Abraham laid Isaac on the alter and prepared to slay him, as commanded by God, but the Angel of the Lord stopped him at the last moment.But then Abraham turned and looked, and saw the ram caught in the thicket, provided by God, for the sake of Isaac!No doubt, that look was prompted by the Holy Ghost, so that Abraham might see the lamb that God had provided, just as He said He would!The instant Abraham saw that lamb, he understood everything: God's Lamb is slain in the sinner's place, and His wrath is done away with!The Holy Ghost had prepared Abraham's heart to see the lamb, and to grasp its necessity.Why is it, then, when we preach the Lamb to the lost around us, He is almost universally rejected? It is because lost men think they have no need for a Lamb of sacrifice to take away their sin.They are lost in their sin, and therefore they cannot see the need for a Lamb to save them.Trusting in the Lamb is unnatural without the converting power of the Holy Ghost to convince us of our sin, and judgment, and wrath, and salvation.Paul teaches that the natural man knows of God, but rejects that knowledge of God in rebellion. Therefore, he can only slide deeper and deeper into sin and willful blindness.The natural man, being void of the Holy Spirit, cannot receive the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him. This doesn't mean that lost man cannot grasp the basic content and meaning of the Gospel, but rather that he cannot embrace it, or value it, or trust in it.The gospel is hidden from the lost, because the god of this world has blinded the minds of all unbelievers, so that the light of the gospel of Christ cannot shine unto them.

Too many good Americans see our country as the "indispensable nation" – raised up by God for great things, and God will surely continue to use us indefinitely, if only Trump succeeds.But America is already awash in innocent blood, both the unborn and many helpless victims around the world. Very few of us seem to care.We are 35 trillion dollars in debt, with no way out. Societal collapse is all around, with corruption and incompetence. The post office, the police, the courts, the public schools – all are catastrophic failures.Depravity and immorality saturate our own community, which is falling apart before our eyes, with murders, serious losses of population, worse and worse fools elected to run things. Some of them cannot even speak plain intelligible English in the public meetings they conduct!Americans are going to have to let go of our fanciful view that particular nations will survive in the long term, and do great good, and advance the Lord's kingdom.God controls all things, but not for the reasons we'd like Him to!The prophet Daniel declared: God removes kings, and sets up kings. He alone gives wisdom and knowledge.Scan through history and you will find that there have been many great kingdoms and peoples, but in the end, God has destroyed them all, and then raised up other kingdoms and other peoples to take their places.Therefore, it is foolish for us to look to any extent kingdom for our future hope.Babylon had a powerful and cruel king Nebuchadnezzar. He was forced to submit himself to the absolute rule of the God of Heaven.But God had already announced his kingdom's fall and the rise of the Persians.

Today in many churches, sermons on who to vote for, or who a Christian can never vote for, will be delivered.But not here. Instead, we will review some warnings about improper ways of thinking about elections.First, democratic representation brings along with it personal moral responsibility onto the voters whose candidate is victorious. In Christ's day, the people were ruled by foreign despots, and had no moral input into government conduct.But with the democratic process, now we do bear moral responsibility for what our elected officials do.Both major candidates are overt moral catastrophes. None of them believe the gospel or have repented of their gross sins.They will seize our money and waste it. They are using outrageous lying rhetoric against each other. They lie about what their opponents will do.Their hands are drenched in the innocent blood of countless helpless people the world over, and both have assured us they will continue those terrorist policies. Both major candidates openly advocate terrorist atrocities against innocent people.There are several moral pitfalls we easily fall into at election time.The first is moral pragmatism, to vote for the "lessor of two evils." But that begs the question, how can we really tell which candidate is the lessor evil?The next moral slip is to assume that our chosen candidate won't turn out to be nearly as bad as he appears now! Maybe he will surprise us by doing some good things!This demonstrates that determining the "lessor of two evils" is in fact impossible, because we cannot know the future or what God is trying to accomplish in all these things.

God promises a startling change in the condition of the mountains and plants and fields when Messiah comes to reign. There will be a marvelous transformation of this old fallen, broken down world, marred now by sin and corruption.In Isaiah 11, the change in the animal's behavior is underlined: where once there was discord and death and danger, Christ's reign will bring about peace and friendship and docility. The wild beasts will be tame in the hands of a little child! The lion will eat straw like an ox, and the beasts will no more destroy each other!In other words, the animals will no longer behave according to the fallen and corrupt world.According to God's explanation, the reason for this dramatic change is, that the whole world will be filled with the knowledge of God, like the water covers the sea!The overwhelming knowledge of God from the presence of Jesus Christ will overcome the corruption of sin, and will rule the behavior even of the animals!Paul used the promise of the glorious restoration of the creature by the promised glorification of the sons of God, as an illustration of the wonder of the comfort we have by the Holy Ghost, that we shall one day be glorified. If the animals, so much more the Lord's people themselves!Jesus made similar arguments about how God cares for the needs of the animals, so much more will He care for His Children!He uses the life and death of sparrows to show God's greater care for us! "Not one sparrow is forgotten before God! Fear not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows!"Christ goes further, noting that God provides the food and clothing and shelter for His animals, and therefore He will provide for us!

