Fellowship Church Messages
7/14/24 - Genesis 22:1-14 - "Here I Am"
today. We thank you for the beautiful Dave given to us. We thank you for this being VBS Sunday, the closing program for what a just a fantastic week that you gave to us here. The kids were well behaved. They listened to Mr. Jackson and the lessons from your word. They had fun playing the games and eating the snacks and making the crafts. And Lord, it's all to I want to give all the glory to you. Thank you for the volunteers who helped out tremendously. And we thank you that everything went smoothly for the most part. Lord, we thank you that the stories that we learn from the Bible, whether we learn them as kids, maybe it's been a long time since we've really read something in your word or heard a story from your word. And maybe the last time we heard something was when we were a kid. And we came out to a vacation Bible school. But Lord, we thank you that as Elder Long prayed, there are there are superheroes and comic books and movies. But Lord, you are the ultimate and only real superhero. You not only created us, but you provided a way for us to be saved from our sin. You paid the price for us. You are the one who rescued us. Like a superhero would somebody from a burning building. And then you're coming back for us. We put our full faith and trust in you. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. So you heard Elder Long mention a story about his childhood. So I'm going to start things off our message this morning. I have a question for the Gen Xers. Who hears a Gen Xer? Nobody? Come on. One person? All right. Or the Millennials. Maybe we'll got more hands here. Okay. There should be more Millennials here. All right. So if you were born in the 70s as a Gen Xer or you were born in the 80s or the early 90s as a millennial, I got a question for you. Everybody ready? Okay. What is this? I'll turn this on first. What is that? All right. If the VBS kids were still up here, they may say, yeah, what is that? If you had a beloved VHS tape as a kid, and I'm talking so beloved that you watched it to death, right? What usually tended to happen to that tape? Try pulling it out. What happened to it? It got stuck in the VCR, and when you tried pulling it out, what would happen? You'd pull out a bunch of tape out with it, right, out of the VHS. Same thing with cassette tapes. Then once DVDs came out, you had to make sure what didn't happen to those DVDs. They didn't get scratched. Good job, guys. All right. You, you passed the test. And sometimes as kids, we would watch those VHS tapes so much, what would happen? We'd have the entire movie memorized, right? And be able to quote it, line for line, much to the annoyance of our parents. We're going to talk about a part of a true historical account of a man today who lived about 4,000 years ago, who the VBS kids also learned about this week. And this story has been taught so many times that we've perhaps lost some of the full meaning of it and what it still means for us today. That account I'm talking about is of a man named Abraham, and to be more specific, the account I'm talking about is of God calling Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with Abraham outside of the fact that there was a U.S. president who had the same first name, Abraham had to trust God literally his entire life. Well, at least starting from age 75 onward. There was never a moment when he could relax and rely upon that which he could see and what he was used to. In fact, when we first meet Abraham in the book of Genesis, his name wasn't even Abraham. It was what? Abraham. Find out from scripture that Abraham lived in Mesopotamia and grew up in a thoroughly pagan home. Abraham and his family were worshipers of the Mesopotamian moon God. That's how he was raised. Furthermore, when Abraham was nearing 75 years old, there was pretty much not one person living on the face of the earth who worshiped the one true God. So that one true God himself broke into human history and called this man Abraham out of everyone who worshiped pagan deities on the earth, which were really demons in actuality to put his faith in the one true God. God called Abraham and his wife Sarai to leave his father's household, which meant leaving his father's inheritance and everything he was familiar with, but most importantly, leaving his father's pagan gods. And to go to a land he had never been to and didn't know where he was going. Just to put your faith in the one true God who revealed himself to you and actually follow through with that command took a lot of faith to begin with. When you say, Abraham and Sarai were also unable to have any children and Abraham was all set to leave his inheritance to his head servant. But the same God promised Abraham that he would supernaturally and miraculously give him and Sarai a son, even when they were already past childbearing years, and that son would be the ancestor of descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the grains of sand on a seashore. Only God could make a promise like that. Only God could keep a promise like that. Around the same time that God made that promise to Abraham, he made a promise that he would give the land of Canaan, which would become Israel to those descendants. And when God made that promise to Abraham, God changed his name from Abram, which simply meant exalted father, a somewhat cruel irony considering Abram couldn't have any children at that point, to Abraham, which meant father of nations. Sarai's name originally meant my princess, so maybe some of you ladies here had a similar experience. You can tell who was the pampered one in that household, who may have been the only girl in that household, and God changed it to Sarah, meaning mother of nations. In both of these cases, God changed their names based on God's promise to them and God's fulfillment of it. Abraham and Sarah would