God Tests Before He Promotes - Part 6

He doesn't make them millionaires, thank God he doesn't. It would destroy them. But he takes care of them. So the Lord told Abraham, you won't lose out, Abraham, by honoring me. I know you did that way, you acted like that with Lot, to honor me. You passed the test. Here is the reward. That's more than a gold medal or anything like that. Here's the reward. Verse 14 of chapter 13. You lift up your eyes now and look to the north, south, east and west. Now, there is a difference. In verse 10 it says, Lot lifted up his eyes and looked east and saw the beautiful land of Sodom and Gomorrah, saw plenty of pasture, lot of opportunity to make money. He lifted up his eyes. Notice that expression, Lot lifted up his eyes and went. But see what Abraham, he didn't lift up his eyes. God told Abraham in verse 14, Abraham, you lift up your eyes. There's a lot of difference when God tells you to do something and you do it yourself. Lot lifted up his eyes and God told Abraham, you lift up your eyes. You don't have to look east, Abraham. You look north, south, west and east, which Lot has got. I will give all of this to you and not only to you, to your children forever. Four thousand years have passed since God spoke those words to Abraham in the land of what was known as Canaan, today known as Israel. And do you know who's living in that land today? North, south, east and west? The children of Abraham. Not the children of Lot. God keeps His word. It's true. He didn't promise to take all the children of Abraham to heaven. That's not what He said. I don't believe that all the children of Abraham go to heaven because that's not what He promised. To go to heaven is quite another thing. You've got to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. But what God promised He keeps. He said, this land I'll give to your children and He kept it. Four thousand years later, He still kept it. And whatever people may say and nations may decide, what God said, there comes true. And so He said, you can walk through this land, I'll give it to you. Years later, I don't have time to go through all of that. You know that Abraham failed the test in chapter 20, where I like these true Bible stories of people who made mistakes, who told lies to save their life. Abraham told his Sarah, his wife, saying, please tell this king that you're my sister, otherwise they'll kill me and marry you. If you say you're my sister, my life will be saved. Maximum they'll rape you or something like that, that's okay. But at least my life will be saved. Imagine Abraham treating his wife like that. Or they'll take you into his harem. Okay, but at least I'll be saved. That's what he tells. And remember Sarah? You know Sarah was actually Abraham's stepsister? So it was half-truth. But a half-truth is sometimes a lie. He says in verse 13, 12 of chapter 20, actually, she is my sister, because it was another mother. I mean, my father married twice. So she's my stepsister. She's not the daughter of my mother, but she's the daughter of my father and she became my wife. Abraham married his stepsister. Don't follow him there. In certain areas we can follow Abraham, but in certain areas we must know where to follow and where not to follow. These people were living in the Old Testament and they had no laws, they had no understanding. But the point is, he told a lie, and he was rebuked by an earthly king. And he took it. That's great. If you can take a correction from an ungodly boss, when you know what he says is right, you humble yourself and say, Yes sir, I was wrong. And you are a Christian. That's great. See, Christians can sometimes do things which are wrong, which even an ungodly person has to correct. And then, in chapter 22 we read that when, there are a number of ways in which God tested him, but let me come to the last one. It says in chapter 22 verse 1, After all this, God tested Abraham again. Now the guy is 125 years old. He was tested 50 years ago first. He is still being tested. It's like a person who is studying PhD saying, I was tested when I was 3 years old, and now I am 28 years old and I am still being tested. It's something like that. But he is not being tested with the same thing. I mean in PhD they are not asking you what 2 plus 2 is. So, the test gets higher and higher as you go to higher classes. And Abraham was tested. Because God wanted to give him a promotion. Every test is for a promotion. And this time was the greatest test of all. It was the final test. Ok Abraham, now I want you to kill your son. In the previous chapter God told him, Send away your first son. He did that. He passed that test. Now you got only one son. Kill him. And sure enough, it says, Early the next morning. I like that phrase. Verse 3, chapter 22. Early in the morning, he got up to obey God. And I think he went up early in the morning before Sarah got up. So that he doesn't have to tell her what he is planning to do with their son. Sometimes it's not wise to tell our wives something that unnecessarily disturbs them. I think Abraham was a wise man. He quietly took his son. Can you imagine his getting up telling Sarah, hey listen I'm just going to kill my son. We are just going to kill him and I'll come back without him. She wouldn't understand. You see when God gives a man a vision, sometimes a wife may not understand. Sometimes she does, sometimes she doesn't. God's given a man a vision. Sarah was a wonderful woman. The Bible says she just obeyed Abraham and whatever he said. She was a great woman. It says in 1 Peter 3. She just trusted. He was a man of God and I can trust him. And Abraham took Isaac and was just about to kill him. God said stop. I've seen that you love me more than you love your son. That's all I wanted to find out. Now, because you've done this, chapter 22, I swear God says in verse 16, because you've done this, you've not withheld your son. There will be no limit to the way I'm going to bless you and your children. Absolutely no limit. All the nations of the earth will be blessed. Brothers and sisters, you'll never stop being tested. Not me, not you. So much depends on whether we pass the test or not. We see people roaming the streets today without jobs because they never passed the test. They never took their school and college seriously. And we see other people half their age who are earning such high salaries because they took their studies seriously. That's in the world. The same thing happens in the Christian life. We see fine people who come gripped by the message in the church and God's begun to use them mightily. And there are others who sit for years and years and years and years. They're always backsliding and coming back and some bitterness and some complaint and then they repent and they come back. And it's forever and ever and ever like that. They drown, they get up. They drown, they get up. Shall we finish with that? Press on. Let's pray.