Genesis 22:1-2 KJV
1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.
2 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.
Welcome to KJV Café. Thanks for taking time out of your day to listen. Each episode of the Café is dedicated to studying the Bible verse by verse from Genesis through Revelation. Your host here at the Café is Bible teacher Clark Covington. Looks like the coffee is hot and ready, so let's get started. Amen, glory to God. Welcome to the program. Welcome to the Café. Pastor Clark Covington here with another episode of KJV Café. So good to be here today as we explore God's word together. If you're new to the program, we are simply a verse by verse Bible study from Genesis to Revelation. And we are spending time on the Scriptures as you would if you were to study them, right? If someone gave me a booklet and said, "Give this a read," I may look through it and hopefully retain some information. If someone gave me a booklet and said, "I need you to study this and be able to explain it back to me," I would look at it totally differently. I would ask questions. I would cross-reference information. I would research different parts of it. I would spend a lot of time with it because that's what it means to study, amen? And so that's what we do here at KJV Café is we study the Scripture 15 minutes at a time, or 15 minutes a day, however you want to look at it. Seven days a week as we get into God's word. This is the thing. God's word is inexhaustible, right? You never can exhaust it. I've spent the better part over a decade now, spending a lot of time in God's word. I mean, a lot. And it's inexhaustible. I learn new things every day. There's new principles every single day. I was in my morning study reading about, I think it was in Leviticus, and God commands essentially like a railing or a barrier on the roof of the house for the Israelites. And I had studied that earlier, and what that means is that back then they had their patios on their roof, right? And he was saying, "Don't let anyone fall off and hurt themselves." But like today, you build a house, at least in North Carolina, I think in South Carolina too, and many other places, they put a deck on the back of the house. They have to put railings on it. And I'm like, "Man, did that rule?" I mean, I don't know. It's a patio with a barrier. Like, you know, here we are thousands of years later. And here is the Bible. God's true word with advice from home builders and for legislators, you know? They just connect. But people will say, "Where's God's word in the laws today?" Well, just look into God's word. It's that deep. Okay, I think I've done enough giving explanation on what we do here and why it's important and how it's relevant, by the way. It's very relevant. It's just God is so good. And I know for people in the home building field or patio building field that if you have a low-lying deck, maybe you don't need it or whatever it may be, but generally you do. And it's just incredible. How much of that? Like, I think the word "suburb" is in the Bible. I mean, like, there's so many things that you read and you're just like, "Wow." Like, you know, that was there then, you know, and we're using the King James coming out 1600-ish, you know, and they're basing it off the manuscripts and so forth that they have thousands of years old, amen, incredible. All right, so we're in Genesis 22 and we're looking at the theme of obedience, sacrifice, availability, agreeability, right? So let me read these scriptures. And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham and said unto him, Abraham, and he said, "Behold, here I am." And he said, "Take now thy son, thine only son, 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 of thee." And the very beginning of verse 3, and Abraham rose up early in the morning. Okay, so basically Abraham's available, he's agreeable, he's going to go do what God's calling him to do. Even though God's calling him to sacrifice, the only true son, his only true son, Isaac. We'll take a break and we'll get to the idea of the positive idea of obedience so we get back from this break, so stay tuned. You're listening to KJV Cafe. We encourage you to look us up on your favorite podcast app and subscribe to our channel on YouTube. Now let's get back to some more in-depth Bible study. So let's put a positive bow on this, okay? God's calling Abraham to do something hard, and Abraham agrees. And we spoke in the last couple episodes about how if we spend time with God, we make ourselves available to God because we know who he is. We're not afraid, yes we fear God, but we're not afraid of what's going to happen to us because we know God is love. And he loves us, Jeremiah 2911, very familiar verse, "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you sayeth the Lord, thoughts of peace not of evil to give you an expected end." Jeremiah, I mean speaking to the Israelites, reprobate, backslid, rebellious, prideful, I mean really they call him the weeping prophet for a reason. Horrible what he had to go through in trying to just correct them as God would have him to correct them. And yet in the midst of it, I know the thoughts I think toward you sayeth the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil to give you an expected end. So we can be obedient because we know God's intention for us is good. 1 Samuel 1522, this is a verse I've kind of been thinking of this last few episodes and should have mentioned it earlier, but here it is 1 Samuel 1522. And Samuel said, "Had the Lord is great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord, behold to obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of rams." Do we not see that being true here in this passage? Abraham obeys, and then here's the question for those that have read it, does he have to sacrifice Isaac? No, God provides the ram. God, this is a picture of the substitution, the idea of Jesus Christ, the substitutionary death, the atonement, him being put in our place, taking upon our sin on his shoulders so that we could be saved. That's a picture of that. And just to get back to the Samuel verse, Abraham's obedient and that is more important than this sacrifice. Now, if you want to get very technical, sure it was a sacrifice to drop whatever he was doing to get his group together, the emotional and all those things that you go through as you believe you're bringing your son to be sacrificed on the altar. But he didn't have to sacrifice and so it fulfills this scripture