Genesis 22

Let us turn to Genesis chapter 22 and what a thrilling thing it was just to listen to Matthew expound the greatness of our God. We're going to see the greatness of God in a very special way in this chapter as the Lord teaches us what was in his heart when he gave his only Son. So let's first read the first 14 chapters of the well-known Genesis 22.

Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, here I am. Then he said, take now your son, your only 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. So Abraham arose early in the morning and saddled his donkey and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son and he split the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.

Then on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off and Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey and the lad and I will go yonder and worship and we will come back to you. So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son and he took the fire in his hand and a knife and the two of them went together. But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, my father, and he said, here am I, my son.

Then he said, look, the fire in the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? And Abraham said, my son, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering. So the two of them went together. Then they came to the place of which God had told him and Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar upon the wood.

And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son, but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. So he said, here I am. And he said, do not lay your hand on this on the lad or do anything to him for now I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your son, your own only son, from me.

Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. And Abraham called the name of the place the Lord will provide as it is said to this day in the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.

And so we read the great account of what's called the Akedah or the binding of Isaac. There's no reason really why anyone in this meeting needs to leave without their sins forgiven. What we want to do in the last few minutes of this conference is to share with you the gospel of our Lord Jesus and to present again to you the way of salvation that you must it must be obvious to you looking around at the believers how much we enjoy being not only with each other but particularly coming around the Word of God and honoring the one we love above everyone.

We've come to love him but only because he first loved us and we want you to love him too and we want you to have the forgiveness we enjoy. And so please listen I know it's hard late in the afternoon please listen if not to me to the Word of God and you will I think learn from the Spirit of God if your heart is willing how you can come to know the Lord Jesus this very night. At the end of our conference back in November my niece I'll call her my niece is sort of a little distant more distantly related was saved and what a joy it is at the end of a conference for someone to be saved.

May it be you tonight. I want to start with a story that kind of gives a background to this. There was a day of number of years ago when I took my brother Bob to a funeral director I had taken him from the hospital with his wife my sister-in-law and we went to the Schrader funeral home to meet the funeral director.

His daughter six years old had died so that was a rough time for us and of course as usual we try to comfort people we tell them things that we think would be of help to them certainly we want to be there next to them to support them but my wife Heidi and I had no concept of what they were going through. So we then returned the following day and walked into the room together and there for the first time we looked at the dead form of my niece Michelle and again what do you say? A few minutes later the door swung open and in came Don and Chris Venema. Don and Chris Venema had lost a daughter age six the same age just as tragically a few years before and they walked up to the casket and the four of them embraced and the rest of us drew back because what we were seeing with our own eyes was sympathy.

I couldn't provide it but they provided it. What God wants from Abraham here the friend of God the one who talked with God the one who knew God better than anyone else the one whom God had revealed more to than anyone it was he was God's confidant. God wanted Abraham and he wants us to feel what was in his heart when he gave his only son.

The gospel is about God so loving the world let's think of that verse we know it well that he gave his only begotten son gave him to the cross that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Why would the father give his son? Because he wanted to save you and he wanted to save me but that makes it so poignant when we think of a man Abraham coming to the very brink of where God the father went but then graciously being stopped right as brinksmanship takes him to the very 11th hour very 11th hour and 59th minute 59th second and God says stop now you feel it but you can't go where I'm going with my son on the cross and many years later the Lord Jesus who fulfills the picture that we see here in Genesis 22 went to a cross bearing our sin just as Isaac went bearing the wood but there was no voice from heaven that said stop but the transaction went through and the son was slain the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. What I want to do with this passage is just show how this picture at the beginning of the chapter shows us such a wonderful expression in the Bible in picture form and story form a true story of exactly how God has given us his son and then this is a twofold story because there's a switch in the middle and the symbols kind of change around a little bit because Abraham is seen as God the father giving his son Isaac but because that could not carry all the way through only God with his son carried it through at the cross.

