Genesis 22: Preaching/Teaching Plan
Notes
Transcript
Faithful: Life’s Final Exam
Faithful: Life’s Final Exam
EOT-Abraham passed God’s Greatest test with flying colors.
EOS-A Faithful Life
DDS-Every person would be willing to do anything, say anything or go anywhere for the cause of Jesus.
Gospel Connection-This may the greatest gospel connection in the entire Bible. At the end of the day our worship comes from out of a response of what God did for us in his son. This may be the clearest picture in the Bible.
Gavin-Planted a church in California-Mission church
Went to work in a mega church
Now has planted a church
He told me the other day, you want me to tell you the secret. Be faithful and you will make it.
There is a story in the Bible where there are three guys and they are based on if they were faithful to what God had given them
Two of them left and God said
Well done good and faithful servant
Last one
The first quality of a FAITHFUL life is that it is:
1. Available to God (1-2).
1. Available to God (1-2).
Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
Testing comes regularly and unexpectedly.
Testing comes regularly and unexpectedly.
It came about. God specifically wanted to test his man.
Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of Genesis I. God Tests the Faithfulness of Believers by Asking Them to Surrender to Him the Best They Have (1–2)
Abraham did not know that it was a test. Had he known that God was testing him to see if he would obey, the value of the test would have been diminished. To be effective as a test, the divine command had to be both sudden and surprising.
Take a second to reflect right now:
What are some tests that you are going through or have gone through before?
A Brilliant Response:
A Brilliant Response:
Here I am.
This is a response we see other places in scripture, I think of Isaiah. God calls Isaiah and he says the same thing. But God calls and Abraham says here I am.
If we want to succeed in God’s final exam we have to make ourselves available to God.
This makes a lot of practical sense. IN a sport if a coach looks to the bench and wants to put you in, players go in and they want to play.
In the same way God is saying to Abraham I want to put you in the game, the game of life.
Abraham says here I am.
So many times as Christians we are willing to ride the bench for GOD. We are content in our relationship with God to be a bench warmer, but the things we love and care the most about are the very things we are available for.
Availability comes with no strings attached
Availability comes with no strings attached
He said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”
WHAT????
THIS DOES NOT EVEN SEEM IN LINE WITH THE GOD I BELIEVE IN.
Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of Genesis I. God Tests the Faithfulness of Believers by Asking Them to Surrender to Him the Best They Have (1–2)
This unpredictability made it all such a staggering test—God seemed to be totally out of character and completely destroying his program. Or as Crenshaw says, God seemed to become Abraham’s worst enemy. This aspect made Abraham’s faith so great—he was willing to sacrifice to God this son who had everything in the world to live for, whom God had provided as the hope of the future.
Abraham I am going to make your the promised seed, you are going to have as many kids as the stars of the sky and now I want you to kill the very kid that would actually allow that to happen.
What in the world can we love more than our kids? God this does not even seem in line with your character, the lesser pagan God’s kill their kids, and you want me to sacrifice my kid. This makes no sense.
Throughout Abraham’s life we see that he was available to God and willing to do what he was asked.
He was willing to leave his homeland, he was wiling to let go of Ishmael, the child that he had with HAGAR, he willingly let go of him. Now God wanted to see if he was willing to let go of Isaac.
Abraham was available to God.
Are you available to God?
Will you live openhandedly before me?
A lady who made herself available to God was Lottie Moon.
Lottie Moon grew up in an affluent background, with a Christian family. She was just going through the motions until she went to a revival in her teens. And her faith went from her parents faith to her faith, her faith went from religion to a relationship with the living God. Her sister accepted a call to go to China, and soon after she felt God calling her to go to China as well. She spent 40 years of her life bringing the good news to a place that felt dark.
Since here death they Southern Baptist have taken a offering each year called the Lottie Moon offering. It has raise 1.5 Billion dollars and has funded half of the Southern Baptist missionaries.
Her life still lives on because she was available to God.
She never married, would not have been considered successful by the standards of the world, but aced God’s test because like Abraham she said Here I am GOd.
Application:
Are you ready to Ace God’s Final exam?
I don’t know when or where you are going to have God’s biggest test for you, but don’t you want to be ready for it.
If you want to ACE it, then this quality needs ti be one you aspire to.
Are you going through your trial by fire right now?
Are you available to God?
The next quality of a FAITHFUL life is that it is:
2. Worship regularly (3-10).
2. Worship regularly (3-10).
In America we have cheapened worship. We go to church once a week, check off our worship box with a latte and coffee in our hand.
Abraham worshiped throughout his life and it was costly worship.
Costly worship does not hesitate
Costly worship does not hesitate
So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.
