Better...At Trust

This podcast is a ministry of Grand Parkway Baptist Church, helping people know, enjoy, and glorify God.

For more information about Grand Parkway, visit Grandparkway.org.

Father, this morning we ask you to give us an insatiable appetite to be happy in Jesus.

Those are not words we put together very often.

Those three words, happy in Jesus, they kind of sound cheesy when we first hear them.

But people that have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, they understand what that's all about.

And so give all of us that shared understanding today.

That this is not, you're not here to receive our begrudging obedience.

Lord, we want to, out of joy, we can't contain ourselves, Lord.

So let the happ, let, let the happiness we find in you get the better of us this morning.

As a matter of fact, God, increase our happiness with teaching and revelation from your word today.

We ask this in Jesus' name, and everyone said, Amen.

You can have a seat.

If you've got a Bible, I invite you to take it and open up to Genesis chapter 22.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

Genesis chapter 22.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

Welcome to the Sunday after spring break.

Now you need a spring break to recover from spring break.

We need a break from spring break.

We went to Fredericksburg to hang out and just kind of relax, get away for a couple days.

Thought we'd get up early and go hike up Enchanted Rock.

Got there at 8:15.

The thing was closed.

The park ranger said, You gotta go down this road.

It's a one-way line.

How long's the line?

At least an hour, maybe two.

No thanks.

I'm good.

So, anyway, and so my kids, my 13-year-old says from the backseat of the van, Dad, I think I need some retail therapy.

I looked at my wife and said, Where did our kids learn that?

Anyway, I digress.

Uh, and so uh we're in a series called Better, and we just look at different things you want to get better at, and today I want to talk to you about being getting better at trust.

Getting better at trust.

Uh, and kind of a familiar story from Genesis chapter 22 and verse 1.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

Now, by the way, God's going to ask this man to do something that's incredible and sounds scandalous, but look at me before I want you to hear this and understand this.

God never asks anybody to sacrifice their children.

So somebody today kind of says, hey, you know, uh God told me that.

No, that that's not God, okay?

Because I want you to read this story, but I want you to understand kind of what's going on on the bigger picture scale.

Let's just read and we'll jump into it.

Genesis 22, verse 1.

Genesis 22:1

After these things, God tested Abraham, and he said to him, Abraham, and he said, Here I am.

He said, Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall tell you.

And so Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac, and he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and he arose and he went on to the place of which God had told him.

On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.

Then Abraham said to his young, to his young men, Stay here with the donkey.

I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.

And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and he laid it on Isaac, his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife, and so they went both of them together.

And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father, and he said, Here I am, my son, and he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where's the lamb for the burnt offering?

Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.

So they went both of them together.

When they came to the place which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there, and he laid wood in in in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.

And then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.

But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham, and he said, Here I here I am.

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

And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns.

And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

So Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide, as it is said to this day, on the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.

I want you to underline, if you will, if you're prone to writing in your Bible, there's seven words there.

And then in verse 14, I want you to underline, as it is said to this day.

As it is said to this day.

We'll come back to that in just a little bit, okay?

What do you mean getting better at trust?

Because if you read this just on the surface level, it's kind of like, oh my gosh, that's exactly you said God doesn't ask people to that's exactly what God did right here.

God's doing something bigger and something better and something beyond.

It's something that's applicable to us today.

And we'll get there in just a little bit.

But let me point out a few things in the text.

Let me give you four or five things I want you to write down and take note of today.

The first one is simply this that God tests us for a purpose.

God tests us for a purpose.

He doesn't tempt us, but he does test us.

The Bible says in James makes very clearly, let no man say when he's tempted, that I'm being tempted by God, for God Himself does not tempt anybody, but he does test us.

And that's what the Bible tells us in verse 1.

It says, After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, now when it starts off, anytime you read like a new chapter of the Bible and it says, after these things, some stuff just happened in the previous chapter.

What just happened was uh Abraham sent away his son Ishmael and his mother Hagar and said, Hey, because God had told uh Abraham and Sarah, hey, you're gonna have a son, and they laughed because Sarah's like, I'm an old woman.

Are you kidding me?

And so the longer they went without a son, the less they believed God, they begin to doubt.

And so Abraham's wife Sarah said, Hey, you know what?

I can't give you a son.

You should have relations.

Can I say it like that?

Y'all are like, we don't care how you say it.

You can have relations with my handmaid, with our housekeeper, because she's a young woman and she can give you a son.

Anytime, it's what I call interpreted obedience.

