Our scripture reading tonight is one passage from the Old Testament and one passage from the New Testament.
! We're in a series on Hebrews 11.
!
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 he went to the place of which God had told him.
On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes, and he 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.
And 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.
Then, 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 he 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.
And 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 he took the ram, and he 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 mountain 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 the 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 from Hebrews 11, verses 17 to 19.
By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son,
of whom it was said, Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.
He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead,
from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
By faith, Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau.
By faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff.
This is God's holy word.
I feel like Corey's nearly preached this passage in his prayer,
but we'll endeavor to talk a little bit more for 20 minutes or so about Hebrews 11, verses 17 to 19.
We've been in Hebrews for a few weeks.
And in this letter, the writer is writing to his Hebrew audience,
and he's saying that although times are hard, don't turn back.
Don't go back to the way things were before you knew Jesus,
because Jesus is better than anything else.
And in chapter 11, the one that we've been looking at specifically for the last few weeks,
the writer is saying, Don't turn back, but look back.
Look back at these great men and women of faith and how they were blessed by God,
not because of the strength of their performance, their moral character, or their sheer determination,
but because of their faith.
Abraham gets quite a lot of coverage in this chapter.
So we started talking about Abraham back in verse 8.
That's unsurprising because Abraham in the Bible is called the man of faith.
Well, tonight we're going to look at one of the tests.
Abraham went through several tests, different challenges in his life.
Today we're going to look at, I think, the most significant of those.
And despite going through these tests, Abraham remained faithful to God.
Before we dive into it, I just want to say,
if this is the first time that you've read this passage,
these words are quite difficult to read.
If you've come to church for the first time and you've read about Isaac being put onto a pile of wood,
these are difficult things for us to read.
But as we consider it together,
I think we'll see that what we actually have here is an example of the extraordinary faithfulness of God.
A faithfulness that taught Abraham that he could rely on God
with even the most precious things in his life.
And it shows us that our God goes to extraordinary lengths to save his people.
And it shows us why we can put our faith in God,
holding nothing back, not even our most precious possessions,
and come before him certain that he will fulfill the promises he's made to his people.
I've got three points.
The unthinkable test, the unbreakable promise, the incomparable provision.
So first, the unthinkable test.
So the test that we've read, that we've referred to,
Hebrews 11 verse 17,
says that when Abraham was tested.
And in the chapter that Corey read for us, chapter 22 of Genesis,
it tells us this is a test that stands above all the other tests
because it says God tested Abraham.
That's a pretty big clue.
But also when we consider the nature of the test,
God spoke to Abraham and he said,
Here I am.
And God said,
Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love.
And notice here the preciseness of the language.
God says,
Take your son, your only son, Isaac, the one that you love.
There's no ambiguity to who God's referring to, what God's commanding.
Father Abraham had many sons.
We all know that from the song.
But here he calls Isaac Abraham's only son.
Well, we know already from Genesis,
if we'd been reading through,
that he's got a half-brother called Ishmael.
So Isaac wasn't literally Abraham's only son.
But Isaac was the one through whom God promised
he would deliver the blessings that were coming to Abraham
and through Isaac to the whole world.
So we can think of Isaac that only maybe as a unique.
Isaac was a unique son.
And Abraham takes Isaac, two of his servants,
along with the woods and a couple of servants,
and they head off for Mount Moriah.
And it takes them three days to get there.
And I can't help but put myself in Abraham's sandals
in three days thinking about what's going to take place.
Because God tells Abraham to offer Isaac as a burnt offering.
And I don't want to be overly detailed and gory,
but that would involve killing the sacrifice with a knife,
letting out its blood, and then burning it.
This is truly horrific, what he's walking towards.
You've maybe seen children's storybook stories of Isaac and Abraham.
And Isaac's a little toddler on his back.
But Isaac's old enough to carry the wood up the mountain.
So he's at least a teenager.
And Isaac knows something of the plan of what's going to happen.
Because he says, you've got the fire, I've got the wood.
Where's the animal for the burnt offering?
And Abraham says to Isaac,
God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.
