Well, we are working through the book of Genesis and in God's providence, we land today, and this is one of the really exciting things about ministry when you work through books, you land on certain things at certain times, and I'm never bright enough to put all this together, I assure you. But we have the Lord's Supper with Genesis chapter 22. It doesn't get any better than that. So we're going to read together Genesis chapter 22, and I will just read the first 19 verses this morning. The Lord, beginning at verse 1 of Genesis chapter 22. After these things, God tested Abraham and 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. 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. So 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, he said, Here I am, my son. He said, Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So they went both of them together. 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 for me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by its 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 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 rose and they arose and went together to beersheba and abraham lived at beersheba may the lord bless the hearing of his word one of the things that we don't realize about the christian life is that it is a testing ground. It is a testing ground. I have, as a pastor, seen many people tested with various things. And there are some people, and you know this, there are some people in life who are constantly being tested, and it just seems like it's one affliction after another, one hardship after another. And you look at them and you think, boy, so many hardships, so many trials, so many afflictions. And then there are those who seem to have a relatively smooth life and they seem kind of trouble-free. No matter what kind of category we may place ourselves in, all of us as believers at some point are going to be tested with something big. I can assure you of that, you're going to be hit with something big. And when you are, when this comes, whenever it might be, it will affect how you go forward. It's going to have some kind of effect on you. I have seen people disillusioned when this happens, and like the parable of the sower, they walk away. They walk away questioning the goodness of the Lord. They even, some have I've seen, walk away saying there is no god and that's what's happened there are others of course who have been tested and afflicted and i have seen in the greatest moment of their affliction strength boldness confidence and understanding and if you ask them where that comes from they're going to say yeah, it's not me. It's the Lord upholding. Incredible moments as I've looked into the lives of the people that I've shepherded. I raised this this morning because we're coming to the table and what we are doing this morning is we are proclaiming the Lord's death. We're coming together and we're proclaiming the Lord's death that in an act of love, God gave of his son, gave of his best to demonstrate how great his love is for you and to put on display his gospel so that we all would marvel at the goodness of God. Look at this display that's put on and before us this morning. Announcing to you, sons, forgiven are your sins. proclaiming this. At some point, even though you've proclaimed this throughout the whole course of your lives, you're going to be tested as to whether God is really that good. Because the circumstance in front of you seems to tell an entirely different story. And today, that's what we come to with Father Abraham. Abraham faces a test in his life. This is a test like no other test this man has ever had to undergo. And this passage is a wonderful encouragement for us today because as the Lord is inviting us to the table, as he's spreading a feast before us, he wants you to see that no matter how you're tried and tested, all the way through, he is good. The intention is good. And when you can see the whole picture, as Abraham finally saw it, you will taste and see today that the Lord is that good. This is the whole story of the Christian life. But we need to look into for a moment how Abraham responded to this test, a test unlike any other. I want everyone to look at verse 1 this morning. If your Bibles are open, walk through this with me and I want you to see what Moses, who is writing, is doing here. It's very helpful and exciting to see. After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, here am I. 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. Now maybe we've read this so much that we don't even stop and reflect upon this the way that we should. The first thing you should say when you read that is, do what? We have the advantage of reading here up front that this is a test, but hey, Abraham didn't get the memo. I want you to offer up your son, your only son, whom you love as a burnt offering. I want you to sacrifice him. We're really overwhelmed at what the Lord is asking this man to do. It really does. At this point, it makes no sense. This, this, this makes absolutely no sense. And I want us to consider this for a moment. This man, yes, he has failed over and over. We studied that in the life of Abraham. But hey, you know, he left all to follow. He left father and mother. He left his land. He has been a traveler. He's been a pilgrim. he's had no place really to lay his head and he immediately enters the land and all he's experienced are things like like famine and this guy really really has been put through it and i know i've gone after abraham i've gone after him for lying about his wife and trying to do things his way but you know would i do any different i have fears you have fears he was scared he's traveling in this world of armies and enemies and kings and he's moving around in a tent now he's already made remarkable progress in the last chapter last chapter was pivotal in the study study of abraham and where this man had come in his willingness to send off his son he sent off really his firstborn son of his own making yes the son of his own flesh. But he did it. God said, send him away. Which one of you have ever cast out a son never to see him again? And Genesis tells you this really, really disturbed him when God didn't put the promise through him. It was really displeasing. He was distressed. And God then in chapter 21, we