If you are inclined, let me encourage you, ask you to turn to Genesis 22. Nobody pays attention to the sermon title except the guy that writes it, but I think this sums it up. Abraham, Isaac, and the Gospel of Jesus. I've already mentioned I don't like to hear about Bible stories, Bible accounts, yes. We have here, not a tale, We have history. Jesus is the central person in all scripture. If you read a portion of scripture and you don't see him there, go back and reread it. And sometimes you have to look. I'll admit, there's some stuff in the Old Testament that fits not easy. But be looking for Jesus. So we're going to look at him, look for Jesus, in the person of Isaac. We're going to look for God, the Heavenly Father, in the person of Abraham. We're going to look to heaven by looking to Jerusalem by looking to Mount Moriah. As we're reading the account and talking, hopefully thinking together about this, I suppose in formal worship, I wouldn't do this so much, but I really, I'd like to be leading a Sabbath school class on this and asking questions and getting people's biblical input. So I've given you the heads up there in the psalm meditation, in the call to worship, what we just sang, and this little introduction, be watching for heaven and Jesus. After these things, God, so who's active? The hero isn't Abraham or Isaac. The hero is God, the doer. God, what did he do? What's the verb? Tested Abraham. Now let's be sure we've got our theology right. God didn't do that so he could learn something. He predestined all things which come to pass. The testing is not for God to learn something, but for Abraham. It has to do with character development. One of the reasons that basic training in the military is hard They want to teach you, you can't overcome. You can do more than you thought you could. You can stand more pain than you thought you could. You've got more grits and, if I wasn't such an august group, I'd say grits and guts. We're looking to develop that in America's warriors, and God is looking to develop that in Abraham. Let's face it, Abraham failed the test several times. He's got this cute chick for a wife, and what does he say? Oh, she's my sister, because they might kill me. I'm going to hide behind her skirts. Abraham needed to man up. God tested Abraham so Abraham would learn. God said to him, Abraham, by the way, I, yeah. Abraham, are you listening, boy? Do I have your attention? And I love his response. What does he say? Here am I, here I am, what do you want? And that's the right approach. Again, this has to do with military rank structure. If he's the boss, here am I, what do you want? I'm ready. Point me and I'll go. Great response of faith. We'll see this again. And God said, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah. Where's that? Jerusalem. and offer sacrifice, that's bloody, offer him, your son, there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you, turns out to be the Temple Mountain. So Abraham He didn't argue and he didn't dilly-dally. I like this. He gets up first thing in the morning. You got a job to do, get up and go do it. Rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him. We'll come back to them. And his son, Isaac. He didn't go up to kind of check things out. God said, bring your son and he brought him. That would have been tough to get him up that morning, wouldn't it? expecting that by nightfall you might have murdered him. He took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac, and he, Abram, Abraham, cut the wood for the burnt offering. Boy, this is starting to get real. This isn't theory. I just cut the wood, chopped it up, and he rose and went to the place of which God had told him. God doesn't always tell us where we're going. Young people, listen up. The Lord will sometimes lead you places you don't know and places you don't want to go, and the issue isn't to argue with God until you figure it out. When you have that sense that you need to be doing this, do it. Take wisdom from your parents, from the elderly people, from the folks in the church, but get up and go do. On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and he saw the place far off, because it's a mountain. Abraham said to his young men, these two guys that he took with him, stay here with the donkey. Watch this. I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again to you." How can that be? God said, kill him. And you're telling me, are you lying to them? I don't think so. I think he had belief, faith. God who has never failed me yet. Look at all he's done for me in a hard life. I don't know. And as a theologian, I'm not going to say this dogmatically, but he had a faith in a resurrection and there had never been one. I believe that he believed God could raise and would raise Isaac from the dead. That's hard to believe, something you've never seen or heard of. It's never happened in world history. But I love the old man's faith. Remember, he was 100 when Isaac was born. He's called a lad, a young adult male. He could have been as old, maybe he's 20. A little hard to say. we will go and come back to you." Incredible faith, faith for the journey. