Our text this evening is in Genesis chapter 22. For those using the few Bibles, you only have to turn 19 pages towards the front. Admittedly, my study Bible throws me off because there's so many introductory pages that it feels more in the middle. But for the few Bibles, it's only page 19. We're going to be considering verses 1 through 19. This is God's holy word. 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, but 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. And 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 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 he said, by myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate 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 and Abraham lived at Beersheba. And that concludes the reading of God's word this evening. Admittedly, it's kind of weird to be preaching an Old Testament text on the same day that Dr. Van E. preached in Old Testament text, and he preached in the New Testament. But here we are, nonetheless. Most people in their lives, they experience trials or a tough time in their life. And in those times, it pushes them to the edge. Now, for some, it can be health struggles. For others, it can be stressful seasons of life, seasons that are brought on by financial hardships, regular responsibilities with their jobs or their families, or it could be relational matters that are ongoing. And still, for others, it could even be matters of anxiety, depression, or doubt. And yet, when you talk to these people, or you think of these situations yourself, on the other side of these seasons, we can look back and we see God's faithfulness. This was my experience back in the fall of 2013. In 2012, I graduated undergrad with a degree in youth ministry. I had applied for several jobs and been passed over. And I, in the fall of 2013, was in a position where I was informed by a church that I had been called to serve only to find out that the pastor overruled the search committee and chose another person. This led to a season of a lot of frustration, anxiety, depression, and pretty soon I started to deal with doubts. Doubts about what God, I felt God had called me to do in my life. Doubts, though, even more so about Him and about His truth. And it led to a time of questioning my faith. But as I got through this, one of the things that became clear on the other side was that God was faithful, and he had carried me along during that time. Now, I could easily say that I was strong enough, having grown up in the church my whole life, that I was going to be unshakable in that season. But that would be a complete and utter lie. See, the reality is, with what little faith I possessed, I was being strengthened enormously by the unmatching faithfulness of my Savior, of our Savior. In the text we're looking at tonight, we find Abraham is faithful to God's promises. But we also see Abraham going through a tough situation, perhaps way tougher than any other situation we may experience in our own lives. And yet, while it is easy to look and say, look at how faithful Abraham was, that becomes secondary when we consider the fact that what's most prominent is God's faithfulness. See, in particular, what comes to light is that God will and that he has provided for the salvation of his people. We also see that God is faithful to his covenant promises. Now we see this faithfulness to provide as we think about this text when we consider God's command to Abraham, God's test of Abraham, and God's confirmation of Abraham. That's God's command, his test, and his confirmation. Now as we jump in to the text, it's important for us to think about the context of what's going on. It's important for us to think about where Abraham is, but also where he had been. So briefly, we think back in Genesis 12. God calls him, we meet Abraham, and he calls him and he makes this promise to him that he will be a great nation and that all the earth will be blessed through him. Fast forward a few chapters to Genesis 15 and God makes a covenant with him and he swears by himself in this covenant. It's important for us. This covenant wasn't Abraham having to do any of the swearing. God swore by himself on this covenant that he would keep it. Now along the way, knowing this promise that God had given to Abraham, that he would have an heir because of the nature of this promise, he thought, given that his wife was barren, he and his wife, Sarah, they thought maybe the way they have to do this is surrogacy. So as we know, Abraham met with Sarah's maidservant and Ishmael was born to Hagar. But God comes back and he tells Abraham, Ishmael's not the heir of this promise. It's going to happen the way that I say it's going to happen. And eventually, Isaac is born. Now, immediately preceding the section we are on, we find out that Abraham loved Ishmael greatly, but God instructs him to send Ishmael away. Thus, he's leaving Abraham with only one son at the moment. He goes from having two sons to now he just has Isaac. But not only that, We know that this covenant promise that God has given to Abraham rests on Isaac. But what do we find here in this passage? Now God has commanded him to offer Isaac as a burnt offering. If you look with me again at verses 1 and 2, it says, After these things God tested Abraham, and he said to him, 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. When you read that, are you shocked? Admittedly, we all probably have felt at one point when we've read this story, whether it was the first time or maybe it is even tonight, it's an uncomfortable thing to think about. Here, we have God asking Abraham to sacrifice his son. That in and of itself is a very abhorrent thing to think about. But when we think about the context, it only gets worse. How could God ask him to do such a thing? How can God ask Abraham to now go and sacrifice his only son after he just sent away his other son, both of whom he loved dearly? And beyond that, we can ask the question, don't we find out later in Scripture that God condemns such practice of sacrificing a child in a religious sacrifice? This doesn't make sense. There's a shock that's here. Now, there's also a second aspect to this shock. The reality is, if