here from Samuel, from 1 Samuel 15, 22, behold to obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken. That hearken means listen and to hearken or listen than the fat of rams, right? So the proper sacrifice is good, but what's even better is just to be obedient. And we can be obedient because we understand God's heart. And then we also can be obedient because we understand his program. We should expect turbulence and not panic. We will encounter obstacles. We will encounter obstacles. You know, what preacher is saying that we won't? Psalm 34 19, "Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord deliverth him out of them all." Now I'm thankful for that scripture and I think a lot about it because there's two parts to this. There's the many afflictions, which aren't fun. And then there's the Lord delivering the person out of them all, which is fun, the righteous person. Now that's great to get delivered, but those afflictions can sting a little bit. It doesn't say there's few afflictions for the righteous. There's no afflictions for the righteous. There's great wealth for the righteous. There's great like, you know, fun times, your popularity in the world for the righteous. It says, "Many are the afflictions of the righteous." You know, how about this one? All that will live biblical. All that will live biblical will be persecuted, right? Is that not another one? 2 Timothy 3, 12. Yay, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. All that will live godly. Our North Star, our point of direction is Christ Jesus. Did He suffer persecution? Absolutely. He was persecuted to a T. He was falsely accused. He was ridiculed. He was hated. He was plotted against. Amen. He went through all things that we could ever imagine going through. He went through all of them at once without ever deserving any of it. Christ, our North Star. How about for the New Testament Christian? Their doctrine comes from Paul. Was Paul persecuted? Absolutely. He was plotted against. He was hated. He was imprisoned. He was, you know, eventually we believe martyred. All of these things. All that will live godly. 2 Timothy says, Paul writing this. All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution. If you are suffering persecution, if you, and that may not mean being in a jail cell. It may mean not getting a promotion. It may mean not being invited to the popular party. It may mean not having the things of the, you know, the dainties of the world, right? It may mean being hated by people. It may mean being ridiculed and whispered about. It may mean literal persecution, right? You know, it may mean that you people are literally targeting you and going after you and trying to hurt you, which by the way is happening a lot now. I don't know if it is the most ever, but there is a ton of persecution around the world. And, you know, us in America, we've got it light and easy. Someone may leave a comment or something. Oh, well, you know, someone may send a nasty letter or again, may not, you know, our religious beliefs. They said, get the shot or you're fired, right? We had a religious belief, you know, and then, then some arbitrator could say whether our religious belief was authentic or not. Yeah, that's persecution, amen. Whatever it may be, all that will live for Christ, whatever it may be, will face persecution. You go to school and your teachers, they're not saved and they see that you're on fire for God. You may get a C when you deserve to be, right? You know, you may go to work every day and at lunch. Everybody's sitting around laughing at some dirty joke on the phone and you're in your car studying your Bible. And the boss is there laughing with all of the wicked people in the world. And when that promotion comes up, they're not looking at you to fill it. They don't want to be around you. Whatever it may be, okay? All will face it, right? And so we understand to expect turbulence, we understand that we will encounter obstacles and we understand to trust the Lord's plan. Christ, again, our North Star, where is he today? He's at the right hand of the Father, highly exalted for eternity. He is our Savior and our friend. He is all things. You know, he is perfect. He is love. He is working today. You know, I mean, if you look at this idea of where he was being persecuted and despised and all of these things and what he did, he was obedient even under death. And where he is now risen, exalted. Amen. King of kings and Lord of lords. Amen. The world is his. All things were made by him and for him without him was nothing made. That's Christ. The world is his. Amen. We will see him soon face to face. We'll be co-heirs with him. All riches, honor, and glory are his. So you see the end of his obedience is beautiful. Because he understood the character of God. He understood that there be turbulence. He understood there be obstacles. And he understood that he must trust or have faith in the Lord's plan. He came to do the father's will and he did. And as we live for God, we can expect to be blessed as we accept his call in our life. As we're available and agreeable. And as we live for him, right? And so I think the Christians, I don't know if they get blindsided by the turbulence. They get blindsided by the persecution. They're surprised by it. I know it's hard. It's not easy living for the Lord. And I'm not going to say in the ministry, just period living for God, trusting God. It's not easy, but the fruit is so beautiful. And the idea that a little pain now, it pales in comparison to joy forever in eternity. Amen. That we will have a peace that the world knows nothing about and enjoy the world knows nothing about. We will be able to enjoy that forever, millennia after millennia forever. And even through it all, even through the fire, right? Jesus is there with us, even through the fire, even through the hard times. You know, he's a very present help in times of trouble. That idea that truly we see the character of God the most clearly in our hardest days. Do we not in our hardest days and our hardest times, we can see God show up and show out like we haven't seen him do it in any other way. That's our God. That's who we serve. And that is the beauty of being obedient to him, even in scary times. All right. Tune in next time. Take care. God bless. Amen. Thanks for spending time with us today at the Cafe. We would love to hear from you. You can email Brother Clark directly at Clark@EnduringPromise.org. See you again tomorrow. Same time. Same place.