God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his own most beloved son Isaac. Abraham had trusted in God's promises, and God counted it for righteousness. Abraham would not disobey God's command, even though it seemed that the killing of Isaac would overturn the covenant God had made with Abraham, because according to the Lord, all the promised blessings were to be in and through Isaac his son.Along the way, Isaac asked his father the most important question: where is the lamb for the sacrifice? Isaac was old enough to understand that God required an animal to offer up, whose blood was shed to satisfy God's demands upon His people.How could God be satisfied without a lamb to sacrifice?Abraham's response to Isaac was profound, even though he failed to grasp its full import: God will provide Himself a lamb for a sacrifice!What Abraham articulated had been revealed to him by the Holy Ghost, and he spoke prophetically. His statement had an immediate fulfillment, and an eternal one.Just a few hours later, God did indeed provide a lamb to take Isaac's place, and to rescue Isaac from being slain by Abraham.But in the future, God would provide Himself as THE Lamb of sacrifice, His Own dear only begotten Son, the Lord Jesus, to take the place of His loved ones as our sin offering, to take away our sins completely.Before Christ went to the cross, all men could say in hope and trust was that somehow, someday, "God would provide Himself a lamb for our sacrifice."But now we can proclaim, no, now God HAS PROVIDED Himself our Lamb of sacrifice!The promise foretold to Abraham by the Holy Ghost has finally, after all these centuries, been completely fulfilled for us in Christ!

According to Paul in Romans 8, the comfort of the Holy Ghost for us includes the promise of our resurrection one day. The same spirit that raised up Christ will also raise up all of Christ's people!That power of Christ rising again will be deployed in every single one of the Lord's people!Then glory will be revealed in us, a glory that far exceeds the suffering of this world.But then, Paul inserts an argument about the creation as a startling example of the glory that will one day be revealed in us.That glorification of Christ's people will include the salvation of the natural world from the corruption of sin and death.It is as if Paul is saying, if we can hardly grasp the glory about to be revealed in us by the Holy Ghost, then look at how that same glory will result in the restoration and saving of the natural world!This is a teaching that most believers find wholly novel, and yet Paul thinks it an important reason why the glory of our resurrection is particularly spectacular.We don't like to think that man's fall so marred the physical creation, but it did. That fact explains all the pain and sorrow and dying and suffering of the entire world.But Paul teaches that our coming into glory by the resurrection power of Christ through the Holy Ghost, will have visible and astonishing effect upon the whole creation.That great glory that will be revealed to us at our resurrection, will extend to the whole creation.All the brokenness of the animals, their violence, their brutal deaths, their tragic existence, and the malignant power of nature, will finally be set right, with goodness restored, and Christ's righteousness overwhelming the world like a flood.

Peter claimed he would die before he would ever deny Jesus.--When it came time for Christ's betrayal, Peter demurred. Why was this----The key is Christ's forbidding Peter from fighting to stop His murder. In other words, Christ deprived Peter of a -fair fight- with swords and fists. So long as Peter could strike the enemies of Jesus with weapons of war, his determination was secure.--But Christ forbade Peter from using carnal methods in the cause of Christ. It was at this point, that the disciples all forsook Christ and fled.--It turned out that Peter's boast to stick with Christ was limited to circumstances where He, as a man, could put up a fair fight with arms. Peter was a man of action, and such a battle appealed to him.--So long as Peter could resist physically and violently the taking of the Savior, he was operating in his zone of comfort as a strong and determined man---But the idea of submitting according to the will of God to violent men, to murderers, to traitors, that Peter could not and would not do.--If Jesus wasn't going to put up a fight, how could Peter----But Christ must be slain to save His people from their sin- The gospel plan of salvation was utterly contrary to carnal man's way of thinking.--To submit to the Holy Ghost, to place one's hope in a savior who died to save us, was to turn away completely from all self-reliance, earthly power, strength, and self-righteousness.--Peter and the other disciples were not ready for all that-