finishing it up. I was thinking
about, you know, there are some portions of Scripture, all of
the Word of God's precious to us. There's certainly no question
about that, but there are some passages that are real mountaintops. I think of the 22nd Psalm, which
David wrote it, but it's our Lord Jesus speaking, and Some
of what he said is indeed recorded in the New Testament. It's a
marvelous portion of Scripture. I think of Psalm 22 and another
Old Testament passage, I think of Isaiah 53. And that's such
a delightful portion of Scripture to us. We're never weary of reading
Isaiah chapter 53. I never will forget it was my
dad's favorite portion of Scripture. And he left instructions for
us when he was to be laid out in the casket. He said, my Bible
opened to Isaiah 53. I want everybody who walks by
to see that passage. So we had it facing those who
walked by his casket so they could see Isaiah 53. And it was
with prayer that they'd go home and read it. Just such a, it's
a mountaintop passage. and this one is as well. It is
just absolutely glorious. Now, in the Scriptures, there
are many instances of men who believe the Lord and their belief,
their faith is evidenced by their obedience. Earlier in the book
of Genesis, we have read and studied of Noah. And the Lord
told Noah to build an ark to the saving of his house, which
he faithfully did 120 years building and preaching. And Noah was a
preacher of righteousness, the scripture says. And I think of
Noah fulfilling the mission that God gave him, and he did so faithfully. But for all of those years, The
Scripture just says in Hebrews chapter 11, by faith Noah built
an ark to the saving of his house. He moved with fear because he
trusted God. He reverenced God. He worshipped
God. And so he moved. God said, build
an ark. He built an ark. It took him a long time to do
it. And I'm sure that he entertained quite a bit of mockery and that
kind of stuff. People threw all kinds of choice
words at him. You foolish man. What are you
doing? You're building something that
looks like some kind of contraption that would float in water where
there's not even been any rain. And I'm sure he put up with that
for years and years and years. Why do you keep on building?
Because he believed God. What an instance of faith. But we get to this portion of
Scripture, and here is Abraham. believing God and obeying what
God told him to do. And I would say this, of all
the recorded instances of faith and obedience set forth in the
Word of God, none is surpassed. None surpasses, I should say,
Abraham and the offering up of Isaac, with the exception of
our Lord Jesus, who was the perfect man who absolutely believed God. He never doubted. He never failed. He came into this world to save
his people from our sins. He said in Psalm 22 how he trusted
God. Hebrews chapter 2 and verse 13,
the Savior said, I will put my trust in him and again behold
I and the children which God hath given me. He was willing
to lay down his life for us and then to take it up again. He
said in Acts chapter two, and this is our Savior speaking so
positively and showing that he believed God without reservation. And this is quoted from the psalm,
thou wilt not leave my soul in hell. He fully believed God. He hoped in the Lord. He waited
for God. We ask God to strengthen our
faith and our hope and our love, and we trust that He will and
we believe that He will. But think of this, our Lord Jesus,
He had perfect faith. But He had to have that to save
us. He's got to be the perfect man.
He's got to be the one who identified with us, being bone of our bone
and flesh of our flesh, but He must exercise perfect confidence
in the Father. And He did just that. Never failed. Never failed. He knew something about living
in obedience to the will of God and believing God. And even those
around him, even the Jews, they knew he believed God. When our
Lord was dying upon the cross of Calvary, they said, he trusted
God. He trusted God. Let's see if
God will have him now. They mocked his faith in the
Father. But his faith never wavered.
