Two Journeys

Andy Davis preaches a verse by verse expository sermon on Genesis 23. The main subject of the sermon is the death and burial of Sarah, Abraham's wife.

Open your Bibles to Genesis 23, as you've heard read so beautifully for us this morning, and as we come to Genesis 23, we come to the account of Abraham's burial of his wife Sarah as he grieved in hope. At the beginning of the 17th century, India was ruled by Muslim emperors named Mughals. In 1612, the heir to the throne, Shah Jahan, married a beautiful young woman named Arjumand. He eventually became the fifth Mughal Emperor. This marriage was truly a love match. They loved one another deeply, and her name, she was called Mumtaz, she was her husband's inseparable companion on all his journeys in his military expeditions. She was his comrade, his counselor, and especially she inspired him to acts of charity and benevolence toward the weak and needy. Sadly, however, she died in childbirth in 1630, only three years after he had ascended to the throne. He was so overpowered by grief, Shah Jahan wanted to perpetuate her memory in some way, and so, he decided to build for his beloved wife, the finest sepulcher that had ever been built, a monument of eternal love. 

The sad circumstances around her death and the loyalty and the piety of the people, together with his desires, worked together to make a magnificent structure. After 22 laborious years, and the combined efforts of over 20,000 workmen and master craftsman called from all over India and Asia and Europe, the complex was finally created, completed in 1648, on the banks of the River Yamuna in Agra, the capital of the Mughal Monarchs. The graceful structure was a perfect fusion of the Muslim and Hindu styles, it had four minarets and a beautiful reflecting pool in front of it. It glistened in the sunlight, pure and white, because it was made out of white marble taken from Makrana, 250 miles away. Now, the skilled craftsmen that worked together so intricately inlaid the walls with every precious stone known to man that it was almost to be transported to be there and to look at them. For example, there was one flower, about one inch square that was made up of 60 different precious materials, and if you took your thumb and rubbed it across it, it would feel as smooth as glass. 

The quality of the workmanship was exquisite. The incredible building, of course, was called the Taj Mahal, and is visited by over 2 million visitors every year. Perhaps the most spectacular tomb in the world, built because one man loved one woman and he wanted people to know it forever. By contrast, about 19 miles south, southwest of Jerusalem, there is in the vicinity of Hebron, a cave. Like the Taj Mahal, it was provided for the burial of a beloved wife by a grieving husband. Like the Taj Mahal, it stands as an eloquent and lasting testimony to the nature of their relationship. However, unlike the Taj Mahal, it is not adorned in any way by human hands, there's nothing physically attractive about the cave, but it's purchased for 400 pieces of silver, 4000 years ago, speaks volumes about the faith of the grieving husband Abraham. More eloquent, in my opinion, than the luxurious mausoleum that is the Taj Mahal. 

I'm not saying it's not worth it to go see the Taj Mahal, if you have a chance, do it. But the cave speaks more to me than that structure ever will, for it speaks of faith. Sarah's tomb bought by grieving Abraham was specifically purchased in the Promised Land. And despite the grief of death and its permanent physical separation, Abraham's purchase demonstrated faith in a simple fact, and that fact is the central lesson of Genesis 23. It is this: God's promises are not exhausted in this life. Let me say that again: God's promises are not exhausted in this life. It is not for this life only that we trust in Christ. For every believer, the best is yet to come. Amen? For every believer, the best is yet to come, and not even death can quench faith and hope and the future promises of God. 

Now, Genesis 23 is a purely secular account of a business transaction between a tent dwelling nomad wandering from place to place and a small now extinct Palestinian tribe over a very small insignificant piece of land. There's not a single overt mention of God in this whole Chapter. But Abraham's faith in the promises of God are the central theme, and the lesson for us today.

Now, if you look at Genesis 23, it breaks into three sections. Verse 1-2 is the count of Sarah's death and of Abraham's mourning over Sarah's death. Verses 19-20 is the simple account of Sarah's burial. But in between those brief bookends, we have from Verses 3-18, the account, the narrative of Abraham's purchase of a burial place. Most of the chapter is the purchase of the cave. Now the question is, why did Moses include this account? What is the purpose of putting this chapter in Genesis? Why did he emphasize so prominently the negotiations over this cave? What is he getting at in this account? 

Now, look at Verse 1-2, and the account of Sarah's death. “Sarah lived to be a hundred and twenty-seven years old. She died at Kiriath Arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her.” Now, Sarah was a great woman of God. She is the only wife of a patriarch whose age at death is mentioned in the Book of Genesis. She's a very significant figure in redemptive history. She is a Godly woman who's submission to her husband was the pattern or is the pattern for all godly women who would follow after her. That's what Peter says in 1 Peter 3. In Verse 3-6, it says, “Wives, Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. They were submissive to their own husbands, like Sarah, who obeyed Abraham and called him her master. You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear.”

So Peter picks Sarah as an example of a Godly wife, and so she was. Sarah never murmured against following her husband's calling. And it was a difficult calling, her life was made very difficult by Abraham's faith-filled obedience. She served her husband, she shared his table, his bed, his life. They suffered the pain of childlessness together. She was unfortunately his partner in sin as they lied both to Pharaoh and later to Abimelech in the same way. But more she was his partner in faith and in the promises of God. Her faith grew as his did. They grew together in faith, and her barrenness was the stark tablet of pain against which God painted a beautiful picture of power in the birth of Isaac, a supernatural birth. Her trust in the Lord was, it says in Hebrews 11, essential to that birth. Hebrews 11:11 says, "By faith, Sarah herself received power to conceive even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had made the promise." And so, Sarah was a faith-filled woman whose faith is essential to the fulfillment of the promise of God. 

Now, also, as we come to these first two Verses in Genesis 23, we come again to a sad reminder that sin brought death in the world and that the entire human race is under the physical death penalty. "For it is appointed unto man to die once, and after that comes judgement." Abraham was called God's friend, but God did not spare even his friend, this physical death penalty. God will not spare anyone that death penalty short of that final generation who will be alive when Jesus returns. The curse of the entire human race is physical death. It links the godly with the ungodly. It links the rich with the poor, it links males and females. And it links Americans with Lithuanians and Aborigines, and people from every tribe and language and people and nation. It is universal, all of us are under the physical death penalty, no one is exempt. This is the final enemy that Christ will destroy at the end of the world. In 1 Corinthians 15:26, it says, “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” 

And so, all of us have to wrestle. And so, there's an empathy that we have with Abraham as he's kneeling there beside his dead wife, as he has to get up from beside her to care for her burial. All of us can feel the poignancy of that. And there is pain therefore in these details, isn't there? There's pain in the details. It says that Abraham went to mourn for her. There are actually two Hebrew words used here for the mourning. It was a whole process, and there were many things that he would have done to show his grief for the loss of his wife, a whole ritual of grief. Don't know what it would have been, but anything from the tearing of clothes, putting dust on the head, to any one of a number of other things, fasting, lamenting, and weeping. Faith in the resurrection does not mean that we do not mourn for the dead. We do mourn. And it was painful for Abraham to lose Sarah. Jesus wept at Lazarus' tomb, and no one believed in the resurrection more strongly than he did. Job lamented over the death of his children, even though he also believed in the resurrection. 

Also, there's a little detail, and I don't know for sure if this is the case, but the Hebrew reads this way. It's possible that Abraham was absent when Sarah died. It says literally in the KJV in verse 2, “And Sarah died in Kirjatharba; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan: and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.” The Hebrew implies, therefore, that Abraham was away on a trip, on some kind of a journey or something when Sarah died, thus the death was probably a shock to him. If she had been in some kind of lingering illness, if death had been imminent, he never would have left. And so, it's probably the case, similar to Adoniram Judson who was away on a trip when he found out that his wife had died in a very shocking and sad way, that Abraham may have been stunned by Sarah's death as well. This is part of the grief and the pain of death, its unexpected nature. We never know when it's going to strike. And so, the death was unexpected, and therefore painful. 

But more than that, there's the pain and the permanent separation. I don't mean eternally permanent, but I certainly mean permanent in this world. Abraham would never see Sarah in this world again. They would never share a table together, they would never share a bed together, they would never talk about Isaac again together. They would never pray together again, it was finished their earthly relationship. It was till death parted them, and death had now parted them. They would not be together again in this world. 

And then, there's pain in the physical preparation for the burial. To me, I find this to be one of the most challenging aspects that I've been through funeral after funeral, and I've seen what is involved, and that is that the one left behind has a lot of work to do, and it's difficult. There's all the preparations, there's the dealing with the funeral home, the funeral director, there's calling of relatives, there's making myriad decisions. There are financial issues that have to be resolved, it's really very difficult and very painful, and Abraham isn't spared that either. He's got to get up and dicker with the Hittites over a burial place for his wife. And so, we see the pain of death here.

But now we get to the center of the text, and the center of the text in this account is the actual purchase of the burial place. He is negotiating for a present piece of the future inheritance. He's negotiating for a present piece of the future inheritance. Now, let's remember the promises that God has spoken already to Abraham concerning the land. In Genesis 12:7, it says, “The LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.” 

In Genesis 13:14-15, the Lord had said, “The LORD said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, 'Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever.’” Notice by the way, it is to you and to your offspring. We'll come back to that in a moment, but it's striking. Genesis 15:7-9. “He also said to him, ‘I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.’ But Abram said, ‘O Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?’ So the LORD said to him, ‘Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.’”

Now, you remember Genesis 15, the amazing covenant cutting ceremony. It was all based on, “How can I know I'll get the land?” And so later in that chapter, it says, “On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram and said, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates — the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites…’” and that's who he's dealing with here in this account, Hittites, “‘Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites.’” I practiced that much of the morning. But I'm glad that we got through it. Genesis 17:8, “The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you [to you and your descendants after you]; and I will be their God.” So notice that God promised the land to Abraham and to his descendants, not just to his descendants. Very striking, isn't it? But not yet. Not yet.

In Genesis 15, he spoke of a 400-year lapse in which Abraham's descendants will be enslaved in a country not their own, where they will be mistreated for 400 years, but God would bring them out of that place with a mighty hand, an outstretched arm and bring them into the Promised Land. And so, Abraham has to show humble acceptance of the not yet part of the promise. Abraham's almost in a position of a beggar here in the Promised Land. He is begging for a small piece of land that's all, and so he's humbly bowing down and he's begging and he's asking, he's bowing and scraping, because it's not his yet. It's not been given to him yet. Abraham was an alien and a stranger. Look at Verse 3-4, “Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, ‘I am an alien and a stranger among you.’” So he calls himself an alien, and a stranger. He said, I don't belong here, this isn't my homeland in that sense.

In Hebrews 11:9, it says, “By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.” So he's a stranger in a foreign country, but the foreign country is the Promised Land. God gave him, the Scripture says in another place, not a foot of ground there. Stephen in his speech in Acts 7:5 says, “God gave Abraham no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land, [notice Stephen got it, he and his descendants after him would possess the land] even though at that time Abraham had no child.” So there is a now and a not yet, there's the promise now, but the rest is not yet, concerning the land. This is the nature of the promises of God. And this is the way it will be for you. The overwhelming majority of the promises God makes you in Christ will be unfulfilled, as you draw your last breath. The overwhelming majority of the promises God makes to you will be unfulfilled as you die. Will you die in faith believing, trusting those promises? That's the question of the text. I believe Abraham and Sarah did. The Hittites, they were the present owners of the land, they were occupying the land. They would be future enemies of the people of God, but they were the present owners. They are the sons of Heth, it says in Genesis 10, descended from Heth, the Hittites. They were listed among the future enemies of the people of God in Genesis 15, as I already noted, and God would drive them out in Joshua's day. Exodus 23:23 says this, “My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.” They are the future enemies of the angel of God, future enemies of the people of God. In Abraham's day, however, they were courteous and respectful, as you can see in this text. How things change, but at that point they were... Eventually, they would become the enemies of the people of God.

Now, let's look at the negotiation, stages of the negotiation. Now folks, if you're in a business, I'm not gonna get out of these principles of cutting a business deal, that's not what we're looking for here, but it's interesting to me how they go back and forth, isn't it? Stage 1, verses 3-4, Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, ‘I am an alien and a stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead.’”  That's stage one, he wants some land and he doesn't just want a gift of land, this is very important, he wants to buy it. More on that in a moment. 

Stage two, the Hittite response. The Hittites replied to Abraham, “The Hittites replied to Abraham, 'Sir, listen to us. You are a mighty prince among us. Bury your dead in the choicest of our tombs. None of us will refuse you his tomb for burying your dead.’” Notice how gracious they are. They’re very gracious, they compliment him, calling him literally a prince of God among us. That's the only mention of God in the whole text, and it's really just an honorific title, a great man among us. And they offer him any burial place he wants, anything that he would choose as a gift. But notice also that they do not give him what he wants, and what does he want? He wants a price, he wants to buy the land. He doesn't want a gift. 

He wants a sale of land so he can bury his wife. He wants to own the burial place, not merely receive as a gift. Now, why is this important? Do you remember back after the battle in Genesis 13, when the king of Sodom came out and wanted to give him a bunch of plunder and loot from the battle? He wouldn't accept anything from the king less the king of Sodom should say, "I made Abraham rich." Well, I think that's on his mind here too. “I don't want a gift, I wanna own this thing, fair and square, no strings attached. And so give me a price and we'll settle on it.” But instead they're offering to give them him a gift and he doesn't want it. 

Look at stage three, verses 7-9, Abraham's urgent request, which is ownership of a piece of Promised Land. That's what he wants. “Then Abraham rose and bowed down before the people of the land, the Hittites. He said to them, ‘If you are willing to let me bury my dead, then listen to me and intercede with Ephron son of Zohar on my behalf so he will sell me the cave of Machpelah, which belongs to him and is at the end of his field. Ask him to sell it to me for the full price as a burial site among you.’”

Now, first of all, Abraham has already picked out a specific place, he knows what he wants. He already knows what he wants. Now, this word Machpelah, the cave of Machpelah comes from the Hebrew, which means to fold over double. And so it probably was a cave complex, it was at least a double cave in it. So there's plenty of room for burial. The proceedings are very formal, they fit a certain pattern of negotiation in the ancient near east of things negotiated and bought and sold especially land. Again, Abraham has in mind to be the full and legal owner, no strings attached. He doesn't want whether he gets to stay in the cave or his wife gets to stay in the cave to be at the whim of some future Hittite tribal chieftain, and whether they're in a good relationship with the people of God. He wants to own it. End of story. And that's what he's looking for. He wants to pay the full price in a legally witness transaction. So, he humbles himself in the extreme, he's bowing down again and again here so that he can get what he wants, he wants the price. 

So, Ephron makes his reply in the fourth stage, stage four, Ephron's reply, Verse 10-11, “Ephron the Hittite was sitting among his people and he replied to Abraham in the hearing of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of his city. ‘No, my lord,' he said. ‘Listen to me; I give you the field, and I give you the cave that is in it. I give it to you in the presence of my people. Bury your dead.’” What do you notice about the offer? He is not yielding to the very thing that Abraham wants, namely, he wants a price. 

Now, there's back and forth about why he doesn't give him a price. It could be that this is just the next stage of negotiation. For example, if you went to a Mid-East bizarre and you're dickering over something and at some point they say, "Is it a matter of money between us? We're friends, I'll give it to you," but you both know it's not a genuine offer. What he's saying is, "Your last offer wasn't good enough, let's keep trying." And it could be that that's exactly what's going on here. Give me a price. Well, Abraham wants them to set the price. 

So stage five, verses 12-13, Abraham comes again with a request for a price. Again Abraham bowed down before the people of the land and he said to Ephron in their hearing, ‘Listen to me, if you will. I will pay the price of the field. Accept it from me so I can bury my dead there.’”  Abraham simply will not accept this burial place as a gift, he wants a price. 

Finally stage six, Ephron names his price. Verses 14-15, “Ephron answered Abraham, ‘Listen to me, my lord; the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver, but what is that between me and you? Bury your dead.’” Now, most commentators say it was way overpriced. I have no idea. All I know is that Abraham finally gets what he's looking for and he doesn't dicker anymore. He's not gonna go down to 200 and then 250 and then they meet somewhere in the middle. They're not gonna do that. 400 shekels of silver it is. So he immediately accepts the price, and the transaction is formally made. Now, if you put everything together, I don't sense that Abraham was hurting financially. Do you? And I think he had the money with him at that particular moment. He's ready to go. He's got the 400 shekels, and so he weighs it out.

Stage seven, Abraham immediately accepts Ephron's price and the transaction is formally made. Verses 16-18, “Abraham agreed to Ephron's terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites: four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weight current among the merchants. So Ephron's field in Machpelah near Mamre — both the field and the cave in it, and all the trees within the borders of the field — was deeded to Abraham as his property in the presence of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of the city.” So Abraham has the silver with him, he knows the right amount that the merchants use for their weight, there's no standard currency in those days, so they weigh out the silver. And so they weigh it out according to the standard merchant weight. There are solemn formalities here. The whole thing is done at the gate of the city with a bunch of witnesses and there's a deed, and it describes what's on the land, the trees are included, which is a good thing. They're very difficult to move, very hard to move trees. But they're included in the land along with the cave and everything in it. Do you sense the formality of the legal transaction that's going on here? In my opinion, it's the point of the whole account. In addition to finding out that Sarah has died, but it's the point of the whole account is this negotiation and the title deed of the land transferred over to Abraham for a certain sum of money.

And so finally we get the completion of the burial. Verse 19, “Afterward Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave in the field of Machpelah near Mamre (which is at Hebron) in the land of Canaan.” So Abraham laid his wife's body in that cave, and he did it in future hope of resurrection. 

We've seen this before just as he was willing to sacrifice his son, Isaac, believing and trusting that God would raise him from the dead. I believe he'd buried his wife Sarah, believing in the same way that God had power to raise him from the dead. Now, look at the final verse. In Verse 20, it says (this is the summary of the whole account), “So the field and the cave in it were deeded to Abraham by the Hittites as a burial site.” My friends, that's the point of the whole account. It's that he bought this land and it was deeded to him, he is now legal owner of a piece of Promised Land property.

Now, in the future, in the Book of Genesis, there will be other burials in this same cave complex. Abraham himself will be buried there. In Genesis 25:7-10, it talks about the burial of Abraham after his death at age 175. It says, Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people. Isaac and Ishmael his sons buried him in the cave of Machpelah, in the field of Ephron the son of Zohar the Hittite, east of Mamre, the field that Abraham purchased from the Hittites. There Abraham was buried, with Sarah his wife.” 

So, Abraham is gonna be buried in that same cave. Later Isaac will be buried in that same cave. In Genesis 35:27-29, it says, “And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre, or Kiriath-arba (that is, Hebron), where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned. Now the days of Isaac were 180 years. And Isaac breathed his last, and he died and was gathered to his people, old and full of days. And his sons Esau and Jacob buried him.” So, he also is buried in the cave at Mamre. Later in the account, Rebecca will be buried there, Leah, Jacob's first wife, will be buried there, and Jacob himself, and this is really striking, at the end of the whole book of Genesis, kind of the summary of the Book of Genesis, Jacob is on his death bed, he knows he's dying. 

He's already moved down to Egypt, he's left the Promised Land. He's gone down to Egypt because of the severity of the famine, and Joseph was down there second in charge over all of Egypt, you know the story. And he's on his death bed. And so he gathers his sons around him and he gives them one final command, and this is what he tells him in Genesis 49:29 and following, “Then he commanded them and said to them, ‘I am to be gathered to my people; bury me with my fathers in the cave that is in the field of Ephron the Hittite, in the cave that is in the field at Machpelah, to the east of Mamre, in the land of Canaan, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite to possess as a burying place. [There's like 17 different identifiers. “Do you know the cave I mean? You know that very one, please bury me there.” He is very clear about this.] There they buried Abraham and Sarah his wife. There they buried Isaac and Rebekah his wife, and there I buried Leah — the field and the cave that is in it were bought from the Hittites.' When Jacob finished commanding his sons, he drew up his feet into the bed and breathed his last and was gathered to his people.” This is his last command on earth. After all of the years on earth, the last thing is, "Please don't bury me here in Egypt, but take me back to the Promised Land and bury me there, with Abraham and Sarah, with Isaac and Rebecca, and with Leah."

And they obeyed him. In Genesis 50:12 and 13, “Thus his sons did for him as he had commanded them, for his sons carried him to the land of Canaan and buried him in the cave of the field at Machpelah, to the east of Mamre, which Abraham bought with the field from Ephron the Hittite to possess as a burying place.” This is not insignificant friends. This is a significant theme in the Book of Genesis. And here it is purchased. It was a piece of the Promised Land.

Now, the Book of Hebrews gives us a little bit of a commentary on what they were feeling and thinking at this time. It's in Hebrews 11:13-16. And it's printed in your bulletin, so you don't have to take time to flip there, but you can if you'd like. But in Hebrews 11:13 and following, it says, “These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, [Do you realize how important that is? They died in faith, not having received] but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. [That’s what Abraham does in this account.] Hebrews 11:14: For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”

Now, Abraham had opportunity to go back, along the journey, Mesopotamia back to Ur of the Chaldees and bury Sarah if he'd wanted to. I'm sure that his relatives which were still living at the end of Genesis 22, we know they're there and they'll come into the story in Genesis 24, they're all still there. He could have gone back there and buried her there. But no way. He’s going to stay in the Promised Land. Abraham's true home is in the center of God's promises. That's his home. And even though he doesn't own a foot of ground in the Promised Land, and he's got to bow and scrape to get a cave from these people, that's where he's going to bury Sarah. 

It says also in Hebrews 11 that these folks died in faith, not having received what they were promised. The promises were begun, but still unfulfilled. And what I say to you is true of them, is just as true of us. Faith shines most brightly beside the grave. It shines most brightly when we come face-to-face with death. More on that in a moment, but this intense purchase of land and this heart felt burial, all of it is a testimony to the significance of this cave and the piece of the Promised Land and Abraham's faith in the promises of God. 

In effect, Abraham is saying, "Some day all of this will be mine, my lasting possession, and this cave is a testimony of it." It reminds me very much of another real estate purchase later in redemptive history, at a very, very difficult time when Jerusalem is surrounded by Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians. When Nebuchadnezzar has conquered everything else and seems irresistible, when the walls of Jerusalem are crumbling, at that moment, a hated prophet, Jeremiah who's saying, "By the way, your only hope is to go through the walls and go surrender to this guy, therefore, he's a traitor." One of the most difficult ministries anybody's ever given anyone, God had ever given to anyone, Jeremiah's task to stand in the city and say, "It's over, Nebuchadnezzar is going to conquer this city." In the midst of all of that, a relative comes and wants to sell them a piece of property out there. 

Now, I would think that this would be an unwise investment, wouldn't you? I mean at this particular moment, the Babylonian army seems to have full intention of having an empire there. Why in the world would you wanna buy a piece of that? Do you remember the relative comes and says, "Why don't you buy some of my ancestral land and I can sell it to you at a really good price." You know? It's like buying the Brooklyn Bridge. Will it ever come into possession? But the Lord spoke to him and said, "Buy the land, get the title deed, have it witnessed, roll it up and put it in a jar for safe keeping. 70 years later, it'll be needed." That's a remarkable thing.

And at the height of that conquest by Nebuchadnezzar, at the height of the besieging of Jerusalem, he buys some land. Jeremiah is beside himself with joy and faith. This is what he says in Jeremiah 32:16-17, 24-27: “After I had given the deed of purchase to Baruch the son of Neriah, I prayed to the LORD, saying: ‘Ah, Lord GOD! It is you who has made the heavens and the earth by your great power and by your outstretched arm! Nothing is too hard for you. … ...Behold, the siege mounds have come up to the city to take it, and because of sword and famine and pestilence the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans who are fighting against it. What you spoke has come to pass, and behold, you see it. Yet you, O Lord GOD, have said to me, “Buy the field for money and get witnesses”— though the city is given into the hands of the Chaldeans.’ … The word of the LORD came to Jeremiah: ‘Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?’” 

That land is the Promised Land, and it doesn't make a difference who's trampling it right now, it doesn't make a difference what armies are on it. That land was promised to Abraham and to his descendants forever. And so this is what I come to. We come to the edge of life, to the end of life. We come to death. We come to the grave. And are you able to say what Job said [Job 13:15], “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him.” Because the slaying is not the end. There's more beyond. There's something beyond. And God has some unfulfilled promises. Faith knows that those unfulfilled promises will all, every one of them come true. 

Now, what does it mean? Aliens and strangers have no lasting possession here on earth. Do you know that? I hope you do. The things you say in the body, and in the flesh — “This is mine” — it's yours temporarily. Use it for the Kingdom, you won't have it long. And you know why? Because the book of Hebrews tells us that some day this physical world will go away. It will be transformed. It will be rolled up. Listen to the Hebrews 1:10-12, “In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed. But you remain the same, and your years will never end.”

Peter testifies to the same thing in 2 Peter 3:10-13. It says, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But [oh, what a sweet “but”] in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness.”

So, let's go back to the central main lesson that we said at the beginning. God's promises are not completed or exhausted in this life. There's more yet to come beyond the grave, and he's going to fulfill every one of them. All of the promises that he's made. Now, Hebrews 11:16 says this, “But as it is, they [the patriarchs and believing people] desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.” A country, a heavenly city. Very interesting, isn't it? And how in Revelation, you heard earlier, Revelation 21:2, it says, “I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband.”

There's a kind of a mysterious, and I don't have it all figured out yet, but a mysterious kind of unity or union between the heavenly and the earthly. The new heavens and the new earth, the home of righteousness. And so remember that God had promised to Abraham and to his descendants forever this land. But it's gotta be transformed. It's gotta go through the remaking of the new heavens and the new earth. And so this cave at Machpelah, it's just a symbol of all the incredible glorious things that are yet to come.

Now, let me ask a simple question. Why did Moses include this secular account? Is it because he wanted us to know how they dickered back then? So that we also could learn business techniques? That is not it, folks. It has everything to do with redemptive history. That's why he included it. It's a purely secular account. I've said that before, there's no mention of God at all except in the honorific title given to Abraham. Then why is it included? What does it matter to us, a modern people, that some tent dwelling nomad bought a piece of land, an insignificant piece of land 4000 years ago? I'm sure he doesn't own it now.

So why do we have to learn this? Well, let me tell you, first of all, Moses wrote this. What was Moses's immediate situation? Well, he's coming out of Egypt with Abraham's descendants. And the way I read it, he was very busy, right up until they came to the edge of the Promised Land, and they chose to disbelieve the promises of God and not enter and take the land. So they turned back and said, "Fine, you'll wander for 40 years until your children will go in." Now, all of a sudden Moses has nothing but time on his hands, and he's got some time to write. He's got time to write the book of Genesis.

And he's writing, and his immediate audience are these unbelieving Jews who devalue the Promised Land, who didn't think that God had power to fulfill his promise. So he's writing to them saying, "Look what Abraham did concerning this cave. Look what Isaac did. Look what Jacob did. Jacob commanded that his body be carried back and not buried in Egypt, but buried instead. “You're the ones that said, aren't there enough graves in Egypt? Bring us back so we can die there.” Oh no, Jacob would never have allowed it. He said, “Bury me in the Promised Land because God promised it to us. That's our land."

So the immediate audience of Moses is the unbelieving Jews whose children would then go in and take the Promised Land, value it properly, it's the Promised Land, God promised to Abraham, "And you will have it by the edge of the sword, by Joshua's conquest." But the fact of the matter is, even that doesn't fully answer it, you know why? 'Cause Abraham didn't have it. He was dead. Isaac didn't have it. He was dead. Jacob didn't have it. Frankly, only the resurrection can fulfill this promise. Amen? Only the resurrection can give Abraham his eternal inheritance, and Isaac and Jacob.