Anytime we interpret what God says in terms of uh in light of our willingness, hey, I know God said this and that ain't happening, so here, here, God, here's kind of our solution.

This is what we're willing to do.

Nothing good is gonna come of that.

And and and and so and so Abraham he slept, he had relations with their housekeeper, Hagar, and she gave birth to a son, and his name was Ishmael, and it has not gone well ever since.

That's why we have a travel ban.

Just want you to see how it all kind of fits together, okay?

And so, and so in the previous chapter, when the Bible says in chapter 22, verse 1, after these things, what's just happened with Sarah got up one day and Sarah said, I can't live with this.

This is like a scourge on me.

Abraham, you gotta send them away.

And Abraham sent them away.

He just said, Hey, you gotta go.

You you gotta go.

And by the way, God said, Hey, I'm gonna take care of them.

So a lot of stuff, nothing in the Bible is standalone.

It all happens in relation to something else.

Uh but but he says, hey, after these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, Here I am.

Now God tests us for a purpose.

It's not temptation, and let me just give you the difference between temptation and testing.

Temptation has as its goal uh exposing your weakness and leading you into sin.

Temptation, the goal of temptation is to expose your weakness, okay?

That's not what God's about.

God's not like, hey, I'm gonna rub your face in how inconsistent you are today.

So get ready for this.

No, temptation has as its goal exposing your weakness.

Testing has as its goal proving the quality of something, proving the quality of something.

Uh that's what testing is about.

And so when it says, hey, after these things, God said, I'm gonna test Abraham.

What he's doing is he's proving to Abraham the quality of Abraham.

He's reminded Abraham, hey, you know what?

I know this is in you.

I want to bring it out in you.

So we'll talk about testing.

I have a confession to make.

Don't tell anybody, but I'm flipping channels probably about a month ago, and I didn't know this was on uh TV because I don't watch a lot of TV.

We have Apple TV, and so I'm into documentaries.

I love things with no commercials, I can just boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, and flip through.

And so, but I'm on regular TV and I'm flipping around late one night, and on some channel, there's a show called Forged in Fire.

Does anybody know what I'm talking about when I say forged?

Yes, I see those hands are there.

Others, Jeff Wood, the bustles away.

And here's the show.

This is only in America can you do this.

It is a show about men making knives.

Yes, they hammer it out from steel, and and the thing that blew me away was they heat this thing up and they're pounding on its glowing orange, then they take it and they dip it in this long, like shoebox thing or it's in full of hot oil.

And I'm like, that's not gonna catch anything on fire.

Uh and and and they pull it out, and one of the things that they keep saying is, you know, we've got to test the metal, we've got to test the metal, we've got to test the metal, not so it'll fail, so we can be reminded of its strength.

In the same way, when the Bible says, when God says after these things, God tested Abraham, God tests us for a purpose.

So if you're going through a test right now, it is not willy-nilly, God's not just jangling you along just for the sake of having something to do, okay?

There's a purpose behind that.

That's the first thing I want to say to you.

The second thing the text says to us is that God understands what he's asking, God understands what he is asking.

You say, What do you mean?

Whenever we hear something like this that sounds just beyond the realm of our willingness or possibility, because uh one of the things that blows me away about this text is Abraham, every time someone speaks to him, his response is the same.

Here I am, here I am, here I am.

He says, Abraham, here I am.

And he says, Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will tell you.

Did I say here I am?

Never mind, I'm busy.

No.

See, God understands what he's asking.

Because see, we respond to God on the basis of what this will mean for us.

By that I mean we're like, but God, you don't understand what this means for me.

Hello.

He's God, of course he understands what it means for you.

And I think when we're thinking, hey God, you don't understand, I think God's just smiling back and saying, You don't realize what I'm what I'm what I'm doing here.

You say, Well, what do you mean God understands what he's asking?

Uh, this happens here in Genesis 22.

It happens back in chapter 12 when he first sets his affections on Abram and calls him.

And here's what happens: there's this imperative, which is a command.

He says, Hey, take your son.

Uh, and then there's kind of these three ascending kind of statements of, hey, I get what I'm asking you.

Here's what it sounds like.

He says, take your son.

And then God says these three kind of it kind of builds to this, okay, you get what you're all what you're doing here.

And here it is, take your son, he says, your only son.

Secondly, whom you love.

And then thirdly, Isaac.

By the way, just just just think about what God's doing here.

He says, Take your son.

You're like, hey, hey, you don't get that.

He says, hey, your only son?

He's your son, number one, he's your only son whom you love, number two.

