The Lord Will Provide - Pastor Tom Loghry
In Genesis 22, we see God challenge Abraham’s faith by asking him to sacrifice his son, foreshadowing God’s own sacrifice for us.
Transcript:
This is from Genesis 22 verses 1 through 5. Some time later, God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. Then God said, take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you. Early the next morning, Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him 2 of his servants and his son.
Right. 1, he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering. He set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then will come back to you.
For 6 years, our church had no meeting place. This began in April of 1861, the same month in which the Civil War came upon our country. Miles Pray, the church clerk, had been paying rent for a tabernacle, but he couldn't pay anymore. There just weren't enough people. It seems that they were down to around 13 people at that time.
I wonder what that was like. Well, I'm sure that there were some sweet times together. It must have been a season of discouragement for them, especially in the midst and aftermath of war. Yes, they persevered meeting in homes, but to do that for 6 years, that's difficult. How many times they must have prayed for spiritual renewal and for our church to grow, wondering when their prayers would be answered.
The time came on September 22, 1866. Daniel Reid, an Advent Christian evangelist assisted by some other local Advent Christians, held a 20 day tent revival here in Scituate. Somewhere between 70 to 80 people put their faith in Christ, and if you appreciate how small Scituate would have been back that time, that's a significant response. It would have been a significant response today, too. Over the next year, the church became formally organized.
They purchased a small tin shop down in the village for a chapel, and they opened the building for use on October 19, 1867. On the same day, they baptized 61 people. Can you imagine that baptizing 61 people in 1 day? The Lord provided.
RCC has known its ups and downs in all the years since that time, but one thing has remained the same. The Lord has provided. Our story is just a small thread in the larger fabric of God's history of provision which is ultimately tied together in Jesus Christ. This series has drawn us to look at Abraham. But our gaze shouldn't stop on the man.
We should look through Abraham to see God more clearly. Abraham is a God given lens so that we know who God is and his love for us, that he is the God who provides. That's exactly what we see here in Genesis 22. We open up chapter 22 with some indication that some time has passed on. It says sometime later, God comes to Abraham, speaking to him again, and as I'm going to suggest, this is actually a number of years later.
Everything up to this point in the past, the previous chapter has been pretty upbeat. This promised son, Isaac, has has come. Things seems like it's onwards and upwards from here. But then God says to Abraham in verse 2, take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah, sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.
When we want to talk about a plot twist, we can be sure that Abraham did not see this coming. And as it says from the beginning, verse 1, it says that God had come to Abraham with this command in order to test him. And by the time we get to verse 12, it says that after Abraham passes through this test, God tells Abraham that now I know that you fear me, that you fear God. Now, this raises 2 questions for us. First, is God tempting Abraham?
And the second is, did God not know what was in Abraham's heart? Dealing with this first question, is God tempting Abraham? What this really boils down to is our understanding of what it would mean for God to tempt Abraham. Kind of the answer we can give to this is yes and and no. We we find this dynamic in James 1 verses 12 through 14.
James says, blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. When tempted, no one should say God is tempting. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. But each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.
Now, the thing that's interesting here about the language of testing and temptation is that in the Greek, it's it's the same word. It's it's the same same root. So, it's it's somewhat interchangeable. And yet, while James kind of picks out testing and trial as something that can be a positive good, he seems to make some sort of distinction here when it comes to thinking about God tempting us. So, how do we kind of split things? How do we discern the difference here?
Well, we would have to say that based on what's said in Genesis 22 and elsewhere in scripture, God does in fact will at times that we would undergo tests and trials, but that when he does allow these things and actually will these things to occur, it's not his purpose that we would fail in the face of that test. And what James is getting at is that there's times at which we as human beings, when we go through a difficult time and we stumble, we would like to blame anyone else other than ourselves. You've maybe heard it said, Well, the devil made me do it. Or, you know, in this case, you know, what James is responding to is the idea that God made me do it because I was put in this circumstance. And what James is saying is, no, it's not God who made you fail.