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. And I want to pause there for a moment. Verse 4, What jumped out at you about the life of Christ? On the third day, something was gonna happen, and then it's related to death, and it's related to resurrection? What are we looking at here on the third day? I think that was important, terribly important. Jesus is gonna be in the tomb, we say three days. Let's pay attention to Jewish timekeeping, He was buried at its dusk. It's the end of the day. He didn't spend a 24-hour day. The next day, he spent a 24-hour day. And the next morning, a great while before day. Jesus probably spent 30, 32, 34 hours in the grave. Jewish timekeeping, three days. And I think that's why God had him take three days. We're looking to the resurrection of Christ just as he was looking at the resurrection of Isaac. But I'd had mixed fears. You told me to kill him and you said we're coming back. The third day. We will go now talk for a moment. Verse six. Abraham took the the wood. Where do you see that in Jesus? He carries his cross. Now, he is so badly battered and beaten and mistreated, he couldn't carry it all the way. So yes, they did get another guy to carry it. But Jesus started out carrying the wood up the mountain to Golgotha. You see the parallels here, how this prefigures Jesus. Isaac, the figure of Jesus, is carrying the wood as Jesus would carry the wood. He has the fire and the knife. They both of them went together. Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father? And he said, here am I, my son. Here I am. What you need, I'm ready. And the young lad says, Behold, I see the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Well, wouldn't that have brought a lump to your throat? Well, you're it. But that's not what he said, is it? God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. Oh, that is pregnant with meaning. God will provide. I don't have to do it. He's got it. He's in charge. Absolute. Okay. He will provide for himself the land. The problem with death isn't death. The problem is what happens next. If you know Christ, it's a home going. You'll see the saints you've known and loved. You'll see Jesus face-to-face. You'll see your Heavenly Father face-to-face. It's a great thing. The Lord will provide for Himself. The issue is our relationship with Him, not our relationship with somebody on earth. If I make the Pope totally happy, that has nothing to do with going to heaven. God will provide himself the land. God had to have a perfect sacrifice. God is perfect. He made us innocent. We've turned our back on him We have to be reconciled to God the Father. It has to be His terms. He's the one who said, and He laid out the sacrificial system and all of that. He's the one who says, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. That's in place then of all of the other religious stuff. It reconciles us to God Himself. So that I no longer have to be in knee-knocking fear of what the eternal judge will do. When we die, we go into eternal judgment. He is not just the awesome and the holy God who punishes wrong. He's made himself known as our heavenly father. It's a home going, it's a family get together. God will provide himself the lamb. One of the names of Jesus is? Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world. Not a dumb sheep. The death of a sheep could not pay for the sins of a man, could not satisfy the infinite justice of the Holy God. It had to be the particular Lamb, Christ the Lamb of God, who perfectly kept the law, sinlessly lived, died innocently, That perfect sacrifice of one who was himself infinite can infinitely satisfy the infinite judgment of God. The Lord will provide himself the perfect lamb, not a four-legged one, for the burnt offering, my son. He's still calling him my son. Abraham still got skin in this game. And so they went, both of them together, with trust. Trust. When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there, laid the wood in order, and then what happens? You got to remember, Abraham is a hundred and, 10 or 20 years old. We're talking about, the Hebrew word is not specific enough about age. I wish he'd given us a number. He was 21 and able to vote or something, you know, but he doesn't. But a young man. Now we go back to those two guys waiting down the hill. If he had brought them up, And they watched what was going on. What would a normal human male do? He wouldn't stand there and let the boss kill his kid, would he? They were brought along in Jewish law, and Christ reiterates it, the truth in trial has to be established by two or three witnesses. And he's got two witnesses down here. And the other thing is, He doesn't want them, in my opinion, he doesn't want them there to intervene and get in the road. Man's plans cannot supersede God's and man cannot comprehend the infinite wisdom of God. And these big, big old country boys, boss, I think you flipped your lid. You are certainly not going to tie up that boy not on my watch. I mean, can't you kind of hear that? That's, by the way, one of the reasons God made men stronger than women. We are defenders and protectors of women, children, the old, the weak, the infirm. These guys are down here. They're not the bouncers. He didn't want them there, but they are there to testify what happened. So the crazy old man can't come down and give some story about the death of his son. The people come just a