So they go up the mountain until they arrive at the place.
And Abraham builds the altar.
And he ties up Isaac.
And he places Isaac onto the woods.
Isaac's been strong enough to carry this wood up the mountain.
He's not a helpless child.
Abraham, when Isaac was born, was 100 years old.
So it's not as if Isaac couldn't fight him off.
Or at least run away.
But he doesn't.
Isaac willingly allows himself to be put onto the sacrificial altar.
Isaac's been raised to know the God that his father knows.
Isaac goes willingly onto the wood.
And then we arrive at the climactic moment.
And Abraham's hand is stretching for the knife.
He's going to kill his son.
And a voice comes from heaven and says,
Abraham, Abraham, don't harm the boy or do anything to him.
Because I know that you fear God.
Seeing you've not withheld your special, unique son.
Your pride and joy.
Your most precious thing from me.
This is hard to hear.
What could have, in our minds at least, have happened.
We've got lots of children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews.
And friends.
And little lives that we love.
And just to be clear,
God is not going to command any of us to do anything like that.
The culture that Abraham lived in was pagan.
He lived in a pagan land among pagan people before God called him.
Sacrificing children to lowercase gods was not an uncommon practice.
That's not saying it's okay.
That it's okay then and it's not now.
Not at all.
It was wrong then.
But it existed.
And Abraham knew about it.
Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah, though, was a very different situation.
Because the real God.
The big G God.
Abraham's God.
The Israelite God.
Our God.
He intervenes to stop child sacrifice.
And this is a massive departure from the peoples around them.
And later, the people of ancient Israel.
They were defined.
They were different among their neighbors.
Because they were not allowed to practice human sacrifice.
In fact, when they mixed with people who did.
And they defiled their own way of life that God had set for them.
They were condemned for that.
God strictly forbids murder.
And in the New Testament, Jesus takes that murder commandment and extends it to being angry.
God loves children.
And wants them to come in to a saving relationship with him.
God loves them.
He's never going to ask you to do something like this in a literal sense.
But there is a sense in which what Abraham was asked to do does apply to us, I think.
Because what Abraham was asked to do was give over the thing that he loved most to God.
God, the son of his old age.
And the son through whom Abraham's blessings and the blessing of the whole world was going to come.
Abraham being able to hand over his one and only son.
It has to make us stop and think.
What are the things that we do, that we love tonight, that we refuse to give up for God?
What possessions do you have?
Or I think what's more likely is what habits, what ways of living do we know that God doesn't want for us?
And yet we cling to them.
We hold on to them.
We let them become between ourselves and our God.
And these don't have to be inherently sinful things.
Putting anything before God is idolatry.
And often our idols are good things that we make our first things.
So hard work's good.
But refusing to fight against overworking at the sacrifice of other things that we know God wants us to do.
Because we need to prove our worth is not good.
Maybe you refuse to Sabbath, to take rest.
Because you think that getting a first in your degree is the thing that is going to prove your worth.
Or maybe you love your children so much that you allow them to dictate their own screen time, home time, bed time, Bible time.
Because you're afraid that they're going to resent you for making them do otherwise.
What are the things that you love tonight that you refuse to stop for God?
Because we're in a chapter that's all about living by faith.
And Tim Keller says, you've never known true faith until you've given up something that you love.
Okay, point number two.
The unbreakable promise.
So my old job was the kind of job where you'd spend weeks thinking about how you're going to express an idea in like three words.
And I know that sounds kind of worthless to lots of people in here.
But it means that I can't help but think about how things are expressed.
Especially in writing.
And to me, what we have here is such a straightforward, matter-of-fact account.
That there's no discussion of the circumstances, the setting, the mood.
And that feels surprising considering the task that Moses is describing here.
And Abraham's actions are kind of like that too.
God tells Abraham to go.
And Abraham immediately gets up the next morning and heads off.
And it takes him three days, as I said, to get where they're going by donkey.
Lots of time to back out.
But the narrative doesn't even give us a hint that he's considering it.