try to make that promise happen in their understanding and timing of the only way they could see it happening, and Sarah giving her servant Hagar to Abraham as his concubine, who conceived and bore a son named Ishmael. But that was not God's promise, and that wasn't God's plan. And it was a sinful decision on Abraham and Sarah's part. As such, Abraham had to send Hagar and Ishmael away eventually. Finally, in the midst of all of that, God's promise to Abraham and Sarah came true. In spite of being well-passed, naturally childbearing years, God miraculously had Sarah conceive and give birth to a son, the son of promise, a boy named Isaac. Since he was the son of God's promise, which God fulfilled, Isaac's name means rejoicing in laughter. You would think that was the end of the story, wouldn't you? They all lived happily ever after. That's it. Cue the credits. Well, God wasn't done stretching Abraham's faith. As many of us know all too well. And so, God introduces yet another trial in Abraham's life to test and stretch his faith. As we go through this passage, we're going to see three instances of Abraham responding to God with, "I'm here. Here I am." Each instance reveals something we need to understand about this account in human history, about faith, and about God. The first instance of, "I'm here," or, "Here I am," occurs in Genesis 22, 1 through 5. So, if you brought your Bible with you today, please turn to Genesis chapter 22. We're going to be in the first five verses here. If you didn't, that's okay. There should be one located in the pew in front of you. Please also turn to Genesis chapter 22, or look this up on your favorite Bible app, on your smartphone. If you're having trouble finding it, it's the very first book in the Bible. So, just take it from the cover and just keep flipping forward. You'll get to it. Genesis 22, first part of verse 1. Now, it came about after these things, or these events. Well, what are these things? What are these events? Well, among other events, the most pertinent event to our passage here is that Isaac is born. Some time passes, and now Isaac has grown into a pre-adolescent boy, probably about 12 years old. So, Isaac would have been allowed to come to our VBS this past week. We would have led him through these younger than 13. Thank you to the two of you who chuckled at that. It's after these events that God gives Abraham another command. Second part of verse 1. God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, "Here I am." There's the first instance of that. He first calls out to Abraham, and Abraham answers, not knowing what God would say next. The first, "Here I am," denotes trust in God. That Abraham knew he had to listen to and trust God no matter what God might say. What's God's command this time? Verse 2. He said, "Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you." This is part of our scripture reading a few minutes ago. Now, there are several things that we need to understand about this command. As one factor, it was regular practice in the land of the Canaanites, where Abraham was at the time for parents to sacrifice children to the Canaanite God of fertility. In order to continue to have fertility of the field, they sacrificed crops. In order to continue to have fertility of the livestock, they sacrificed animals. In order to continue to have fertility of the womb, they sacrificed children. Now, wonder the apostle Paul in the New Testament refers to so-called pagan deities as demons in reality. This practice was well known by Abraham and was well known by everyone else in the region. So, one of the questions that may have crossed Abraham's mind was, is God requiring me to do something similar? Next, God wasn't commanding Abraham to sacrifice one of his children. He was commanding him to sacrifice his only son, whom he waited his entire life for. He already had to send his other son Ishmael away already. Now, God was telling him to kill his other son, whom he loved dearly. This was another test of Abraham's obedience. He had already given up everything to move to a foreign land and be a foreign nerve for the rest of his life. He already had to trust God by waiting to have a son in his old age. Now, God was telling him to obey him in this extreme test as well. What was Abraham's response? Does he linger while he tries to figure out what his next step should be? Does he say to himself, "I'll pray about what I should do?" No, verse three. So, Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son and his split wood for the burn offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. He gets up at first light. He doesn't hem and haw. He doesn't think about it. He doesn't pray on it. He doesn't take his time at all. He obeys God without any hesitation, verses four through five. On the third day, after their traveling, Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance. Abraham said to his young men, "Stay here with the donkey and I in the lad will go over there and we will worship and return to you." Here's where we catch a glimpse into what Abraham is thinking here. Regardless of what the surrounding Canaanites were doing with their child sacrifices, Abraham knows that God made a promise to him and God made good on that promise. Promised to his son, he gave him that son. How could God promise that a nation would come from his son and then have Abraham kill that promise and allow that promise to stay dead? Abraham refuses to believe that God is either capricious or a liar and instead trusts in God's perfect goodness. Why do we know this? As biblical scholars point out, the verbs translated as worship and return here in the Hebrew are plural. So Abraham is saying in verse five, "We will worship and we will return to you." You see that? We have a huge clue as to what Abraham was thinking, what he had concluded in his mind and heart and what he probably told