Hebrews Lesson
181 December
3, 2009
NKJ Ephesians
2:8 For by grace you have been saved
through faith, and that not of yourselves; it
is the gift of God,
Tuesday night (for most of you who weren’t here on
Tuesday tonight), we’re continuing our study in Revelation, in Revelation
17-18. Something just went passed me as significant on that particular day
because Revelation 17 and 18, of course, focus on the end time kingdom, the
world kingdom that the Antichrist pulls together that is really a one world (a
universal) government that pulls together under his leadership. He is also the
leader of the ten-nation Revived Roman Empire, but he seeks to control the
whole world. We keep seeing trends today that push us more and more into the
direction of the kinds of things that we’ll see taking place during the
Tribulation period. What we're seeing today are not signs that we are
necessarily near; but the increasing number of things (we see almost on a
monthly basis) certainly gives us pause for consideration. On Tuesday night
Great Britain and other nations in Europe under the Lisbon Treaty lost their
national sovereignties because of the new EU treaty where they voted on the
Lisbon treaty, which creates a president, basically a president of Europe. We
continue to see the breakdown of nations and nationalism in this world. So
that's just another indicator that people are moving towards that one world
globalism that we keep hearing about.
That's going to have tremendous implications. They went
to the euro whenever it was, ten or fifteen years ago. All of these things just
keep moving in that direction. So
it's just kind of interesting to watch God set the stage for the end
times.
Okay, we’re in Hebrews 11. We're continuing our study
here on these examples of Old Testament saints, examples of Old Testament
saints who by virtue of their faith in the promise of God provide evidence of
the reality of what they believed in, the reality of their faith and the hope
which is a future orientation, their hope in the eventual fulfillment of the
promise of God.
Now the reason this is here, this lies in the
structure of Hebrews between the arguments in chapters 7 through 10 that focus
on the sufficient work and the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross so
that the Old Testament sacrificial system is null and void and cannot provide
that which only Jesus Christ can provide. It ended with a warning to these
Jewish background believers in Israel that were on the verge. They were feeling
the pressure, the adversity, the persecution, the rejection. So they're on the
verge of just giving up on their faith in Jesus as the Messiah and folding back
into Judaism.
The purpose for chapter 11 is to go back into the Old
Testament and to use of examples from all of these different Old Testament
individuals of how they encountered testing. They encountered adversity and
persecution and rejection; and they never saw the ultimate fulfillment of God's
promise in their lives. Nevertheless
their faith was not shaken. They continued to trust God. They continued to grow
and they didn't give up. They didn't bail out - that when things got tough in
life, they didn't give up. They didn't start and have a pity party. They did at
times, but they always came back. And they always focused on the Lord and they
grew through it and they grew because of the testing. James says that when we
apply doctrine and trust the Lord in the midst of those tests (no matter what
they are) that that's when we grow. We hate going through those kinds of
growing pains; but that's exactly how the Lord teaches us and matures us and
stretches us so that we too can have a life that is a testimony of faith.
In verse 13 we studied:
NKJ Hebrews
11:13 These all died in faith, not having
received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them,
embraced them and confessed that they
were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
That meant that at the time that they died, they were
still living according to the standards of what they believed. They didn't bail
out. They didn't give up.
They didn't say, “Well OK, I trusted in God for the
last twenty or thirty years and He still hasn't given me the land. He hasn't
done what He said He would do. I guess He's just not going to do it.”
They persevered. They endured. That's the real meaning
of perseverance is to continue to hang in there and not grow weary. So this
chapter is set here between the challenge at the end of verse 10 and the
challenge that will come in chapter 12 especially beginning in verse 3 of
chapter 12.
NKJ Hebrews 12:3
For consider Him
That is, Jesus Christ.
who endured
There's our word for perseverance or endurance.
such hostility from sinners against
Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
NKJ Hebrews 12:4
You have not yet resisted to
bloodshed, striving against sin.
His point there is you just think it's bad for you;
but you haven't really taken a hard look at how all the adversity that these
others have gone through and they've gone through much worse. And Jesus Christ
went through what was much worse; and He didn't grow weary because the same
thing that strengthened Him (the Holy Spirit and the Word God) is what you have
available to you. So don't give up. Don't bail out. Don't start blaming God for
your problems. It's just a test. It’s only a test so keep your focus on the end
game, which is what God is preparing us for in the future.