And so it's yet to be fulfilled, and so the final audience, folks, is you and me. We are supposed to read Genesis 23, we're supposed to learn the lesson that God's promises are not exhausted in this lifetime, and that we also have some promises. You say, "Well, do any of them involve real estate? I heard it's a great investment." Well, yes, as a matter of fact, there's one that does. How about this one? Matthew 5:5 “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” That's a good promise, isn't it? Are you in present... Presently a legal owner of any chunk of the earth? Well, you may be. You may be a homeowner, but let me tell you something, we already know from Hebrews 1, you hold on to it loosely because it will be taken from you at death.

No, what you want is a lasting inheritance, isn't that right? You want a lasting possession. Well, Jesus said, "The meek will inherit the Earth in the future." What earth? I want the Good Earth, I want the new heaven and new earth earth, don't you? Meanwhile, the Hittites they do better here on Earth, than we do. They trade better. They kind of own it. They seem to do very well. We, however, we're the believing ones, and we've got a gravel for a cave, but we've got the promises, don't we? The meek will inherit the Earth. It's written for us.

So, what application can we take from this? What lesson and what application? Well, you tell me. God's promises are not exhausted in this life. Death doesn't end it, there's more beyond. More things are promised to you as a Christian than you will receive in this life. Nothing in this world is permanent, even precious relationships like that of a godly spouse, a husband and wife relationship, it's temporary. For every believer the best is yet to come. So, what applications can we take from this?

Well, do not grieve like the hopeless, don't grieve like death is all there is, don't act like a pagan at the grave, don't forget what's promised to us in Christ. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14, it says, "Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep or to grieve like the rest of men who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him." So don't grieve like the hopeless. We have a sure and certain hope of resurrection, don't we? 

Secondly, when the time comes to bury your loved ones, do so in faith. Let the world see your belief, let the world see your trust in the promises of God. “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die." Do you believe this?’ ‘Yes, Lord,’ she said, ‘I believe…’” [John 11:25-27] Well, then, how about all of us, how about act like it at the moment of burial.

Thirdly, can I say gently that you as a believer should prefer burial to cremation? Now, I think it's possible that some of you have cremated relatives, and I'm not being negative towards you. I wanna say two things about that directly. First, there is no overt command against cremation in the Bible. And second of all, do not think for a moment that God is not capable of raising to resurrection life those who have been cremated. Think about those believers who were on the jets that crashed into the buildings in 9/11, there were some believers there, their bodies were incinerated by the jet fuel. God is fully able to raise them up to resurrection life. He will do it.

That's not the point. The point is that this burial clearly means something to Abraham, doesn't it? He takes an awful lot of time concerning the corpse of his wife. The physical burial of Sarah is a testimony of resurrection, so also was the physical burial of Christ as they wrapped him up with grave clothes and the grave clothes empty were a great testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. How we treat the body at death can be a testimony to the watching world of our faith in resurrection. 

Fourthly, die well. Die well. When it is your time, if you are in a lingering illness, you know that death may be approaching, may I urge you to die in faith, believing. May I urge you to say with Job, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." There's more beyond, even if I'm suffering now, even if I'm dying, even if it hurts, God is faithful. Die in faith. Because what you're saying when you die in faith is there's more yet to come. This isn't the end of the story. There's more yet to come. And so it is.

Fifthly, do not hold on to earthly things, they're not yours forever, use them wisely, use them well, use them as those who are going to soon lose them, because you will. This earth is not all there is, and it will be destroyed by fire. But in keeping with his promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth. So don't hold on to earthly things. Let the Hittites be more worldly-wise than you are, let them do better in business, let them get advancements that you won't have in this world. We know the truth. The meek will inherit the Earth. It says in 1 Corinthians 15:19, “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” It is not for this life only that we hope in Christ.

Six, rejoice in the future glory of all believers and of all creation. Some day this world will be made incredibly beautiful, without any corruption, without any corruption, it will be incredible. Don't you want a piece of it? I do. I wanna be there. I wanna be in lasting possession, eternal inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade kept in heaven for me, I want it.

Seventh, restore your faith by seeing how faithful God was to Abraham. He fulfilled the promise by bringing the Jews into the Promised Land at one level. He did it, he has the power to fulfill all of his promises.

And then finally, to you who are married, make the most of the brief life you have on Earth with your wife, with your husband. Make the most of it. It says in Ecclesiastes 9:7-9, “Go eat your food with gladness and drink your wine with a joyful heart for it is now that God favors what you do. Always be clothed in white and always anoint your head with oil, enjoy life with your wife whom you love, all the days of this meaningless life that God has given you under the sun, all your meaningless days. For this is your lot in life and in your toils and labor under the sun.” 

I'm not gonna take the moment to explain what meaningless means in the book of Ecclesiastes, but what I will say is this, enjoy life with your wife, enjoy life with your husband, enjoy life with your children. Make the most of every opportunity. Make the most of the days. We don't have them for long. It won't be long before you'll be kneeling beside your dead spouse and then rising to handle the burial. Make the most of the days that you have.

Andy Davis preaches an expository sermon on Genesis 22 on how God offers sacrificial provision for his people.

We are looking for a fifth and final time this morning at Genesis 22. The first two sermons focused, on the human side, on Abraham and what it was like for him to offer his son Isaac in faith as a burnt offering. The next two focused on fourteen type prophecies that are fulfilled in the sacrifice in Genesis 22. Today we will look at one more type prophecy, specifically the place of the offering, and trace it across Scripture to see how “on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” 

Thanksgiving is one of my favorite celebrations of the year. In December of 1620, the pilgrims came to cold Cape Cod. When they landed after a difficult voyage, they immediately got on their knees and gave thanks for God’s good provision in getting them there safely. They saw everything as coming to them from the hand of God. They were always looking for providence, for provision. But it was a very difficult experience. The harshness of the following winter almost destroyed their colony. Sickness ravaged them that winter. By the beginning of spring in 1621, half of their 102 members had perished. Of the 17 male heads of families, 10 died during the first infection. Of the 17 wives, only three were left after three months. Governor William Bradford wrote that the living were scarce able to bury the dead. At any given point, only six or seven people were healthy enough to do all the work of caring for the others, fetching firewood, cooking, washing “loathsome clothes” by hand. 

These heroes, he said, did “all the homely and necessary offices for [the sick] which dainty and queasy stomachs cannot endure to hear named, and all this willingly and cheerfully, without grudging in the least.” Can you imagine the difficulties of making it through that first winter. The turning point for the colony began one Thursday, in the middle of March 1621, when they met an Indian named Tisquantum, also known as Squanto. Squanto was, they believed, a special instrument of God for their good beyond their expectation. 

 He had found his reason for living: these English were helpless in the ways of the wilderness and would not have survived without him. Squanto taught them how to catch eels — apparently they were very sweet for those who liked that kind of thing — how to stalk deer, how to plant pumpkins, how to refine maple syrup, how to discern both edible herbs and those that are good for medicine. 

Perhaps the most important thing he did was teach them the native way of planting corn. They would put five kernels in a small shallow pit with three fish in a star-like pattern with the heads pointing in toward the kernels. They needed to guard the fields all the time, 24 hours a day, from the wolves who would try to dig up the fish. As a result, they ended up with 20 full acres of corn, which saved their lives the next winter. Squanto also taught them how to exploit the pelts of the beaver, which was in plentiful supply and in great demand throughout Europe. He taught them not only how to hunt them and prepare them, but also what were the best prices and how not to get taken for a ride by the traders. 

The pilgrims rightly ascribed their health and their prosperity at the human level to Squanto, but ultimately as Bible-believing Christians, they ascribed it to Providence. They believed in the providence of God. They believed that the Bible teaches that God rules over all things, and that everything we have comes from his hand. They were not getting together at Thanksgiving to thank the native Americans. Though they were no doubt grateful, they were there to thank God because they believed in the doctrine of Providence. 

 As great as was the providence of God to them that first year and through the second winter, how much greater was the providence of God at Mount Moriah for them? On the mountain of the Lord, it has been provided. I get the joyful news of proclaiming that today. What better thing can there be than that? On the mountain of the Lord, there has been full provision for sin. Today’s sermon is a story of providence, a story that those first pilgrims would have enjoyed hearing, a story of God’s full provision for sin.  

The story begins with Abraham’s walk by faith, in which he was told, in effect, “Go to the land I will show you.” The whole thing began for Abraham in Genesis 12:1: “The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.” It says in Hebrews 11:8, “By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” So it was also in this case. God called Abraham to go to a place he would show him, to follow by faith.  

Genesis 22:1-2 says, “Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.’” The general region was chosen and selected by God, designated by him, but God also had a specific mountain that he had picked out, and it would be on that mountain that Isaac was to be sacrificed. 

In the account, the place is prominent and very important. It is mentioned eight times in this account. Verse 2: “…go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” Verse 3, after preparations were made: “…he set out for the place that God had told him about.”  Verse 4:“On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.” Verse 5: “He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there.” 

After the conversation about who will provide the lamb, in verses 8-9: “Abraham answered, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.’ And the two of them went on together. When they reached the place God had told him about…” Verse 14: “So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.’” This is a striking and intense focus on this place.  Scripture also indicates that God communicated to Abraham about the place as he went along: “…go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” Evidently God revealed some things to Abraham so that when he reached the foot of the mountain, he knew that that was the place, because God had told him. The sacred mountain was named the Mountain of the Lord, given before the encounter. But by the end, Abraham gave it a more complete name: Jehovah Jireh, the Lord will provide. 

The whole Old Testament can be summed up in a central question, found in verse 7: “Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, … ‘The fire and wood are here,’ Isaac said, ‘but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’” Animal sacrifice was nothing more than a symbol. While waiting for fulfillment, the Old Testament question was always, “Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” The central New Testament answer was given by John the Baptist: “Behold the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.” This is the provision that is provided on the mountain of the Lord. Isaac asked the question, where is the lamb? Verse 8 (NIV) says, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.’” The NIV is the only version that translates it that way literally in the Hebrew. The ESV translates well: “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” There is a subtle difference. 

In effect, only God can atone or provide an atonement himself. He is the only one who can turn his own wrath away. No other created being could come up with an offering that could do it. God must, to use the technical theological term, propitiate himself. He must turn his own wrath away, and that is exactly what Abraham says: “God will provide for himself the lamb; no human offering can do it.” 

Let's look at this word provide. It says “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” The simple meaning in English of the word “provide” is to make something available to meet a need. For example, the host provided his guests with water and towels so they could wash for the meal. In other words, he provided or gave them what they needed to meet the need. But the literal English meaning of the word provide comes from the Latin means pro — “before” — and videre — “to see”; to see ahead of time.  

The host, knowing, or seeing, that his guests would need to wash up after their difficult journey, provided water and towels. The literal Hebrew verb in this verse means “God will see for himself the lamb for the burnt offering.” How? God’s vision transcends his history. He sees the end from the beginning. This message will make no sense if God has no accurate and perfect foreknowledge of the future, but he does. 

 It is not an accident that God’s provisions at Mount Moriah — the ram in the thicket, Solomon’s temple, and Christ’s cross and empty tomb — line up. God had chosen a place; he had seen the place ahead of time, before the foundation of the world. God was seeing Christ before Abraham and Isaac began their journey to Moriah. God was seeing Christ before Abraham and Isaac were born. God was seeing Christ before the world began. From eternity past, God saw the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. God will see the lamb for himself, my son. Behold the lamb.  

The first provision at Mount Moriah was the ram in the thicket caught by its horns. It was provided by God. It would not do it all to send Abraham home with no sacrifice having been offered. That would have sent the wrong message. The right message is “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” Isaac was a sinner. He needed a substitute. The right message is also, “The wages of sin is death” If Isaac won't die, something must die; there must be a substitute. 

The ram in the thicket was God’s provision for that. In order for a sinner to approach the thrice Holy God, there must be a blood penalty paid, as Hebrews 9:22 says: “... without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” Either Isaac would die for his own sins or there would be some substitute, some provision. The ram in the thicket is clearly a substitute for Isaac. Genesis 22:13 says, “Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.” The ram took the place of the son.  

Verse 14 gives the key lesson: “So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.’” Abraham’s name for the sacred place was Jehovah Jireh, which could be read, “The Lord will see to it.” He will see what needs to be done and he will provide. This was the proverb. What was to be provided on the mountain of the Lord? A substitute for sins.  

The second provision happened in the unfolding of redemptive history. Abraham’s descendants were enslaved in a country not their own for 400 years. Just as God had told Abraham it would happen, so it happened in Genesis 15. In Abraham’s time, there was a pattern of holy ground. Abraham built altars as he would pilgrim through the promised land. Genesis 13:18 says, “So Abram moved his tents and went to live near the great trees of Mamre at Hebron, where he built an altar to the LORD.” That is holy ground, where he would set up an altar and go regularly to worship.  

We see the same with Jacob when he made his journey to find his wife. As he was traveling, he stopped for the night and had a dream. In the dream, he saw a staircase extending from earth to Heaven, and from Heaven to earth, with angels ascending and descending on it. Genesis 28:16-17 says, “When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.’ He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.’” 

He set up a pillar and poured oil on it. It was a commemoration that it was a holy place. Again, on Mount Sinai in the account of the burning bush, the angel of the Lord said to Moses in Exodus 3:5: “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”  

After God brought his people out of Egypt, took them through the Red Sea, and destroyed Pharaoh and his army, He led them to Sinai and gave them the law, including provision for worship. One of the provisions for worship was the tabernacle. A tabernacle is a tent. A tent is portable. In the tent, God ordained the Most Holy Place, or the Holy of Holies, which was to contain the golden Ark of the Covenant. On the top of the Ark were cherubim. There the blood of the sacrifice was be poured. Above the Ark, God said, he would meet with the people on the basis of the blood that was poured out. So because the tabernacle moved, God was taking the journey (much longer than if they had simply obeyed in the first place) through the wilderness with his people. The pillars of cloud and fire also indicated that God was moving from place to place. As he went, he spoke to the people through Moses.  

In Deuteronomy, God said the traveling would stop when they entered the Promised Land, and there they would worship at the place where God would choose. Deuteronomy 12:4-6 says, “You must not worship the LORD your God in their way. But you are to seek the place the LORD your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go; there bring your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, what you have vowed to give and your freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks.”  

Throughout the book of Deuteronomy, this is a major theme. God commanded that three times a year, all of the Israelite males were to appear at that one place that God would choose from among the tribes, and there they would offer their sacrifices. In the time of Joshua, they conquered the land. In time, God selected the place, which was Jerusalem, the city of David.  Jerusalem was a city of the Jebusite people, and it was tough to conquer. It was a citadel, a mountain fortress. The Jebusites mocked, “Even the lame and blind could defend against David,” but David was able to take it. He took the fortress, the City of Zion, and made it his own, his capital.   

Once David was established there, he built a beautiful, aromatic palace of cedar, but his heart was to build a house for the Lord. In 2 Samuel 7:2, “…he said to Nathan the prophet, ‘Here I am, living in a palace of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.’” He did not think that was right. He wanted to bring the Lord to Jerusalem, and he wanted to build a house, a permanent dwelling place, for the Lord, a resting place where the people of God could come with their offerings. 

Nathan, the prophet, initially says in 2 Samuel 7:3, “Whatever you have in mind, go ahead and do it, for the LORD is with you.” But God had different plans and spoke through Nathan again shortly thereafter. God told Nathan to tell David that he would not be the one to build a house for him. God had not asked for a palace of cedar. Instead, God would raise up David’s son, and he would be the one to build a house for God. There is a double meaning — the immediate fulfillment was Solomon, David’s biological son, who literally built the temple, a physical structure, the house of the Lord; but it is Jesus, the ultimate son of David, who builds the eternal house. And we are his house. Hebrews says, “We, believers are like living stones. And he is building his house and he has been building it for all this time.” God told David it would be his son who would build it. The question is, where should it be built?  

Eventually, David sinned greatly against the Lord. He decided to conduct a sinful census to number the fighting men, to find out how much military strength he had. “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” [Psalm 20:7] David was not trusting that at that moment. It does not say directly why it was sinful, but it was, and Joab knew it was sinful. But David overruled Joab, his commander, and ordered him to count them. So Joab counted the military men.  

Then God was greatly displeased with David. God was determined to punish David for the sinful census. He gave him one of three options — three years of famine, three months of fleeing from before your enemies, or three days of the sword of the Lord, a plague, with the angel of the Lord ravaging every part of Israel. David was in anguish — because of his sin other people would die — but he chose the third option. He said, “Let us fall into the hands of the Lord, for his mercy is great.” 70,000 people died because of David’s sin. As heads of houses, pastors, leaders of countries, we must keep in mind that we may not directly suffers for our sin. Sometimes the punishment gets poured out on those we are responsible for. 

1 Chronicles 21:15-18, 21:26-22:1 tells of the end of that plague: “And God sent an angel to destroy Jerusalem. But as the angel was doing so, the LORD saw it and was grieved because of the calamity and said to the angel who was destroying the people, ‘Enough! Withdraw your hand.’ The angel of the LORD was then standing at the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. David looked up and saw the angel of the LORD standing between heaven and earth, with a drawn sword in his hand extended over Jerusalem. Then David and the elders, clothed in sackcloth, fell facedown. David said to God, ‘Was it not I who ordered the fighting men to be counted? I am the one who has sinned and done wrong. These are but sheep. What have they done? O LORD my God, let your hand fall upon me and my family, but do not let this plague remain on your people.’ Then the angel of the LORD ordered Gad to tell David to go up and build an altar to the LORD on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. ... David built an altar to the LORD there and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. He called on the LORD, and the LORD answered him with fire from heaven on the altar of burnt offering. Then the LORD spoke to the angel, and he put his sword back into its sheath. At that time, when David saw that the LORD had answered him on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, he offered sacrifices there. The tabernacle of the LORD, which Moses had made in the desert, and the altar of burnt offering were at that time on the high place at Gibeon. But David could not go before it to inquire of God, because he was afraid of the sword of the angel of the LORD. Then David said, ‘The house of the LORD God is to be here, and also the altar of burnt offering for Israel.’” 

The temple was to be built on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, where God had answered him with fire from heaven, and the plague had ended. Where was the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite? 2 Chronicles 3:1 says, “Then Solomon began to build the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah…” This is why I am an inerrantist. I can base a whole sermon on one verse, 2 Chronicles 3:1. In one verse, it says that the temple was built on Mount Moriah on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. That was the location of the temple, God’s second provision on the mountain of the Lord.  

What was provided? A semi-permanent dwelling place for the house of God, where lasting animal sacrifices could be offered, including the passover sacrifice. In the sanctuary, this magnificent temple of Solomon, the Holy of Holies was built out of gold. 2 Chronicles 3:8-9 says, “He built the Most Holy Place, its length corresponding to the width of the temple — twenty cubits long and twenty cubits wide. He overlaid the inside with six hundred talents {That is, about 23 tons (about 21 metric tons)} of fine gold. The gold nails weighed fifty shekels. He also overlaid the upper parts with gold.” The Holy of Holies of Solomon’s temple was built with golden nails, but that was not the true holy of holies. God had ordained that the physical temple would be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, king of the Babylonians.  The true holy of holies was built with iron nails, Roman nails, because of Christ’s body and the blood he shed there. That is the true Holy of Holies. That is the true sacrifice. 

Solomon prayed the prayer of dedication concerning the temple and the Holy of Holies. In 2 Chronicles 6:41-7:2, he said, “Now arise, O LORD God, and come to your resting place, you and the ark of your might.” This was symbolic: God was going to come rest, so the glory cloud of God filled the temple that day, — a visible representation of the presence of God. God had stopped his journey and come into his resting place symbolically.  

This was God’s lasting but temporary provision at Mount Moriah. There on Mount Moriah, God came to dwell in symbolic form, and there the Jews were to arrange themselves three times a year to offer their burn offerings. There on Mount Moriah, on the mountain of the Lord, God provided animal sacrifice, a temporary and symbolic provision. At Solomon’s temple on Mount Moriah, the mountain of the Lord, day after day, the priest stood and performed their ministry; day after day, they offered animal sacrifice. Leviticus 17:11 says, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life.” However, Hebrews 10:3-4 says, “…those sacrifices are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Bulls and goats do not equal the value of a human being, and so therefore their blood is no permanent and final provision for sin.  And so Isaac’s question still stands. Where is the lamb? Year after year, these priests offered their sacrifices, and it was just an annual reminder of wickedness and sinfulness. Where is the lamb? 

The Lord’s final provision of Mount Moriah was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world —  Jesus, his own Son. Christ came into the world to die. That was not his only purpose, but it was his central purpose. He came to atone for sin. Hebrews 10:5-7 says, “…when Christ came into the world, he said: ‘Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, but a body you prepared for me; with burnt offerings and sin offerings you were not pleased. Then I said, “Here I am — it is written about me in the scroll — I have come to do your will, O God.”’” God provided a  human body for Jesus — the incarnation — which He lay down as an atoning sacrifice. His blood was necessary for the forgiveness of our sins.  

 What was the will of God for Christ’s body? John 10:17-18 says, “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.” Jesus was saying he had the power to die whenever he chose, and the power to live again whenever he chose he had a command from the Father to lay down his life. And so he would. Matthew 20:28 says, “…the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”  

Was the place of Jesus's sacrifice also determined and written? Mark 10:32-34 says, “They were on their way up to Jerusalem, with Jesus leading the way, and the disciples were astonished, while those who followed were afraid. Again he took the Twelve aside and told them what was going to happen to him. ‘We are going up to Jerusalem,’ he said, ‘and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will hand him over to the Gentiles, who will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise.’” Jesus had to die in Jerusalem.   

Luke 9:51 says, “As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” That was the finish line of his earthly physical ministry, to die in Jerusalem. The time of Jesus’ death was set by prophecy — he would die at the time of the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb, since he was the passover lamb. The circumstances of his death were set by prophecy — he would die having been betrayed by a close friend for 30 pieces of silver and rejected by his own people. The manner of his death was set by prophecy — he would be pierced for our transgressions and lifted up like a bronze serpent, like Moses lifted up the bronze serpent on the stake. Do you think that God ordained the time, circumstances and manner of Christ’s death but left out the place? No. Jesus would die on Mount Moriah. Genesis 22:14 says, “to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.’”  

Where was Christ sacrificed? He was sacrificed at Golgotha. The word Golgotha simply means “the place of the skull,” (Matthew 27:33), but Golgotha was still in Jerusalem proper. It was still on Mount Moriah. Revelation 11:8 says, “[The two witnesses’] bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.” Jesus was crucified in Jerusalem. Speaking of the sign written in three languages that Pilate had put on the cross that said, “Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews,” John 19:20 says, “…the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city…” 

Hebrews 13:12 says, “Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.” Mount Moriah is a complex of mountains, like a ridge, so Jerusalem, the city is built on one section of it, but just outside the gate is where Jesus was crucified. The Roman soldiers would not have made a man who was to be crucified walk 10 or 15 miles. They would bring him just outside the city gate and crucify him as a warning to the people in the city. All of these signs point to God’s eternal provision. Jesus Christ was sacrificed for our sins.  

Why does God do so much precision of time and manner and mode and place? So that you may be saved. So that people to the ends of the Earth can hear the story and marvel at the complexity of the threads that are woven together in this Gospel. It is beyond human ken. We cannot put something like this together. The quality is too high. Jesus did many miracles, not just one. And Jesus fulfilled many prophecies, not just one.  

Genesis 22:14 says, “…to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.’” The greatest joy of my life is to tell you that on the mountain of the Lord, it has been provided. Jesus said “It is finished.” A full provision of sin was made when Jesus shed his blood, but that is not all — God did not leave Jesus dead on Mount Moriah. We still have some work to do — he must be raised from the dead. On the mountain of the Lord, a full provision must be made.  

These verses in Isaiah are so important to what I am presenting that they are printed in your bulletin. Isaiah 25:6-9 is the second significant prophecy concerning the mountain of the Lord. There are many more than that, but we will focus on the second one first: “On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine — the best of meats and the finest of wines. On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever. The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The LORD has spoken. In that day they will say, ‘Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the LORD, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.’” Twice it says, “On this mountain.” On what mountain? In context, it can be none other than the mountain of the Lord’s temple, using Isaiah’s language — it is Jerusalem, God’s holy hill, Mount Zion. 

What will happen on this mountain? The Lord Almighty will spread a feast of rich food for all his people, with the highest quality food and drink. Isaiah was a visionary prophet. If you close your eyes and listen, you see images, but his images are spiritual. There is always a physical side to them, but he was using spiritual language — physical language to talk about a spiritual feast.  

What is this rich feast, this banquet that he will spread? It is none other than the destruction of death. He will destroy the shroud that covers all nations, the sheet that enfolds all peoples. He will swallow up death forever. Where will he do it? On this mountain, Mount Moriah, Jesus Christ destroyed death forever by his crucifixion, but if he had not been raised from the dead on the third day, we could not say that death was destroyed. We need a resurrection. On this mountain also Jesus destroyed death forever by his resurrection.   

Where was Jesus buried? On Mount Moriah. John 19:41-42 says, “At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid. Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.” Right there on Mount Moriah, he was buried, and therefore Isaiah 25:7-8 was fulfilled, because on that mountain, Jesus destroyed death forever by his resurrection from the dead. 

The first mention in Isaiah of the mountain of the Lord’s temple is in Isaiah 2. Here is where it gets final and complete, and the Gospel extends. Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world, Mount Blanc the highest mountain in Europe, Mount McKinley the highest in North America. There are many mountains that are taller than Mount Moriah, but Mount Moriah is the chief among the mountains on earth. 

Isaiah 2:1-3 says, “This is what Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem: In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. Many peoples will come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us his ways, so that we may walk in his paths.’ The law will go out from Zion, the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.”  

What does Isaiah see concerning Judah and Jerusalem? At a certain point, the mountain of the Lord’s temple will be established and all nations — the Gentiles — will go streaming to it. You may wonder why, then, isn’t there a pilgrimage like there is to Mecca? Jesus covered that in John 4: “Woman, believe me, a time is coming when you worship the Father, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”  

We do need to make a physical pilgrimage to Jerusalem, to Mount Moriah, because God is spirit. Because Jesus physically died and was raised from the dead, we can worship him right here in Durham, North Carolina. Amen. We do not need to physically go to any mountain, but still there is a streaming of the nations. People go there spiritually in their hearts and minds, understanding that the most important thing that has ever happened to them happened 2000 years before they were born. 2000 years before we were born, Jesus died on the cross. In my heart, I am at Mount Moriah, where it was provided for me. It is my only hope on the mountain, the Lord has provided for me, a sinner.  

The final mention in Isaiah of the mountain, the Lord’s temple, is in Isaiah 66:19-20: “I will set a sign among them. And from them I will send survivors to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to Tubal and Javan, to the coastlands afar off, that have not heard my fame or seen my glory. And they shall declare my glory among the nations. And they shall bring all your brothers from all the nations as an offering to the LORD, on horses and in chariots and in litters and on mules and on dromedaries, to my holy mountain Jerusalem, says the LORD, just as the Israelites bring their grain offering in a clean vessel to the house of the LORD.”  

They are all moving. Where are they going? They are going to the mountain of the Lord’s temple. Are they going there physically? We already answered that. Jesus said we do not need to go anywhere physically. But they are streaming there. This is the advance of the Gospel, beginning in Jerusalem, moving to the ends of the earth. Isaiah saw it. They are all going to the mountain of the Lord’s temple. Why? Because on the mountain of the Lord, it has been provided. That feast mentioned in Isaiah 25, that banquet of rich foods, is provision from the Lord.  

Isaiah 55:1-2 “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare.” 

 God specified a specific place for Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. He said, “Go to the place I will show you” — Mount Moriah — and he led him right to it. That is the place Abraham designated as the mountain of the Lord, and he coined a phrase, a proverb saying, “On the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided.”  

