Have you observed, as I have, that the trials of life have different definitions depending
upon the stage of maturity that you happen to be in?
There was a time when a trial of life to you was the denial of a piece of candy.
I would guess some of you may have stomped your feet and cried in a store with your
mama just like I did.
Then there was the time of life when the trial was having an especially big pimple just
before the big date.
You know the kind that come with not out but by prayer and fasting.
The older you get, the more serious trials become.
I wonder what is the most difficult trial that you ever had in your life?
What would be the definition of the most severe trial that you have faced?
It wouldn't take Abraham two seconds to answer that question.
Seeing the comfort and civilization of the Caldees living as a pilgrim in the promised
land that he never really possessed in his lifetime, waiting 25 years for the promised
son to be born, all of these paled compared to what we read about today in the offering
of the beloved son in Genesis chapter 22.
I invite you to turn there with me as we think about this trial in Abraham's life.
Let me remind you that God sends us trials according to the measure of our faith.
God never forges trials to devastate us or to break us, but he forges our trials for
our good, that he might prove the quality of our faith to be sure we can devastate ourselves
or we can be broken by our own foolishness in the midst of trials.
But we cannot lay that to God's blame.
God forges our trials for our good.
God will take care of what we go through, but it's up to us to take care of how we
go through them.
What I want you to look at this morning are the responses of Abraham to this experience
with God, three responses that I see in this trial of Abraham's life.
In this culminating trial of his life, in the first place, Abraham obeys.
Now it came about after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham,
and he said, here I am, and 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.
And 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 he split wood for the burnt offering and arose and
went to the place of which God had told him.
Abraham obeys.
Moses immediately tells us that this was a test for Abraham.
He does this because what God tells Abraham to do is so totally out of character and so
bizarre that he wanted us to understand before we read about it that this was a test for
Abraham.
What God orders Abraham to do here is not only bizarre, it is irrational, because Isaac
was the son through whom God had promised to bless not only Abraham's family but the
whole world.
How could this be that he should be offered as a burnt offering?
Abraham had sent away Ishmael reluctantly and sadly, but he had sent him away.
But would he kill the son of the promise?
Because Abraham loved Isaac.
To be genuine, a test has to defy logic and it has to plumb the depths of our resistance
in life.
To be a genuine test, it has to defy what we think is rational and it has to measure
out the resistance that challenges God's will in us.
The point of this test is, would Abraham cling to his son now that God had given him to him?
Or would Abraham give his son back to God at God's command?
I am glad that I was not in the place of Abraham.
God knew what he was doing when he tested this man.
I want you to notice that Abraham immediately, immediately obeyed God.
I am not saying to you it was easy.
I believe it was the most difficult thing Abraham had faced in all of his life.
But early the next morning he arose.
I don't know about you, I would have put it off until later in the day or the next week.
But Abraham early the next morning made the preparations and left.
No questions.
He doesn't ask God why.
There are no objections to it.
He simply does it.
Yet in the way that Moses writes the narrative here you see that he is underscoring that
this was not easy for Abraham.
Moses knew the pain in Abraham's heart as he journeyed toward Moriah.
It was agony for him.
It was an arduous and perhaps even a silent three-day journey.
God called Abraham to sacrifice the very dearest thing to his heart.
It might have been easier for Abraham to think of offering Sarah than it was for him to think
of offering Isaac.
What is God calling you to sacrifice?
What is the dearest thing to your heart?
What do you cling to for security?
What is the promise that God has given to you that he may well now say to you, will
you give it back to me?
There is nothing and there is no one that can be more important in our lives than the
Lord.
This was Abraham's test.
Is Isaac now more important to Abraham than God himself?
The purpose of a test is to see whether we will obey God.
But everything within our being resists the very thing that God wants us to do.
That can be the ultimate trial of our lives as it was for Abraham.
How is Abraham able to obey?
Because of his second response in the culminating trial of his life, Abraham believes obedience
you see springs from faith that God is God and that because he is God, he is worthy of
our trust.
We pick up the narrative in verse 4.
On the third day Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance.
And Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey and I in the lad will go yonder.
And we will worship and we will return to you.
Please notice that.
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.
So the two of them walked on together.
And Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, my father.
And he said, here I am, my son.
And he said, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?
And Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.
And so the two of them walked on together.
Abraham had a deep faith in the Lord.
I must confess to you a deeper faith than I possessed this morning.
As he spoke to the young men who had accompanied them, he said, we are going to go, my son
and I.
And we, my son and I, are going to return.
Now we know from our perspective that God never intended for Abraham to complete the
deed.
Abraham did not know that, keep that in mind.
Abraham was going to go to that mountaintop and kill his son as a sacrifice to God.
And he said, God will provide the lamb, Isaac.
God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering.
Do you see the faith in this man?
Because as far as he knew, his son was to be that lamb, that burnt offering.
And yet he had confidence that the son was going to come back with him from this experience.
He had seen Isaac come from the dead once before, so to speak.
And he came from the dead womb of his mother.
