Abraham, Isaac & The Atonement

Gracious God, our fatherly thank you and praise you for your goodness and your mercy and your kindness. Thank you for the privilege of gathering together again to worship you, gathering in the presence of your people, to offer our praise to you for who you are and for what you've done. Grant by your grace the worship that we offer would be acceptable, for we know that this is only possible if we offer it the power of your Spirit and the name of your Son. And so we do offer all that we are that we have to you, the Triune God. We offer it the name of the Father, the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. As we continue our series today, our series of One Big Story, we continue to look at those major stories throughout the Biblical narrative and how they connect to the one overarching story of redemption. Today, we find ourselves in Genesis twenty two. In Genesis twenty two, we find one of the most familiar passages in the entire Bible, and as it relates to connecting to the overall picture of redemptive history, this passage is one of the easiest to connect to redemptive history, but it's one of the most difficult to understand in its context. So our tendency is to run almost immediately to the bigger picture of redemptive history. But I don't want us to pause and try to comprehend this passage. And one of the things that is missing when we try to comprehend this passage is a proper understanding of biblical worship. We don't understand what worship is about. If I was to ask you the question why did you come here today, that would be a variety of different answers. You came here today because it's what you're used to doing. You came here today because it's what you're supposed to do. You came here today because you had some need that you wanted mad. Oftentimes, if we listen to those voices out there, they would tell us that we came here today because we need His presence and His power. We listen to those voices, that's what our worship would sound like. You know, all of our songs would in one way or another talk about how desperate we are and how much we need a presence and how much we need is power. And I mean that would be our whole time, just begging the Lord for his presence and his power, because that's why we're here, as though somehow there is this supernatural transference that we need from the Lord so that we can re energize ourselves and top up, if you will, on our spiritual power before we go back out into the world to be the head. And not to tell you've heard it right, but there's something missing. There's something missing, and it's surprising what that something is. I'm gonna make a statement that might make you a little uncomfortable at first, but that's okay because I'm gonna show you how this statement is consistent with what we find in scripture. The statement is this that the center of worship is not presence or power or even praise, but the center of worship is actually sacrifice. Let me say that again, the center of worship is actually sacrifice. And if we don't comprehend this, then we won't comprehend what's happening in Genesis twenty two. Now, the center of most of the world's worship has always been understood to be sacrificed. If you look at the religions of the world, one of the things that most of the religions of the world have in common is the practice of sacrifice. If you look at Buddhism and Hinduism, Judaism, you look at all these religions of the world, you look at tribal religions around the world, and one of the things that they all have in common is some form of sacrifice. The reason that this is true is because men have a knowledge that is in them from God, and it is a knowledge of their guilt. We know that we are guilty. Ironically, I would argue, we know that we're supposed to die. But these sacrifices are offered up before God as substitutes, if you will, for us, And the level of our sincerity is often determined by what it is that we bring as a sacrifice. Either we bring some animal that is worth a great deal of money, or we bring hundreds or thousands of them to offer as sacrifices. But this is not a new thing. It's not a unique thing. People all over the world have always understood this. This sacrifice has often taken various forms. The sacrifices are sometimes symbolic substances, a grain offering, a flower offering. We read about these even in the Old Testament, right. Sometimes they're even more symbolic than that. We read about the sacrifice of praise the sacrifice of thanksgiving in Psalm fifteen, verse fourteen. There's even a popular song. You know, we bring the sacrifice of praise into the House of the Lord, and we offer unto you the sacrifices of thanksgiving, right, the sacrifice of praise, the sacrifice of thanksgiving. Again, when we hear this initially at the center of our worship is sacrifice, we are no, No, it can't be. It must be gratitude, gratitude for what. Don't answer that. Yet, it must be praise, it must be presents it, it must be some other thing. Sometimes there was the sacrifice of symbolic animals. We know that Israel's sacrifice and the Tabernacle and later in the Temple was given in painstaking detail as to what animals were acceptable, what animals were not, how they were to be sacrificed. Israel's temple listened to this. Second Chronicles, chapter seven and verse twelve. Now Solomon has finished building the temple, and the Lord visits him and basically says he accepts this temple, but listen to what he says. Then the Lord appeared to Solomon in the night and said to