So in verse 13:
NKJ Hebrews
11:13 These all died in faith, not having
received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them,
They were still confident that God would provide.
embraced them and
They embraced them, that is that they recognized that
they were their own and that they made it part of their thinking so that the
promise of God even though it was distant it wasn’t empirically testable. Even
now it has not been fulfilled. They do not have the land, all the land that was
promised to them. But embracing has the idea of making it a part of their
thinking so that that the promise was more real to them and more determinative
in the way they thought and reacted (responded) to the issues of life than
anything else that was more apparent to them in their timeframe.
confessed that they were strangers
and pilgrims on the earth.
…statements that Abraham made to the sons of Seth that
he was just a sojourner in the land. Later Isaac made the same admission that
he was just a traveler in the land. He was just a sojourner. That wasn't their
home. They didn't own any real estate there other than the Cave of Machpelah,
the burial ground for Abraham and Sarah.
We looked at that last time. As part of that study, I
looked at the issue that every believer faces; and that is that a certain
duality in our life that on the one hand we are different from everybody around
us. We’re not part of the cosmic system. We don't think like people around us.
We don't respond to things like people around us. We do not perceive or
evaluate things around us like the world does. We are not of the world as Jesus
said in His prayer to the Father in John 17. Nevertheless we are in the world
and throughout the history of Christianity there's always been this tension in
believers in how to live in the world without being a part of the world.
One of the key passages I talked about last time in
this verse in Philippians 3:20 where Paul said:
NKJ Philippians 3:20
For our citizenship is in heaven,
from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
Now this word that’s translated citizenship is a Greek
word polituema and the root poli from the word polus for city has to do with your citizenship to a colony. It
really has an interesting background. I'm not going to go through all of the
details, but it was particularly notable that Paul used this when he wrote to
the Philippians because Philippi was a Roman colony. It had been established as
a Roman colony after the victory that Marc Anthony and Augustus had over
Cassius and Brutus at the two battles of Philippi that were fought during
October of 42 BC. Because of their victory, Augustus established this Roman
colony at Philippi (Phil-leep-pee, as it’s pronounced in Greek) and that it was
a colony. He attached his name to that colony. Now what that meant was that
someone who was born as a citizen in a Roman colony had all of the citizen
rights of someone who was born and who lived in Rome; but they were, as it were,
an outpost of Rome.
Now I think that it's important to understand the
historical background on this; and it has a predecessor in classical Greek
times during the 6th century BC when the Athenians were establishing
colonies in Calcas (spelling?). They would send out there citizens to Calcas
and they had all of the rights and all the privileges of people who lived back
in Athens. That's the idea. We, as believers, are an outpost of heaven. Though
we are living in the world; we have all of the rights and privileges of a
citizen of the home country. The concept of politeuma
citizenship isn’t one that emphasizes that we aren’t involved in what goes on
around us though we’re living on the earth. It is an emphasis on the fact that
even though we're not living in our homeland (which is heaven), we have all of
the rights and privileges of that citizenship. There is nothing that is
diminished by virtue of that.
If you look at that comparison, it focused on the fact
that they had certain privileges because of the Roman citizenship. Paul did as
well. But that did not mean that they ignored what was going on in the
countries or in the cities or in the regions where they lived. They were still
very much a part of the commerce, the activities, and the other things that
went on in that world. But they had something extra about them and that was the
privileges of their Roman citizenship
As we as believers live here in the world; we work, we
operate, we interact with people. We have responsibilities as citizens under
our form of government to be involved, to state our views and our opinions and
to vote and all of those things. But yet there is something distinct about us.
We have something special and that’s all of our privileges that come with
heavenly citizenship.
Things were a little different of course in the Old
Testament because they don't have all of the same aspects that a Church Age
believer has in terms of their position in Christ. But nevertheless they had a
destiny that was promised by God that is related to the promise of the land as
well as something that they understood that there was a heavenly city. Now this
is alluded to here in this passage in verse 16, even though we don't have any
more information given about it until we get over into the 12th
chapter of Hebrews. There when we get to Hebrews 12:22, there is this statement
made that “you have come to Mount Zion into the city of the living God, the
heavenly Jerusalem.” This city that they're looking for is related to the New
Jerusalem. It's something that goes even beyond the literal giving of the land
that is theirs that belongs to Israel during the Millennium Kingdom. But it
goes beyond that to be heavenly city the New Heavens and New Earth and the New
Jerusalem. They have a long distance perception here. It is their understanding
of those concepts that drove (motivated) them during the adversities that they
faced when they were living on earth.