or if there's anything to be said about our faith, at least
my faith, sadly, it's wavering faith. You know something about
that wavering faith? I'm so glad we got a perfect
Savior. He was obedient unto God all
the way to and including death. And when He died, He fully believed
that God would raise that body from the grave. He's the perfect
man, the Son of God, the righteous servant of Jehovah. Believing
that God would exalt Him someday. And indeed, He has been exalted. Let me show you three things
here. First of all, let's look at the faith of Abraham. The
faith of Abraham. This is a man who walked before
God believing the Lord. That doesn't mean that Abraham
was perfect. There are no perfect people in
this world. There are no perfect churches. If you ever find the
perfect church in this world, don't go to it because you'll
ruin it. Okay? Don't you dare attend it. You'll
mess things up for sure. People say, I'm looking for the
perfect church. Well, the perfect church is in
glory. That's the only place you're
going to find perfect church members. It's in glory. But as
we make our way toward heaven, well, we're going to find that
everybody is just made of flesh and blood and clay. We're clay
vessels. We're vessels of mercy. Indeed. God has prepared us unto glory. But we're still fickle men and
women. And we want to believe God. We
don't believe Him like we should. We do believe Him. And we do
love Him. I love the Lord. Don't you all
love the Lord? But I love Him because He first
loved me. And I don't love Him like I want to, and I don't love
Him like I ought to, and I don't love Him like I'm going to, but
I do love Him. That's what Peter, he fell back
on that and said, Lord, You know all things. You know I love You. And we do believe Him. We do
believe Him. And Abraham, he had his spells
of unbelief. when he told Sarah to tell the
king of Egypt and then the king of Bimelech, honey, don't tell
them you're my wife because they're liable to kill me. Just tell
them you're my sister. So Abraham, he's a liar too. He said, man, I'll not tell a
lie. All men are liars. It doesn't excuse us. I'm not
excusing lying. But if you tell me I don't lie,
I've had some parents say to me, my children, they don't lie. Well, I hope you'll wake up to
reality someday. The Bible says all are liars. Everybody. We lie when we're
little children, and as we get older, we just kind of perfect
it. We get better at it, just kind
of curbing the truth. You know what I'm talking about.
So Abraham had his spells of unbelief, but overall, this is
a man who believed God. And one of the beautiful things
to notice when you get to the book, like the book of Hebrews,
especially chapter 11, which is the faith chapter, the weaknesses
and the sinfulness and the transgressions and the disobedience of the people
of God aren't even mentioned. While we've already read when
the Lord said that I'm going to come back this season of the
year and Sarah's going to have a child, she's behind the tent
door and she laughs. Yeah, right. And the Lord said
to Abraham, why'd she laugh? Why'd she laugh? Nothing's impossible
with God. But you get to the book of Hebrews
11, by faith Sarah delivered a child. Aren't you glad your sins are
under the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ? They're not recorded
against you. No. They've been blotted out. That's how powerful the blood
of Christ is. That's how powerful His sacrifice
is. It wipes the slate clean and
gives to us a perfect righteousness in Christ. Well, where did Abraham get this
faith? Same place you get faith. God
had to give it to him. Faith is a gift. Faith is a gift. So we can't brag on Abraham too
much because he believed God, but he didn't believe God on
his own. He's just like you and me. He
was a sinful man to whom God gave quickening grace, made him
alive, and then gave him faith to believe God. Now that's a
great trial for this man's faith. What do we know about Abraham?
There's several things we know about him, just real quick. He's
a blessed man, because he's blessed with all spiritual blessings
in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. He was a called man, called
out of Ur of the Chaldees by effectual grace. He was a forgiven
man, forgiven of all of his sins. He was a righteous man. The Scripture
says he believed God. It was counted to him for righteousness.
He was righteous in and through that one whom he believed. Christ
is Jehovah Sitkanu, the Lord our righteousness. And he was
a preserved man. God kept him. God kept him. Even in those events in his life
when it seemed Abraham, his life was in jeopardy. God preserved
him. Let me tell you something. You
are immortal till God gets through with you. You know that? You're
immortal. Can't anything happen to you?
