Welcome to KJV Cafe. Thanks for taking time out of your day to listen. Each episode of the Cafe is dedicated to studying the Bible verse by verse from Genesis through Revelation. Your host here at the Cafe is Bible teacher Clark Covington. Looks like the coffee is hot and ready, so let's get started. Hey, man, glory to God. Welcome to the program. Welcome to the Cafe. Pastor Clark Covington here with another episode of KJV Cafe. I'm so glad you're here with us today as we go deeper into God's word. We're in Genesis 22, and we are simply looking the first two-ish verses of Genesis 22. We may peek a little bit at the third one there, but generally speaking, we're just looking at the theme here at the beginning of Genesis 22. And that theme is obedience, and also to sacrifice, and with those come availability and agreeability, okay? And these are themes that are presented in Genesis 22 that we can and should live out in our lives. Because Abraham is given a command that is very daunting from God himself, and yet Abraham obeys by faith, okay? So it's beautiful scripture. Let's read it here. Genesis 22, 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, thy 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 of thee." And in the beginning of verse 3, and Abraham rose up early in the morning, okay? So what we see here is God makes a command. It's a very challenging command that Abraham is to go sacrifice this chosen child, the one that he had to wait till a hundred to have, the one that was promised by God, the one that is supposed to provide this multitude as the sand on the seashore, as the stars in heaven of a progeny that he's supposed to go and sacrifice this child on Mount Moriah, right? And we see that he goes. He goes. He gets Isaac and he goes. So there's a lot we can learn from this. How about where is Moriah, okay? Now, the answer is people don't know, okay? What does the word Moriah mean? The answer is people still don't agree or they don't know, all right? So if you were to look up, you know, the meaning of Moriah, right? It's a popular name. You know, some people say it's the land of Yahweh or the land of God, land of teaching. It's a popular baby name on and on. I kind of thought about it as Mara. Mara means bitter, and I was thinking it's a very bitter situation. You know, there's that water at Mara that was bitter, but it's not Mara, it's Moriah, so I don't want to confuse you there. But we see here that we, from what we can tell, 2 Chronicles 3 1 tells us that Solomon began to build the house of the Lord at Jerusalem in Mount Moriah, where the land of the Lord appeared unto David his father in the place that David had prepared the threshing floor of Ornn in the Jebusite. And so if you can go through that whole situation where David had to repent and he by the threshing floor of Ornn in Jebusite, David wanted to build a temple and God said, "No, you're not going to do it, but your son will do it. You make plans and your son will do it." David made the plans, instructed the son Solomon, and he built it there on Mount Moriah. The Jewish, make sure I get this right, the Jewish Seminary, J-T-S-A dot E-D-U, okay? Jewish Theological Seminary, there you go. Examining the word Moriah, they have an article on this, and they say that in the Torah, it actually could mean the land of the Amorites, that it actually could be translated or constructed as Han, Moriah. I don't know if I pronounced that or it looks like Hoth, Moriah, and that God was commanding Abraham to go to the land of the Amorites. And again, if you look at the biblical geography of the time, the Amorites were right there, along with the children of Lot. And so we see here that that's not too far off, right? So we understand generally that this is a very important place and that it is not where Abraham is now and that he's called to go there, right? And so I think we can agree on those things and that he does go there, right? But it also just goes to show how much is still undiscovered out there and for people, you know, just the careers and the hobbies that people could have in studying these words and these places. And even in just, I don't know what you call it, co-illading or putting together, curating, that was the word I was looking for, all of this information into one place. There's so much opportunity out there, really, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few and I believe part of that is putting together some of this information. So God knows, man, if you're looking for a ministry, something to do for the Lord, pray about that because, hey, maybe the Lord wants you to do it. There's just so much opportunity when I research these terms, oftentimes there's not a consensus. There's not even like one place where people could really dig deep. All right, that's just a little extra there, but we see that Abraham's called to go to Mariah and it says here and verse one of Genesis 22. And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham and sent unto him, Abraham, and he said, behold, here I am. And so we see a call and a response. And so in Genesis 22, verse one, we're seeing Abraham making himself available, right? There's availability there. Another great lesson here, and again, the overarching theme would be obedience is being available. I mean, you know, what is it going on in your life that makes you unavailable when God would call you? You know, Abraham is about to exhibit. I don't know if you say the ultimate sign of faith. I mean, the ultimate sign of faith is Jesus going to the cross, right? For the sin of all mankind dying innocently, being obedient unto death. Okay, so that's the ultimate. So we're given Jesus ultimate sign of faith, ultimate faith, perfect faith, biblical faith, all those things. That's Christ. That's Jesus. Beyond that, show me greater faith than someone saying that son that you beloved, the son that you waited so long to have, go sacrifice him. Now, I have two sons, and the youngest is seven. And I'm just doing math in my head. Okay, give me a second. I was 37 when he was born. And really? Yeah, I can't believe I was that old, but yeah, I was 37 when he was born. Okay? You know, he's