minute. laid the wood in order, and he bound Isaac. No 120-year-old man can outrationalize a 20-year-old man. What's Isaac doing? The same thing when he said to dad, hey, we got the wood, we got the knife, we got the fire, where's the lamb? In faith, in confidence in God, confidence in dad, he submits. Young people, there's a lesson. He submits. And the old man ties up Isaac and laid him on the altar. Actually, that'd be a pretty good trick for a 120-year-old man to pick up a mostly grown guy and put him up on a stack of wood. It happens. And Abraham I've thought of this so many times. By the way, I like knives. Anybody here like knives? I do. That son of his, he's the son of the covenant, remember? There was Ishmael. He was the son of the handmaid, adulterous, and he's going to produce a whole generation of nations and so on bad stuff. This is the covenant seed. This is the one through whom all of the promises are to be filled. Abraham has to be the most conflicted father in world history. How could you do that? Take the knife. And again, I'm not a Hebrew scholar, I'm not trying to impress you, but I think the reading of the Hebrew implies this. And I would certainly be conflicted. He gets right down to the knife. Isaac has got seven tenths of a second yet to live. The Lord called to Abraham from heaven And I should turn this off. I don't think he said Abraham We're down here to fractions of a second I'm thinking if there was some urgency in that he didn't he didn't want Abraham to miss this We've called it game over And Abraham says, here am I, sir. I'm ready, sir. What do you want, sir? Here am I. And God said, don't lay your hand on that lad. Don't do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, and now you know that you fear God. You know you have the faith to follow me in old age as you had the faith to follow me in smaller challenges in the past. You fear God. The evidence that I see is that you have not withheld your son, your only son from me. Again, your only son, the son of the covenant, the son of your wife, not the other woman, the one through whom Jesus Christ will come, the one who will walk up the same mountain, to the same place, to the same death, sacrificial death, and go through with it. Your only son. It's as Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked. I'm thinking there'd have been a whole lot of eye contact with that son and God says, hey, look around here. Looked and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. Scholars are so interesting and crazy. There was for a while a significant argument. Was the ram there all the time or did God miraculously put him there? It doesn't matter. He was there. However God wants to work it, it's fine with me. Behind Abraham was this ram caught in a thicket by his horns. Abraham went, pulled that ram out, and we don't know how old it was. The sacrifices were ordinarily a year or less old. Again, the scholars can argue that, and it doesn't matter. And he offered it. as a burnt offering instead of his son. I often try to avoid theological terms but here is substitutionary atonement. Abraham and all of us can be reconciled to God because he substituted the death of his son in the place of our death. substituted and we see the substitutionary atonement that great theological thing and it's well worth studying on its own it is important to me because this is us we are the beneficiaries of substitutionary atonement and so Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah Jireh the Lord will provide as it is said to this day On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided. I'm thankful that I don't have to, you don't have to, face a God of anger over our sin. That we face a God who loved the world so much he gave his only begotten Son. That whosoever believeth on him might not perish but have everlasting life. we worship in the fulfillment of this entire passage. Hopefully you have seen Jesus and God and judgment and hell and heaven and mercy and grace. God's blessing on the family and it did a part of this for us. The grandchildren that I work with don't have to be my biological grandchildren. We're talking about young people. We all have an obligation to young people to be providing them opportunities to share the gospel with them, get them to church camp, get them to family camp, get them to Christian activities. Can I give a personal opinion? Get them away from the digits. Fascinating to me, some of the richest people in the country, their kids have no computers, have no cell phones. I've seen that in the press twice. They know something you and I don't, maybe, about the addiction of it. We need, instead of leaving our kids in the world and hoping for the best, we need them to be out of the world and pleased with Christian schools and Christian homeschooling and families working together and lots of different arrangements, but parents and grandparents and great-grandparents who are footing the bill and paying the time and the effort to reach these kids for Christ. That's the most important thing for an education. And it is not an education when you send them to the university and they come back believing all this current left-wing stuff. They need to know who God is, who Christ is, need to know the stuff we've been talking about.