Before Israel entered the Promised Land, God told Israel through Moses in the book of Deuteronomy, you must not worship under any spreading tree or anywhere you want, but you must go to the place I choose, and there you must worship. Where was it? It was on Mount Moriah, where God ended the plague during the time of David’s sinful census, and where Solomon built the temple. But that was only God’s second provision on Mount Moriah, the temple of the Lord. He was still asking Isaac’s question, where is the lamb? And then John the Baptist points to him and says, “Behold the Lamb, see him, look at him, behold the Lamb” — he is God’s final provision of Mount Moriah. Jesus had to journey back to Mount Moriah, just like Abraham and Isaac did. He went there to die. What Abraham was asked to do, God the father did — he literally died, and he was raised from the dead on the third day. That is God’s final provision. And now survivors, messengers, are going out to the ends of the earth, to the coast lands and the distant islands who have not heard of God’s fame or seen his glory, and they are proclaiming that on the mountain of the Lord, it has been provided. Come and eat. The feast is spread. Come to the table, sit down and eat. 

If you are not a believer, I invite you to come sit down and eat by faith. Trust in Jesus Christ to be your atoning sacrifice for sin. There is no other. Those who are wavering concerning the Word of God, waver no longer. Who could ever have put something like this together? It is too intricate, too perfect. This is the word of God, not merely the word of man. Lose forever any doubt about a single verse in the Bible — like the lynch pin verse, 2 Chronicles 3:1, that the temple was built on Mount Moriah. Do not doubt the Word of God anymore. This week, when you are thanking him for provision and family and all of God’s good gifts — for every good and perfect gift comes down from above — thank him more than anything for this provision for your sin. 

If you were a high ranking official in the Pentagon working on top secret intelligence data, you would work behind a door accessible only with an iris scan. The camera designated for this purpose would be connected to a database, and through that process, your unique identity would be detectable. More and more, the issue of identity is pushing to the fore. That is especially true after the September 11th terrorist attacks. The United States government has a quandary of balancing a free and open society with screening and vetting people who come across our borders for business or pleasure or even to immigrate.

Agencies, corporations, and others use technology known as biometrics, the measurement of some physical attribute of the human body. Unique identity is one application among several. Law enforcement agencies have used fingerprints for a long time; the FBI has millions and millions of fingerprints stored in their database to help identify people for various purposes.

According to a CBS 60 Minutes recent report, fingerprints are not foolproof. A Japanese man proved with Crazy glue that he could get fingerprints off of a drinking glass and use it to fail some fingerprint tests. So more and more law enforcement agencies are looking to other biometrics such as DNA, taking a sample from one who is accused of a crime, in order to be more accurate. DNA samples do not solve the need for quick identification, such as opening the door at the Pentagon or boarding an airplane.

An iris scan is by far the easiest and the most accurate means of biometric identification to date. According to the information from Iris Scan, a company that makes these machines, only one in 1078 times will there be a match from one eye to the next. There are about 5.8 billion people on earth. Given that probability, with 5.8 billion planets with the same number of people, there would not be two identical irises. With two seconds of scan, an individual can be identified and matched.

Individuals must be able to maintain identity across the internet to avoid becoming a victim of identity theft when conducting e-commerce with a credit card, protected with a password. Immigration and Naturalization Service officials must be able to identify a person who presents a passport. The Pentagon must be able to limit access into top secret rooms to those who have clearance. Swiss banks operating with numbered accounts must be able to know that the person withdrawing from an account is the same French industrialist who put the millions of francs into the bank.

As important as all of these things are, they pale in comparison with the importance of your soul. For what would it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? Of the approximately 10 billion plus people that have ever lived (impossible to know the exact number), God must identify for us the one man who is the Son of Man and the Son of God, the Savior of the world. In that one man, we must put our faith. We must trust in Him for the salvation of our souls. How will God identify Christ for us? The answer is in Scripture: He has given us prophecy, which targets and triangulates one individual, the only one who could fulfill all of the prophetic pictures of the Christ.

There are two different categories of prophecy. One is verbally predictive prophecy, such as Isaiah 53: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth” speaking of the life of Christ, how he would be our substitute at the cross. Isaiah 9 is another: “For to us a son is born, to us a child is given, and the government will be on His shoulders… He will reign on David’s throne…” The Son of David would be the king of the world.

The second category of prophecy is typically predictive prophecy. In other words, elements of Christ’s life and ministry were acted out by others in space and time as a type, prior to his incarnation, and recorded for us in the words of Scripture. All of them together give us a picture of what Jesus came to do. Of all of the typically predictive prophecies, one of the clearest is in Genesis 22.

We previously considered the first eight of fifteen elements laid out in the story in Genesis 22 between Abraham and Isaac which are a type, or prophetic picture, of the Gospel. Genesis 22:2 says, “Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.’”

Father/son relationship: Abraham was Isaac’s father. God the Father gave His only begotten Son for us.

Pre-determined deliberate choice on the part of the father: Abraham had time to think about what he was doing — a three-day journey preceded by tasks of preparation such as chopping firewood. This showed a great deliberate choice on the part of the father to sacrifice his son, Isaac. That is nothing compared to the eternal foreknowledge of God the Father — from before the foundation of the world, God had determined to sacrifice His only begotten Son for the sins of the world.

The father and the son were alone: Abraham and Isaac left the servants behind and went alone up on Mount Moriah. The heavenly Father and the only begotten Son alone worked salvation. There was no other human involved; there could be none. The transaction from the Father and the Son won our salvation.

Isaac carried his own wood: This was fulfilled in Christ as he carried the cross himself. The Gospel of John states in the Greek in the intensive: “He, bearing His own cross himself, went out.” That was also borne out in a spiritual sense — Jesus was the sin bearer for the world. He physically bore the cross, but he also carried our sins on himself.

The fire of judgment: Abraham had the fire ready to consume Isaac. God had commanded that he be offered as a burnt offering. Fire is a picture of God’s judgment and wrath. While God ordained for Christ to be the blood sacrifice, he was not to be burned up. He did have the fire of zeal in his heart for the temple of God that led him to cleanse the temple at least twice, into immediate problems with the powers that be at the time, and immediately to his death. John 2 says, “Zeal for your house will consume me” which means literally “burned me up, is burning within me.” And Jesus drank the cup of God’s wrath spiritually at the cross.

The death penalty was required: Abraham was not commanded to sell his son Isaac into slavery or to wound him, but rather he was commanded to kill Isaac. He had to be put to death. “For the wages of sin is death.”From the very beginning, there has been a link between sin and death, and so Isaac had to die. So also Jesus gave himself up unto death; He died on the cross as an atoning sacrifice for sin.

The moment of revelation to the son was shocking: At one point, Isaac did not know that he was to be the sacrifice. He asked, “Here's wood and fire, but where is the sacrifice?” Abraham spoke to his son and said, “God will provide the sacrifice.” At some point, Isaac realized he was the sacrifice. That must have been an amazing moment of revelation for him. Jesus Christ in His deity was omniscient, but during his incarnation, he limited himself in space and time. He could only be one place at one time. That did not mean he was no longer God, but that was something he took on himself. In some way, he was also limited in his knowledge. It makes sense in that he was born an infant, and wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.

Luke 2:52 says, “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” At some point, the Heavenly Father revealed to the earthly Son who had taken on a human body: “You will die for sin.” That revelation continued until, on the night before he was crucified, it came to a peak in the Garden of Gethsemane. Mark’s Gospel says that Jesus was astonished and he fell to the ground. As he prayed, great drops of blood were falling to the ground. God had in some way opened up his mind and showed him what it would be like to drink the cup of God’s wrath, which Jesus drank it to the bottom.

The son willingly yielded to death: This detail is coupled with the previous one. Reading between the lines, we assume that a young man strong enough to carry all the wood of the offering is strong enough to fight off an aged father if he had wanted to, or certainly strong enough to run away, but Isaac wanted to do neither. He willingly submitted to death. In the same way, Jesus, in the greatest, most courageous act of heroism in history, said, “Yet not as I will, but as you will.” He desired to drink the cup. Our salvation is based on that deliberate act of obedience.

Romans 5:19 says, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” That was Jesus’ obedience.

The ninth type is in Genesis 22:9: “When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.” It should not trouble us that Abraham bound Isaac as though he was trying to get away, or there was some kind of struggle. If there had been any kind of struggle, Isaac would have won.

Luther says it was not because Isaac was trying to get away or was weak in any way, but because Abraham was following the pattern for sacrifices. The sacrifice was bound, so he was going to bind his son as he was about to slay him. Perhaps also it might have been an act of mercy to help Isaac physically to stay on the altar. I cannot imagine what it must have been like for him to bind up his own son, to lash his hands and feet with a cord. What grief must have filled his mind with every knot. Abraham laid Isaac on the altar in a picture of total submission to the will of God, but an incredible act of courage and faith for Abraham.

This prophecy, this binding of Isaac, was fulfilled in a number of ways in Christ. First and foremost is the spiritual binding of Jesus. Jesus was hemmed in, or bound, by the will of God and the Scripture. He could do no other than die on the cross, and he knew it. He says this in Luke 12:50, rendered from the Greek most accurately in the KJV: “But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”  He is saying in effect, “I am in a strait jacket until it is done, bound by the word of God.”

The baptism he must endure clearly refers to his death. Later, John uses the same Greek word, speaking of Jerusalem being surrounded and hemmed in from every side by his opponents. Jesus said he felt that way by the will of God, surrounded, hemmed in, having no other place to go. In a crowd of people, a woman who had been bleeding for 12 years came up behind him unnoticed and touched the hem of Jesus’ garment. Luke 8:45 says, “‘Who touched me?’ Jesus asked. When they all denied it, Peter said, ‘Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.’” The same Greek word is used to refer to the press of the crowd.

Jesus felt bound by the will of God, and this really comes down to the moment when he was being arrested. When Peter drew his sword to fight for Jesus, Jesus told Peter, “Put your sword away, for all who live by the sword will die by the sword.” In Matthew 26:53-54, he said, “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” Jesus was bound in by the scripture, and there was no other way for his life to end. He had to die on the cross. He rebuked Peter for trying to disrupt the scripture path that God had laid out for him. Jesus was bound in by it.

He gives glimpses of what it must have been like for him. John 12:27 says, “Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” You can see the sense of the straitjacket in a way, the binding of Jesus, not against his will, but just hemmed by the word of God.

There was also a physical fulfillment. Isaac was bound by cords, and Jesus was physically bound by cords. All four gospels mention it. Matthew 27:1-2 says, “When morning came, all the chief priests and the elders of the people took counsel against Jesus to put him to death. And they bound him and led him away and delivered him over to Pilate the governor.”

The tenth picture of the Gospel is that Abraham was commanded to strike Isaac himself, to put his own son to death. I mentioned Patrick Morley’s account of the father on the fishing trip with his son in Alaska when their float plane leaked and sank. The father did not want to leave his son to die in the cold waters of Alaska. Though he probably could have saved himself, he did not want to leave his son to die alone in the cold Alaskan waters. Instead, he stayed and died with his son. It would be an equally difficult, horrible experience for a father to watch his son die and be powerless to save him, as with leukemia or some other disease.

It would be even more horrible and difficult to watch your son die and choose not to save him though you could. What kind of father would have the power to save his son but choose not to? Pastor Florescu, a Romanian pastor during the time of the communist oppression in Romania, was arrested for his faith. During his imprisonment, he was beaten every day. At night he was kept in a horrible prison cell. They forced large starving rats through the drainage pipe which would harass him all night. He had to stay awake and vigilant all night to keep the rats at bay, to keep them from biting and eating at his bleeding wounds. And then the next morning, his oppressors would begin again.

This went on for three weeks. They wanted him to reveal the list of all of his congregation members to arrest them for torture as well. He refused; he would rather die than betray his brothers and sisters in Christ. However, when they brought in his 14-year-old son and started to beat him with the clear intention of killing him, this man, broken down by lack of sleep, physical pain, and torture, wavered and said to his son, “I cannot watch any longer. I must tell them what they want to know.”

The son said, “Father, do not do me the injustice of having a traitor as a father. Stand firm. I will die with the words Jesus and my fatherland on my lips.” This incited the communists to anger. They killed the 14-year-old son. The father had the ability to deliver his son and chose not to because his son exhorted him not to, knowing it would lead to more suffering and death of more Christians.

Harder still would be for a father to put his own son to death, the very thing that Abraham was commanded to do. He was not simply powerless to save his son, nor had the power to save him and chose not. He was commanded to be the one to do it himself, which, in a very small way, mirrored what our heavenly Father did to his own Son at the cross. This is an astonishing thing. God the Father gave to his Son the cup of His own wrath. Isaiah 53:10 says, “Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer…” The Father poured out His own wrath on His Son.

You could think that God the Father did it for the joy that was set before him, as the Son did. That is true, but it was not easy. We are emotional beings. The feelings we have for our children is a dim reflection, being created in the image of God, of how the Father feels for His own Son. Our Heavenly Father is an emotional being. It was not a light thing for Him to put His own Son to death.

There are at least two indications of what the heavenly Father was feeling at that moment. First, Luke 23:44-45 says, “It was now about the sixth hour, and darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour, for the sun stopped shining.” Second, at the moment of death, Matthew 27:50-54 says, “And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people. When the centurion and those with him who were guarding Jesus saw the earthquake and all that had happened, they were terrified, and exclaimed, ‘Surely he was the Son of God!’” It was not a light thing emotionally for the Father to do this to his own Son, but it is precisely what he did. What Abraham was asked to do, he did, he crushed his only son, but it still would not have compared because it was a spiritual crushing, it was the wrath of hell that the Son experienced on the cross, and the Father gave him the cup.

Eleven, we see the shedding of blood. Abraham was set to slay his son. He was ready to take the knife, to plunge it into his son’s body, to shed his son’s blood, because the sacrifice required it. Sacrifices in the Old Covenant were blood sacrifices, the only acceptable gift to God for our sin. Later, the Mosaic Law says in Leviticus 17:11, “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.” Hebrews 9:22 says, “…without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” Abraham was commanded to shed his son’s blood.

So also Jesus shed his blood on the cross. He would not be suffocated or drowned or stoned to death. He was to die a bloody death. His blood would be shed. Ephesians 1:7 “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace.” Find your significance, your lasting joy in that God the Father shed his own Son’s blood for our sins. It is enough. He does not ask anything more of us. Our works cannot add anything to the finished work of Christ on the cross. The blood of Christ is sufficient for all of our sins, past, present and future. That blood was shed at Calvary.

Twelve, the angel of the Lord appeared just as Abraham reached out his hand to take the knife to slay his son. Genesis 22:11-12: “But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. ‘Do not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.’”

Who is the angel of the Lord? Angels are spiritual beings created by God to serve Him. Psalm 103:20-21 says, “Praise the LORD, you his angels, you mighty ones who do his bidding, who obey his word. Praise the LORD, all his heavenly hosts, you his servants who do his will.” Angels are created servants who do God’s will. Angel is the Greek word for “messenger”, somebody sent to bring a message or act as a representative for the king. Angels are now assigned to minister to we who are being saved. Hebrews 1:14 says, “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?” Angels appeared regularly in the Old Testament in various ways.

But the angel of the Lord is different. He speaks and acts differently. He takes a different role than other angels do. He is treated differently in the accounts. The angel of the Lord is none other than the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ. Before he took on a human body, the angel of the Lord — Jesus Christ — spoke to Abraham and stopped him from killing his son, Isaac.

In Genesis 16:10, the angel of the Lord appeared to Hagar and said, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.” Angels usually say things like, “The Lord will increase your descendants.” But the angel of the Lord says, “I will increase your descendants.” After the angel of the Lord departed from Hagar, Genesis 16:13 says, “She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me.’”

In Exodus 3, the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush. Two verses later, the Lord spoke to Moses from within the bush. The angel of the Lord spoke to Moses, and the angel was God Himself who sent Moses to Egypt. Even more striking, God spoke to the Israelites through Moses in Exodus 23:20-21: “Behold, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him [the angel of the Lord] and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him.” No other angel would be described that way — My name is in him, he will not forgive your rebellion. Who are angels to forgive or not? That is not their job. God alone can forgive sins. But the angel of the Lord is God, because God’s name is in him.

Genesis 22:11-12 gives the strongest account of the angel of the Lord. “But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. ‘Do not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.’” Now I know. The angel spoke as though he was watching, assessing, trying to determine whether Abraham loves God and will obey and follow Him. He was watching and assessing, because He is God. The angel of the Lord watches and assesses. The angel of the Lord became later the Son of Man, and because he is the Son of Man, he will judge the entire human race. So he has the right to sit and decide whether we fear God or not. He is the judge of all the earth.

The angel of the Lord said “Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” The Lord told Abraham to sacrifice his son. Abraham was thinking of the Lord when he was going to offer Isaac up as a sacrifice. How is it that the angel of the Lord gets to say “you have not withheld from me your son, your only son”? The heavenly Father is not jealous of the angel of the Lord, because he is His beloved Son. It is perfect that Jesus stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac, as though he was saying, “Let me do it. You do not need to kill your son. I will take his place.” The voice of the Lord that calls out to stop Abraham is the angel of the Lord.

Thirteen, Isaac was released, giving a picture of redemption and of resurrection. After the angel of the Lord called to Abraham and stopped him, Abraham set his son Isaac free. The time of Isaac’s suffering, of being bound, was over. Perhaps Abraham used the same knife that he would have used to kill his son to set him free. Walking down the mountain must have been one of Abraham’s happiest moments after what must have been one of his most miserable and difficult, walking up the mountain. What a test, what a trial, what an incredible moment — but what joy! Did they walk? Or did they float? What an encounter with God as they came down. What must that have felt like to cut him free! He is released from his bondage.

This is a picture of our salvation in three ways. First, Isaac represents Christ. Christ was released from the grave through his resurrection. Peter, preaching on the day of Pentecost, said in Acts 2:24, “But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him.” Death is bondage, chains which no one is strong enough to break, but Jesus was. It was impossible for death to keep Jesus in bondage. He broke the chains of the grave, he is set free. Romans 6:9 says, “We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.” He has broken the bonds of death.

Second, Isaac represents us, humans who are set free because Jesus will die in our place. The angel of the Lord called down and Isaac did not have to die. Neither do we who have trusted in Christ. Jesus will take our place. When he was set free, so are we also were set free. We are pictured in Isaac. He is the sinner who was released. Jesus says as he began his preaching ministry in the temple in Capernaum, Luke 4:18: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners…” Jesus proclaims freedom for those who are held in bondage, in sin.

In John 8:34-36, he says, “I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” Jesus has come to set us free from sin’s penalty and power and from everything that sin has ever done to us. Hebrews 2:15 says he has come to “… free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.” Isaac being set free is a picture of us who are saved through faith in Christ. Amen.

Third, Isaac represents physical creation. Physical creation is in a kind of bondage now to decay. Physical creation is enslaved because there is a link between man and the world around us, so that the ground was cursed when Adam sinned, so that Noah took a bunch of animals on the ark. God established and makes clear that link between us and the world. The world is groaning under a kind of bondage because of our sin. Romans 8:20-21 says,“For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” Amen and Amen.

Creation is in bondage right now. Fall is a beautiful time, but represents decay. Leaves fall and decompose. Creation is in bondage, and it will be in until we are raised from the grave. When we are raised, there will be a New Heaven and a New Earth, home of righteousness. 

Fourteen, Genesis 22:13 says, “Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.” The ram was also a type or picture of Christ, and so was every animal offered in the Old Covenant. All of those animal sacrifices were types or pictures of Christ, they were substitutes.

Animal sacrifice had been around a long time. The first instance was in Genesis 3, when God covered naked Adam and Eve with the skins of animals. He got those from the animals. They did not give their lives up willingly. They died so that Adam and Eve might be covered. What a picture of what Christ did. Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain did, for he offered an animal sacrifice. Noah got off the ark and offered some of the clean animals he had brought as a burnt offering. The Lord smelled the aroma of that sacrifice. Abraham himself had done it many times, but here the substitutionary aspect of animal sacrifice is clear.

Verse 13, [NASB] “…and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son.” The substitute, the ram, dies and the son lives. I cannot imagine what Isaac must have felt as he looked at that ram, being killed as his father was going to kill him. He may have thought, “That could have been me. The ram is my substitute. I am not dead, I’m alive. I can walk down the mountain with my father.” But something was amiss. Perhaps never before or again will the inadequacy of animal sacrifice be so clear. Isaac, a living breathing son of Abraham, the promised child, a human being, ready to die, was released by an animal, a ram that happens to be caught in a thicket. It was a clear step down.

David says in Psalm 51:16, “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.” Hebrews 10:4 say about the sacrifice: “…it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” The ram in the thicket was a type waiting fulfillment. An animal took the place of a human sinner, who was set free just as David was from the death penalty, even though he committed adultery with Bathsheba and murdered the husband Uriah. Nathan the prophet told David, “You will not die.” The death penalty was waiting for the moment when John the Baptist pointed at Jesus and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Jesus is the fulfillment of every animal sacrifice ever offered.

More than anything, wonder, and worship God at the depths of the riches of His wisdom and knowledge. I have shown you fourteen of fifteen types, and you could probably find fifteen more. These patterns are set out so that you, a sinner, 4000 years after Abraham and Moriah, 2000 years after Christ, can identify Jesus as your personal Savior — God’s iris scan. Nobody else in history fits this pattern. He is the only one. Worship God for that.

You may not know much about the Gospel. Or you may know all of these things have never committed yourself to Christ, never yielded to the claim of God on your life, never come to grips with the fact that you are a sinner and that you deserve to die and go to hell. If you do not want to go to hell, you need a substitute to drink the cup of God’s wrath in your place. There is one available. For God made him, Christ, who knew no sin to be sin for you, so that in him, Christ, you might become the righteousness of God. Meditate on these things. Think about them. Deepen your sense of the Gospel.

Are you discouraged? Renew the joy of your salvation by thinking what God has done for you.

Is your faith weak or shaken? Renew your faith by hearing the message again. Let it be strong again.

Are you struggling with besetting sin? If the Son sets you free, you are truly free. You are no longer a slave to sin if you are a child of God. Shake off the cords and walk as a free man, a free woman. You do not need to do that sin ever again. Stand firm in the day of temptation.

Are you afraid to obey God in some difficult path of obedience? Follow in the footsteps of your father, Abraham, who was willing to lay down his son Isaac in obedience to God.

Are you skeptical about the truth of Scripture? Let skepticism be dispelled when you see these kinds of patterns woven throughout a document like the Old Testament.

Finally, are you fearful of sickness and death? Be liberated from fear of sickness and death through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

What is the purpose of history? When I ask the question, I assume that there is a purpose. To some atheistic scientists, the very question itself is absurd — they would say there is no purpose to history.

I read about Jacques Monod, who won the Nobel Prize in 1965 for discovering the replication mechanism of genetic material. In 1970, he branched out into philosophy and wrote a book called Chance and Necessity. Newsweek, writing at the time, described his argument in this way: “After some thirty years of research in biochemistry and genetics, the short trim scientist [Monod] is convinced man’s existence is due to the chance collision between miniscule particles of nucleic acid and proteins in the vast ‘pre-biotic soup.’ Indeed, Monod argues that all life results from the interaction of pure chance— unpredictable mutations—and necessity, or Darwinian selection.”

That sounds like a book well worth reading, don’t you think? It reduces us to chance and necessity. Monod himself, in the book, wrote this: “Chance alone is at the source of every innovation, or all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis…” [The only thing that explains our existence is chance and necessity.] “The universe was not pregnant with life nor the biosphere with man. Our number came up in a Monte Carlo game. It is any wonder if, like the person was has just made a million in the casino, we feel strange and a little unreal?”

I find that argument strange and a little unreal. It certainly leaves us with nothingness as our future and nothingness as our present significance. It is ironic that some of the same atheistic scientists participate with SETI, or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, listening to radio static from the cosmos, trying to string together proof of intelligent communication. They are looking for patterns, and if they see regular pulsing patterns, they say, “We knew all along that there is intelligence out there. There has to be because there is not just one Monte Carlo game, but lots of spinning wheels. Somewhere, elsewhere, the chance of life must have come up. We are waiting to hear and looking for patterns.”

Instead of looking for patterns outside of our planet, I urge you to look for patterns in the Old Testament. In doing so, I find the cross of Jesus Christ again and again, and it is not at all accidental. There are amazing patterns in Biblical history and each one contributes to some degree to our understanding of the Gospel.

Noah built an Ark. On it, there was safety; off it, there was destruction. In Christ, you live. Outside of Christ, you perish. Joseph’s jealous brothers sold him as a slave; he was despised and rejected by his own brothers, and yet he ended up becoming the very avenue of salvation for Jacob’s family. Judah, one of the very ones who had rejected him, later came to his senses and started to have some sympathetic love and compassion for his brother, Benjamin. He offered his life in exchange for Benjamin’s, to substitute himself. Judah, the ancestor of Christ, did this. It is no accident. There is no chance in this. History is a story — an elaborate tapestry woven together, all of which points again and again to the cross.

The Passover at the time of the Exodus, when the Israelites were coming out of Egypt, liberated from slavery and bondage and brought over into the Promised Land, is just such a picture as a whole of salvation. But it came at a price. The Passover lamb had to be sacrificed; its blood had to be poured out; it had to be applied. Those under the blood escaped, survived, though they deserved death. But the animal was sacrificed in their place so that they could live.

See the patterns, again and again, pointing to Christ? Old Testament scripture points prophetically to Christ. There are two different kinds of prophetic passages in the Scriptures. One is verbally predictive prophecy such as Isaiah 53:6-7: “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; He was led like a sheep to the slaughter and as a lamb before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”  Or Isaiah 9:6: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Verbally predictive prophecy tells us something of the Christ who would save our souls. The other category, typical, or type, prophecy, shows the depth and the richness of God’s communication to the human race by His sovereign control of history. This means that Biblical history means something. It points to the cross. Hebrews 11:19 says, “[Abraham] considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received [Isaac] back as a type.”

The idea is that Isaac was a type or a pattern of something that would come later, namely Christ. There are numerous types or pictures. Something is acted out in history and captures an element of Christ’s salvation work. Of all the types that we have in the Old Testament, none is better and clearer than what happened on Mount Moriah in Genesis 22. It is the pinnacle, the peak, of typical predictive prophecy.

The purpose of history is that God may be glorified in the redemption, the full salvation of sinners from every tribe and language and people and nation, who will be clustered around the throne, worshiping Him forever and ever. We get the joy, He gets the glory. The purpose of Old Testament biblical history is to point, in verbal and predictive prophecy, to the Christ who will accomplish that great salvation.

What is the context? I was taught in seminary that we must not take verses out of context. You can make the Bible say anything you want if you rip things out of context. In order to emblazon it in our minds, they gave us a slogan, “Context is king.” The Old Testament is the king of context. Genesis 22 sets the context of waiting for the Christ. When he came, he fulfilled not just this type, but every type in the Old Testament.

Galatians 4 says that in the fullness of time, Christ came. After God had set the table, then the feast came and the feast was Christ. The immediate context is that Abraham, a man who lived 2000 years before Christ, was called to leave his country and his people and go to the land that God would show him. God made a promise. He said in Genesis 12:2-3, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” What an incredible promise. Eventually, that promise focused on one miracle baby named Isaac. God promised in Genesis 17:19, “…your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.” Abraham waited for 25 years after the original call had come and finally at age 100, after 25 years of waiting for that promise, Isaac was born. What a moment of joy and celebration, as God at last fulfilled his prediction and His promise.

One day, a shocking command came from God. The same God who had both predicted and provided Isaac now commanded, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” This story makes up the greatest typical predictive prophecy in the Old Testament. It is a picture of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. I have identified 15 points of contact between the story of Abraham and Isaac and the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

We have looked at Genesis 22 from the human side: how difficult it would have been for Abraham to obey the command; how Abraham is our father, laying down footsteps of faith so that we should follow them; the nature of his faith; the nature of testing of faith, which comes to all of us. This was given from the human perspective, Abraham looking upward, so that we become his followers, walking in his footsteps. Now we will take it from God’s perspective, looking to see what He is communicating about the Gospel.