him, I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a house of sacrifice. Israel's temple was a house of sacrifice. This is what happened in the temple, over and over and over again, all day every day. As God's people were reminded of the weightiness of their sin, and as they were reminded of the holiness of God, and as they were reminded that there was a debt to be paid, that sinners owed something to God, and this was significant. The smell of blood and burnt flesh rose up from the temple day in and day out. God's people were constantly reminded of how costly sin is, and they were constantly reminded that it was never gone away. That's what the author of Hebrews says in chapter ten, is it not? Those sacrifices could not do away with sin. That's why they had to be we offered continually. It wasn't until later that a once for all sacrifice would be made again. We'll get to that. We can't understand this unless we understand man's guilt and its significance. But even this only goes so far. You and I, most of us have probably never seen the sacrifice of an animal, so it's not something that we would be very comfortable with if we were to see it. And yet here were people who saw it all the time. But they saw something else as well. They saw human sacrifice. It wasn't ordinary, it wasn't an everyday occurrence, but it was a reality. Listen to this from one commentator speaking about this passage. In the ancient Near East, the god that provides fertility l is also entitled to demand a portion of what has been produced. This is expected in the sacrifice of animals, brain and children. Just think about that for a moment. Texts from Phoenician and Punic colonies like Carthage in North Africa describe the ritual of child sacrifice as a means of ensuring continued fertility. The Biblical profits and the Laws and Deuteronomy and Leviticus expressly forbid this practice, but that also implies that it continued to occur. In fact, the story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac suggests that Abraham was familiar with human sacrifice and was not surprised by Yahweh's demand. Was it extraordinary, Yes, it was extraordinary, but obviously not out of the question, because this was something that was required by many of the gods with whom Abraham would have been familiar. This was a problem in Israel, as elder both reminded us this morning. Even in our reading on last week, we read about one of his reels leaders sacrificing his son. This is why we find, for example, in Leviticus eighteen twenty one and twenty verse two, you shall not give any of your children to offer them to Mullick, and so profane the name of your God. I am the Lord. Say to the people of Israel, anyone of the people of Israel, or of the strangers whose sojourn in Israel, who gives any of his children to Mullik shall shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones. So offering one's child to Mulak, and Mullik was the god to whom most often these children were offered, was a capital offense. It was an offense punishable by death. This was not something that God expected or accepted from his people. Well, then that leads to a question, does it not. The question is why would he ask this of Abraham. We'll get there, but for now, suffice to say, the law to Abraham, it was given to Moses. Abraham doesn't have Deuteronomy, Abraham doesn't have Leviticus. Abraham doesn't know that this is something that is file and unacceptable to Yahweh. It's going to figure that out. Modern man is scandalized by the idea of blood sacrifice. Modern man can't even take himself there. Modern man can't wrap his head around it. This is why, in fact, former head of the Church of England, the Archbishop of Canterbury, once said that the idea of penal substitutionary atonement. By the way, this is the idea that Christ died for sin, once for all, the just, for the unjust, in order that he might bring us back to God. He says that it is no more than cosmic child. Apar highly offended by the idea of sacrifice. And so what do we do. We remake worship into something that does not acknowledge or does not require a sacrifice from us, nor does it acknowledge sacrifice from God. We remake worship as something that is just purely experiential. Coming here has nothing to do with sacrifice. It has everything to do with us being connected to some power so that we can then go out into the world and use that power to manipulate the world and get what we want in the world. This is the way we've remade worship. But at its center and its core, is sacrifice. And I'm not talking about the sacrifice of your time to be, I'm not talking about the sacrifice of a few quatcha in the basket. Talking about sacrifice in the truest sense of the word. And it is only in this context that we can understand what happens with Abraham. So now let's look at the text. We won't necessarily be looking at it in order not only the sacrifice the center of most of the world's worship, sacrifice was also the center of Abraham's worship. This was a routine trip. And this is one of the things that's amazing and quite obvious when you read the passage here in Genesis chapter twenty two. As we'd say back in Texas, this wasn't his first rodeo, right, he had done this before. Look with me, beginning verse six, and Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son, And he took his hand 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 burn offering, my son. So they went both of them together. Notice what Isaac didn't say. Isaac didn't say, what is all this. Isaac says, we've done this before. I know