how are you saints i heard about 1200 of you i said how are you saints okay because i've seen about 50 of y'all getting starbucks all day so i know you're woke uh i i i say this every tgc conference that i have the opportunity to teach it i i need to let you know i'm from a country called black church okay you might have heard me say that before what that means is when someone is speaking or teaching it's not a monologue it's a conversation okay so when when i say something that moves you
in your spirit you have the right and the authority and the permission to talk back to me you can clap you can speak in the tongue just find a translator but don't throw don't throw no shoes though okay you can do everything else but don't throw your shoes up here unless i like them throw the other one and i'm gonna take it take it back home please turn in your bibles to genesis chapter 22. say amen when you got it sorry to get verse one it says 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 rose and went to the place of which god had told him on the third day abraham lifted up his eyes
and saw the place from afar then abraham said to his young men stay here with the donkey i and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you and abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on isaac his son and he took in his hand the fire and the knife so they went both of them together and isaac said to his father abraham my father and he said here i am my son he said behold the fire and the wood but where is the lamb for a burnt
offering abraham said god will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering my son so they went both of them together when they came to the place of which god had told him abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood then abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son but the angel of the lord called to him from heaven and said abraham abraham and he said here i am he said do
not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him for now i know that you fear god seeing you have not withheld your son your only son from me and abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his thorns 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 let's pray lord i thank you for this moment thank you for your word i thank you for your spirit i thank you for your church i thank you for our feelings and our emotions and how they are so involved in the way we read your scriptures i pray that you would do whatever it is that you want to do with us in this moment i pray that you would help me that you would use me that you would speak in jesus name amen this narrative opens up with the words after these things
god tested abraham i think before we even get to the nature of the test we need to know something about the one being tested we are introduced to abram his original name in genesis 12. when out of nowhere god calls abram an idol worshiper to leave his home leave his family leave his country and then god gives abram a promise he tells them that he will make him a great nation and that all the families of the earth shall be blessed through him we also learn some about his wife's arrive and how she is barren
they have no children which makes god's promise a smidge complicated because if abram is going to be a nation then abram needs a child in genesis 15 god speaks to abram again this time he expands on his original promise he made he tells abram he's going to give him a son but not only that god gets all built now the science guy on him and tells him to head outside look at the stars and that the amount of stars he sees is the amount of offspring abram will have this is a big promise because remember
abram ain't got no kids sarah's womb is bearing barren so abraham is like god how i know that's going to happen this is the jhp version by the way so god backs up his promise by entering into a covenant with abel a covenant is a promise made between two parties to perform certain duties one party might promise to share their resources their strength and protection while the other party promises their loyalty if abram were one of us hypothetically speaking and he wanted to buy a house in 2022. he would have to get a realtor get
on zillow redfin whatever's your your thing find a house hopefully his credit score is in order that's a word for some of y'all know some of y'all in the 500s god is able he's able to do exceedingly and abundantly above all we can never ask i think his lender would then have to give him a decent loan to purchase the house when it's time to close on the house he would sit down with a lawyer with a realtor they would give him a big old stack of papers for him to sign these papers and contracts
between him and the bank he's getting the loan from the contracts have a bunch of words but the bank is basically saying hey we promise to give you this money you promise to give us the money back if you don't you're going to be homeless so when you purchase a home then you are entering into a loose kind of covenant both parties are making a promise to do a certain thing and if one party fails to keep that promise there's a consequence in abram's cultural context covenants weren't ratified by signing a bunch of contracts they
were a little bit more dramatic than that what would happen is that uh they would get some particular animals who would be killed sliced in half laid side by side creating a path for both parties to walk through the bodies by making a covenant this way the parties were reenacting what would happen to them if they didn't do what they said they would do is them saying if i don't keep my promise to you let me be put to death like these dead animals that i just walked through to establish his covenant with abram then
god has abram get a heifer a goat a ram two birds basically the whole meat section of the grocery store and abram cuts the animals in half except the birds because that's odd and lays them side by side usually both parties that are ratifying the covenant would walk through the animals but this time shockingly abram isn't awake for the ceremony abram goes into a deep sleep similar to the one that adam went into in genesis 3 and the bible says that a great and dreadful darkness came over him but what i don't want you to