The first type or point of contact between the Abraham and Isaac story and the Gospel is the father-son relationship. God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and sacrifice him.” Human relationships, whatever they may be, are crafted in the image of God. We are created in His image. God came first, we came after. So all human relationships are patterned after the Trinitarian relationship. We believe, as Christians, that there is one God who has eternally existed in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The relationship between an earthly father and son is patterned after the heavenly relationship between the Heavenly Father and His only begotten Son. We first learn the human relationship. We do not come into the world knowing or reading the Bible. We start as infants and we live and first experience parental love.

Sons experience the love of a father. Those who do not experience it first hand see it in culture and at least know what a father and a son is like. We can all understand that relationship. That knowledge heightens for us a sense of the cost, a sense of the sacrifice, what it must have been like for Abraham to offer his son Isaac. As we look at the human side, we can see the cost of the sacrifice and the father-son relationship.

Patrick Morley, in his book, The Man in the Mirror, tells a heart-wrenching story about a group of men and a 12-year-old boy who went fishing in Alaska. They used a pontoon airplane to reach a remote area of Alaska. They enjoyed a great day catching salmon, but then they noticed that the tide has gone out and that the plane was no longer in water. They had to wait for a while for the water to come back in so they could take off. And when the time came for them to take off, they did not know that one of the pontoons had sprung a leak and was half-filled with water. As they tried to take off, it crashed back down into the bay. All of them survived the crash but faced a vicious riptide in the cold Alaskan water. They began to swam hard for the shore, and two of the men made it with great difficulty, exhausted. It was all they could do to survive. As they looked for the other man and his son, they saw them far out in the water. The father was holding the son, waiting because the father knew the son could never make it on his own. The father was unable to bring the son in and chose to die with his son rather than to swim to shore without him. So they perished there.

Charles Spurgeon told a similar story from the ancient world during the time of the Roman persecution. Two sons of a father were arrested for being Christians. The father, aged beyond the interest of the empire, escaped arrest. He went to intercede with the Roman guards and begged that his sons might be released that he might die in their place. They were moved with pity and decided to go as far as they could. They gave him a choice to exchange his life for one. Spurgeon says, “He looked first at one, and then at the other. He would fain say, ‘Spare that one,’ but then they would put the other to death; and he would fain say, ‘Spare this one,’ but then the other must die. And so the old man alternated between one and the other, undecided which should be released, till both were slain.” He could not give the word for either to be executed.

The human level helps us to understand what it must have been like for the father to give up the son. Genesis 22:2 is the first use of the Hebrew ahava, the word for “love.” “Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah.’” When we think of love, we think first of male-female love. Most love songs are about that kind of love. As important as that is in God’s redemptive plan — God created a man and a woman and told them to be fruitful and multiply — this word is introduced first in a father-son context.

Is that incidental? I do not think so. The whole universe is based on the love the Father has for his only begotten Son. It came first before any man and woman were created. The father loved the Son, and He has eternally loved him. Jesus prayed in John 17:24, “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.” In effect, he says, “I want to bring these believers whom you have given me, into the love relationship that you and I have had before the foundation of the world.” It is no accident that the first time love appears in the Bible is this father-son love. It is no accident that the first instance of love in the New Testament is at Jesus’ baptism in Matthew 3:17: “…and behold, a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’” It is the love of the heavenly Father for his only begotten son. It is the first time that love appears in Mark’s and Luke’s Gospels. The first time that love appears in John’s Gospel is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.”

Our salvation is being brought into the love relationship between the Father and the Son. That is how we get saved. God is able to love you as a sinner because He loves His Son on your behalf. He sees you in Christ, and so it is fulfilled. Romans 8:32 says, “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” In the words of the Michael Card song “God Will Provide a Lamb”, “What Abraham was asked to do, he’s done. He’s offered his only son.”

The second type is the pre-determined and deliberate choice on the part of the Father. Abraham knew exactly what he was doing. This was not a fit of passion that came over him in an instant, and then he did it. There are tasks of preparation involved. Verse 3 says, “Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.” He had to saddle his donkey and chop the wood. What must he have been thinking as he was doing those things? This was a predetermined deliberate choice on the part of the father to give up the son.

What about the three-day journey? As he was walking along, he must have been constantly thinking, “My son will be sacrificed.” It was a predetermined, deliberate choice on the part of the father, fulfilled in Christ. Jesus was not caught or arrested or captured, but was given over by the Father to death, done by the predetermined choice and deliberate foreknowledge of God.

Peter, preaching at Pentecost, said in Acts 2:23, “[Jesus of Nazareth] was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.” Acts 4:27-28 says, as they were praying about the crucifixion, “…truly in this city there were gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.”

This was the deliberate predestination of God. Revelation says that Jesus is the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The heavenly Father did not have a small three-day walk but a 4000-year walk through history every moment thinking, knowing Jesus would die for all the sins of his people. When Noah got drunk, Jesus died for that. When Abraham sinned with Hagar, Jesus died for that. When David saw Bathsheba, committed adultery with her and had her husband killed to cover it up, Jesus died for that. God thinks about these things as they happen, and this was a predetermined choice on the part of God the Father. 

Third, the father and son were alone on Mount Moriah. The two servants were left behind. There were no other humans with them when this happened. Verse 5 says, “Then Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.’” Even dear Sarah is entirely left out of this story. Not that she was not important — she was, and that is why there is so much about her in prior events — but this is between the father and son as typical predictive prophecy.

There was no one other than the father and the son. We must be clear about this. We Protestants, as we communicate with our dear Roman Catholic friends who bring in Mary as Co-Redemptrix, as though she had a role to play in redemption, must be careful. We have much common ground with Catholics, but that doctrine is not one of them. When Pope John Paul says that Mary’s intense sufferings united with those of her son were “also a contribution to the Redemption of us all”, you must say no, for the Father and the Son alone worked out this salvation. Your good works were not there; there was nothing of you there. It was the Father and the Son in a transaction between them. Salvation was worked at Calvary as an eternal transaction between the Father and his Son.

Isaiah 59:16-17 says, “He saw that there was no one, he was appalled that there was no one to intervene; so his own arm worked salvation for him, and his own righteousness sustained him. He put on righteousness as his breastplate, and the helmet of salvation on his head; he put on the garments of vengeance and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.” There was no one with them, and neither was there anyone at Calvary during the transaction of the salvation of your soul. It was a transaction between the Father and the Son alone.

Fourth, Isaac carried his own wood. Verse 6 says, “And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son.” We assume that Isaac was no small boy. It adds emotional weight to think of an innocent 5-year-old to be sacrificed, but I do not think that was the case. This was a strapping young man who was able to carry the wood for the burnt offering up the mountain. The Hebrew word for lad, or young man or boy, can range as high as 25 years old or older. This was a strong young man who carried his own wood. This was fulfilled literally, physically in Jesus. We could not get any more close connection here.

John 19:16-18 says, “So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called the place of a skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified him…” The Greek in verse 17 is intensive. It literally says, “He, bearing his own cross himself, went out.” That is a point of contact back to Genesis 22 as we see Isaac going up the hill bearing his own wood himself. It was fulfilled physically in Christ, but even better, it is fulfilled spiritually.

Isaiah 53:6 says, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” That is the real burden of Calvary, laying on Christ the crushing burden of all of your sin and mine and that of a countless multitude, redeemed from every tribe and language and people and nation. What an incredible burden Jesus carried to Golgotha.

Charles Spurgeon wrote: “...the sin of the ages past and the sin of the ages to come, the sins of those of the elect Who were in heathendom, and those who were in Jewry; the sin of the young and the old, sin original and sin actual, all made to meet, all the black clouds concentrated and brought together into one great tempest that it might rush in one tremendous tornado upon the person of the great Redeemer and substitute. As when a thousand streamlets dash down the mountain side in the day of rain, and all meet in one deep swollen lake; that lake the Savior’s heart, those gushing torrents the sins of us all who are here described as making a full confession of our sins. Or to take a metaphor not from nature but from commerce; suppose the debts of a great number of persons to be gathered up, the scattered bonds and bills that are to be honored or dishonored on such and such a day, all these laid upon one person who undertakes the responsibility of meeting every one of them without a single assistant; such was the condition of the Savior; [God] made to meet on him the debts of all his people so that he became responsible for all the obligations of every one of those whom his Father had given him whatsoever their debts might be. ...all sins are made to meet, and then having met together and been tied up in one crushing load the whole burden is laid upon him.”

Hallelujah! Hallelujah, that all of my life’s sins were wrapped up and placed on my substitute. Hallelujah, that he bore my burden for me. Praise God forever and ever.

The fifth type is the fire of judgment ready to consume Isaac. Fire is consistently a picture of the holiness of God and His hatred of sin, and of His wrath poured out, like fire and brimstone poured down on Sodom and Gomorrah. Hebrews 12:29 says that “our God is a consuming fire.” The sacrifice was to be bound and laid on an altar and burned up, his blood poured out and he was to be burned up. So Abraham carried the fire up Mount Moriah with which to consume the body of his son, his only son whom he loved.

Christ’s body was not burned up, but there is a different kind of fire at work in him. First, there is a burning zeal inside Christ’s heart. When Jesus cleansed the temple, driving out the money changers with a whip, John 2:17 says, “His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’” The word “consume” is used of being literally consumed by fire. There was a fire inside his heart for the purity and holiness of God’s house. It is ironic that that was the very thing that got him killed physically, because he messed up the business of religion. He was hitting them in the pocketbook, hitting their income. That zeal burned him up in that it destroyed him — he was killed as a result of that zeal. That is one sense.

How much more the cup of God’s wrath that he drank to the bottom? Jesus went to Gethsemane. Matthew 26:39 says, “And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, 'My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.’” Revelation describes the cup very well when it speaks of those that are condemned. Revelation 14:10 says, “…he also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur.” Jesus drank that cup at Calvary. He drank your hell and mine, if you are a Christian, to the bottom. Two others were crucified with him that day, but they did not drink the cup of God’s wrath. Jesus alone drank that.

Sixth, the death penalty is required. From the beginning, God established that “the wages of sin is death.” [Romans 6:23] In Genesis 2:17, He said, “of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” The command to sacrifice Isaac was not in any way unjust, for Isaac was a sinner and he deserved to die. The wages of sin is death. Ezekiel 18:4 says, “…every living soul belongs to me, the father as well as the son — both alike belong to me. The soul who sins is the one who will die.” Later in Israel’s history, when God killed the firstborn of all of Egypt, the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed in their place so that the firstborn of Israel would not also perish.

Isaac deserved to die, as do all who have sinned, which is all of us. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” [Romans 3:23] Jesus was born to die, among other things. He had to lay down his life as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Isaac was not merely to be sold into slavery, not merely to be wounded. He was to be put to death — the death penalty had to be paid. Jesus was born to die. 1 Peter 3:18 “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body…” Jesus paid the death penalty. We are sinners; we violate the Ten Commandments and the two Great Commandments every day. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and to love our neighbors ourself and we do not do so. God has taken up all of that selfishness and pride and lust and evil and put it on Jesus; he died the death penalty we deserve.

Seventh, there was the shocking moment of revelation. Isaac did not know as he started up that mountain that he was the sacrifice. Genesis 22:7-8 says, “Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, ‘Father?’ ‘Yes, my son?’ Abraham replied. ‘The fire and wood are here,’ Isaac said, ‘but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’ Abraham answered, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.’ And the two of them went on together.” At some point, Isaac realized that he was the sacrifice. We do not know when Abraham told him — halfway up the mountain or after they had arranged the wood, or when Abraham began to bind him. But at some point, he realized he was the sacrifice. It must have been quite a shock to realize.

How would this be fulfilled in Christ? Here we are on holy ground, brothers and sisters. In his deity, Jesus always knew what the Father wanted him to do. But when Mary wrapped him up in swaddling cloths and lay him in a manger, did he know he was born to die? No. Jesus submitted himself to a normal growing process. Luke 2:52 says, “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.” At some point, long before he began his public ministry, the Father began to communicate to his Son, “You will die as a sacrifice.” Jesus himself spoke of this in John 10:17-18: “The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life — only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This command I received from my Father.”

When did he receive that command from his Father? Before the foundation of the world. But when did Jesus in his human consciousness know that command he had received from his Father? It is not clear, but it was before he began his public ministry. Again and again, he testified that he had to be sacrificed, but he did not know when he was wrapped as a baby and laid in the manger. He grew into that knowledge, and step by step the Father educated him. Then we come to Gethsemane where the shocking realization reaches its peak before the cross. Mark 14:32-33 in the KJV says, “And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray. And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy…” The King James Version is one of the most accurate translations ever done, but English has changed. Why was he sore amazed? The Greek means to be astonished or amazed, usually connected with Jesus’ miracles, and the crowd’s reaction to them.

The Greek root comes from the sense of being struck or shocked by something, perhaps new or unexpected. Why did Mark use this expression regarding Jesus? Jesus knew he would die. It was what it would be like to drink the cup of God’s wrath. Imagine listening to a game on crackly AM radio and comparing that experience to watching it on state-of-the-art HD TV. You get the idea, you get the facts, you get what has happened, but there is an entirely different level of understanding.

That was what Jesus was sore amazed at in Gethsemane. God did something inside him, showed him what it would be like to drink that cup, and he was struck to the ground and blood started coming out of his pores. Mel Gibson cannot depict it — no movie can; the best he could do was a nonverbal expression of anguish and sorrow and astonishment, as if to say, “That’s what it’s like to drink the cup?” “Yes. Will you still do it?”

Eighth, we see the greatest, most heroic decision that was ever made in history: “Father, Abba, if it is possible for this cup, which you are now showing me more fully and completely, to pass from me, may it be so. Yet, not as I will, but as You will.” That was an act of obedience. Isaac willingly yielded to his death. He was a young man strong enough to carry a bunch of wood up a mountain, walking with his 100-year-old father whose body was as good as dead.

It would not have been much of a contest. Not to be irreverent, but imagine Isaac saying, “Oh, no! You’re not doing that to me!” What chance did Abraham have? Who was stronger? Who was faster? If Isaac had not wanted to be sacrificed, he would not have submitted. He must have been in his 20s or so, and he said, “I will do it.” Why then was he bound? Because sacrifices were bound, and if they had gone through with what God commanded, it would have been a mercy to Isaac to bind him. He willingly yielded to death.

Here I find my salvation: “Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.’” [Matthew 26:39] This is the sublime courage of Jesus Christ. Never in history has anyone shown that much courage. He took that burden, he took the cup, he accepted it and said, “I’ll drink it.”

Romans 5:19 says, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” Jesus obeyed his Father; he drank the cup. God showed it more fully to him in the garden so that he could make the fully-informed decision of his own free will to die in my place as my substitute. Knowing what it would entail, he did it anyway. Martin Luther said, “Never a man feared death so much as this man” but he did not fear the physical death that the robbers on his left and right also faced. No, he feared hell, which is something to be feared. Jesus himself feared it. “Fear not those who kill the body and after that can do nothing to you. Fear the one who has power to send you to hell.” Jesus willingly went to hell on the cross and drank the cup of wrath.

We have considered eight points of connection between Abraham and Isaac and the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The story in Genesis 22 depicts types of the Gospel in these ways: The father-son relationship in which the son would be sacrificed. A predetermined deliberate choice by the Father. The father and the son were alone, humanly speaking in Genesis, just as the heavenly Father and the heavenly Son alone work salvation for us. The son carried his own wood — Isaac his wood for the fire and Jesus the wood of his cross; he also bore our sins, if we have trusted in him. The fire of judgment, ready to consume Isaac; the fire of hell, consuming Christ spiritually. The death penalty was required — not paid in Isaac’s case, but paid in Jesus’ case. “What Abraham was asked to do, he has done. He’s offered his only son.” Isaac had a shocking moment of revelation when at last he realized that he was to be the substitute; Jesus had been instructed all along in his human understanding that he would be a substitute and in Gethsemane and had a more full revelation. Isaac willingly yielded himself to death and so also did Jesus Christ

What applications can we take from this? Read this account with a sense of wonder, amazement, and astonishment. This Gospel was not thrown together but has been being worked out for thousands of years of history. This is my salvation and yours too, if you trust him. Trust in Christ, repent of your sins. That great burden that you have been carrying around, maybe you carried it in here today — a sin habit, wickedness — give it to Christ. He is the only substitute. Nothing but the blood of Jesus can wipe away your sin. Give it to him. And if you are tempted to waver and quaver in your faith, get back in the Word. Read Genesis 22. Review these types and try to see more types of the Gospel in this account. Think about it, wonder about it, and build your faith again through the Word.

The more I look at this magnificent chapter, the more it encourages and strengthens me in my faith. We have in Genesis 22 an amazingly complete Old Testament picture of salvation, both from the human side — Abraham’s — and from the divine side — God’s. Two weeks ago we considered an aspect of Abraham, namely his obedience. Today we look more at the human side of salvation, and specifically to try to understand the relationship between faith and works, the nature of the kind of faith that saves, and how the faith that saves or justifies gets worked out in an energetic life of obedience.

Two themes emerge with beautiful richness. The first is the literal historical human side — a life of faith as Abraham walks on earth and leaves footsteps that we can follow. Paul talks about following in Abraham’s footsteps in Romans 4:12, enabling us to learn what he was like in order to imitate his faith.

The second theme emerges in type, or prophecy acted out in Abraham’s life. Specifically, his life mirrors the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Abraham’s obedience depicts for us the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in a beautiful way.

There are two marvelous aspects of the human side. One has to do with the issue of friendship with God. Abraham was called God’s friend. James describes what that means. He says that Abraham was willing to offer Isaac up as a sacrifice and thus he was called God’s friend. Jesus says in John 15, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” There is a connection between a lifestyle of obedience and submission to God’s law and friendship with Him. Conversely, James 4 says that “Friendship with the world is hatred toward God.” The issue is one of friendship with God. Are you God’s friend?

Many of you perhaps came hoping for friendship. There is much loneliness in the world and in America. We see the isolation that comes in our culture. People do not know each other, they do not know their neighbors as much as they used to. They are isolated from each other. Perhaps this is a reason why many come to church, in hopes of building relationships, of finding friends, of being welcomed. It is my prayer that that would happen all the more, that we would be more and more loving of strangers, inviting people in, because there is so much loneliness and brokenness out there.

The church is a place to meet people and be refreshed, but more than that, I am concerned that you be friends with God — the one who hears and obeys His commands is His friend. Abraham was God’s friend because he was willing to obey. We see stair steps in that relationship — first faith, then the fear of the Lord as the angel of the Lord stopped him and said, “Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld your son.” Then we see costly obedience as a result of fear of the Lord, and finally we see friendship.

The other aspect of the human side is the harvest and vindication of Abraham’s faith. This was a lifetime of working that God had been doing in Abraham. It did not happen overnight. This was the test or trial of a mature faith, not a baby or beginner trial. It was the harvest of all that God had been doing in his life all those years, building up in maturity.

In effect, Abraham was God’s masterpiece. I had the chance in the summer of 1986 to go on a mission trip to Kenya. We had 18 hours in the city of Amsterdam before we caught our connecting flight. I went to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where some of the Dutch masters were — the paintings of Rembrandt and others. One painting was absolutely huge. It would have filled all the way across one of the walls in here. It was skillfully done, with the lighting, the shadows, the expressions on people’s faces. I wondered how long it took Rembrandt to paint that. It was breathtaking. I imagined what it would have been like if, after working in the basement by candlelight, painting this magnificent painting, when he was finished and dry, he had rolled it up and stuck it somewhere and never showed it to anyone. What would the point of that be?

Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance that we should walk in them.” If you are a Christian, you are God’s workmanship. He is putting his craftsmanship on display. This week, even today, He will arrange some good works for you and He calls you, demands you to walk in them. Based on our text, we will look at how saving, justifying faith relates to being God’s workmanship and doing good works.

First, let us review what we learned last week. This was Abraham’s greatest test. We learned right from the beginning, “After these things, God tested Abraham.” I made the point that we should be ready for testing from God, brother and sister in Christ. He will test you. It is like the assayer’s fire which is used to determine the purity of gold or silver. He will test you and try you in that way. In the midst of being tested, do not say “What is going on in my life; what is this strange thing that is happening to me?” It is not a strange thing but rather is the very thing He told you He would do. He will test your faith.

God tests us for several reasons. He tests us for His own glory. He tests us to reveal His character so that we might know him better. He tests us to reveal our character so that we can know ourselves better, not to provide a good picture but a negative one as sin bubbles to the surface. He tests us to increase our faith-filled dependence on Him since we are very independent, thinking we can do life on our own, but these trials show us otherwise. Ultimately He tests us to build our character.

The nature Abraham’s test is described in verse 2. God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah, sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains. I will tell you about.” This was a mature test for a mature faith. Every word seem to be designed for pain: “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and sacrifice him as a burnt offering…” Oh, the pain. That was the nature of his test. He was tested to the uttermost: God did not call it off until right at the very end when Abraham was about to kill his son.

The nature of Abraham’s response was faith-filled, total obedience. We can follow in his footsteps, as Romans 4:12 says. His obedience was immediate: The very next day, he saddled his donkey, after gathering his supplies, and departed. His obedience was faith-filled: Based on a lifetime of experience with the word of God, he had trusted in it, and he was ready for this test. His obedience was practiced: He had regularly obeyed all the commands God had given him, 19 recorded in Genesis 12-21. He obeyed every single one, even some very difficult ones, like being circumcised at an old age and having his whole family and his whole household circumcised. His obedience was reasoned: Faith and reason are not opposites, not enemies, but friends. Faith-filled people accept a larger database of reality which includes the unseen spiritual world. We accept its existence by faith and then use our reason to work with the promises of God and other spiritual things. That is exactly what Abraham did. He reasoned that God must raise Isaac from the dead, and so he obeyed. His obedience was complete: He did not obey 80%. He did not say, “At least I went two days.” Right to the end, he obeyed to the uttermost.

We discussed those things in detail last week. This week we will look at the details of God’s response to Abraham and the the New Testament commentary on the aspect of faith and works.

God commended Abraham in a beautiful way. Brothers and sisters, I desire that you would have a moment like this, that God would commend your courageous obedience. Aren’t you hungry and thirsty to live in such a way that God would commend you as He did Abraham? The commendation from God is sweet.

Genesis 21:11-12 says, “But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied.” [Wouldn’t you love your soul and your spirit to be so ready to obey God?] ‘Do not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.’” This was an absolute last-second reprieve. The knife was probably on its downward arc. One second later, Abraham would not have been able to stop his arm, it was that close. He obeyed right to the end. But then he got a reprieve, in effect, a stay of execution. Abraham had passed the test; he had been faithful, and it was time for the rewards of obedience.

This is similar to 2 Timothy 4:7-8, Paul’s magnificent statement: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day — and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” What a triumphant note that was for Paul. His test was to preach the gospel to the megalomaniac Nero in Rome, and he passed it. What a sweet air of obedience and God’s commendation on the other side of that. That is what it was for Abraham too.

With the commendation, however, comes an astonishing mystery, this incredible statement, “Now I know that you fear God.” We could meditate on that for a long time and never plumb the depths. Now I know? It would be one thing to we speak that way to each other in a human way, in human language: “Now I know how much you love me” or “Now I can see that you are willing to obey me by how you are acting.” We did not know. It could have gone either way.

Not so with God. He is omniscient. He knows the end from the beginning. He is the Alpha and the Omega; He was Omega at the same time that He was Alpha. Knowledge does not unfold to God — He knows all things. That means that foreknowledge, knowledge of the future, is part of His omniscience. He knows everything in the future, the way it will come. AW Pink says, “God not only knows whatsoever has happened in the past in every part of His vast domains, and He is not only thoroughly acquainted with everything that is now transpiring throughout the entire universe, but he is also perfectly cognizant of every event, from the least to the greatest, that will ever happen in the ages to come! God’s knowledge of the future is as complete as is His knowledge of the past and the present; and that because the future depends entirely upon Himself. Were it in any way possible for something to occur apart from either the direct agency or permission of God, then that something would be independent of Him and He would at once cease to be Supreme.”

I tell you now, God — the King of kings and Lord of lords — will never cease to be supreme in His universe. He knows the end from the beginning. David meditated on this same theme in Psalm 139:16: “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” That is the God that we serve. He is a foreknowing God. Psalm 139:4 says, “Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely.” (“Altogether” in the ESV.) That is the God we worship.

Then what is happening when the angel of the Lord says, “Now I know that you fear God.” Did He not know before He tested Abraham? Herein lies the mystery of His statement. This teaches me, first, that this little brain will never understand all there is in the Word of God, but also that life matters, that history matters, that decisions matter. It teaches that God is watching and observing to see what we will do with the next temptation, and He will note it and record it. He remembers everything, because we matter, and so do the people we interact with at every moment. Life matters, and God’s record books matter. Today is unspeakably precious — not that yesterday was not or that tomorrow will not be — life is unspeakably precious, and it makes a difference what we do with the test of our lives. God said in a human way of understanding, “Now, I know that you fear God.” Without Abraham’s total obedience this statement would never have been made.

The angel restates and intensifies the promise in Genesis 22:15-18: “The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, ‘I swear by myself,’ declares the LORD, ‘that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.’” How sweet to hear! This is no different than the promises that He had made before — many descendants, the promised land. Here, the promise is intensified with new insights and details — taking possession of the cities of his enemies — in the context of what was previously promised.

Then this interesting statement: “…through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed…” Paul picks up on this in Galatians 3:16: “The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. The Scripture does not say 'and to seeds,’ meaning many people, but ‘and to your seed,’ meaning one person, who is Christ.” Paul, inspired by the Spirit, is a good commentator on Scripture. He is saying the angel was not speaking about the millions of Jews that would come, but through Abraham’s seed, meaning one person, all nations on earth will be blessed. Jesus, when facing his tormentors and opposers in John 8:56, said, “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.” This could be the moment of revelation to Abraham; or that moment came in Genesis 15, when God directed him to look at the stars. There is an unfolding revelation of Christ, including at Mount Moriah through this obedience.

Faith has rewards for Abraham. The first reward is praise and commendation of God. It is a wonderful and blessed thing to be able to spend eternity in Heaven praising God. I am looking forward to that; it will take a central place because He is at the center of Heaven. We should praise Him now. But a lesser Judgment Day theme is that God actually praises sinful human beings. Can you believe that God would actually speak a word of praise or commendation about a sinner? But He will.

Jesus said in one of his parables that the master praised the servant, saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant. You’ve been faithful with a few things. I’ll put you in charge of many things. Enter now into the joy of your master.” Your heart will swell with joy to hear that from God. How will it feel to have God, the meticulous judge, look across your life with the cleansing work of the blood of Christ — because nothing we do is perfect — and commend your life with detail.

Is this not a great reward that God would praise you? Many Scriptures speak of this. John 5 says that we should seek it, when Jesus criticizes the Jews for seeking praise from one another, and yet make no effort to obtain the praise that comes from the only God. Romans 2:29 says, “No, a man is a Jew if he is one inwardly; and circumcision is circumcision of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the written code. Such a man’s praise is not from men, but from God.”

Is that valuable to you at all? Would it be precious to you to have God praise you, not just once, but for a lifetime of obedient things, for things well done? Go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father who is unseen, and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Will He give you some trinket or material reward? No. He will praise what was done. That is better by far than any wreath or any medal around your neck. Praise from God is the reward. 1 Corinthians 4:5 says, “Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's hearts. At that time each will receive his praise from God.”

The second reward for Abraham is greater self-revelation from God. Would you like to know God better here on earth, to have Him open up and show himself more? It is precious that He would show Himself more than He has shown before. Isaiah 45:15 says, “Truly, you are a God who hides yourself, O God of Israel, the Savior.” You may think, “That is not the God I know.” Yes, it is. We do not see Him, and sometimes may wonder if He is there. Those are echoes from the devil. Our God hides himself and chooses to reveal Himself more and more to those who obey Him by faith. If you obey him in a costly way, He will show Himself more to you. John 14:21 says, “He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” He will reveal Himself, manifest Himself to the obedient keeper of His commands. Would you like to know God better? Then walk in the footsteps of the faith that your father Abraham had in Genesis 22.