Isaac dies, that's the end of the promise. If Isaac dies, there's no producing more beyond what Abraham just produced. Thus, the fulfillment of God's promise is really in question. Now, this is something that for us, it's not only shocking to us, but this would have been very shocking to the people of Israel upon hearing this or reading this for the first time as they were learning about this. This would have caused them to ask a lot of questions, just how I just posed a few questions earlier. But in God's infinite wisdom, in redemptive history, there's something here that he's showing, not only to Abraham then, but he's showing to us now. Because what happens in this shocking command is that it draws us to look further to see what God is doing. We know that for God to ask Abraham to kill his only son as a as a religious sacrifice, it doesn't match with who God is. There has to be something else going on here. And so it forces us to look deeper. And so this is how God draws us in. See, in the course of redemptive history, God has done many things that are recorded for us in scripture for this very purpose, to invite us to come and see who he is as he has revealed himself in his holy word. Now admittedly for us, many of us have read this story before, or in the reading of the story, because we see what happens, the initial shock wears off. We have the benefit of seeing the before, the during, and the after. But put yourself in Abraham's shoes as he's living through this. No doubt he would have been jolted. He's left to just trust in the promise that God has made. Take a moment and think about the hard times in your life that you've been through, where you've been pushed to the edge. Are those not seasons where you are left to simply just trust in God's faithfulness. Now Abraham had no idea how any of this was going to go. All he knows is that God had made a covenant with him. He had made a promise to him. God had reaffirmed the covenant throughout his life. And he even showed his faithfulness by the fact that Isaac was born to Sarah, who again could not have children apart from God's intervention. and yet at face value even knowing all of this even seeing all the ways that god had worked in his life and was true to his promises this does not make sense if you're abraham it doesn't make sense to us initially considering again what isaac's death would mean for this covenant promise see here we find Abraham he's he has no control of the situation God has eliminated any sort of control Abraham could have had if Abraham would have tried to revert back to thinking maybe if Ishmael was still around that he would be the fulfillment of this promise all of a sudden that was gone because he sent him away he eliminated all control that Abraham could have possibly had And Abraham is thus left at the mercy of God over the fulfillment of this promise. Now for us also, and even for Abraham, it could have seemed like this was a very arbitrary thing for God to ask of him. But another thing we learn about God, and we as we go along here we're going to see, is that God's not an arbitrary God. He's not a God who calls us to do things without a purpose. He knows us intimately. He knows who we love, what we love, and what we hold most dear. He knew how much Isaac meant to Abraham. He knew how much Ishmael meant to Abraham, but he had a purpose for why he was asking Abraham to do these things. So in this text, one of the ways we see there's a purpose in what God is doing is if you note, and it's very subtle, it's that he gives Abraham very specific instructions within the command of where to sacrifice Isaac. It's not just that he asks him to go sacrifice Isaac, build an altar. He tells him, I'm going to tell you which mountain you need to go do this on. But notice, he didn't tell him up front where that mountain was. The way the text reads and the way I believe we're supposed to see is he only finds out as he goes on the journey. That tells us that God was with him. God wasn't standing far back as Abraham was doing this. God was near because he gave an instruction in the moment to Abraham. And to this end we realize then that the command was not arbitrary and it wasn't cold. God was very much active in this event that was taking place. And with this command to test Abraham, he was planning to reveal even more himself as the provider who fulfills his promise. As we continue in the narrative, in verse 3, we find, we find that Abraham responds to God without question, and he obeys. As we read the text, what does he do? Gets up early the next morning, starts getting everything together, cuts the wood, gets two young men, gets Isaac, saddles the donkey, and they're on their way. We don't read of Abraham wrestling with God. We don't read of him asking God any questions. He simply listens. But what we begin to see, though, is that the test wasn't in and of what God said initially. The test was in the whole ordeal, because we realized it was going to get harder and harder as he went on. So that we think about it, they begin their journey. Abraham, the two young men, and Isaac. They get the wood for the sacrifice, as I said, and they travel three days. So far, if you think about it, it's a bit easier in obeying God at this time. I think about it this way. I'm trying to lose some weight, and every morning I wake up with the goal that I'm going to work out today. I have the best laid plans. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. Then it gets closer to the time that I'm supposed to work out. I have kids. I have an insane amount of schoolwork. And I begin to push it off and I don't follow through with what I said I was going to do. Is that not a little bit what could have happened here? Abraham could have said, yeah, sure, God, I'll do that. In the moment, it sounds great. But as he gets closer and closer to the actual event, any man would have been dealing with intense pressure. In fact, Calvin even speaks to this in his commentary on the passage. Now, we're not told specifically what the inner thoughts were of Abraham, but again, certainly anyone would have been wrestling with what's going on here. But it gets a little bit harder because after three days, Abraham raises his eyes and he sees the place that God tells him to go build the altar. Now it's getting more real. To think of this in another way, think about, and this is not to get philosophical, but think about if you plan to go to the beach. You're saying, I'm going to go to the beach. In your mind, you're imagining the waves, you're imagining the beach, the sand, but you're not really experiencing it. It's not fully real yet. And then you roll up on the coast, on the road, and you see the actual beach, and you see the water, you see the waves, and it's becoming real now. You know you're actually going to set foot on the beach and do the various activities you do on the beach. We see here that there's a location that has a reality to it for Abraham now. It's getting more real. And yet, he remains steadfast. He leaves the two men that were with him and Isaac, and he tells them that he and Isaac will go and worship and then return. The next increase in pressure, though, undoubtedly takes place here. As they walk to the site of the sacrifice, Isaac seemingly addresses the elephant in the room. It's the question that before he even came up in the text we were probably all asking if he told Isaac that they're going to to do a sacrifice he hasn't informed Isaac what they're sacrificing and Isaac seemingly is picking up on there's something not right here he says behold the fire and the wood but where is the lamb for a burnt offering this leaves no room for Abraham to try and wiggle around it and yet he remained steadfast. He doesn't give in to what I think would be, as a parent, a very heart-wrenching question. He doesn't give in. Instead, he simply says and declares that God will provide a lamb for himself. So they finally get to the site, and Abraham is Isaac bound, and he reaches for his knife, and as he has that knife up in the air, he's about to insert it. And what happens? God intervenes. An angel of the Lord calls out to him, saying, Abraham, Abraham. And Abraham hears this, and he responds. Yet we face another question in all this, and it's how could Abraham carry on to this point? How could he get to the point where he even was about to insert the blade into his son? How did he know that God was going to intervene in this way? Well, the answer is he didn't know that this is exactly what God was going to do. Yeah, he said God would provide a lamb, but that can be very ambiguous. The lamb could, in Abraham's mind, refer to Isaac. He just knows Abraham, for all intents and purposes, was going to sacrifice someone or something on that altar. But the answer to how Abraham could get this far, we actually learn in Hebrews chapter 11, verses 17 through 19. It tells us that Abraham believed in the promise that God had given him. That's that covenant promise. And this is the quote from the text. Considered God was able even to raise him, Isaac, from the dead. In other words, Abraham clung to the promise of God. he clung to this promise God had given him and trusted that even if he did kill Isaac on that altar, God would raise him in order to fulfill his own word, to fulfill his promise. And then suddenly we look back in this text and we notice what Abraham told his young men before back in verse 5. When they leave the two young men, Abraham says, we're going to go worship and then we're going to come back. Now, I point this out because I think the English could be more literal to help us see how confident Abraham was in the fact that Isaac was coming back with him. The word for return, which is translated in our version here, just come again, it's in a first common plural, meaning he was saying, we will return. We are going to return. So the would in translation would be, we are going to go worship and we will return. Meaning, he knew for a fact that he was coming back with Isaac. How did he do this? He clung to the promise. Now ask yourself, what has God promised us? What has he promised you? Has he not given us, in many ways, that same promise he gave Abraham? That is, I will be your God, and you will be my people. God has promised us in that promise, in his covenant of grace, that our sins will be forgiven, and that we will have eternal life in Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, our God is not against us. He's for us, and he works all things out for the good of our salvation. But you say, how does this help me practically? how does this help me in the moments? Sure, with sin and temptation, I get it. Well, I go back and I say, think about the level of stress and temptation and pressure that Abraham would have been dealing with in this instance. And think about what undergirded his obedience. It was that faith in the promise. For you and I, we all have different times of struggle and temptation. They besiege us. And in these times of struggle, it can feel like this world and or the devil are just poking at us with needles and we're just crying out for when are we going to get a break? When are we going to find some rest? And we find ourselves in a very vulnerable place because we're left to our ends. We're left to simply not be able to control the situation, but trust in our God. So we think about this. What can keep us going in our darkest times? What can help us to continue resisting sin if that's the issue? It's the promise of God that he's given us. It's knowing that while we are assailed in this moment in time, there's a promise. And the promise is that he will be with us and that he will strengthen us and he will carry us through. And if and when we should fail, even more in that promise is that he has provided for us a lamb. And this brings us to our final point, which is in the provision of that lamb. We find God provides what is necessary to fulfill his covenant. And not only that, he confirms his promise. So as we consider the text again, as God intervenes and provides this ram to be sacrificed in place of Isaac, we find he provides a substitute. And not only that, he provides a confirmation to Abraham that what he has promised, he will surely do. He will multiply Abraham's offspring and the nations will be blessed. And unbeknownst to Abraham, we know on this side of history that God will do this by