, think of the love of God in giving
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Jesus to be a propitiation for our sins, and when you hear how
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Abraham built an altar upon the wood, think how your Heavenly Father bound Jesus, his only son, upon the altar of his justice and laid on him the iniquity of us all.
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When you read of Abraham stretching forth his hand to slay his son, think, oh think, how
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God actually suffered his son to be slain so that we might live forevermore.
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Do you read of Isaac carrying the wood upon his shoulders upon which he was to be offered? Let this lead you to Mount Calvary, and there take a view of Jesus, the
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Son of God, bearing, ready to sink under the weight of that cross for us.
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And I close with Joseph Hart. Loved the hymn and I never knew anything about the writer, though the name was familiar.
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Joseph Hart was raised in an evangelical home in the 18th century, raised in an evangelical home, a very devout young man, and as often happens to devout young men, he got into a relationship a little early in life and that led him astray from the things of the
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Lord and he became a libertine. He still had his moral compass from his upbringing and he tried to defend his new way of living, and so he actually published pamphlets about how works have nothing to do with faith.
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I can live as I please. In fact, if I'm trying to live a more obedient life, I might invalidate my justification before God, and this is how
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I can have my cake and eat it too. I can be a libertine living by faith. He even published a tract against John Wesley, rebuking
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John Wesley for his emphasis on good works, which maybe that's slightly right actually, but anyways.
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Later, Hart came to see that he was way off base and he recanted of his view.
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He realized he was wrong, but now he was filled with uncertainty. He began to struggle to know whether or not he was ever truly saved, and so he began to pray that God would give him assurance, or if not assurance, at least some sign, some momentum toward finding the answer, and this was a struggle that tormented him for about a year, and then in the spring of 1757,
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Hart, as was written about him, had such an amazing view of the agony of Christ in the
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Garden of Gethsemane, showing him that Christ's sufferings were, and it was actually under the preaching of George Whitefield.
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This would be amazing if it was true, I have no idea, but maybe it was something along the lines of what I just read from Whitefield.
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You know, Paul the Apostle never, never wanders far from that devotional reality of faith.
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The Son of God who loved me, he gave himself for me.
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The Son was not just spared for us in some generic way. Brothers and sisters, do you know, as Hart had to come to know after a year of struggling, but do you know, do you know that Christ died for you?
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Do you know that? Is that the ballast?
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Is that the strength that will carry you through that trial of faith? Is that the devotion that that will give you the endurance to give evidence to your faith, no matter the difficulty?
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Is that truth the object of your faith, the self -giving
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God in Jesus Christ, revealed to you by his Spirit?
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Do you know that the cross was for you? Do you know that God did not spare him for you?
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Do you know that? Have you repented of your sins and come to him by faith because you know that?
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Have you given the first evidence of that faith by being baptized because you know that? Or do you just know about it?
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Would you just like to say, for us, and hide in the safety of that vagueness where there is no salvation and there's no communion with the
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Son of the Living God? And so let me close with these, just a stanza from one of Hart's hymns which was written a few years after this, and I think it shows you the kind of transformation he had as a result of knowing that Christ died for him.
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Not enough to know that Christ died. Any historian worth his salt should know that Christ died.
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The life of faith does not begin until you know supernaturally that Christ died for you.
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Feel him prostrate in the garden. On the ground your maker lies. On the bloody tree, behold him sinner.
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Will this not suffice? Lo, the incarnate God ascended, pleading the merit of his blood.
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Venture on him. Venture wholly. Let no other trust intrude.
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I will arise and go to Jesus. He will embrace me in his arms, in the arms of my dear
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Savior. Oh, there are 10 ,000 Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the glory, the beauty, the power to save that is contained within your gospel.
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This glorious good news of your grace that was preached to Abraham beforehand.
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This trial of faith in his life which pointed us forward to the ultimate seed of Abraham and the ultimate trial of faith in which he and he alone could be an acceptable sacrifice, having lived in perfect obedience to you and yet receiving the covenantal curse for disobedience.
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Being cast out, facing your wrath, the wrath that was due us for our sins, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
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For my brothers and sisters, Lord, just refresh our hearts in the awe of this truth.
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Let us never get beyond the fundamental power of your gospel, the things which angels long to look into, the things we so readily take for granted.
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Forgive us. We'd be like the apostle in labor, that among us, in my own devotional life, in my heart,
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Lord, I would desire to know nothing but you and you crucified. And if there's one in this room,
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Lord, that believes you, believes you died, but doesn't know with spirit -wrought assurance that you died and have made restitution and atonement for their sins, may you do that even now.
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Lead them by the faith that you alone can bring through regeneration to give the evidence of that faith, that they might be counted among your people, received into glory at the last.