Abraham No.10 I surrender all

Jesus Shall Take the Highest Honor Jesus Shall Take the Highest Honor For all honor and blessing and power Belongs to you, belongs to you For all honor and blessing and power Belongs to you, belongs to you Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God Jesus shall take the highest honor Jesus shall take the highest praise Let the world join heaven in exulting The name which is above all other names Let fatherly and humble adoration For as His name every land found Let every tongue confess He is Christ, the Lord, His Son Sovereign Lord, we give you glory now For all honor and blessing and power Belongs to you, belongs to you For all honor and blessing and power Belongs to you, belongs to you Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God For all honor and blessing and power Belongs to you, belongs to you For all honor and blessing and power Belongs to you, belongs to you Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God Mighty God, we bring you praise For your Son, the Word of God Mother of God, we are redeemed Morning star, the Father's glory We now worship and adore you In our hearts, your light is risen Jesus Lord, we worship you Mighty God, we bring you praise For your Son, the Word of God Mighty God, we are redeemed Morning star, the Father's glory We now worship and adore you In our hearts, your light is risen Jesus Lord, we worship you For the name, for the name of Jesus The Word of Jesus is worthy of glory And worthy of honor And worthy of power and of praise For the name, for the name of Jesus The Word of Jesus is worthy of glory And worthy of honor And worthy of power and of praise His name is exalted far above the earth His name is higher above the heavens His name is exalted far above the earth Give glory and honor and praise unto His name For the name, for the name of Jesus The Word of Jesus is worthy of glory His name is exalted far above the earth His name is higher above the heavens His name is exalted far above the earth Give glory and honor and praise unto His name For the name, for the name of Jesus The Word of Jesus is worthy of glory And worthy of honor And worthy of power and of praise Here's one of the most remarkable narratives in the whole of the Bible. I think it was F.B. Meyer who said, as long as men have eyes to read, they will come back to this story and reflect on it. It's a story that speaks about the availability of one man, and I guess in a sense the availability also of his son.

It's an outrageous story. It speaks of the strange demands that God makes upon an individual. It takes you to what Tim has called, and probably will home in on it again next Sunday evening, the very frontier of faith.

It's a story that requires not just one address, but countless addresses. Unlike trying to drain the English Channel with a kid's seaside bucket, there will always be much more, no matter how much you take. Genesis 22, as we're following the life of Abraham, let me read it fairly rapidly, but hopefully with meaning to you.

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 Moriah. 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 had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had 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 the 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 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. 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. 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. So Abraham called that place, the Lord will provide. The Hebrew actually gives you the option of translating that, the Lord will see to it.

And to this day it is said on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided. Let's have a look at what the apostle Paul had to say in the eighth chapter of Romans. Writing centuries later, it would be difficult to believe that when Paul was writing some of these words at the end of that eighth chapter he didn't have this incident in mind.

He speaks about the provisions of God and says that if you've got your God on your side then it doesn't really matter who's against you. Romans 8, 31. If God is for us who can be against us, he who did not spare his own son that gave him up for us all, how will he not also along with him graciously give us all things.

That was a tragedy, wasn't it, the other day in the fairground. Twice, one fairground as a result of fault on the machinery or maybe a failure to buckle up, being the cause of two youngsters losing their lives. I'm not very happy myself about those big dipper rides or these feats of courage that you're tempted to spend one pound in checking out whether you have the wherewithal to show whether you're a wimp or not.

I'm quite happy to remain under that description, actually. I mean, as far as the G-force is concerned, my feet on terra firma. I can understand why the Pope kisses the ground when he gets out of an aircraft.

I do it frequently, especially on some of the airlines. You know, it's an interesting thing, flying, even more interesting when you get down. They drop this thing on the floor or on the runway as they put it technically at Gatwick and then the engines which have been going forward are suddenly put into reverse.

That's one of the reasons why you wear your safety belt because you come to a thumping stop and this can be quite a jolt. Remember an MAF pilot telling me on one occasion, he was in Nairobi. I think that this is a true story, but you know what pilots are.