I've had some people who've written to me and they're concerned about
the COVID virus and things like that. And I really appreciate
people's concern for me. having some immune issues as
I have and you know that don't try not to get around my doctor
said don't even get around people. I'm not sure how I can avoid
that but I appreciate the concern that people have but I don't
worry about that. And you shouldn't worry about
it either. You shouldn't worry about your health. Take reasonable
care of yourself. Of course we do that. But don't
wear yourself, you know, I don't wanna put my life in jeopardy,
I don't wanna do this, I don't wanna do that. Let me tell you
something, every time you go out the door, you put your life
at risk in a sense. You get in a car, you eat food,
it could be bad. It could be contaminated. Take
reasonable precautions, but live your life for the glory of God. to worship the Lord and believe
Him. He preserves us. He keeps us
alive to the time that He's already ordained that we're going to
die. We ain't going to speed up our death. We ain't going
to slow it down either. A fellow told me one time, he said,
you know, I'm taking all these vitamins and I'm exercising.
I said, well, you know, you can't make yourself live any longer.
You're going to die one day. He said, yeah, but I want to
die healthy. I want to die healthy. Well, okay, that'd be kind of
nice to die healthy, I suppose. Maybe. But our lives are in the
Lord's hands. He preserved Abraham. He provided
for Abraham. Do you know you got a whole lot
more than Abraham had? He didn't live in a house. You
got a house over your head? Well, ain't much, but I got a
house, I got an apartment. That's more than he had. He lived in tents all his life. I bet that really bothered him.
He said, no, I'm looking for a city. I'm looking for a city
that's got foundations, the city of God. Years ago, I was visiting with
a man in a nursing home. Bless his heart, he'd lost everything. His wife had died. They'd spent
all their money, had to sell their house to pay for their
nursing home bills, and he had to drop down to a nursing home
that would accept payment from Medicaid. He had nothing. Bare room, tile floor, And I
was visiting with him. He started crying. He said, you
know preacher, I worked hard all my life. He said, I got nothing
to show for it. I said, well, I'll tell you this. His name was Ed. I'll tell you
this, Ed. You're a child of God, aren't
you? You believe the Lord Jesus Christ? Oh, yes. I said, well,
you've got a whole lot more, infinitely more than most people
have got. I said, yeah, it's true. Bare walls, no furniture except
for the bed, and a dilapidated dresser drawers. I'll tell you something. You
have Christ the King. You have God for your father.
You have the Holy Spirit for your guide and comforter. You're
rich. And he said, yeah, I am. But
he said, you know, I don't have anything. I've got nothing to
show for all my work. And he was a hard worker. There's
no question about that. Even when he was in his early
80s, he still delivered pizzas. So they stopped him from doing
that because he made turns from the wrong lane. He was just a
hard worker. I said, I'll tell you something,
Ed. When everybody dies, they leave everything that they've
worked so hard for, they leave it all behind. So if you got
nothing to leave behind, what does it matter? We get really
attached to things, don't we? Abraham was a man whose needs
were provided. But I'll tell you something else.
He was a tested man. And every child of God is going
to be tested. You're going to be tested. Every
day. And I think a lot of times, I
was thinking about this testing business today. You know, so I hope one of these
big trials doesn't get me. You know what the script says?
It's the little foxes that spoil the vine. Little things get under
your skin and aggravate you. First thing you know, you're
not believing God at all. But he was a man of faith. He believed God. And when this was finished, he's
the one who gave the name to this place in verse 14. He called the name of that place
Jehovah Jireh. As it is said to this day, it
became a proverb, in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.
The Lord will provide. And then here's a picture. Let
me get into this. This is especially important. A picture of God and His Son.
Abraham pictures God the Father and Isaac pictures the Lord Jesus
Christ. Verse 3, Abraham rose up early
in the morning, no delay, didn't hesitate, saddled his ass, took
two of his young men with him and Isaac his son, and he took
the wood, He rose up and went to the place that God had told
him of. Our Lord Jesus was taken by the
Father to that place of death. That's what Abraham is doing.