God says okay right in the middle we're going to switch it to give another level of meaning to this story because now I'm going to teach you the truth for the first time explicitly in the Bible of something we call substitution and now we're going to make Isaac the sinner who deserves to die on an altar but he is drawn off of the altar and released from his bonds and a perfect ram now this ram is my son will come and die in his place. So we have a wonderful twofold picture of the transaction between God the father and God the son on the one hand and on the other hand between God and the sinner who is saved by the provision of a substitute. So that's the basic outline I want to follow for a little while.

Do you know at the beginning of the chapter again this is a very emotional chapter and we need to think of it that way and remember that those of us who have read it many times are a bit jaded by it but notice how it opens. God says to Abraham, Abraham and he says I'm here and God says take now your son now Abraham might say I have at least I have two sons I have Ishmael I have Isaac no not Ishmael take your son you're only Isaac oh not Isaac what do you want me to do with Isaac of course ominously he may understand that there's going to be something seriously asked of him about Isaac so what what do you want not only Isaac but the Isaac the one you love the one you love I want you to take him and offer him as a sacrifice Abraham's mind was reeling at this point he's the son of promise how can I give the son of promise to death you know the Lord Jesus Christ who answers to this picture is the son of promise do you know God in the Old Testament right when your sin and mine began back in our forbearer that is not our sins but the sins that caused the race to fall and led to us to the situation we find ourselves in as sinners tonight right after that God gave the promise and that promise was that the seed of the woman would bruise the serpent's head and in so doing he would deliver a death blow to the serpent and God would provide a Savior all the way through the Old Testament we have the promise of the coming Savior because you need one and I need one and thank God he provided him and he promised he promised he promised this very chapter we're reading is a chapter of promise I promise I will send you a Savior I will provide it in the mount of the Lord it will be seen I'll see to it that's what he's saying so thank God the promises of God can be relied on because if you're going to be saved tonight you need to understand what it is to believe God's promise salvation is based on the Word of God giving us a promise that we accept openly and frankly by faith knowing the truthfulness of the God who said it and we accept his free gift of salvation by faith a promise that we shall have eternal life I want you to think as well that there is a place that's specifically mentioned here God says about a place Abraham talks about the place they arrive at the place and this shows us that this picture is giving us a very clear view of what happened at the cross is a transaction something was done some accounting was done it was done at a place and it was a specific act that changed everything so we then come to the New Testament and we find of a place called Calvary and when they were come to the scripture say when they were come to the place which is called Calvary there that spot the same spot by the way there they crucified him and two other with him on either side one and Jesus in the middle and so the place that God had provided salvation was the great work that the had come to do right up to the time when the Lord was heading to the cross he was 33 years old so most of 33 years was now behind him he only had hours to go before he was dead but do you know that he spoke of his work not as something he had already finished but it still lay ahead of him now you say didn't he do a lot of good works wasn't he a wonderful man for those three years and before that I'm sure he was a wonderful child and young adult before and wasn't he serving God in those years and the answer is yes yes and yes but the real reason he came was still in front of him when he only had hours to live the work that he came to do was still future because I'm stressing from this chapter Genesis 22 that it was the giving of the Son on the cross that was the true work that he had come to do and the payment of a debt and once the debt was paid and he cried it is finished then his work was behind him it was forever done and so we see the place that is called Calvary I want you to understand two of the privacy of what goes on here it says the son and the father the two of them went together yes they had a donkey with them and yes two servants accompanied them to a certain point but then they stopped and the two of them went up together to the place called Calvary as we think of it in our picture to the place of Mariah that's interesting because in the experience of Christ on the cross we have what men did to him for three hours and then the lights went out and we're given no information about what happened in the next three hours people couldn't see people couldn't hear there was something going on between divine persons that was different from what had happened previously to that between men who hated him and the victim that they had put on that cross telling us that Christ did not die merely as a martyr or as a good man who was misunderstood but he died in a way that not only would show the hatred of men toward him but would allow the opportunity for the God of heaven to lay on him eternal wrath hell separation and you and