do is take this as a abram laying down and taking a nap taking going to bed it's probable as some commentators say that he is made unconscious by god's presence and as that happens god manifests himself as a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch and god himself walks in between the dead animals god himself all alone walks in between their bodies walks in between their blood and by doing so god is saying that he is putting his very own nature on the line so as to make sure that this covenant is maintained remember abram
asked god to give him evidence that god was going to do what he said he would do and god responded by saying if i don't give you what i promised you the blood will be on my hands now that didn't convince abram that god was worthy to be trusted i don't know what else god could do moving forward you might be thinking okay now god then showed up as a pot in the torch and walked through some heifer blood sari is definitely going to get pregnant next week but nope abram and sarah just get old
and older and older making god's promise seem that much more impossible in genesis 17 when abram is 99 and sarai is 90 god shows up again adding even more specificity to his promise he tells abram that sarah will have a son from her own womb whose name will be isaac in genesis 18 god shows up again and tells abram now named abraham that this time next year god will give him a son sarai now called sarah was being a little nosy don't know if you remember the story she heard what the lord had said and
the text says that by this time the way of women had ceased with sarah what does that mean it means sis ain't got no time in the month no more okay her uterine lining ain't shedding nothing but dust she ain't used always she ain't had kotex in her cabinet in decades and now god is saying it's a women's conference i can say that now god is saying she's going to give birth to a son which is absolutely crazy so sarah laughs she like god must don't know how old i am how in the world am
i going to have a whole baby this is one of my favorite parts of the bible the lord says to abraham because sarah had laughed when god said what he has said uh god says why does sarah laugh is anything too hard for the lord to which sarah responds like she ain't talking to god i didn't laugh then god was like no but you did let's be clear but in all seriousness i think we all need to remember the reality of god and that there is nothing too hard for him all of us have something
in our life where this truth needs to be applied it may be the salvation of a family member the restoration of a marriage deliverance from addiction the opening of a barren womb the resources to adopt the power to forgive the ability to put to death your favorite sins whatever it is god can do it because this is the thing god is not like anyone you have or will ever know he has no limitations he is the one that made the heavens and the earth he is the one who has all power he is completely sovereign
always strong and never tired but unbelief will move you to construct a god in your own image and therefore you will start to believe that either god has a weakness and cannot do the impossible or that god isn't good and therefore he won't do the impossible for you which isn't to say though everything we ask of god he is obligated to do god is god so he has the right to move however and whenever and wherever he pleases but the challenge is this to believe that god is god which means god can answer my impossible
prayers and god can give me an impossible faith to still trust him if he doesn't is anything too hard for the lord in genesis 22 or 21 the impossible happens it says the lord visited sarah as he had said and the lord did to sarah as he had promised and sarah conceived and bore abraham a son in his old age at the time of which god had spoken god is not a liar so by quickly walking through genesis chapter 12 to genesis 21 we are clear on three things god has promised to make a nation
out of abraham that all families of the earth will be blessed through him and that god will do this through abraham seed isaac with that in mind now when we get to genesis 22 the first two verses should be shocking it says after these things god tested abraham and said to him take your son your only son isaac whom you love and offer him there as a burnt offering if you're like me the first time i read this passage i was like now god you promised this man that all nations of the earth will be
blessed through his seed isaac you don't make covenants you don't walk through blood and became pots and stuff and now you're telling him to sacrifice the son he done waited decades for not only that god's promise to abraham hinges on isaac being alive it's crazy but what helps us to give us some pause is the beginning of this verse and how it begins by saying that this is a test the concept of testing is all throughout scripture usually it's explicit like in exodus when god said he allowed israel to be in the wilderness for 40
years to test them or in luke 4 when it says that the holy spirit led jesus in the wilderness to be tested god tests for two reasons usually to reveal and to refine when a test is used to reveal something what is exposed is whatever is in your heart testing reveals what you really believe if you really have faith if there are a few idols hiding in a corner somewhere a little pride that you didn't know you had which is such a merciful thing for god to do because i don't know if you know this
we tend to think really highly of ourselves the natural state of the sinner as described in romans 1 is that we think we are wise when we are full so we may have a self-conception that has nothing to do with reality but also we can get therapy we can take enneagram tests enneagram three wing four and b as be as self-aware as possible and even then it is impossible for you to discern everything about yourself so in god's sovereign compassion he will allow your kids to act up so you can see how impatient you are
he'll let your money get funny so you can discern your greed or your distrust in god's provision tests reveal but tests also refine peter said in first peter 1 6 though now for a little while if necessary you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire imagine who you'd be if you didn't go through anything if your faith was never challenged if life never got hard intense if you never had any angst or confusion or anxiety about what
to do or where to go and and who to trust without the refiners fire what would the quality of your life look like i can bet that it might be easier but would it be fruitful why because tests purify your faith it is only fire that refines gold and it is only trials that will refine you and yes i know trust me no discipline seems enjoyable at the time but it will yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it circling back to genesis 22 since this narrative is fr as a