He's taking Isaac to the place of death. Our Lord Jesus was escorted by
the Father, led by the Father to that place of death, ordained
before the foundation of the world. It was a death that God
purposed. Because there's no other way
to save sinners. Christ had to die. The cross
of Christ is said to be according to the determinate will and counsel
of God. God determined what had to be
done. And God ordained where this death of Isaac would take
place. A mount of God's choosing, the
mount was Moriah, which means chosen by Jehovah. Chosen by
Jehovah. If you want to take a note here,
2 Chronicles chapter 3 and verse 1, this will later become Jerusalem. Jerusalem. That's where the temple
will be built. And just outside of Jerusalem,
we know what happened there on Mount Calvary. That's where the
Savior died. Now two men accompanied Abraham
and Isaac. for a ways, for a little ways. It said, Abraham, you know, he
was in Beersheba, which is in the land of Gerar, the land of
the Philistines. And that's about, they say about
60 miles, 60 miles from Beersheba in Gerar to Mount Moriah. 60 miles. Three days. Three days
journey. 20 miles a day. walking maybe two and a half
miles an hour. That's not a real fast pace,
but it's a continual pace. Walking about eight hours a day,
something like that. Three day journey. And they'd
stop and spend the night. Now, you put yourself in Abraham's
shoes. Spend the night. Build a little campfire. I'm sure he brought a little
food. Well, Isaac, about time for some shut-eye. And Isaac
unrolls a blanket or something, whatever it is, sleeping bag
of sorts. He goes to sleep. Don't you know
Abraham looked at that boy? You're thinking about the promises
of God. In Isaac shall thy seed be called. Isaac wasn't even married yet. He doesn't have any seed yet.
He doesn't have any children yet. In Isaac shall thy seed
be called. Is this going to stop Abraham
from continuing on his journey? No. I wonder if the thought came
to him, how am I going to explain this to Sarah? He didn't hesitate to do what God
told him to do. You know, he lived in a heathen
land. All these lands he's traveling
through, they worship false gods. and they thought that their gods
could be appeased, the heathen now, thought that their gods
could be appeased by the animals that they brought, they believed
in sacrifices too. But if it was really something
big, you know what sacrifice did it bring? Their child. And Abraham, being a man who
believed God, he preached against idolatry. He preached against
that. I wonder if he thought, what's
a heathen going to think of me if I kill my own son? But he didn't hesitate. He kept
on going. Kept on going. After three days, they get to
the place where God showed him. And Abraham says to the young
men, y'all stay back here. It's between me and my boy. Those two men, those two servants
kind of remind me of those two thieves that one died on either
side of the Savior. But when it came time for the
transaction, you reckon they're going to be able to look on and
see what's going on? No. God's going to put His hand
over the son. and there's just darkness. Three
hours. Nobody's going to enter into
the transaction between the Father and the Son. Nobody's going to see. Nobody's
going to watch. No peering eyes. No curious onlookers. They can't
even see their hands in front of their faces. They hear that
man dying on the middle cross, say, my God, my God, why hast
Thou forsaken me? And I'm sure they wondered, what
in the world's going on? Just like these two servants,
they stay behind. Tell you what, when God the Father
exacted from His only begotten Son the full debt that our sins
deserve to be punished with the full indebtedness that we owe
to the justice of God. Nobody was there but the Father
and the Son. And who can ever begin to commence
to get started understanding all of the wrath that the Father
poured on His Son? The Bible says God was in Christ
reconciling the world. unto himself. And then Abraham took the wood
of the burnt off. He laid it on his son Isaac.
He laid it on him. And so, Christ bore his cross. Very interesting verse. I won't
take the time to turn to it, but I do want to read it to you.
You can jot it down. John 19 and 17. Speaking of Christ. And He bearing His cross. Not a cross. Not the cross. The Holy Spirit is very specific. And He bearing His cross. He was appointed to this cross.
You know why it's His cross? God purposed for it to be His
cross. You know why it's His cross?