I are only told that it was black at the end of that awful experience the Lord cried out my God my God why have you forsaken me so we know he was forsaken and then you and I asked yet why why and the answer is to provide us a Savior to cleanse us from our sins and so then we come to this image of Isaac carrying wood and fire and a knife we need to ask ourselves what are these symbols of well I'll tell you what I think they're symbols of if you don't like my symbols that's okay the truth that I'm conveying is clearly established in the New Testament but I think these are pretty excellent symbols first of all we talk about the wood this young man had to carry a load of firewood up the mountain on his shoulders now when we think of burdens in the Bible we understand that burdens are things that people bear that bow them down and crush them and in order for Christ to release us from the burden of sin he took his own he took our burden rather to the cross and there he absolutely obliterated it so that we would not have a burden and that we would be free people this is illustrated many of you I'm sure I've read Pilgrim's Progress and you understand that Christian had this enormous burden on his shoulders that bowed him down and it troubled him and tormented him all of his life until finally at the cross looking up at the man who died for him it rolled away those of us who were saved here know what it is to have our burdens rolled away we want your burden to be rolled away tonight we want you to know what it is to be forgiven now to understand how much of a burden sin is we need to let the Bible tell us what sin is like we read today in Matthew chapter 18 those of you of you who are here which doesn't include the little kids I know there's younger people and at the end of that there's an interesting parable there's a man a king who has a servant who owes him money the servant owes him six billion dollars six billion dollars ten thousand talents in today's currency is something like six billion dollars that servant in turn has another one who owes him money and that second person owes the servant that we're talking about in the story 100 denarii which is $20,000 what the Lord is teaching us in that parable is that our sins are not primarily damaging the people around us but they are doing damage to the holiness of God they are on a front to God they are treasons in his sight and the seriousness of sin is not to seem to the extent it damages other people but to what it does to God's own holiness and character let me illustrate you go to the candy shop no let's say you go to my suitcase which is a securely somewhere this evening and John and Esther's house and you sneak into the bedroom and you go in there and you find my wallet and you take out $100 and you put it in your own pocket and then on the way out the door we have security cameras not really I'm sure they don't but we discover you're the culprit so we bring you to the court of justice which is basically the living room couch probably and we say all right we have to have an exacting here you say okay I've been caught red-handed here's your hundred dollars case closed case not closed because even though the money has been returned to me the damage that has been done to me by someone stealing from me you owe me $20,000 more 20,000 in our parable but the staggering thing and the thing I really want you to get your heads around tonight is that by taking $100 from me and therefore making me your debtor for $20,000 by doing that act you now owe God six billion dollars do you get it let me illustrate it another way suppose you have some moles digging holes in your backyard and I come over and I shoot the mole that's sticking its head up you say thank you we needed these vermin eradicated from my lawn anyway or this is the neighbor speaking right but then of course this dog comes over to my flowerbed and digging so I shoot his dog say whoa hold on that's not right a mole is one thing but a dog a dog is much more valuable it has meaning to this person I'm going to escalate it one more and I'm going to be a little careful here because it's going to get some of you to laugh sardonically but of course the atrocity would be multiplied infinitely more if I shot my neighbor I wonder if you know anything about officer tippet officer tippet was killed by a man named Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22nd 1963 you say I didn't know that I never heard of officer tippet all I know is President Kennedy was killed on November 2nd 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald up in that little you might call it a crow's nest where he had set up pointed his man like her Carcano carbon out the window shot three shots the third one the fatal one hitting the president in the parietal boss on this part of his head instantly fatal but then of course he left that crow's nest and went down and ran along the streets to get away from the law and he went into a movie theater and he was seen going in the movie theater and the police came to the theater he emerged from the theater and he shot officer tippet and killed him that we call a murder the death of Kennedy we have a different word for we call it assassination why not because President Kennedy was worth more than officer tippet as a man but because we have killed the office of the president now you take that higher and you go to the very throne of the universe and you take God and you attempt to put him to death which is what all people do who hate him but when God comes down to the earth as a man then you have your opportunity and you assassinate the Son of God you see the