Good evening. Well, I saw that several folks as I
was walking up had kept Psalm 99 marked. We won't be going
there. In fact, it's going to take us
a couple of minutes to get to our text in Genesis 22. But first, let's start off in
John chapter four. John 4, starting in verse 19. This is the woman at the well.
And she saith unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our fathers worshipped in this
mountain, and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where
men ought to worship. Jesus saith unto her, Woman,
believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain
nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father. Ye worship ye know
not what. We know what we worship, for
salvation is of the Jews. But the hour cometh, and now
is, when the true worshipers shall worship the Father in spirit
and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. I have a question for us to consider.
Why am I here tonight? Why are you here tonight? Have
we come because it's Sunday night and you're supposed to be here?
Have we come because our parents said Get in the car, you're going
to service. Have we come to hear the gospel
proclaimed? It's a good reason to come. But
if that's the only reason, I'm afraid we may have missed it. At the heart of the matter, why
do believers gather together? Why do we come together? We come desiring to worship. I want to worship. I want to worship my Lord and
Savior, Christ Jesus. I want to worship my God. And tonight, I pray that he'll
teach us a little bit about what it is to worship. Before we can
worship, before anyone can worship, he or she must be taught of God.
There are certain things that you have to know, and sinful
man by nature does not know. But we have to know how to worship. And there are some elements that
must be present in order to worship. And as Lord reveals these things
to us, as he opens our eyes and he causes a sinner to grow and
see their need of him, We learn that there are at least three
things required to worship. We need a sacrifice, we need
an altar, and we need a priest. Missing any one of these three
elements will result in false worship. Now when my kids were younger
and I was teaching them in Sunday school, sometimes I would throw
out a question that I knew they wouldn't know the answer to,
just to kind of get discussion going. And as they got a little
bit older and a little more experienced in Sunday school, they would
take a guess at the answer. Jesus Christ. They were being
taught, well, Christ is all. Well, that is our answer tonight. We need a sacrifice. Jesus Christ
is our sacrifice. We need an altar. Jesus Christ
is our altar. And we need a priest. Our Lord
is our priest. Now if you would, turn over to
Genesis chapter four. As we grow or as the Lord begins
dealing with us and reveals something of our nature to us and something
of who he is, one of the first things that we're taught, I'm in trouble and I need a sacrifice. And these two things go hand
in hand. Genesis 4 verse 3, And in process of time it came to
pass that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering
unto the Lord. And Abel he also brought of the
firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord
had respect unto Abel and to his offering. But unto Cain and
to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and
his countenance fell. Our sacrifice must be innocent,
must be free from the condemnation of death. Cain brought
of the fruit of the ground, but what he brought was cursed. If you look over in chapter 3
verse 17, the Lord said unto Adam, Cursed, and this is towards
the end of the verse there, Cursed is the ground for thy sake. In
sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Cain brought
an offering to God that he thought would be accepted that was cursed. The fruit of that that was cursed
is cursed. But Abel, he brought of the flurslings
of the flock, he brought a sacrifice that was free from sin, free
from the condemnation, free from judgment, that had no fault and
didn't deserve to die. and his offering was slain, the
blood was spilled, instead of the sinner, the sacrifice
died in his place. No sinner can come into God's
holy presence to worship without an innocent, slain sacrifice. As we grow up in life, The older
we get, the more we learn. And all of that builds on what
we've learned before. So it is with spiritual life.
We start out as babes, knowing not much of anything. I need
a sacrifice. And scriptures grow with us. In Genesis, the Lord clothed
Adam and Eve. And then we're given the sacrifice
that Abel brought. And then we continue growing.
And in chapter eight of Genesis, Genesis eight, Noah is getting,
has gotten out of the ark. Genesis eight and verse 20. And Noah builded an altar This
is the first time the word altar is used in scripture. Noah builded
an altar unto the Lord, and took of every clean beast, and of
every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar.