Do you think Abraham knew God better when he walked down Mount Moriah, with his living son, Isaac, than when he walked up? He learned more of God’s faithfulness. He learned more of God’s future plans. God had revealed and opened Himself up to him. That is the faithfulness of God.

Hebrews 6 provides New Testament commentary on our text. It is about God swearing by himself for our benefit. That is an odd thing, an oath in which God swears by himself. Genesis 22:15-18 says, “The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, ‘I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.’” What an interesting thing for God to do.

The author of Hebrews picks up on this, reaching back to Genesis 15, with the solemn covenant ceremony. Abraham asked, “How can I know that I will possess the land?” God had him cut the animals into pieces and make a path, then God, in a kind of a theophany or picture, came down on a blazing fire pot and moved through the pieces. In Genesis 22, he was taking an oath stance, saying, “I hereby swear by myself, that through your seed, all peoples on earth will be blessed.” In effect, He links His character and His own existence to whether Abraham will get the land. He links his truthfulness as a God to whether through Abraham’s seed, all nations on earth will be blessed.

The author in Hebrews does not want us to miss that. It was written for us, not for Abraham, who had been dead for 500 years when this was written; he was already in his eternal reward. It was written for us, so that we succeeding generations could read it and be greatly encouraged in our faith. That is the bottom line. The reason we are studying Genesis 22 carefully and talking about God swearing solemnly by Himself is so that we will realize how truthful is God who has made promises to us. Our God is truthful. The One who passed through in the fire pot, the One who said, “I hereby swear by myself,” is the God that we are dealing with.

Hebrews 6:13-19 says, “When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself, saying, ‘I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.’ And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised. Men swear by someone greater than themselves, and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument. Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God did this so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie we [including you and me] who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be greatly encouraged [exhorted, strengthened in our faith]. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.” He wants to give us stability in our Christian life, to give us an anchor that will not pull out when the storms and trials come. We know they will come. That anchor, connected to Christ, is strong enough to hold our souls in place.

In Genesis 15, when God in the fire pot moved through the pieces, He was saying first, “If I do not keep my promise, may I be blown to bits as this animal is cut up,” and second, “I hereby swear solemnly, by myself, that through your seed, all nations on earth will be blessed.” By these two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for Him to lie, we are greatly encouraged in His covenant promises to us, better than those He made to Abraham. We will live forever in an incorruptible place and an incorruptible body with other people like us, worshiping the eternal God face-to-face. He wants us to be certain of it, and encouraged, to throw off the discouragements of life, and to say, “This Gospel towers over anything that is going on in my life —physical illness, monetary problems, anything else — because God has made me an unshakable promise.”

Some day, if you are a Christian, you will be in an incorruptible body with a soul that shines like the sun, in purity and holiness. Hebrews 6 is for my great encouragement and yours too.

The final issue is faith and works. James 2 presents the vindication of Abraham’s faith. James and Paul, who would likely have been friends, seem to disagree over the meaning of the word justification. Those who say there are contradictions in the Bible might point to this example of what seems to be opposing ideas.

In Romans 3:28, the apostle Paul says, “For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law.” As a result of faith and no works, or apart from works of the law, one is justified. But James 2:21-24 says, “Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’ — and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” I would say to the one trying to prove this contradiction in the Bible, “You have chosen well,” and proceed to work through it.

How is it that Paul can say, “…we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law” but James says, “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” Martin Luther was so distressed by this that he made two mistakes. First, he called James an epistle of straw in comparison with Paul’s epistles. He saw in effect a canon within the canon, that some Scriptural books were more holy and better than others. He agreed that James is canonical and Scripture, but Paul and the Gospel of John is the core, what is really necessary. That leads to liberalism, and eventually, to the point where you do not respect the Word of God at all. It is like a worm that starts to eat the sweater — it will not stop when it gets to the good part. It will continue, and before you know it, you have no Scripture left at all. It was a mistake.

Luther also did what you could call the unforgivable sin of translating, adding words that are not in the text. In Romans 3:28, he said, “For we hold that one is justified by faith alone, apart from works of the law.” He added allein in the German or solos in his Latin works was not in the Greek. He justified it by saying, “This is what Paul means.”

How will we reconcile this? Alexander Ross said, “[Paul and James] are not antagonists facing each other with crossed swords; they stand back to back, confronting different foes of the gospel.” They use terminology differently in order to do that. Paul was fighting a Pharisaic Jewish legalistic understanding of salvation that says by good deeds — circumcision, temple sacrifices, dietary laws, keeping the law of Moses, works of the law — your sins are hereby paid for. Paul said, “May it never be! Or else you could boast.”

Martin Luther fought against the Roman Catholic version of that — by sacraments of penance, going up sacred staircases on your knees, reciting the Ave Maria, paying money to the church, doing whatever the priest told you for penance — you could thereby pay for your sins. Luther said, “May it never be!” “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” How then are sins forgiven? How can we who are wicked and sinful be made right on Judgment Day? What will atone for our sins? Paul and Luther got it right. It is by faith in the promises of God. Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness, at the beginning of his life as a spiritual man made alive in Christ. He was innocent before the judgment seat of God, but had done no good works. Paul and Martin Luther both faced that enemy.

But James was facing an opposite enemy that would appear only after that understanding of salvation was in place. Once you understand that by simple faith alone we are made righteous, the next thought that comes is that we can live any way we want and go to Heaven. Have you ever faced that in witnessing, when someone says that it is simply by grace through faith, no works? Yes, that is true for salvation. But then why do we not murder our enemies, or do whatever evil things we want? James was dealing with that enemy of the Gospel. James 2:14 says, “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith [a faith like that] save him?”

He was dealing with the question of what kind of faith justifies you: A faith that produces no obedience, that will not take Isaac up on Mount Moriah and sacrifice him, that says no to the commands of God, that throws off the yoke of King Jesus, even though he said, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” A faith that will not obey, James says, is dead faith, demon faith, useless faith. It is a dead faith because it produces nothing. It is a demon faith because even the demons say they believe in God but they hate Him and shudder. It is a useless faith because it produces nothing. If that is the kind of faith you have, then you are not justified. Abraham’s justification was set out in the mind of God, but lived out in Abraham’s life. His faith and his actions were working together, and he was called God’s friend.

This may not be easy to understand, but it is taught repeatedly. God has saved you so that you might be zealous for good works, as Paul says in Titus. Jesus said in John 14:15, “If you love me, you will obey what I command.” John 14:23: “Jesus replied, ‘If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.’” John 15:10: “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love.” God said in Genesis 22:18, “…through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” God gives a gift of justifying faith. He displays it through a series of trials and tests that bring to the surface what He has invested in you. It is a mystery. Your own will, your own heart, are intimately involved. You have successes and failures. As Charles Swindoll said, “Three steps forward and two steps back,” God revealing a saving faith through a lifelong pattern of obedience. If that pattern is not there, question whether you are in the faith at all. That is what James 2 is saying.

God will test your faith. He will not ask you to sacrifice your only son. That is a one-time picture of the Gospel. But He will ask for something. He will speak daily through His word. Matthew 16:24-25: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” Romans 12: “Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice holy and pleasing to God.” Put yourself on the altar every moment. Romans 8:12-14: “Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation [we are debtors] — but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.” This is the kind of faith that saves. Walk with Jesus daily, every moment.

Faith apart from obedience is dead. Many in America claim to be Christians. I walked the aisle. I remember it distinctly. I remember praying that prayer at the end of that little pamphlet. They told me that was it. Well, that is not it. That is what James 2 is written for. That kind of faith does not save.

The reward of faith-filled obedience is greater knowledge of God himself. There must be great men and women of God listening to me right now who have not yet found out the great things God has in store. Be courageous for Him. Step out in faith. That strange voice you hear inside, telling you to do something heroic and sacrificial, that would take great courage for the Gospel, is the Holy Spirit. Test it by seeking wise counsel and praying through it, but then do it. Then you will know God better. Then He will give you new assignments, and so on. Be fruitful for Him and be courageous.

Finally, test yourself to see if you are in the faith. 2 Corinthians 13:5 says, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you — unless, of course, you fail the test?” We are not very introspective. Do not take for granted that you are a Christian by the fact that you go to church. That is not enough. Are you living as Abraham did? Jesus said, “If you were Abraham's children, you would do what he did.” Obey and walk in faithfulness the way he did.

Genesis 22 is one of the truly great chapters in the Old Testament. There is so much truth to connect to our present walk with Christ. In order not to miss any of the things that the Lord has revealed in this passage, I will preach four messages. The first two will focus on Abraham himself — the challenge of the trial for him and how his faith was vindicated. This week, we will look at the trial itself, what it was that God asked of him and how it must have been for him. Next, we will look at the mystery of God’s statement, “Now I know that you fear God” and what that means for us concerning our justifying faith and the relationship between faith and deeds. The third sermon will look at the parallels of this passage with the Gospel — what Abraham was commanded to do and what God did in his son, Jesus Christ. We will see the Gospel in prophetic typology, predictions, in how the Gospel was acted out in history. The fourth message will look at one phrase in particular and the precision of prophecy: “On the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided.”

What was the nature of the test of God in Abraham’s life? Each one of us will be tested, even most severely. A testing of our faith is essential to what God is working in each one of us. It is one of the reasons He has left us here on earth and has not taken us home, so that we might be tested as Abraham was. The tests will be small and great, light and severe, but they will all come from the hand of God, not from the devil — not because the devil attacks us, but rather because God tests us. It is my desire that when your time of testing comes, that you will shine like the sun. That you will rejoice in it, not murmur against your heavenly Father. Not wonder why He is bringing this hard thing to you but trust him the way Abraham did and rejoice in it. God will in effect be putting you on display. No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bowl, but they put it up on a stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. God wants to light you up and put you on a stand. And he often does so through these tests.

In 1849, a dusty Californian prospector came into an office and put a large yellowish rock on the countertop of a place run by a New Yorker named John Little Moffat. The prospector had sold everything that he owned and had gone west in the gold rush of 1849, and this was the fruit of his labor. He was in the assayer’s office to find out what it was. Was it genuine gold or was it fool’s gold? Moffat had developed a technique during smaller gold rushes in Georgia and North Carolina of assaying the mineral. He would weigh a precise amount, wrap it in lead foil and fire it in a furnace at 1100 degrees Celsius. Then he would remove all base materials, and reweigh the sample to declare its carat level and how much pure gold there was there. Then he would offer to strike it and mint it into gold coins worth $20 each. Those things are collectors items now because eventually they became recognized as legal tender. The quality was so high. His methodology of assaying the gold was adopted and used for over 100 years.

God will put your faith in the assayer’s fire to find out what is in there. He intends to display what He has put into you by faith, to put it on display for yourself and for the world to see. That is exactly what is going on here in Genesis 22, with Abraham’s test. We know, looking back, reading about it, what Abraham was never told, namely that this was only a test. It is helpful when we are told, “This is only a test.” But Abraham was not told that. Genesis 22:1-2 says, “After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’ He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’” The basic idea here is that God tests his children. The Hebrew word has to do with this process of assaying to find out what is in it. It is a form of revelation to uncover what the metal is. It is different than a temptation which the devil does, which entices and pulls us toward evil. Rather, God was uncovering and exposing what was genuinely in Abraham’s heart and in his faith.

The Lord does this to his children. Deuteronomy 8:2 says, “Remember how the LORD your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.” God was testing Israel to know what was in their hearts. God tests us in a variety of ways, with fire, with hardship, with difficulty such as disease, illness, the death of loved ones. But he also tests us with prosperity and praise. It says in Proverbs 27:21, “The crucible for silver and the furnace for gold, but man is tested by his praise.” What does praise do to you? Does it go to your head? Does it make you arrogant and independent from God? Or do you give it up to God and give Him the glory immediately? Praise and prosperity are forms of testing, though we identify tests for the most part as our response to harsh and negative circumstances.

Why does God test us? First and foremost, He tests us for His own glory. Trials are woven into the tapestry of redemptive history, the light and dark threads of what we consider good providence — the good things that happen, the things that are delightful to us — and also those harsher things in which we are tempted to cry out, “God, what are you doing to me?” They are woven together, not only in your life, but in the lives of all of our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout all the ages of the church. What results is a magnificent tapestry for his glory of how His children were more than conquerors through Him who loved us. God has put them on display. It is for his own glory that he tests us.

Second, God tests us to reveal His character. God delights to reveal Himself to those who will be obedient by faith in the midst of trials. He wants to put himself on display, so he tests us to demonstrate His faithfulness. God demonstrates his faithfulness and His character the most when we need Him the most, when the trial is severe. God wants to show Himself to you, and He will providentially orchestrate trials in your life to test you and to show you what He is like.

He also does it to show us what we are like, to reveal our character and our nature. Jeremiah 17:9-10 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? ‘I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve.’” Tests come to search our hearts and reveal to us, among other things, how much evil, how much self-reliance, how much faithlessness in in there, and how much we need a Savior. How God hates our pride. It is during these testing times that we get to know ourselves and find out just how much we need Christ.

He also does it to increase our faith-filled dependence on him, so that we will rely on Him more and not on ourselves. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1:9, these trials have come to teach us to rely on Him “who raises the dead”, and not on ourselves. If even the Apostle Paul had to be taught that lesson, how much more do we need to learn to stop relying on ourselves and our ability and what we can do, and to teach us to rely only on God, to trust in Him, and depend on Him.

Finally, He does it to build our character, to shape us and train us for future good works. James 1:2-4 says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

To make swords out of iron, the iron was heated red hot and pounded and pounded and placed back in the coals. In the coals, carbon would get on the surface, which was then pounded in. Carbon made the iron almost like a form of steel, tough and strong, able to stand up in the day of battle. In the same way, these tests and trials come to make us stronger, so we are more fit for His service. That is why God tests us.

Abraham’s test was of a unique nature, because his life was being put up in a prophetic display. It seems the test was created for pain, especially the way God speaks to him and told him in Genesis 22:2 “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

Every phrase, it seems, was designed for pain. There are times we go through trials and wonder, “Why is this trial coming into my life? What have I done, and what is happening here?” In When God Doesn't Make Sense, Dr. James Dobson relates a story about pain involving his son Ryan, who had a terrible ear infection.

Dr. Dobson writes: “Ryan had a terrible ear infection when he was three years old that kept him (and us) awake most of the night. After examining Ryan, the doctor told us that the infection had adhered itself to the eardrum and could only be treated by pulling the scab loose with a wicked little instrument. He warned that the procedure would hurt and instructed us to hold our son tightly on the table. ... I swallowed hard and wrapped my 200-pound, six-foot-two- inch frame around the toddler. It was one of the toughest moments in my career as a parent. What made it so emotional was the long mirror Ryan was facing as he lay on the examining table. This made it possible for him to look directly at me as he screamed for mercy. I really believe I was in greater agony in that moment than my terrified little boy. ... What hurt me was the look on his face. Though he was screaming and couldn’t speak, he was “talking” to me with those big blue eyes. He was saying, ‘Daddy! Why are you doing this to me? I thought you loved me. I never thought you would do anything like this! How could you? Please, please! Stop hurting me!’”

That is what the Lord endures whenever He puts us through pain. We look up and wonder, why are you doing this to me? But it had to be done. There is no way that little toddler could understand the procedure and what had to be done. The only thing for it was that it had to be done, and that Dr. Dobson had to hold him down so that he could get through it. My desire is that we would learn to not question God during that time, to not look up in the mirror and say, “God, I don’t know you anymore. I don’t know why you’re doing this to me.” Because that is the time that the devil has opportunity, when he can work to get you to question and to wonder about God.

Look at the language that God uses in Genesis 22:2: “Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.’” It seems that every phrase must have hurt more than the last one.

George Herbert in commenting on this said: “Each word was like a case of knives cutting at the patriarch’s heart.” “Take your son.” What? A father slay his own son? Would that not make Abraham a monster in his own eyes? How could he face his wife Sarah and tell her that the child born in her old age was now killed at his own hand? “Take your only son.” Oh, what a painful memory this was, because he had already been commanded to send away Ishmael. That was hard enough. Now he was to sacrifice the remaining son Isaac?  The word Isaac means “laughter”, and what a flood of memories that must have brought back. It is the memories that are painful when a child dies. The memories of the laughter as Abraham, in chapter 17, fell down and laughed with joy at what God was doing, as Sarah initially laughed through unbelief, but also as she laughed with joy when she marveled at being able to give birth, and to suckle an infant at her old age.

“Whom you love.” This is a twisting of the knife. “You love him. He is a special child. You do everything together. Your heart is wrapped up in him. You cherish him. He is your only son, Isaac, whom you love. He is the focus of all your hopes and your future. He is the focus of the promises. Your only son, Isaac, whom you love…”

“And sacrifice him.” But what kind of God is commanding this? “Who are you God? Are we now like Moloch, offering up human sacrifice? How could I explain this to the pagans around as I have been preaching a holy God? How could I explain this to Abimelech, who heard about the gift of this miracle son, Isaac, and sacrifice him as a burnt offering? I do not even get to bury him. I don’t even get to touch his cold forehead. I have to watch him burn up. I have to be the one to burn him. I have to smell the smoke. How could it be more horrible?” It seemed every phrase was designed for pain. The real test seemed to be, who was God, that He was commanding this?

This was, brothers and sisters, a mature test for a mature faith. This was at the highest level. God had been preparing our patriarch, our father in faith, Abraham, for it for his whole lifetime. It was not a beginner test but an advanced test — in some respects a final test, a final exam, and a step-by-step preparation. Genesis 22:1 (ESV) says, “After these things God tested Abraham…” After what things? After, perhaps, the immediate events of Chapter 21, but I think after a lifetime of these things, after all of the shaping that God had done in Abraham’s life.

Charles Spurgeon said, “The great test came after nine great trials, each of them most searching and remarkable. After he had passed through a great fight of affliction, and had through the process been strengthened and sanctified, he was called to endure a still sterner test. From which fact it is well to learn that God doth not put heavy burdens upon weak shoulders, and he doth not allot ordeals fit only for full-grown men to those who are but babes, he educates our faith, testing it by trials which increase little by little in proportion as our faith has increased. He only expects us to do man’s work and to endure man’s afflictions, when we have passed through the childhood state, and have arrived at the stature of men in Christ Jesus. Expect then, beloved, your trials to multiply as you proceed towards heaven. Do not think that as you grow in grace the path will become smoother beneath your feet, and the heavens serener above your heads. On the contrary, reckon that as God gives you greater skill as a soldier, he will send you upon more arduous enterprises; and as he more fully fits your bark to brave the tempest and the storm, so will he send you out upon more boisterous seas, and upon longer voyages, that you may honor him, and still further increase in holy confidence. You would have thought that Abraham had now come to the land Beulah, that in his old age, after the birth of Isaac, and especially after the expulsion of Ishmael, he would have had a time of perfect rest. Let this warn us that we are never to reckon upon rest from tribulation this side the grave.”

It could be that your most severe test awaits your death bed, that God will step by step prepare you to give glory to him by the way you pass out of this world. I do not know, but He is shaping and preparing each one of His children by means of these wise tests. We see it in Abraham, through his original call from Ur of the Chaldees, through years of calling upon the name of the Lord, and through 25 years of waiting for this promised child. He had many ups and downs: weak moments — sins with Pharaoh and Hagar and Abimelech — and spectacular revelations from God — the night under the starry skies, when God made him a promise with a magnificent and mysterious covenant cutting ceremony, the command for circumcision, the birth of Isaac, the promised one. It could be that through all of that, Abraham’s heart had gotten so wrapped up in this little boy Isaac that he could not let him go.

Later in the Genesis account, Jacob loved a woman named Rachel, but he was swindled and had to marry her sister. He cherished the child Joseph that Rachel finally gave birth to. Later she died giving birth to Benjamin, and then Joseph was cruelly taken away from him. Jacob believed that Joseph was dead, and all he had left was little Benjamin. Judah testified to this unknown Egyptian leader who was Joseph that Judah’s father’s heart was wrapped up with the boy Benjamin, and if he died, his father will die. Judah begged Joseph not to bring his father’s gray head down to the grave in grief and sorrow. It may be that Abraham had the same kind of affection for Isaac.

God tested Abraham to the uttermost. He was to take a three days’ journey — not three hours, but three days of thinking about this, step-by step going to the region of Moriah, and every step, increasing pain. The text highlights their togetherness.  Genesis 22:6-8 says, “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 they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘My father!’ And he said, ‘Here am I, my son.’ He said, ‘Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’ Abraham said, ‘God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.’ So they went both of them together.”

God waited until the last possible moment to stop the test. God did not call it off and congratulate Abraham after one day. No — one, two, three days, up the mountain, the conversation, the whole thing. Abraham built the altar, bound his son and lay him on it. He went right to the end, reaching for the knife. Perhaps even as he was starting to move it toward his son, Isaac, then and only then did God stop him. 

First, Abraham exhibited faith-filled total obedience. First, it was immediate obedience, no hesitation. Genesis 22:3 says, “Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.”

I have heard, “To delay is to disobey.” We are called on to obey immediately when God tells us to do something. Abraham was immediate and prompt in his obedience. He did not linger or meditate and say, “Lord, let me pray about this.” Not that he did not pray, but there is no prayer in the text, he just did what he was commanded to do, and he certainly did not complain or murmur. It does not say whether he told Sarah what he was doing — that would have been quite a conversation — but the text is silent about that encounter, if it ever happened. Immediate obedience.

Second, we see faith-filled obedience. This is key because his obedience is based upon a lifetime of hearing God speak to him. Faith does not come out of nowhere. Romans 10:17 says, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.” Faith comes from hearing the word. If you want greater, stronger faith, hear the word more.

I extracted all of the direct quotes from God to Abraham in the Scripture and put them on one sheet. It came out to 1133 words in the English translation I was looking at. Over a thousand words. Page after page. I then categorized them into 19 separate commands, 12 statements, two questions, and 40 promises. God had given him a river of revelation. This is faith-filled obedience based on hearing God speak to him again and again.

Third, it was practiced obedience based on habit. Abraham had obeyed every one of those 19 commands. God commanded: “Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.” Abraham obeyed. God commanded, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” Abraham brought that whole list of things.

God commanded, “No longer shall your name be Abram, but it shall be Abraham.” Abraham changed his name. He commanded concerning his wife, “No longer shall your wife’s name be Sarai but Sarah.” Her name was changed. God commanded, “Every male among you, including you shall be circumcised.” Abraham obeyed and was circumcised. God commanded, “Send away the slave woman and her son.” Abraham obeyed and sent them away, though it hurt him deeply. Abraham had established a pattern of obedience. This is how God gets you ready for your trial: you do what He tells you to do.

It was reasoned obedience. He used his rational capacity, his logic. Some people think of faith and reason as diametrically opposed. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary scientist, likens religion to an infectious virus that readily replicates by spreading falsehoods, which is what he says faith is. He embraces science and human reason, and paints religion as an evil virus. He would say, “Faith is irrational, illogical, unreasonable.”

But that is not true. Abraham took as a basic starting point that there is a God who created Heaven and earth, and then had an experience of hearing God speak his word to him again and again, and his word proved true again and again. He predicted something that no one could ever have seen, a child born to him in his old age, 100 years old, and Sarah whose womb was dead, 90 years old. God had proven trustworthy. Furthermore, God made specific promises to him concerning the boy, Isaac. He said to Abraham in Genesis 17:19 “…your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.”

Genesis 21:12: “But God said to him, ‘…it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ [Next, he weighed God’s command] ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’” Abraham thought, “How will I reconcile these things?” Hebrews 11:17-19 tells us how: “By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.” Faith and reason were working together in Abraham’s life. He reasoned from the basis of faith promises, but it was a rational process.

The NIV gives an incorrect impression in Hebrews 11:18 concerning Abraham: “He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’” The Greek does not say “even though.” No other translation says “even though.” The NIV adds it in because it does not otherwise make sense to our modern ears. But to Abraham, it made perfect sense. The only way he would do it was if God had given him a promise already concerning Isaac. If there had been no promise that through one of his offspring, all peoples on earth would be blessed, and Isaac had not been specified, then the test would have been tough — he would have no basis for thinking that God would raise Isaac from the dead. He would fear that he might lose him forever. Instead, he reasoned that Isaac was the child of promise. God had said so. The only thing that made sense is that God would raise him from the dead.

Never let anyone tell you that faith and reason are enemies. They are not. They are good friends and they work together. But faith-filled people accept more data and more information than unbelievers do. We accept the Word of God, and we reason out based on that. So Abraham’s faith was a reasonable faith.

Finally, Abraham displayed total obedience, right to the uttermost. In verses 9-10, “When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.” We see, in the obedience of Abraham, a pattern of Christ, although not perfect. Jesus said in John 17:4, praying to his heavenly Father, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do.” Jesus is the only human being that ever can say, “I did everything you wanted me to do, Father.” But in this case, Abraham is a pattern of total obedience.

We see immediate, faith-filled, practical, habitual, reasoned, total obedience. As a result, we see God’s commendation, which we will cover in the next sermon. Verses 11-12 say, “But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. ‘Do not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.’” This an incredible mystery, this statement, “Now I know that you fear God.” The omniscient, all-seeing one who says all the days of your life are written in his book before one of them came to be, is saying, “Now, I know that you fear God.” We will, God willing, plumb the depths of that statement.

If you are a child of God, He will test your faith. He will bring hard things in your life to test you with pain, with suffering, with setbacks, with sickness, and with the death of loved ones. He will also test you with praise and prosperity and success. He will test you in many ways. He does it for His own glory and for your good. The question is, how will you respond?

One of my seminary professors told me of a family that was in the church that he pastored, a loving, godly Christian family. They had three children, and each one of their children was taken from them in three separate incidents over two years. Stop and think what that would feel like. No children left, all of them gone separately in two accidents and one terminal illness. At the funeral, they sang at the family’s request How Firm a Foundation. The final line says, “The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose, I will not, I will not, desert to his foes. That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake, I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.” They put a child’s name under each “Never”. They were trusting in God to get them through the most severe trial they had ever faced in their lives. They knew the faithfulness of God, while at the same time they knew the pain that that trial alone can bring.

Are you ready to trust God through the trials he has in mind for you? Some of you have already been through great trials. God may still have more in store for you. But you should testify to those who have yet to go through it that God has been faithful to you.

Some of you are going through trials now. Trust in Him. Please do not murmur. In church history, human suffering has been an open door to bring bad theology into the church. “Because I lost my wife, I lost my son, I went through this suffering, therefore God is not sovereign, or does not care,” or some other charge. Do not deny in the dark what you learned in the light. Trust Him in those times.

One final word about the nature of worship. Verse 5 says, “He said to his servants, ‘Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.’” “We will come back to you” — that is his testimony of faith.

Before that he said, “We will worship.” I meditated on that for a long time. In our Wednesday night class we are studying worship. It is interesting to talk about “worship wars” in various congregations regarding music styles. Do you realize how much greater and bigger worship is than all of that? In effect, Abraham looked on the sacrifice of his own son as worship. God is saying, in the same way that he did with Abraham, “He who did not spare His own son, but gave Him up for us all — how will he not also, along with us, graciously give us all things?” That is God’s stance toward you if you are a Christian, because you have faith in Christ, that everything that He has is yours. He will give it to you. The question is, what is your stance toward God? Can you say back to God the same thing He is saying to you in Christ?

Can you come to Him on Sunday morning and seven days a week and say, “God, all I have is yours. I will not withhold Isaac, I will not withhold anything — my body, my time, my money, my children.” Jesus said beautifully in John 17:10, praying to his Father, “All I have is yours, and all you have is mine.” Is that your stance in worship? My desire is that we would be purified and strengthened and be true worshipers, able to offer to God a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to him every day, and lay down whatever Isaacs he calls on us to lay down, all of them, on the altar.

