Beacon Sunday Service: December 29th, 2024

Well, thank you for the invitation to come here to visit you all, Beacon. It's uh it's a great honor to be here today. Uh, Pastor Peter Chung, he shared with me uh what kind of a congregation we have here: a hungry congregation, a faithful congregation. Um, and he told me how through a long season without a senior pastor, you guys not only survive, but thrived. And for you guys to be able to thrive as a church like that without a senior pastor, that's nothing short of a heroic effort by the grace of God. So I'm very thankful to be here. It's such a joy and privilege to be able to encourage you from God's word today. Um let's turn uh in our Bibles to Genesis 22. We'll be preaching, uh I'll be preaching from Genesis 22, verses 1 to 19.

But we'll start our time by reading just the first eight verses. So let's all stand for the reading of God's word. Genesis 22, starting from verse 1. Now it came about after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham. And he said, Here I am. 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. 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. 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. Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his, laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac spoke to Abraham, his father, and said, My father. And he said, Here I am, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. So the two of them walked on together. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, your word is good, and your word is truth.

And we pray for eyes of our hearts to be open so that we may delight in your word as we understand the heart of this message, the story that you have given to us. Give us the ears to hear, and the heart to obey these words that you have given us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Please sit. So as Pastor Peter mentioned, my family moved from Orange County, California to Louisville, Kentucky, back in August. And they couldn't be more different. I'm sure you can guess California versus the South. I'm sure your imagination can run wild. So I won't enumerate all the differences, but one of the pleasant, a pretty minor, but a pleasant change that I immediately noticed was the number of stars that I can see in the clear summer sky.

See, here in Los Angeles, there's all this light pollution, right? Even at nights, there's the office building lights, the home lights, the car lights, and so it distracts us and it blurs our vision from seeing the stars that are right there. We can't appreciate the beauty that's in right front of us. The eyes of our hearts are also blurred from seeing the beauty of God. Because of all the distracting lights around him. Our hearts end up loving and idolizing God's good gifts over God who gave us those good gifts. In other words, blessings from God can distract us from loving God. And Abraham was no exception. So we're gonna see in today's passage as we walk through the story of how God illuminates Abraham's blurry vision so that he can once again love God with all of his heart.

The main point of the passage I propose to you is this. Love your God who did not withhold his only son from you more than every other competing love. Love your God who did not withhold his only son from you more than every other competing love. And we're gonna look at this story from three different characters' perspective. So we're gonna go through the story three different times from three different characters' perspective, and with each turn of the story from the new character, it's going to shed additional light on this fairly well known story, but still puzzling at times, if we're honest, right? So the first character that we're going to see the story from is Abraham. And just to give you guys a little bit of a context of where Genesis 22 sits, Abraham is a pretty old man.

He's no spring chick. When God first called Abraham back in Genesis 12, he was already 75 years old. He was childless and he was hoping to have a child, but he was 75 year old man, and God called him to go to the land that I will show you. And he went with only a promise, holding on to that he held in his hands that God will give him a child who will later become a nation. But God didn't give Abraham a child right away. He had to wait 25 years. But after 25 years, Isaac was born. And in Abraham's hands, he was looking at this son, this precious son that he had to wait 25 years for, and staring back at him was the initiation of God's good promises. My guess is Isaac was Abraham's greatest earthly blessing that he received from God.

And so after raising Isaac up to be a young man, God sends this command that I'm sure would have sent the ice cold shiver down his spine. Look down at verse 2 with me again. God commands Abraham, 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. We may not hear such direct commands from God from heaven in our day to day. But if we're honest with ourselves, aren't we all facing the threat of losing what's most precious every single day? Nothing in our life is perfectly secure. There's always the possibility of losing what we treasure most. That possibility is always just right around the corner. Maybe it's your lucrative career that you've established for yourself after working years and years and years of long, frustrating hours under a harsh boss.

Or maybe it's your dream house that you just bought after years and years and years of saving up and living on poverty budget. Or let's bring it a little bit closer to home with this story. Maybe it's your child. A child that you waited for with tears as you saw all your peers have children. And maybe not just one, but maybe two or even three. None of us can grip these good things hard enough, tight enough, or even prayerfully enough to secure them from loss. We're always one phone call away, one text away, one email away, one sudden momentary turn of events away from losing it. And that momentary turn of events arrives for Abraham here in their story.