It's your own heart, your own sinful desire that has led you astray. Failure is not due to the test, but our hearts. And we see Jesus, he goes through tests and temptations, and that was all part of God's will that he would undergo those things. But he succeeds, because that evil is not within his heart. So it's kind of a yes and no sort of thing.
Understood properly, yes. God does will that we would sometimes go under undergo tests and trials. But he's not trying to make us fail. When we fail that just exposes what's within us. So now to the second question, did God not know what was in Abraham's heart?
Because it kind of seems like he doesn't know. Well, something that we have to appreciate is this is called an anthropomorphic way of speaking, um, which is a really fancy word, but it's basically a way in which God communicates to us in human terms in a way that we can understand. So what God was trying to communicate to Abraham is that I was interested in you proving out your faith. We understand that God knows all things and this is testified elsewhere in scripture. We see this in both the Old and the New Testament.
In Psalm 44 says, If we had forgotten the name of our God or spread our hands to a foreign God, would not God have discovered it since he knows the secrets of the heart? In the case of Jesus, Son of God incarnate, in Mark 2:8, it says, Immediately Jesus knew in his spirit that this is what they were thinking in their hearts. And he said to them, why are you thinking these things? In Acts 1 :24, when the apostles are trying to find a replacement for Judas, it says that they prayed saying, Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which of these 2 you have chosen.
So clearly, God knows what resides within our hearts, which would lead us to conclude then that God certainly knew whether Abraham actually feared him or not. So what then is the purpose? What is the purpose of this testing? Well, it seems that the purpose of this test is to bring to the surface what is hidden to everyone else. In the case of Abraham, it's faith and fear of God.
And this is to the glory of God. It's to the glory of God when people trust in him, and God is able to use that occasion to show just how good he is. We can think about, like, that kind of testing. You just open up the book of Job where Satan, the accuser, comes to God and says, no one's righteous. You know, you can't find anyone faithful, basically, on the face of the earth.
And he says, have you seen my servant Job? And then a whole test plays out. And this is to the glory of God as difficult as it is to Job. And in the end, Job is restored. I think the best way to picture this is in terms of trying to smelt down a precious metal from a raw ore.
I I think I've got a picture of some gold ore here, maybe. Is there a picture in the next 1? Yeah. So you got a picture of gold ore here. Now you can see the flecks of of gold in there, and this is actually a pretty good piece of gold ore because other ones it's not so obvious, but it doesn't have the brilliance it could possibly have if it was just smelted and separated from all the other stuff that's not worth anything.
This is what God does with us. Now, we understand that there's nothing naturally good within us, that anything that's good within us is the product of God's spirit working within us and transforming us. But the idea is that God allows us to undergo tests in order to bring that concentration of that faith, of that fear, to the surface. And this isn't just something that I've kind of invented on my own, this this sort of imagery. This is biblical imagery.
This idea of refinement. In in Psalm 66, this is 1 of my my favorite verses, verse passages. It says, For you, God tested us. You refined us like silver. You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs.
You let people ride over our heads. We went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance. I love that verse because those verses because it just seems to reflect so much our experience of going through life. Sometimes you feel like people are riding over your heads. But God brings us these through these experiences, in order to bring us out to a place of abundance.
And this is to his glory. We see likewise in the New Testament, how the testing of our faith is compared to proving pure gold. In first Peter 1, verses 6 through 7, it says, in all this you greatly rejoice. Though for now for a little while you have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith, of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire, may result in praise, glory, and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
That's what's going on here in this passage. God is proving out the genuineness of Abraham's faith in him. And this is of greater worth than any goal, than it is to the glory of God. Visible proven faith is a much better thing than a hidden faith. Just as that purified gold is so much better than that just speckled gold caught up in that ore.
Now, all that said, the demand that God places upon Abraham here is very strange. It's very strange to us that God would ask him to sacrifice his son. And it would have been pretty strange to Abraham himself, though not entirely foreign to him, because human sacrifice was something that happened in those times. In fact, in some of the pagan cultures, they would sacrifice their children ironically to perpetuate their fertility. It was like the god had to have some Okay.
