Father Abraham

This recording is from Christ Kingdom Church in Avalon Park, Orlando. Visit us online at ChristKingdom.org for our calendar, driving directions, and more audio recordings. The first script reading for today is Hebrews 11, 17, through 19. 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 reasons with God that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did perceive Isaac back from the dead. Our next script reading is from Genesis 22. Sometime 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 Moria, sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about. 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 cut enough wood for burnt offering, he sat up for the place God has told him about. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 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. Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac. And he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 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. When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood on him. 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. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven. 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. Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by his by its thorns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 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. The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from the heaven from heaven a second time and said, I swear by myself to clayers the Lord that because you have done this I 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 as the sand on the sea shores. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies. And through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed because of you have obeyed me.

Thank you guys for reading that. Is that good? Okay. We go. What in the world? I think that is probably what Abraham was thinking at the beginning of this story. I mean we now as these guys have read we see the whole chain of events as they played out. But at the beginning you know when Abraham received this mysterious command he must have been thinking oh my goodness what are you asking me to do. And maybe some of the some of the shock value has has worn off over time even for us as we've heard the story many of us many times. And so it doesn't affect us maybe like it should that God has commanded murder here. He's he's asked Abraham to do what the pagans were doing in those days sacrificing their children. But God has has come to Abraham and asked him to do that. And so certainly Abraham he's going through some internal suffering some emotional torment in the in the three days between the command and the actual action of raising up the knife. Okay. So what I want to talk about this morning in a sense is as a continuation of Scott sermon from last week it's suffering. And today is going to be a day for questions I'm going to ask you to ask yourself some questions and I wasn't going to start out by by telling a genie joke. I looked on the internet though and I couldn't really find one that was both appropriate and funny so just pretend like I told her really funny genie joke. And so now I'm going to ask you okay if you were at the beach and you stumbled across this lamp in the sand and you rubbed you know rubbing the sand off a genie popped out today this afternoon when you take your dad to the beach. What would what would you ask for what would it be that you would want to change your life significantly. Maybe you know the typical one would be I want a million dollars or you know I want a nice house mine would be I want a job maybe for some of you it would be I want to be married. Some of you would be I don't want to be married or maybe it would be I want to change something about the person I married that was not mine. But maybe for some of your kids it would be you know I want to play all the video games that I want to play without my parents getting on my back about that. Maybe for some of you it's gosh you know what I wish I could go back 10 years I wish I could go back 15 years and erase a certain event for my past erase an abusive event maybe it's I want to go back and give myself two parents who love me instead of a parent who abandoned me and one who struggled to nurture me. And so I don't know what it is but I want you the first thing I want you to do is just ask yourself what is it that I would change about my life if I were God for a moment. And then the second thing is in these are warm up questions these aren't the ones on your outline we're not today yet but the second one is are you demanding of God in some sense what you just asked about. Are you demanding that God do what it is you would change about your life are you saying you know what God if you really love me if you really cared about me you would do this. And so in a sense we're going to delve a little deeper into those questions that Scott talked about last week the the why me and why God questions you know that he said that aren't really the right questions to ask but the reality is we ask those a lot of times don't we I know I do I'm asking that right now in certain ways. And so what I want to do is sort of put them out on the table this morning and say okay this is this is what I do sometimes in rebellion against God and and just when when life gets hard I ask these questions so let's put them out there and talk about them a little bit so we can release their power. And so that maybe in the future we don't ask them quite as much or quite as often because in this story as I said certainly Abraham was asking some questions at least internally about what God had commanded he had he had received these promises God had been with him for so long as he had brought him from the land of his fathers he brought him from a land where no one knew God really. And God called him to go to the to Canaan to the promised land and Abraham followed him he trusted him to do that and then there was a famine in Canaan and Abraham followed God to Egypt and live there for a time. And God made a covenant with Abraham and he promised him you know what you're you're going to have to send it you're going to have children you're going to have children from your own body and they're going to be as numerous as the stars in the sky. And at that point Abraham was getting really old and by the time Isaac's born he's around a hundred years old and so he and and he had waited all of these years and and God had tested him and he had failed to test at one point right he he slept with he slept with his wife's maid servant Hegar because they were waiting on God they were waiting on God to fulfill this promise of a son. And God wasn't doing it in their timing so they took matters into their own hands and and Abraham was rebuked for that but then he continued to faithfully wait and finally the son Isaac is born. They nurture him they raise him up till he's 10 or 15 years old somewhere in there about the same age as the as the guys who read the