And the Lord smelled a sweet savor, and the Lord said in his
heart, I will not again curse the ground anymore for man's
sake, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his
youth. Neither will I again smite any
more every thing living as I have done." Noah came, he built his altar,
and he offered his sacrifice, burned it, and after it was burnt,
the Lord smelled a sweet savor. I want to spend some time this
evening on the altar. and see what it is, what its
purpose is, how it magnifies Christ, how these Old Testament
pictures magnify Him. So with that said, let's go over
to Genesis chapter 22. And we'll be camping here for
a little while. Genesis 22 verse 1. And it came to pass after these
things that God did tempt Abraham and said unto him, Abraham. And
he said, behold, here 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 rose
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 unto the
place of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham
lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said
unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass, and I and
the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to 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. And Isaac spake
unto Abraham his father, and said, My father? And he said,
Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire
and the wood, but where is the lamb for a 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 him of. And Abraham built an altar there,
and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac 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 thou anything unto him. For now 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 a thicket
by his horns. And Abraham went and took the
ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his
son. This account covers three days
of Abraham's and Isaac's life. And if we read this account,
and the Lord's pleased to open our eyes and our understanding,
we'll see that this parable has Abraham representing God
the Father, and Isaac representing, for a large portion of it, God
the Son. There's also a portion of that
in which Isaac represents us. And we'll look at each of those
as we go through this. We're taught and we learn that
we need a sacrifice, and we need an altar, And not always for a child do
you understand at first why you need something. You're hungry,
you cry out in hunger. You don't understand why you're
hungry, just know that you are. Why do we need a sacrifice? Why
do we need an altar? Look up in verse six. 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." Abraham took the fire
in his hand. Scripture records, the Lord thy
God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God. Fire is often
associated with God's wrath. and his fury. It's important to note that Abraham
took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it upon Isaac, his son.
That wood represents our sin. It was laid on Isaac. The fire
in the hand of the Father, the wrath of God, and the knife,
the judgment of God. We, in our nature, apart from
Christ, are under condemnation and wrath of God because of our
sin. We deserve His wrath poured out
against us and we deserve His judgment upon us. Knowing now the necessity of
the sacrifice in the altar, join me in verse 9. I've often said the hardest thing,
and Gabe said it this morning, we want to keep the gospel so
simple. Seeing what I saw in this verse
and being able to convey it simply. It's a very difficult thing to
do. Verse nine, and they came to the place which God had told
him of, And Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood
in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar
upon the wood." When we read through that the
first time, did you, like I've done for so many years, read
through it and it's a single verse of scripture, not much
has happened here. The greater thing happens over
in verse 13. That's where we want to get to,
right? Where the substitution is made. Let's look at this a little closer.
There's a lot that happened here. And they came to the place which
God had told him of, and Abraham built an altar there. We're not
told the age of Abraham and Isaac at this point. The next chapter, Sarah dies
at 127 years old. That means Isaac was about 37
years old, Abraham about 137 years old. I've heard some say that Isaac
was a little boy here. I personally don't think that's
true. I kind of think he was in his
prime of life, probably 20 at least. I think a better picture would
be that he was around 33. That's my personal opinion. But this isn't a child going
on a mountain to worship. This is a young man. He carried
the wood by himself, and there was a significant amount of wood
for going to offer a burnt offering. So say Isaac's 20 years old,
Abraham would be 120 years old. Abraham built an altar there. The father prepared the altar. He went to work. I don't know
at this point if Isaac knows that he's going to be the sacrifice.