have all this blessing come in chapter 21. We're really getting a taste of fulfillment in chapter 21. Look what happened in 21. The promises back in chapter 12, 21 is demonstrating are starting to come to pass. The son has come, a king has come and bowed, and he gets a deposit on the land, a well. This is a remarkable chapter of real fulfillment, beginning to taste it. He gets some rest in the land for a long time. It's at this point all this progress that God comes to him and gives him something unbearable. The test was on the closest level, the most intimate level. This is your son. It touches the closest relationship here. You know this with your children. I want you to take your son, your only son. Notice how God digs this in. I want you to take your son your only son it's the only one left whom you love and i want you to inflict upon him death it's it's really a dagger into this man's heart i mean it's it is as calvin says he's finally experiencing and enjoying peace in the last chapter he's had some rest and as he's enjoying this. This is Calvin, and I quote, God thunders out of heaven denouncing the sentence of death on his son. Talk about killing your hope. I want you to take that which is most precious to you in this life, the most precious to you, and I want you to violently slaughter him by your own hand. I want you to put him through that awful painful death and i want you to see it and i want you to experience it you execute him god has just leveled upon this man a crisis of faith a total crisis you know how many people have said i don't understand why god would do this you know It just, it shows nothing of goodness here. How many times have you heard or even been through anger, maybe, and struggled with what the Lord is doing and why He's doing it and why He's putting us through this and why this particular chain of events and why this twist of providence and why is it happening? This kind of, I mean, this was Job's complaint. This was Job's big complaint. Job said, what is man that you make so much of him and that you, the Holy One, you set your heart on him. you visit him you test him every moment and how long will you not look away from me says job so that i can at least swallow my own spit and god tests many of you and sometimes these tests seem to undermine this it seems to undermine goodness i mean he's told you he's going to protect you through life and yet you've been hurt he's told you not to worry about anything and you say i love the verse but is that reality you've been told to be comforted in the death of a loved one and you have no idea why they were taken and now you have to face the grief of it and you just can't get over that kind of separation you don't get over that kind of stuff you just don't get over it my last funeral that i did up north was a 27 year old man and i told you about him before but he had um three children and a young wife and i'm sitting with him in the hospital and uh he says you know i don't understand why the lord doesn't just heal me i don't want to leave my family i don't want to leave my children how are they going to even make it without me this was his his great concern and I said the Lord will provide of course that's the pastoral answer the Lord will provide but it didn't seem so helpful at the moment did it it's hard when I don't see it it's hard when I don't understand it and I don't think when life you know we think when life is going well we don't really realize how much this kind of struggle is going on in the hearts and lives of of God's people I mean I I just sat with Dick and Gertie, and here's this couple that is, you know, in their 90s, and their love for one another is everything that you want, you know, in a marriage. It's just beautiful. And they're going through absolute anguish right now, being separated from each other. And she says to me, she says, you know, I could deal with cancer, but I'm really having a hard time dealing with this. I don't understand it. And Dick said the same thing. And you think, well, I didn't know. I didn't know that my brothers and sisters, you know, 90 would say something like that. Just being separated. Painful separation. Abraham, the son that you've been waiting for for 25 years, slay him. You feel this? What kind of request is that? I mean, this is radical. You know, Abraham doesn't know it's a test. I've got to remind myself that. How could God say this? You know, if I haven't built this up enough right now to raise some kind of anger, some kind of irritation, I haven't done my job. What is the Lord doing to this man? And then you see, you know, throughout the history of interpretation, what unbelievers have done with this when they read it. Oh, unbelievers love texts like this. Boy, they look at texts like this and say, this is the kind of God you guys claim. bloodthirsty. Was it Kierkegaard who said, God is completely illogical. God is completely absurd here. How absurd to ask Abraham to negate the reality that had reversed his years of disappointed hope. Cruel. I think the Lord wanted everyone to feel this. He did this on purpose. Have you figured out the test yet? How is Abraham to believe the promise that the seed is this promised son is going to come through Isaac and your seed, and Isaac your seed shall be called. All the nations are going to be blessed through him. How in the world, I mean this is the gospel, how is that possible if I kill him. I want you to kill the gospel, Abraham. I want you to put out that light. Put an end to everything that I promised you. And you see the struggle that's going on. Abraham's torn between two things. He's torn with the divine promise, and now he's torn with a command that is directly at odds with the promise, which would nullify the promise if he does it. If the Lord is to fulfill what he said, humanly speaking, now you've got a real contradiction. You've got the problem of death. These promises can't be fulfilled if Isaac is dead, and yet the Lord is commanding death. Therefore, that would mean if Isaac goes into the grave, God's a liar. It's one option. God himself and his commitments now. We often look at Abraham's test here, but you know, God just really put himself to the test. Everyone should be on the kind of edge of their seat. Abraham has two choices, you know. You could, if this happens, say, who