How can it be that Abraham's experience is recorded here as almost serene despite what he was facing?
Well, we know in our relatively comfortable lives that we're full of anxiety and stress and doubt and fear.
God's made promises to Abraham.
Promises to bless him with land and offspring.
And that through his seed, all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed.
And when Abraham asked God for assurance that he could trust those promises,
God didn't say, trust me.
He did.
But he didn't just say, trust me.
He entered into a covenant with Abraham.
So Presbyterian seminary students love talking about covenants,
but maybe everyone else doesn't love it as much.
So I'm going to be brief.
But this covenant is a solemn agreement between God and Abraham.
You can read about it in Genesis chapter 15.
When we were children and we didn't want somebody to tell our mums what we were doing,
we would say, cross your heart and hope to die.
And it's kind of like that.
In the ancient Near East, two parties, a powerful king and a less powerful king,
they would swear on terms of an agreement.
And they would also agree on the sanctions,
the consequences that would happen if he broke that agreement.
So it's a visceral, a really real sign of the solemnity of the agreement that God makes with Abraham.
God gets Abraham to gather some animals and to cut them up
and put them in two parts, two halves.
And what's interesting about the covenant that God makes with Abraham,
as opposed to other covenants that God makes in the Old Testament,
is that the covenant God makes with Abraham,
it's only God who takes on the consequences.
Abraham's in a deep sleep.
God is the all-powerful king here.
And yet, it's God, a representation of God that passes between the animals.
God's saying to Abraham,
may what's happened to these animals happen to me if I break this covenant.
If I don't deliver these promises to you, Abraham,
I'm going to be torn in two, just like these animals.
It's only God that says, cross my heart and hope to die.
If I don't do what I'm going to say.
Now, we know God can't be torn in two.
And Abraham knew that God can't be torn in two.
So does that mean that God's promise was worthless?
Well, no.
In fact, it's the exact opposite.
God's saying to Abraham,
just like it's absolutely impossible for me to be torn in two,
it's impossible for me to break the promises I've made to you.
You see, while this passage might be hard for us to read,
there was never any possibility of God not fulfilling
the promises that he'd made to bless Abraham through Isaac.
And Abraham was convinced
that he and Isaac were both going home again.
Look what he said to the young men.
Genesis chapter 22, verse 5.
He said to his servants,
stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there.
We'll worship and then we will come back to you.
So these guys are not Abraham's peers
that he has to kind of like pretend
that everything's going to be okay
and nothing sinister is going to happen.
These are his servants.
They'll do what he says.
And yet he tells them,
Isaac and I are going
and Isaac and I are coming back.
Even as he reached for the knife,
Abraham knew that this wasn't the end of Isaac.
Even if, as Hebrews 11, 19 tells us,
God was going to raise Isaac from the dead.
There's already been a fair bit of life and death
talk language in the story of Abraham.
In verse 12 of Hebrews 11,
the writer calls Abraham as good as dead.
And that refers to the fact
that he was nearly 100 years old,
way past the age of having children
when God came to him and said,
your wife's going to have a baby.
And Sarah was 90.
She was well past her time of fertility.
There was no life left in Sarah's womb.
So when Isaac was born,
Abraham knew that God had already performed a miracle.
He brought life from a place of death.
And that's why when God told Abraham
to sacrifice Isaac,
Abraham could get up the next morning
and go and do it,
even although it contradicted
what God had promised him.
Maybe we could say
that Abraham could do what God told him
because it contradicted
what God had promised him.
He could contemplate sacrificing Isaac
because he knew that that wasn't the end,
because he knew
that God would not break his promises.
Living in Edinburgh,
the 21st century,
these things are hard for us
to get our heads right.
You know, for a long time,
our society in general
has believed that the material
is all there is.
But Abraham lived in a culture
when that wasn't the case.
For Abraham,
there was this life
and there was an afterlife.
And Abraham believed that God
was the God of both.
Abraham's so utterly convinced
that if it came to it,
God was going to raise Isaac from the dead
because he was utterly convinced
that God would not fail
in delivering the promises,
the covenant promises
that he'd made.