And somehow Abraham grasped the fact that this God who gave him his son from a dead
womb could bring his son back from the dead.
There was no precedence for this.
There was no promise that we know of for this.
But Abraham's faith went into that invisible, into the unknown, and it latched onto this
concept, this notion that God is able to raise the dead.
And we know this from Hebrews chapter 11, where I invite you to turn to this New Testament
commentary on what we're reading in Genesis.
Verse 17 of Hebrews 11, by faith Abraham when he was tested offered up Isaac, and he who
had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son.
It was he to whom it was said in Isaac, your descendants shall be called.
Verse 19 explains, he considered that God is able to raise men even from the dead, from
which he also received him back as a type, that is, as a picture of resurrection.
God had made promises to Abraham regarding his son, and now the patriarch trusted what
God had said to him.
And God had said in Isaac, your descendants will be called.
And so Abraham prepares for the sacrifice.
He prepares the altar, and he actually intended to go through with this deed.
But as we speak of Abraham's faith, let's not overlook Isaac's faith.
I wonder how long it was before it dawned upon Isaac what was taking place.
But certainly when he was bound and placed upon that altar, Isaac began to get a picture
here.
And yet Isaac too trusted his father and trusted the Lord.
Isaac is not a young boy here.
He is called a lad, but the word can mean a variety of ages.
It's anyone who's not married.
He is a young man, sturdy, easy.
It would have been for him to overcome his father.
And yet he submitted himself to what his father was doing.
And then God provided a substitute.
Let's read about that.
They came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and arranged
the wood, bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on the top of the wood.
And 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.
And 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.
And Abraham raised his eyes and looked and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket
by his thorns.
And Abraham went and took the ram and offered him for a burnt offering in the place of his
son.
Abraham obeys.
Abraham believes.
And now we see that Abraham, in his third response, worships in this culminating trial
of his life.
He built an altar.
He placed the wood.
And now he offers the substitute ram on that altar.
And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah Jireh, the Lord will provide.
As it is said to this day, says Moses, in the mount of the Lord it will be provided.
Abraham worships.
Abraham knew God.
I believe Abraham knew God in a more profound way than anyone here this morning, including
myself.
It is one thing for you and me to know about God, to be able to recite theology or to read
fine books that tell us of God's nature.
But it is quite another thing, isn't it, for all of us to experience God personally?
To have that intimate relationship with God that Abraham had.
Does your experience with God lead you to worship?
I'll tell you something, theology won't lead you to worship.
Having lots of head knowledge about God will not stir your heart to worship, but an experience
with God will.
And folks, that's part of what trials are about.
God wants to move us beyond our head knowledge to where we have a heart knowledge of God.
He wants to get us beyond the theological ideas and concepts that we learn, which are
very important to the place that we have an intimate relationship with Him.
Is your knowledge of God growing and is the intimacy of that relationship with Him deepening?
In Moses' generation, this mountain, Moriah, was known as the Mount of the Lord.
Where it is said, it will be provided.
When I ask myself the question, what will be provided?
Jehovah Jireh, it will be provided.
What will be provided?
Well, those of you who know your Bible know that at this very place is where God provided
another substitute.
God provided a human sacrifice for you and for me.
For it is on this very mountain where centuries later the temple of Solomon was built, according
to 2 Chronicles 3, 1, over this very stone where this took place.
That is where Solomon built his temple.
And geologists tell us it is on that same strata of rock, on that mountain that Jerusalem
sits on, where Calvary stood as well.
It was not in the temple compound, but in the same area, on the same strata of rock that
jutted out of the ground, something a query perhaps in that day, where the Son of God
was sacrificed and He was provided.
It was there on the same mountain that God's only begotten Son, the Son that He loved,
was sacrificed.
My friend of Abraham loved his son Isaac.
How much more does God the Father love his son?
And so how filled with wonder is this statement from Romans that reminds us that the God of
Abraham did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all.
And that's what we remember as we come to the Lord's table this morning.
And as we enter into this most holiest of weeks, that on that mount of the Lord it was
provided what is necessary for our redemption.
There the substitute was slain, God's beloved Son, and will not this God who freely gave
us his Son, not with him, but give us all things freely.
This God of Abraham is able to prove himself in the trials of your life.
And if this morning you are in the midst of a trial that seems severe and as difficult
as what Abraham was going through, remember that God proved himself in the midst of that
trial.
Abraham obeyed, he believed, and he worshiped.
And that's the response that needs to come from our hearts as well.
And so as we come to the Lord's table this morning, let's look at our hearts, see where
we are, and obey, and believe, and worship the God of Abraham, and the God who gave us
his beloved Son.
Let's pray.
Fathers, we come to this table this morning to perform this ordinance that we have done
hundreds of times in our lives.
May it be with a fresh meaning that we partake of this cup and eat this bread.
Break our hearts over our sin.
Our convictus of our lack of belief in the midst of trials, and show us this morning the
value of surrender, of worship, of believing, of obeying.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, that you believed and you obeyed.