Yahweh Will Provide

Greeting, Passage Reading, and Opening Prayer

Good morning church! It is my delight to be bringing you the word of God this morning. If you are able, please remain standing while we read through our sermon passage today, Genesis 22.1-19:

Genesis 22:1–19 ESV

After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together. When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.” And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beersheba. And Abraham lived at Beersheba.

Let’s pray:

Gracious God, we thank you for your Holy Scriptures, for it is in your word that we come to know your character and your great love for us. We pray that as we look into the story of the binding of Isaac this morning that your Holy Spirit would enlighten our hearts to hear the good news of your gospel, and that we would see even more deeply your character and your deep love for your people. Help us to understand the challenging aspects of this passage, and above all let us trust in your sovereignty and your perfect goodness. Help us all to have ears to hear, eyes to see, and, like Abraham, hearts to obey. Amen.

Introduction

Have you ever had a person that you looked up to as a hero of the faith? Has there ever been someone that you’ve looked at and thought - I would love to have faith like them? Perhaps it was someone close to you - maybe you had a father who modeled God’s love and leadership for you, who served and led your family well, taught you the scriptures, and never failed to pray for you. Or maybe it was your grandmother who was always faithful to pray and to serve, a woman similar to Sarah Smith in C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce, one of whom it could be said that “fame in [heaven] and fame on earth are two quite different things”. Or if it wasn’t someone in your immediate family, it may have been someone from church history (either ancient or modern) - Jim Elliott, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Charles Spurgeon, John Newton, John Wycliffe, Martin Luther, Augustine, or Justin Martyr. Whoever in particular it might be for you, I think we all have people that we look up to and wonder about their faith - how is it so strong? What would it be like to have faith like that?

And if you were to ask that same question to any biblical Jew, there’s a very strong chance that their thoughts would have immediately turned to the father of their people, Abraham. He would have been the quintessential person of great faith in the Bible (although there were many - see Hebrews 11, as we will later this morning!). Our passage today showcases one of the most dramatic instances of Abraham’s faith in Yahweh - when Yahweh asks him to give up Isaac, his son of promise, as a burnt offering. There’s a lot to cover in this passage and we are going to do it in three points - first, we will talk about Yahweh’s command to Abraham, primarily focused on verses 1 and 2. Second, we will look at Abraham’s response to this command in verses 3 through 11. Third, we will look at how Yahweh provides for what Abraham needs from verse 12 through 19. So, let’s begin!

Yahweh’s Command

Please turn with me to Genesis 22.1-2:

Genesis 22:1–2 ESV

After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

Let’s not beat around the bush or pretend otherwise - this is a difficult passage! It seems as though Yahweh is not only condoning, but is actually demanding human sacrifice here! How are we to make sense of this? The very first sentence of chapter 22 gives us a clue - “After these things God tested Abraham”. First off, what are “these things”? Well, to understand that we need to look backwards a little bit across Genesis. If you were here for my sermon on Cain and Abel you might remember that there are certain literary features in Genesis that let us know that we are looking at a full section of narrative. These take the form of genealogies - typically we will see them spelled out in the ESV with wording along the lines of “Now these are the generations of [somebody]”. We see the first of these in Genesis 5, highlighting that we should read the first five chapters of Genesis as a consistent narrative. We then have the story of Noah, which ends with the beginning of chapter 10 where we get the generations of the sons of Noah. We have a short section on the tower of Babel, and then we have the generations of Shem and the generations of Terah, which brings us to Genesis 12. The next time that we see a genealogy is at the end of our passage today, in Genesis 22.20-24, where we read about the generations of Abraham’s brother Nahor. This tells us that we should consider Genesis 12-22 to be a cohesive narrative, and that when we see “after these things” in verse 1 we should call to mind the events of Genesis 12-21. So what has happened in those chapters? A lot! For the sake of time, we’ll focus just on the major plot points. First, in Genesis 12, Yahweh calls Abraham and tells him “go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed”. So Abraham gets up and goes, along with his nephew Lot. They have a brief sojourn in Egypt, where Abraham gets into trouble because he lies about Sarah’s identity because he is afraid that Pharaoh will kill him and take Sarah as a wife. They reach the land and separate, with Abraham letting Lot choose which portion of the land he wants and Abraham taking the other part - but Yahweh then appears to him and tells him that he will eventually possess the entire land. Lot is then captured, Abraham rescues him, and he meets Melchizedek. In Genesis 15, Yahweh makes a covenant with Abraham where he passes between animals that have been split in half and promises him that he will obtain the land and that his offspring will number like the stars in the sky. But Abraham has a crisis of faith where he tries to bring about the promises of God in his own timing, and he sleeps with his wife’s servant Hagar in order to obtain a son because Sarah is barren. But Yahweh speaks to him again and reiterates that he will have a legitimate son who will be his heir. In Genesis 20, Abraham has a carbon copy of the Egypt incident in the court of Abimelech, the king of Gerar. Finally, in Genesis 21 Isaac is born, Abraham expels Hagar and Ishmael, and makes a treaty with Abimelech. And that brings us back to Genesis 22.