scripture for us this morning. And then this command comes and God says sacrifice him I want you to bind him up I want you to put wood on top of him I want you to slit his throat and burn him up that's what a burn offering was and so Abraham there must have been an intense torment going on in him when he when he receives this command certainly ask some questions the author moses as he's writing this account in Genesis as he's reporting the events as they happened. He uses some linguistic techniques he says he in 16 verses he uses the word son ten times and the phrase only son three more times and there's this tender language back and forth in the story between Abraham and Isaac several times Abraham says my son yes my son this is how it's going to happen my son. And as Isaac questions Abraham he says my father what are we doing father so there's this moses is raising the level of pension to report the story so that we so that we can get a little bit of a better picture of how Abraham was suffering and struggling through this through this situation they got his column to. And then so we find out in at the beginning of Genesis and just in the first verse there of 22 that it says sometime later God tested Abraham and then in the Hebrews account verse 17 by faith Abraham when God tested him so we find out that it's a test. The God is is testing Abraham in some way so what what is that what is what is this testing does God do that to us what is what does the Bible me when it says that Abraham was being tested here and I think you can boil it down to this you boil it down to the fact that God was asking Abraham okay Abraham do you really love me. Or do you love what I can do for you more do you love your son and what I've blessed you with and given you more or do you love me. And relationship with me and so I just the first question I want to ask you this morning is could you're suffering could the could the struggles and the trials that you're going through in your life. Could your suffering be ways that God is refining or testing or strengthening you in your walk with him because God because really God is not a genie that pops out of the bottle that's at our back in call but he's way more mysterious and way more confusing sometimes and way way higher above us than then we understand. And so that's the first question I just want you to ask this morning giving illustration from my own life and how I'm struggling through this right now I did graduate from seminary a couple weeks ago I've been in the process of looking for a job for about five months and there's some possibilities but nothing solid at all. And I'm really wrestling with okay God you know I feel like I was being faithful to you I feel like I was loving you I feel like you know I'm in seminary that's you know that's God school that's Bible school and so it seems like you know if you really loved me you would you would have a job lined up for me the money. So our money is going to run out at the end of July and we don't know what's going to happen at the end of that time and so I feel this tension I feel this unease would in my relationship with God sometimes thinking what are you doing but at the end of the day I think that that's God refining me it's a God testing me in some ways to say you know David David do you really love me or do you really love a nice job and a comfortable life and so you know some of you may be thinking well you know what that's not really suffering David that's not suffering and you know what some of you may have experienced suffering to a much greater degree I'm not up here presuming to know how you've suffered or the trauma you've been through but what I am saying is that God isn't the business of redemption he's in the business of resurrection he's in the business of healing and restoring what's broken and so I just wonder could the suffering that you're going through that you've been through in the past be a way that God is breaking into your life and showing you how much you love him and showing him how much he can restore what you've experienced because we do have a God who has suffered and who suffers with us when we suffer. Okay so the first question then for your outline could your suffering be God working to refine you the second one what does God really promise me just want you to ask yourself that what does God really promise me Abraham had received a promise from God and Hebrews 1118 says or actually the end of 17 he would receive the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son as I said the promise he had received was that you would you will have this son and through him all the nations of the earth will be blessed through him you'll have offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky and so Abraham had to have been asked himself when he gets this second command from God it says okay did I eat some bad goat steak or something last night I mean did did I not understand the original promise correctly is there something that I didn't get about that and I think Abraham had to go through a process of discerning okay what was it that God really promise me and in what ways have I sort of run with those promises and come up with with these fantasies and these longings and these visions of how God's promises are going to work out in my life and how do I need to reconcile that with what God has me doing right now with where God has me with the with this new command that he's given me at this point you know I just wonder if Abraham had these ideas of okay you know finally the son is born you know we're going to set him up a little hut over here and then his son will be over there and all the grandkids on Sundays we'll get together and sing Father Abraham they'll sort of gather around me you guys know that song maybe singing Sunday School Father Abraham as many sons anyway I just imagine based on my own experience that once he received God's promises once he had an idea of what God wanted for him he sort of took liberty to to project what that might look like in his life and so I just wonder you know for us for me how have I taken God's promises and what he really does promise us and want for us and how have I taken that and sort of run with it and projected my own vision of what the rest of my life is going to look like what the rest of this month is going to look like what the what my children's lives are going to look like and I wonder if we need to reconcile that a little bit like Abraham did with the reality of what God promises and just quickly I want to look at three areas of promise that we may struggle with the first one financial okay so sometimes I know I get confused and I wonder if you do about what it is that God really promises us when it comes to money you know I think maybe someone's had the idea that you know God wants God wants me to be wealthy so that I can give more money away to other people is that what God promises God this is the one I struggle with God wants me to be comfortable God wants me to have you know a nice home and a nice car and nice clothes to wear nice