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00:00:01 [Applause] [Music] but anyway uh once again it's my joy and privilege to be standing here sharing with you from the word of god and for months now we have been inching along through our long-running series on genesis and this morning we have come to the climactic chapter 22 right with the title the sacrifice of isaac genesis 22 is a well-known passage and its narrative is so familiar to us if you have been the believer for many years i'm sure you have heard this chapter preached more than a few times in your life
00:00:57 which is what is so uh challenging about this sermon i mean is there anything new that we can glean from these verses i struggle as i tried to dig even deeper into the text while i sought the spirit's illumination to get to the bottom of genesis 22 especially considering the fact that the the the sacrifice of isaac is indeed one of the most gripping episodes in the old testament it is full of tension and drama and this opening slide shows a painting by an italian artist painted in the 1603 and you will notice
00:01:38 the terror in isaac's eyes and the distress on abraham's face as the as the angel stopped what was about to happen however what does the text actually say now many atheists and people with an anti-christian ban they like to point to genesis 22 and to say something like this hey your god is advocating child sacrifices he's asking abraham to kill his son what kind of a god do you believe in now in the first place god is very very specific about an individual taking another's life thou shall not kill the sixth commandment
00:02:24 and furthermore uh there is a strict prohibition against child sacrifice in several not one but several places in the old testament for example deuteronomy let no one be found among you who sacrifices their son or daughter in the fire and the context is that the canaanites had a culture of sacrificing their children to the pagan god molech and god detested that so to say that the god of the bible condone child sacrifice or senseless killing is to is a complete and even devious twisting or distortion of genesis 22.
00:03:04 even bible teachers can get the text wrong for example by saying oh god was asking abraham to to give up to sacrifice his son someone so precious to him so also god is asking us to give up people or things in our lives that are precious to us in order to prove our love for him now this is also missing entirely the point of the text so what is the point of genesis 22 now before we dive into the text for today let's commit this time to the lord in prayer our father in heaven shine your light on these verses before us
00:03:43 so that our minds may be enlightened and our hearts encouraged by your word may your spirit minister to our souls so that we can take home a deeper understanding of who you are and how you relate to us your children according to the riches of your love for we ask this in jesus name amen sometime later next week i think this was august 11. our son jeremy who now works in dublin ireland will be sitting for his first major professional paper in his quest to be a chartered accountant the company has granted him study leave
00:04:29 and and i trust he's working very hard now to prepare for for this exam each time i call him on whatsapp ask him boy uh how is how is the preparation he would mumble okay okay yeah you know boy if you're continuing tuning into this you better listen to what your daddy is saying okay you better take this exam seriously okay better i say now now to ask the rhetorical question obvious question now why is it a must for someone to go through a series of tough exams if he wants to be a chartered accountant
00:05:10 well it's simply to qualify him to become one to ensure that he has the the necessary knowledge to be won if he wants to make a chartered accountancy the choice of his career in other words is to sieve out those who has the competencies to be chartered accountants from those who do not have otherwise you get half past six chartered accountants so but to cite the related but the contrary example uh where is the clicker you do for me better i do the uh for example in in 2016 the education ministry proposed that the
00:05:56 upsr uh these ujjayian panchapayan scholar renda they suggested that the upsl be abolished and this is the standard six national exam at the end of six years of a primary school education before a student progresses to to secondary school and in this news article on the screen and the teachers union actually came out to support this this decision now to say the least i was rather shocked when i read this you know although as of now i'm not sure if the government has has decided to implement this decision
00:06:35 this year's upsr has been cancelled because of the pandemic but i'm not sure about next year now the policy makers may have their back they have their reasons but to me education must come with assessments okay the student must be evaluated to check for us to check if he has learned all that he needed to learn a national exam is to maintain a certain national benchmark and now to let the school uh set their own exams would lead to the questions getting easy and easy over time leading to a to lower and lower education
00:07:09 standards and it can be scary when children learn the wrong things as they grow into adults the other day uh just the other day my my one of my life group members sent me this these these were actual answers to that catholic elementary school conducted this test okay and the kids were tested on their bible knowledge and these were actual answers that the kids wrote okay in this bible bible exam or test one of them wrote in the first book of the bible guinesses not genesis or guinnesses god got tired of creating the world so