Because He willingly accepted this duty, this work. It's His
cross. And it's His cross by law and
justice. He's got to bear His cross. Bear
His cross. I quoted just a little bit of
the song Susanna sang a few weeks ago. I should have been crucified. I should have suffered and died. I should have. But the Son of God died in my
place." Abraham puts the wood on his
son, and then Isaac says, my father? And Abraham said, here am I,
my son. And Isaac said, behold the fire
and the wood, but where is the lamb for burnt offering? That
young man knew more than most preachers everywhere today know. Preachers don't know anything
about this. Well, the vast majority of them
don't know about this. Where is the Lamb? Isaac knew
this. You can't worship God without
a lamb as a sacrifice. You just can't worship God. You
can call it worship if you want to. But it's not worship if it's
not Christ the Lamb who's magnified. Christ who died. Christ who's
slain by the judgment of God. He said God will provide Himself
a lamb. God will be the Lamb Himself. That's what He's saying. God's
going to be the Lamb. And John the Baptist identified
Him when he said, Behold, the Lamb of God that taketh away
the sin of the world. So they both went together. They
came to the place. He laid the wood in order. In
verse 9, He bound Isaac. Isaac is a willing sacrifice. We speak of the faith of Abraham,
but we must also speak of the faith of Isaac. Abraham said, wood goes up there
on the altar I just built. You climb up there. And you lay
down on top of that wood. Yes, Father. Yes, Father. How old are you? 17? 17 years old. That's how old Isaac
was. Isn't that something? Put yourself
in his shoes. And Abraham, verse 10, stretched
forth his hand, took the knife, he's ready to kill him. You say,
oh, how horrible this is! Let me tell you something, a sacrifice
to God is a very necessary thing. And here's where we really, for
the first time, get an understanding that that sacrifice that God
is going to offer to put away the sins of His people must be
a man. Must be a man. We got a little
indication of that back in Genesis 3.15, the seed of the woman. But if there's any doubt as to
what that meant, here it's clarified. It's got to be a man. A man of
God's choosing. And I know Isaac is going to
be released, but you know why he has to be released? He's not
a perfect sacrifice. He's a sinner. He can't be the substitute or
He can't be the sin offering. He can't be the burnt offering
that will satisfy God. Because He's a polluted man. Polluted with sin. The only sacrifice
that we'll do to put our sin away has got to be the sacrifice
of a perfect man. The God man. So Isaac can't die. He can't be the redeemer. And the Lord says to Abraham,
stop! Don't you hurt that boy. Lord, I'm doing what you told
me to do. I know you fear me. And now all
who read this passage, even May the 19th, 2021, will know this
man feared God. We know that now. He feared God. He reverenced God. He believed
God. And the Lord in his purpose and
providence, he had a ram wander away from somebody's flock And he gets
caught up in the bars, in the thicket. Boy, who would ever
think that'd happen? God owns all the rams in the
world. And he's going to have a substitute
for Isaac. Abraham, look over yonder. See
that ram caught in the thicket by its horns? Offer him up for
a burnt offering in the stead of your son. And he did. See, God offered up his son in
the stead of you. In the stead of you. In my stead. We should have been bound to
the altar. We should have felt the knife
of God's justice and the fire of His wrath and vengeance. But
no, never will feel it. It won't come to us. Why not? The perfect substitute died in
the stead of His people. Which brings me to the last thing
I want to say. Here's Jehovah Jireh. God will
provide. Verse 14. Notice there, if you have a center
column, which my Bible does, it says, verse 14, Jehovah Jireh,
that is, the Lord will see or He will provide. The Lord will
see or He will provide. Literally, the Lord will see
to it. He'll see to it that the proper sacrifice is offered,
The Lord will see to it. I had wonderful grandparents. The Fergusons on my mother's
side and the Byrds, of course, on my dad's side. But I was especially
very close to my grandfather Byrd. And he worked at Bassett Furniture
Company. I loved to go home with him.
And he would tell me he was going to give me something or do something
for me. And he said, don't worry, Jim.
