If you would, go with me to Genesis
22 this morning. Our pastor told me when the Lord
first led me to start teaching the Sunday school class a little
bit, it made mention that when you're standing teaching, you
get to teach the stories that you love. And this is one of
my favorites. This is one that the Lord used
to reveal Himself to me. And it's been a favorite ever
since. Let's read the first 14 verses. And it came to pass, after these
things, that God did tempt Abraham, or try Abraham, and said unto
him, Abraham, and he said, Behold I, or behold me. 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 sons, two of his young
men with him, and Isaac his son, and claimed 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, 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 that 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. And 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. Starting back at verse one, it
says, and it came to pass after these things that God did try
Abraham, said unto him, Abraham. And he said, behold me. This will be one of Abraham's
toughest trials. They say he had nine or ten trials. You know, it was a trial. The
Lord called him out of his father's land. That was a trial. And him and Lot, their men couldn't
get along, and they split up. That was another trial. You know,
the Lord kept promising him a son. All through there, he promised
him a son. And it was a while before the
Lord gave him that son. That's a trial. But through all
that, Abraham, being tried, is trusting the Lord. All of God's
people will be tried. The Lord will try us to prove
that it's not our faith. For by grace are we saved through
faith, and that's not of ourselves. It's a gift of God. And our Lord,
he tries us, and the only reason we love him is because he first
loved us. But in this, he tells him to take thy son, thine only
son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of
Moriah, and offer him for a burn offering upon one of the mountains,
of which I'm telly of." It won't be too graphic, but
my understanding of a burn offering is that you take the lamb, the
sacrifice, you bind it, you put it on the altar, you slit its
throat, catch it in the basin. Not one drop of blood is lost.
That's our Christ. His blood was shed, but there
wasn't one drop wasted. Then the lamb is quartered, placed
a certain way on the altar. The blood covers the mercy seat. The lamb or sacrifice that's quartered
is burnt. Fire is God's judgment on us.
Because of sin, God's wrath has to be poured out. And then where he told him to
take his son and do this to him, you know this was a burden. Abraham
trusted the Lord. He didn't know why the Lord would do this. The
Lord had told him that this was going to be the son that all
nations would, that his nation was going to be multiplied, greater
than the stars. greater than a number that he could see. Abraham
didn't have any understanding of this, but he trusted the Lord.
So he set out for it. This son, our God, that was his
son. It's what he did to his son.
Before the beginning of the foundation of the world, he chose a people.
He chose a Savior that would save him, which would be Himself. And then, Thine only Son, you
know, the Lord said He loved His Son. He said, Behold, My
Son, whom I love, you know. He said, This is My Son, in whom
I am well pleased. And it tells us that Abraham,
he rose up early in the morning. He saddled his ass and he took
two of his young men with him, and Isaac, his son. And he claimed
the wood for burn offering, rose up, and went on to the place
which God had told him. You know Abraham probably didn't
sleep any the night before. He was up early that morning.
He was preparing everything, that claiming the wood, that's
cutting wood. He was preparing everything.
He didn't know what he would find once he got to the place
the Lord sent him. He didn't know whether there
would be wood there. So he made sure he took what he needed with
him. And he prepared everything. And
you know, he had three days to think on this.
And he said on the third day, he lifted up his eyes and he
saw the place afar off. And the Lord showed him. And we see also that, you know,
our Lord, God said we're all taught by Him. And, but we see
while we're in this life and around this sin, we only see
through a glass dimly. That's our, but He shows it to
us. He opens our eyes. He makes us
see some things and makes us rejoice in them. I heard Henry Mahan in a message
say that being saved is not always happy, but it's always joy to
be saved. Our God sends us trials. Look
at what he allowed Job to go through. Job had everything taken
away from him to prove Job and prove that Christ had done everything
for Job. And Job without sin was able
to say, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. It's easy to
sit here and closed with our families and our health and say
that, but may the Lord give us the grace to say that if he takes
it away from us. And then it says, and Abraham
said unto his young men, abide here, abide ye here with the
ass, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again
to you. These young men couldn't go.
There are several reasons. One, they wouldn't have understood.
Abraham, being as old as he was, they would have just considered
him to be a senile man when he went. execute his son in this
fashion. They would have tried to stop
him. They couldn't. It had to be done. I've heard men in religion say,
when talking about Christ and going to the cross, that they
would have tried to stop that. They don't know the gospel. Christ
had to die. He must needs die. But then for our Lord, he went
to the Passover. He had 12 disciples with him.