what that is. I know what that is, I know what that is. But something's missing. In fact, there's a very important piece that's missing. So sacrifice was central to Abraham's worship, and it was central to the worship of his son, Isaac, who had been taught under the tutelage of his father. This was not something new, the idea that they would go to Mount Mariah and that they would offer sacrifice to the Lord. So not only for most of the world to sacrifice the center of worship, but for Abraham it was the center of worship. For Israel, it was the center of worship. In fact, I just looked at it again. You know, in Exodus, no less than a dozen times. Moses says, not just let my people go, and not just let us go so that we can worship. But he says no less than a dozen times, let us go so that we can sacrifice, because he could not comprehend worship apart from sacrifice. Nor would Abraham have been able to contemplate worship apart from sacrifice. Nor would David or Solomon or any of the people in the Old Testament have been able to contemplate worship apart from sacrifice. It was an unthinkable thing. They were linked inexorably, and you could not have one without the other. Worship requires sacrifice. So Isaac asks his father where is the sacrifice? Because it would not have been enough to just go to the top of the mountain and light a fire. Amen. And there are people who do that. I don't think they are here, but you know, in the West we have these people called wickens. Other people call themselves pagans and druids, and they'll do that, right, just go light a big fire, take off all their clothes and run around the big fire. Okay, that wouldn't have been acceptable. It's not acceptable now. It wouldn't have been acceptable then. So Isaac understood that something was missing. You cannot have worship without sacrifice. The second thing I want you to see is this that Abraham will be God without question, without question. It is important. Abraham had plenty of flaws, but there is a reason that he is referred to as the Father of the faithful, and this is because when it came down to it, when Yahweh said go, Abraham went amen. And here's another example. We have verses one and two. And this is ironic because we're so scandalized by the idea of human sacrifice that we think that even this obedience somehow has to be sinful. But remember this is something that Abraham has seen, and Yahweh has not told him that it's unacceptable. Other gods expect this verse one. 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. Case you're wondering, don't go get Ismael, amen, and go to the land of Mariah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. And he went, think about that. Think about that. I'm going to destroy sodom intomorrow. Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait what what if it's what if it's fifty righteous? Wait? Will you will you spare them? Then? Yeah? For fifty of it? Okay? Wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wif there's forty wait wait wait wait, go sacrifice your son? Not a word? Not a word? What an amazing contrast. Yet this was an act of faith, and we're going to understand the nature of that faith. Momentarily, h Abraham didn't hesitate to offer his son when the moment came. Perhaps we would think, perhaps, you know, God says this, and in that moment you just say okay. But you know, it's a multiple day journey. There's a three day journey to get to the place. Certainly, Abraham's thinking that by the time we get to this place, y'all is gonna say something other than this, because here's another promise here, and that promise is that through Isaac, will your offspring be numbered? How is this going to happen if I kill the boy? But when he gets to the place, it becomes obvious that that's not his thinking. He is not thinking that, you know, certainly, certainly, yeah, wagh will change his mind when we get there. Look at verse nine. 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. By the way. Isaac is not a baby at this point. Abraham is an old, old, old man, well passed one hundred years old. Isaac's old enough to not get tied down by a hundred plus year old man. Amen. So we don't just see obedience from Abraham. Here, we see obedience from Isaac. 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 let your hand 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. Again, beyond the ethics here, beyond us being scandalized by the fact that what we're talking about here is the sacrifice of a human being, ask yourself this question, how far would God have to go before he found something in your life. That would cause you to say, I don't think so. How far? For some of you, we don't even have to get to son or daughter. For some of you, God could tell you to give up your car and you would say, ah, that's too much. Can't say amen, you want to say ouch? How far would God have to go? And I'm saying this not to shame us. I'm saying this so that we understand the magnitude of the faith displayed here. But why this is the fascinating part. Abraham believed that God could raise the dead. Watch this verses four and five. On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from Afar that 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. He doesn't say, listen, the two of us are going. One of us is coming back. He says, the boy and I are going to go over there and worship. Notice again, worship equals sacrifice. The boy and I are going to go over there and worship, and then we are coming back. Abraham was ready to slaughter Isaac, and Abraham absolutely