Well, we're pausing our study in the book of Philippians and going back to Genesis chapter 22 today. Genesis chapter 22. We're working through Philippians in the morning, and I thought as we come to the table that we would look at one of the most purest presentations of the gospel in the Old Testament. Such a marvelous section to study here. Tonight we'll come back to Philippians and take up where we left off in chapter 2 and complete that chapter. But now I'm going to read Genesis chapter 22, beginning at verse 1 through 19. After these things, God tested Abraham and said, Abraham, and he said, here I am. He said, take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which 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 arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went, both of them, together. And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father. And he said, here I am, my son. He said, behold, the fire and the wood. Where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So they went both of them together. 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 of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. He said, here I am. 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 from 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 instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place the Lord will provide, as it is said to this day. On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided. And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, by myself I've 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 heaven and the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gates of his enemies. And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. So Abraham returned to his young men and they arose and went together to Beersheba. Abraham lived at Beersheba. And there we'll end the reading of God's word. One of the most beautiful truths about today coming to the table of the Lord is something that was said by inspiration by the Spirit that when we do this, we are actually proclaiming the Lord's death until he comes. It's one of those statements I think that we constantly read over in the Bible and we say this, you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes and we don't quite understand exactly what we're saying or what exactly does that mean and what is the implication of that in the celebration of the supper? It's really, when we understand what the Bible is showing us, it's really a statement of faith, isn't it? I'm proclaiming together, we're proclaiming together as the body of Christ, The Lord's death. That's not an insignificant thing that we do. That's a beautiful truth that the scriptures hold out for us as a great blessing when we commune together. The problem is that we are always pulled away from that great truth of our Christian faith. One of the things that God does, and think of how much we are bombarded in our weeks. Your weeks are lessons in being pulled away from this by all the stuff happening in the world and the culture. That's what the devil wants to do. He's a master of distraction. He's a master of saying, these are the most important things. This is what you have to worry about. This is what you need to think about. This is what you need to proclaim to everyone. The devil has his proclaiming too. And the Lord comes back and he, every Sunday, helps us with this and refreshes us and renews us. That's what we understand about worship. But one of the things God does in life to keep us too is to test us and try us through the difficulties and trials and difficulties and hardships and sufferings and pains and all those things that perplex us. One of the things he does is test us in these things so that we would trust this most important truth. And that's why I love moments like this to zero in closely and to have our minds focused and given to God's grace in the gospel. It's beautiful. To take this familiar passage that we all know and say, oh, I know that passage. I can tell you every time I read it, I end up in tears. it hits you afresh in beautiful ways. It's a passage of Abraham and Isaac to help us with this great truth of what it means to proclaim the Lord's death until he comes and to understand the promise of forgiveness of sins and the immensity and the greatness and the gift of God's sacrifice for you. That's what we're looking at today. The purpose of this as we proclaim the Lord's death is that we would respond in the same way as Abraham, in faith. This is a wonderful thing God is calling us to, and you'll see why in a moment. So we're looking at faith's test here, faith's trust, you'll notice, and then faith's triumph. Let's start with this test. You'll notice in chapter 22 of Genesis, Abraham has come to this great trial in life. It's the first thing that's said. I want everyone to look at verse 1. these things. God tested Abraham. You know life's a testing ground. We love it all to go well and everything to go well. Actually, there's really no channel that God has not dug for us in these tests to put us through them. Abraham said, here am I. Here's the test. It's quite a test. Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall tell you. Do what? We have the advantage in reading that this was a test. Abraham has no idea this is a test. Abraham, I want you to take your son, your only son, whom you love, whom you have that deep love for. Every parent here knows the bond of a love that they have for their sons and their daughters. It's indescribable. He hits them there. I want you to take that son, And I want you to take him up to Moriah. And I want you, common worship of the day was to offer sacrifices. I want you to put him on that altar for the sacrifice. So we really sat back and considered what God's asking. When you study Abraham's life, you realize this is a really pretty radical moment because Abraham has not done things well. He has been a big mess in life. He basically sold off his wife twice to another king who was attracted to her to save himself. He fought God the whole way. It's amazing that the Jews so trusted in Abraham because the guy really was a mess. It was a big mess. He was not trusting the whole way. He was taking matters into his own hands. At one point, he and his wife have this great scheme. Hey, let's go get the seed because God is slow. And let's go get the seed through another woman, which the Bible says was a woman of bondage, represented that. And they have a son. And God says, send that son away. Oh, man, this is his first son. That's not the son of promise. Not the son of promise. Abraham in the last chapter was so displeased by this. We read that it was very displeasing in Abraham's sight because of his son, Ishmael. Ishmael's out. He's gone. Now we have this remarkable moment, you know. God comes and begins to test him with that which is most dear to him. the very son he had been waiting for, the very son from him and Sarah, whom God had said, this is the one. In Isaac your seed shall be called. This is the chosen son through whom the one, through whom the Christ, the seed would come. And so here we come to this moment of this test with something that seems totally unreasonable. I mean, this is totally unreasonable. It doesn't make any sense. Take your son, your only son whom you love, as a dagger is driven by God himself right into Abraham's heart. I'm taking that which is most precious to you in life. Now listen, I want you to violently slaughter him as a sacrifice to me. By your own hand, I want you to put him through the most painful death. And I want you to see it. And I want you to experience it. You go execute him. Now my guess is, for us who read this, we all stand back from this. And say, you know, this is why this passage doesn't get as much treatment as it should. This is not the sort of seeker sensitive stuff to come to church for, is it? I mean, this just doesn't work if you're trying to do seeker sensitive stuff. This is why this passage is avoided, because God is really portrayed here as cosmically full of vengeance and blood. That's how God is presented. And to even ask Abraham to do something like this, this is how the world has responded to this, to even ask Abraham to do something like this shows what kind of God you really have. So we would, in the church, because we're so worried about numbers and gaining people and being super sensitive, we kind of push this one away and we just stay with be anxious for nothing, you know. Why would God do this? It doesn't seem to show anything of his goodness. Unbelievers look at this and that's what they say. A man of Kierkegaard said years ago, God is completely illogical and absurd to do this. How absurd to ask Abraham to negate the reality that had reversed his years of disappointed hope. Cruel, illogical. Sometimes people will say to me in the ministry, I'm angry with God. It's because this is the same sense they get. What he has done, what he's put me through, makes no sense in terms of goodness. This seems to call into question God's goodness itself. I mean, we talk a lot about God's goodness, and it's another thing when the reality that we're experiencing or the test he's put us through or the difficulty that we're in is suffering and death and hardship. I had to minister to a young man years ago, 27 years old. Had a wife and three children, and he was going to die. There was no doubt about it. It was coming, and he did. And I remember sitting there with him, and he said, I don't want to die. I don't want to die. Why is God doing this to me? I want to raise my children. We wept together. Die he did. What do you say at this point? Abraham's been waiting for his son 25 years. And God says, slay him. You feel this? I want you to feel it. I want you to think, what in the world kind of request is that? I want you to be fully perplexed about it. I want you to feel all the pain of this and the ugliness of this. I want you to feel the offense of this. I want you to feel that right now. I want you to feel the offense. How is Abraham to believe when you get this kind of test? All the nations would be blessed through his son and you just tell me to slay him? Jesus would come for my son and you tell me to kill him? What is this? I mean, what you're asking me to do makes your own promise impossible, which kind of leads to the question, who's really being tested here? Everyone's on the edge of their seat when you understand this the way that you should. You have a choice at this point. You kind of got the Job choice. Curse God and die, right? That's one option. Or believe and do what he said. Abraham has two choices if this happens. I'm done, walk away. Why would God put me through this? I'm angry at God, see you later. None of this makes sense. How can God be true? Or we come to faith's trust. No comment. No comment is made by Abraham. It's a really interesting moment. No comment is made. Verse 3, so Abraham arose 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. I really can't fathom this. every