Puritan Thomas Watson tells us
that there's an important lesson
for us here as well.
He says,
God's to be trusted
when his providences
run contrary to his promises.
When his providences
run contrary to his promises.
So when our faith is in Christ,
we can trust that God
is doing what is ultimately best for us,
even when it doesn't feel
anything like that at the time to us.
Christian, the circumstances
of your life at this moment
are not indicative
of your eternal life
with God in glory.
I wonder if you feel today
like God's taking his eye off you.
Maybe you're walking with the Lord
and you feel like,
this is not how my circumstances
should be.
Maybe you're up against the wall
financially.
Maybe you're dealing with a diagnosis
that you were not expecting.
Maybe the relationship
with your family
has hit an all-time low.
Maybe you've stepped out in faith
and you feel like things
are just getting harder
and harder.
What Abraham's teaching us
to keep trusting the Lord.
Don't compromise
on listening
to what he is saying
and obeying
the things
that he says.
Even when you feel like
the way he's shaping your life
is not what you expected.
Scottish minister Sinclair Ferguson,
he wrote that Abraham
had faith
that looks away from self
and rests on the faithfulness
of God.
Your circumstances,
no matter how difficult,
are not a reflection
on your faith,
as though the more faith you have,
the fewer struggles
you should have.
The Old Testament book of Job
makes that very clear for us.
And in the New Testament as well,
the Apostle Paul,
he says that
his faith in Christ
resulted in tremendous
trials and difficulties.
Yet Paul knew God's promises
and he knew
that the promises
that God made to his people
were unbreakable.
In Romans he writes,
for I'm sure that
neither death,
nor life,
nor angels,
nor rulers,
nor things present,
nor things to come,
nor powers,
nor heights,
nor depth,
nor anything else
in all creation
will be able to separate us
from the love of God
in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We can have faith
in the promises
God makes us
because nothing can separate
God's people
from God's love.
And it's worth
reminding ourselves as well
that this is not
a blind faith.
We're not being asked
to blindly follow
what God says.
We're being asked
to follow what God says,
but not blindly.
So Abraham
could follow
God's command
because he'd seen
God working
throughout his life.
He'd had evidence
of God's faithfulness.
When Abraham
left the land
of his fathers
and he went out,
he didn't know
where he was going
and yet God
was gracious to him.
When Abraham
was with his nephew Lot
and they were deciding
which land
to pick
for their people,
Abraham gave Lot
first choice
and Lot chose
the good land
and yet God
blessed Abraham
in the land
that wasn't meant
to be as good.
And when Abraham
pretended that Sarah,
his wife,
wasn't his wife
to save his own skin,
twice,
God was gracious
to him.
R.C. Spurl said,
faith isn't blind.
Faith is trusting
in what you have
good reason
to believe.
Abraham believed God
because,
was faithful
because Abraham
had seen
God's faithfulness.
In what ways
are we seeing
God's faithfulness
in our lives
today?
Have you failed
to see God's faithfulness?
If you're investigating
Christianity
and you've come
here tonight,
how did you even
end up here?
What was it
that brought you here?
Did you think
it was pure coincidence?
Or do you think
something,
someone,
was coordinating
events to bring you
here so you would
hear about Jesus?
God doesn't need
to speak to you
audibly like he did
to Abraham
to show you
that he's at work.
God's orchestrating
everything that happens
at all times
in the whole world
and in your life.
One way we see
God at work
every day
is when we see
people who were
unbelievers
that are now
believers.
How he changed
people who
once loved
the things
that God
disapproves of
and now long
to listen to
and obey
the commands
that God gives.
And the church
itself
across the world
for all the
imperfections
of its people
is evidence
that God
keeps his promises.
The Bible
promises that
the church
is going to
exist until
Christ comes
back.
And from
12 disciples
2,000 years
ago
we've now got
2.26
billion people
who say
that they
follow the
Lord.
Our
promise-keeping
God
keeps keeping
his promises.
Finally
and briefly
the
incomparable
provision.