But what's interesting is we don't have a clue that
they knew any of this back then. That is one of the fascinating things about
studying the Old Testament. You
can’t understand the New Testament unless you understand the Old Testament. But
there are features of Old Testament spiritual life and what they knew that you
don't even realize when you read the Old Testament until you get into the New
Testament. That doesn't mean they did not know it just because it's not talked
about. For example, understanding that the serpent in the garden is Satan. That's
not clear if all you have is just Genesis. But when you get to Revelation, you know it's clear; and
they understood it. And it's not really clear. People get into debates over as
to how much Cain and Abel understood about sacrifices. But when you read Hebrew
11, you know that they must have understood a lot more about the importance of
blood sacrificed than what is revealed. And, it's mostly because we don't take
enough time to read the details such as what all would have been involved in
what God did when He clothed Adam and Eve with the skins of animals. He didn't
just kill a couple of animals and skin them and put clothes on them. He had to
teach them how to skin, how to prepare the skin, all of these things, which aren’t
covered in the text. But it had to have been covered in that kind of a context.
There was a lot information, obviously, based on these insights that we get in
chapter 11. There was a lot of information that was available in the Old
Testament to believers that is not necessarily recorded in Scripture. Nevertheless
they knew it, and it motivated them.
So when we look at Hebrews 11:13f (like verse 14) we
read:
NKJ Hebrews
11:14 For those who say such things
That is, those who confessed or admitted that they
were strangers and pilgrims on the earth, those who admit such things…
declare plainly that they seek a
homeland.
This is their visible witness, their visible testimony
of their faith as evidence of things not seen. So they declare plainly. It’s
obvious by their actions, which reflect their faith that they seek a
homeland.
The word there for homeland is the Greek word patria, which (if you wanted to have a
literal translation) would be a fatherland or homeland. But the idea is they're
looking for their ultimate country of a destiny. They're looking for what will
be their true eternal home. That is their focus. That is what they were
seeking.
So they are living their lives in light of that
eternal promise. As I say over and over again, living today in the light of
eternity and the more we come to understand what our future destiny is, the
more it should impact how we think, how we respond, how we evaluate the
challenges that come into our lives every single day. It was because of the
evidence in their life from their faith that they declared that they were
living in light of eternity.
Then in verse 15:
NKJ Hebrews
11:15 And truly if they had called to mind
that country from which they had come
out, they would have had opportunity to return.
Now the country from which they had come was Ur of the
Chaldees back over in the area of the land of the two rivers, the area that’s
in southern Iraq today that’s between the Euphrates and Tigris. They knew where
the family had come. They knew the stories. They knew how God had told Abraham
and commanded Abraham to come out. They could go back. This verse emphasizes
the fact that every single day they had the opportunity to bail out and go
home. It was ultimately their volition, ultimately their faith in the promise
of God that kept them in the Promised Land. Despite whatever challenges they
had, whatever failures they had, ultimately this verse emphasizes that they had
the opportunity to go back.
That plays in terms of application with this group of Jewish
believers that the writer of Hebrews is addressing because they're on the verge
of doing the same kind of thing spiritually. They're about to give up on
Christianity and go back into first century Judaism just like many of us are
tempted on a daily or weekly basis to maybe just give up on the Christian life
and live as if we weren't a Christian, live according to the standards of the
world and not to be viewed or seen as some kind of a religious radical nut case
that thinks that the Bible is actually, literally true. I know many of you (and
myself included) deal with people who were family members or close friends or
associates who think that what you believe is just absolutely nuts. At times
that really becomes a point of tension in your relationships because you just
don't look at what's going on in the world around us today as they do. They
can't even conceive of how you think. So sometimes it just gets a little tough.
We have to realize that what we believe is the truth and they're the ones who
are living on a false standard; and they're the ones who are living in a
fantasy world, not us. But we have that opportunity to bail out every single
day. It's a real option.
So the emphasis there is on the desire. That is a
volitional term. It's the Greek word orego.
It’s a present middle indicative, which indicated a continuous action. It was
something. The word has to do is seeking to accomplish a specific goal,
aspiring to something, striving for something. It's more than just wanting
something, it is an intentional movement and thought toward something. They
aspire to something better. They were driven (motivated) by a vision of this
better country (a heavenly country).
Now that phrase heavenly country - the country if you
look in the translation is in italics. It’s not there. The word that’s
translated heavenly is really in the genitive case, which has the idea of
origin or possession of something like that. So it could be translated literally
“they desire a better”, i.e. something of heaven. So it doesn't really define
it. But we get that idea brought into this context by the word homeland in the
previous verse. They're looking for this homeland that is of heaven or has a
heavenly origin.