himself, this entire journey from home to Mount Moriah in the New Testament book of Hebrews. In that book, the author writes, "By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac and the one who had received the promises, was offering up his only son. It was through he to whom it was said, 'Through Isaac, your descendants shall be named.'" He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead from which he also received him back as a type. We'll get to what was meant as the word a type as we get towards the end of this message. But what is clear from this at this point is that Abraham fully believed that God was requiring him to sacrifice Isaac to follow through with it. But he also fully believed that God could and God would raise Isaac back from the dead in order to still keep his promise to Abraham of innumerable descendants. Logically, you can't have countless descendants if the one through which those descendants are supposed to come is dead at the age of 12 and unmarried. There may be situations in our lives that look in every human understanding impossibly bleak. Do we see beyond that impossibly bleak situation though and to the promises that God has already made to his children? Do we see beyond that impossibly bleak situation to trust that God will make good on his promises that he will preserve us and our faith, that he knows every one of our needs before we even know what they are and will provide for every single one in his timing and that when Jesus returns, he will make everything about us brand new. We've now come to the second instance of here I am found in verses six through nine. Abraham took the wood of the burn offering and laid it on Isaac his son and he took in his hand the fire and the knife so the two of them walked on together. Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said my father and he said here I am my son and he said behold the fire in the wood but where is the lamb for the burn offering? Abraham said God will provide for himself the lamb for the burn offering my son so the two of them walked on together. Here we find out that Isaac is at least grown up enough for Abraham to be able to lay all the wood for the burn offering on his back. As one biblical scholar notes if Isaac is old enough and big enough to carry all the wood for the burn offering Isaac is old enough and big enough to fight back against his father at any point when it's just the two of them here and run away. We can imagine the anxiety building up inside of Isaac right now he's thinking to himself here. Something's missing here and undoubtedly Isaac wasn't living under a rock he would have heard about the other boys and girls his age being sacrificed to the Canaanite God. We think we as adults have wild imaginations about what something could mean but remember as a child how much wilder your imagination was about what something could mean right and in this case it was going to be Isaac's most extreme fear of what was happening. This is what prompts Isaac's response again beginning part of verse seven. Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said my father uh dad and here we have the second time that Abraham says I'm here here I am but he adds my son. He knows what Abraham what he knows what is going through Isaac's mind here he knows it he can see he knows his son he can see the wheels turning in his mind he knows how much anxiety is tearing his son up inside so I'm sure he anticipates what Isaac is about to ask and then Isaac asks it and he said behold the fire in the wood but where is the lamb for the burnt offering. That's a pretty fair question of Isaac to ask Abraham. Isaac is a smart guy he's putting all the pieces together it's not that Isaac is confused Isaac is more so thinking surely this can't be happening. Abraham responds with verse eight God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering my son. As one biblical scholar points out from the way this is written in the Hebrew language the best translation and therefore understanding of this especially taken along with what we have already talked about from the book of Hebrews is that Abraham is really saying in verse eight God is providing the lamb think about it in that light where is the lamb for the burnt offering God is providing the lamb in other words Abraham is referring to Isaac as that lamb that's why Isaac doesn't ask the question again as he's being tied up and laid on the altar this is huge both Abraham fully knew that God was requiring him to willingly sacrifice Isaac and now Isaac fully knows and understands that God is requiring him to willingly be that sacrifice. We always talk about and focus on the trust that Abraham had in God all this time but we never really think about Isaac's trust in God all this time. This is why when you read this story in Genesis 22 Isaac does not fight back that's not in the text at all Isaac doesn't fight back. You don't think Isaac could have taken his old man on or at least come up with a way to escape after they left everyone else behind and well before they got to the top of the mountain surely he had multiple opportunities but at this point in verse eight the realization dawns on Isaac that he is to be the willing sacrifice and he also goes through it in the same way his father does. We end verse eight with Isaac's willing continuance with his father knowing full well what lay ahead of him finally we come to verse nine then they came to the place of which God had told him and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood even though it's incredibly difficult we see that Abraham is obedient to God and Isaac is obedient to God through being obedient to his father again Isaac doesn't resist and doesn't fight back but willingly lets his father tie him up and lay him on the altar and God asks us to trust him it is not always easy in fact we'll go out on a limb here and say it's never