providing his own son who will be actually an heir of Abraham himself. See, this event was a foreshadowing of Christ's death and resurrection. Think about it. You walk through it and you can see it. Christ, just as Isaac, was a faithful son in whom the hopes of the world rested on. Many commentators have noted that when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Isaac was as good as dead. Abraham was going to go and he was going to do it if he had to. And again, we know, we just touched on why he did that. So for all intents and purposes, Isaac was dead. And yet what happens? He's essentially raised back to life when the substitute is provided and he returns from the mountain. And Isaac would then give life to the church physically through his offspring, as we know. While Jesus, as he actually did taste death, through his death and resurrection, he would bring life to the church spiritually. Because it was his death that would bring our justification. It was his death that would lead to the imputation of his righteousness to us who would believe and have our sins imputed to him. And it was his resurrection that would confirm that this promise was true to us. But this foreshadowing also reveals something else. It reveals as faithful as Abraham proved to be through this whole ordeal. God's faithfulness is beyond compare. Consider again this moment in history that is taking place there on that mountain. Have you ever stopped to think about the fact that this was bigger than just Abraham and Isaac? This was bigger than Abraham, Isaac, and what would become Israel. This was big in the sense that it affected you and me. See, it's not just the heir of the covenant for Israel. It's the heir of the Abrahamic covenant that was also in question here. An heir of the covenant of grace. Because Isaac is the line where the seed who was promised to Eve to trample the head of the serpent That's the line it was going to come through. So if Isaac dies, there's no Jesus Christ. And if there's no Jesus Christ, then we as Christians, who are children of Abraham, spiritually, we're hopeless. We and everyone else in the world and in history would have been left to save ourselves. There's so much riding on this moment. And yet, what did God do? He provided. He kept his promise. Now, there's a question here that also arises. And it's this. Is this a reward or a confirmation of the promise? See, many people like to jump into this text and they say, see, Abraham, he was justified by his works. In fact, James says that. And people jump on that and seem to believe that this takes away from justification by faith alone. Especially when you read verse 12 and it says, now I know that you fear God. And it's important for us here to think about something as Christians. We need to remember all of scripture. First of all, we confess and we believe from scripture that God is all-knowing, that he is eternal. He knows all events that will take place and how they will play out. So here what is going on, and it's worth mentioning, is the language that's being used is simply God condescending and coming down to Abraham in a way that Abraham would understand the moment. Because again, Abraham's living in the moment, and this is what is going on. But we know from the benefit of Holy Scripture that more was going on. See, as we examine this more, we think about it, it can't be a reward. Because what God says is actually a confirmation. He'd already promised all this stuff to Abraham. This was a confirmation of that promise. And so what we begin to realize is that in this moment, Abraham was living in light of that promise. And God was confirming that. In fact, in many ways we can think about it as if God was saying, Abraham, look back at what just happened. Look back at your life. Look at how your faith in my promise has transformed you. now as we come to a close here we think about how all of this ties to our lives so going back on the experience i experienced many many years ago going through that one of the things that god made clear to me and that became the cornerstone for me was reminding me of his provision of Christ. And realizing that in all the questions and doubts that I had, in all my failures that I felt like I was failing in, ultimately he had provided for my greatest need, which was to be justified by his son Jesus. And from there, because I was justified in Christ and I believed in Christ, he wasn't just going to leave me out to dry. He was going to be with me and he was going to walk with me through that season. See, his provision goes beyond just dealing with our sin. His provision is all-inclusive. It includes being with us as we go through the hard times in life. So as we do wrap up this evening, this event in history shows us directly that our God is a faithful God who provides and saves his people. For his provision of a substitute to Abraham was but a precursor of the ultimate substitute he would provide for all of us, that provision being Jesus Christ, in whom and through whom we find our salvation and hope. Believer, he is the same God today that he was thousands of years ago on that mountain with Abraham. The God that provided and kept his covenant promise. His promises are true, and he will surely keep them. Let's pray. Almighty and merciful Father, we come to you knowing that even when we're feeling like we're our strongest, we are weak and frail before you. Lord, we praise you for the amount of times we can look back in our life and see how you sustained us and cared for us. but Lord we also ask that you would help us be reminded of your faithfulness even in seasons where that might be the farthest thing from our minds life might be going well right now help us to be reminded though of your provisions and if anyone here is going through tough seasons right now Lord remind them that you are with them and that you provided for them both in their greatest need and every subsequent need after that. Lord, be with us as we go forth this week. Be with our congregation. Again, give peace to our congregation as we go through the mourning period, having lost some dear friends and members of our church. We pray all this in Jesus Christ's name. Amen.