Genesis 22:15-18 KJV
15 And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time,
16 And said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son:
17 That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies;
18 And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.
Amen, glory to God. Welcome to the program. Welcome to Cafe. If you are a new listener to KJV Cafe, we are simply a 15 minute, I had to think about it for a minute, but we are a 15 minute daily Bible study going through Genesis to Revelation in the Bible. And we're not affiliated with any denomination or special group. We don't have anything to sell you besides, I guess, the gospel, but we don't have anything to sell you. We don't have any, you know, major agenda other than God's agenda, which is to open up the word and study it. Amen. God saves by his word. He redeems by his word. He helps us grow by his word and mature in his word. So that's all we do here at the cafe. So just for anybody listening that's new to the program, that's what we do. You can find us on your favorite podcast app. Okay. So right now we are in Genesis 22. And Genesis 22 is the famous chapter in Genesis where Abraham is called to sacrifice Isaac. And we've spent a lot of time in Genesis 22 looking at several ideas, you know, the theme that Abraham was obedient, the theme of sacrifice, the idea of the Old Testament. Sacrifice playing a big role in worship at that time. In fact, I think it is, let's see here in verse five of Genesis 22. And Abraham said unto his young men, remember, he brought two young men with him, along with Isaac to perform the sacrifice by ye here with the ass and I in the lad will go yonder in worship and come again to you. And so that word worship could be interchangeable with sacrifice. And Old Testament worship involved the sacrifice. And then in this same chapter, we see that Abraham is prepared to actually kill Isaac on the altar. He's got his knife in verse 10, ready to slay Isaac, his son, the chosen son, and yet the angel of the Lord stops him. The angel of the Lord stops him because he was simply being tested by God to see if he be obedient, to do the unthinkable. And I think it's important to reflect on this idea of if you're a parent, what would it take for you to give up your only son? Now, surely many parents, if not all of them listening, would be willing to lay down their life for their child. Certainly they would. But to give your child's life up, you know, it's almost like doubly harmful. It's like it's like killing both the child and a part of yourself, right? And so when God calls us to do that, he is doing it for a very specific reason. He's not being sinister or, or, or, you know, um, acting in a way unseemly. What he's doing is saying, no, I'm going to provide this ram, but I gave my son up at the cross at Calvary. And that is that poignant kind of example that almost has to be lived out in this true biblical history, this passage, rather than us just thinking about it or considering what it would be like to give up our child. We read about, you know, really, if you want to go back till Abraham separates from his father there, I believe it was in Heran. After coming out of early cal days, they end up in Heran, he's got to leave his father. That was very unusual. The families in those times as I understood it stuck together. And the father's pagan religion and all this, he leaves that. Why? Because God's calling him to a new place. And what is God doing in that new place? God is calling him to this new place so that eventually he's going to give him and provide him with the promised child. And we don't understand all of the dates, at least I don't, in terms of his exact age, but roughly speaking, he would have been, I think, in his 70s when he left Heran. And we know that he had Isaac when he was 100. Okay. And so he waited a very long time to have the promised child. And yes, Ishmael was born to Hagar in the process in between there. But the promised child, the one with Sarah as the mother, is Isaac. And here, after a hundred years of waiting, okay, if you will, he finally has the promised child Isaac and then God says, go and sacrifice him on the altar. Now, the reason why Abraham was okay with this is because he believed, as Paul writes the New Testament, that God was going to raise Isaac from the dead, that he was going to resurrect him. But better than that, he never even had to go through the horrific experience of slaying his own son. Why? Because God provided the ram, the young boy lamp, right? That's what a ram is. Now, God, what does he do with Jesus? He's fully sovereign. He's fully in control. So he sends Jesus. Jesus says himself, I am obedient under the Father. Jesus says, let this cut past for me, nevertheless, thy will be done. Jesus was obedient under death. So God both sent Jesus. And if you want to be very technical, him being sovereign, allowed Jesus to be killed. So what Abraham had to do was called to do to Isaac and didn't have to because God provided the ram. Jesus Christ, God the Father, had to go ahead and go through with it. And so it's a perfect picture of the substitutionary death, which we've spent several episodes talking about, the atonement, the idea that Jesus took our place on the cross at Calvary to pay our sin debt that we could never pay. And that when we believe on him, the Bible speaks to us being reconciled to God. We're at peace with God once we believe on Christ. We have peace with God. That's what, that's the idea of being born again. We're all God's creation. We're not all his children. Those that have been born again are his children. And we're born again by believing on Jesus Christ. And so what we're going to look at now is verses 15 through 18, when we come back from this break. So stay tuned. Hey, it's break time around here. Thank you for listening to KJV cafe. If you haven't already, visit kjv cafe.com for more information. So here we have in verse 15 and the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time and said, by myself, have I sworn say it the Lord for because thou has done this thing and has not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing, I will bless thee in multiplying, I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is upon the seashore and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because thou has obeyed my voice. What a passage of scripture. And so verse 15 here is shortly after verse 10, when Abraham is ready to sacrifice Isaac on the altar. Verse 11, he stopped by the angel. Right. Verse 13, there was the ram caught in the thicket. Verse 14, Abraham dedicates that place calls it Jehovah Jaira, as it is said today in the Mount of the Lord, it shall be seen. That's verse 14. And then we have this 15 through 18, this passage of scripture to give you an idea. If you're not looking at the scripture, Genesis 22 is