easy or else God would never ask us to trust him with it he may have us walk through a period of our lives with question marks hanging over our heads wondering what the outcome will be God may call us to trust him with something that we cannot see the ending of yet or the or we see the ending and the ending is downright scary yet even in the midst of that waiting period God calls us to still trust him why because he's sovereign he's the one in complete control of everything his thoughts and ways are outside of our realm of limited and fallen human understanding he has his plan he is working out that plan and we know that God causes all things not just some things all things to work together for good to those who love God to those who are called according to his purpose the third and last here I am section starts in verses 10 through 11 Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said Abraham Abraham and he said here I am Abraham goes through with his obedience to God even to the action of raising his knife over his son and right before he plunges that knife into his beloved son Abraham Abraham he hears and we can imagine Abraham without hesitation shouting this to the angel of the Lord making sure that being heard him hey hey I'm here here I am tell me what you want to tell me and then Abraham waited on the edge of his seat to hear what the angel of the Lord said to him next sometimes God will wait until the very last second and our minds anyways before he acts we always have to remember that whatever he does he will do in his perfect timing next the angel of the Lord says this in verse 12 he said do not stretch out your hand against the lad and do nothing to him for now I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your son your only son from me God tells Abraham to stop and not go through with the sacrifice of his son the whole point of God's test was to see how far Abraham would go in his obedience to God and it was to see how much he not only trusted God's plan and how much he trusted God's promise but also how much Abraham trusted God's character God provides the animal sacrifice instead verses 13 through 14 then Abraham raised 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 place of his son Abraham called the name of that place the Lord will provide as it is said to this day in the Mount of the Lord it will be provided what God is doing here and providing the animal sacrifice according to one biblical scholar is this God is establishing the concept of substitutionary sacrifice which he will further establish in his future law to Moses and those Israelite descendants of Abraham and then Isaac with substitutionary animal sacrifices for sin and most importantly the substitutionary sacrifice for sin let's go back to the reiteration of this account from the book of Hebrews and that phrase as a type that I told you we were going to come back to you consider that God is able to raise people even from the dead from which he also received him back as a type a type of what a type of human sacrifice that would come back from the dead in resurrection does that sound familiar at all to anybody here you may be here this morning and you may not be so-called religious but you've at least heard of that concept of biblical Christianity Jesus sacrificing himself for our sins and then rising again from the dead in fact is noted by biblical scholarship this whole account of God calling Abraham to sacrifice his only son Isaac is a type or a prophetic pattern for and reference to what would happen 2,000 years later from that point firstly in the Hebrew the term for Isaac is only son in verse 12 but that should be better translated as unique son one of a kind son Abraham didn't only have one son right he had two he also had ishmael which we talked about at the beginning of this message but Isaac was the unique son that is the son in connection with God's promise to Abraham we see this exact same meaning and understanding in the Greek language translated into the English in the famous verse John 3 16 no doubt many of us have heard this as well for God so loved the world that he gave his only son we see that phrase show up again so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life have eternal life the Greek word used there for only before son or only begotten depending on your English translation literally means only one in its class or one of a kind or the truest definition of unique the only one that exists for anyone here who collects any kind of collectibles or baseball cards or football cards or anything if there was only one of those one specific card that was made that would be extremely valuable wouldn't it because it was only one of a kind there was no others made the only one that exists the second person of the Trinity equal in being nature and essence known as the son of God fully submitted to God the father's plan for the salvation of humanity the son of God actually already shows up throughout the Old Testament as the reference the angel of the Lord before he also becomes 100 human at the beginning of the New Testament so when we come to this account of Abraham and Isaac here you might have picked up on this already the stunning realization is that the pre incarnate or before he put on human flesh son of God the one who tells Abraham to stop before he actually follows through this with the sacrifice of his son is the same exact one who will fully follow through as the willing sacrifice as the son of God that son of God adds full humanity to his full deity and was named Jesus or as we looked at the meanings of Abraham and Sarah's and Isaac's names Jesus is the English translation of the name meaning the Lord is salvation not the Lord gives salvation the Lord is salvation truly God is the very salvation for us as humans in every way but most importantly from our sin just as Isaac carried the heavy wood for