Can you picture the struggle he must have had the night before. We don’t read it but we can only imagine what a parent would go through. But what we do see is that Abraham rose early-We did what asked him to do .
Costly worship believes God will provide.
Costly worship believes God will provide.
On the third day Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance.
Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you.”
Notice here it says we will worship and we will return to you.
How in the world are they going to return if he kills his son.
SPURGEON-
God is too good to be unkind and he is too wise to be mistaken. And when we cannot trace his hand, we must trust his heart.
Abraham did not know how he was going to return to God but he knew he would.
This next verse is so good.
Abraham said, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” So the two of them walked on together.
What I have noticed in my life is that the times I have walked by faith God has provided.
Times I walked by faith God has provided
God provided for me a wife
God provided a van for us when we had our second kid
God provided the day after we left it all a check for 10000
God literally provided our house that we live in
God provided us to meet in this gymnastics space
I can name so many different times that God has provided when we have walked by faith.
Costly worship offers God their best
Costly worship offers God their best
Then they came to the place of which God had told him; and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood, and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.
Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
David was willing to offer the very best thing that the had to God. This was worship that was well pleasing to the Lord.
David was willing to offer his very best to God.
We can worship God in a way that we give him not our very best or a way we can offer him our best.
We saw in Genesis an example where Cain did not offer God a great sacrifice.
Genesis 4:5 “but for Cain and for his offering He had no regard. So Cain became very angry and his countenance fell.”
Listen to what David says about offering our best sacrifice.
1 Chronicles 21:24 “But King David said to Ornan, “No, but I will surely buy it for the full price; for I will not take what is yours for the Lord, or offer a burnt offering which costs me nothing.””
Abraham was willing to give God his best
David was willing to give God his best.
Are you willing to give God your best?
I love the story of David Livingston as a kid:
He sat in the offering plate!!
“If a commission by an earthly king is considered an honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?” “I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. ”
Romans 12:1 “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.”
The last quality of a FAITHFUL life is that it:
3. Receives Regularly (11-14).
3. Receives Regularly (11-14).
The Christian life is all about being saved by grace. Grace is a hard thing because by nature grace is something that we do not and cannot earn. And to be a believer in Christ you have to receive God’s gift because you don’t deserve it.
A gracious recipient fears God.
A gracious recipient fears God.
But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
Notice we see this repetition.
Abraham said here I am at the beginning, he made himself available and he is still available to God.
HERE I AM!
Notice the divine intervention came when the sacrifice was made.
Why
God approves sacrificial obedience.
God was asking Abraham to do something outlandish and once Abraham showed that he was willing to do it he showed up.
He said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
Abraham’s sacrifice showed that he feared God.
A gracious recipient sacrifices without reservation.
A gracious recipient sacrifices without reservation.
Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son.
Abraham called the name of that place The Lord Will Provide, as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the Lord it will be provided.”
Abraham receives the ram that the Lord provided and he offers it willingly back to God as a form of worship.
Why does he sacrifice without reservation:
Because he knows the Lord will provide.
What I have found when I worship like this God always gives me something greater than I gave him.
I think worship is like the little kid who is so excited to buy his dad a gift. He buys a gift that his dad is going to flat out love and his dad receives it so gratefully, and the reality is that it does not even matter that he bought the very gift with his dad’s money.
To me that is what this picture exemplifies.
Are you living open handedly before God?
What are you holding onto that you are not willing to give over to God?
Is it your:
Time
Treasure
Talent
Is it a habit.
Is it an addiction.
I would be at a loss if I did not connect this test into the bigger picture of both the story of the Abraham and really the story of the Bible.
The real reason Abraham was able to ace this great test is because Abraham knew deep down that none of us can ace God’s test apart from what Jesus did.
We all fall short of God’s standard without exception.
Romans 3:10 “as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one;”
Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”
There is a story in the book of Revelation where it says they are looking for someone to take the scroll, they were looking for someone who was worthy of worship.
Revelation 5:4 “Then I began to weep greatly because no one was found worthy to open the book or to look into it;”
But this very thing that seems so evil and audacious that God asked Abraham to do, the very thing we see that God hates, the sacrificing of kids, the killing of babies. God did. And the very thing he never intended to do is what he did for us because he loved us.
When he put his son on the cross he did not give him a way out he killed him for our benefit.
Romans 8:32 “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?”
This final test that Abraham aced, because he was Available, a costly worshipper and a gracious recipient is the very test that God went through with so that we could have life with him forever.
So as we celebrate a man with great faith, whose life still lives on to this very day, let’s not miss the picture of the greatness of our great Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
I want to leave this invitation on the table today. If you do not know him you can begin a relationship with him today.