Trust of a Man

Meaning For Men Series

Introduction

Introduction

Good morning brothers, let’s get started with our study this morning. Not sure if you all remember but last year back in September we started listening to a lecture series by RC Sproul named “Meaning for Men”. It was a series of messages delivered at a “men’s conference” sometime in the early 90s. So I’m convinced that we can learn a lot by reflecting in these messages, so we will listen to the second lecture today and then afterwards we will open for some discussion.

If you remember the title of the first message was “The Word of a Man” where we dealt with the subject of us man, being a man of our word, to be trustworthy and we looked into the meaning of

Start the message: 40min.

All right… If you remember the title of the first message was “The Word of a Man” where we dealt with the subject us men being man of our word. We learned about what it means to make a promise, we talked about how serious it is to take an oath before God and the fact that according to our Lord we need to let our yes be yes and our no be no. And so in this message Sproul teaches what it means to be a man of Trust, and so and he goes to Abraham’s ultimate trial where God tested him. I confess that meditating in this story after becoming a father myself, it makes it even more real.

If we consider what let up to this point in Abraham’s story, from chapters 15 through 17 God makes a covenant with Abraham, and we see his name changed from Abram, meaning “exalted father” to Abraham, meaning “father of a multitude”. Now can you imagine how hard it must have been for him, to receive the promise of the blessed seed, that he would be the father of many nations, and still having to endure many years of waiting, and waiting until the promise is fulfilled. Now, I don’t believe Isaac was a little boy when Abraham was tested. It was many years later, now I haven’t looked deeper into this but as far as how old Isaac was at this point, I’ve seen different numbers thrown around, from 15 to 35 years old. I know Matthew Poole’s commentary says he was 25. And all of sudden God commands him to take Isaac’s life with his own hand. And yet he trusted the word he received from God and was quick to follow through. Now I was reading Calvin on this passage and he thinks that the real conflict in Abraham’s head is not merely having the son taken from him, it goes way beyond that, He says:

Now after Isaac is born

“If we compare all the other spiritual conflicts Abraham engaged in with this one event, they are mere shadows. For the reason for his own sadness was not his own bereavement or that he was commanded to kill his only heir, but that in the person of this son, the whole salvation of the world seemed to perish.”

Calvin, J. (2001). Genesis (p. 201). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

Now we can spend a lot of time unpacking all the imagery behind this story, all the types and shadows that pointed ultimately to the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. But unlike the case of Abraham, where the Angel actually stopped him, God withheld NOT his only begotten son, but killed him.

God withheld NOT his only begotten son, but killed him,

“The salvation that flows from that, the redemption that is given to us from that does not come to us automatically, God requires faith, God requires that we place our trust in Christ, without that trust, without that faith the benefits of his death are not yours, but a christian man is a man who trusts, for the just shall live by faith.”

We know that God’s word is sure, and that his promises are altogether certain, even while knowing that our trust in God is often weak. What does it mean to be men of trust?

Was Abraham always this man of unrelenting faith and trust in God? Did he make mistakes?

Let this cup pass from me, but not my will but your will Father.

What other biblical characters can we cite as examples of m

Now I can’t help but bring up the subject of what we are all going through here dealing with this pandemic.

It is without a doubt that what’s happening now is a judgement from God and each one of us is affected

How did God work in his life to shape him

Without a doubt Abraham was a real person, with real struggles, temptations and weaknesses. His faith and trust in God at the sacrifice of Isaac can be seen as the fruit of God’s sanctifying work of brokenness and repentance that He worked in Abraham, so that at this point in his life, he was committed to following and trusting God to the death, versus his previous walk, with doubt, fear, and compromise.

I want to point out this verse in Genesis 22:5

The New King James Version Chapter 22

And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”

The New King James Version Chapter 22

And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”

How does this verse relate to what states about Abraham?

The New King James Version Chapter 11

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.

We can apply much of what we heard today about trust to our current situation with the coronavirus. How can we best deal with many of our trials and struggles that will result from this pandemic?