Genesis chapter 22. And the title
of the message this evening is, Three Things Necessary for Worship. Three Things Necessary for Worship. Genesis chapter 22, verse 1,
And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham,
test Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham, and he said, Behold,
here I am. And he said, Take now thy son,
thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the
land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon
one of the mountains, which I will tell thee of. And Abraham arose
up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two
of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and claved the
wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went out to
the place of which God had told him. Now on the third day, Abraham
lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said
unto his young men, Abide here, with the ass and I and the lad
will go yonder and worship and come again unto you and Abraham
took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it upon Isaac his son
and he took the fire in his hand and a knife and they went both
of them together Isaac spake unto Abraham his father and said
my father Abraham said hear him I my son And he said, Behold
the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God
will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. So they went
both of them together. And they came to the place which
God had told them of, and Abraham built an altar there, and laid
the wood in order, and bound his son, and laid him on the
altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his
hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the
Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham. And
he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand
upon the lad, neither do anything unto him. For I know that thou
fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only
son, from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes,
and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket
by his horns. Abraham went and took the ram
and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his
son and Abraham called the name of the place Jehovah Jireh as
it is said to this day in the mount of the Lord it shall be
seen worship Three things necessary for the worship of God. That's
my subject tonight, the worship of God. I want us, as we come
to this place here, it should be the heart of everyone here
to have one goal, one aim, one theme, and that is to worship
God. We do not come here to play church. We do not come here to be super
religious or to appeal to man. We come for one purpose, that
God may be worshiped. That God may be honored and praised. Now there are many opinions as
to how to worship God. There are as many opinions as
how to worship God as there are denominations in churches. But if we really desire to worship
God, we must forsake all we think and feel about the subject of
God's worship and totally rely and depend upon what God says
about worship. What does it matter what I think
about worship if it is in opposition to what God says is worship? Remember, God is the one to be
worshipped, and God is the one to tell us how He is to be worshipped. We are not to speculate on worship. We're not to speculate on how
we are to come to God or how we're to be accepted of God in
worshiping God. God tells us plainly how it is
we must worship Him. And so the question must be asked,
what is worship? What does it mean to worship
God? Well, simply, it means the word
here, when it says Abraham, and he said in verse 5, to his men,
he said, I and the lad will go yonder and worship. This is what
it means. It means to depress. It means
to bow down one's whole self. to fall flat, unbelieve, beseech,
do reverence, and stoop before God. That's what it means. That's
what worship means. If you're here to do that, you're
in the right place. That's what we've come to do.
We've come to stoop down and surrender all before God and
worship Him. Now, without argument, without
speculation, The Lord God who made heaven and earth and the
sea and all that is in them is due worship. God is due worship from you and
everyone else because He made you. You did not make yourself. matter of fact the psalmist makes
it very clear he said make a joyful noise unto the Lord all ye lands
serve the Lord with gladness come before his presence with
singing here's the reason know ye the Lord that he is God that
he hath made us and not we ourselves we are his people and the sheep
of his pasture I would say to every living person
here worship God worship God Come now, right now, and stoop
down before God in reverence and holy fear. Bow yourself before Him because
He is worthy of your praise. Remember the Lord God, He made,
not only made you, He sustained you. Why are you breathing? Is it not the Lord that sustains
your life and breath? Is it not God who gives you all
that you have? Even the lost, even those outside
of Christ. Everything a man has is a gift
of God's mercy. It is a full display of God's
long-suffering with man that they actually are allowed to
breathe. God is due your worship, and
you listen to me very plainly, He'll have it. Whether you want to give it or
not, He'll have it. He'll have it now, or He'll have
it later, but He'll have it. That's a doubt. Without a doubt, He'll have it.
Now listen, I know this. All men worship something. You're
bowing down to something. Most of this world are bowing
down to their own selves. They bow down to their own lust. They bow down to their own desires. They bow down to whatever makes
them feel good. That is their obeisance. That is their worship, is self. There are others who bow down
to a God. Others are very religious and
they bow down to a God. Listen, not the God, but a God. A God they make up in their own
mind and their God, when they talk about Him, He sounds an
awful lot like us. He wants to do things but can't.
If that's your God, that's no God. Now that's not, that God
needs to be, any God that wants to do something and can't do
something is not God. He's not worthy of your worship.