A little more is going to be added at the end of the
verse because there in the last sentence we read:
NKJ Hebrews
11:16 But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to
be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.
What city would that be? Well the only city that we
know of in the future is the New Jerusalem that is revealed when we get into
the book of Revelation.
As we come to just the conclusion of this little
section, what we've seen so far is that the patriarchs that is these early Old
Testament saints all lived their lives by means of faith and according to the
standard of faith. Those two different phrases are used. The “according to
faith” is only used one time in verse 13 which meant that all the way up to the
point of their physical death they were living according to faith and they
didn't give up.
They did not receive the promise in their lifetime. In
many cases they didn't see even a hint of it. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never
owned anything in the land other than the graveyard. They saw the future
fulfillment, but only as something in the distant future but they believed that
God would bring it to pass.
Now that indicates something. This is an inference
from text, one that (unfortunately, I think) that a lot of Bible students today
are afraid to make. They weren’t afraid to make this in earlier generations.
When I was young what I was taught about this is often even smirked at today by
some of the Bible teachers that we have today because they're almost afraid to make
these kinds of inferences. It really does become clear in the next couple of
verses, but the reason that they were able to live as if those promises were
going to come to pass because they understood resurrection.
Now go back into Genesis and tell me one place that
even talks about resurrection. There's not one. But the writer of Hebrews under
the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit understood this very fact. He's going to
bring it out in the illustration with Abraham and the next section talking about
Abraham test when he offered up Isaac. He moves directly into that. That's what
it is inferred there in verse 16: that they could desire something better
because they knew that when they died physically it didn't end their lives,
that there would be a resurrection. There would be a future beyond the grave.
They understood that. But it's never talked about in Genesis. You won’t find it
there.
The reason I make this point is because there's just a
real trend that I’ve seen for over 20 years now in the academic circles and
commentaries that you just can't say that somebody in the Old Testament
believed something if it's not there in the original context of Genesis or
Exodus or whatever.
“It doesn't matter what the New Testament says. If it
didn't say that in the original, you can’t come in there and make those
statements.”
It gets rather silly. It really shows a breakdown in
an understanding of the unity of Scripture and the totality of God's revelation
that even though we have to interpret Scripture in light of the time it was
given in light of the context; there are some things that are clear; but we
don't find out that they knew them until maybe the end of the story –
like Revelation or Hebrews.
They obviously did have an understanding of
resurrection, which gave a concrete strength to their ability to encounter of
the day-to-day trials and vicissitudes of life. They embraced these promises.
They made them part of their life (their thinking), and they became more real
to them than their day-to-day experiences. So they focused on the future and
that made a difference for their present reality.
That's why eschatology is so important for us is that
we can get wrapped up in some of the details related to end time events, but
they're part of Scripture. But all
that fits a picture for us that should drive us (should motivate us) in the
difficult times that we face on a day-to-day basis.
Well, that brings us to the next example in Abraham.
We started with Abraham in verse 8 and we’ve had a little interlude here in
verses 13 to 16 to focus on the real issue. Then we returned back to another
example of Abraham in verse 17.
NKJ Hebrews
11:17 By faith Abraham, when he was
tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his
only begotten son,
NKJ Hebrews
11:18 of whom it was said, "In Isaac
your seed shall be called,"
NKJ Hebrews
11:19 concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a
figurative sense.
There's a doctrine of resurrection - clearly. The
writer of Hebrews is saying Abraham was so convinced of the reality of
resurrection and the truthfulness of God's promise that was more real to him
than anything that he was willing to sacrifice his son (to kill him dead) on
the altar because he was so convinced of God's promise that his seed would come
through Isaac that he knew that that if God actually let him go through with
it; He would just raise Isaac from the dead and go on as if nothing happened.
That's how real his faith was for him.
So back to verse 17 just to talk about some of the
elements or components here.
NKJ Hebrews
11:17 By faith Abraham, when he was
tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his
only begotten son,
This is a present active participle here that’s a
temporal participle talking about giving us more information about offering up
Isaac. It indicates that testing here happens in the offering up of Isaac.
Now we're all tested, not in this way. I pointed out
in our study of Abraham a few weeks ago and in my study of Genesis that there
were 13 clear tests that Abraham went through. He probably went through many
more, but 13 are highlighted by God the Holy Spirit in Genesis. Some he passed;
some he failed. They're all
related to those three promises that were given in the Abrahamic Covenant: the
land, the seed, and the blessing. God was going to give Abraham a specific
piece of real estate; and he was to go live there. He was commended initially
to come out, to go, to leave his family behind in Ur of the Chaldees to go to
land that God was going to give to him. So he had to believe God at that point
that God was going to give him that land and he had to believe Him to the point
that he packed his bags and he loaded up everything on the camels and the
donkeys and they took off. Of course he didn’t fully obey because he took his
dad with him and he took his nephew with him. But in terms of the core issue, he's
trusting God to go to the land.