The story of Abraham up until this point has been one of great highs (his initial obedience in Genesis 12, his defeat of the kings of the valley in Genesis 14, his belief in Yahweh’s promises in Genesis 15, the birth of Isaac) and deep lows (the incidents with Egypt and Abimelech, his unfaithfulness with Hagar). But all of those events came before the birth of Isaac. Abraham has now seen that Yahweh is faithful to fulfill the promises that he has made - and therefore it makes sense that Yahweh would at this point put him to a test. This is a request that seems so utterly at odds with the promises that God has made to Abraham. That is the point. It will allow Abraham to demonstrate his true faith in Yahweh’s promises once and for all.

In fact, the very way that Yahweh makes this request of Abraham indicates that it is something that is absolutely extraordinary. The original Hebrew here includes what is known as the “particle of entreaty”. The way that this is typically translated is by using either the English word “please” or the phrase “I beg you” - so here we are seeing Yahweh say to Abraham: “Please, take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering...” It’s a very rare construction in the Old Testament - it occurs only five times in total, in Genesis 13.14, where Yahweh tells Abraham to look all around him after he has separated with Lot and promises to give him all the land that he can see to the north, south, east, and west; in Genesis 15.5, where Yahweh tells Abraham to look to the stars and to count their number if he can, because that is how many offspring he will have; here, in Genesis 22.2; in Exodus 11.2, where Yahweh commands the people of Israel to go to the people of Egypt and ask for their gold and silver prior to the exodus; and Isaiah 7.3, where Yahweh tells the prophet Isaiah to go and meet with the wicked king Ahaz who would immediately want to murder him. In each of these instances, it is clear that God is asking something dramatic of the people that he is giving a command to, something that would be seemingly ridiculous to obey. This particular grammatical construction serves to underscore the seriousness of the command - Yahweh knows that he is asking something extraordinary of Abraham.

Now, I also don’t want us to misunderstand the nature of this test. Yahweh is not testing Abraham because he does not know how Abraham will respond. Yahweh is testing Abraham for his own benefit and for our benefit. He is allowing Abraham an opportunity to demonstrate his trust in Yahweh’s promises. It’s not that Yahweh doesn’t know how Abraham will respond - it is because Abraham doesn’t know and we don’t know how he will respond! And this fact needs to color our understanding of the seemingly crazy request that Yahweh makes of Abraham here - it is a test. God never intends for Abraham to actually sacrifice Isaac. We know this because when Abraham actually intends to do so in verse 10 Yahweh’s angel immediately intervenes! So we need not read this passage as God condoning or demanding human sacrifice - he has never intended for Isaac to die, and would never ask his people to do such a thing (indeed, there are many instances in the Pentateuch where Yahweh explicitly condemns those who practice human sacrifice (see Lev. 18.21, Deut 18.10, Micah 6.6-7). I think it helps us to consider the parallel between this and the original command that Yahweh gives Abraham in Genesis 12. There, Yahweh tells Abraham to “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you” - we see a similar three-fold construction to the command in Genesis 22. As Yahweh tells Abraham to leave his country and his family and his father’s house, he also asks him to “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love” and sacrifice him. In Genesis 12, Yahweh asked Abraham to give up his past and trust Yahweh. In Genesis 22, Yahweh is asking Abraham to give up the future that he has longed for and trust that Yahweh will still be faithful.

So we have an incredible ask of Abraham. How will he respond? Will he respond like he did when he received the promise of his own heir, where he went out and slept with his wife’s servant so that he could bring it about of his own power? Or will he respond with faith and trust that Yahweh knows what he is doing. The next few verses show us what Abraham’s response is.