And that's why you even half-heartedly worship Him. Because He's not
worthy of it. And so then it matters not if
a man is totally given to worship himself or totally given to worship
a false God, both will end up in the same place. Hell. Our Lord Jesus, talking to these
Pharisees, you remember those disciples, they were eating that
corn, didn't wash their hands. They defiled the tradition of
those religious men. Our Lord said this, He said,
you that think you worship God by your obedience to the law,
He said this, in Matthew 15, He said, you hypocrites, Well,
did Isaiah prophesy of you? This people draweth nigh to me
with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but their
hearts are far from me. But in vain do they worship me. Teaching for doctrines and commandments
of men. Everyone who seeks to worship
God by their obedience to the law, by the works of their flesh,
I'll tell you this, you can say it all you want to. You can say
you love God, you can say you worship God, you can say you
believe God, but if you're trying to worship God by what you do,
you're a hypocrite. Your lips, they speak of worship,
but your heart is nowhere near God. Why? Because you have taken
the vain traditions and doctrines of men, rather than what God
says about worship. If we are to worship God, we
must do it according to what God says we are to do. If our
worship is to be accepted. Now then, in our text, and I
picked this text for a very specific reason. This is the first time
worship is used in all of Scripture. I like, Genesis is the beginning,
it's a seed plot for everything. If you ever want to study anything,
usually the law of first mention is a good place to start. Wherever
the word is first mentioned, You find out a lot about that
word where it's mentioned first. And here it's in Genesis chapter
22. And we're going to see, we're going to find out what three
things God requires. And that's what I want you to
see. Three things God requires for worship that are necessary.
And they're found in this text. They're found in this text. First
of all this. In order to worship God, there
must be an acceptable place of worship. acceptable place of worship.
Second of all, there must be an acceptable sacrifice for worship. And third, there must be a high
priest. There must be someone to offer
the sacrifice. And all the three of these things
are found in here. First of all, notice that there's
only one place of worship. In our text, God told Abraham
to go to Moriah, to Mount Moriah. he said that in verse two he
said get thee into the land of moriah and offer me there a burnt
offering upon one of the mountains that i will tell thee uh... so abraham rose up early started
coming and look at verse four then on the third day abraham
lifted up his eyes and saw the place of far god here tells abraham there
is one place one place that I want you to worship me and I'll show
you that place. You don't have to guess where
that place is. I will show you that place. You
go out by faith and I will show you that place. And he came on
the third day and sure enough he looked up and he saw the place. He saw the place. So if we're
to worship God just like this, there must be a place where we
are to worship. Now, God, in this text, requires
something of Abraham. A very hard thing to see. God promised that Isaac was going
to be the one. Isaac, in him, all the nations
of the earth are going to be blessed. In Isaac shall thy seed
be called. In Isaac shall Christ come. And
then he says something that seems totally contradictory about what
he promised. He said, now I want you to take that one I promised
was going to be him. I want you to take him up this mountain
and I want you to kill him. I want you to kill him. And you know
this? I love this verse. And he rose
up early. Do you see any doubt there? Do
you see any questioning in Abraham's heart there? No. He believed
God. He believed God. And so he took
his son. And he took his son to the only
place where God was to be worshipped God ordained this place, He said,
He said, stay here while the lad and I go yonder to worship. Now listen to me. There's only
one place where God will meet with sinners. The place is a person. The mountain, in this text, most
commentators believe that it was Mount Zion. Some even go
as far to say it is Mount Calvary, which is in the same region.
It's not very difficult to see that that is very true. Both of which picture our Lord
Jesus Christ. The only place God will meet
with sinners is in Jesus Christ. I like this. He saw that mountain
afar off. That reminds me of what our Lord
Jesus Christ said, Abraham rejoiced as he saw my day, and what did
he do? He saw it. He saw it afar off. He saw it
by faith. He saw it. This is the place. This is the place where God will
meet with sinners. And just as Abraham had no other
mountain that could worship God. You realize that? All the mountains
in that region. There's a whole bunch of mountains
in that region. But there was only one God chose. And you listen
to me. There are many religions that
say they worship God. There are many Christs. There
are many saviors. But there is truly only one Savior
with which a sinner can meet with God, and that is in Jesus
Christ, the Son of the living God. Go a little bit further in the
Scriptures and you read about Moses and the law being given
to Moses. And Moses was given great detail. You read the law and you can
see the detail. I know it begins to drag some
of the detail as you try to read that law. And you read some of
this about the threads and how it is to be sewn and how many
pillars are to be... He gave great detail to this. And in Hebrews we find out why.
He said, "...see that thou make all things according to the pattern
showed thee in the mount." By this God prescribed the place
and the way in which his people were to worship. What was a place? In Moses' time, what was a place
called? It was a tabernacle. It was that tent that Moses pitched
in the wilderness. That was the place where God
himself came down and filled that tent. You realize that that was the
only place in all the world where God would meet with sinners?