gravity of crim of the crime that you've committed right down to my little filching of $100 from my wallet is an offense against God that is so great that only an eternity in hell can begin to compensate justice for what has been done and if you don't get that if you don't believe that if you think that's an overreaction then we can't progress too much farther in the gospel because until people realize that they have sinned against a holy God and deserve his divine wrath forever and ever they cannot be saved now we talk about the pot of fire and the knife we'll go back to my illustration of the hundred dollars when you take money from me you owe me money but you also owe me something as one person to another because you violated me so one is called a debt the other is called a crime the debt you can redress with money but the crime cannot be taken care of with money it requires perhaps we would think of a prison sentence right now here's the thing if Christ comes and he agrees to pay all of your sins in the past what about the sins of the present and the future let's say God is able to pay all of the sins you will ever commit and so their particular aspect as sin of sins as debt are addressed and taken care of that doesn't save you I'm sorry it doesn't save you because what about your black heart what about the enmity the scripture calls that you have between yourself and God you say I don't mind God I like God I don't hate God no the Bible says you hate him you hate him because you will not bow to his authority you will not take his provision for your own need you have the desire by not obeying him to put yourself on his throne and be the captain and be the king and be the the one who calls the shots and if you're going to put yourself on the throne you've got to shove God off and the Bible says that's hatred so we have the fire and the knife the fire speaks of the sufferings the judgment of God that this sacrifice would have to go through but the knife speaks of death and you know on the cross Christ not only paid your crimes in terms of what they were as debts but when he bowed his head and gave up his life and died if you accept him as your Savior tonight you will have died with him and therefore not only your sins as debts but the black heart itself will be completely taken care of and removed you'll be forgiven not only for what you've done but you will be corrected for what you are you'll no longer be a person with an unregenerate black sinful heart but you'll have a new throbbing heart beating with love for God now the Bible calls it a heart we're talking about the inner man that's created well you say that means you're perfect then you're a Christian you're perfect now I'm not perfect but in my new nature I have a love for God I'm encased by this fallenness we call flesh God's gonna deal with that ultimately and finally when he takes me home to heaven and then I'll be as perfect as his son you say that's a pretty off that's your that's quite enough a statement to be making you're as perfect as Christ is yes indeed because God wouldn't be settled satisfied with anything less and my perfection is not mine it's Christ's so we have I think a clear picture of the burden of sin when we see the wood the weight of it the fire the debt and the suffering it requires the knife the death of the substitute that's required so we move on and we find that right up to the point of the knife flashing in the Sun and about to come down on the sacrifice we have a poignant picture of God giving his son for us the writer the author of Genesis Moses again the poignancy of the first verses we've talked about your son you're only Isaac I mean the one you love that one I want you to offer in the stead or as a burnt offering then we get Isaac himself just tugging at Abraham's heart there was a knife that was intended for Isaac there's a knife that goes into Abraham's own heart you say when does that happen because Isaac says my father again stressing this relationship between father and son he says here am I my son notice the literary beauty of this it's being pulled out being milked we're now seeing that this relationship is being absolutely emphasized my father yes my son look the fire and the wood but where is the lamb people talk about God as impassable they say he can't suffer God can't suffer in the sense that he cannot be manipulated by people we can't do things to hurt God in any way other than those ways in which he has ordained to be hurt you say you're getting heavy on me God can suffer that's the whole point not only God in Christ suffering as our substitute but the pain of the father's heart which he willed for himself to endure is seen at the cross the father gives his only son the Lord of glory dies for us the guilty and undone do you think that tells us then how God so loved the world if he was willing to give his only son that he whom he loved beyond words and beyond absolute comprehension but I'm very thankful that the story switches at this point because now I get to see myself in the story and if you're here tonight not save you put yourself in this part of the story and you will understand what it means to have someone die in your place because we have a ram now who's caught in a in a thicket or a thornbush and Abraham releases him from the thornbush takes Isaac off the altar frees him from the bonds says you're a free man my son because now we've found a substitute now you can have a savior who's not a substitute the almost obvious example I can think of is if I have see you drowning in somebody's pool or in the water and I throw you a life ring I'm your savior but I'm not