When you think of eternity, what comes to mind? It is hard for us finite creatures to get our thoughts around eternity. Some time ago, I read a survey of history from a secular writer who was grappling with eternity. He came up with an analogy of a mountain in a vast plain. Once a day, a sparrow came from a horizon far away, and would take away from this huge mountain a single pebble and drop it into the ocean. The next day, it would do the same. When the mountain had been leveled to the the plain, that was one day of eternity. That is a secular writer trying to grapple with the infinitude of time.

The Bible talks about God as an eternal God. Our text says that Abraham called on Yahweh, or the Lord, El Olam, the God of eternity. What an incredible title that is for God. The text speaks in a very plain and simple way of a covenant, an agreement, a treaty between two persons, between Abimelech and Abraham concerning a well and the relations that they would have in an ongoing sense.

We have this immense, eternal God, and this rather mundane interaction between two people in every day life. That is the mystery of life for us as Christians — eternity into time. In our everyday business, tasks, relationships, work here in this world, we call on Yahweh, El Olam, the eternal God. The connection of the two in this passage is in another verse, Hebrews 13:20: “May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will…” This text in Genesis 21 is about a temporal covenant made in the eyes of an eternal God, but it is a picture of the blood of the one eternal covenant that saves our souls.

The Father and the Son made this agreement before time began, from eternity past, before there was a sun or a moon or stars, by which we set time. Before any of that happened, there was an agreement between the Father and the Son — that is the eternal covenant — that if the Father would give the beloved ones to the Son, the Son would pour out His blood for them. He would die in their place, and make for them an eternal resting place. Simply put, the eternal covenant benefits aliens and strangers and pilgrims. Abraham lived in Abimelech’s land. The king wanted to remind Abraham that Abraham was living on his land by temporary covenant, that Abraham dwelt in the land of the Philistines as an alien and a stranger, passing through. But the covenant made on your behalf to give you a resting place is eternal, if you are a believer in Christ. Jesus said [John 14:20-3], “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”

That is what the eternal covenant is all about. The seven ewe lambs were a sign or a witness between Abraham and Abimelech that the well belonged to Abraham. So also the blood of Christ is a sign and witness to us that God eternally has determined to bring believers in Christ to Himself, that we would have an eternal resting place. All the rest is details which are interesting, but it is the eternal covenant that I trust in for my salvation, that I am resting in. The tamarisk tree that Abraham planted and the well that they bickered over are gone. Life is flying by; time is moving on. Every week brings us closer to Judgment Day. Every week, we age, we see material things around us become old and decrepit and we have to replace them. Trees that are planted die, but there is an eternal God who has made for us an eternal covenant in Christ, and He is saying that some day we will be with Him in paradise. I look forward to that. 

The context in Genesis 21 is of God’s faithfulness in keeping His word to Abraham and Sarah. At the beginning of the chapter, God fulfilled this promise at last, and little miracle baby Isaac was born. God also fulfilled His promise to Ishmael, that He would protect him and care for him, even though he was cast out from the family at God’s command. He and his mother Hagar went out into the desert where God provided and protected Ishmael. Isaac and Ishmael had different promises, but we see in both cases, God faithful to fulfill His promise — He is faithful to His word. 

However, even the best of God’s people are not faithful to their word. The Scripture says, “All men are liars.” Abraham was now eating the fruit of his past behavior with Abimelech. He had told him a lie. He had a mixed witness to him. Abimelech could look at his life and see God’s hand of blessing on it, but he also remembered how Abraham behaved when he lied about Sarah, saying she was his sister. That almost got Abimelech killed.

God in Genesis 20 spoke to Abimelech who was considering taking Sarah to be his wife based on the word that Abraham had given him that she was his sister. He was going to take her, but already God’s hand of curse was on Abimelech and his household. They were physically ill with physical problems such that the women could not conceive and bear children. God warned Abimelech in a dream saying, “You’re as good as a dead man because of this woman that you have taken because she is another man’s wife.”

Then Abimelech called Abraham in and said, “What is this you have done to me? You have done things to me that ought not to have been done, you lied to me.” As he sought to make a treaty, the mixed witness and the results of it here are having their effect. Verse 22 says, “At that time Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his forces said to Abraham, ‘God is with you in everything you do.’” That is the good part.

But then he says in verse 23, “Now swear to me here before God that you will not deal falsely with me or my children or my descendants.” That is the bad part. Abimelech was asking Abraham not to lie to him anymore, to deal well with him. Abimelech feared Abraham, and he knew that God was with him and could wipe Abimelech out. Abimelech knew He is a powerful, eternal God. He did not trust Abraham, but he saw God’s hand of blessing. That is a mixed witness.

What did he mean when he said, “God is with you in everything that you do?” Isaac had been born already. This must have been a very striking testimony to Abimelech who knew Abraham’s family well, that they had no child, that Sarah was an aged woman at this point, 90 years old and beyond, and Abraham 100 years old. They had had no children all those many years, and now here was miracle baby Isaac. Abimelech recognized that this could not happen except that God was with Abraham in everything that he did. He also saw at a lesser level the material prosperity of Abraham’s life — the cattle and sheep, the possessions, the silver and gold. Abraham was a wealthy man, and there was the principle of blessing.

We do not have record of Abraham’s conversations with Abimelech, but perhaps they had time to talk about the visions and the promises that God had made to Abraham. When Abimelech said God was with Abraham in everything he did, there was a history there. That is the good witness that Abraham presented. “My God is a powerful God — He is a promise-making God, and He is a promise-keeping God.” Now he had a baby to prove it, after waiting for 25 years since God first called him to that land to roam.  Abimelech saw God’s hand in everything, but he also remembered his problem with Abraham and asked him not to deal falsely, to deceive, to lie to him anymore, but to deal well with him.

Abimelech desired a treaty of covenant with Abraham. Verse 24 says, “Show to me and the country where you are living as an alien the same kindness I have shown to you.” He reminded Abraham of the kindness he had shown in letting him live in his land, that he was a guest there. At the same time, he introduced Abraham to Phicol, the commander of his army. Was he there only as a friend and witness to the covenant? No, most likely it was to give Abraham the sense that Abimelech was not bargaining from an inferior position.

There was a concern there. Abraham is reminded once again, as Stephen said to the Sanhedrin concerning the land and concerning Abraham in Acts 7:5: “[God] gave him no inheritance here, not even a foot of ground. But God promised him that he and his descendants after him would possess the land.” He gave Abraham nothing. Everywhere he went, he lived in tents. He roamed through the land, a stranger and an alien in Philistine land. It says concerning Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Hebrews 11:13-16: “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country — a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”

Abimelech was saying, “Please do not forget that you are here at my leave, as my guest. Show me the same kindness that I showed to you and swear an oath or a treaty of covenant friendship with me.” Abraham said simply, “I swear it.” He made a covenant oath, which was sacred to both Abimelech and to Abraham, performed in a solemn ceremony of covenant oath-taking. Hebrews 6:16 says, “…the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument.”

However, there was still a matter to be discussed. Abraham brought a complaint to Abimelech — even though he was an alien and a stranger, he still had a grievance: “Then Abraham complained to Abimelech about a well of water that Abimelech's servants had seized.” This well Abraham had commissioned was his by rights, and when Abraham made this treaty with Abimelech, he testified to this very fact when he said, “Accept these seven lambs from my hand as a witness that I dug this well.”

This was a significant issue to Abraham. In my opinion, it was the issue that brought Abimelech and Phicol there to begin with, even though Abimelech said in verse 26, “I don’t know who has done this. You did not tell me, and I heard about it only today.” Whether Abimelech was lying to Abraham or had only heard that specifically who had done it and what the issues were, this was a very serious matter. In the Negev, in the desert, where they were living, water was life. Wars have been fought between desert tribes over wells of water, so this was a brewing conflict between Abraham and Abimelech. Phicol the commander of the Philistine army was there, but Abraham had his army too. He had defeated undefeated Kedorlaomer and had 318 men he could put on a horse at that point. But those 318 men did not mean a thing. What mattered was that God was with Abraham in everything he did, and Abimelech saw the promise of blessing in Abraham’s life. Abimelech was saying he did not want to fight Abraham over the well and wanted instead to make a treaty — a covenant and a friendship.

The search for water is a fascinating one. Historically, diviners have used rods, sticks in the shape of an upside down capital Y. They walk around holding the top of the Y in both hands, and where the stick bends down, supposedly there is water underground. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, was a water diviner before he found a better line of work founding a mythological religion called Mormonism. He sold his services to search for water. One can never be quite sure where subterranean water is, and it is difficult and expensive to dig or drill a well. Once water is found, it is life itself — better than finding hidden gold in the desert, because gold cannot sustain life. It seems that Abimelech’s servants — his soldiers or some of his men — had taken over this well and were not letting Abraham use it. This was a very serious matter.

I read recently about a French scientist named Alain Gaché working in the desert of Chad. He uses space age technology, a certain kind of radar that reads 60 feet below the surface of the earth which can find subterranean water. The space shuttle has made a topological map for him, and he has put the coordinates in his GPS. He has found water with 100% accuracy and dug six wells. This is important because right now in the Darfur region of Sudan, there is a terrible civil war, and there are 200,000 refugees out there in that desert in Chad. This is literally life for those refugees, many of whom are our brothers and sisters in Christ. They are suffering and dying because of the conflict in Sudan. 

About 300 years before the time of Christ, there was an oft-forgotten kingdom called the Nabataean empire, Arab in descent. They traveled through the desert and whenever threatened, for example by the Romans or the Greeks, they could retreat into the Negev, the desert region we are looking at today. No one could follow them there, because they had a genius for finding subterranean water and digging wells and cisterns to collect rain. They would then cover them over so that they could not be detected. They had certain signs and symbols that they alone knew so that they could water their animals and themselves to survive, but no one following them into the desert could survive. Water is life in the desert.

As before, Abimelech declared ignorance. Verse 26: “But Abimelech said, ‘I don't know who has done this. You did not tell me, and I heard about it only today.’” Abimelech took it very seriously, and he dealt with it seriously, which is why he wanted a treaty of friendship with Abraham, for he feared the God of Abraham.

In verses 27-32, the two seal the treaty of Beersheba: “So Abraham brought sheep and cattle and gave them to Abimelech, and the two men made a treaty. Abraham set apart seven ewe lambs from the flock, and Abimelech asked Abraham, ‘What is the meaning of these seven ewe lambs you have set apart by themselves?’ He replied, ‘Accept these seven lambs from my hand as a witness that I dug this well.’ So that place was called Beersheba, because the two men swore an oath there. After the treaty had been made at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his forces returned to the land of the Philistines.”

So this matter was sealed with a covenant. The covenant was a binding solemn agreement between two or more parties. Baptists, unlike Presbyterians, do not think a lot about covenants, but we should. Hebrews 13:20 says that we were saved by the blood of an eternal covenant, an agreement between the Father and the Son. No matter what we believe about infant baptism or the covenant theology, we are saved by that covenant, the eternal covenant. Throughout the Old Testament especially, we see covenants coming in again and again. This was more of an everyday covenant concerning the well and the relationship that there would be between Abraham and Abimelech.

To seal it, Abraham gave a return gift of livestock, seven ewe lambs. They were probably part of the original gift that Abimelech had given to Abraham, and he was willing to give back some of it, so that there would be a good relationship between the two.

It was a seven-fold witness — the seven lambs were set off as a special sign, to say that every time Abimelech looked at these lambs or their offspring, he would remember that Abraham dug the well. The meaning of the name of the place, Beersheba, is slightly unclear — either “well of the seven” or “well of the oath”, but either way, the name commemorated the covenant of friendship between Abraham and Abimelech.

In Genesis 26, the exact same thing will happen again over the same well, but between Isaac and Abimelech and Phicol. Beyond that, it would be included in the land that Joshua conquers, and would become part of the Promised Land. Some day, Abraham’s descendants would own Beersheba. 1 Samuel 3:20 says, “And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba recognized that Samuel was attested as a prophet of the LORD.” From Dan to Beersheba, all the Jews assembled and made David their king. Dan was the furthest north, and Beersheba, on the Negev, the furthest south. This well was part of the Promised Land.

Having made the covenant, Abraham planted a tamarisk tree. Genesis 21:32-34 says, “After the treaty had been made at Beersheba, Abimelech and Phicol the commander of his forces returned to the land of the Philistines. Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the LORD, the Eternal God.” This would be an oasis of rest for a weary pilgrim like Abraham and his household. The tamarisk is a desert dwelling tree with narrow leaves; it does not have much surface area, so not a lot of water evaporates off, and it can stay green 365 days a year. It is a great desert dwelling tree, and it provided shade in a shadeless place for Abraham. The tree was a symbol of permanence in an impermanent world for Abraham, so it symbolized Abraham’s sense of rest and peace and security in his pilgrim life.

Finally, verse 34 says, “And Abraham stayed in the land of the Philistines for a long time.” He lived there for a long time, but it was still the land of the Philistines.

This encounter with Abraham and Abimelech is the first time we meet the Philistines in the Bible. The Philistines are a major player in the book of Judges, and then in the books of Samuel, with David, with Saul and with Samuel. Originally the Philistines came from a place called Caphtor. Amos 9:7 says, “‘Are not you Israelites the same to me as the Cushites?' declares the LORD. ‘Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt and the Philistines from Caphtor?’” Archaeology has shown that Caphtor is probably the Island of Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean, but also that the pattern of lifestyle of the Philistines — the way they made pottery, their language and their entire system — was similar to the Mycenaeans and the Peloponnesos. Mycenae is where the wars with Troy originated. King Agamemnon and Helen of Troy and Achilles were Mycenaean.

It is fascinating that they would fight battles in the same way. When they faced another army, they would send out their champion, and the other side would send out their champion, and the two of them would fight it out. Whoever won would seal victory for their entire army — it was all down to the two champions. In 1 Samuel 17:4-10, “Goliath stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, ‘Why do you come out and line up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.’ Then the Philistine said, ‘This day I defy the ranks of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.’” It all came down to hand-to-hand combat between two individuals. That is very Mycenaean, very Greek. That is what the Philistines were. Praise God for David, who came out in the name of the Lord and took a sling and down went Goliath. Unlike Achilles and Hector, he did not drag his body around. He beheaded him and kept the head as a symbol of his victory.

This is significant because the Philistines were constant enemies of the people of God, but it need not have been that way. In Genesis 15, God listed the names of the nations that would be wiped out to a person by the Israelites when they came in and took the land. The Philistines were not included among them. The Philistines could have lived in peace and under the blessing of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God said when He called Abraham, “I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse.” Abimelech and Phicol blessed Abraham, and as a result, they received a blessing. The blessing was that while Abraham’s family was still around — Isaac’s twin sons, Jacob and Esau, were 12 years old in Genesis 26 — they would have long life, long rain, peace and security. That is what God did for those Philistines.

But at some point, they became enemies of the people of God, and came under the judgment of God as a result. Jeremiah 47:4 says, “The LORD is about to destroy the Philistines, the remnant from the coasts of Caphtor.” God means what he says. That is what Genesis 21 is all about. What God says, He means. He keeps the promises he makes and He upholds the warnings he gives. If you make a treaty of friendship with Him through faith in Jesus Christ, He will give you eternal life, but woe to you if you oppose his Son. Our God is a promise-making and a promise-keeping God.

The final note in this text is this issue of the eternal God. Genesis 21:33 says, “Abraham planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheba, and there he called upon the name of the LORD, the Eternal God.” Yahweh El Olam, “our God is an eternal God.” That means He is timeless. He is changeless. What God’s omnipresence is to Him concerning the boundary of space, His eternity is concerning the boundary of time. He never changes. He never dies. He lives forever and ever. He is the eternal God. Therefore, the name Yahweh is The Great I Am. He says, I AM. Jesus said, “Before Abraham was born, I AM.” It says in the book of Revelation, “He is the God who is, and who was, and who is to come.” He is the Almighty. This is the eternal God.

Humanity is bound by time, just as we are bound by space. We cannot be in more than one place at one time, and we cannot see what will happen even the next instant. We do not know anything about the future. But God sees the beginning from the end and the end from the beginning. He is the eternal God. We mark time by the passing of events, but God does not. About 500 years later, a descendant of Abraham named Moses wrote a beautiful Psalm. Psalm 90:1-4 says, “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn men back to dust, saying, ‘Return to dust, O sons of men.’ For a thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night.”

Moses traveled from place to place with the people of God before they entered the Promised Land. Like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob before him, he was a pilgrim, a stranger, a wanderer on this earth. And so are we. You may think you have a permanent home, that the things you possess are really yours, that situations that you are in are lasting and permanent, but nothing that you can see with your eyes or hear with your ears or experience in this physical world is eternal. Nothing, including the human relationships that you treasure on earth will last, but spiritual things are forever. Our God, in His eternal nature, is our only hope. Therefore, we trust in a God who, before anything was created, made a blood covenant with Jesus that we would be saved.

First, in a very simple way, live a life of integrity before a watching world. Jesus Christ came to bring a kingdom. He is the King of Heaven, and he came to testify to a kingdom. When he was standing in front of Pontius Pilate, Pilate said, “So you are a king?” Jesus said, “You are right in saying that I am a king. For this reason, I came into the world. For this I was born and for this I came into the world to testify to the truth. All on the side of the truth listen to me.” So Jesus’ kingdom is a kingdom of truth. How can we witness to the world if we lie? How can we present to the Abimelechs of our world, the people who are observing our life, any kind of a witness at all, if we are not living up to the calling that we have received, if we are dishonest, if we are deceptive as Abraham was? In John 14:6 Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” The Gospel that we preach is a message of truth. Christians are called to love and obey the truth. Consistency therefore, is key to our witness that we present to the watching world. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:2, “We have renounced secret and shameful ways; we do not use deception, nor do we distort the word of God. On the contrary, by setting forth the truth plainly we commend ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God.”

Live carefully in this world. Mean what you say and say what you mean. Wives, do not lie to your husbands, and husbands, do not lie to your wives. Children, do not learn the habits of telling falsehoods to your parents. It is hard to undo that habit. 

It is also hard to undo the poison and the impact of a lie in a relationship. What is on Abimelech’s mind as he comes to Abraham at this point? You lied to me. How can I trust you? When a lie has come into a significant relationship — husband-wife, parent-child, friend-friend — it is difficult to undo that lie. You can only hope that as in Abimelech’s case, grace will cover the transgression and the relationship can continue to flourish. Say, “I was deceptive. I am a liar in my heart, but God is transforming me, and thank you for being gracious. Thank you for believing the covenant that I am making with you that we will have a good relationship between the two of us.” A lie can be difficult, and therefore, on the front end before sin, do not do it. On the back side, grace can cover, but do not lie — it is a poison in a relationship.

Third, we see from this account how to deal with conflict. The world is full of sinners, and therefore the world is full of conflict. It makes sense. There could have been a war over this well; there could have been a big problem, but both of them rose above that and made a treaty of friendship. Those treaties are only as good as the characters of those that make them. You know how many treaties Hitler made before World War II and broke? How many promises he made and broke? You can make a treaty, but it is not worth the paper it is printed on if you are a liar and a deceiver. But we can see here the efforts, as it says in Scripture, to live at peace with all men as far as it depends on you, and that is what this text calls us to.

Finally, I cannot end except with Jesus Christ. Some time later, Jesus was sitting by another well that Jacob had given to his descendants that was still being used. A Samaritan woman came, and Jesus wanted to talk to her about a different kind of water, so he enticed her into a discussion. “Yes, you come here every day to draw water because you need it to live, but I want to talk to you about something else.” “‘If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.’ ‘Sir,’ the woman said, ‘you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?’ Jesus answered, ‘Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’” [John 4:10-14]

Do you know that? Have you experienced that? Are you experiencing it right now? Are you satisfied with Jesus? There are all kinds of muddy wells around that seem to promise satisfaction, but which do not. When you drink from them, you will thirst again. Material prosperity, popularity, worldly success, human relationships, or any one of a number of other counterfeits are all wells that will not satisfy, but Jesus has come to give you life and give it to you abundantly and eternally. Are you drinking from him as a deer pants for water? Are you hungering, are you thirsting for fellowship with God? Jesus Christ came to give you that very thing. He is the Lord, the eternal God. He came to give you eternal life.

Genesis 21 is a celebration text as God has fulfilled His promise to Abraham and Sarah by giving them Isaac. We live in a world that is used to broken promises. We live among people who break their promises, but God does not do that. God makes promises and He keeps them.

In 1897, Charles Parsons wanted to meet George Müller, the man that God had used to bless and to provide for thousands of orphans. Müller received him cordially into his study, and they sat down and began to talk. Parsons asked what was the secret of his success. Müller’s answer was straight forward. The secret was entrusting the faithfulness of God to his promises. God makes promises and God keeps them. Müller took those promises at face value.

Parsons asked “You have always found the Lord faithful to His promise?” Müller answered: “Always. He has never failed me! For nearly seventy years every need in connection with this work has been supplied. The orphans from the first until now have numbered nine thousand five hundred, but they have never [lacked] a meal. Never! Hundreds of times we have commenced the day without a penny in hand, but our Heavenly Father has sent supplies by the moment they were actually required. There never was a time when there was no wholesome meal. During all these years I have been enabled to trust in the living God, and in Him alone. One million four hundred thousand pounds have been sent to me in answer to prayer.” Müller’s life verse, Psalm 81:10, says, “I am the Lord, your God who brought you out of Egypt. Open wide your mouth and I will fill it.” He took that promise to God daily.

One Puritan said, “Show God His promises... God is fond of His handwriting!” So we take the promises of God and say, “This is the thing you promised to do.” He likes to look at what He has written, and He is always faithful to keep it. We do not keep our promises — the Scripture says in Psalm 116:11, “…All men are liars.” We break our promises, but God never does.

In Genesis 21:1-8, at last, God has kept his promise. The fact that God did as he had promised is strongly emphasized in the text. Verses 1-2 say, “Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised [the repetition gives emphasis — As he had said, what he had promised]. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.” That is the third time in two verses. Clearly God is emphasizing this fact, “I keep my promises. The thing I said I would do, I have now done.”

God had made many promises concerning Isaac and concerning Abraham’s offspring. Genesis 12:1-3: “The LORD had said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.’” 

Genesis 12:7: “The LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’”

Genesis 13:14-16: “The LORD said to Abram after Lot had parted from him, ‘Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever. I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted.’”

Abraham asked, “Lord, what can you give me, because I have no child, and Eliezer of Damascus is my heir.” Genesis 15:4-5: “Then the word of the LORD came to him: ‘This man will not be your heir, but a son coming from your own body will be your heir.’ He took him outside and said, ‘Look up at the heavens and count the stars — if indeed you can count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’”

Genesis 17:16 is more specific after Abraham had taken matters into his own hands and had Ishmael by Hagar. God clarified and focused: “My promise is for Sarah.” “I will bless [Sarah] and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.”

Genesis 17:19: “Then God said, ‘Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.’”

Genesis 17:21: “But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.”

Genesis 18:10, “Then the LORD said, ‘I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.’”

Sarah overheard that and began laughing. Genesis 18:14: “Is anything too hard for the LORD? I will return to you at the appointed time next year and Sarah will have a son.”

God spoke concerning Sodom and Gomorrah, revealing his will to Abraham. Genesis 18:18-19: “Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by doing what is right and just, so that the LORD will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

In those ten different passages, God made the same promise again and again. Now at last, God could say triumphantly, “The Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. The Lord brought about a son for Abraham in his old age, just as he had promised.” He told us three times in two verses, “I did what I promised.” In this way, their faith was vindicated. God’s promise overcomes all obstacles. Paul wrote about Abraham, who believed the Lord and trusted in this promise. Romans 4:19 says, “Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead — since he was about a hundred years old — and that Sarah's womb was also dead. Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.”

Abraham’s faith was vindicated, and so was Sarah’s. Hebrews 11:11 (ESV) says, “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.” Both Abraham and Sarah were trusting in God for this promise, and their faith was vindicated. The issue was not biology but theology. God had closed up Sarah’s womb, purposely keeping it barren for 90 years, in order to bring about a supernatural child of the promise. He wanted to do a miracle. It was not in vitro fertilization. It was not wonder drugs that produce quintuplets or any of the kind of things that we see today. It was not a matter of biology, not at all. This was a supernatural act of God himself. This was a miracle baby. This was Isaac. The timeless lesson is playing: God can do anything.

Our God can do anything. There is nothing he cannot do. He is a powerful God; He is a sovereign king. What he has promised, he will most certainly bring to pass. Why does this matter for us? Someday we will die. Whether peacefully or not, when I breathe my last breath, I will do so trusting God’s promise to raise me from the dead, that in Christ all my sins are forgiven, and that my life is not now over, that my body is not all there is, that evolution is a lie, that I will live even after I die. I believe that promise. Genesis 21 is written for us, that we might trust in the promise of God that he will raise us from the dead. Romans 4:17 says, “As it is written: 'I have made you a father of many nations.’ He is our father in the sight of God, in whom he believed — the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.”

God speaks into nothing, and he creates. In this case, he created a baby, miracle Isaac. As a result, in a dim reflection of God’s faithfulness, Abraham was faithful. He obeyed God’s command to circumcise his son. Genesis 21:4: “When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God commanded him.” Abraham was faithful to his promise as well to obey God’s commands, one of which was circumcision on the eighth day. We desire as children of God to respond in the same way. To be God-like, we keep our word.

In verses 6-8, we see the joy and wonder and celebration at God’s victory.  Genesis 21:6 says, “Sarah said, ‘God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.’” Isaac’s name means laughter. It was a celebration, a time of joy. This laughter is not the laughter of unbelief that Sarah gave when she heard God’s promise, nor was it the mocking laughter from Ishmael when he mocked Isaac.

No, this was a laugh of joy. This is the way we will laugh when we see Christ face-to-face. It is a laugh of celebration. Sarah also reacted in wonder at the details of the fulfillment. Verse 7: “And she added, ‘Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.’” She is in amazement that she is nursing a little boy at age 90. Next in the text — I find this in real life too, that the children grow quickly — soon, it was time for him to be weaned. That is a mixed thing, part of the joy and the pain of parenting, preparing children to be independent, getting them ready to not need you anymore. You do not want your kids when they are 70 and you are 90 asking, “What’s for dinner, mom?” By then, they should be on their own. That is good parenting. You are preparing them to be independent, but it hurts when they make those steps more and more away from you. It is a mixture.

This is the very thing that happened. Abraham gave a feast. They celebrated the little boy as he was weaned with a big feast. In verse 8, “The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast.”

But that feast was the occasion of a danger being uncovered — the danger of Ishmael. At that feast, Ishmael, probably 15 years old, mocked the little boy. He laughed at him, made fun of him. It was a mocking laughter, not a laughter of joy or of faith or of celebration at God’s faithfulness. It was a mocking laugh.

In verses 9-21, we have the account of the expulsion of Ishmael. It says, “But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking and she said to Abraham, ‘Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.’”

Ishmael’s expulsion is rather shocking. Ishmael was the son of Abraham and Sarah’s maid servant Hagar. In Genesis 16, when Sarah saw that she could not have children, her womb was barren, she gave her maid servant to her husband to sleep with her, which was the custom at the time. Hagar gave birth to a son, Ishmael. This was not the will of the Lord; it did not follow God's pattern for marriage, and it caused nothing but trouble. After Hagar had run away when Sarah treated her harshly, she did not want to go back. “Then the angel of the LORD told her, ‘Go back to your mistress and submit to her.’ The angel added, 'I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count.’ The angel of the LORD also said to her: 'You are now with child and you will have a son. You shall name him Ishmael, for the LORD has heard of your misery. He will be a wild donkey of a man; his hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he will live in hostility toward all his brothers.’” (Genesis 16:9-12)

God also spoke two prophecies concerning Ishmael to Abraham. God made it clear that it would be through Sarah that the child of promise would be born and they would name him Isaac. Abraham’s first thought is, “What about Ishmael?” Genesis 17:18-21 says, “And Abraham said to God, ‘If only Ishmael might live under your blessing!’ [He is concerned for his son.] Then God said, ‘Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.’” God made clear prophecies concerning Ishmael to both Abraham and Hagar.