Well, preacher, that's narrow. You bet it is. I'm preaching
a very narrow gospel. This is not a wide gospel. This
is not an all-encompassing gospel. There is only one way to God. There's only one place where
God will meet with you and will accept your worship, and that
is in and through His Son, the tabernacle, Jesus Christ. And eventually, you remember
that tabernacle was removed to Jerusalem, where this took place. That tabernacle eventually ended
up where this took place. And David, after a long time,
you remember David sinned and then Solomon reigned and then
God split the kingdoms. You remember he split those ten
tribes to the north and two tribes to the south? And God appointed
a man to the ten tribes to the north. God did this, named Jeroboam. You remember Jeroboam, what he
did, what the sin of Jeroboam was this. He said, you don't
have to go all the way down to Jerusalem to worship. We can build our own tabernacles
up here in the north. We can build it and we could
copy the worship down there. You don't have to drive all the
way down there. Just stay up here. It's all right. But remember, God says there's
only one place I'll meet with you. And that was in Jerusalem.
Why? Because that pictured His Son.
The sin of Jeroboam was so great because it sinned, it marred
the picture of where we are to worship God. The only place to worship God
was in the tabernacle, and I tell you, the only place to worship
God is in Christ. Paul writes about this in Hebrews
9. He says, "...that which was a figure of the time then present,
in which were offered both gifts and sacrifices that could not
make them that did the service perfect, pertaining to the conscience,
which stood in meats and drinks and divers, washings and carnal
ordinances, imposed on them until when? The time of the Reformation,
until Christ came and fulfilled all the type." He satisfied the
type. Don't you get it? When Christ
came into the world, who is He? He is God. And how did He come? He came
in the flesh. God filled a tent. You get it? That's the picture. The body
is the tent. You remember that tabernacle
tent that had that old rugged badger skin on the outside, just
ugly as all get out? Nobody would think anything beautiful
inside that tent, yet inside was all gold and purple and fine
linen and all the treasure and that gold ark was in there? That's exactly what Christ was.
He came and nobody thought anything of Him. I tell you still, people don't
think anything at all of Him. I think much of Him. Why, He
was God, manifest in the flesh. He came, and John said this,
He tabernacled among us. Isn't that wonderful? He dwelt,
that word means tabernacled among us. Why? He's a tabernacle. He's
the only place God will meet with you. If you're ever going
to worship God, you must worship Him in Jesus Christ. That's the only place. Our Lord
said it, woman, believe me. Remember He's speaking to that
woman at the well? He said, woman, believe me. There's a time coming
that you ain't gonna worship Him in this mountain or in Jerusalem.
But they that worship Him must worship Him by the Spirit and
by the truth, in the Spirit and in the truth. Listen, I know
this, you'll never worship God except the Spirit of God give
you life to worship God. I would have never worshiped
God. had God the Spirit not come and open my eyes and my heart
to show me my sin and need. If you'll never come to Christ,
I know this, because you don't have any need of Him. Oh, but
when you have a need, you'll come. And how sweetly does this
message come to somebody who's got a need. Do you need to worship
God? Then I'm telling you the only
way God's going to be worshiping you is if you come by Christ. And this
is wonderful because Christ says, come unto me! Doesn't he? Come unto me. He said, I am the way, the truth,
and the life. No man comes to God but by me. So that's one place, is a place
of worship. Now listen, tonight we're worshiping in a place,
right? I'm preaching the gospel because this is how he is worshiped.
You can't worship in a person you don't know. And how can you
know him except someone come and tell you? And how can they
tell you except God send them to tell you? I'm sent to tell
you. Now listen, you can sit in a
place where the gospel is preached all your life and never really
worship God. How many sit in the gospel church,
here in the gospel message, and never worship God at all? Ever.
They do it with their lips, but they don't have any heart for
it. If God ever get a hold of you,
you will. And I'm so thankful when he got
a hold of me, he never let go. I want to worship him. I really
want to bow. I want to be accepted before
God, and I know this, the only place is Jesus Christ. I say that, and you're going
to hear about Christ wherever you go. Let me tell you who Christ
is so you know without a doubt who I'm talking about. I already
told you He's God manifesting in flesh. That's Christ. Any Christ, not God, manifesting
in flesh is not Christ. You can't worship God by Him.