the sacrifice on his back as the material for him to be sacrificed upon Jesus carried the heavy wood of the cross on his back as the material for him to be sacrificed upon just as Isaac even when the realization dawned on him that he was the sacrifice still went willingly in obedience to his father the New Testament book of Philippians tells us that Jesus knew full well what the plan was and still went willingly to be the sacrifice and obedience to the father but unlike God the father stopping Abraham from following through the sacrifice of his son through God the son's message both God the father and God the son fully followed through with what was the required sacrifice for humanity's sin in order to rescue us from the destination that that sin only ever just fully deserves an eternity spent in the torments of a literal place called hell Jesus paid the price that was required for our sin death as a substitute on our behalf to rescue us from our sin and that hell just as just as as soon as Abraham obeyed what God the father had commanded him to do in the first place and then heard the voice of who in reality was God the son calling to him to stop what he was doing the only way for us to be restored to God the father because of the separation our sin makes between us and him is to put our faith and trust in the substitutionary sacrifice of God the son for that sin and listen to the third person of the Trinity of God the Holy Spirit calling out for us calling out to us to stop what we're doing and to surrender ourselves to God this surrender according to God's word is a surrender of our sin and who we are also known as repentance or turning from that sin in ourselves and turning to God asking for forgiveness of that sin and wanting nothing to do with living for it anymore we must surrender in repentance of sin based solely on Jesus paying for our sin on our behalf we must surrender ourselves to him by surrendering ourselves to Jesus as king when we do that we become a brand new person being indwelled by the Holy Spirit who seals us for our eternal home in heaven and transforms us into the likeness of Jesus see we cannot earn our own salvation or follow enough sacraments or do enough good works to try to outweigh the bad the only thing we can do to be given entrance into heaven is to surrender our sin and who we are based on Jesus's sacrifice and resurrection as a substitutionary sacrifice on our behalf the newness of a person based on trust in what Jesus did for us is described in God's word as being born again or saved from our sins and hell God made a promise to Abraham that only God could fulfill and that God did fulfill that's known as the Abrahamic covenant God made another promise to all who would put their faith and trust in what Jesus's death and resurrection accomplished for us that's called the new covenant of salvation based on the sacrificial blood of Jesus and it's only a promise it's only a covenant that God could fulfill not on anything we could do for ourselves and it's one that God did fulfill just as this message was based on the sacrifice that God called Abraham and Isaac to the ultimate point of the message this morning is the fulfillment of that and based solely on the sacrifice that Jesus made for us in order to restore us to God and give us eternal life with him in heaven forever if you've never come to God in prayer ask for forgiveness of your sin and turn away from that towards God surrendering your life to Jesus's king and all based on Jesus's death and resurrection on your behalf I implore you to do so right now none of us have any clue when our earthly lives will end then it will be too late it is the very most important surrender and commitment you could make if you have done that remember all that Jesus has done for us and all that he has opened up for us the truth that he teaches us in his word which is the only source of truth in this confusing and dark world the peace with God that enables us to have peace from God all the promises that he will take care of us as his children the indwelling holy spirit changing the whole way we look at everything in this world the promise that our soul will immediately enter the very presence and safety of Jesus himself upon our earthly death and the promise that someday Jesus is coming back and he's going to reunite those souls with our resurrected bodies and promises us we will live with him forever in the new heavens and the new earth you may be feeling the holy spirit churning within you right now to surrender and commit your life to Jesus just as Abraham listened to and obeyed God's commands responding with here I am improving his faith in God listen to and answer God's movement in your heart today putting your faith in Jesus his death and resurrection on your behalf surrendering to his kingship and receive all of his promises including the promise of life with him for all of eternity let's pray heavenly father we thank you for this passage in the old testament that ultimately points to the greatest event in human history that could have ever taken place 2,000 years later and that is the death and resurrection of you coming in human flesh being our Savior from our sins and making yourself king over our lives Lord I pray that if there's anybody here who has not yet surrendered and repentance of their sin to you both as Savior from that sin on their behalf and committing the rest of their lives to serving you as king I pray that they would do so right now and then know have the full assurance and promise that they will be indwelled by the Holy Spirit as a seal for their eternal home Lord for those of us who have I pray that you would reignite in us a love for that a love for you a love for bringing that message of salvation to one more personal love for your great commission that we may all glorify you with our lives and I pray all these things in Jesus name amen.