believed that Isaac was going to walk back down that mountain. But don't take my word for it. Listen to this. First of all, why would he believe this because of the promise that through Isaac offspring will be numbered. But then in Hebrews Chapter eleven, verses seventeen through nineteen, by faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promise, 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. Why did he do it? God has made a promise, and the only way that God could keep this promise and require this act of obedience is if God is going to raise the boy from the dead. Again, think of ourselves as it relates to this, and recognize that this is theology that Abraham has not been taught yet. The idea of the resurrection is something that's going to come later in redemptive history. This is not something that God has taught Abraham about himself. But Abraham knows that God is a god of his word. Abraham knows that Sarah should not have been able to have a child. Abraham knows that God has made a promise and said that through Isaac, your offspring will be numbered. And so Abraham just reasons this, God, who always keeps his word, is only going to be able to do it if he raises my boy from the dead. Now, think about that in light of the way that we live. I'm in a relationship with a non believer, and I know the Bible says that I'm not supposed to be unequally yoked with an unbeliever. Your assumption creates a new theology, But unfortunately, the new theology that's usually created is God must not have understood my circumstance, and he must have been talking to everybody else. Or we reason well, God has allowed me to go too far in this relationship and exercise a complete lack of wisdom. Therefore, God must be planning to do something to overcome the consequences of my sin. That's not the reasoning that we saw with Abraham. That reasoning would look more like this. God says, do not be unequally yoked together with an unbeliever. Lord, have mercy. I love this woman, Lord, I want her, I do I know what you said in your word. I just but I want her, But I know that you are a God of your word, So I'm going to let go, believing that either you will work in such a way that this person will no longer be an unbeliever and you're bringing back, or you will work in such a way that what you bring instead will make me realize that I was thinking too small. But you and I both know nine times out of ten, that's not the way we think. God hates divorce. Yes, I know God hates divorce, but he also must hate husbands that make their wives miserable. So I'm getting a divorce. We change, I think again, we're changing our understanding of theology based on our circumstances. But notice the difference. At the center of Abraham's theology was God and his promise. At the sinner of our theology is me and my happiness. Whatever it is that God is going to do out of the ordinary, he's going to do to keep me happy, because that's why God exists, to keep me happy. Whereas Abraham was saying, God keeps his word, and the only way that he could demand this of me and keep his word is by doing something I've never seen, never heard, never thought of before. But he's God, and I believe he's going to do it. So you stay here. Me and my boy are going up, and me and my boy are coming back. Not only that, but notice the third thing. Not only is the center of most of worship throughout the history of the world sacrifice. Not only is the center of Abraham's worship sacrifice, not only is the center of Israel's worship sacrifice, but the center of our worship is sacrifice. And Genesis chapter twenty two exists in part to remind us of that reality. In fact, not only is the center of our worship sacrifice, but the center of our worship is this very sacrifice, the sacrifice that we find in Genesis chapter twenty two. How is that. Well, our worship is based on a substitutionary sacrifice, and that is exactly what God provided for Isaac, a substitute Verse thirteen. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. Here's what's amazing about this. The text doesn't say it, but more than likely the ram was there the whole time. But if a man thinks he's about to take his son's life, he'll miss a whole lot, including a ram in the bush. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. It was a substitute for his son. So Abraham called the name of that place. The Lord will provide what a substitute, as it is said to this day, on the mount of the Lord it shall be provided. Don't miss that on the mount of the Lord, mount on Mount Mariah, it shall be provided. What shall be provided on the mountain range of Mariah. A substitute shall be provided not just for Isaac, but also for Abraham and for all who are Abraham's descendants by faith One Peter chapter two, verses four and five. As you come to him a living stone, rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious you, yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifice, says acceptable to God through Jesus Christ, our worship right here, right now today. It's built on sacrifice. Why is it that we can offer this acceptable sacrifice because of the substitute that the Lord provided on this very mountain range Galatians three seven through nine. Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham, and the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. But how do we get this? We get this because the God who did not require Abraham to kill his son Isaac, actually did on that same mountain range, kill his son Jesus, who was our substitute. How do we know? First Chronicles chapter twenty one, verse fifteen. And God sent the Angel to Jerusalem to destroy it. But as he was about to destroy it, the Lord saw and he relented from the calamity. And he said to the angel who was working destruction, it is enough. Now stay your hand. And the Angel of the Lord was standing by the threshing floor of Ornan, the Jebucite. So there's a threshing floor verse eighteen. Now, the Angel of the Lord had commanded Gad to say to David that David should go up and raise an altar to the Lord on the threshing floor of Orner the Jebusite. So there's a threshing floor. David raises an altar on the threshing floor. This is a thousand years after Abraham. But how do we know that it's on the same mountain range Chapter twenty one, verse twenty eight. At that time, when David saw that the Lord had answered him at the threshing floor of Ordon the Jebusite, he sacrificed there. Second Chronicles, chapter three, verse one. Then Solomon began to build the House of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Mariah, where the Lord had appeared to David, his father, at the place that David had appointed on the threshing floor of Ordon the Jebucite, same mountain range. Abraham two thousand BC. Take your son to the top of the mountain and sacrifice him. And he goes to the top of this mountain on the mountain range of Mariah, and he raises his knife to kill his son, and God says, don't take your son's life. There's a substitute over there. And here's what Abraham didn't know that if he could see God pointing through time. God was not just pointing at the ram and the bush on that day, but he was pointing to another who a thousand years after David would be sacrificed on the same mountain range of Mariah, on a hill called Cavalry, So that two thousand years earlier, as God is saying to Abraham, don't kill your boy, there's a substitute for him, He's not just pointing at that Ram who was killed that day. He was pointing to the lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. He was pointing to the sacrifice that stands at the center of all authentic Christian worship, because it is that sacrifice that makes us clean. It is that sacrifice that makes us whole. It is that sacrifice that makes us righteous when we come to Him by faith. And it is that sacrifice that makes the worship that we offer acceptable to God. Because God made him who knew no sin, to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. How does this happen? Isaiah says, all we like sheep and gone astray. Each of us had turned to his own way. But God hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all so that on the Christ, on the Cross, Christ is our substitute, and our sinfulness is imputed to him. We don't have to die, just like Isaac. We don't have to die because there's one who dies in our place, and Christ's active obedience and the righteousness that he won is imputed to us, so that, as Paul says in Romans, God can be both just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus. Folks, the sinner of all human worship has always been sacrificed. But it's wrong. It's wrong because it assumes that there is something that we can sacrifice, even something as precious as another human being, that will appease God and take away our sin. It's wrong. The sinner of Abraham's worship was sacrificed. It wasn't wrong. It was just short sighted and couldn't see far enough. The center of David's worship, the center of Solomon's worship, was sacrifice, and it wasn't wrong. It wasn't wrong. It just had no idea what it was foreshadowing. And the center of our worship is sacrifice. We don't gather here so that we can somehow manipulate time and space and nature, and so that we can somehow access for ourselves some kind of power that will allow us to go out there and unleash that power against the world that has no defense for us. That's not why we gather. We gather here today because we owe a debt that we could never pay. Christ died for sin, once for all, the just, for the unjust, in order to bring us back to God. That's why we gather and sing things like amazing grace, How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found. Was blind, but now I see because the sinless Savior died, My sinful soul has counted free because God the Just was satisfied to look on him and pardon me. Everyone is trying to offer God a sacrifice that is sufficient, and all the while God is the one who offered a sacrifice that is the only one that has ever been or will ever be sufficient. What is the sacrifice at the center of your worship? Do you believe that God would give his only son and then be satisfied with your time? Do you believe that God would give his only son and then be satisfied with your quatcha. Do you believe that God would give his only son and then be satisfied with anything else. No, there is salvation in no other and there is no other name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved. Our worship it is built on sacrifice. The only question is he is yours the right one. Let's pray, Oh God, how we rejoice, How we rejoice in the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf. How we rejoice in the sacrifice that satisfied your righteous wrath against sin. How we rejoice in the perfect sacrifice given on behalf of imperfect sinners. And how we rejoice and the fact that that sacrifice brings us justification, adoption, sanctification, and glorification. In His name, Grant by your grace that our worship might always be built on sacrifice, on none other than the sacrifice of Christ. Shall we pray this in His name?