is this God? I'm done. I'm walking away from him. I don't see any goodness in him. Look at my life unraveling, and many do that. They face tests, and what is the first thing that comes out of their mouth? Where is God in this? Where is God's goodness in this? There's no God. The narrative builds. Abraham begins to think about this. I'm sure he didn't rest that night. The question that he's wrestling with is, how can God be true to his promise if I sacrifice Isaac? No comments. You don't get it here in the narrative. All you get is this immediate submission and obedience. It's really beautiful in light of everything that we've studied about Abraham. Look at the obedience. Look at the sanctification that's happened in this man. Verse 3, 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. Wow. He's up splitting wood early. Imagine splitting the wood for the sacrifice of your son. I want everyone to notice what he says. As soon as he gets to Mount Moriah, he looks at his servants and you hear what he said. You stay here. I and the boy are going over here to worship, but we're coming back. That's not wishful thinking. That's not wishful thinking at all. We'll be back. We together. This grand test of refining has just done something. This test has drawn him away from attacking the Lord and doing things his way. And it now has moved him to trust the promise. Even when the circumstance is completely contrary, it seems, to the promise. Abraham says, no, right? I will, we will be back. Because God said, in Isaac your seed shall be called. And Abraham here, he had fought against this for 25 years, doing it his own way. And isn't this beautiful? You finally come. I mean, this is why we call him the father of the faith. You really do see now Abraham in a place of complete resting. Complete trust. The lie of Genesis was, did God say, said Satan to Eve. Abraham has said, God said it. I believe it. Nothing can annul it. That's where he is. I so trust what he said. and now he is resting on that gospel promise that he believes nothing can take that from him and he goes forward. That is faith. A complete denial of himself. And you see, this is where the Lord wants us when whatever is in front of us, when whatever it is speaks contrary to his word of gospel to you and his word of peace to you, this is where he wants you. Right here. Stay here. You say, how did this man get through it? Abraham thinks to himself, the promise is through Isaac. Then if I am to kill Isaac, then God's going to have to do something. That's what I conclude. God's going to have to do something to make that happen. He can't renege on his word. He can't kill his covenant, he swore an oath. God can't lie. It's an impossibility for God to lie. Therefore, Hebrews tells us what he thought in his mind. 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. Here it is, concluding. Here was his The master conclusion of the whole thing. If I do that, God will raise him up and we'll come back. He'll raise him from the dead and we'll come back. I believe his word. And right then and there, the test was sustained. He believed the promise. He's resting in it. You see how you're casting yourself on the promises of God. This is faith. When the reality of your greatest fear comes in the tests of the Lord, the Lord is showing you where he wants you, believing that no matter where you go, what you face, when everything speaks directly contrary to his word, you say, I stand on the word. And how many people have cast aside the word of God? Mountains are now ready to be moved, you realize. Jesus said that, that faith is of a mustard seed moves mountains. Mountains are ready. He takes the wood and he travels up one. And he carries the wood and the fire in his hand and the knife and they go together. They arrive at Moriah and Abraham builds an altar and he places the wood on it and he binds his son on the altar. And then you come to verse 10. Then Abraham reached out his hand, and he took the knife to slaughter his son. Slaughter's right. He would have first cut open Isaac's throat. He would have dismembered him. His body parts would then have been spread open on the altar and consumed by fire. Can you imagine the horror of this? There's only one other time he felt this horror. That was back in Genesis chapter 15. Can you imagine the horror of what now this man has to undergo? But he raises the knife. And at the last moment, when he's ready to do it, the angel of the Lord speaks. Abraham, Abraham. He said, here am I. Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, seeing that you've not withheld your son, your only son for me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. Now here's where commentators stop. And even Calvin stops. And we're commended to just go through the tests in life, trusting God's Word. That is a huge point of this passage. But you really haven't got to the heart of it yet. Do you see what God just did for Abraham? Every emotion, every feeling, every emotion of rage that all of us would ever feel if we were asked to do this, He just declared to us that He will never put us and our children through that. But He requires it. And then He takes the reality That if we're troubled by this scene, think about it. If we're troubled by this scene, then you start asking questions. Well, have I really then understood the offense of my own sin and the real offense of what He had to do to remove us off the altar of His own wrath? Let me take you to a different scene. One day Jesus is responding to the unbelief of the Jews. And he says something that must have been absolutely remarkable to the Jews. He says, you know, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. And he saw it and was glad. You ever thought about what day that was in the whole course of Abraham's life? What day he saw the Lamb of God? Go back over the story one more time and then we'll come to the supper. Take your son, your only son whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. That day Moriah was desolate, but you know that 2 Chronicles tells us Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem on Mount Moriah. This would be the place where the temple would later be built, right here. It's desolate that day, where Golgotha would be, and the Lord of glory would be crucified. What a scene. Abraham takes a donkey and his son is riding on this donkey and verse 6, the wood for the burnt offering is laid upon the back of his son and Abraham the father is carrying fire and a knife and the crucial, critical moment of the whole narrative, which is a structure in the Hebrew that is the crucial moment of the narrative is the question that comes out in verse 7. Isaac speaks And Isaac says, look, Father, the fire and the wood, where's the lamb? God will provide. Isaac is a young man, not a boy. Next chapter, he's 40. There's no opposition from Isaac. You would think that a 30-year-old would give some opposition to this. You'd think. Palm Sunday, your Lord, 32 years old, enters on a donkey. And in a few more days, a massive piece of wood is laid on his back. And the Father would walk with him up to Mount Moriah. And on his back would be every single sin that you ever committed. In thought, word, and deed. 