I'll make you fertile, but you kind of have to give me a little bit back, too. So, at this point, maybe Abraham's like, Well, I guess I have a little bit more to learn about this God. So, it's a little bit surprising, especially given the promises, but at this point, what really stands out in this passage is that Abraham is going to trust God. Now, the offering that God calls him to offer is a burnt offering, which is a complete offering, an offering which holds nothing back. So, this might be kind of news to you, but there's actually different kinds of offerings.
There's burnt offerings, there's sin offerings, there's fellowship offerings. We find these all specified, especially in the book of Leviticus. And and we see what a burnt offering looks like in Leviticus 1. We'll look at a few verses from there.
Says the Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting. He said, speak to the Israelites and say to them, when anyone among you brings an offering to the Lord, bring as your offering an animal from either the herd or flock. If the offering is a burnt offering from the herd, you are to offer a male without defect. You must present it at the entrance to the tent of the meeting so that it will be acceptable to the lord. You are to lay your hand on the head of the burnt offering, and it will be accepted on your behalf to make atonement for you.
And you jump down to verses 10 through 13, and we find it specified to sheep.
It says, if the offering is a burnt offering from the flock, from either the sheep or the goats, you were to offer a male without defect. You were to slaughter it at the north side of the altar before the Lord. And Aaron's sons, the priest shall splash its blood against the sides of the altar. You were to cut it into pieces, and this priest shall arrange them, including the head and the fat on the wood that is burning on the altar. You are to wash the internal organs and the legs with water, and the priest is to bring all of them and burn them on the altar.
It is a burnt offering, a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord. I want you to remember that last line there, an aroma pleasing to the Lord, because we'll turn back to that again. The idea here, though, with the burnt offering is that it is a complete offering to God. Something else that you might not have known about these ancient sacrifices is that they would actually have some of it the people offering them would actually receive some of the offering themselves in order to eat it. And, actually, this kind of represented some communion with God, sharing in his offering.
But in the case of the burnt offering, everything is given to God. It's a complete total sacrifice. We can see how this sacrifice being characterized as a burnt offering is very fitting because Abraham is offering his only son. His only son. I'm sure any parents here, if you imagine being in this position, you'd understand you you'd be giving your very heart to God, and being willing to offer your child unto him.
Abraham trusts God so much that he's willing to do this. And so he's directed to the land of Moriah, to Mount Moriah. It's debated whether this is the Temple Mount because elsewhere, it's the Temple Mount is referred to as Mount Moriah, but some commentators thinks it might be actually elsewhere. Um, but in any case, wherever this is, it's not a quick journey for Abraham. It's not as though, okay, the mountain's out in the backyard, we'll climb up there, just do this.
It took him 3 days to get there. 3 days of intentionally taking step by step closer to sacrificing his son. Imagine that dwelling on your mind for, for 3 days, and those nights, those long nights having to get back up again and keep plodding onward. Now, he didn't go alone. He took Isaac obviously was with him, but they also took 2 servants.
Now, at this point, we're kind of wondering, well, how old is Isaac here? Because in verse 5, it says that he was a boy, which I guess it it shouldn't be any more or less painful, I guess, when you think about it. I mean, your kid is your kid regardless of whether they're 50 or if they're 5, but it just makes it all more acute when we imagine Isaac maybe being like a 5 year old who can't offer any sort of resistance. But we have to slow down here and be careful about rushing to that assumption just because the translators chose to use the word boy here because the same word, na'ar, that's the word word for that can be translated as boy, is also used for the 2 servants of Abraham. And then when we look elsewhere in Genesis, when we go to Genesis, when we look to the story of Joseph, we actually see Joseph being referred to as a boy when he's quite a bit older than being a child.
In Genesis 37, it uses that term to describe him when he was 17, and when the story goes on later, when the cupbearer is telling the pharaoh that, Hey, I met this guy who could interpret my dreams. He said, I saw him 2 years earlier, and then it says, Joseph rose to a position of second in command because he was able to interpret the dream. It says that he was 30 years old at that time, so if you go 2 years back, that means that he was 28. So at the very least, we're thinking about here that, you know, 17 to 28, you could still be called a boy, a na'ar. And we also recall that in the case of Ishmael, he was referred to in the same way, and he was about 14.