Then later not long afterward there's a famine.
There's a drought that occurs so he has to go make a decision.
“Am I going to go where God told me to go and handle it
by trusting in God or am I going to try to handle it my own way and go down to
Egypt?”
He failed the test; and he went down to Egypt, created
some problems and finally came back to the land. We went through all of those
and we saw that there were various tests that were also related to the
seed.
God said, “I'm going to bless the world through your
seed, your physical descendants.”
Later on Abraham tries to say, “Okay. Well, I’m too
old. The seed must be Eleazar,” because you could adopt an heir.
God says, “No. It's not going to be Eleazar. It’s
going to be a son from your own body. It‘s going to be a son from your own
loins. Not only that from Sarah also.”
So Sarah comes along and she’s got her alternate plan
B, which is Hagar, and that causes other problems because there wasn't a
consistent obedience there. He
didn’t endure, persevere in obedience even though it looked like: “We're
getting pretty old here. It just can't happen anymore.” He didn't believe that
God would do the impossible; and God is still the God of the impossible. So God
was testing him.
Finally it got through to Abraham that God really
meant what He said and when He said He was going to provide a son through his
loins, a son through him and Sarah even though they were way beyond child
bearing age even though it was biologically physically impossible for them to
become parents and for Sarah to have a child; God is in the process of bringing
death where there's life. When that happened it finally started getting through
Abraham’s head that God was really able to do that which He promised. He would
fulfill it and so Abraham began to realize that if God could give life where
there was death in the womb; then that would mean that nothing was going to
happen to Isaac. God said that Abraham would become the father of many nations
through Isaac and that the seed would be blessed through Isaac. He finally
realized, nothing can happen to Isaac that would cause those promises not to be
fulfilled. That's the test. Do you really believe the promise of God when he
said that in your seed all nations will be blessed? Or have you given up?
That's the issue. The test is related to the seed.
Then there were other tests that Abraham faced that
were related to the blessing issues because the statement “you will be a
blessing to those around you” was a command. It wasn't a declarative statement.
It wasn’t a descriptive statement. It was a command that Abraham was to be a
blessing to others around him. He was to provide for them. There were the instances
where after the Chedorlaomer alliance came in and defeated, had a conquest over
the cities of the plains, abducted a number of people, took a lot of plunder
and booty and headed back home that Abraham then took his servants to go rescue
his nephew Lot and to defeat the enemy and to bring all of the plunder and
booty back to its original owners.
So he learned to pass tests in every one of those
categories. Now we’re tested in many other categories but the tests that are in
Genesis are designed to focus on the three-fold promise of the Abrahamic
Covenant, the most central of which is the one related to the seed. So when
Abraham was tested, God commanded him to offer up Isaac.
he who had received the promises
It's focusing on Abraham as the one to whom these
promises were made.
offered up his only begotten son,
Twice you have the use of that word in the Greek prosphero, which is a standard word for
offering up an offering; not any kind of offering but primarily it would focus
on the sacrificial types of offerings. So it's not just a dedication like you
see parents sometimes dedicate their children to the Lord or something of that
nature. It is a sacrifice that is in view.
offered up his only begotten son,
This is a critical word here, which is going to show
us the connection that God is making. He's making a picture. He's giving us a
visual aid in the Old Testament of Isaac that there's something about this
offering of Isaac that foreshadows and depicts something about the Lord Jesus
Christ.
The writer of Hebrews uses the word monogenes here for only begotten. It’s a
compound word, mono from mono, just like we used to have records
that were mono instead of stereo, meaning single. You have wear glasses or
monocle, just one lens over one eye. So the word mono indicates one only. Then
the word genes comes from the Greek
word genos, meaning kind. It means
literally one of a kind only or unique. That's the idea there. Something about
this person is unique. The word is actually used 9 times in the New Testament.
Sometimes it’s used to refer to an only child. They are a monogenes child. They are unique because they're the only offspring
of their parents. But when it's applied to the Lord, which is unique to John’s
writings: John is the only author who uses this word to apply the unique
relationship of Jesus to the Father. It's emphasizing the fact that Jesus is a
one-of-a-kind or unique Son of God. There's something distinct and unique about
Him because of the hypostatic union, that He is the God man. He is eternal
deity who then takes on humanity.