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, He opened not His mouth. Verse 9 of our narrative, they came to the place where God had spoken, something very specific. And Abraham places the wood in order, and he bound his son Isaac. Isaac is laid on the altar. Christ is taken there, very spot. to the place of the skull, and he is bound. And Abraham raises the knife, and the angel of the Lord, who is the Lord Jesus Christ, meets Abraham that day and says, I don't want you to do that to your son, Abraham. I don't want you to have to face that. I'll provide a lamb. In an act of substitution, the lamb goes on the altar, and it's consumed. And now it all has come together, you see, because the message that we are so offended by, that God would ever ask Abraham to do such a thing, this illogical and erratic God as people have charged him with, this irrational charge that we make against the Lord, this absurd test. He did to tell you he never intended for you to face it. He wants you to understand that every feeling and emotion of repulsion and anger at the notion of sacrificing your own son and feeling the shock and the horror of that. He wants you to know you deserved it. You deserve, you and your sons and your daughters, to be laid up on that altar and face the wrath of God forever. But instead, God wanted you to know through this, as Abraham learned, I'm not doing that to you, but I have to do that because I'm just. And so you know what I'm going to do for you? I'm going to put my own son there. I'm going to put the Lamb of God right on that altar. And the Father wants you to understand. The Father wants you to understand because of love, he pushed his son backwards. And he pinned him to that wood. He drove through the knife. He drove through the fire piercing his soul. And the father, as he drives it into his own son for you, the son cries out and says, I'm thirsting. I'm facing the wrath of God. And then he cries out and he says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And there was no one there to cry out and say, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do that. We stood there and we said instead, crucify him. Give it to him. And because of his great love that you might be forgiven. The father did that to his son. The fury of his justice was released in full, and I don't know how to explain that, upon the body and the soul of his own son. This is my son, says the father, and I love him. I'm so well pleased with him. But you know what? None of you would ever make it if I didn't do this to him. And the son didn't willingly lay down his life because of his love for you. But the most beautiful thing here is, is that the very thing that Abraham concluded is the whole story, isn't it? That God did raise up his son. And the Son went back to the Father. And today they're together. And the Holy Spirit is taking this and opening your hearts wide to receive it. Verse 14, Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah-Jireh. The Lord will provide, the Lord will see to it. And he saw to it in AD 30 in the month of Nisan at about the sixth hour of the day when Jesus said, it is finished. Now, as we come to the supper, you see why we proclaim gospel. He's showing you as a believer that your life is constantly being tested and tried, that you would be brought to a place of complete reliance and complete resting on his gospel promise for you and to you. That you would trust his word of gospel. And sometimes we are fighting that. It's like Luther once said. Luther said, it's not fit that the head should wear a crown of thorns and the members sit on cushions. You're going to be tested. It's life. You're going to be hit. But the glory of the gospel is, you're not looking back saying the Lord will provide. You're looking back and saying the Lord has provided. On the mountain of the Lord, it was provided. And that means I'm forgiven. And if I have that good confidence, and if I have that faith in Christ as a gift, you know what that means. It means that whatever comes down my path in life, He has promised it's for good. And He's promised He means it for good. As we all come to the supper this morning, I want to challenge those who don't believe. If there are any here who reject this, You know what you just said to God? You said to God, I don't need your substitution. No thanks. And then you said, I will voluntarily take it because he requires it. And if you want to run that way, if you want to run and despise this and do your own thing, what a game with your own soul. Why would you play that? You see, the wrath of God is very real. And this story tells us that. You don't want to go to a place where the fire is never quenched. May we today then look unto Jesus as the author and the finisher of our faith. Come to Him. And be overwhelmed and know what the saints have always known, the joy that we have, the peace that we have to be called sons of the living God because He did not, He Himself did not. He gave, He didn't spare. He gave His Son, His only Son, whom He loves for us. Let's praise Him today. O Lord, open our minds and mouths now to receive by faith, the Holy Supper, which is able to strengthen us as your Spirit applies these things to our hearts. Strengthen us to believe your promises and in whatever ways we are tested and tried, that we would rest on all that you've said to us in your wonderful Word. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.