test we can know that whatever god is doing with abraham it will reveal something to him and reveal something out of him and what greater test is there for abraham than for god to tell him to sacrifice his son the son he loves note that this is the first mention of the word love in the bible which is really fascinating to me that it's set in the context of sacrifice and not self-centeredness but that's a completely different conversation anyone one thing about this test is that if you're familiar with abraham's story at all if you
followed his life up until this point you know that this test actually isn't unfamiliar do you remember when god commanded abraham in the beginning in genesis 14 what he commanded him to do he told him to leave his country leave his family leave his home and go where god wanted him to go abraham then is well acquainted with god telling him to sacrifice stuff that he loves since abraham was called he was repeatedly tested so even though sacrificing isaac is an extreme test god didn't start there he has been readying abraham's faith so as the
test got more intense he had the stamina to endure it charles spurgeon said this he said the lord knows how to educate you up to such a point that you can endure in your years to come what you could not endure today just as today he may make you stand firm under a burden which ten years ago would have crushed you into dust perhaps this is the reason you don't he read anything about abraham pushing back or asking questions he just he just gets up and obeys verse three abraham rose early in the morning saddled
his donkey and took two of his men with him and his son isaac and they cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which god had told him in other words abraham obeyed immediately why because he had faith the writer of hebrews says that faith is the assurance of things hoped for the conviction of things not seen another way to see it is that faith is an inner certainty regarding things you cannot see that engages your will leading you to act in relation to what you believe i'll say
it again because y'all taking notes faith is an inner certainty regarding things you cannot see that engages your will leading you to act in relation to what you believe for example you ever seen one of those team-building exercises called the trust fall it's weird basically one person stands on a platform with their eyes clock closed and their arms folded looks like they're about to die beneath them behind them are co-workers or their team standing in the line with their arms out ready to catch not the bouquet but the person the reason it's a trust fall
is that the person on the platform can't see nobody can't see the people behind them so they have to trust what they cannot see but it wouldn't be enough for them to just say they trusted their team like yeah i trust you and stay there that's not good enough words are easy trust is actually realized when the person chooses to fall backwards the inner certainty gave them confidence that their team would catch them even though they couldn't see them and that certainty engaged their will which was why they chose to fall i use this example
because faith cannot be separated from behavior faith is at work in abraham because remember god has made him a promise and isaac is a pivotal piece of that promise is isaac dies the promise does too the irrationality of it all doesn't seem to hinder abraham though i think any rational person would be like um god this test ain't it there has to be another way tell people to steal my donkeys and burn down my tents but don't make me sacrifice my son but the thing is abraham isn't like me he doesn't barter with god he
is certain that god is going to do what he said he would do because he is god so because he believes and trusts god he behaves accordingly it says that he woke up early in the morning cut the wood that he would sacrifice his son on and he goes to the place that god told him to go to then we finally get an idea of what's in abraham's mind in verses five and six look at it it says 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 do you hear his faith somewhere in between god telling him to sacrifice isaac and him getting the wood he has concluded that after he has killed his son isaac is going to come back how does he know that who or what is he trusting to make him so certain it's simple he believes god not merely the promise of god but the person of god because the promise is only trustworthy because the one
who made the promise cannot lie so so it's the very nature of god that abraham has considered and in so doing he has reckoned that because god cannot lie he is obviously going to do something to ensure that isaac ultimately doesn't die the writer of hebrews said this 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 wait we are in genesis 22 right amen no yes okay so we are centuries before elijah raises a widow's son from the dead we are we are centuries more for when jesus raised lazarus easter ain't on abraham's radar he don't got a clue about pastel outfits and shiny white shoes there has yet there has yet to be an empty tomb for him to base his faith on so how is it then that abraham knew the very concept of resurrection was even possible i think that before abraham rose early in the morning while he
thought about what god was calling him to do and that it meant that he have to put his son to death i think i think abraham remembered his own body and how god had brought life from death before so surely he could do it again unless you think i'm just making up stuff i want you to remind your romans 4 19 which says this he abraham did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body which was as good as dead or when he considered the barrenness of life or lifelessness of sarah's womb the
word dead here literally means corpse-like so then god had to resurrect their bodies in a real sense so as to give them the power to create life in the form of isaac abraham had the audacity to say that he and isaac would go worship and return because he remembered that god had did it before in 1953 this guy by the name of henry malaysian went in for brain surgery to treat his epilepsy during the procedure the doctor removed a piece of henry's brain affected his memory especially his short-term memory and one recording a doctor doing