Abraham’s Response

Abraham’s response to Yahweh’s request is absolutely remarkable - he gets up in the morning, saddles his donkey, takes a couple of servants, cuts the wood that would be required for the offering, and sets off for the place that God commanded him to go to. There is no hesitation on the part of Abraham. He hears the word that Yahweh has given, he obeys, gets up, and does exactly what Yahweh has commanded him to do. Can you imagine what must have been going through his mind at this time? He has been promised that he will have an heir and that his heir will eventually lead to him having descendants who are as numerous as the stars in the sky or as the sands of the seashore. And yet here is Yahweh asking that he kill that son of promise as a burnt offering. I’ve always wondered why Abraham cut the wood ahead of time and chose to bring it with him instead of simply cutting the necessary wood when he got to the location of the sacrifice. Victor Hamilton in his commentary on Genesis provides a possible reason that I find compelling and that serves to demonstrate Abraham’s faithful response to God’s command - he cuts the wood not because he is worried that there won’t be any wood at the place of the sacrifice, but because he does not want to put himself in a position where he will have any excuse to disobey Yahweh’s command. He is removing the option to use the lack of wood as an excuse to not obey. He has made all of the necessary preparations, and nothing has been left as an excuse.

That brings us to verse 5, where if this was a movie, we would probably have the record-scratch scene were we have Abraham voicing over a freeze-frame of “Yes, that’s me - you’re probably wondering how I’ve found myself in this situation”. But the truth is, he has found himself in this situation because he is resting and trusting in the promises of God. It’s amazing as we look at the description of what Abraham does - every action that he takes demonstrates that he fully intends to follow through with the command that God has given him, even if he doesn’t fully understand why God would ask him to do such a thing. It’s interesting here also that it takes them three days to travel to the place where God has commanded them to go. There’s a clear pattern in the Old Testament of important events happening on the third day (this pattern obviously extends to the New Testament as well!) - for example, on the third day Yahweh descends on Mount Sinai to speak to the people in Exodus 19.10-11. Jonah is saved from the belly of the fish on the third day (Jonah 1.17). The people of Israel cross over the Jordan River to the Promised Land on the third day in Joshua 3. In Esther 5 Esther goes before the king on the third day. It’s a sign that something monumental is going to happen.

After they arrive at the place Abraham turns to his servants and tells them to stay with the donkey, saying “I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” I want us to stop for a minute here and think in depth about what Abraham is saying. He and Isaac are going to go up to the mountain to worship, and then he says that they will both come back to the servants. This shows something of what Abraham believes is going to happen - he fully intends to carry out the command that God has given him, but he also fully trusts that God is going to do something remarkable. The author of Hebrews gives us some insight into the nature of what Abraham believed in Hebrews 11.17-19:

Hebrews 11:17–19 ESV

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.

Here we see the manifestation of Abraham’s faith - he fully intends to do the horrible deed, but he trusts that God will remain faithful to the promise that he has made, and that he will receive Isaac back from the dead. His words to the servants here are not a blind expression of warrant-less hope - they are a deep heartfelt conviction that God will be faithful to do what he has said he will do, even if the circumstances seem to make it impossible. He knows from Genesis 17.19 that Yahweh has promised that he will establish his everlasting covenant with Isaac as well, and he trusts that even if he must kill the boy, Yahweh will be faithful to do what he has promised.

So Abraham takes the wood required for the burnt offering and gives it to Isaac to carry to the place of the sacrifice. He grabs the tinder and the knife, and they start to walk up to the place where Yahweh has commanded them to go. And on the way, Isaac asks a perfectly reasonable question of Abraham - “where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham’s response is curious. There are two ways that it can be translated - the first is the way that we read it in our Bibles today “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son”, where the “my son” is used to indicate who Abraham is speaking to. It can also be understood as an “appositional phrase” that defines the burnt offering - if that is the case, then Isaac would have clearly understood from that point onward that he was intended to be the sacrifice. I think there’s actually a pretty strong case to be made that the second way is how Isaac understood it. When they arrive at the place for the sacrifice, Abraham builds the altar, lays the wood down, ties up Isaac (without any sort of resistance!) and lays him down on the altar. There’s some debate about how old Isaac would have been when this event happened - historical Christian interpretations have put his age in his early to mid-teens, probably similar in age to what Ishmael was when he and Hagar were sent away from Abraham and Sarah. Jewish interpretations have him much older, usually in his 30s when the event happened. The specific age isn’t that important, but it is important to remember that Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born. Whether Isaac was 13 or 30, it probably would not have been difficult for him to overpower Abraham if he wanted to. But we don’t read about any struggle - if anything, it seems as though Isaac was a willing participant at this point.