00:07:49 he took the sabbath off the second or the seventh commandment is thou shall not omit adultery scarier isn't it another one solomon one of david's sons had 300 wives and 700 porcupines one more this is this is interesting christians can have only one spouse this is called monotony and those who are married i hope this is not the case for you [Music] the last one the the first commandment was when eve told adam to eat the apple i like particularly the last one because there's a ring of truth to it
00:08:31 because when your wife asks you to do something you better get on with it otherwise [Music] anyway funny as these answers may be this should be adequate to illustrate the importance of testing you've got to make sure okay the person has the necessary knowledge before moving onwards now the point i'm making is that testing is necessary if you want to prove quality or qualification the purpose of testing is to is to prove the worth or the value of of something or somebody evaluation is needed to determine if
00:09:10 if a certain standard has been achieved or even not achieved and if not achieved then obviously remedial action must follow and something of this nature has happened in our text right from the onset in verse 1 it says god tested abraham god was testing abraham abraham had to go and have had to go through a sort of a spiritual exam a very very tough one at that in fact an almost impossible one now the the testing of abraham is one of two parallel themes that cut across genesis 22. what abraham went through
00:09:47 was a test a severe test and this theme is rather obvious from the text now the second theme perhaps the more important theme which is not so apparent runs alongside the first theme underneath the verses and as most of you are familiar with the text you will know this well that is the sacrifice of isaac is by the foreshadow of the sacrifice of the lamb of god on the cross it is a signpost pointing to the future to the sacrificial death of jesus on the hill in calvary we will take a look at both
00:10:24 of these themes firstly the testing of abraham which we shall discuss in in some depth and then more crucially the template for christ and towards the end of the sermon we will then bring these two themes together and derive some practical lessons to help us in the conduct of our faith now let's begin with the testing of abraham but first i really want to do a recap of the narrative although many of you know the story very well so let's just go through the the text and i shall try to bring out some of the
00:10:56 drama that permeates the verses uh have uh divided into five segments uh to make it easier for us to to to take this in uh one the command of god two their compliance by abraham three the climb up the mountain of course for the sacrifice for the climax of the account or the near sacrifice of isaac and lastly the commendation from god which included a reaffirmation of the covenant between god and abraham first the command the chapter opens with god speaking to abraham instructing him to take his son and to
00:11:38 sacrifice him as a burnt offering the words were unambiguous and the place was even specified that is the region of moriah and notice how the drama is being whipped up first god said take your son and then an adjective is added your only son and then the word of of of emotion was thrown in whom you love and then to make it even personal then the child is named isaac take your son your only son hope you love isaac now although not explicit in the text one can only try to imagine the term the turmoil raging in in indeed
00:12:24 in the abraham's head he must have been so utterly confused and and confounded because isaac was the child of promise and so by sacrificing him wouldn't it be killing the the promise as well and even more painful for abraham was the thought of killing his own son whom he loved dearly and do you know that this is the first instance in the bible where the word love appears and what is god thinking in his mind he must be wondering what is god thinking why is he asking from me the impossible now in the next segment the compliance
00:13:05 so despite the distress in his heart abraham proceeded to carry out god's instruction and he started to prepare for what he needed to do verse 3 early the next morning he wasted no time there was no daily daily no attempt to buy time and notice also in verse 3 that abraham cut the wood himself the word needed for the sacrifice he didn't ask his servants to do it and if you recall my sermon two months ago on genesis 15 how abraham was cutting up the animals for the covenant signing ritual with god here in verse
00:13:42 3 chapter 22 he might have been thinking since i have to cut out have to cut down my son as an offering i might i might as well cut the wood needle for the offering we can almost imagine the tension as they chop the wood with the full force of his emotions and so after the preparations were done together with his son and two servants abraham set off for the region of moriah i very much doubt he was looking forward to getting there but he arrived on the third day and he told his servants to stay with
00:14:17 the donkey and to wait at the foothill while father and son journeyed up the mountain and next the climb the track up the gentle slope of moriah must have felt very steep and severe for abraham as he and his son inched their way to the top the silence between them was only broken by a by innocent question from the boy he asked in verse 7 the fire and the wood are here but where is the lamb for the burnt offering the father blurted out a reply in verse 8 which he himself was unsure of god himself will provide the lamb for