So, what do you think is going on in his mind? We're not told what he's thinking, but if I were him, these are the kind of thoughts that would immediately pop up. God, you promised this child to be a nation. How can you tell me to kill the son? What good is a dead child? Surely you've made a mistake. Maybe we can reconsider. Are you sure? There's got to be another way. Well, one thing's for sure, it sure doesn't make sense. But in verse three, we find Abraham rising early in the morning, saddling his donkey, and heading toward Moriah, the mountain where he would kill his son. And I'm sure he's rising up not eagerly, but with bags under his eyes, because he's been up all night, with queasiness in his stomach at the thought of killing his own son, and questions after questions, still flooding his mind that he doesn't know what to do with.

And yet, and yet he still has a determined will to obey God. You see, obedience doesn't mean absence of doubt. Obedience marches forward even in the presence of doubt on the basis of faith. So for three whole days, Abraham is marching step by step towards the death of his son. And I see a lot of children at this church, and so I'm sure many of you guys are here parents. So I want you to imagine what's going on in Abraham's mind as he's marching towards the killing of his son. It might as well have been a march towards his own death. But somewhere, somewhere along the three-day hike, Abraham finds supernatural faith. Look with me down in verse 5.

This is what Abraham says to his young men. I and the lad will go over there. And we, I and the boy, will worship, and we, I and the boy will return to you. And at this point, we don't really have to guess what's going on in Abraham's mind because the author of Hebrews in Hebrews 11, verses 17 to 19, tells us exactly what was going on in his mind. If you could turn the slide to the passage.

It was he to whom it was said, and Isaac, your descendants shall be called. He considered that God is able to raise people, even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type. This is Abraham's logic. If God can miraculously bring new life out of my 90-year-old wife's barren womb, then surely, then surely he can miraculously bring back my son back to life from death. That's Abraham's logic. To the unbelieving, unregenerate years. This is utter insanity. This kind of logic confounds the world. This is the kind of faith and logic that would cause you to drain your savings, including every last penny of your retirement fund, to fund orphanages around the world.

Believing that God is going to somehow, some way provide for you the rest of your life, because he is a good and powerful God. This is the kind of faith and logic that would cause you to quit your stable, lucrative, prestigious career job to become a missionary, and go to an unknown land where nobody will appreciate you, believing that God will some way, somehow sustain you, because he is a good and powerful God. This is a kind of faith and logic that would cause you as parents to willingly send your only child to the missionary field where hostile people willingly and openly kill Christians, and where death and martyrdom is not just a remote possibility, but a daily reality because you believe that God is a good and powerful God.

And even if your child dies as a martyr, he is able to even raise up your child one day. Abraham doesn't know why this is all happening, even to this point in the story, even as walking and marching towards obedience. But Abraham does know who is speaking to him. He knows who is commanding him. And that's all that matters. That's enough for Abraham to walk on towards the mountain. The who for Abraham is a promise-keeping, powerful God who is able to even raise up the dead. Now, in verses 9 to 10, we read of a rapid fire sequence of events.

As we try to keep track with all the things that are happening in just two verses. Abraham built the altar, he arranged the wood, he bound his son Isaac, laid him on the altar, Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But just as the knife in the father's hand is about to come down on his own son. A voice. A voice calls out from heaven. Let's read verses 11 and 12. 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 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.

One second later, too late, and his son would be lying on the ground, on bloodied ground, lifeless. But these timely words from heaven, they're matched by a timely sight in verse 13. 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. Earlier that day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the mountain where he would kill his own son. But now Abraham lifts up his eyes and sees God's provision for a substitute. I want to draw three applications from this story from Abraham's perspective.

To my own children, I try to teach them what obedience is with this phrase. It's not original to me. I've been taught this, but I say to them, obedience is right away, all the way with a happy heart. And that's not just a cute phrase, it's biblical. When we look at Abraham's exemplary obedience, we see that it was right away, all the way with a happy heart. So let's look at each of those three components of obedience. First, right away. In verse one, before Abraham knew what's coming at him, when God calls him, what are his words? Here I am. In verse 11, after Abraham had already determined to kill his own son in obedience, the voice from heaven also calls out Abraham, Abraham, and what does he say?

