Abraham and Isaac

But, still yet, humanity’s tendency toward sin remained. What God desired is for the descendants of Noah to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Genesis 9:1). But instead, the ones who were called to replenish rebelled. Here is their stated goal as put plainly in Genesis 11:4…

Genesis 11:4 KJV 1900

4 And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

Almost as if they were unaware of God’s covenant and being knowingly disobedient, they set out to create for themselves this permanent residence with a man-made tower at the center of it. And this tower is going to be a source of pride for them (“let us make us a name”).

But also, they believed that this tower was going to be a source of protection from something. Anyone know what it could be??? (future floods)

So again (as is with so many instances in this Book), humanity deserved full and final judgment. And AGAIN… God chose to distribute mercy instead. In another example of undoing what He had done initially, the one who brought order to disorder in the days of Creation introduced disorder to the rebellious people by “confusing their language.”

Genesis 11:5–9 KJV 1900

5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded. 6 And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. 7 Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech. 8 So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city. 9 Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.

Verse 6 is particularly interesting - God understands that the power of humanity unified is something special. But unified for the wrong purpose, it’s evil.

So one of the things He does is to confuse their language. And unable to communicate with one another, they had no choice but to stop the project. And He scatters them to do what they were supposed to: be fruitful and multiply.

But that’s not to say that God is against the unified humanity’s potential. Because the goal is for everyone to come into the body of Christ. And what happens when you receive the Holy Ghost? You speak in other tongues as the Spirit gives the utterance. SO - the Church is the correct iteration of Babel! We come together in the body of Christ, we have one language, and we’re not advancing our own kingdom - we’re advancing HIS!

And it will be a glorious thing, because in the end, we will rule and reign with Him!

Another Savior

So… they are scattered. And they are multiplying in the earth in different regions.

And as the population of the world increased, so did sin. Another flood was surely justified. Maybe the first few times it rained, everyone breathed a sigh of relief when it stopped before flooding!

But after every thunderstorm, arched in the sky as if it was being hung from heaven itself… was a rainbow. A sign of God’s covenant.

The rainbow was not placed in this world as a sign of anything else! It is not PRIDE. It is COVENANT!

It reassured humanity that God was faithful to His promise. “If people will just willingly obey me, they will reap blessings.” Noah found out.

And generations later, God call for obedience was responded to by another man: Abram.

Genesis 12:1 KJV 1900

1 Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will shew thee:

And we learn a few verses later:

Genesis 12:4 KJV 1900

4 So Abram departed, as the Lord had spoken unto him; and Lot went with him: and Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran.

What happened?

Abram heard a command from God.

He then obeyed that command without knowing exactly where he was going.

And his obedience resulted in a covenant with a promise from God to make him a blessing to all nations.

Anyone noticing a pattern here?!

I’ve told you - no one finds out if water can be walked on unless they obey the Lord and take a step where there is no step to step down on!

I know that we live a generally comfortable life and we tend to avoid and run away from risk. But it’s not merely risk when you’re putting yourself out there for God - it’s FAITH! That’s what the Apostles had! That’s what our Apostolic elders had - even though they might have not have had much else!

If you’re going to see a move of God, you’re going to have to move yourself!

I Will Always Hope in the Gracious Mercy of God

Something we discover in these stories is that there is always the mercy of God in action. There is definitely judgment, but those who live for Him receive mercy.

Listen: we can be eternally grateful that God doesn’t give us what we deserve. Truthfully, we deserve judgment… but He gives us mercy! We deserve death… He gives us life.

It’s like a judge allowing a guilty person to go free. The mercy of God allows us to escape the death penalty of sin.

But we have to understand the whole of God’s nature. Because He is holy, He cannot just ignore sin. Someone has to pay the penalty and suffer the sentence we deserve. And that is the gospel. It’s the covenant that all of these Old Testament scriptures are pointing us toward!

The gospel teaches us that God Himself took our sins and our sorrows on Himself. He paid our penalty; He suffered our sentence.

And it goes beyond just getting pardoned! Not only do we not get what we deserve because of His mercy, but we get what we do not deserve because of His grace!

John 10:10 NKJV

10 The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

God’s Covenant with Abraham

The Most Unlikely Choice

Now… let’s check out this Abram guy a little more.

In Genesis 17:5, God renamed Abram as “Abraham.” Anyone have a guess at what that name means??? (“father of many nations”)

Now, here’s what’s ironic about that. When God first called them, Abraham and Sarah were older in age, and they were childless. Not the most optimistic scenario for a “multitude of descendants.”

But God proved yet again that He can make something out of nothing. So He cures Sarah’s barrenness and gives her their promised son, Isaac. And - also interesting - what Abraham and Sarah hoped would be an unveiling soon after receiving the promise, proved to be more of a slow, 25 year unfolding of God’s promise as they walked in covenant.

Here’s what He told Abraham:

Genesis 12:2–3 NKJV

2 I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

And the rest of the Bible’s amazing story invites us to observe Abraham’s journey of faith and God’s fulfillment of this covenant. Step after step.

And because Abraham obeyed and God was faithful, we today all benefit from God’s plan to bless the nations through Abraham!

Abraham Believed and Obeyed

Now, everyone say “BELIEVE” and say “OBEY.” These are action words.