00:14:58 the burnt offering and this journey up must have been so unbearable for abraham not so much physically but emotionally and to and to underscore how the client must have felt like an eternity for him the writer wrote in verse six as the two of them went on together and he repeated it in verse eight and the two of them went on together on and on and on and up on top of the mountain which was really more of a hill abraham prepared an altar on which he he laid the wood had brought and he tied up his son and placed him
00:15:40 on the wood on the altar as the narrative reached a climax with almost superhuman resolve and perhaps with trembling fingers abraham dropped the knife to slay sun but seconds before the reluctant blade was plunged into the boy an angel of the lord called out from heaven to stop abraham if this were a movie the background music would be rising to a crescendo [Music] if you're a movie buff like me and the music will stop abruptly the moment the angel of the lord intervenes to spare the life of isaac do
00:16:28 not lay a hand on the boy do not do anything to him from verse 12 and suddenly the tension dissipates and the drama subsides and then slowly as the camera pans to the side there it is the ram trapped in some bushes and when he sees the animal you can imagine abraham heaving a huge sigh of relief pardon me if i appear to be over dramatizing the narrative but this is what many of the medieval artists they tried to do when painting this dramatic scene from genesis 22 such as this one in addition to the one you saw earlier this
00:17:14 one was painted by a spanish artist in the year 1616. you almost you have to really observe carefully you know to take in all the drama now in almost all medieval art on the sacrifice of isaac i checked many of them there are really dozens of them okay a ram would be shown in the painting to reflect verse 13 and here you can see the ram in the bottom left corner now the importance of this ram cannot be overstated in fact it embodies the anchor of the text which we shall see shortly now here i have a quiz for you
00:17:51 i want you to compare this painting with the first one in the opening slide okay let me let me put them together okay side by side for you now uh if you look carefully at the at the first painting the bottom one the rhyme is also seen okay at one corner now the question is this can you point out the obvious difference between the two okay just give it a quick look now okay the answer is very simple very clear the second painting the spanish one on top you see isaac blindfolded and depicted in the state of submission
00:18:30 or resignation to his fate whereas in the italian the first one the italian one at the bottom isaac's eyes were open and filled with terror now nothing in the text is says that if the boy was blindfolded nobody knows not a hint on his reaction on the altar but i just want you to guess which of the two paintings might be a more accurate portrayal of what happened now we are trying to get into the minds of the of both artists okay and think about this as we as we continue with the text and we shall
00:19:01 come back to this short wall okay now coming to the last segment of the narrative the commendation um sorry where am i oh eyes somehow we scripted many slides okay coming to the commendation the last narrative uh the last amount of narrative if if all these were exempt for abraham what kind of marks do you think he got 90 out of 100 some may say 99 out of 100 yes abraham passed with flying colors in verse 16 the the angel of the lord commanded him by saying you you have done this and have not withheld your son your only son
00:19:49 and in fact this is the second time the angel of lord said this the first was earlier in the in verse 12 and then for the third time abraham's successful completion of the test was acknowledged in verse 18 because you have obeyed me three times he was commanded and here i need to digress briefly to explain the term the angel of the lord in verse one it was it is clear that it was god himself who spoke to abraham to give him the instruction to sacrifice isaac but in verse 11 here it says it was and the angel of the lord
00:20:24 not an angel of lord the angel of the lord who call out to abraham to stop him and here in verse 15 again it was the angel of the lord who commanded him and this term angel of the lord appears about 60 times in the old testament sometimes it means exactly that an angelic being or a messenger from god but at other times it can be taken to mean god himself and such as in in these two instances in our text because it's clear from from the several verses here that when this being spoke he spoke as god himself would speak
00:20:59 using first-person pronouns so to finish the narrative in our last segment in response to abraham passing the test god reaffirm his covenant with him in verses 17 18. this covenant so-called the abrahamic covenant was first proclaimed to him in back in verse 12 i saw in chapter 12 as he moved from haran to canaan and it was then reaffirmed in many other chapters later chapters 13 15 and 17 and now repeated here in chapter 22. the terms of this covenant have been well explained in previous sermons so i'll
00:21:35 just set aside these verses now with this short refresher course on the account of the sacrifice of isaac let's continue with where we started and that is the testing of abraham as i explained earlier the purpose of testing is to prove the worth or value of something or somebody and here in this case in the case of abraham in genesis 22 it was to ascertain the quality of his faith would his faith in god measure up now some of you may be itching to ask is it in god's nature does it have this this habit of