That's what Abraham intends. But Isaac's set aside, be still,
I'm building the altar, and Abraham builds the altar. We're so accustomed to our conveniences
of everyday life, that doesn't sound like much. But Abraham
took some time preparing this altar. This altar was going to
contain the wood that he was going to put his son on top of,
slay him, and burn his body as a sacrifice to God. Abraham's being very careful
with everything he does. He doesn't want to waste the
sacrifice. It has to be accepted, and it
has to be burnt. So he spends some time building
this altar. God the Father prepared a body
for his son to come down from glory and inhabit, to bear the
sin of his people, to suffer the wrath of God, in that body
and to give that body as a sacrifice. What is the purpose of the altar? The altar holds the fuel for
the fire that will consume the sacrifice. The altar directs
the flames of the fire to the sacrifice. What's so important
about the sacrifice being consumed? In Noah's account, it wasn't
until after the sacrifice was burned that God smelled a sweet
savor. Sacrifice must be burnt to be
accepted. And the altar holds the sacrifice
as well. so that the flames will consume
the sacrifice rather than the one deserving death. Back in verse nine. And they came to the place which
God had told him of, and Abraham built an altar there and laid
the wood in order. There's an art to burning a fire. I've tried to burn fire before
and failed miserably. My dad had a neighbor trying
to burn some debris. You would think he had a big
pile of debris to be burnt, and it had been out there quite a
while. And the guy tried to burn it and failed a couple times
and finally asked dad for some help. Dad came over and moved
things around with his tractor, put the wood in order. started
the fire and it burned all the debris. Abraham is a skilled fire builder. He knows how to lay the wood
to make a cooking fire, to make a fire for light, or to make
a fire to burn a burnt sacrifice. There's various ways you can
lay wood to have the the fire react in certain ways. He laid
the wood in order to burn the sacrifice. This wood that Abraham laid in
order, this wood that Isaac bore alone up the mountain, represents
the sin of God's elect. Sin is the fuel of God's wrath. Without sin, there is no wrath. When Adam was in the garden,
prior to disobeying God, prior to breaking his law, they dwelt
in unity. They had fellowship together.
But once transgression of the law, once sin entered, Adam and
God could not have fellowship one with another without a mediator. We'll come back to verse nine
in a few minutes. Because we've seen for true worship,
we must have an acceptable sacrifice offered as an atonement for our
sin. An altar in which the sin is consumed and directed at the
sacrifice in order for the wrath to not overflow and spill out
on those for whom the sacrifice is offered. And a priest. We need one to intercede on our
behalf. a priest that is separated or
sanctified by God, a man ordained to go into the presence of God
with the blood of the sacrifice to make peace on our account.
From the beginning of the message I said that we'll find all that
we need to worship, a sacrifice, an altar, and a priest in our
Lord Jesus Christ. Now let's look at a few scriptures
to bear that out. Keep your place here in Genesis
22, we'll come back to it. Let's turn over to Hebrews chapter
10, verse 10. Hebrews 10, verse 10. Well, let's start in verse nine. Then said he, our Lord said this,
lo, I come to do thy will, O God. He taketh away the first that
he may establish the second. By the which will, that will
that Christ came to do, we are sanctified through the offering
or sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. We have a sacrifice, not of the
blood of bulls and goats, but he came in the likeness of sinful
flesh without sin to suffer and bear what was due to me, due
to his people, as the innocent sacrifice for
sin. All those sacrifices offered
throughout the ages, from the first one slain by God to provide
a covering for Adam and Eve, to the last offered before Christ's
death, all pointed to the lamb slain from the foundation of
the world. When we worship, we bring to remembrance that our
Lord left glory, robed himself in our likeness, lived under
his own law, as a man and fulfilled his law perfectly. Being innocent,
having no cause of death found in him, he freely laid down his
life on Calvary's tree as our sacrifice." Now turn over a couple
pages to Hebrews 13, verse 10. Hebrews 13, 10. We have an altar, whereof they
have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle. For the bodies
of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary
by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. Wherefore,
Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood,
suffered without the gate. Let us go forth, therefore, unto
him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here we have
no continuing city, but we seek one to come. By him, therefore,
let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that
is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to his name." Jesus Christ
is our altar. He was the altar in ages past
and in time to come, for verse 8 of chapter 13 says, Jesus Christ,
the same yesterday and today and forever. God prepared himself
a body to dwell in, a body to fulfill the law in, a
body to bear the sin of the elect in, a body to be sacrificed,
and a body to be an altar. As our priest, Christ entered
into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us.