Why, then, was Ishmael cast out? I see five reasons in the text. First and simply, he mocked; he laughed. Verse 9 says, “But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking.” Even though his name means laughter, the mocking is not connected to Isaac’s name. It is not a play on words, but ridicule. Paul calls it persecution. In Galatians 4:29, he said, “At that time the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit.” This was a serious matter. By this time, Ishmael would have been 15 years old. He was laughing at Isaac’s weaning feast, making fun of it, mocking.

Second, Ishmael was cast out because Sarah wanted him out, as well as Hagar. Sarah perceived a threat to Isaac and to her own position in the family. And Sarah, like many mothers at that time, derived her significance from the role of her son as heir. She saw what things would be like down the road, so she was furious when she heard about this mockery. She went to Abraham, Verse 10, “…and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” Sarah did not use Hagar’s name but denigrated her position entirely. “That slave woman and her son,” she said. She also believed the clear statement that God had made to Abraham in Genesis 17:10: “…for that slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.”

The third reason was the threat that he posed to Isaac’s role as heir. Some things you have to nip in the bud. I was reading recently in MIT’s review magazine of ongoing technology about cancer detection at a very early stage. They are able to detect it through certain technologies far earlier than they ever could before, at the molecular level, and tag these cancer cells before they accumulate into a tumor. This would be powerful for treatment, especially if the detection could be done inexpensively. The issue is that tumors are best caught early. The earlier you can get the cancer, the better. Ishmael was a cancer in the household waiting to happen, and the issue would have been a rivalry over the succession to the throne, so to speak. Who would be the heir? Ishmael being so much older than Isaac perhaps would have had some kind of an advantage.

The history of Europe, for example, is a history of wars of succession. One son claiming and then the other son claiming and both got their armies together to fight a war over it. It is not good for the country. Alexander Dumas’ classic, The Man in the Iron Mask, is about this. Louis XIV in the story had twin sons, who looked identical. When they grew to a certain age, the rightful heir was taken away and put in a hideous iron mask so that nobody could look at his face and see who he was. All of this to prevent a civil war in France that would have destroyed the country. In the same way, Ishmael was a threat to Isaac. He blurred the distinction of who it was through whom the covenant would be made and the promise would come.

Fourth, Abraham needed it done. Such a thing would have happened because of the affection that Abraham had for Ishmael. In Genesis 17, after the promise came concerning Sarah and Isaac, wonderful good news, Abraham’s instinctive reaction was, “What about Ishmael?” That was a significant problem, and God wanted clarity on this matter. In the incredible passage in the next chapter, Genesis 22, when God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, He said “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and offer him a sacrifice.” That was God’s word to Abraham. Did God forget Ishmael? No, never. He did not forget. Clearly, it was going to be through Isaac and Abraham was not crystal clear on that. Some clarity needed to happen.

Finally, Ishmael was cast out because God commanded it. Verse 12 says, “But God said to him, ‘Do not be so distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’” Whatever Sarah’s motives were, whatever was going on in Abraham’s heart, all of that was secondary to the clear fact God wanted it done, so he cast Ishmael out. Abraham obeyed immediately.

Verse 14, “Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the desert of Beersheba.” In effect, God was saying, “From this point forward, let me take care of Ishmael. He is no longer your responsibility. I will be a father to the fatherless, I will care for him.” How did God provide for Ishmael and Hagar? The harshness of the desert is certain death if there is not provision. If you do not know what you are doing or where to go, especially with a little one, like in this case, it can be deadly. Sweltering heat, hidden canyons, very cold nights because the sand absorbs so little heat, wild beasts, poisonous snakes all make it a dangerous place. Hagar took her teenage son as far as they could go, lay him under a tree, and she went off a distance of about a bow shot, probably so that she would not have to listen to him crying. It is remarkable that the mother was so far away, she could not hear the son God heard his cries.

Verse 17-19 says, “God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, ‘What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there.’” [That is twice in the same verse — God hears.] Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.’ [That is a promise.] Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.” The word of God was life to Hagar and Ishmael in the desert. Before the word came, they were both dying. God spoke to Hagar, and when she believed the word, life came again. With that word came the promise concerning Ishmael to make him into a great nation. He had a future; he would not die that day. God’s faithfulness is clear, even when Hagar had left him and gone off and his father had sent him out at the command of God. Here is this boy without father or mother, but God heard, God saw, God knew. Psalm 27:10 says, “Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.” Isaiah 49:15 says, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!” That is the faithfulness of God.

He was faithful to the promise He made to Ishmael. He restated his multiple past promises to Abraham and Hagar. In Genesis 16:10, God spoke to Hagar: “The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.” He would be a wild donkey of a man, living in the desert, and he would be the father of twelve nations of desert dwelling tribes. God said to Abraham in Genesis 17:20 “And as for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him; I will make him fruitful and will greatly increase his numbers. He will be the father of twelve rulers, and I will make him into a great nation.” It is reiterated to both father and mother. In verse 13, God told Abraham, “I will make the son of the slave into a nation also, because he is your offspring.” He was saying, “I care about Ishmael. I will do it. You cannot anymore, Abraham; you must send him away. I will be faithful to my promise to Ishmael.” Concerning Hagar, verse 18 “Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” These are promises kept.

I want to highlight how different these are from Isaac’s promises. Abraham was told that he would have descendants as numerous as the dust of the earth and the stars of the sky. I consider this a paradigm for the two types of descendants of Abraham. He has both dusty descendants and celestial or starry descendants. The dusty descendants have dusty blessings and dusty futures. The starry descendants have starry promises, starry blessings and starry futures. Ishmael was a child of the dust, and Isaac, a child of the starry promise. Ishmael’s future was that he would roam free like a wild donkey and live in the desert and that his mother would find a wife for him from Egypt. That was her home land. He became good with a bow and arrow, a skillful archer. He had 12 sons. He enjoyed eating goat meat around a fire, sitting with his sons, laughing and telling jokes, shooting his arrows, living a dusty kind of life. He was a wild donkey of a man. Every one of those good things was a blessing from God, for God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. Even though he is a dusty person and has dusty blessings, every one of those dusty blessings comes from God himself. 

Isaac, on the other hand, had celestial blessings waiting for him. He would sit at the table with God eternally, in the very presence of God — Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the feast in the kingdom. Concerning the starry descendants of Abraham, Daniel 12:3 says, “Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.” Philippians 2:15 says, “…so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe.” Jesus said, after one of his parables, in Matthew 13:43, “Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.”

The New Testament gives us the significance of this. Galatians 4 tells how the Apostle Paul applies this story. By way of context, the Apostle Paul planted a church in Galatia. These were Gentiles, rejected by the physical descendants of Abraham, but not every physical descendant from Abraham is one of the starry children. It is amazing and wonderful that Gentiles can become starry children of Abraham by faith. By faith in Christ, we can be among those starry children of Abraham while those who are actually physically descended from Abraham, even if they are Jews, who do not believe the promise, are dusty. Paul planted a church in Galatia. He preached the Gospel of God’s grace in Christ, but then along came the Judaizer party to Galatia, saying, “Unless you meticulously obey the law of Moses, you cannot be saved.” Acts 15:1 says, “Some men came down from Judea to Antioch and were teaching the brothers: ‘Unless you are circumcised, according to the custom taught by Moses, you cannot be saved.’” The Apostle Paul says the gospel that they preached was no gospel at all. Galatians 1:8: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned!” It was a very serious matter. 

He gets to the crux of the matter in Galatians 4:4-7: “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons. Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, ‘Abba, Father.’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son; and since you are a son, God has made you also an heir.” He is saying, Galatian Christians, you are children of God by faith. You are heirs of the kingdom. Why would you want to live like a slave? That is his point in Galatians 4, but he makes it with an allegory.

Galatians 4:21-31 says, “Tell me, you who want to be under the law, are you not aware of what the law says?” [Note that he calls Genesis 21 the law.] For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and the other by the free woman. His son by the slave woman was born in the ordinary way; but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a promise. These things may be taken figuratively, for the women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem that is above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written: ‘Be glad, O barren woman, who bears no children; break forth and cry aloud, you who have no labor pains; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband.’ Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. [He is saying “You are Isaac, all who have trusted in Christ are the children of promise.”] At that time, the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. [The Judaizers are speaking against the Gospel of free grace, focusing instead on legalism and slavery. They are not speaking adoption and inheritance but a lie. The dusty child born in the ordinary way persecuted the child born by power of the Spirit. So it is today.] But what does the Scripture say? ‘Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son.’ Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman.”

Let me make it very straightforward and simple: There are two ways to live in this world. You can live a dusty life or a life of celestial blessings — like the dust or like the stars. You can live the Ishmael life, born in the ordinary way, or you can live the Isaac life, born only by the power of the Spirit. Those are the only two ways to live. Later, the analogy will be Jacob and Esau. Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of stew.

What do the dusty people live for? They live for earthly blessings — for comforts, lusts, power, money. They live for today. “Let us eat and drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die,” and we can add biblically, “And go to hell.” It is a life that ends in destruction. That is the life of Ishmael, the dusty life. Or you can live as a child of the promise. You can live as an adopted son or daughter of God. You can trust in the promises of God and know that what is happening in you cannot be explained normally — it is supernatural. It is the power of the Spirit, as Jesus said: “Flesh gives birth to flesh but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” [John 3:6] “You must be born again, Nicodemus.” Being a physical descendant of Abraham, even if you are a Jew, descended physically from Jacob, does not matter. What matters is being born again. You must be like Isaac, a child born only by the supernatural power of God.

In Galatians 5, Paul explains what that life is like. The life in the flesh is characterized by “sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like.” [Galatians 5:19-21] That is the Ishmael life. Galatians 5:22-23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” This is the Spirit-filled, Isaac life, and God will make those who live like that perfect in the end.

Which kind of life are you living? Are you like Ishmael or are you like Isaac? Are you bound for the dust? Dust represents death. God said to Adam, “For dust you are and to dust you will return.” Is your future dust in the grave, or is it to be made like the stars of the sky? Is it to be conformed to the glory of God? The whole issue is whether you believe the promise of God or not. Abraham believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. You must simply believe a promise.

Jesus spoke a treasured promise in his words to Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies, and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?” That question determines your destiny. If you say, “Yes, Lord, I believe the promises of God. I trust in you. You have resurrecting power. You can call dead things to life. You can create in me something that was not there before, I believe you. I can be transformed by the power of the Spirit,” then you will spend eternity with God in Heaven, not by your own strength or power, not by obeying legalistically a bunch of laws and rules and regulations, but by the power of the Spirit. He who began a good work in you, by the Spirit, will most certainly complete it also by the Spirit, and you will be like Isaac, a child of promise. That is the central application. Trust in Christ, believe in him. Celebrate what He has accomplished in Christ.

Like George Müller, step out in faith on some promises of God. What promises of God are you trusting in concerning the Kingdom of God today? Are you trusting in God for anything today so that God must be faithful to a promise (or in Müller’s case, some orphans do not eat). Are you stepping out in faith to trust God for some promises? Are you believing in Him? I stand before you today as a messenger of promises, but also as a believer of them. I love the promises of God. That is my only hope and it is your only hope too. Trust in his promises. He is a faithful promise keeping God.

Yesterday, in New York City, bells throughout the city tolled at four different times in commemoration of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001: One to signify the time at which the first plane hit the first tower, one at the time the second plane hit, one at the time when the first tower crumpled to the earth, and one at the time when the second tower collapsed.

As people gathered to commemorate what happened, to remember loved ones, to weep and pray and turn their hearts toward God, a question was perhaps in the minds of many: “Are we safer now than three years ago? Where do we find safety and security in a world that hates God?” Are we safer now? Many would answer no. Many will never look at the world the same again when boarding an airplane, or being in a crowded restaurant or a bus depot. A suspicion may lurk that they might be among the next victims of a spectacular terrorist attack. That feeling has been corroborated by the small world in which we live, in which things happen on the other side of the earth which we know about it the moment it happens. Terrorists have attacked commuter trains in Spain and viciously, a public school in Russia. We all saw the effects of that.

Are we safer now than we were three years ago? The central message of the September 11th Commission is that our nation was unprepared. In the wake of that commission report and on the brink of the presidential election, people are asking, “How can we be better prepared? What can we do about terrorism? How can we find security?” Perhaps the answer is more military systems or better trained anti-terrorist commandos. Perhaps we need a better worldwide system of intelligence gathering, especially in the Muslim world. Others would argue completely differently, that as a nation, our security lies in creating a better profile in the world and presenting a more generous and caring face, including better relationships with our Muslim neighbors.

People also debate whether the war in Iraq made us more or less safe. You pay your money at the beginning of that question before you enter into it — how in the world could we ever answer something that complex? Those that would oppose the war in Iraq say, “No, the situation has destabilized. Al-Qaeda and other groups are more able to recruit, and there is more animosity. Whereas if we had played the situation differently on September 12, 2001, and from then on, we would have world sympathy on our side. Others would say, “We had to remove Saddam Hussein. He was like a cancer.” And so the debate goes back and forth.

This has relevance to Genesis 20 because when Abraham came to that region, he looked around and said, “There is no fear of God in this place.” He was afraid, so he looked inward and dealt with it with his own resources. He lied and connived and schemed. He looked inward when he should have been looking upward at the Sovereign God. American Christians, you will not find your security in any of the things that I have mentioned, but in God alone, in trusting in Him alone. Because the real danger hanging over the human race is not a terrorist attack. It is eternal condemnation at the hand of a just God because of our sin. What can rescue us from that? God and God alone.

We find our security in Him, not in whatever commission comes after the September 11th Commission, or whatever schemes the American government makes or other governments in the world. No, we do not find security in that. We find it in Christ, and Abraham should have found it there too. He should have found his security in God, and in God alone.

In Genesis 20, we come to another embarrassing moment in the history of the patriarch Abraham. This is not one of his best times. It is remarkable how we can go back and forth. Here we see the stubbornness of sin emerging again. Genesis 20:2 (ESV) says, “And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, ‘She is my sister.’ And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah.”

The context is Abraham’s continued wandering from place to place. He lived in tents, as the Scripture says. He had no permanent dwelling place. He had the Promised Land, but it was not his yet, and so he had to move around. He left the Oaks at Mamre and went into this desert region in Gerar. Verse 13 says, “And when God caused me to wander from my father's house…” He was a wanderer, an alien and a stranger in this world, just as we are. You may own a home, but this is not your home. You are an alien and a stranger in this world. So Abraham wandered into this desert region.

I was in Greece this summer to speak and minister to missionaries working in Eastern Europe. One of the ministry groups that they target is gypsies. There are hundreds of thousands of gypsies in these Eastern European countries. You see them along the side of the road, in some places still in quaint horse-drawn carriages. They have no home, not welcome in any nation, shunned to some degree. Abraham was like that, drifting around from place to place, with no permanent home. As he came to Gerar, he looked around and determined, “There's no fear of God in this place.” He was concerned again about his wife Sarah. By this time, she was almost 90 years old. I wonder how good-looking she was at that point, but he was concerned about her, and so he thought, since there was no fear of God, he must do the same thing he had done before.

This is the second time. He did this in Genesis 12 while in Egypt, and he received difficulty there as a result. He was about to do it again. How stubborn is the stain of sin. How difficult it is to conquer the habit. AW Pink put it this way, “Sad indeed, inexpressibly sad, was Abraham’s conduct. It was not the fall of a young and inexperienced disciple, but the lapse of one who had long walked the path of faith that here shows himself ready to sacrifice the honor of his wife, and what is worse, to give up the one who was the focus of all God’s promises.” He was ready to trade all that in for personal security, for safety. We see how difficult it is to break habitual sin. Pink further said about this, “What made the matter so much worse in Abraham’s case was that it was not a question of being surprised into a sudden fault. It was the reoccurrence of an old sin. Long ago he had followed the same wicked course in Egypt and had been banished in disgrace.” It seems as though he learned nothing from that experience, so he did it again.

In Verses 3-7, we see God’s sovereign restraint of sin. God is active in the world restraining sin. The church is called to be salt in the world, and I look on that as a restraint against sin. Salt desiccates — it dries out the meat so corruption cannot spread so quickly through it. God is the ultimate salt in the earth, resisting the spread of evil. He is active all the time, blocking people’s evil intentions. We see in this text the interference of God, the activity of God in blocking sin so that it cannot happen. He gets involved. He says in verse 3, “But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night and said to him, ‘Behold, you are a dead man because of the woman whom you have taken, for she is a man’s wife.’” God rebukes Abimelech for his unwitting sin. It is amazing how strong God’s rebuke is. “You’re a dead man walking. It’s just a matter of time, Abimelech. You’re dead because of the woman that you have taken.”

Abimelech pleads innocence by reason of ignorance. Verses 4-5: “Now Abimelech had not approached her. So he said, ‘Lord, will you kill an innocent people? Did he not himself say to me, “She is my sister”? And she herself said, “He is my brother.” In the integrity of my heart and the innocence of my hands I have done this.’” This is Abimelech talking to God in a dream. He is pleading innocence, saying, “I didn’t know.” Not guilty by reason of ignorance. 1 John 3:21 says, “Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God.” That is the way it was with Abimelech. He said, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Ignorance greatly mitigates guilt. The less you know about God’s will and His commands, the less guilty you are. It does not remove it entirely — ignorance of the law is no excuse. He is guilty, but his ignorance mitigates his guilt greatly. We see also, however, God’s sovereignty in restraining the evil. Verse 6 says, “Then God said to him in the dream, ‘Yes, I know that you have done this in the integrity of your heart, and it was I who kept you from sinning against me. Therefore I did not let you touch her.’” Did you notice that? God said, “I will not let you do it. I kept you from sinning against Me; I did not let you touch her.”

God is very active in the world in restraining evil, not passive. He is not along for the ride in world history, just discovering the surprise of what is around the next bend. He is controlling events, and He interfered here with Abimelech. He stopped the situation before it unfolded. He told Abimelech what he had to do. There is a time when “I’m sorry” is not good enough. There must be restitution for the evil; something must change. He could not say, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, but I’m gonna go ahead and take her.” He was a dead man if he continued forward. Verse 7 says, “Now then, return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you, and all who are yours.” Your life is hanging in the balance and the only thing that will save you is to return the woman, and if he prays for you, then you will live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you and all who are yours.

It is not just Abimelech's life hanging in the balance here. Other people will be affected by Abimelech’s next move. This is a great threat against Abimelech, a great danger.

If you were Abimelech, what would you do? You would wake up and say, “Get Abraham in here, I need to talk to him.” He summoned all of his servants first. Verse 8 says, “So Abimelech rose early in the morning and called all his servants and told them all these things. And the men were very much afraid.” There was an intense urgency. First order of business was to deal with the situation. Then he called Abraham in verse 9: “Then Abimelech called Abraham in and said, ‘What have you done to us? How have I wronged you that you have brought such great guilt upon me and my kingdom? You have done things to me that should not be done.’” That is a rebuke, is it not?

Abraham was supposed to be a blessing to the Gentile nations. He was not supposed to bring a curse and death, but that was the very thing he brought to Gerar, the very thing Abimelech was facing. The ESV has a literal translation of verse 10: “And Abimelech said to Abraham, ‘What did you see, that you did this thing?’” In other words, “What did you see in me? I need to understand the way you perceived us.” In Verse 11-13, “Abraham replied, ‘I said to myself, “There is surely no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.”’”

We live in a world like that, not characterized by the fear of God. Terrorists who do the kind of evil things they do have no fear of God in their eyes. They have their own idolatrous view of God. They do not fear the true God. “There's no fear of God in this place,” said Abraham. He misjudged Abimelech by a country mile. Abimelech did fear God. All it took was a dream, and he was immediately zealous to do what was right. Abraham was wrong about Abimelech, he did fear God. Not only that, but Abraham faithlessly misjudged God’s sovereign power, the power that is available to keep him safe and protect him. He forgot about God, he forgot about his faith in God. He said, “They will kill me because of my wife.”

It is vital to understand that Sarah was not pregnant yet. She conceived Isaac in Genesis 21:1-2. So she was not with child yet. How in the world then could Abraham’s life be hanging in jeopardy? God had made a promise that through his seed all nations on earth would be blessed. So faithlessly he was not trusting in the God of the promise. In Chapter 22, he spectacularly trusted in the God of the promise — by then his faith had reached a high level, but here it was so weak.

Then he gave the humorous rationalization, “Besides, she really is my sister…” Would that really make things well between him and Abimelech? No, Abimelech was almost a dead man, and God was not impressed by Abraham’s technicality. “Besides, she really is my sister, the daughter of my father though not of my mother; and she became my wife.” Because Sarah was Abraham’s half sister, he was technically not lying. But the issue was that Abimelech was going to take her to be his wife. The fact that she was really Abraham’s sister is totally irrelevant in this case. He should have confessed. Also, the Lord covered this in His law. Leviticus 19:11 (ESV) says, “... You shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another.” He conned Abimelech; he was a false dealer.

This was a deeply embedded pattern of unfaithfulness. He had made the commitment when he first began to wander from his father’s household: “And when God had me wander from my father’s household, I said to her, ‘This is how you can show your love to me: Everywhere we go, say of me, “He is my brother.”’” They had settled that many years earlier and it had been working ever since. It was a good con game. Every time he did that, he ended up richer; good things came to him every single time. He missed the point from Genesis 12. This was a deeply seated pattern, a commitment that he and Sarah made together. In doing so, they forgot about God — it was a fleshly commitment.

Abimelech was zealous in moving forward for restitution and vindication of Sarah. Abimelech fully obeyed God and immediately restored Sarah. He humbly asked Abraham to pray for his healing and the healing of his house. “For God had closed every womb in the house because of this offense.” Everybody was affected by what had happened. Abimelech fully restored each relationship and covered the offense by generosity. Grace brought about a happy ending.

Verses 14-18 say, “Then Abimelech took sheep and oxen, and male servants and female servants, and gave them to Abraham, and returned Sarah his wife to him. And Abimelech said, ‘Behold, my land is before you; dwell where it pleases you.’ To Sarah he said, ‘Behold, I have given your brother a thousand pieces of silver. It is a sign of your innocence in the eyes of all who are with you, and before everyone you are vindicated.’ Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, and also healed his wife and female slaves so that they bore children. For the LORD had closed all the wombs of the house of Abimelech because of Sarah, Abraham’s wife.”

Grace was at work covering a multitude of sins. First, God was gracious to Abimelech in bringing the illness to begin with. It is counterintuitive to think of it that way, but it was a gracious act of God to protect and prevent sin. The disease came into his house from the grace of God. God was gracious to Abimelech in warning him by means of a dream, rather than simply bringing judgment. God did not owe him a warning; He could have killed him without it, but He was gracious. He was also gracious in the timing of the warning, before any sin could occur. He timed it perfectly, interfering before the sin could be consummated. He was gracious in the mode and the message of the warning in the form of a mild and yet convicting dream. He was gracious in accepting Abimelech's explanation: “Yes, I know that you did it with clean hands.” He was gracious in telling Abimelech clearly what to do to make it right. Finally, he was gracious in hearing Abraham's prayer on behalf of Abimelech and his nation.

In turn, Abimelech was gracious to Abraham and Sarah. He could have had them executed, could have been furious with them, but instead he was gracious and was humbled to ask for prayer. He was also generous, giving a thousand pieces of silver and freedom to settle anywhere in the land. Abimelech was gracious to restore Sarah to her husband and to restore their dignity in the eyes of everyone. Abraham was gracious to Abimelech and that he prayed for him. But more than anything, God was gracious to Abraham. God protected His redemptive plan, intending soon for Sarah to conceive Isaac. As God was gracious to Abraham, he was gracious to all of us by beginning the redemptive plan through Israel in this way.

We learn several lessons about God and man in this account. First, we learn about human nature. Entrenched sin patterns become incredibly stubborn. While in Japan, Christi and I made a comforter. It was a lot of work, but it is special to us. About four years ago, a little red pen stain got on it. We did not deal with it immediately; we may have eventually tried to clean it, but now it is a permanent part of the cloth. Not dealing with things immediately in terms of cleansing can leave lasting stains (though Christi can get most stains out). This is the way it is with sin — if it takes root in your behavior patterns, it is tough to eradicate.

The way I read the Genesis account, Abraham was at this minute innocent of all sin because of his faith in God. Abraham heard the promise, the word of God, and God credited to him as righteousness because of his faith. Genesis 15:6 says, “Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” That means in terms of justification that in the judgment book of God, all of his sins had been erased, eradicated by the blood of Christ. In John 15:3, Jesus said to his disciples, “You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.” It is incredible for God, through Christ, to say all who have trusted in him are free of the guilt of sin, clean because of the word He spoke. But God removes the blot on his judgment book before He removes the blot in your character, and for the rest of your life, you battle the entrenched effects of bad decisions you made in the past. It is so hard to overturn character traits, as we see with Abraham.

We also see in this the way our sin affects other people, not only ourselves. Sarah lied as well. Soon Isaac would do the very same thing. Abimelech’s life hung in the balance. Abimelech’s family, his household, and in fact, his whole nation were affected by the sin. Sin is devastatingly expensive.

Third, we see the powerful effects of the fear of the Lord. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Because Abimelech feared the Lord, he zealously made it right before anything worse could happen.

Fourth, we notice the powerful effects of prayer. James 5:16 (NIV) says, “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.” That means some disease and sickness and infirmity are the direct result of sin. The wombs were closed up, a physical infirmity directly caused by sin. Do not misunderstand, do not make the mistake that Job’s friends made, that every time that there is an illness, there is a hidden secret sin. But sometimes there is. And when there is, James 5 says, the answer is effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous man and confession of the sin. Bring it up, deal with it so that you may be healed.

We also learn about God’s sovereign grace. Our sovereign God has a sovereign plan, and He will not allow people’s sin to derail it. He gets involved. That is so encouraging, no matter how much it seems that earthly events are spinning out of control. It is grievous to read about terrorist attacks like the one in Russia, to see the pictures — they should bring us to tears. Yet God is sovereign, ruling still, able to stop things from happening. Do you put your trust in the Office of Homeland Security? They may be doing a good job with a hard task — how can we be protected against small terrorist cells who can kill eight people with a car bomb if they wanted to? How is Homeland Security that powerful? They are not. I put my trust in a God who is.

He is sovereign, and He is powerful. How many Al-Qaeda plots have been spoiled by circumstances? Let's win an Al-Qaeda operative to Christ and ask what has happened over the last 20 years, any circumstances that have interfered with any plans, intending to do something and then something happened to prevent it. They would testify of the times they saw this again and again. Is it not the hand of God in secret who is protecting, working, channeling the river of history for His purposes? Our God is sovereign.

I am glad he did interfere, because this encounter between Abraham and Abimelech could not have happened at a worse time. Suppose that Sarah had spent just one night with Abimelech, and then shortly thereafter became pregnant with Isaac. God’s specially crafted supernatural plan, the miracle baby, the child born in Abraham’s old age would forever have a big dark question mark over it. People would wonder if Sarah needed to get herself a man who could give her a son. There would be some questions, some whispering — the human heart is capable of that kind of questioning. God was crafting a wonder child, Isaac, the son of the promise, and there was no way he would allow Abimelech and Sarah to have even one night alone together. God interfered before any questions could darken the sovereign power of God. His redemptive plan had to be protected. In another situation, Isaiah 7:7 says, “Yet this is what the Sovereign LORD says: ‘It will not take place, it will not happen…’” Our God said “No, it will not happen.” Be glad that God interferes with sin, that in His sovereignty He does not let it happen. He says in verse 6, “That is why I did not let you touch her.” Truly, God is a sovereign king.

I will make five connections to the person of Christ. Old Testament accounts teaches us about human nature and about God, but we should also look for what we can learn about the person of Jesus Christ.