00:22:14 testing his people will god test me now the answer is a definite yes god does allow various trials and hardship pain and sufferings to come our way as a test of our faith you might be thinking are you how come i become christian also someone must go through tessa how come they didn't tell me this when they shared the gospel with me now if you think that the life of a christian is smooth sailing then you are badly mistaken if all you want is is the passport to heaven and you expect god to put you on a cruise ship you know
00:22:53 to get you there they have got it all wrong i've always described life as a blend of both the sweet and the bitter we enjoy sunny days of course but sometimes we have rainy days or even stormy days the bees give us honey which is wonderful but bees can also sting us roses are beautiful but roses come with thorns and god allows that sometimes life can be bitter sometimes it rains and sometimes we get stung by bees as the wise man in ecclesiastes puts it there is a time for everything a time to weep
00:23:41 a time to laugh a time to mourn and a time to dance notice that the coin of life has two sides other words it's wise for us to expect pain and sufferings as part and parcel of life it's far better for us to expect them than not to of course no no one in his in his right mind would wish sufferings and pain upon himself we would much prefer not to go through them if given a chance of choice but it is the political fact that on that on occasions god does employ all kinds of challenges on us to evaluate the state of our faith in
00:24:26 him and the basis of this is in one peters chapter one even if you need to have sorrow and all kinds of tests for a while these tests have come to prove your faith and to show that it is good gold which can be destroyed is tested by fire your faith is worth much more than gold and must it must be tested also please note the words i have highlighted in yellow the purpose of the test from god is so that our faith may be proven there are many biblical reasons or shall i say several biblical reasons to help
00:25:10 explain why god allow pain and sufferings to shake up shake us up during our journey of life and one of them is what i call evaluational suffering which is what is described in these two verses which is what we also see in our text genesis 22 it is a test an evaluational test an assessment to gauge if we have met the standards required to determine if our faith has reached a certain desired level now at this juncture i wish to point out something important something that you need to know about the testing of abraham
00:25:50 let's go back to verse one of our text the chapter opens with these words some time later god tested abraham now in many translations in fact in majority of the translations this phrase sometime later appears as after these things or it come to pass after these things or sometime after these things what exactly are these things it was the writer's way of tying genesis 22 with what happened in the earlier chapters if you want to read chapter 22 in its context which we should it comes after a long series of events
00:26:29 earlier in abraham's life because by the time we get to chapter 22 abraham is said to be about around 125 years old even take about 10 years he had lived a long time and he has come a long way in this in the maturing of his faith after going through many experiences in his work with god and let's look at a few of them in chapter 12 he took a leap of faith and settled down the land of canaan as god instructed him to in chapter 13 a god had blessed him materially in chapter 14 he witnessed the mighty of
00:27:03 hand of god to help him to defeat four northern kings when he went to rescue his nephew lord in chapter 19 he saw god's mighty power from afar when god destroyed sodom and gomorrah and most importantly in chapter 21 the chapter before this he rejoiced over the miraculous birth of his son isaac what i'm getting at is that abraham had seen much in his life time and again he witnessed the faithfulness of god his was not a beginning faith but a maturing a growing faith and so when god tested him in chapter 22 it happened
00:27:40 at the culmination of of his long spiritual journey this severe evaluation of his faith comes at a fitting time when his faith would have developed to a very high degree my point is this god doesn't test us out of the blue he prepares us for the test that he wants us to take sometimes the teacher in school gives the student a surprise test but god doesn't do that he makes he makes sure that we have the resources to pass the test because he wants us to pass the test and the level of difficulty of the test is
00:28:16 commensurate with the degree of our faith in short abraham was well prepared for the tests he was about to take god prepared him well for the test he was about to take now before we look at the second part of the sermon i have one quick point to make relating to to our faith or the testing of faith some of you may inquire isn't god all-knowing don't we describe god as the omniscient god oh knowing god doesn't god already know the level of my faith what does why does he still need to to test me to find out it's a very good
00:28:57 question now let me answer this by going back to jeremy's exam later next week do you know what else is happening here he has been preparing for this for months and now on study leave he he's working very hard even as i speak to make sure he's ready for this big exam i hope so like at least so what is happening here is that by the time he sits for the paper he would have acquired so much knowledge he would have improved himself by lips and bounds in in this particular subject matter i mentioned this now that there are