When he went to the garden, he had 11 with him. He went to pray
in the garden before he was crucified, and he had three with him. But
when he went to that cross, he went alone. He was there to do
it all by himself. There was no one with him. He
was alone. He had to do it by himself. He
said that he had the power to lay down his life and he had
the power to raise it up again. The Lord would give him that. And then 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 both went together. As the wood was laid upon Isaac,
the cross was laid upon our Lord. The Lord bared his cross,
which was our sins, on his way to Calvary. And he hung there
to redeem us from our sins, to cover our sins with his blood. He took, Abraham had everything. He'd taken the fire, which is
the Lord's judgment. He's a consuming fire. He took
a knife and they went together. In verse
seven, Isaac said, 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 the burnt offering? Isaac was a young man at this
point. He wasn't a little boy. He was
a young man at this point. He had been taught by Abraham
that in order for to have a sacrifice, you had to have a lamb. There's
no forgiveness of sins without that lamb. Without the blood
sacrifice, there's no remission of sins. I mean, Isaac saw here
what he knew, and he knew that the fire, which was the judgment
of God, he knew that they had the wood, which is the sins,
but where was that lamb? We can't come to God without
a lamb. Christ is our sacrifice. In order to come before a holy
God, we have to have that lamb. And Abraham, the Lord gave him
great prophecy to say this. He said, my son, God will provide
himself a lamb for a burnt offering. So they went both of them together. Our God will provide Himself
as the Lamb, He will provide the Lamb for Himself, and He'll
see to it, the rest of it. Our brother Henry wrote in his
little commentary, and I can't expound on it better, so I'm
going to read exactly his three points on that. He says that
the Lord will provide Himself as the Lamb for our Lord Jesus
Christ, The Lamb of God is God. Number two, the Lord will provide
for himself a lamb. For the Lord God is the offended
majesty to whom and for whom the blood was shed, that he might
be both just and justifier. Number three, the Lord will provide
or see to it that redemption for all his sheep The honoring
of His law, the satisfaction of His justice, the fulfillment
of His covenant, and eternal glory of His Son is accomplished
in full. Nothing will be left undone.
It is finished, the Savior cried, and it is. On that cross, our
Lord did it all. He covered the sins of many.
He didn't die for everyone. If he died for everyone, everyone
would be saved. But the ones that he chose, in
his time, he will reveal them to him. He will bring them to himself.
He's that great shepherd that goes looking for his sheep. And after this, 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." Abraham couldn't have bound Isaac
if he wasn't willing. Our Lord was willing. He went
to that cross willing. He asked God in one of his prayers
if it would be possible to take it away from him. But it was
not his will, it was the Father's will, is what he said. It had
to be done in order to save a few, save many. There's a lot there. Our sacrifice,
our great Christ. Lord Jesus Christ came to this
earth, walked it as a man, lived and fulfilled the law that we
couldn't. Didn't commit a sin. He was without
sin. But at that cross, he was made
sin for an offering for us. to bear our sins. What grace, what mercy. And Abraham stretching forth
his hand and took the knife to slay his son. That's what the
Lord did. The Lord had to shed his own
blood, his own son's blood to save ours and to cover our sins. And then it says, and the angel
of the Lord called out to him, called unto him out of the heaven
and said, Abraham, Abraham. You know, it's the first time
he called him and just said Abraham. This time it's urgent. He wanted to get Abraham's attention.
Isaac would have fulfilled nothing to have been sacrificed. He was
just a sinner like we were. And that angel stopped him, stopped
him quick, and said, lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither
do thou anything unto him. For now I know that thou fearest
God. We need to fear our God. Fear of the Lord is the beginning
of the wisdom. Fear of the Lord will make us
trust in the Lord and give him all the glory in everything that's
said, done, That we think we'll have this sin with us. As Paul
said, that I would do, I do not. And that I would do, that I do
not. So we need to take that to heart
and really pray to our Lord without ceasing. And Abraham lifted up his eyes
and looked, and behold, behind him a ram called in a thicket
by his horns. And Abraham went and took the
ram and offered him for a burnt offering instead of his son."
Can you imagine the grip that Abraham put on that ram? That's
what we need to do to our Christ. We need to put that grip on our
Christ. He is our salvation. But this was a substitute for
his son in this case. Isaac is no longer represent
Christ here. He he becomes the substitute or the one that the
substitute would die for That ram becomes Christ And Abraham he took hold of that,
you know, he he grabbed that bound that ram put him there
on that altar Shed its blood offered it for a burn offering Our What a substitute we have. Our God is gracious to us. He shows us kindness by revealing
himself to us, by keeping us from this world, giving us ears
to hear and a place to hear it in. All these things our Lord has
done for us. We need to come to Him with that
But that sacrifice, we need to lay hold of Christ. We need to
bring that sacrifice to our Lord. And Abraham, he called the name
of the place Jehovah-Jireh. Margin says that the Lord will
see or will provide. The Lord will see his redemption
through everyone that he put the Lord on the cross for. We'll
be saved, everyone. And he said that he put our sins
as far as from the east to the west, apart from me. In closing, I want to look at
one verse here in Hebrews 11. Starting with verse 17. The Lord even recorded a record
of this. Over in Hebrews, I believe Apostle
Paul wrote it. He said, by faith Abraham, when
he was tried, he offered up Isaac. And he had received the promises
offered up. his only begotten son, of whom
it was said that in Isaac shall thy seed be called. Accounting
that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from whence
also he received him in a figure. This was why Abraham trusted
the Lord. He knew The Lord had already told him
that this son was going to be the one that all his heir would
be through, that his nations would be because of him. So he knew that Isaac was the
chosen one in that, but he knew that the Lord could even raise
him from the dead if he allowed him to go through with that.
That was his trust in the Lord. May our Lord have mercy on us.