He was telling me of an air, I was going to mention the country, north of Nairobi. It would be perhaps unfair to, besides this tape may get out there and I'll be faced with a libel suit. One of the north African countries, they were flying into Nairobi and they hadn't got their regular pilot, but what they did have was one of their air force pilots.

So they used him and he brought the thing in just as though it was a small jet and blew two tires as a result. As he shoved the engine into reverse and there's such a tremendous sort of reaction of opposite forces when an aircraft lands. There's a jolt.

Take your son, your only son, and sacrifice him. Now quite frankly I find this hard to preach on now and I've read this more times than I've had McDonald's breakfasts. I mean here is Abraham and he's learned so much about God and his providential and merciful dealings with him and with Sarah and with their household.

And suddenly it's just like an aircraft dropping on the runway and it's been going forward The G-force or whatever is activated and Abraham must surely, because he can't be that dissimilar from you and me, he must have been totally astonished. You see for Abraham, Isaac was the thing that he desired more than anything else and Jesus has put it down as a consequence or if you like as a condition of discipleship that to fully follow him, whatever stands for the thing that you want most, you must be prepared to invest in his service or put on one side. Back in the church where I was brought up as a kid we used to sing a hymn.

It's an old Sankey hymn I think, certainly it's an older hymn. Some of you friends will remember it. I surrender all.

All to Jesus I surrender, I surrender all. And then the ladies would come in with, I surrender all. And the men would come in as a background, I surrender all.

And the church would almost merge into an antiphonal chant at that point as we affirmed what we were prepared to do as disciples of Jesus. I surrender all. Here I am wholly available.

All right Isaac take your son. Isaac can sacrifice him. As God wants Samuel, as God wants Peter and the rest of the bunch to give up the security of the job of fisherman or civil servant or what have you, so the demands are still the same today.

If you're going to follow the Lord Jesus, whatever stands for that thing which has more affection, in your estimation, you concentrate on more than anything else, he says would you be prepared to give that up in order to achieve my purposes. I want to say that in that first verse of Genesis 22, what you discover about God is this, and I use a pun on two words which sound the same but are a little different in spelling. It is the way of God, W-A-Y, to weigh men, W-E-I-G-H.

It is the way of God to weigh men. And that's precisely what he was doing with Abraham. He was weighing him.

He was testing Abraham as to the validity of his profession of faith. You see, in biblical times you could always test whether a coin was genuine or not, not so much by what it looked like but how it weighed. And God weighs professions of faith.

He does so by this remarkable incident or illustrates it by this remarkable incident in Genesis 22, but this is repeated time and time again in the lives of all those who claim to trust Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. He weighs you. You know, sometimes when you look at a sunrise in the morning, it gives you an anticipation of the sunset.

I mean, for my money, the sunset is always much more wonderful than the sunrise, but there is, if you're like mirrored in the sunrise, something of the glory of the sunset. You say, why do you say this? Take your son, your only son, the son who you love. That is sunrise.

That is the beginning of Genesis. But how are you to understand this incredible test that Abraham is given in the name of God? I say that it is, if you like, the catching in the Old Testament in sunrise fashion. What will happen in the New Testament in sunset fashion? You don't understand? Somebody has said that Scripture should be read like Hebrew is written.

How do you write Hebrew? You start at the end and you move to the front. A complete reversal of the way that you write English or Western languages. And you can never fully understand, I think, this account in Genesis 22 unless you move to the sunset.

And that will tell you a little bit more about the sunrise. You recall John 3 and verse 16? God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believed in him should not perish but have everlasting life. Anticipated in the 22nd chapter of Genesis is what will be fleshed out in all its wonder and all its horror in the New Testament.

Here will be God himself divesting himself of his Isaac, his most precious possession, so to speak, in order that men and women who do not deserve to have their sins forgiven may be presented with his gospel. As you see Abraham here moving on a three-day journey with Isaac towards Moriah. So you're getting an anticipation that many centuries later moving up a hill called Calvary will be our beloved Lord Jesus Christ.