The use of that word by the writer of Hebrews is
intentional in order to draw for us the connection that we will automatically make
between Abraham’s offering of his son, as a picture of the offering of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God.
Then in verse 18 what we have is the phrase “in Isaac
your seed shall be called.”
NKJ Hebrews
11:18 of whom it was said, "In Isaac
your seed shall be called,"
That’s a direct quote from Genesis 21:12.
NKJ Genesis
21:12 But God said to Abraham, "Do
not let it be displeasing in your sight because of the lad or because of your
bondwoman. Whatever Sarah has said to you, listen to her voice; for in Isaac your
seed shall be called.
…God’s direct promise that the seed would come through
Isaac. That's the promise that is in mind when we read of him who had received
the promises, that in Isaac your seed shall be called.
Then in verse 19, Abraham reaches a conclusion.
NKJ Hebrews
11:19 concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead,
The word that is translated in the New King James
“concluding”, but it's the Greek word logizomai.
Now you can hear it. It’s related to the noun logos, which is where we get our English word logic. So here is a
great example of how a believer is to use to the logic machine that God gave
him under the authority of God's revelation to think through what God has said
and to draw conclusions that aren't necessarily part of the direct
revelation.
God didn't tell Abraham, “Well, I’m going to take you
up there and going to have you sacrifice Isaac; and then if you do I’m going to
raise him from the dead.”
But Abraham’s learned enough doctrine; and we don't
see where he learned of this. He’s learned enough doctrine to understand and
believe in the Doctrine of Resurrection. So he's putting two and two together
and coming up with the conclusion, with a logically derived conclusion that if
God promised the seed would come through Isaac and Isaac hasn’t produced any
seed yet then God is not going to break His Word so either He's going to stop
me and I'm not going to end up killing Isaac. Or if I actually do kill Isaac
then God's going to have to bring him back from the dead; but no matter what
happens God is going to be true to His promise. So the promise of God was more
real to Abraham than taking the life of his own son.
Then at the end of the verse we read:
from which he also received him in a
figurative sense.
It's really not a good translation. The Greek word
there is parabole where we get our
English word parable. So what the writer is saying is that he also received him
in a parabolic sense or in a sense that he understood that this was a picture,
a type of something, that he recognized that the reason God was having him do
this was to picture something or to depict something about God's grace and
about salvation.
To understand that we need to go back to Genesis 22.
Let’s turn to and spend the rest of this evening going back. This is one of my
favorite episodes and stories in the Old Testament. It is such a great visual
aid. We see how God can take some of the most abstract doctrines that
theologians can wrangle about left and right for hours and hours and God just
pulls it down into a very simple picture that even a child can understand.
I used to love to tell the story when I was a camp
counselor and working with little kids because the lights would go off when you
would then talk about Jesus dying for their sins. It just made it so clear.
NKJ Genesis 22:1 Now it came to pass after these things
That is
after all of these previous tests, promises of God.
that God tested Abraham, and said to
him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."
After the birth of Isaac, after he has grown. We’re
not sure how old Isaac was. I think he was over twenty. I think he was all old
enough to have had offspring, but he wasn't old enough to have done it yet. He
had not become a father, been married. But he's not just a little child.
Usually the picture that we have is that people always as David was a little
boy. Isaac was a little boy. But I think in both cases they were at least 15 to
20, something like that. Isaac could have even been older. But there's nothing
in the text to really give us a good handle on that.
So God tested Abraham.
that God tested Abraham, and said to
him, "Abraham!”
Abraham responds.
And he said, "Here I am."
He says hinneh,
which is Hebrew for “Here I am. I'm ready to go.”
“Yes Lord, I'm ready to do whatever You tell me to
do.”
NKJ Genesis 22:2 Then He said,
That is God said.
"Take now 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."
Now this really emphasizes the close emotional
connection that Abraham had with Isaac. The Septuagint translates it in this
manner.
Your son, your only son whom you love.
It really sets it apart in terms of the structure to
emphasize the deep, profound intimate connection that Abraham had with this
son. He deeply loved his son. His
son is the embodiment of the promise of God. For all those years and all those
tests finally came the promised seed. So everything that he hopes for is
focused on Isaac.
Now we're going to see a test that’s going to cause
Abraham to decide who he loves more, God or Isaac. Is the promise of God going
to be more real to him or the immediate experience of the presence of
Isaac?
"Take now 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."