I think this tells us something about the faith of both Abraham and Isaac. While it’s not recorded in scripture, it seems clear that Abraham would have told Isaac at some point the story of how Yahweh spoke to him in Haran and called him to leave, how Yahweh promised him a land and a people and descendants as numerous as the seashore. He must have told Isaac about how he tried to make Yahweh’s promises come true with Ishmael and Hagar, and how Isaac was the child that Yahweh had promised him. Because both of them here are acting in a way that shows they have faith in the promises that God has made. Isaac is a willing participant because he believes in the promises too - we see here faith being passed from generation to generation. Isaac has the same hope as Abraham, that Yahweh will intervene and restore him to life as the heir of the promise. There is no struggle - there is simply obedience and faith in the promises of Yahweh.

Abraham has come a long way from the man who first heard the voice of Yahweh in Haran and left his ancestral household to obey and worship a God that chose him. He has come a long way from his lies about Sarah’s identity to save his own skin, he has come a long way from trying to bring about the promises of God via his own means by conceiving Ishmael with Hagar. He has seen the faithfulness of Yahweh to do what he has promised he will do. And if Yahweh could give him Isaac when he was 100 and Sarah was 90, he trusts that it would not be impossible for God to raise Isaac from the dead. And so he slowly lifts the knife, preparing to do what Yahweh has commanded him to do.

Yahweh Provides

And at just that moment, right as the knife is about to come down, Yahweh intervenes. He sends his messenger to call down to Abraham from heaven, saying “Abraham, Abraham!” And Abraham responds the same way that he did in verse 1: he says “Here I am”. And we come to the pivot point of our passage, Genesis 22.12, where the messenger says:

Genesis 22:12 ESV

He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”

Here we see the vindication of Abraham’s faith. He believed that even if he did sacrifice Isaac, God would have raised him from the dead and returned him to Abraham because God had promised Abraham that he would covenant with Isaac as well. But what we get to see here, and what Abraham gets to see, is that his faith is genuine. He trusted in the promises that God made so completely that even if it looked like God was asking him to do something that would nullify the promises, he trusted that God would undo that act and remain faithful.

Remember - God was not surprised by any of Abraham’s actions. He knew that Abraham would be faithful, but Abraham couldn’t know until he was tested and we as God’s people couldn’t know until he was tested either. Abraham has passed the test - he showed that his love for God and his faith in God’s faithfulness to see his promises to completion was even more powerful than the fulfillment of the promise itself.

Can you imagine the relief Abraham must have experienced when he heard the voice of the messenger? As he looks up, he hears a noise, turns around, and finds a ram stuck in the thicket behind him - Yahweh has indeed provided for himself the animal for the sacrifice, just as Abraham had proclaimed in verse 8. So he goes and takes it and offers it as a burnt offering instead of Isaac, and he names the place “Yahweh will provide”. The angel comes and speaks to him again, closing out this section of the book with a reiteration of the promises that God has already made to Abraham - he will multiply Abraham’s offspring, and all the nations will be blessed through him. Just as the story of Abraham opened in Genesis 12 with a promise, it ends here with the same promise proclaimed - with Yahweh’s assurance that he has sworn by himself that he will bring all of these things to pass.

And so Abraham goes down the mountain with Isaac and returns to his servants, just as he had said that he would. He and his entourage return home, and that is the end of the story.

So what does it mean for us?

If you’ve talked with me about applying the Old Testament, you know that I’m generally pretty skeptical about applications that are “be like this person”. But this is one situation where that’s actually a pretty good application. So good, in fact, that both James and the author of Hebrews use this story to drive home their points about the relationship between faith and works and faith in God’s promises respectively. In James 2.21-22 we read:

James 2:21–22 ESV

Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works;

James is effectively saying: “Do you want to know if your faith is genuine? See if you are like Abraham! Do your actions demonstrate that you are willing to trust that God is going to be faithful to his promises? That’s the question! If you have real faith, you will be obedient to what God commands - it shows that you actually trust him!”

And in Hebrews 11.13-19 we read:

Hebrews 11:13–19 ESV

These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city. By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.

The author of Hebrews is saying - “Do you want to see what true faith looks like? Look to Abraham (and Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and Moses, and Rahab, and so on and so forth). He trusted in the promises of God - he knew that God would be faithful!”

But Jon, you might say, it’s all well and good for Abraham to believe, after all, God spoke with him directly and made him all of these wonderful promises that he then continued to fulfill. But God hasn’t spoken to me, and he hasn’t made that kind of promise to me!

Oh but friend, yes he has! He has spoken to you in this good book - he has promised wonderful things, that he will establish for himself a people, that he will reconcile humanity to himself, and that he will one day set the world right again, the way that it was always meant to be before our sin corrupted it.