So we have that consideration in mind, and also, as we'll see in the following verses, that Isaac would have had to have been strong enough to carry enough wood to offer a human sacrifice. You can't load up a kid under 10 with enough wood to pull that off. It has to be a young man. So, you know, why do I, why do we focus on this? Why do we, why are we trying to figure this out?
Because I think it makes Isaac's submission all the more striking. His father is very old. It seems that he was a young man who probably would have had strength enough to say, heck no, and punch his father in the face and run away, But he doesn't do that. There's a trust there. There's a fear there on Isaac's own part either in trusting Abraham at least, and trusting God.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, Isaac himself carries the wood that will be needed for this offering. So, we pick up on this in verse 6. It says, Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son, Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the 2 of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father, Abraham, father, yes, my son. Abraham replied, the fire and wood are here, Isaac said, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?
Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And the 2 of them went on together. Now, when Abraham offers that reply that God himself will provide the lamb, Maybe we think, you know, is he deceiving Isaac? I don't think so. I think Abraham, he doesn't understand how, but he has faith in God's word that Isaac was to be this promised son.
And so that, some way, somehow, a substitute would be provided. In the worst case scenario, we learn later on in scripture, in the book of Hebrews, that Abraham had a faith actually that God could even raise Isaac from the dead. In Hebrews 11 verses 17 through 19, it says, by faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his 1 and only son, even though God had said to him, It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.
So So 1 way or another, it's difficult to know exactly what was in Abraham's mind except that he had this trust that God had the power to, to raise the dead, to preserve the life of his son. He had this faith because he had already seen God's power at work in bringing forth his son from a completely barren womb. And so they trek onward to the summit. Picking up in verse 9, we read, when they reached the place God had told them about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.
Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, Abraham, Abraham. Here I am, he replied. Do not lay a hand on the boy, he said. Do not do anything to him.
Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son. Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place the Lord will provide. And to this day it is said, on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.
So Abraham is prepared to go through with this sacrifice. His faith is bubbling to the surface for all to see, but God stops him at the very moment that he's actually going to go through with it, which makes it clear that God didn't have to really see anything more, because if it was a matter of God really truly knowing, if God was depending on this test and knowing, then he'd actually have to see him go through with it. God doesn't need to see that. But this is revealing Abraham's faith in God. And so he stops him.
And as I've said before, you know, a burnt offering is a complete offering. That's what he was prepared to do in offering his son, offering his whole self. But what becomes clear here, in the fact that God does not require Isaac to be sacrificed is that God has no desire for human death. If God wanted human death, then sure, he would have required human sacrifices. Even in the case of Christ, when he died on the cross, it's not the case that God desired his death as such.
We're being very, very specific here. He didn't desire his death as such. Because if that was the case, if he just wanted someone to just die, then Christ staying dead would have been enough. But we see in Christ's resurrection, that was not God's point at all. Jesus dies to rise again.
Jesus dies to bring new life. And so, the truth is that if Isaac had died, it would have gained nothing. Nothing for himself, nothing for anyone else. . We see this testified to in Psalm 49.
This is a really powerful passage that kind of anticipates our hope and resurrection. It says, no one can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for them. The ransom for life is costly. No payment is ever enough so that they should live on forever and not see decay. Then you get down to verse 15.
It says, but God will redeem me from the realm of the dead. He will surely take me to himself. So as the psalmist has said, there's no there's nothing that we can do to ransom a human life. And yet, the psalmist asserts his faith that God will will basically somehow redeem me. He will deliver me from death.
We see this intervention anticipated in the substitution that God makes here in the case of Isaac. The substitution of a ram for Isaac. And you have to understand a ram is just a male sheep in the biblical language. It's just a male, male sheep. It's not any, any special other sort of breed.
And so working on from this picture of the substitution of this male sheep for Isaac, we have built upon that the prophecy that's given in Isaiah 53. Or in the case of the Messiah, this promised king, this one who is a suffering servant, it's prophesied that he is going to be like such a sheep. In Isaiah 53 verses 6 through 7, it says, we all like sheep have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth.