Moriah is applied to the same area as where the Temple
Mount is today. It would include more than just where the Temple Mount is; but
if you look at the geography of Jerusalem it could even include the whole area
there: the Temple Mount across the entire Pean Valley, the Valley of the Cheese
Makers on to the area of Golgotha where Christ was sacrificed. So it's in that
general area that Abraham was commanded to go. It is believed by the Jews that
it is the very rock that is at the center that is under the Dome of the Rock
that is where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac and that that same rock is where
the Ark of the Covenant sat when the Temple was built there and that is the
centerpiece of this story.
Now nothing in the Bible states that specifically, but
it is generally that area of Jerusalem. That is the Mountain of Moriah.
NKJ Genesis 22:3
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 the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the
place of which God had told him.
He doesn't cry about it. He doesn't argue with God
about it. He doesn't resist. He gets up early in the morning indicating a
certain measure of enthusiasm. He gets
early in the morning, saddles his donkey and took two of his young men (two of
his servants) with him along with Isaac his son. He splits the wood for the burnt offering. So it’s not going
to be just a sacrifice. It is an olah,
which involves cutting the throat of the sacrificial victim and then building a
fire under him and completely burning all of the carcass in a burnt offering.
He puts together everything necessary to offer a burn offering.
This is always challenged by liberals who see the God
of the Old Testament as a terrible old God that believed in human sacrifice.
But He doesn’t. He never allows it to happen. It was always wrong in the Old
Testament. This is just expressed as a test.
So Abraham takes off. On the third day he sees the
place afar off. He comes within eyesight of the mountains of Moriah. Those of
you who've been to Jerusalem know what that's like as you come through those
mountains and suddenly you see where the Temple Mount is. It’s a low ridge.
It's not high. Many mountains around Jerusalem are much higher in elevation
than the Mountain of Moriah or the Temple Mount. He sees the place. He tells
his young men (the servants) to stay there with the donkey.
He says that he and Isaac will go forward to worship.
So he is focused on the fact that this is going to be worship and the core
meaning of worship is the idea of obedience and submission to the will of God.
The literal meaning in the Hebrew is to bow the knee. It has to do with
obedience.
So he takes the wood of the burnt offering and he
gives it to Isaac.
“Isaac, you're going to become the beast of burden.”
Isaac’s carrying all of this wood. Those of you who've
been camping know that to build any kind of decent fire takes a certain amount
of firewood. You can imagine how much firewood you would need if you were going
to create a fire that was hot enough to cremate a body. That's a lot of wood. I
don't think Isaac as a five or six year old could carry a load of wood like
that. He might carry a couple of logs, but that’s it. It is going to take a lot more than that in order to have a
burnt offering. That's one reason I think that Isaac was much older and
stronger. So he takes Isaac his son. He took the fire in his hands so that
they’re carrying some sort of a censer that has holes in it in order to be able
to start the fire, a knife for the sacrifices. The two of them went on
together.
Isaac’s perceptive. He says to his father:
NKJ Genesis 22:7
But Isaac spoke to Abraham his
father and said, "My father!" And he said, "Here I am, my
son." Then he said, "Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"
So he's been instructed as to the proper procedures
for the sacrifices of what they should be. Abraham simply responds and says:
NKJ Genesis 22:8
And Abraham said, "My son, God
will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering." So the two of
them went together.
Now that expresses another dimension to this test. Hebrews
says he knew that he could raise Isaac up from the grave. Here the focus is
that he understood that ultimately God would be the one to provide the
sacrifice.
So they went on and when they came to the place where
God indicated, Abraham built an altar there, placed the wood, set everything
up. Then he bound Isaac.
Notice nowhere in here does it tell us when he
informed Isaac that he was the sacrifice. That must have been an interesting
conversation. But he ties his hands together, tries his feet together, binds
him, places him on the wood and lays him out. Then he stretched out his hand to
take the sacrificial knife ready to cut his son’s throat through the very point
where I think where it would have been clear that he was going to go through
with it. It was at the last possible moment (I believe) that God stopped him
and called to him and said, “Abraham, stop,” which is in verse 11.
NKJ Genesis
22:11 But the Angel of the LORD called to
him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" So he said, "Here
I am."
The angel of the Lord which is the pre-incarnate Lord
Jesus Christ called to him and says:
NKJ Genesis
22:12 And He said, "Do not lay your
hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The
fear of the Lord is a respect for God where God is more real to us and His
commandments and His word are more real to us than anything else. Abraham
finally reached that point. It was evident that he feared God.
since you have not withheld your
son, your only son, from Me."