As Abraham is prepared to sacrifice his son, so God will sacrifice or allow his son to be sacrificed for you and for me. In this particular account in Genesis, you read that when Abraham took his leave of his servants and he went the remaining bit of the journey with Isaac by his side, he said to his servants, we will worship and then we will come back to you. But in verse 2, God says, 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.

Have you got your little cogs working at the back of your mind? Don't you understand that there is a measure of a lack of logic? Take your son, sacrifice him. Lord, what will happen is this, we're going to worship and we will come back to you. When our beloved Lord Jesus was nailed to the cross of Calvary, did he lose hope? I mean, when he gave himself as a lamb to his slaughters, when he submitted himself to the power of his executioners, did he die in total despair? Now listen, whenever Jesus Christ made reference to his impending death as described in the Gospels, he always twinned that with some information about his resurrection.

He never speaks about the cross without speaking about his resurrection. Now remember my comment that in the Old Testament what you really have is sunrise and in the New Testament you get sunset. Let's change the analogy for a moment.

Here's an artist and he's going to or she's going to put together a landscape. What is the initial work that the artist does? Well, he or she takes the pencil or takes the charcoal and sketches out the outline which will become the basis of the masterpiece. You from the outline can see where the artist is going to go but return a month or several months or maybe it's a wonderful and large piece of work.

Return in three or four years and you will see that picture in all its relief, in all its beauty, in all its colour. So in the Old Testament, the pencil, the bit of charcoal, the anticipation of what will be filled out remarkably in the New Testament. And when the anticipation of what's found in the first book of the Bible is described in all its wonder, then as much as you may be horrified as to the test that God gave Abraham, you're even more amazed at what the Lord Jesus has done for you.

But my seed thought, which I nearly lost, is this. Abraham anticipated that though God had told him to slay Isaac, both Isaac and he would come back down the mountainside. And when the Lord Jesus was crucified, he anticipated that that would not be the end.

In Hebrews in chapter 11 and verse 19, speaking of Abraham's faith, you read this. 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. Listen, here's the punchline, verse 19. Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead.

And figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. What did Abraham do? Well, he had the little cogs going at the back of his mind. God had told him that he would become the father of a great nation and that that promise will be fulfilled through his son Isaac.

If Isaac is annihilated, if Isaac is killed, even at his father's hand, it will mean that the promise has been rescinded. But the promise comes from God and Abraham knows this. God cannot renege on his promise.

So what does Abraham do? Almost at the beginnings of civilization, the beginnings of the pilgrimage of faith, as recorded in the Old Testament, he reasons. God will not lie. God will not mock Abraham.

Alright, you tell me to take my son, my only son, the son whom I love. You spell it out so carefully. It hurts me so much.

Everything you say of my attitude to my son, that is correct. But if I obey you and kill this boy of mine, then it makes you a liar. And Abraham comes to the conclusion that God must raise his lad from the dead.

In order? In order to be true to his word. So once again you understand how Genesis anticipates the Gospels. How the sunrise is made even more glorious at the sunset.

And Abraham is the man who stands out as someone who has been weighed by God. And I remind you, as Abraham was weighed by God, so albeit in differing circumstances, he will weigh you. He will test you.

For us it seems that Abraham's test was a brutal one. But in the culture of that day, it was the done thing for fathers on occasion to sacrifice their children to the pagan gods. Shall I give the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? Some of you will remember Micah's outrageous suggestion and question.

Abraham is weighed by God and he comes out well. You can only understand the story, I argue, secondly, because Scripture has to be read like Hebrew is written. Start with the New Testament, go back to this incident, and it makes wondrous sense.

But thirdly, and with this I conclude, remember that though Abraham was a success here, and my address this evening might be putting you off because you feel an abysmal failure, Abraham didn't always behave with such sterling faith as he did on this occasion. This incident wins him, and rightly so, along with one or two other peaks of faith that he scaled. It wins him the description as the friend of God.

But there were times when Abraham acted very much out of character. Times when you would wonder why God would want a friend like Abraham. Times when Abraham risked the virtue of his wife by deception and by cunning.