only 24 verses. So this is the latter part of Genesis 22, and we see this beautiful picture of God's blessing on Abraham for what? For obedience. And this is the mystery of God. This is the poetic nature of God that when we act sacrificially, in this case literally, right, but when we act sacrificially, when we're obedient to God, when, when it does not meet our best interest, right? At, at a hand, or like what we intellectually would think is our best interest, or what our heart would tell us is our best interest. When we act in that way, we are most blessed by God. Abraham did something he clearly didn't want to do. Look, Abraham had much love, much meekness, much humility about him. You see that throughout the scriptures. He was torn to pieces when Ishmael got a God expelled. When Sarah said, no more get this child out. He's not the heir that, that Isaac is going to be. He's not the chosen child. And it was grieved Abraham because he loved Ishmael. He loves Isaac. You can't imagine what this was like for him. Yet he was obedient to God. And God said, because you've done this thing, right? It says verse 16 and said, by myself, have I sworn, say it the Lord for because thou has done this thing. What thing has not withheld thy son thine only son? That's verse 16. It just spells it out right there. It's not complicated. Because you've done this thing in blessing, I will bless you. Listen, when we obey God to our detriment to what we understand as a detriment, we receive the biggest blessings. You know, and I, I don't know exactly because think of how Abraham is going to be blessed. He's going to be blessed. I mean, he's already over a hundred. He's probably 113, 115, 117 at this time. Okay. How's he going to be blessed? Yes, he's blessed on earth. But guess what? His true blessing comes in eternity, right? And so you may do something. The Lord's calling you to do and not see an immediate gratification from it. You may not see an immediate blessing from it. But friend, just hold fast and keep doing what God's called you to do because there are eternal blessings at stake. There are things that will literally never corrupt, never decay, never rust. Trust me, I've got allergies. I can't be around stuff that's overly dusty or rotten or moldy or anything. I've got terrible allergies. So I know all about rust and decay. Amen. And I like gadgets and stuff. We do different recording and video years ago. I used to do more paid like video stuff, you know, on a very low level, you know, for companies and authors and stuff. We record content for them and I have like old equipment that was that was new at that time. And if you pick it up now, the the rubber is falling off of it or the plastic is cracking where the screen is oxidized. Look, even the nice things, whatever it may be, eventually in this world will decay, right? That's what the Bible says. And so we are to do what? Store up treasures in heaven, amen? Jesus speaking, Matthew 6 19 through 21, lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rough dust corrupt and where thieves break through and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust of corrupt and where thieves do not break through nor steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also, okay? So where was Abraham's treasure? It was in heaven. It was with the Lord. Where was his heart with the Lord? And therefore, he was storing up treasure in heaven by doing this deed, right? And of course, God spared him of actually having to do it, but he came close enough to doing it that God saw he was willing to go through with it. It wasn't just an act, right? You could tell he was for real. And so he does this deed and God says, in blessing, I will bless you and multiplying all multiply thy seed as the stars that heaven as the sandwiches upon the seashore and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. You know, God's saying here, you're going to be blessed. You are going to be blown away at what comes out of your family line. And guess what? You're going to, you're going to be successful. You're going to have victory. You're going to possess the gates of your enemies. You know, I don't know about you, but that sounds pretty good to me. If that was, if God gave me that prophecy for my family, I'd be pretty satisfied with that. I'd be pretty satisfied with any one of those, amen. I love sports, you know, and in sports, it's a zero sum game. You have a winner and a loser. And that's it, you know, yeah, there's moral victories this that but generally speaking, as far as I can tell, it's good to be the winner. It's good to win, right? And God's saying Abraham, you are the winner and you're lying your progeny. They are the winners. You will possess the gates of your enemies. And now bring that forward here a little bit. You're living for God. You're serving him. You're studying his word and it seems like the more you study his word, the more he calls you to do this and this, the harder life gets, the less people understand what you're doing, the less popular you may be at school work or wherever, the less like fun it may be sometimes. You look at these things and you say, I feel like I'm losing, right? And yet in this world, the world will do a really good job of trying to shape that, right? But in God's eyes, you're winning. And guess what? You know, one day the last shall be first, amen, and the first shall be last. That's Jesus as well. Matthew 20 verse 16. So the last shall be first and the first last, for many be called but few chosen. So if the Lord has chosen you and called you and got you involved in his word, whether he's calling you to study his word, whether he's calling you to preach his word, whether he's calling you to teach his word, whether he's calling you to evangelize his word, like I would believe any believer would be called to do. As the Lord is reaching out to you, trust that there is a great reward for you one day, I believe one day very soon as he returns. The Bible speaks to Jesus coming and his reward is with him, amen. And that is personally how I've modeled my life is that I treasure what's in heaven more than what's on earth, because what's in heaven is eternal. And what's in heaven are these kind of blessings that God is bestowing upon Abraham. Look, it's in his word. It's recorded as word, not just to record this true history, which it is true, it is true, but it's also to give us believers an idea of the power of obedience, verse 18. "And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed because," Here's the because, God speaking through his angel directly to Abraham, Genesis 22, 18, "because thou hast obeyed my voice." He's blessed for his obedience. I wish we had more time, but for right now we are done today, tune in tomorrow, and we'll get more to the Scripture, amen. Thanks for listening to KJV Cafe, and we'll see you at the Cafe tomorrow.