And God says, I know his name.

His name's Isaac.

God understands all the ramifications of everything he asks you to do.

So God's not this unfeeling, willy-nilly despot up in the heavens, just looking down, jerking with people's lives, just toying with you.

He understands what he is asking.

Thirdly, and I want to just pump the brakes here, and I want you to get this.

He also understands the magnitude of what he's doing.

He also understands the magnitude of what he's doing.

And this is the part that we miss, unless you have a Bible that's written in Hebrew, you you miss this.

When I say that he understands the magnitude of what he's doing, when we understand this, it isn't so much ask as much as an invite.

Let me say that again.

If you write anything down this morning, write that down.

When you understand the magnitude of what God is doing, because he understands the magnitude of what he's doing, and I'll demonstrate in just a minute.

Uh, when we understand this, it's not so much to ask, it's not a request as much as it is an invite.

Here's what I mean.

And like in my Bible, it says, uh in verse 2, he says, take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and it goes on.

But in the Hebrew it's written, take now.

Take now.

And it's I don't want to get all nerdy, but it's a Hebrew particle.

It's a part of speech in the Hebrew language.

And so the Hebrew particle now is a term of entreaty.

It's almost like please.

It's like God saying, take, please take.

Trust me on this.

Please take.

It's almost as if God, and bear with me, please.

It's almost as if God is pleading with Abraham, hey, take now, please.

Just trust me, please.

I'm begging of you, take your son.

Now, when you understand kind of the nuances behind the Hebrew language and what goes into this, it's not God looking down, kind of go, who can I be mean to today?

Okay, Abraham, take your son, your only son Isaac, and offer him up.

No, it's God inviting Abraham into something that he's that is going to blow his mind.

You say, I don't get the you're seeming all excited about this.

What's the big deal?

The Hebrew particle Naw, it appears 60 times in the book of Genesis alone.

But there's only five times in the entire Old Testament where that he that Hebrew particle is used when God is speaking to someone, to a human being.

And every time it is used when God is speaking to a human being, God is inviting them into something that is so beyond the realm of the explainable.

It is so out of this world, it is so, oh my gosh, you don't understand.

This is staggering, this defies explanation or understanding.

There is no way, are you kidding me?

And this is one of those five times.

There's four other places in the Bible that God uses this Hebrew particle gnaw to say to his people, hey, by the way, I know this sounds crazy.

I know that you can't see it, but I can see it.

Trust me, I'm inviting you into something that is gonna rock your world.

Do you want to know where the other four places are?

Uh I'll list them for you.

The first one is in Genesis 13, 14.

The Lord said to Abram, now by the way, here's why I list these off for you.

Uh, because you're gonna find yourself in situations where people do you wrong, people cheat you, people lie about you, people sin against you, and you're gonna get if you're not careful, you're gonna get just discouraged and just beat down, like, uh, are you kidding?

In those moments, you just might need to just whisper to yourself, No.

No, no.

You're like, you you you you you sure you didn't climb up enchanted rock and do something up there with the Indians up there?

No.

Genesis 13, 14, this is what it says.

The Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward, eastward and westward, for all the land that you see, I will give to you and to your offspring forever.

Now, what is the context of that?

Uh, Abram and Lot, and Lot was his nephew.

They they they took off on a journey and they they they prospered so much, their herdsmen were fighting because there wasn't enough room for all their sheep and all their livestock and everything.

And so they sat down and they said, Hey, Abram said, Hey, I'll tell you what, let's separate and I'll let you pick first.

And Lot picked the best land.

Lot looked over and saw, man, that's a green and fertile.

I'll take that.

And Abram was kind of like, really?

I mean, you got that, and I got the leftovers.

I mean, it's oh, really?

So he's just kind of discouraged.

And God says, Hey, uh, after they separate, lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are.

God says, look all the way around.

North, south, east, west, all this land, I'm gonna give to you.

I know it looks like you got the raw deal, the short end of the stick, but hey, you ain't at the mercy of Lot.

You're at the mercy of me.

That's one of the places it's used.

Another place it's used is in Genesis 15, 5.

It says, and he brought him, hey, this is Abram, and he brought him outside and he said, Look toward heaven and number the stars if you're able to number them.

Then he said to him, So shall your offspring be.

And again, what is the context of that?

What's so unbelievable about that?

Abram's old man.

Sarah's an old woman.

And they're just kind of like, you know what, God, you said, okay, we're gonna have a child and and we're gonna have be the father of many nations, but I mean, okay, it it we the the joke's on us.