Just like Noah, Abraham put feet on his faith. When God told Abraham to go, Abraham went. As Abraham is walking with God, God continues to reiterate His covenant.

Now, not surprisingly, Abraham battled fear and doubt on the way.

He even tried to force this thing by siring a son named Ishmael when God didn’t answer as quickly as Abraham had hoped.

At one point of doubt, God told Abraham to look up toward heaven and count the stars. And that became enough reassurance for Abraham.

Genesis 15:5–6 NKJV

5 Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” 6 And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.

Now, Abraham had a sign of the covenant, too. Remember what Noah’s sign of the covenant was? (rainbow)

For Abraham and his descendants, the sign was circumcision. God said:

Genesis 17:11 ESV

11 You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.

And then, God gives another prophetic page from His great plan:

Genesis 17:21 NKJV

21 But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year.”

What did Abraham do? He obeyed immediately. He and his whole household were circumcised.

I Will Seek Encounters with God that Renew My Covenant Relationship with Him

And all because of that obedience, the blessing still flows today!

What we’re seeing here is an example of how God wants to interact with humanity. He directs, we follow. He has a master plan for all of us together, but it unfolds in our lives individually.

If I can take that down even further: God has a massive plan for this church that is difficult for any of us to imagine! But the way that it’s going to play out is through our individual lives! God has placed you here with great purpose!

You want to know how the New Testament would begin???

Matthew 1:1 KJV 1900

1 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Abraham is sitting there, looking up at the night sky counting the stars. And little does he know that one of his descendants would be… Jesus Christ, God in flesh… who would be also called the “bright and morning star” (Revelation 22:16).

Abraham’s Final Test

The Call to Mount Moriah

Let me point out again, because of what we’re about to read now, that Abraham’s walk with God was not always easy.

Once he receives this promised son, God promptly tells Abraham to take Isaac up to Mount Moriah and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.

Now… a lot of people have great problems with this situation. Child sacrifice was a horrible but common thing in the pagan tribes that were in the surrounding area. But the God of creation had never commanded something like this.

Was Abraham willing to do for his God what pagans did for theirs?

Abraham starts gathering materials for the sacrifice. And when Isaac asks about the lamb, Abraham gives one of the most amazing, curious, and bold prophetic statements of all time:

Genesis 22:8 KJV 1900

8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.

By this point in Abraham’s walk with God, he had learned to trust God completely. Hebrews gives us some perspective:

Hebrews 11:17–19 NKJV

17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, 18 of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called,” 19 concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.

How is a father going to be able to obey a command to sacrifice his promised son? There was this unshakable faith that the God who gave him his son could raise his son back to life.

God’s Final Provision

And God would honor this faith.

Because just as Abraham is about to bring down the knife, the angel stops him before he could sacrifice his son. And perhaps with his heart being 150 bpm and sweat rolling all down his head, he looks up… to see a ram caught in the thicket.

God had provided.

And YET AGAIN, in a beautiful prophetic way, this foreshadowed a future moment when God in the flesh, Jesus Christ, would willingly offer Himself at Calvary as a sacrificial lamb for the sins of humanity.

When you read this…

Genesis 22:8 KJV 1900

8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.

…He would quite literally “provide Himself” as a lamb!

You need to underline that in your Bible!

Abraham believed God could raise his promised son after death. And Jesus’ empty tomb proved Abraham’s faith was justified! The promised Son of God rose in victory over death after three days!

And here’s where Abraham really connects with Jesus… If you look at what Peter was preaching right after the day of Pentecost… he started preaching at the Temple that the Abrahamic covenant was fulfilled through Jesus Christ and it was sealed with the promise of the Spirit.

Acts 3:25–26 KJV 1900

25 Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. 26 Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.

Do you see how important the Old Testament is to the New Testament?!

Promises made hundreds and thousands of years ago… being fulfilled even in your life today!

Abraham’s Final Act of Faith

One wise man said:

“A faithful man walks by faith in the present while preparing for the future.”

- Anon

Years later, as we look toward the end of Abraham’s life, Abraham’s sweet wife Sarah died. And here, Abraham shows again his great faith.

He purchased the cave of Machpelah in the Promised Land as a place to bury her. Generations later, Jacob charged his sons to bury him there, as well.

Here’s why that is important:

Over four centuries later, when the Israelites had come out of bondage in Egypt and eventually made it into the Promised Land, they did so by following in Abraham’s footsteps.

Here’s what Abraham had done: he had, in a final act of faith, purchased land and staked a claim of faith on the promise of God.

I Will Trust God with Everything

This guy Abraham… was human. He dealt with impatience, doubt, frustration… just like we do! All while he was waiting on God’s promises to come to pass.

Being in covenant with God does not always mean everything will make perfect sense. We have to remind ourselves that God does not call us to understand; He calls us to trust.

God proves Himself trustworthy every day with each new sunrise. Think on that.

With His Spirit inside us and His Word to guide us, we have every reason to put every season into His hands.

Speaking of Jesus, the writer of Hebrews wrote:

Hebrews 2:13 KJV 1900

13 And again, I will put my trust in him…

Is there an “and again” step you need to take today?

Conclusion

If you haven’t broken through to the Holy Ghost in a while - you need to do that this very morning.

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