He was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. It's an incredible continuation of the imagery that we have here in the case of Isaac so many years later on, spoken, recorded not by Moses, but by Isaiah, and about, like, 700 years before Jesus. This is a passage that you feel like could be coming right in the New Testament. Building upon that we have the testimony of the New Testament, though, that Jesus is this promised lamb of God. In John 1 :29, it says that John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
And in verse 36, when he saw Jesus passing by, he said, look, the lamb of God. Peter's testimony in 1 Peter 1:18-19 is this. He says, For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed.
Because as the psalmist says, you can't be redeemed by such things. We're not redeemed by these things from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ.
A lamb without blemish or defect. We've been redeemed by Jesus Christ. He is the substitute for our sakes, And because of that, something interesting happens. Because Jesus has been he's been our sin offering, he's also been our burnt offering, because he offered himself completely, something interesting happens in which, because he has made this offering, we are now enabled to offer ourselves as offerings to God, Not for our salvation only Jesus can accomplish that but as an act of worship. Paul testifies to this in his letters to the Ephesians and the Romans.
He says, follow in Ephesians 5, he says, follow God's example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Did you catch that fragrant offering? Remember how in Leviticus we read about how a burnt offering was to be a pleasing aroma to God. Now, now we understand elsewhere from scripture that God takes no satisfaction in the sacrifice of animals. These were all symbolic.
They were pointing us towards the sacrifice that God truly desires, which is a completely devoted human life. So, how do we offer a fragrant offering up to God? By following Jesus' example, walking in the way of love. Romans 12, many of us are familiar with this verse. It says, therefore, I urge you brothers and sisters, in view of God's mercy, that mercy we've received in Jesus, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.
So no one's dying here in the literal sense. We're a living sacrifice. Holy and pleasing think about that pleasing aroma holy and pleasing to God. This is your true and proper worship. Now, you know, when we gather here on a Sunday morning and we sing, yes, that is part of what it means to worship God.
We're glorifying God. But the very heart of worship is not merely a song. It's a life completely devoted unto God. And so, when we think about eternity, when we think about that time when Christ will return and we will dwell on earth here with God, and we think about it being worship all the time, We shouldn't think that it's just a song fest the whole time. It's that we're actually living our lives in complete devotion to God, Glorifying him in everything that we do.
And that's where we've come up short as human beings now. The truth is that we don't do that consistently. We don't always offer our lives as a burnt offering, as a living sacrifice unto God. Because of Jesus though, that's changing. We are now invited to offer ourselves as living sacrifices, and in the end we will be perfected.
Now, because God has provided this substitute in order to spare Isaac's life, Abraham calls the place, The Lord will provide. And really this designation is, is kind of thematic for everything that God has been doing in God's mission to redeem mankind. It's always God providing. It's not the human beings providing. It's always God who's making the way forward.
From the beginning, it's been about God's provision. And the promises that God has made to Abraham are going to reverberate around the globe. In response to Abraham's faith, we see God double. And at at this point, more like quadruple down on his promises to Abraham. Verse 15, we read, the angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, I swear by my self, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring, all nations on earth will be blessed because you have obeyed me.
Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And Abraham stayed in Beersheba. We see here in the case of Abraham is faith being manifest in action. James picks up on this in his letter. In James 2, he says, Was not our father Abraham, considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?
You see that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did. And so in response to Abraham's faith, his trust in God proven by his actions, God doubles down on his promises. And I'm not going to read through all these verses, but we've seen these previously in Genesis 12, 13, 18. God again and again repeats his promises to Abraham. And ultimately, how this ties into is that the promises that God makes to Abraham encompass the whole globe, encompass all people.
I will read this, Galatians 3:8 Paul says, Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles, that is the non Jews, by faith and announce the gospel in advance to Abraham, all nations will be blessed through you. This is how what's happening here connects directly with us. So God promises Abraham that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars, as grains of sand. That certainly includes his natural descendants, but this would also include his descendants by faith. He promises him that his descendants will overcome enemies, and Israel will face many enemies, and there's even a signal here that you are going to face difficulties.