NKJ Genesis
22:13 Then Abraham lifted his eyes and
looked, and there behind him was a
ram caught in a thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram, and
offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son.
What does he see? There is a ram that has been caught
in the brush and God has provided the sacrifice. Rather than taking the life of
his son, God has provided a ram that will be sacrificed as a substitute for
Isaac. There's the picture of substitutionary atonement. It doesn't get into
real complicated abstruse theology. You just have to understand that one thing
is taken instead of another. Jesus died for us so we don’t have to. He died in
our place. That is the picture that you have all the way through the Old
Testament with the sacrifices. Jesus died so that we would not have to die or
pay the penalty for sin.
Abraham looks. He sees the ram and he takes the ram
and offers it as a burnt offering instead of his son.
Now if burnt offering here means burnt offering; burn
offering earlier had to mean burnt offering. So it's very clear that this was
the kind of test that God had given him and he was willing to do it. He passed
the test.
Then he gives the place a name, verse 14.
NKJ Genesis
22:14 And Abraham called the name of the
place, The-LORD-Will-Provide;
Jehovah-Jireh, I
think that’s one of the great names of God in the Old Testament because it
emphasizes His grace and His sufficiency that God is the one who is going to
provide for us. His grace is
sufficient for us and His power is made evident in our weakness.
as it is said to this day, "In the Mount of The LORD it shall be
provided."
as it is said to this day, "In the Mount of The LORD it shall be
provided."
Then what happens? What happens after that is God
reaffirms the Abrahamic Covenant to him? Again he restates His promise,
NKJ Genesis
22:17 "blessing I will bless you, and
multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as
the sand which is on the seashore;
and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.
Notice all of that emphasizes the seed: “In your seed
all the nations shall be blessed because you have obeyed My voice”. This is a
tremendous Old Testament picture not just of faith but of substitutionary
atonement and the fact God always provides for our every need. But at the core
of this is Abraham’s faith that no matter what happened he knew what God had
promised. He knew God's Word. When he faced the challenges of life, he learned
to use and claim God's promises and that's exactly what we have to do.
I think they we’re living in difficult times. We're
living in what may become very difficult times. There are things that
potentially could happen in our nation and in the world related to the economy,
things can happen related to military events and terrorism. We have had the
incident with the shooter at Fort Hood several weeks ago. He’s a self-motivated
terrorist in my opinion. He's just a mass murder. Terrorism sort of masks the
whole idea that it’s just mass murder.
Then today I was sent an e-mail that was actually
verified by a couple of different sources. It's a story about what happened
just last week on an AirTran airplane that was coming out of Atlanta. According
to an eyewitness report (and of course you never know with these e-mails are
true or not). When I sent it out David Roseland actually tracked the guy's name
down and called the individual who said he wrote this eyewitness report and
said yes it was him and this happened to him and he wrote that and it happened
to him last week. They were flying out of Atlanta. The news agencies did not
report this. There were several Moslems on the plane that were causing a
disturbance, talking on their cell phones. All that came out on the news was
that there some one talking on his cell phone who wouldn’t stop, so the plane
had returned to the gate and they had to take him off. That was why it was
delayed.
More information came out. There was a chaplain who
was sitting in the waiting area. He just missed that flight. He was supposed to
be on it. So when it came back to the gate he thought, “Boy, now I will get on
my plane.” All these people were coming off. He had interviewed this one man
who wrote this one report up because the flight crew came off the airplane.
Homeland security went through all the luggage and looked through what these
guys had. They didn't have anything so they put them back on the airplane. The
aircrew according to this report walked off the plane said they were not going
to fly. They were returned to the plane.
But we live in a world today where people have created
their own view of what religion is. Religion doesn't relate to reality. In the
West, we can’t understand how real this kind of thing is to Moslems and how
real it is to the Quran.
This kind of thing is going to increase. We live in an
extremely uncertain time, a time of chaos. It's a great opportunity to witness.
It’s a great opportunity to be a testimony that we don't panic. We don't give
up. We’re not going to let all of these things bother us and that we're going
to be able to as Paul says be a light shining in the midst of a dark and
perverse generation.
That is a great challenge for us. That's what Abraham
did. That's what Isaac did. That’s what all these Old Testament heroes did.
They were lights in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation. So we need
to grow. We need to mature as believers because who knows what's going happen.
But if you don't get ready beforehand, it will be very difficult to get ready
after these kinds of things do happen. So we need to remember that it's not
just going to Bible class. It's preparation for the immediate future and
preparation for eternity.
Let’s bow our heads in closing prayer.