00:29:35 several biblical reasons to help explain pain and sufferings and one is i've just mentioned evaluation of suffering which we have just discussed another one is what i call educational suffering meaning god allows trials and hardship to come away so that our faith can grow so that we can come out of it stronger and better so often there is an educational purpose in our sufferings it is a learning curve and the basis of this is in james chapter one consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds because
00:30:12 you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete and a similar passage in romans 5 we also glory in our sufferings amazingly we glory in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance perseverance produces character and character produces hope and so when god is testing us not only is he assessing our faith he's also helping us to develop and to mature in our faith any athlete who aspires to take part in the olympics
00:30:52 by the way if not for the pandemic the olympics the tokyo olympics supposed to be happening right now you know until this saturday but now it's been postponed to next year if an athlete wants to compete with the best in the world at the olympics he would have to undergo undergo gruesome training very tough training so simply put the testing from god is also spiritual training or as we always say no pain no gain the more we are tested and tried and trained by god the more progress we make in our journey
00:31:26 of faith now let us now move to the second part of the sermon the template for christ which runs beneath the surface of our text as pointed out earlier there is this is something that you already know that the sacrifice of isaac is is really a foreshadow of the sacrifice of the lamb of god on the cross but how so and the door and the text that that leads us into this understanding is the name of the location which where all this happened in verse 2 is named this place is named as the region of moriah on this certain mountain
00:32:03 in the region specified by god in verse 4 when god when abraham arrived he said that he looked up and saw the place from the distance confirming that the place was was elevated and higher than the surrounding land now do we know today where moriah is where is exact location the good news is that we do moriah actually refers to the hills of jerusalem so you can actually go there today on one of its highest points was where isaac was supposed to be sacrificed and this particular spot has been identified as a site
00:32:43 where solomon built his temple in 957 bc and today this site is referred to the name given to this site is the temple mount and this is a photo taken during my trip to the holy land in 2017 and we are on the east standing on the mount of olives looking west at the this paranoic site scene of the city of jerusalem and you can clearly see the temple mount that flat plateau rising up from the valley below at the elevation of 740 meters from sea level but there is no temple on the temple mount today not since 80 70.
00:33:25 instead we see a mosque and another muslim a muslim shrine on the temple mount but that is another story for another time in any case this is where the near sacrifice of isaac happened this is moraya from genesis 22 verse 2 or at least a specific point in moriah now how do we know that this is true here's a bit of bible history that might be useful to know in you see in ii samuel 24 god commanded david to build an altar on a certain location in jerusalem but that particular piece of land belonged to a jebusite name arona
00:34:02 who used it for trashing wheat and so david had to buy it from him uh at a price of i think 50 shackles of silver and later in the second chronicles 3 we find solomon building god's temple on that particular piece of land and verse 1 says solomon began to build the temple of the lord in jerusalem on mount moriah it was on the threshing floor of araunah the jebusite the place provided by david and there you are moriah named as the site of the temple the same mariah in our text which is why in verse 14 uh moriah
00:34:36 is is described as the mountain of the lord because when the when the temple was later built it was where god's physical presence is shakina glory dwelt now to get on with the second part of the sermon you will appreciate this more visually here's another photo from three years ago showing a model of city of jerusalem at the time of jesus this is quite a big huge model okay made for us to appreciate how jerusalem was like 2000 years ago now i i took a picture nearer okay it shows the temple ground
00:35:12 at that time they didn't call it the temple mount so i just say temple ground and you can see the temple in the middle where jesus visited many times and where he often taught now notice another structure next to the temple to to the north east at the corner known as the antonia fortress okay i i've labeled it there named after the roman general mark anthony and this is where the roman garrison was housed where pontius pilate stayed and where jesus was condemned to die where he stood before pilate
00:35:49 and this is hugely significant because from the spot where abraham was about to slay his son which was where the temple later stood abraham looked up and saw a ram a short distance away and fast forward 2000 years from the spot where the temple was located a short distance away the lamb of god stood to offer himself as a sacrifice and what a peril between the realm and the lamb of god almost at the same spot separated by two thousand years now the obvious theme in our text is the testing of abraham