First, Christ’s character shines by contrast. Abraham is one of the great men of history and in the Bible. As proof, read Genesis 22 again, when God tested Abraham and said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love and sacrifice him.” You see his obedience and his faith and what a great man he was, but he was not a perfect sinless man. He was disqualified from being our redeemer. It was impossible for him to lay down his life because he was a sinner. But Jesus is absolutely sinless and perfect in every way. He never once told a lie, never once misled anybody, he told the truth to Pharisees, to tax collectors, to friends and enemies alike, and in the end, when his life was hanging in the balance, standing before the high priest, he told the truth about his divine nature. He stood before Pilate and told the truth again, and it got him killed. He was a truth teller. Absolutely flawless, unlike Abraham. 

Second, Christ’s human lineage through Isaac was protected and enabled. God already made the promise that through Isaac Abraham’s offspring would be named. The genealogy in Matthew 1:1-2 says, “A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham: Abraham was the father of Isaac…” God interfered and protected the earthly lineage of Jesus Christ.

Third, Christ was the second Adam, our only hope. Central to the idea of Abimelech’s plight is this concept of federal headship — a king represents his people, a father represents his household. God upholds this in the account. Verse 4 says, “Now Abimelech had not gone near her, so he said, ‘Lord, will you destroy an innocent nation?’” Abimelech was concerned about his whole nation.

In verse 7, God says, “Now then, return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live. But if you do not return her, know that you shall surely die, you, and all who are yours.” It was not only Abimelech who would die for Abimelech’s sin, but everybody who belonged to him. This is a strange idea to us Americans. We are individualistic. I stand or fall on my own two feet. Yes, I have done some wrong things, but I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul. Why should I be held accountable for somebody else’s sins? When we come to a deep doctrine called original sin and find that Adam represented the whole human race of the tree, that is troubling to us. It does not seem fair. Adam stood in our place and represented us, and as a result of his sin, all of us die? Death entered the world through one man and in this way, death came to all men because all sinned in Adam? How can that be?

It is a strange corporate identity. We do not understand it. One of my children once complained, “It’s not fair, I wasn’t there when Adam sinned.” But neither were we there when they crucified our Lord. We were not there when Jesus died in our place. Just as Adam sinned for us all, so also Christ stood in the place of all of his people, all who would trust in Him and believe in Him. He is the second Adam. Federal headship, the idea of a single person representing all of us, is our only hope of salvation. Romans 5:19 says, “For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” Jesus is our representative. He took our place on the cross; He died in our place. That is our only hope. 

Fourth, we see Christ as prophet and priest. Verse 7 contains the first mention of the word prophet in the Bible. “Now then, return the man's wife, for he is a prophet, so that he will pray for you, and you shall live.” We see the impact of the king, Abimelech, on his whole people. And we see Abraham conducting a priestly intercessory ministry, praying as a priest would. All three of these — prophet, priest and king — are fulfilled perfectly in Christ Jesus, the King of Kings, He is the final word of the prophet, and he is our great high priest who ministers for us.

Finally, we see Christ’s atonement as a covering for the eyes, the actual mechanism for atonement displayed in Abimelech’s restitution. Genesis 20:16 (KJV) says, “And unto Sarah he said, ‘Behold, I have given thy brother a thousand pieces of silver: behold, he is to thee a covering of the eyes…’” Atonement is literally a covering of the eyes. The eternal God never forgets anything, so how will he forget your sin? He puts the blood of Christ as a covering for His eyes, so that His eyes, pure and holy, can see only the shed blood of Christ when he looks at us. He interposes the blood of Jesus Christ between His holy eyes and our sin.

Alan Carlson told me a story about one of his Bible classes. The question was asked, Is there anything impossible for God? A little girl gave the answer, “Yes, it is impossible for God to see through the blood of Jesus and look at my sin.” Isn't that beautiful? I would like to know who that little girl was, deep in theology and strong in her faith. It is impossible, because God has made it impossible. It is impossible for him to see through the blood of Jesus to look at your sin.

First, acknowledge the stubbornness of your own sin patterns. Realize you are fighting it too; you are no better than Abraham. He is like us, so acknowledge it and grieve over the amount that your sins have cost you and those around you.

Today, like Abimelech’s dream, if God is warning you to turn from sin, do it without delay. Why presume that God will give you any more time to turn from your sin? Abimelech did not have time. He had to do it first thing the next day or God would have put him to death.

If you, or somebody you know is struggling with a serious physical problem, disease or an ailment, do not assume that sin is not at the root of it — it may be. I am not saying it always is, but sometimes it is. Take the advice of James 5:16 (NIV): “Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.”

Do not rest in the Office of Homeland Security or in the winning of the next election, or in the occupation or the liberation of Iraq for your security, but rest in God and in God alone.

Finally, trust in the blood of Christ, and in His shed blood for you. He alone can protect you and save you from your ultimate danger, which is Hell.

I have been a Christian almost 22 years, and I have never heard a sermon on Genesis 19:30-38. Some of you have been in this church for five or six decades and you probably never heard a sermon on this text either. I studied the index of Spurgeon sermons over 3000 sermons, and not one on this text. I have a 12-volume set of 20 centuries of great preaching and they skip this one. You might wonder, then, why we are preaching a difficult and unpleasant text. I have asked myself that question over the last three or four weeks. It would be easier to package this one together with Sodom and Gomorrah as an addendum, and move on to Chapter 20. But my general methodology is verse by verse exposition, so if I were to skip it, I would probably have more complaints and questions than if I preach through it.

It is not just for love of ease that I am doing this. This is my ordinary approach and I want to preach every text of scripture as opportunity comes. We might be tempted to avoid this text because it is an unsavory and unattractive topic. What happened in the cave between Lot and his daughters is not something we want to talk much about. Perhaps you, parents, in going through Genesis with your children, may have skipped this part. We do not like this repulsive display of human nature, especially the mirror held up to show us who we are — it might be an ugly portrait — so it hits a bit too close to home.

Why must we not avoid this? First and foremost, because of the nature of Scripture itself and what God has said about it in 2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” This passage is a useful Scripture for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness. Do not ask why the pastor of First Baptist see fit to preach on it, but ask why God included it. That question hits closer to the mark. Our purpose with Sunday mornings sermons is expository preaching.

Albert Mohler of Southern Seminary defines it this way: “Expository preaching begins in the preacher’s determination to present and explain the text of the Bible to his congregation.” That might seem simple, but that is what I am here to do, to present and explain Scripture to you. “... [Most modern preaching, commonly called topical preaching] begins with a human problem or question and then work backward to the biblical text.” I go exactly the other way, and so do other expositors. We start with the text and go out.

Os Guinness, in his provocative book Dining with the Devil, talked about how audience-driven is much modern preaching. “The preacher, instead of looking out upon his world, looks out upon public opinion, trying to find out what the public would like to hear. Then he tries his best to duplicate that, and brings his finished product into a marketplace in which others are trying to do the same. The public, turning to our church culture to find out about the world, discovers there is nothing but its own reflection.”

Exposition, hearing whatever the Bible has to say, is totally turned around by this approach. We are coming to God, saying, “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening,” and then we listen quietly and humbly. We stand at the feet of God and say with our demeanor that we will hear whatever He has to say to us. By doing so, we submit our minds and our wills to Scripture — we let Scripture lead wherever it wants to, or in truth, wherever the God of Scripture leads. We submit to Him. If we pick and choose the Scriptures we like and skip things that are unpleasant, then we really are ruling over the Bible, not letting the Bible rule over us. I think Bible study is a misnomer — we are not studying the Bible; the Bible is studying us. One purpose of that is to be transformed, to be under the Scripture to learn how we need to grow and change.

Another purpose is my role, my calling, as a preacher of the Word, What is my task? The Apostle Paul, speaking of his own ministry, said in 1 Corinthians 4:1-2 (ESV), “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.” I am a steward of something entrusted to me, so I am required to be trustworthy with it. A messenger has no right or authority to change the message entrusted; he is not trustworthy if he does that.

A major objective of corporate worship is the hearing of the Word unfolded just as it is written, It is a form of worship. The Word of God must be central and the preaching clear. Unfolding every text of Scripture, trying to understand what it says, is a high form of worship. We are honoring God by this.

Again, Dr. Mohler, regarding modern worship, said: “Persons move from congregation to congregation looking for the worship experience that will meet perceived spiritual needs. Worship is turned into just another consumer commodity. This focus on self comes from the sinfulness of the human heart. Christians leave church services asking each other, ‘Did you get anything out of that?’ Churches produce surveys to measure expectations for worship: Would you like more music? What kind? Drama? Is our preacher sufficiently creative? Expository preaching demands a very different set of questions. Will I obey the Word of God? How must my thinking be realigned by Scripture? How must I change my behavior to be fully obedient to the Word? These questions reveal submission to the authority of God and reverence for the Bible as his word.” That is true, and that is what I seek to do as a preacher; that is my goal for our church services.

That is what we will do together in Genesis 19:30-38. The central message of the Bible is that there is a holy God who is a mighty Creator and a King, filled with love and power, who also is just and righteous. We are created in His image, but we are sinful and rebellious against him, so we stand under His judgment. Therefore we need a Savior, Christ, to come into the world, born of a virgin, born under the law to die on the cross in our place, to take our penalty. We must repent and trust in him for the salvation of our souls. That is the central message of the Bible. We will see many of those themes coming out of the cave this morning.

Jeremiah 17:9 says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” God knows the human heart, and He has exposed it for us to see in the text of Scripture. We will learn that this morning as we study the completion of Lot’s sad descent.

We see Lot as a warning, someone we do not want to imitate. He is a positive example to us in the way he was grieved and broken over the wickedness of Sodom and Gomorrah, but mostly, his poor choices serve to warn us. Lot desired to save his own life. The angel commanded him to leave, so he fled. Genesis 19:17-22 says, “As soon as they had brought them out, one of them said, ‘Flee for your lives! Don't look back, and don't stop anywhere in the plain! Flee to the mountains or you will be swept away!’” [But Lot did not think he could make it. He was afraid or fearful or weak.] “But Lot said to them, ‘No, my lords, please! Your servant has found favor in your eyes, and you have shown great kindness to me in sparing my life. But I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die. Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it — it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.’ He said to him, ‘Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.’ (That is why the town was called Zoar.)”

Lot fled to Zoar, which God spared because of one righteous man. But he realized the futility of what he tried to do. When we craft a place of safety through our own wisdom, our own imagination, apart from the Word of God, it ends up crumbling, falling apart. Lot comes to the same conclusion. Genesis 19:30 says, “Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave.” Why was he afraid to stay in Zoar? He must have seen the same pattern of behavior he had seen in Sodom and Gomorrah, and he is likely afraid of God’s wrath again. Perhaps he was afraid of the residents of Zoar — maybe they were angry or hostile toward him as an outsider. Whatever the case, he felt fear, so he obeyed the word of God through the angel in the end, but only through faithless unbelief, through fear, through cowardice. He and his daughters ascended to the mountains, but as he ascended, he was on the brink of descending morally.

This was the beginning of his descent, though he physically ascended to the cave. He was accompanied by his greatest enemy — his own sinfulness — as well as his two daughters with their own corruption of wine and other things. In the cave, we see the end of Lot’s slide into immorality. Jack Evans, who works with prison ministry, gave me a great quote: “Sin always takes you farther than you want to go, keeps you longer than you want to stay, and charges you more than you want to pay.” That is true. Ron Hutchcraft put it this way: “First sin fascinates you – then it assassinates you.” That is the case with Lot. It began with him standing on the ridge, looking down over that lush ground of Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding area. To avoid quarreling over whether they could inhabit the same region, Abraham graciously allowed Lot to choose his home, and Abraham went to a different area.

Lot chose what looked to be the easiest most comfortable location for himself. It was a lush green plain, like the garden of God. Initially, he pitched his tent toward Sodom, on the outskirts. But soon enough he moved into Sodom itself (Genesis 14) and became swept up in the events of the king Kedorlaomer. He and his family were carried off as captives. Abraham rode with 318 others to chase and attack at night to rescue Lot.

It would have been the perfect time to decide not to go back to Sodom. It should have been a warning that it was time to move out of the city. He had ample time to see what it was like there. According to 2nd Peter 2, he was tormented in his righteous soul over the lawless deeds that he saw and heard, which must have been occurring already at that point. The tie had been severed, providing a good opportunity for him to go with his uncle Abram, but he did not.

Instead he moved back into Sodom. He set up there again and became immersed in Sodom’s society. He sat by the gate, perhaps in some official capacity, but tormented daily by wickedness. In a way, that is to his credit, but in another way, it is to his discredit. Why did he stay? He should have led his family out of there but allowed them instead to become completely immersed in Sodom’s way of life. They became corrupted to their core. The night that the angels came and stayed with him, he offered his two virgin daughters to a lust-crazed mob to save the men who had come into his house. The slide continued. We will see him reaping the results of that in today’s account.

Lot was reluctant to leave Sodom. The angel had to drag him out to save his life. Then he begged for a break from the harshness of fleeing for his life, ending up in Zoar. But he left there and went to live up in the cave. We can be warned from this to be aware of what is happening around us, and as a result, to be aware of what is happening in our own heart. We live in a place like Sodom. That has been my point the last few weeks.

We cannot say it has no effect on us to live there, that it does not change us at all, any more than somebody can stand out in the sun and say it has no effect on their skin. Of course it does. We you need to take all the precautions we can. Hebrews 3:13 says, “…so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness.” Sin does not say, “Hi, I’m sin, I’m going to assassinate your soul.” It comes deceptively, promising pleasure and comfort and good things. But in the end it owns you. That is what we see with Lot as he descended.

Lot may well be one of the worst fathers in the Bible. He is a terrible example of a father. I am speaking to you who are fathers: you have a specific responsibility. You need to provide for and protect your families physically. 1 Timothy 5 says that a man who does not provide for his family physically, materially, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

How much more valuable are your children’s souls than their bodies! Not only are we to provide physically for our children, we are also to evangelize and disciple them. We are to prepare them to one day meet their Maker, to stand before God to give an account for their lives. Therefore, a father’s lips should speak the Word of God; he should be a priest for his family, leading them in righteousness, providing an example of godliness, and protecting his children. In Lot’s case, the father-daughter relationship is highlighted. From a sexual standpoint, a father is to protect his daughters and their purity.

Deuteronomy 22 says that if a young woman is found to have been promiscuous while in her father’s house, she must bear the guilt and the penalty for her sin. This is for a sin committed right at the father’s doorstep — there is a clear link between the daughter and the father. This is a biblical way of thinking, though unpopular in the world today. But it is there, and therefore a father has a responsibility to protect the sexual purity of his daughters, her chastity.

Lot did that for a while — they had never slept with a man. He had protected them until that night when the angels came and he suggested a terrible thing. “Here are my two daughters who have never slept with a man. Have them to do whatever you want.” How could that possibly have worked? Was there not a way to be both hospitable and protect the daughters? This morally confused father polluted his daughters’ view of themselves that night. The effect is reaped in the cave. 

Some commentators say that the older daughter believed that the whole human race had been wiped out as in the days of Noah. Genesis 19:31: “And the firstborn said to the younger, ‘Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come in to us after the manner of all the earth.’” The Hebrew word for “earth”, erets, can either mean region or land or could mean the whole earth. Thus it is difficult to know exactly what she is thinking when she says this. Does she believe that there is nobody left on earth, that they are the only ones, that this was a clever way to keep the human race alive?

I do not think she thought that, because they had already been in Zoar, which had a community of people. It was small, but there were people there. God was protecting Lot and his family by protecting Zoar. It is hard to see how they could have thought there was no human being left on the face of the earth. Whatever the case, they violated their consciences and sinned in this way, which they should not have done.

The older daughter led the younger into sin. It was her idea. She took the initiative and set the bad example. She said, “Follow my example, this is what I did. Now, you do it too.” In that way, she violated the responsibility she had to her younger sister to set an example for godliness. The whole thing is a very sad exposition of the human heart.

Finally, we see the devastating effects of alcohol. Scripture partially exonerates Lot, saying he did not know at all what was happening. It is written twice, so clearly it is in there for a reason, Lot had no inkling of what was happening. But it is also obvious that he had a weakness for drink.

The daughter knew how to get her father to do something to which he would otherwise never agree. His moral standard was there, but he had a weaker standard in another way, like a fortress with obvious strength in the front but a weakness around the back. The older daughter knew this. She was aware of the weakness and she went after it. She advised the younger sister that they should get their father drunk. I do not know any daughter who can force her father to get drunk — it was a choice he made. He drank, and because alcohol content was supposedly so low back then, one had to know what he was doing. One could not get drunk by accident, but only on purpose. So Lot was drunk, and then his daughter lay with him.

Wine destroys judgment; alcohol makes the unthinkable doable. The one who gets drunk wakes up the next morning and says, “What have I done? What happened here?” Proverbs 23:29-35 says, “Who has woe? Who has sorrow? Who has strife? Who has complaints? Who has needless bruises? Who has bloodshot eyes? Those who linger over wine, who go to sample bowls of mixed wine. Do not gaze at wine when it is red, when it sparkles in the cup, when it goes down smoothly! In the end it bites like a snake and poisons like a viper. Your eyes will see strange sights and your mind imagine confusing things. You will be like one sleeping on the high seas, lying on top of the rigging. ‘They hit me,’ you will say, ‘but I'm not hurt! They beat me, but I don't feel it! When will I wake up so I can find another drink?’”

Alcohol breaks down reserve. Again with the walled city image, it is like opening the drawbridge and saying, “Come on in.” The person does not know what the effects will be. There is similarity between this story and that of Noah after the flood. Noah planted a vineyard and then he got drunk and lay exposed in the tent. His children sinned against him in that weakness, just like in this case. There are lasting issues for generations as a result. Watch out for alcohol. Ephesians 5:18 says, “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.”

Greek mythology has an interesting story on how the world came to be infected with all of its ills. Jupiter, the king of the gods, was very angry at man for stealing the secret of fire. He decided to send a box to a woman named Pandora, inside of which he put all manner of ills — sicknesses, diseases, sins, wickedness. It was tied with a beautiful bow and given to Pandora, with the implication that she should not open the box. She was left alone with the box and heard whispering inside. As she untied the rope and let it slide to the ground, she heard more whisperings, “Open up, open up. Let us out.” Her curiosity was piqued. She opened it just to look, and out they came, brown moths with stingers, which stung her before flying out the door and window to infect the human race with rebellion and sin and wickedness and disease and grief and sorrow.

That story in truth came from Adam and Eve and from the effects of original sin. But it is amazing all the things that can flow out of a small event, all the evil and wickedness that can just run out of the cave.

Both Lot’s daughters became pregnant. The older daughter had a son whom she named Moab, which means “from father.” The younger had a son whose she named Ben-ammi, which means “son of my people.” These were the forefathers of the Moabites and of the Ammonites, who come up again and again in Scripture. They were two of the most troublesome races against the people of God, constantly opposing the children of Abraham. Abraham is off in another place when Lot is in the cave with his daughters. Little does he realize that his descendants will be greatly troubled by what happened in that cave. Oh, the depths of the wickedness of the human heart and the lasting effects of sin.

Much devastation came from the Moabites and the Ammonites. First, they constantly opposed them and engaged in warfare. They hated the descendants of Abraham, the Israelites. When God was bringing the Israelites out of Egypt into the Promised Land, these two peoples opposed their passage through. Balak, the king of the Moabites, hired the the strange prophet Balaam, to put a curse on the Israelites to prevent them from eating their food and drinking their water. He said, “This horde is going to lick up everything around us, as an ox licked up the grass of the field.” [Numbers 22:4] Balaam could not curse them. No matter what he did, God turned it around into a blessing. Balaam opened his mouth to prophesy and to say a curse, but it was only ever blessing.

The opposition and hatred of the Moabites and the Ammonites against the people of God were obvious. Their animosity erupted into open warfare once Israel was established in the Promised Land. David had to quell the Ammonites and Moabites frequently. They often organized themselves into raiding parties and come over into the Promised Land to make life miserable for the Israelites. Again and again, they had to fight the Moabites and the Ammonites.

Their second front against the Israelites was corruption by immorality. Balaam suggested that they should send some Moabite party girls down to entice and lure the Israelite men into sexual immorality, feasting, and idolatry. The Israelites were constantly tempted toward idolatry. There were earthly benefits in a way — the sensual feasts and immorality that were a part of worshiping these false gods were pleasing to the flesh. So the Moabites came lured Israel into worshipping the Baal of Peor. Numbers 25:1-3 says, “While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate and bowed down before these gods. So Israel joined in worshiping the Baal of Peor. And the LORD’s anger burned against them.”

Corruption by sexual immorality and idolatry went together. It reached as high as the wisest man who ever lived, King Solomon, who had a taste for foreign women. He married women from all over, including Moabite and Ammonite women. These were the very ones who brought worship of Baal and of the Moabite god, Chemosh, and of the detestable god of the Ammonites, Molech. He was especially bad because he was worshiped by sacrificing children in the fire.

Solomon built a shrine to the god Molech. 1 Kings 11:1-7 says, “King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter — Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. ... As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the LORD his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the LORD; he did not follow the LORD completely, as David his father had done. On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Molech the detestable god of the Ammonites.” Eventually, Solomon’s descendant Manasseh even sacrificed one of his own children, who could have sat on the throne, to the god Molech. This is the sin that the prophet Jeremiah said God would never forgive. He deported Israel out of Jerusalem as a result.

All this wickedness came in through the Moabites and the Ammonites. Much evil has flowed out of this cave with Lot and his daughters — nothing but trouble. Therefore, Moab and Ammon were rejected by God to the tenth generation. Deuteronomy 23:3 says, “No Ammonite or Moabite or any of his descendants may enter the assembly of the LORD, even down to the tenth generation.”

The two major points of this sermon are: First, great pain and grief and agony comes from sin, so watch out. An armed bandit wants to come into your life. Second, nonetheless, God can take the most sinful and shameful thing and use it for His glory. He is good at that. 

Watch what God does as a result of what came out of that cave. We have already seen the damage and the curse, but Jesus Christ was a Savior born from wickedness and for wickedness. He is God’s answer to Lot and his daughters in the cave, and all the wickedness of my own heart and yours as well.

Perhaps you have a sin you are ashamed of, as Lot must have felt about what happened with his daughters. But look what God did with it, how He transformed it. He used something as simple as a genealogy. Not many would say that the first half of 1 Chronicles, which contains lists of genealogies, is their absolute favorite Scripture, that they enjoy those long lists of names of people they have never heard of. But genealogies have much good truth in them. Like a river, the physical birth of Jesus was fed by many ancestral tributaries.

The Amazon River is the most awesome river on earth. It was first discovered by a man named Amerigo Vespucci, a European explorer for whom our country is named. In 1499, 200 miles off the coast of Brazil, he was surrounded by fresh drinkable water in the middle of the ocean. He followed the fresh water back to its source along the Brazilian coast, and found the mouth of the Amazon River. 4.2 to 7 million cubic feet of fresh water pour into the Atlantic Ocean every hour as a result of this river, the most by far of any river. How does it have so much water? Approximately 40% of the land mass in South America contributes to the Amazon River. There are 17 tributary rivers over a thousand miles long that pour into the Amazon. More than 12 nations contribute water to the Amazon River.

Jesus’ genealogy traces back to many tributaries, myriad connections contributing to his physical birth. Ruth, the godly Moabitess was a descendant of what happened between Lot and his eldest daughter. Unlike her ancestor, she loved the Lord. When she had the opportunity to marry a man from Judah named Mahlon, she did so. He died, so her mother-in-law Naomi planned to return to Bethlehem because she heard there was food there. She told Ruth to go back to her gods Molech and Chemosh and Ashtoreth and Baal. Her sister-in-law, Orpah, had already departed. But Ruth said something that changed the course of history. Ruth 1:16: “But Ruth replied, ‘Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.’”

She cleaved together with Naomi, but even more so with the God of the Israelites, Yahweh. She became a convert. She was a godly, submissive, loving woman to her mother-in-law first. She worked hard to provide for both of them, gleaning in Boaz’s field. Boaz took notice of the way she lived her life and was interested in her. She initiated the possibility of being remarried, which he accepted. They were married, becoming one of the best examples of a godly couple ever to be found. Husbands, you would do well to imitate Boaz in his generosity, his strength and his leadership to Ruth in her godly humility, submission to God and to authority.

Ruth and Boaz had a son named Obed; Obed had a son named Jesse; and Jesse had a son named David. This tributary into the physical birth and descent of Jesus Christ comes through a Moabite woman. It had to be through a woman, because no Moabite man is welcomed in the Lord’s assembly.

I knew all that. But I learned something new about Solomon’s history. Solomon had 700 wives of royal descent and 300 concubines — 1000 women to keep happy. He needed all that wisdom just to know who each was. And what was the nature of each relationship? “What was the last thing we talked about?” I do not know how in the world he kept track of it all. But we can well imagine that with a thousand royal wives and concubines, he had numerous sons — the Bible does not tell us how many — to choose from to be his successor. Among them all, he chose Rehoboam. And I learned that Rehoboam’s mother was an Ammonite.

This is a striking thing. We have a Moabite contribution and an Ammonite contribution into the physical descent of Jesus Christ. Do you think that is an accident? Does God not delight in turning something wicked and foul and shameful into something glorious and majestic? Jesus is truly a Savior born from wickedness. As a matter of fact, if our own hearts were not wicked like that of Lot and his daughters and all of the people on earth, then Jesus would never have needed to come. He would not have needed to be born physically. But he is a Savior born from wickedness because our wickedness made God send him into the world. 

Jesus was also a savior born for wickedness. He died as a result of wickedness. He ministered and died surrounded by wickedness. All of his miracles were a reversal of the curse of sin. When he healed a man born blind or somebody with leprosy, or when he fed the hungry, he was reversing the curse. He took wickedness on and defeating it. In the end, wickedness and Christ had a battle, and wickedness killed Jesus.

Think about it at the human level. What motivated the Jewish leaders to have Jesus put to death? Was it not jealousy? Was it not fear? Was it not wickedness that motivated them? What motivated Pilate to declare three times that Jesus was innocent and yet scourge him and hand him over to be executed? Was it not wickedness? Was it not cowardice and a desire to hold on to his position as governor. What was it that motivated the Roman soldiers to kill an innocent man at the human level, blindly carrying out orders? Wickedness. But what really killed Jesus? Was it not that God took our wickedness from us by faith and put it on Jesus and then struck him with His wrath? Was it not wickedness that put Jesus to death? Jesus, on the third day, was raised from the dead, triumphing over wickedness and sin, and giving us a Gospel of peace and righteousness and hope, even in the face of the grave, that death and wickedness and sin can never stop. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not and never will overcome it.

Isaiah 53:4-6 says, “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Jesus is a Savior born from wickedness and for wickedness. Therefore, Romans 5:20 says, “But where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more…” That is the triumph of grace, the triumph of the Gospel. That is my great joy and hope every day in light of my own sin and wickedness, and I want it to be yours.

First, learn from Lot’s dreadful descent. Take a warning from him. Sin hurts, devastates, kills people. Lot’s wife and his sons-in-law died. He lost all of his possessions. Sin destroys. It hurts a lot.

So watch out and see what is going on in your heart. Are you watching things on television, looking at things on the internet, reading books, having attitudes toward money or power or position, that you know are not in line with Scripture? Repent while there is time. Get out of Sodom while there is still time. I do not mean you should leave this country, because you will find sin whatever country you go to. It really has to do with a spiritual escape. Make a commitment to have a battle against sin and not yield.

Second, be aware of the dangers of alcohol. This would not have happened if Lot had not been drunk.

Third, see the trouble that can come like Pandora’s box from one incident. Be very careful how you live; be careful the things you allow yourself to do. It was a river of trouble for Israel that came out of that cave.

Fourth, fathers take responsibility for your daughters — love them, cherish them, protect them, disciple them. And for parents of children, this is a subset of that larger discussion. We are responsible for the spiritual well-being of our children. Disciple and evangelize them.

The central lesson is that grace wins over the thing you are most ashamed of in your life. If you repent and bring it to the cross, God is able to do something incredible with it. The greatest wickedness and sin that has ever occurred is the death of Jesus on the cross and God is using it for my salvation and for yours. Trust in Him and follow Him.