a study this on netflix by the way i ain't making it up a doctor doing a study on the brain in memory asked henry if he remembered what he did yesterday henry said i don't know the doctor asked him again what he did that morning henry said i don't remember that either then they asked him if he knew what he'd do tomorrow to which henry responded whatever is beneficial you'd expect henry to have some kind of loose schedule i'm gonna wake up i'm gonna get some coffee i'ma watch the news but he didn't because henry
couldn't tell you what he would do tomorrow because he couldn't remember what he did yesterday he answered the question the way that he did because the portion of henry's brain that was removed affected henry's ability to make new memories and since henry couldn't remember the past he had no context for how to imagine his future without his memories henry had no expectation when abraham thought about the sacrifice that he had to make in the future he remembered the resurrection in the past and that if god could do a miracle then then god could do a
miracle now almost all of us have a hard time trusting god to do what he said he would do in his word through his son and it might be because we have a memory problem how quickly we forget that he made the heavens and the earth that he split the sea and delivered his people out of bondage how he brought life from a dead womb we forget how faithful he's been to us and our family how he's provided for us when we didn't even ask how he's protected us from all kinds of mess but when
trials show up now all of a sudden is i don't know if god is going to come through i don't know if god is going to do this i don't know if god is going to do that i don't know if god is going to show up hasn't god always showed up hasn't god always been good hasn't god always been faithful just because you change your mind every six seconds doesn't mean that god does he is the same god today as he was yesterday some of us don't need to fast we need to remember and
it isn't isn't this true that the word of god has provided for us 66 books worth of memories of who god is and how god works which will inform our faith so that we can obey without hesitation because abraham has faith in his god he is willing to sacrifice his only son the text says abraham took the word of the burnt offering and laid it on his son isaac he took in his hand the fire and the knife and they went both of them together to the place that god had told him i want to
be clear about something a burnt offering was a total sacrifice there were other offerings that would allow you to sacrifice an animal and the priest could take a portion of it home to eat but a burnt offering was the one offering where the whole animal was totally consumed the process went something like this as described in leviticus 1 a male animal without blemish was taken the offerer would lay his hand on the animal which was symbolic of the transferring of the offer ascends onto the sacrifice an act of atonement then they'd kill the animal blood
would be collected and thrown on the altar then the animal would be cut into pieces and arranged on the wood then the animal would be burned and totally consumed and as the smoke of the animal rose towards heaven it was said to be a pleasing aroma to the lord and god told abraham to do that to his son the son he loved if this were not a test god's character would be questionable at best seeing that god himself said that human sacrifice was detestable in deuteronomy 12 and 18. but since it is a test sacrificing
isaac or at least being willing to do it resolves god of any guilt and refines abraham of any potential sin this test solidifies abraham's loyalty to god over and above love for his son it is clear that abraham has a deep affection for isaac god even acknowledges it by saying take your son your only son isaac whom you love and this love is natural this love is good we should love our children they are good gifts from a creative god but how easy it is to take these good gifts and make them god isaac was
special he was the promised child the seed through whom the whole world would be blessed abraham had parted ways with his son ishmael years earlier so this was the only son he had and maybe god knew abraham's potential abraham was an idol worshiper before he was called so it wouldn't have been out of character for him to worship something other than god maybe god knew that the son he loved could become the lord he worshiped so to set him free from any inkling of idolatry god had to put him in a position to choose and
he did he built the altar he laid the wood he took some rope and wrapped it around his son's body so he couldn't move and i can only imagine the pain because it wouldn't be a sacrifice if it didn't hurt a sacrifice isn't a sacrifice if it doesn't cost you something this body on this altar is his boy who he saw every day ate dinner with every night on the altar he probably looked at him and saw his own features in his face alongside fear but either way even with all the faith in the world
sacrificing what you love is devastating but even then god must be worthy of it all and abraham knows that so with inner certainty engaging his will leading him to act in a way that is relative to what he believes he takes the knife ready to slaughter his son then he hears his name verse 11 abraham abraham and he said here i am he said do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him for now i know that you fear god seeing you have not withheld your son your only son from me
if there was any doubt who abraham's god was this moment made it clear god had refined abraham's heart removing any other allegiances and now he'd revealed it to for god to say i know that you fear god this anthropomorphic language god knows everything so it doesn't mean that god didn't know it it means that god is affirming that abraham's faith is real and isn't that what we all want the affirmation that our faith is authentic because there are those who will present themselves before jesus with a bunch of evidence for why they deserve glory did
not prophesy in your name did not cast out demons and perform miracles on your name i think some of us in this room we would say god did not preach and expose at the passage correctly did not tithe didn't i go to seminary and lead worship and go on mission trips and vote though certain ways surely that's proof of my faith all of which looks impressive it looks like power it looks like the fruit of faith but jesus turns to these kinds of people and calls them workers of lawlessness god forbid you have to wait