Friends, turn with me back to the story of Abraham and Isaac, because there are a few more things that I want you to see. The first is where God commands Abraham to go in order to offer up Isaac. He sends him to the land of Moriah, to one of the mountains there, to build an altar and make a sacrifice. If you’ve read the historical books in the Old Testament recently, that name might sound a little bit familiar. It pops up again in 2 Chronicles 3.1, where we read:

2 Chronicles 3:1 ESV

Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to David his father, at the place that David had appointed, on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.

On this very site, Solomon will raise up the temple. On this very site, where Yahweh provided a substitutionary sacrifice for Isaac, the priests will every year offer up a ram for the sins of Israel as part of the ceremonies on the day of atonement. On this very site where Yahweh met with Abraham, Yahweh’s presence will dwell in his temple, amongst the descendants that he promised the patriarch back in Genesis 12.

But even these things were just a foreshadowing of that better, “heavenly country” that the author of Hebrews speaks about in Hebrews 11. Let’s turn back to the pivot point of our passage today, verse 12, where we read what it is that Abraham does that fully demonstrates his devotion to Yahweh: “Now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me”. This is the ultimate act of devotion and love - that Abraham did not withhold the son of promise from God.

Friends, I am sure that you see where I am going here. For Abraham was willing to offer up Isaac to God, but God did in fact offer up his only Son for us. For there was another son of promise who would be offered up to God as a substitute for us all, one who went willingly up to the sacrifice without opening his mouth, one who carried not the wood for a sacrifice but the wood of the cross up another hill outside Jerusalem. The ram being offered as a substitute for Isaac; the sheep and goats being offered at the temple on behalf of the people - these were simply shadows of the true sacrifice, the true reality - that God himself ultimately would not withhold his son, his only son, from us, but instead sent him to the cross in our place to suffer the punishment that we deserved. But even more than that, in the same way that Abraham received Isaac back “from the dead” so did we also receive Jesus back from the dead - though not in the same figurative sense that Abraham received Isaac back! Friends, stop and ponder the beauty of this truth with me for a moment - the test that God put before Abraham was the very action that he himself was going to undertake in order to provide for our salvation! He was showing Abraham (and showing us) what he was ultimately going to do in order to restore us to relationship with him. And he did it through the descendant of Abraham, just as he promised he would.

In his gospel, John tells us in perhaps the most famous verse in the Bible (John 3.16) that “God loved the world in this way - that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”.

As Paul says in Romans 8.31-32:

Romans 8:31–32 ESV

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

How can he not give us all the things that he has promised? He already has, for he has given us Jesus.

So what ought we to do? I’ll appropriate a line from Justin’s sermon last week - “look and live”. The only proper response is to look to Jesus. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1.20,

2 Corinthians 1:20 ESV

For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.

Do you desire to have faith like Abraham? Then look to Jesus, the one in whom all God’s promises find their “yes”, who the Father did not withhold from us.

Are you tired and weary, thrown backwards and forwards by the storms of life? Then look to Jesus, for his yoke is easy, his burden is light, who the Father did not withhold from us.

Have you wondered if God could ever forgive you for all of the things that you have done? Then look to Jesus, who bore your sin and your shame on the cross, who the Father did not withhold from us.

Do you struggle to know if God loves you? Then look to the fact that God has offered us Jesus, his son, his only son, whom he did not withhold from us.

There is a wonderful Christmas song by Sovereign Grace called “God Made Low”. The last two stanzas and chorus are:

As He sleeps upon the hay

He holds the moon and stars in place

Though born an infant he remains

The sovereign God of endless days

For our sins one day He’ll die

To make us sons of God on high

Let every heart prepare Him room

The promises have all come true

Yes, and Amen! Let’s pray.

Closing Prayer

Gracious God, we thank you for your incredible faithfulness to us. In the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, we see the deep value and joy of your promises, and the incredible love that you have for us. When you tested Abraham, you did it for his sake and for ours, that we might know what faith looks like and where it should be placed - firmly upon you and your promises. We thank you that you have not just provided us with this story to show us faith, but that you have been faithful to us by sending your son Jesus to be offered up as a sacrifice on our behalf. The son that you promised was slain that we might live, and all that we need to do is look upon him and believe in his death and resurrection to be restored to you. Help us to see and to deeply feel your incredible love for us, how you loved us so much that you did not spare your own Son, but you gave him up for us all. Help us to see and to know what you have done, and let our hearts overflow with joy and gratitude towards you. Amen.