Second of all, Christ came to save His people from their sins. That's what he came to do. He
had a work given to him. And that work was that God sent
him to do, was to save his people from their sins. And the third
thing you must know about this Christ, he was absolutely, perfectly
successful in his work. He did save everyone that he
meant to save. Any Christ, not that Christ,
you ain't worshiping God. That's not Christ. Christ is
successful. any man that confesses that christ
is not come in the flesh is not born of god so i come by him second thing
that you must know about worship is this there's only one offering
by which we may worship god look back at your text Abraham, he
went to the place where God was prescribed, and as he was going,
Isaac noticed something. Isaac, he's a very smart boy,
very observant young man. Verse 6, and Abraham took the
wood of the burnt offering, this will be important, and he laid
it on Isaac. That'll be very important in
a minute. he laid it upon his son and he took the fire in his
hand and a knife and they both went of them together they were
going to that place where God said to worship and Isaac spake
unto his father and he said my father I tell you I Abraham was a very
patient man you can just tell by his answers all the every
time everybody asks him he says here am I I'm right here here
am I ready to answer whatever it is you need here am I my son
he said behold the fire here's wood but where is the lamb for
the burnt offering Isaac understood that in order to approach God
you can't come without blood he was taught this very well
Without the shedding of blood is no remission. Blood is necessary. Blood is required. The need of
a lamb for the sacrifice was something Isaac was taught of
his father, but this went way back. This started in the beginning. God started this principle of
the necessity of blood. God instituted... You realize
God is the one who offered the first sacrifice. I'll show you. Go to Genesis chapter 3. You're
right here in Genesis. Go back to Genesis 3. Abraham, our father, sinned and
he was spiritually killed, spiritually dead, unable, unwilling to approach
God. He was condemned under the justice
of God and worthy of God's wrath, but God in grace came to him.
And he taught Abraham the necessity of a sin offering. Look at verse
21. And unto Abraham and to his wife
did the Lord God make coats of skins and clothed them. Here's the first sacrifice. God
killed two animals and clothed Adam and Eve to cover their nakedness. God instituted the first blood
offering and showed the necessity of the killing of an innocent
in order to cover the nakedness of the guilty. Sinner, I tell you that no man
can come to God without an acceptable offering. What do you have to
offer? Tonight you're worshiping. You want to worship, right? What
do you have to offer? God requires an offering. Now
what do you got? What are you offering? God before them, before He did
this, God taught them that this offering was not something they
could provide. It was God who made the sacrifice
and before He even made the sacrifice, He told them of someone who would
come and make that sacrifice on their behalf. It was verse
15, I will put enmity, speaking the serpent, I will put enmity
between thee and the woman, the church, God's people, and between
thy seed and her seed, the seed of the woman, Christ the virgin-born
Son, it shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel." Sinner, as God demanded the death
of Isaac, even so the justice of god demands
the death of every center isaac here's a picture of god's
people deserved but behold the hope of worshiping
god is not lost because abraham gave an answer well back to take
Isaac said, look, where's the sacrifice? We can't worship God
without blood. And Abraham had a good answer.
His answer was this. My son, God will provide himself
a lamb. God will provide himself a lamb.
That is, God will make provision for his own satisfaction. He will take the blood of another in your stead. Yet this sacrifice cannot be
just any old offering. The blood cannot be just any
blood. It must be pure blood. This was pictured in the Passover.
You remember the night before the Lord God came through and
destroyed and killed the firstborn of everyone in Egypt. God told
them, He said, You take a lamb. You take a spotless lamb. You inspect it. You make sure
it is without blemish. And you kill the lamb, put the
blood on the door and the lintel of your house, and everyone that
has the blood, he said this, I will pass over you. Why did
he pass over them? Because the lamb died in the
stead of the firstborn. Justice was satisfied and justice
could not demand twice payment for sin. And here God's... Abraham by
the Holy Spirit says God will provide himself. I want you to
know that God didn't... He didn't say God will provide for himself
a lamb. Listen to this. God will provide,
listen, Himself a lamb. God himself will be the
Lamb. Isn't that what happened when
Christ came? When John the Baptist saw him, what did he say? Behold
the Lamb of God that taketh away. Listen, that beareth away. the sin of the world, that beareth
away the sin of the world. In Hebrews he said, Wherefore
when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice an offering
thou wouldest not, a body hast thou prepared me. Been burnt
offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Christ himself said,
I come. In the volume of the book it
is written of me to do thy will. And later he said, by the witch
will. We are sanctified through what? Through the offering of
the body of Christ once for all. One sacrifice, one lamb. That God provided for himself
a lamb. Provided himself a lamb. And
he came and he died in the stead of his people. Come now and worship
God only by the blood of Jesus Christ. Look at Calvary and see
as Isaac had the wood laid on his back, even so Christ bore
our sins in his own body on the tree. As Isaac was bound and
laid willingly on that altar, even so Christ willingly was
bound, willingly laid down his life. He was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we may be made the righteousness
of God. in him. Now see the picture.