till judgment to find out who you really are but the irony of it is this the very act of looking to what you've done for jesus as evidence of that you know jesus might be the proof that you don't because the truly faithful ones know that they have never done anything apart from jesus so when they stand before god they stand before him like the men and the parable of the talent saying this is what i've done with what you have given me and do you know what the master will say to them he'll say
well done my good and faithful servant and that is the point of everything my friends when all the tests and all the trials and all the pain and all the angst and all the discipline and all the suffering is over the point of it all is that the god of the glory the judge of the universe the one who cannot lie seated on the judgment say will say i know that you fear god verse 13 and abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his
stars 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 this moment right here is an act of substitutionary atonement instead of isaac being sacrificed the ram is killed in his place with substitution one person takes the place of another bearing the penalty that we reserved for someone else if isaac was killed as a burnt offering a few things would have happened he would have experienced the death and thus he would have been separated from
his father he also would have experienced the desecration of his body as it burned in the fire and all of this would have happened at the hands of his father it is because god provided the ram that saved isaac from death separation and destruction but there's a problem with all of this sacrificing the burnt offering functioned as atonement abram and isaac were both sinners and the wages of sin is dead god's justice had to be satisfied by virtue of blood being spilled a life being taken either their own life or somebody else's life so the
realm was not only sacrificed instead of isaac before isaac but even then the ram wasn't good enough why because hebrew 10 4 says it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin meaning that this ram though it was a sacrifice it wasn't a sufficient one if anything this ram was a shadow pointing forward to a better sacrifice one that would not be accomplished by jehovah providing a ram in a bush but by jehovah jireh providing his son in the flesh and who is this son i'll tell you first of all
the son was born to a woman by virtue of a miracle his mother wasn't barren but she was a virgin named mary who by all accounts should not have been able to get pregnant seeing as though she had not been with a man but because nothing is too hard for the lord she conceived by the power of the spirit the son grew up learned obedience through what he suffered being tested by the devil to turn stones into bread and to worship and thus love anything more than god but he resisted every single time to which
god publicly affirmed that his son's faith was real by saying that this is my beloved son with whom i am well pleased by then or but then the scenario for which the son habit was born came to pass the night before the son had prayed to his daddy prayed to his father said that he wanted this cup to pass from him he was in a position where he had to choose he had to choose either his will or his father's will and he did this son was made to carry his own wood on his own
back as he walked toward the top of a mountain and while up there this son's body was secured to the woods so that he couldn't move the people said if you are the son of god come down the cross what they didn't understand is if he came down they would have had to go up in his place not dying for them but receiving the penalty of death that belonged to us because it's easy to forget that since i was born a sinner and the wages of sin is death that if jesus did my sins i
would have had to pay for my own that even if i sinned once that meant i deserve the judgment that through this death i would be eternally separated from the life of the father that i would endure the the pain and the desecration of eternal destruction and that all of this would happen at the hands of god the father but for these people to tell jesus to come down the cross they clearly didn't realize that if he came down there would be no substitution and that the reason he stayed is because he loved them to
death maybe they didn't remember that day when abraham was asleep and god himself walked through a line of death walked through blood making it known that he was going to keep his promise and do you know what on the cross god got blood on his hands god became man so that he could die so as to maintain a covenant relationship with his people there he was god in the flesh being killed like an animal being slaughtered like the animals that he walked through becoming a lamb that he promised to be and there were no rams
this time there was no voice to cry out from heaven to stop it there was only silence and then those three hours and the dreadful darkness of god's presence was the only begotten son whose very own father was pleased to crush him jesus became sin so that you could be declared righteous jesus died so that you could have life jesus was bruised so you could be healed jesus rose from the dead so that you could too that is the beauty of substitution jesus is the ram and the bush and jesus is the son who returned
from the dead to worship with his daddy and now it is through this son jesus that all who have faith in his name are called the sons and daughters of abraham and look at us a people from every tribe and every tongue and every nation a church that has lasted for centuries with millions of saints that have gone before us and who will come after us and if you just look into the crowd don't we look like stars what god promised to abraham in genesis 12 has been realized in us the children of the promise
is there anything too hard for the lord lord we thank you for this day we thank you for your faithfulness we thank you for your nature and how you have revealed it through christ by the spirit in the scriptures we pray god that this would be more than words that this would be more than knowledge that it would actually inform the way we do life the way we love people the way we engage on social media the way we engage with our families and our friends in our local churches i pray that it even changes
the way we pray that we would pray with power that we will pray with confidence knowing that we are praying to a good and a faithful god we love you in jesus name amen