You are going to face tests and trials. It's not just going to be smooth sailing from here, but what is assured is victory. And in truth today we have that same assurance. The gates of hell will not prevail against the church. Yes, we will go through difficulties, tests, and trials, but we will be victorious.
And as he's promised again and again, all nations will be blessed because of Abraham's faith and the descendants which follow, specifically Jesus Christ, through whom God brings the people of God to himself. So when we look to these closing verses, we're kind of turning a page and we're getting a glimpse of the future. I'm not going to read these verses, um, but you can see them up there. They're included here in this chapter because it's acting as a bridge towards Isaac and his own life. Um, it drops the detail about how Bethel became the father of Rebekah.
And Rebekah is the one who would end up being the wife of Isaac, you know, Jacob and Esau, and then the story goes on from there. So, we have to drop that detail here in order to understand where Rebekah's coming from. God tested Abraham. He commanded him to offer his only son as a sacrifice. And ultimately he didn't require this.
Yes, we do see Abraham's faith here, but more than this, we see God's faithfulness, his provision. That's certainly what Abraham saw. And we should see this even more clearly. God so loved us that he gave his only begotten son to be our sacrifice Jesus is the ram in the thicket for our sakes. Jesus carried that wood upon his back, the cross on which he would die.
He did not protest. He did not fight back. He was in perfect agreement with the father's will. He went like a sheep to the slaughter. Unlike us, he was perfect.
There was nothing wrong with Jesus. We could not redeem ourselves, but he could redeem us. He died so that there can be no question. He offered himself completely to God. It's not death itself that God desired, but this complete devotion which Christ offers.
Jesus offers this complete devotion and opens up a new way in himself for us to be restored to God. He is raised from the dead and brings with him new life. He is the promised blessing to all nations. And so by faith, we can be united with him. His perfection becomes our own before God.
His death kills sin's power over us. His resurrection life brings forth something new in us today, the love and righteousness of Jesus. We are becoming new people, a reality that will eventually reveal itself even in our bodies when Christ returns and the dead are raised and the living are transformed to have bodies like Jesus' own transformed body. Yes. The Lord has provided, and he will always provide.
This is the basis of our faith. You see, faith is not mere optimism, a plucky will to persevere in the face of impossible odds. That's just a gambler's confidence. That's not Christian confidence. Our faith originates from a promise given by a person who can be believed, the God of all creation.
It's because of who he is. It's because of what he has done. It's because of our confidence about what he will do that we offer ourselves as living sacrifices. Not to save ourselves or the world, but to worship God with increasing devotion. It's because our faith rests upon God's proven love that we can face every single test.
Whether it be 1861, or 2024, or any other time or any other season, we know God is with us and he will provide. I close with the words of the Apostle Paul. It says in Romans 8, Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, for your sake we face death all day long.
We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No. In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God as in Christ Jesus our Lord. Hallelujah.
Amen to that. Let us pray. Dear father, we praise you because you are the God who provides. Throughout human history, Father, we have seen your faithfulness proven. We see it proven here in the specifics of Abraham and Isaac, and you providing a substitute for Isaac father. But we see it especially all the more Father, was that is just a foreshadow of the ultimate provision which you've given us in Jesus Christ who is the substitute for us. Because we could never ransom them ourselves for our sinfulness, father. We are only due punishment. But because of Jesus Christ, the perfect lamb, your son, your 1 and only son, father, because of his complete devotion, we are ransomed and reconciled to you. Father, we pray that in response to that, that mercy that you have given us in him, that we would follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ by offering ourselves in complete devotion to you.
That we would trust you completely as Abraham has trusted you, father. And that you would be glorified in all things so that our faith, our fear of you would not be hidden under the surface like raw golden iron or but that it'll be brought forth for all to see. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our lord. Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us this Sunday, as we continue our sermon series looking at the Bible's account of Abraham.
It's our joy to welcome you into our community.
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)