Exact same words. Here I am. Whether before or after a trial, whether before or after a hard command from God, an obedient posture towards God is always ready to obey right away. Here I am God. Delayed obedience is disobedience. And second, second component of obedience is that it's got to be done all the way. Up until verse 11, when the voice from heaven stopped the hand of Abraham, any observer, including you and I would have looked at what Abraham is doing, and we would have called him insane. What in the world are you thinking? Killing your own son. Sometimes the difference between insanity and obedience is just time.

You see, you and I are like a two-year-old trying to try really, really hard to connect two dots with a crayon. We're barely getting there.

But God sees everything. And our job, our role as his children is to obey all the way on the basis of faith. When we are lost, we obey and do the next right thing all the way to the end until God's answer and his provision comes. And lastly and thirdly, obedience is done with a happy heart. Back in Genesis 12, Abraham is first told to leave his home and go to the land that God will show him. And again, he went with nothing but a promise that God's going to give him a child that will become a nation. Now in Genesis 22, in this story, at this stage of redemptive history, Abraham has what he wanted. He has Isaac. He has the child of promise in his possession, and he's again told to go to the mountain and kill his own son.

Both times, whether in Genesis 12 or Genesis 22, whether Abraham was hoping in God's promise, or whether God's promise had already been fulfilled, whether he was childless or with a child, Abraham obeys with a happy heart. A heart that is happy in God obeys whether or not we have everything or nothing. I wonder if some of you sitting here today are struggling and wrestling to obey right away all the way with a happy heart in the midst of tragic loss or looming loss. And I just want to encourage those who are currently going through that struggle, just like Abraham, we have to look at the who, not the why.

Because the why may never come, but the who God has proven and shown to us who he is. So now we're going to look at the story from God's perspective, the second character in our story. The whole story is framed by this short phrase in the middle of verse one, when it says, God tested Abraham. So the natural question is, what's the test? Why is God testing Abraham? I want you to pay attention to how God describes Isaac in two different places in this chapter. Look with me in verse 2. In verse 2, again, pay attention to how God describes Isaac in comparison to how he will describe Isaac later on. In verse 2, he says, Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac.

It's a threefold description of Isaac. That's before Abraham was on the verge of killing Isaac on the mountain out of obedience. Now look with me down in verse 12, which is after the whole ordeal on the mountaintop, the voice from heaven. It says, I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. A twofold description. So what's missing? Whom you love from verse 2. Before this act of obedience, Isaac was characterized as someone whom Abraham loved. After the act of obedience, Isaac is no longer described as one who is loved by Abraham.

And I don't think that means Abraham stopped loving Isaac after this event. I propose to you that the test was to prove to Abraham who he loved more, God or Isaac. God's good gift or the giver of those good gifts. The test is whether Abraham loves God with all his heart. We shouldn't see God as a jealous girlfriend that's testing the guy to see if he's worthy of the relationship and commitment. You see, God already sees Abraham's heart. God sees the hearts of all men. And so God already knows what's in Abraham's heart. The test is for the benefit of Abraham, so that Abraham can see the content of his own heart.

And what did Abraham see? Well, not without a lot of wrestling and sleepless nights and maybe even some tears. But Abraham does emerge from the test with God as his first and foremost love. More than his son, his only son. And so now with Abraham's heart recalibrated to have God as his top first and foremost love, and Isaac somewhere below. Now God reiterates the blessings to Abraham that he had told to Abraham before. Look with me in verse 15 of chapter 22. Then 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 thing and have not withheld your son, your only son. Indeed, I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore, and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies.

In your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice. Did you note that at the end of verse 18? Because you have obeyed my voice. Another phrase that I teach my children is obedience leads to blessing, disobedience leads to discipline. And that's not legalism, that's just how a healthy parent-child relationship works. I mean, Ephesians 6 2 says, honor your father and mother so that it may go well with you and that you may live long in the land. See, as my children obey me, they're learning to trust me, and they're learning to love me. A few months ago, I took my son on a father-son date. So I was trying to think of all the things that he loves. So I spent the first part of the morning taking to the playground.