Look at your text. Look at your text, verse 9. And
they came to the place where God told him of, and Abraham
built an altar there, and laid wood on the altar, and bound
Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And
Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife, and to slay
his son. And the angel of the Lord called him out from heaven,
and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, Here am I. And he
said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do anything
unto him. For now I know that thou fearest God, seeing that
thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me. And
Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and beheld a ram caught
in the thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the
ram and offered him up as a burnt offering in the stead of his
son." Oh, can you not see the The dripping type. It's just so perfect in every
way. How Christ was, the horns of
His power were caught in the thicket of His covenant. He was
bound by His covenant of love and mercy. His power, how he,
how horns have to do with power, and how Christ, His horn of power,
He surrendered it when He became a man, so that He might die under
the justice of God, and the fire and wrath of God fell on Him,
so that, listen, we may go free. You have an offering? Here it
is. God accepts Jesus Christ in His blood. The third thing
you need is this, a high priest. A high priest. To worship God,
you need someone to make the offering. Without this, impossible. You remember those wicked men
that slew Christ? They were slaying Him, but they
were no high priest. There's only one high priest.
In this text, Abraham was the high priest. At this time, there
were no high priests and the law was not yet given. Every
patriarch of the family, the father was the high priest. He
was the one offering the sacrifices for the family. And so, here
it was, God commanded Abraham, only Abraham, to offer his son
at that place at that time. And so Abraham went and did it
by faith as God commanded him. Later on we see in the Law of
Moses through the lineage of Aaron that God made high priest.
He took a man from among the people and he set that man to
be a representative of all the people of Israel. So that He
alone was to offer gifts and sacrifices acceptable unto God. Listen, Jesus Christ is the great
High Priest. The only High Priest. Jesus Christ is both the sacrifice
and the High Priest. Now, are you getting the picture
that you don't have anything to do with this? I mean, you
get the sense that you're totally outside of this. This is something
God is doing all by himself for you. And you have no part in
it. That's a wonderful thing, because
I'd mess anything up. Give me one part, it's messed
up. Sin is mixed with all I do. I would taint it, I would destroy
it, I would ruin it. Therefore, if God is going to
save you, He must save you Himself. He does everything. He is the
priest. He is the altar. He is the tabernacle. He's the
mercy seat. He's everything. He's everything. Jesus Christ, our great high
priest, He has offered that one sacrifice. And listen to what
Paul says about this. He said, those priests of the
old time, he said, they offered these sacrifices day in and day
out, day in, day out, and they never took away sin. But this
man, there's something different about this man. This man, he
says in Hebrews chapter 10, verse 12, but this man, after he had
offered one sacrifice, what was that? Himself, for sins, forever
sat down. Terrence, you've been working
all day. When you sit down, what does that mean? Done. It's whatever
it is, it's finished. I can't do no more. It's empty. It's done. How much more is this? When Christ Jesus finished the
work of our salvation, He sat down. And God gave Him power
over everything. Gave Him authority over everything.
Why? Because He perfected everyone
He died for. Don't you see what you need to
worship God? You need a place. Christ alone is a place. You
need a sacrifice. Christ alone is a sacrifice.
You need a high priest. Christ alone is a high priest.
And listen to this. You must worship by faith in
Him. without faith it is impossible
to please god you see abraham worship god not just because
he did these things but because he did them in faith not wavering believer do you think it's pious
to doubt I mean, I'm telling you, sometimes
our old flesh is so corrupt that we think if we're not doubting,
something's wrong with us. If we have a moment of peace,
we think, oh, something's wrong. It's honoring to God to believe
God. And you only believe God by believing
in His Son. And listen, this is not a cooperative
effort. It's just not. The moment you put your hand
to it, you're saying He's not enough. You spit on the sacrifice and
the high priest the moment you add anything to him. Well, I
joined the church, might as well spit in his face. I took the
Lord, spit in his face. Well, I made my decision, spitting
in his face. If you've done anything, if you
add anything to what he did, that's not worship. What did
I say worship was? It is bowing down and believing
in Christ. That's worship. Have you worshiped tonight? If
you believe Christ, you worship. And you know what? You're accepted.
God is highly pleased with our worship. Is that not astounding? Amazing. It is. May God ever give us hearts of
worship, always considering these things have been provided. These
things we need, He provided. What a restful thought that nothing
else is needed to worship God. May God bless you. Let's stay
and be dismissed in prayer.