your substitute let me illustrate substitution we'll go back to the Titanic disaster there was a man named John Harper a preacher of the gospel he rightly and nobly would not take a lifeboat but at one point as the ship was going down he jumped into the water with a life ring he floated around and his message to everyone who was with an earshot of him was believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved in the icy water and the stillness the stillness that people reported was just the splashes of paddles and muffled cries we had the clear voice of an evangelist floating in the water he came to a man who was swimming with no life raft and he said to the man are you saved and the man said I'm not I can't say I am and John Harper said believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and he gave the man his life ring and he went down once and he went down twice and then he went down for the final time there's more to that story fast forward three years to Kitchener Ontario and that man stood up among a group of Christians and told them how he had been saved that night by the last sermon John Harper ever preached in the icy waters of the North Atlantic who said to him behold or rather believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved John Harper was his Savior but he was also his substitute not only did he provide life for the man but he did it by dying in his place and that's exactly what we're seeing here in this picture of the ram dying in the stead of his son Isaac there are people today who don't believe the Bible teaches a substitutionary atonement they don't believe that Christ was put on the cross in our place but then they're not Bible readers because the Bible teaches that from cover to cover and this is the first place where it is said so explicitly he was offered in the stead of his son Isaac and we can say I can say that Christ was offered in the stead of David Valens can you say that tonight if you accept the truth of the scripture you can say it he died so that you could live he suffered so that you would not have to he went into hell so that you would not you say I didn't know the Lord Jesus went to hell he didn't go to hell as a place he went through hell as an experience because hell is separation from God and this transaction that occurred on the cross was infinite in its magnitude it was a transaction that did not even require if I can put it this way three hours that's symbolic for our consideration that between divine persons it's not a subject to the constraints of time it's a transaction that occurred that was infinite in magnitude far greater than all the sufferings of all the angels who fell and of every sinner whoever goes to the lake of fire all that they ever will experience throughout the endless ages cannot even compare to what the Lord Jesus endured on the cross and so he died in our place you know I came to know that on a specific date June 6 1972 I was a quite a young boy that means I've been saved for 43 years that's a long time it seems but it doesn't seem so long because on that night I was sitting on my sister's bed and I had my little Bible with me and I was troubled all those were the days of the great great great planet earth and all the prophecies there were that the end of the world was coming and indeed it is coming and I wouldn't minimize that but at the time the date setting was really quite a thing and I was convinced I would only had a short time I wish you would be convinced you only had a short time tonight because you don't know that you have any opportunities beyond right now but I really wanted to be saved and so I sat with my sister on her bed and she turned me to John 3 and 36 and that verse tells me this he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life anyone here saved through John 3 and 36 well I'm sure there are some you're looking at one I took God at his word realizing that he that believeth on the Son had everlasting life because of what John 3 16 had told me that God gave him for me he was my substitute he paid for my sin he took my death and he set me free you say how do you know you're saved because God told me you say you're sure did you hear a voice no I have something better than a voice I have it written I have it in writing and all I need to do is look at it once more and say yes it's true you know Christians don't have to be very intelligent people they just need to understand that God has made a promise and they have to believe it and that's what God expects you to do tonight what a wonderful picture we have as we close the meeting of our salvation I don't know Matthew I suspect there are a couple of hymns that I would put on par with thou art the everlasting word one is definitely Edward Quine's hymn that tells me of the glory of the love of God and of Christ for me Edward Quine wrote this glory to thee thou son of God most high all praise to thee glory to thee enthroned above the sky who died for me high on thy throne thy near Lord Jesus been as grateful hearts now to thyself ascend thorns wreath thy brow when hanging on a tree man's cruelty this is the question why lavish love like this O Lord on me thou lovest me would that my soul could understand its length its breadth depth height and everlasting strength thy precious blood was freely shed for me on Calvary to save me from a lost eternity glory to thee glory to thee that's what every Christian says tonight as we think of what the Lord Jesus has done for us now what about you if you're not saved there's no reason to linger any longer believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved shall we pray