He rode his favorite red bike, and I just chased him around. And then afterwards, I took him to his favorite burger joint. Five guys. There's no in and out in Kentucky. And he loved it. Burgers and fries, that's his favorite thing. And then afterwards, we went out for desserts. Mingo ice cream. He loved it. And I love that he loved it. You see, my son enjoyed the blessing of our special time together because he loves me and because he trusts me. A father-son date is only a blessing if the son actually loves and trusts the father.

And to trust him most.

Abraham is like the Michael Jordan of faith. He's like the Elon Musk of faith. Never runs out of faith. He's Captain America of faith, all packaged into one. Can't you give us a more realistic example to follow? Well, I want to help us find deeper trust in God because you're not alone. I too struggle with faith and doubts. So I want to look at the story one last time from a third character's perspective. And let's not forget that there is a third character in the story. His name is Isaac. And he's in the shadows most of the story because he speaks once in verse seven. Only to ask, hey dad, where's where's where's the lamb? And then we don't hear from him again.

Then, after verse seven, after that one question, like a lamb that is led to a slaughter, he does not again open his mouth. On the mountaintop, he's delivered up as an offering and a sacrifice to God. And he's obedient to the point of death, literally, even as his own father raises a knife over his head. But this only son of Abraham was ultimately spared, as we know at the end of this story. But you and I know of another day, strikingly similar day that would come in the first century that would have a very different ending.

Another day would come when the only Son of God, Jesus Christ, crucified on the cross would not be spared. And on that day, no voice from heaven stopped the hands that drove the nails into his hands. The only cry heard that day was not from heaven, but towards heaven from the cross. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And there were, and there would be no last minute substitute to die in the place of Son of God. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died as the Lamb of God, offered up as a sacrifice for sins for all time.

As we read the story, we might even feel bad for Isaac. He's just a young lad, young boy. What has he done to deserve death? This is unfair for him. And we it's easy for us to think that because we're not told any details about Isaac. So we fill in the gaps with this picture of a young innocent man. But what if, what if the story told us this about Isaac. He was a greedy, degenerate man who didn't love his parents, and he's a kind of a son who at the first chance given to him would take all of his father's wealth and run away to squander it. Well no, the mood of the story changes, right? And we might even say his death is justified.

This is the scandal of the cross. Jesus died in the place of not young, innocent people, but in the place of greedy, degenerate, hateful idolaters like you and me. And the sin that he was sacrificed to pay was the failure for all of us to keep this one simple great commandment to love our Lord God with all of our heart. Instead of loving God, we love the good things that he gives us more. Jesus did not give up His life for good people. You and I are not good people. Our death would more than be justified.

But while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us in our place. Saints of Beacon, behold your God and Savior. The one who tests you is the one who loves you so much that he would send his only son to die in your place. And he's proved it on the cross by giving up his only son to die in your place. God's love spares nothing from hateful, fickle idolaters like you and me. God's love withholds nothing from you. And that's why you can trust him. That's why you can trust him in whatever trial, whatever loss, whatever test, because he's proven it on the cross.

You don't grow to trust someone just by trying really hard and trying harder and harder and harder to trust him. You grow in trust by getting to know a trustworthy person. And nobody is more trustworthy than God, who withholds nothing from you for your good. Brothers and sisters of Beacon.

But he was a man who was acquainted with suffering. And he once said, I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the rock of ages. When trials and tests come your way. Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Turn your eyes upon Jesus to strengthen your faith. Look full in his face until your heart brims again with unrivaled love for God. Yes, your earthly blessings may fade away. You know what? They all will. Whether one year from now or fifty years from now, every single thing in our earthly possession will fade away. But that just means that the bright shiny lights of Jesus Christ, your Savior who died in your place, shines that much brighter.

When things fade around Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ will shine supremely in your heart. And there's no greater blessing than that. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we are fickle people. And we confess this to you in faith that you would forgive us and that you would present Christ to us as the supreme shining light in our hearts. So God, I pray for this congregation without knowing all the trials and tests that they may be in. Lord, I pray that these tests that they're going through would only prove your love for them more, and that they would be able to see Jesus Christ even more clearly as a result of these tests.

We thank you for your Son Jesus Christ, who was offered up as a sacrifice in our place for our sin, so that we may enjoy your blessing. Jesus. Amen.