He called me Jimmy. Don't worry, Jimmy. I'll see
to it. And boy, I knew when my granddaddy
told me he'd see to something, he was as good as done. I mean,
if it could be done, he was going to do it. He was going to do
it. I sure would like a lemon pie.
I'll see to it. Drop a lemon pie by the hand.
Lemon meringue pie. He'd drop a lemon meringue pie.
I'll see to it. And God says to all of His children
regarding all of our needs, I'll see to it. Can you just... I trusted my
grandfather's word. I knew he was not going to lie
to me. When he said, I'll see to it, Terry, I said, okay. That's good. You already met.
Tell me a second time. He always kept His Word. God
said, I'll see to it. I'll see to it. I'll see to it
that the proper sacrifice dies. Hundreds and hundreds of years
went by. And the proper sacrifice died. God said, I'll see to it. I'll
see to it. This also means God will be seen. You see some things about God
from the substitutionary death of the Lord Jesus Christ. You
see the love of God. Hearing His love, not that we
love God, but God loved us. Sent His Son to be propitiation
for our sins. You see the holiness of God.
You see the justice of God. You see the grace of God. I tell you, in that mount where
our Lord Jesus Christ died, a whole lot to be seen about God there. And we know that God will provide
that which is necessary. God provided for Isaac. One to
die in His place. No need for Isaac to ever be
it to be a worrier about this, God's going to see to it that
he had a substitute die for him. And I want you as a child of
God to remember the book of Philippians chapter 4 and verse 19. It isn't
written to everybody. This was a church, the people
of the congregation in Philippi, they gave again and again to
the Apostle Paul. I mean, even to the point that
they did without themselves. And he commended them for their
generosity to them. And he said, I want you to know
this, God will Himself supply all your
needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. I read
Sunday morning, Psalm 84 verse 11, No good thing will He withhold
from them that walk uprightly. God will take care of His children. He'll take care of you. And you
may not get all you want, But He will supply your need. What
do you need? You need forgiveness. You need
righteousness. You need His presence. Guess
what? You got it. You got all three
of them. You got His Spirit to guide you,
comfort you. You got His Word to read and
study. You got church. meet with folks who love the
same gospel. You even got a fellow who'll
stand behind the pulpit and tell you the truth. He ain't the best,
but I do have the right message. That's for sure. I close with
this story. I think I've told it to you before,
but Charles Spurgeon, his grandfather was a Presbyterian preacher.
And he went out a Sunday afternoon. He took the train out to go preach
for his grandfather. And the train was late. Charles
was late getting there. And so they had some songs or
whatever, and then the grandfather just got up and began to preach.
Opened his Bible to a passage of Scripture and began to preach.
Here comes Charles in the door late. That's embarrassing. Come in late. And then his grandfather
looked up and said, here comes my grandson, Charles. He can
preach the Gospel better than I can, but he can't preach a
better Gospel. We've got the Gospel. The only
Gospel. God help us to believe it and
just trust God to take care of us. Let's pray. We thank You for the privilege
to sit under the truth, to be fed from the Holy Scriptures,
and to see in Abraham a picture and type, a figure of God our
Father. Jehovah Jireh, the One who provides,
the One who sees to it that everything we need, we will have in Christ
Jesus. And we thank You for the picture
of Isaac. A picture at first of Christ
our Savior, who willingly laid down His life for us, but then
the picture changes and Isaac, suddenly he becomes a picture
of us. And a suitable substitute was found to die in his stead.
Of course, we know that ram, the blood of that ram couldn't
put sins away. All of the animal sacrifices,
they were unable to put away any transgression. Couldn't put
one away. The blood of bulls and goats
couldn't take sin away. But that ram pictured the one
who would come in the stead of, he would die in the stead of,
the people of God. He pictured Christ the Savior
that Ram did. The perfect Son of God. And as
we begin, so we will end, substitution and satisfaction. Oh Lord, we
thank You for the Gospel. Send us home rejoicing in the
Savior, in whose name I pray. Amen.