You see, Abraham has been tested on a number of occasions. He's been weighed, and he doesn't always come up true. I'm reminded of Peter.

But before I tell you of Peter, let me disclose one more thing. Why does God test? You see, God is a curious examiner. I mean, if you were my pupils, if I can think back the years to my days as a school teacher or as a lecturer in a theological college, and I tested you.

I gave you an essay to write, I gave you questions to answer. Then I would check your answers for this particular reason. I want to know how good or how inattentive you have been.

I test you to get knowledge for myself. God's a curious examiner. He doesn't need the knowledge.

He's already got it. The reason why God tested Abraham, the reason why God weighed Peter, was not to find out what they were like. He already knew.

He wanted them to discover for themselves what they were truly like. Lord Jesus, all men may deny you. Even this bunch of your disciples, but Jesus, I, Simon, Barjona, count on me.

I who once walked on water, falteringly, and just for a little while, but I who made it then, I'll make it again. And if our Lord can be conceded as having an inner chuckle, then I reckon that was one of the moments when he smiled inwardly. Peter, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.

You see, the scene is set up, the weighing of Peter, the testing of Peter. Now, why did Jesus, the curious examiner, need to weigh, need to test Peter? Because he was unaware of Peter's treachery? Not a bit. He understands you, he understood Peter, but Peter didn't understand himself.

And very often, the most enigmatic difficulty, the greatest problem that you and I are confronted with, we see each morning when we look into a mirror. It's ourselves. And so God allows testings to come.

God allows us to be weighed. God sometimes will allow a circumstance to evolve in order that we might realize just how sometimes frail and feeble we are. Or indeed on other occasions, how much we've grown in the Christian faith.

Abraham was not rejected by God because of his failure on previous occasions prior to this test. And when Peter is encountered by the beloved Savior on the seashore of Galilee, where he and Jesus first met with each other, far from being excommunicated, the Lord Jesus says to Peter, feed my sheep. And he ordained him to the ministry.

I conclude. A moment or two we come around this table. Why do we come here? Well, because a far greater than Abraham gave his own son.

Isaac, and doubtless Tim will bring in the full relief of the story next Sunday evening. Isaac was not offered. In type he was because Abraham was prepared to concede it.

He raised his hand. He had the dagger to plunge into Isaac's back. But it wasn't the purposes of God for that to happen.

Of course not. There's a lamb that was caught in the thicket. It's a ram that will stand in the place of Isaac.

But when the sunset comes, and it's not Isaac you see, but almighty God the Father, and by his side is his son, with a cross on his back, when the dagger is to be plunged in, so to speak, there will be no restraint. No one will stay the hand. Why? Because there is only one means whereby you and I can be saved through the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In a moment we take bread and wine, symbolizing the broken body of our Lord Jesus and the release of his life's blood. And we thank our Father that he did not spare his only son, but allowed him to go to the cross for our salvation, and raised him the third day to underline the fact that we have been justified, saved, forgiven as a result of the incredible obedience of our Lord Jesus. Let's start to sing a song.

There is a Redeemer, Jesus, God's own Son. And we'll come around this table, maybe one or two more songs, we'll follow this. And in a moment or two we'll offer you bread and wine.

The pleas as I've indicated, or as we've indicated in this church bulletin, receive the sacrament only if you truly confess Jesus as your personal Saviour, and you could make the very act of taking bread and wine the first inclination, the first intimation that this is indeed the case. In your life you're accepting God's forgiveness through Jesus. 6-7-3 Let's stand.

There is a Redeemer, Jesus, God's own Son. Precious Lamb of God, Messiah, all-holy One. Thank You, O my Father, for giving us Your Son.

And lead in Your Spirit's care the world, for help is done. Jesus, our Redeemer, name upon all names. Precious Lamb of God, Messiah, all-holy One.

Thank You, O my Father, for giving us Your Son. And lead in Your Spirit's care the world, for help is done. When I stand in glory, God, I'll serve Thy King forever.

In Thy holy name. And lead in Your Spirit's care the world, for help is done. In Your Spirit's care.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Amen.

Amen. Amen.