00:36:24 but the unlike but the underlying theme beneath the surface is a template for christ which is what we are discussing now and for another clue in the text we find a crucial phrase in verse 13 that is abraham sacrificed the ram instead of his son this is important phrase instead of his son you see isaac was supposed to die but the ram took his place instead you can you know you can take this in metaphorically the idea of isaac facing death actually represents all of us facing eternal death because
00:36:59 of sin the bible teaches that the wages of sin is death and like isaac we are all condemned to die but jesus died on our behalf as our substitute instead of us the realm died so that isaac might live and likewise the lamb of god died so that we might live and it's amazing to see the gospel embedded in these verses hidden in the text the message of god's salvation for us and because god provided a substitute for isaac in verse 14 abraham was abraham named the place the lord will provide but if you read the king james version
00:37:36 uh the they use the phrase the jehovah gyra and sometimes people say jehovah g-ray but actual the the correct hebrew pronunciation is actually irae in any case this term jehovah jireh from the king james version became a rather popular name for god meaning the god who provides the question is provide what now the term has been broadened to encompass all our provisions from god meaning we have a god who supplies all our needs many christians rallies to thought that god is a generous provider of all things
00:38:16 which is true to an extent after all god did provide for abraham all his life and blessed him richly as we can read in genesis 13 but strictly speaking in the context of genesis 22 jehovah gyra refers to god god's provision of a way out of our appointment with death god's provision of a path of salvation for us from death to life and life eternal before to finish off the part where jesus stood in the antonio fortress as a condemned man this diagram might be even clearer and here you can clearly see the temple
00:38:56 ground rising like a hill from the surrounding valleys and from antonio fortress jesus was escorted by roman soldiers through the streets of the northern section of the city marked by the red dotted arrow he was brought to a small hill just outside the city wall it was another hill in moriah called golgotha or calvary in greek and enroute on road on route to the to the hill of gokota jesus carried a wooden cross just as isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice on his way up that's another symbolism for you in
00:39:38 genesis 22 at golgotha jesus hung in some in humble submission on the wooden cross just as isaac was laid on a pile of wood yet another symbolism the lamb of god went willingly submissively to his death on our behalf this comes from isaiah 57 53 verse 7 he was he was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before his shearers is silent so he did not open his mouth he did not open his mouth jesus went to the cross submissively and here i would like to return to the earlier quiz where you were supposed to
00:40:25 decide which of the two painting might be the more accurate portrayal of what happened in your text what do you think i won't say which painting is better okay i'm not an art critic but to me the painting on top the second painting is deeper you see isaac blindfolded which is the artist's way of linking this with luke 22 64 when jesus was blindfolded after he was arrested and more interestingly in the bottom the first painting isaac was terrified and perhaps even screaming but in the second painting the top
00:41:00 painting he totally submitted himself to the father in reference to isaiah 53 7 which i just read to you now to wrap up this part of the sermon on the template for christ the more curious one amongst you may ask why bother to weave this gospel message into this text which is more mostly about the testing of abraham what is the link between the testing of abraham and god's message of salvation now our answer is not hard to figure out now i described earlier that the turmoil that maybe may be raging in abraham's mind from the
00:41:42 time he was he he received god's command to to sacrifice isaac but when i said he was in turmoil he was really just an educated guest because the text is really quite silent on this but some commentators have pointed out that abraham wasn't one who would keep quiet when he sent something was not right you recall how he bargained how he negotiated with god when he in an attempt to to save the righteous in sodom and gomorrah surely when it comes to to this outlandish idea of of sacrificing his own son his only son
00:42:19 he he must have spoken out but he didn't the writer didn't record any pleading or protest on a part of abraham not a sound or a sigh and hence it's fair to say that he was willing to sacrifice his son difficult as though he may be he was ready to offer his this child as painful as it might have been and that's why he set out early the next morning to moriah you might you may be sensing what i'm trying to get at i'm trying to show a connection between the two themes in our text the testing of abraham shows that he did not hold
00:42:55 back his son his one and only son it serves as a foreshadow of how later god did not spare his one and only son romans 8 28 32 says he did not spare his own son he who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all how will how will he not also along with him graciously give us all things but there's a big difference between abraham not sparing his own son and god not sparing his own son and that is god eventually did not allow did not require abraham to sacrifice his isaac he provided a substitute as we saw