precious, right? You know, God would wake me up and say, Clark, and I say, here I am, Lord. Go take your son to the thus and such place and sacrifice him on the altar. Oh, I can't even imagine. Could you imagine? I can't even imagine. It's hard to put into words. You know, it's hard to put into words. And Isaac is the chosen son, right? And for us, you know, being in our me, being almost in my mid 40s, can't believe it. I'm not sure I'm going to have another son. I keep trying to talk my wife into it, but I may not. This may be it, you know? To think, you know, you're going to go and obey God because God, your love for God, your faith for God, your belief in God is so great. We learn in the New Testament. I believe Paul writes this that Abraham thought that God was going to resurrect Isaac. Okay. That's what he thought. He would sacrifice him and God resurrect him. So Abraham had hope for Isaac after death, but still the fact that he would go and do this just shows remarkable faith. I mean, just remarkable. And so we see availability. He's available to God. Are we available to God? Because if we're not, then a response, a question like that would be met with a response that would not, I think, have the right faith behind it, right? If we are close to God, I mean, think of this. Think of it this way. If you are close to God, right? If you're close to someone, take a step back. Think of someone you're close to. Someone you're really close to, maybe it's your grandmother or your father or your mom, your cousin, your brother, your sister. Maybe it's a co-worker or maybe it's somebody, whoever, at work or, you know, I said co-worker. I said, that's why it's, um, appear at school, right? You're close to someone. You know their character, right? You know, you know, you've seen the good and the bad. You know, I think of friends I had in, you know, high school or college or something and you go through a lot of hard times. You see their character, like you see who they are. You know their character. You've been through a few things with them. You've grown close to them. You understand who they are. How much more so with God? If you spend time with God, do you not see his character? Do you not see who he is? That he is love that God literally is love, that he is sovereign, that all things are in his hand, that he knows best, that that love is a gape love, a sacrificial love, that it is a tender love, that God desires for us to have a peaceful end, that God loves us more than we can ever even understand, that God is a defender of his own, amen, of those that turn to him. Vengeance is mine, say, the Lord, I will repay. He is the defender. He is the rock as David writes. He is the fortress. He is the high tower. So it starts with availability and spending time with God so that when you're called on to do something challenging for God, you know, you say, yes, Lord, of course, because he knows best. And you realize it is better to be in the will of God in danger than to be out of the will of God anywhere else. It is better to be in the will of God in danger than to be out of the will of God in anywhere else. And there is a great illustration of this. We did in the truck driver's hour profile of a missionary and the missionary. He had a big family there in Asia, they were struggling and his wife was like worried about the kids and saying, how could we bring the kids over to the dozens such place? And he said, you've got to come. You've got to follow us what God wants us to do. And she let him go and one of the kids died and she committed herself after that to always go with him to follow the Lord because it was safer to be in harm's way with the Lord than to be alone. Then to be allegedly safe without him. And that's a paraphrase and a very small example. You'll just have to listen to all the truck driver hour podcasts to get the whole story there because I can't remember which episode it was on. But the truth is that that is who God is. And so we have Abraham available and receptive to even the most challenging of calls. And again, Abraham in his mind thinking God's going to do it. God's going to raise Isaac from the dead. And that verse comes from Hebrews 11 Hebrews Hall of Fame. Hebrews 11 will do 18 and 19 here of whom it was said that in Isaac shall thy seed be called accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead from whence also he received him in a figure. And so we see here that the writer of Hebrews I believe Paul is telling us that Abraham believed that God would have risen Isaac from the dead. Now why would Abraham have believed that because he knew the character of God and he knew that God was not going to bring about sorrow on Abraham for no reason? That God was not going to take the one promised child that God had been promising Abraham for many years, decades, if you will, that God wasn't going to go ahead and just eliminate that, but that God had a plan. And we see this obedience in Abraham making himself available, making himself agreeable and saying, "Yes, Lord, I'll go." That sounds very challenging, but to be in the center of your will is the best place to be. And for us as Christians in a little time we have left here, how about we pray to God and ask God to put us in the center of his will and to help us to understand the principle there that that's the best place to be? How many Christians never even pray that prayer? God put me in the center of your will and give me the courage to live in the center of your will. Because, Lord, I worry about this, I worry about that, I worry about all these things, but I don't have to worry if I'm in the center of your will because I'm living as you have called me to live. And you're dealing on the plane of eternity, which is much greater than the plane of this mortal life, so let me live for you, whatever it brings. That's how it should be our prayer and our thought here today as we look at the Scripture that God can and will bless those that follow Him as Abraham was very blessed. It started here, it started way before, but it certainly was climaxing here. Tune in next time, take care of God bless, and 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.