indication he's going to go do it. Would anyone in the congregation do this? Hey, walk up to Stanley Peak. Take your knife and you offer your son up there. Go. Who here would do that? Well, he arose. And he went to the place of which God told him on the third day he lifted his eyes and saw the place and Abraham said to his young men stay here with the donkey I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you he gets up starts splitting the wood early in the morning the wood with which he's going to set his son on fire I want everyone to notice what it says here as soon as he gets to Mount Moriah he looks at his servants and he says I want you guys to stay here with the donkey he had been riding on a donkey I and the boy will go over there and come again and we will come back. Hmm. Abraham takes a donkey and notice his son traveled on the donkey to the mountain of sacrifice. The wood of the offering, verse 6, is laid on his back, on Isaac's back. Abraham has in his hand a bucket of fire and a knife. Isaac speaks for the first time in the narrative. Father, I see you. I see fire. And I see wood. But what are we going to sacrifice? Huh. Imagine? You can't. Abraham takes the wood and carries it. A fire in his hand. go and they arrive at Moriah. Abraham builds an altar there that day. And all of a sudden he says, son, come here. Tiza, his son, probably like this, lifts him up, lays him on the wood. Here's what would have happened. He would have taken that knife and he would have cut Isaac's throat alive and killed him. And then he would have dismembered Isaac. His body parts would be spread on the altar and then he would set him on fire. Does that get into the fabric of your being with horror yet? Does it? I hope so. I hope you're really offended. Verse 10. then Abraham reached out his hand and he took the knife to slaughter his son. Imagine the horror. He raises it. He's going to do it. And all of a sudden, a voice comes from heaven. It's the angel of the Lord. Abraham. Abraham. Here I am. Do not lay your hand on that boy or do anything to him. For now I know you fear God. Seeing you, now listen to the language, have not withheld your son, your only son whom you love for me. Oh, whoa. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and he looked and caught in the thicket was this ram. And the Lord said, take that ram and pull your son off the altar and put the ram there. If you were here a few Sunday nights ago, Dr. Godfrey loves chiasms. You'll know that word. He likes to show those. Chiasm shows a structure of the text and it has a beginning point that correlates together and middle points, but it's got a centerpiece. It's got a centerpiece that the author is working with to make everyone stop and ponder. It's the centerpiece of the narrative or the text. The centerpiece of this text is this. My son, Abraham. Abraham said, my son, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering. That's the centerpiece. Moses, the author here, is pressing us with that. What he said was just in absolute confidence. Abraham, we're going to come back. Whoa, what do you mean you're going to come back? You're going to sacrifice yourself. We'll be back. What? This test has drawn Abraham not from, away from attacking God or anger at God to demonstrate something for us. And by the way, nobody has the strength and power to fulfill this test on their own. Nobody. That's where these things get moralistically driven. All that was before Abraham was the promise. In Isaac, your seed shall be called. I think there's some today who probably have a divided mind as they look at the things happening in the world and they look at the sorrows and they look at the death and they look at all the problems and they don't really think that maybe these are tests for Christians whom their trust is. Because we're going to go solve this stuff, you know. They look at the sorrows and they look at the hardships and they look at the backwardness of life and they look at the afflictions and they look at the injustices and they say, where's God in that? Maybe you're being tested to trust him. What kind of a God is he? That's the test, really. We all go through this valley of tears and God's ways seem difficult and cruel and hard and that he's putting us through things that seem to be no good. And here's the shining moment today. Here's the shining moment of the narrative. Abraham is completely resting in the promise of God. Faith. It's not just saying you believe something. A lot of people play that game in Christianity. Wow, it's a big game in Christianity today. They say they believe something, but it has practically no bearing and effect in how they live in life when they're tested. Notice it here. Faith is a deep resting and trusting in the promise. A deep leaning on God's word. A deep belief and trust that no matter what happens, God will fulfill what he promised. You see, there it is. He's made all kinds of promises to us. Eternal life, resurrection, glory, forgiveness of sins. Abraham thinks to himself, The promises through Isaac, then if I'm going to kill him, God's going to have to do something to make that happen. And he can't lie. He can't break his covenant. He's that faithful of a father. It's an impossibility for God to lie. So what does he do? Hebrews tells you. By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promise offered up the promises, offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, And Isaac, your seed shall be called. Concluding what? That