When God
stopped
Abraham
from sacrificing
Isaac
it wasn't
just an end
to the
sacrifice.
It didn't
just become
abandoned.
Abraham
looked up
and he saw
ram caught
in some
bushes
and Abraham
sacrificed
the ram
in place
of his
son.
God
substituted
one life
for another.
And this
transforms
this story
of a test
into a
revelation
of the
gospel.
The 18th
century
preacher
and theologian
Jonathan
Edwards
said,
this command
was a
great trial
of Abraham's
obedience
and faith
and also
a type
of what
God
the Father
was afterwards
to do
in his
son.
God
provided
a ram
as a
replacement
for Isaac.
But Abraham
told Isaac
in verse
8 that
God
will
provide
the
lamb.
Abraham
sacrificed
a ram
but a
lamb was
coming.
The first
readers of
this story,
the Israelites
who wandered
in the desert
with Moses,
they experienced
the saving
power through
a lamb.
When they
were in
Egypt and
they were
leaving,
they were
in slavery,
God sent
plagues on
Egypt and
he said
to the
Israelite
people,
kill a
lamb and
daub the
blood on
the frame
of your
door and
I will
pass over
your houses.
Those people
knew that
God,
through a
lamb,
saved the
life of
their
firstborn.
And in
subsequent
generations,
they would
bring lamb
to the
temple,
not far,
the temple
was built
not far
from where
this whole
incident took
place.
And those
lambs were
killed as
payment for
the sins
of the
people.
But all
those
sacrifices,
all those
lambs,
were mere
pictures of
the one who
was going to
be the
ultimate
lamb.
Jesus,
God's
only
unique
son,
who like
Isaac,
himself
carried the
wood up
the hill
where he
was going
to be
sacrificed.
Who like
Isaac,
went willingly
to the
altar to
give his
life.
But unlike
Isaac on
Mount
Moriah,
there was
no angelic
voice calling
halt on
Mount
Calvary.
Jesus died
for our
sin.
He was
the substitute
for us.
There could
be no
substitute for
the ultimate
substitute.
Jesus,
the one that
John the
Baptist called
the Lamb
of God
who takes
away the
sin of
the world,
died on
that cross.
And when
he died,
even his
best friends
were crestfallen.
The dreams
that they had
that this was
the promised
Messiah,
the long
prophesied
Savior,
had been
dashed in
the most
terrible way.
And while the
disciples didn't
get it yet,
generations
before,
Abraham knew
that death
wasn't the
end.
He had
faith that
death had
no power
to stop
God.
And he
was right.
On the
third day,
Jesus rose
again,
showing that
God provided
his son as
a true
and a
complete
atonement
for our
sin.
He took
on our
sin.
We,
through faith,
put on
his
righteousness.
The lesson
of the trial
of Abraham
is not,
like Abraham,
you can do
anything you
put your
mind to.
It's not,
no matter how
bad things you
get,
you can
overcome.
It's not,
climb that
mountain,
claim that
reward.
The real
lesson is
Jehovah
Jireh,
the Lord
will provide.
God the
Father
provided
dearly,
expensively,
for our
forgiveness
by bringing
the metaphorical
knife across
the throat
of his
pure,
innocent,
only begotten
son.
Paul writes
in Romans
8,
God
didn't
spare
his
only
son
to
fulfill
the
promises
that he
made to
Abraham
that through
his
seed
the whole
world
would be
blessed.
God's
love
what could
you
possibly
love
that you
let stop
you
coming
wholly
and
completely
to this
God?
Amen.
Let's pray.
Lord God,
we thank you
for your
holy word.
We thank you
for the
promises
that it
contains.
we thank
you that
you do
not call
us to
a blind
faith,
but to
have faith
in the
things that
we have
faithfully
recorded
for us
in the
Bible,
that our
God did
not spare
his only
son,
but gave
him up
for us.
Help us
put to
death in
our own
lives any
hard-heartedness
or habits
that are
keeping us
from putting
all our
faith in
your
promises.
We pray
in Jesus'
name.
Amen.