00:43:30 but when the time came for jesus to be sacrificed on the cross there was no substitute because he was the only man without sin who could bear the penalty on us on our behalf us sinners so what god did not require abraham to do in the end he carried out himself when he did not spare his own son we come to the conclusion of today's sermon as we look at some application points to aid us in the conduct of our faith what is the main takeaway from the text i shall draw from both themes in the text to share some
00:44:09 practical lessons with you now let me repeat what i said earlier that life is a blend of both the sweet and the bitter we are not always in the valley you notice that sometimes there are mountains to climb both low and high what kind of mountains for example a job lost perhaps during this pandemic financial problems your boss cut your pay broken relationship issues with children an elderly parent to to care for loss of a of a loved one i've attended at least three funerals this during these past few months
00:44:54 not only that an aging body hear pain that pain sicknesses and and and poor health and so on there are all kinds of mountains to contend with as we journey through life if if you have not encountered any mountain in your life path then you have not lived long enough and those of us especially in the 60s or 70s know that life can be tough at times sometimes the mountain can get so high that we lament oh lord i i just can't climb that that's too huge a challenge for me that's too tough i want to give up so in a way genesis 22
00:45:35 can teach us to prepare ourselves before we are asked to scale the slope especially a steep one even though we imagine the anguish and the distress in abraham's heart but we also noted that he did not complain or grumble he did not back away from the task we also learned that the test came to him after many many years of walking closely with god he had seen god's faithfulness throughout the greater part of his life his own faith had developed and matured over all these years and so the first practical lesson for us is
00:46:08 that an intimate relationship with god drawing closer to god helps us to prepare for the high mountains later in life as we get to know god and his nature more and more deeply as our faith strengthened by the day by the years and we get a sense of how much faith abraham had in god in verse five of our texts after they arrived at the foot of the mountain he told the servants to wait while he and isaac went up the slope and remarkably he said to them then we then we will come back to you not i will come back to you meaning
00:46:48 both he expected both he and his son to come back to the servants although he wasn't sure how it's going to happen and this is faith in action based on hebrews 11 1. and from but from 11 but from hebrews 11 19 interesting verse here we learned that abraham he thought that even he had even if he had sacrificed his son that god would somehow raise the boy back to life he had that kind of confidence in god he knew that god would be faithful to him somehow so what degree of confidence do you have in god
00:47:27 how well do you know god how close are you to god the father now there is this beautiful imagery in genesis 22 which i would like to bring out that might help to help you to increase your level of confidence in god and with this i will conclude to this sermon during the third during the third segment of the narrative which is the climb i pointed out that twice in the text we find this phrase the two of them went on together the writer wrote it twice in verses six and eight the two of them went on
00:48:06 now i ask you to now to use a bit of imagination to visualize further father and son two of them walking perhaps even holding hands imagine a lovely picture of warmth and closeness and bone and bone between them just look in verse seven how how close how intimate they were how they spoke to each other in verse 7 isaac said father and abraham replied yes my son i mean how much more intimate can you get and this is the imagery i want you to take home with you what i'm trying to convey to you is that
00:48:55 you never go up the mountain alone you are never without company god goes with you always father and son be the high or low mountain especially a high mountain god who is always faithful climbs the mountain with you remember this father and son imagery in genesis 22. and what's more jesus himself once woke up uh the heel of gokota when he's where he suffered and died for you and me from the time he was arrested until the time until his death on the cross he suffered unimaginable humiliation mockery rejection sorrow and pain
00:49:34 and as you walk up your mountain be comforted by the fact that god can empathize with what you're going through because he himself experienced far more pain and sufferings than you than you might be shouldering and whenever you climb your mountain focus on the old rugged cross on that hill far away the old rugger cross an emblem of suffering and shame shall we close in prayer our father in heaven we give you praise that you have called us into your family as sons and daughters and we can address you as father may we
00:50:13 your children be drawn ever closer to you as abraham was to you because of faith to in you be stronger and surer as we climb the many mountains in the in our journey of life for we ask this in the name of our son jesus amen