God was able to raise him from the dead. From which he also received him in a figure or sense. So he said, well, if I've got to do this. He said, and Isaac, the seed shall be called. He can't die. He has to live. So he'll raise him from the dead. God will raise my son from the dead. When the reality of your greatest fear comes upon you in the test of the Lord, pretty evident the Lord is showing you and really attacking a divided mind. When everything you face seems contrary to his word, this is where he wants you. Here's faith's triumph. Here's where most commentators stop and they say, well, now we just got to learn how to beat the test of life. And I think we miss the heart of this passage at this moment. It's a message that Jesus took. Think about this. One day Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and he says, listen, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad. Whoa, what does that mean? Listen to the narrative afresh. Hear it with me. Take your son, your only son whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. 2 Chronicles, Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem on Mount Moriah. So this was Jerusalem, this was where it would happen. It was the place where the temple would be built, where Golgotha would be. Isaac's a young man. He's 40 in the next chapter, so we know he's younger than 40. There's not a word of opposition from Isaac, just silence, just a question. The whole scene today comes to you as the Christian gospel. You know what God did? You know what God the Father did? God the Father sent his only begotten son whom he loved and he put him on a donkey and he put wood on his back, a big cross, your cross. And he walked him up to Mount Moriah and never was there a word of rebellion on this son's mouth. He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He was led as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shears is silent, so he opened not his mouth. And when they came to the place where God had spoken of all throughout Scripture, where Jerusalem's mount would be set, where Golgotha would be, God bound his beloved son. and he laid him on an altar called a cross to the place of the skull, Golgotha. He was bound, and his wrists were nailed. A big nail went through his feet, ankles to hold him, to bind him to that wood. And he laid him on that altar, And in 8030, in the month of Nisan, at about the sixth hour of the day, God poured out his wrath in body and soul on his beloved son. And we stood there and we said, I'm going to talk about unjust. Crucify him. Crucify him. We didn't say mercy. Put a ram up there. He faced in his body and his soul what you and your sons deserve and daughters. And your heavenly father wants you to know he took fire in his hand and he never stopped loving his son. And he pushed his son backwards on that cross. And he drove fire into his son as his son said, I thirst. And no one stopped it. There was nobody crying out for him. And the message the world refuses to hear today is something. Instead, they attack him as cruel and mean. Who are the cruel and the mean ones? This is what everyone deserves. Do we not stop and think that there is a place called hell and that there is a judgment because God takes sin that seriously? And yet God did not spare his own son, the father, who loves us. And God instead spared you and your sons. That's what the covenant of grace is all about. You and your children, the promises to you and your children. Is God illogical and erratic? Really? Who's illogical and erratic in thinking that sin's okay and downplaying it? God has announced to the ends of the earth that he never intended to place us and our children on that altar of wrath. That's what's announced. The father loved his son and punished him in our place. And the very thing that Abraham concluded in his mind that day was that God would raise his son. And that's exactly what the father did. The father raised his son. He raised him from the dead and seated him high above all principalities and powers so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue should confess he's Lord. The son lives. The son's out of the grave. And the son has saved. And Abraham says, what a message. And he names the place the Lord will provide. Jehovah-Jireh. Now, as we come to the supper, you see why we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes now? Does that make sense to you now? The Lord has provided the substitute. It's faith he wants from you. It's faith. And whatever you're tested in this life, this is what he's drawing out. If you're divided and you don't believe the gospel and you think God's some cruel monster and you believe all this stuff of the world, stay away from the supper. It's not for you. But if you believe the gospel, you're proclaiming the Lord's death. What you're saying is, there was God's son placed on the altar there for me and he's risen and I believe that and that's the basis of my whole deliverance and salvation. You see? And that's what the table declares to you today. It says, come, it's for you. It's for you. It says, son, son, your sins are forgiven. That's the good news of the gospel. And that's the basis on which we come to this table today. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for such a glorious message and thank you for showing us Christ from all of Scripture. May we be a thankful people who respond like Abraham in faith and see how great your love is. Hear our prayer and receive our thanksgiving. In Jesus' name, amen.