Turn back over to Hebrews 7. Hebrews 7 verse 22. By so much was Jesus made a surety
of a better testament. And they truly were many priests,
because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death.
But this man, because he continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood. Wherefore, he is able also to
save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing
he ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such an high priest
became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,
and made higher than the heavens. who needeth not daily as those
high priests to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins and then
for the people's, for this he did once when he offered up himself. Having put away sin by the sacrifice
of himself, our Lord rose again and afterwards ascended into
glory where he ever liveth to make intercession for them that
come to God by him. Now go back over to Genesis chapter
22. Abraham laid the wood in order
and verse 9 concludes, and bound Isaac his son and laid him on
the altar upon the wood. Isaac here somewhat changes from
being representing God the Son to representing ourselves. He can be viewed as both. He
still represents God the Son, who in the eternal covenant freely
bound himself to suffer and die for those the Father gave him.
As our Redeemer, he freely bound himself to suffer and die on
our behalf. And Isaac can represent the sinner
who God is doing a work in his heart, who Lord reveals you're
dead in trespasses and sins and bound by the law, who says, I'm
guilty. There's no struggle. Isaac didn't
struggle against Abraham binding him. We don't struggle when we're
made to see what we are in God's presence. I'm guilty. I deserve the sentence of death
that is laid upon me, and I freely surrender. Isaac now represents me. For
my sins and transgressions, I deserve the justice and wrath of God
poured out upon me. Verse 10, 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 thou anything
unto him. For now 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 a thicket
by his horns. And Abraham went and took the
ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his
son." Consider these two men just from
the fleshly standpoint at this point in time. Abraham is standing
over his son, whom he loved, holding a knife to slay him. And Isaac is laying there in
submission and obedience to his father, allowing it to happen. When all is stopped and a substitute
is provided. These men had built altars before. They had offered sacrifice to
God in the past. But they've never worshipped
like they worshipped at this one. They've never seen Christ
the substitute like they did now. And they never went to another
altar again, quite the same as they had before this instance. We tend to want to end the story
there, just, okay, it was overdone, they went back to the other men.
But again, it's not quite that simple. Abraham and Isaac watched
that ram be consumed by that fire. They didn't leave. until every bit of that fire
had burned out and the sacrifice was burnt completely. Only when it was clear that that
burnt offering had been accepted did they move on. At Calvary's Mountain, that man hanging on that center
crucifix He's free from sin. There's no
cause of death found in him. And he's suffering there. For this one. Where I deserve
to be. At the sixth hour, the sun darkens. God has business to attend to. And this business, at this point,
doesn't include any of his creation. As Abraham and Isaac left the
men that had traveled with them behind, so God the Father and
God the Son go together alone to conduct the business of salvation. God's altar, the Son, has been
prepared God's lamb slain from the foundation of the world has
been hung on the cross. The sacrifice, having been examined,
is, as we heard this morning, free of sin. There's no cause
of death found in him. He's innocent and a fit sacrifice,
and now it's time for that great mystery to be brought to pass.
God the Father made God the Son sin for us. Our sin, which separates
us from God, is placed on God, and God forsakes God. God's wrath and justice are poured
out on His Son for the sin that He bears in His body. That body
prepared for him endures the wrath, and rather than the sacrifice
being consumed, the wrath is consumed. He consumes the fire until every
sin laid on him has been purged. He, our altar, has borne the
sin directed the wrath, and protected those that he came to save. Then,
of his own will, he gave up the ghost, he laid down his life
as our sacrifice, and our priest entered into heaven with his
own blood to make intercession for us. Isn't he worthy of our worship? As we come here, week after week,
may we come in the spirit of worship. May we come and find
declared Christ our sacrifice, our altar, and our priest. And might we believe on him. John 3.36 says, He that believeth
on the Son hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the
Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him. Come to Christ, suing for mercy. Look to him for your salvation. He's worthy. He's able. He is
a mighty Savior. Amen.