It's not gonna work.

We're old, my wife's old, and God says, Hey, come outside, I'm gonna rock your world.

You cannot fathom what I'm going to do.

So I'm gonna try to give you a frame of reference.

Look up there and count the stars if you're able.

That's the bigness of what I have in store for you.

So when God says to you, 17-year-old, when God says to you, hey, in this relationship, you might need to go outside and count the stars because it's like, well, God, summer's coming.

You know, I need somebody to hang with in the summer.

I don't want to be by myself.

You might want to go outside and look up and count the stars and kind of go, okay.

Just a little reminder what God's capable of.

The third one, or the fourth one acts is Exodus 11, 2.

This is uh, this is I don't think it's sarcastic, but it's kind of like most of us have an idea.

Uh we relate to God, it's kind of, hey, we're willing for for this to happen.

And so the people of Israel have been slaves for so long, Howard, that all they could imagine was freedom.

They couldn't imagine abundance.

They were just like, hey, you know what?

We're slaves.

We're making bricks without straw.

We barely got food to eat.

We just want to be free.

God has more in store for you than you can just imagine.

Exodus 11:2.

Exodus 11:2

He says, Speak now in the hearing of the people that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry.

Now, what where's the naw in that?

The people are like, hey, the Israelites have been slaves for all these years in Egypt.

God sets them free and they're just they're just glad to be free.

And God says, I don't want you to just be free.

I want you to be well dressed on the way out.

So turn to your neighbors and say, I need some silver and gold.

Yes.

Now you got to ask yourself, hey, which one of those is more like you?

Are you just like, I'm just glad to be here?

Are you believing a God that's like, you know what, I just don't want you to be free.

I want you to be looking good on your way out the door.

That's crazy talk.

No, that's how detailed God is.

Here's the last one.

This is I this is my favorite one.

This is in Isaiah chapter 7, verse 3.

Isaiah 7:3

And the Lord said to Isaiah, go out to meet Ahaz and you and Sheer Jashu, your son, at the end of the conduit of the upper pool on the highway to the washer's field.

Isn't that life changing?

Don't you want to get that tattooed on your back?

Ain't no hipster millennial got that tattooed on their arm.

What is this?

Isaiah 7, 3.

It's about how when God told uh God told uh Ahaz, hey, go out there with your son that's got the funny name to the end of the conduit on the upper pool on the highway to the washer's field.

That's like directions.

You're like, what in the world?

What?

Hey, the Bible says, do not despise the day of small beginnings.

Now, what's the context of this?

Life-changing.

I get it.

Let me give you the context.

That's verse 3.

Here's verse 1 and 2.

In the days, this is this is why this is a big deal, because they were just, their hands were just limp.

They were just so beat down.

They're like, oh God, we this no way this is gonna, we're gonna get out of this.

Listen, verse 1 and 2.

In the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, king of Judah, resident, king of Syria, and Pekkah the son of Remaliah and the king of Israel came up to Jerusalem to wage war against it.

But they could not yet mount an attack against it.

When the house of David was told Syria is in league with Ephraim, and the heart of Ahaz, the heart of his people, shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.

Now you say, I I don't get, I mean, that you lost me there.

In the days of Ahaz, the son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah.

What in the world?

Well, in Isaiah chapter six, Isaiah sees the Lord, has this vision.

It says, and it's an incredible thing.

And in chapter seven, you know, the people are like, hey, we're surrounded.

And the Bible says that the king, that the heart of the king, Ahaz, and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.

I mean, they are you're talking about an anxiety attack.

They are overwhelmed.

I mean, this all starts off.

Ahaz's grandfather has died.

In chapter 6, in the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah says, I saw the Lord.

And so his grandfather's dead.

He's now in charge, and time has elapsed, and he's surrounded.

He's like, Great, this is going to be my legacy.

I'm the guy that lost the city.

And so later on, this is what God says.

And again, the Lord spoke to Ahaz.

Now get this.

This is God speaks to Ahaz.

And he says, Ask a sign of the Lord your God.

Let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.

But Ahaz said, I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.

And he said, Hear then, O house of David, is it too little for you to weary men that you may weary my God also?

Now, by the way, when God asks you to put him to the test, ask you for, he says, Hey, God says, Hey, ask me for a sign.

As a matter of fact, don't bore me with this little small little prayers.

Pray some big prayers.

Make it as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven.

Knock yourself out, my man.

And Ahaz was such a well-mannered Christian, he said, I will not put the Lord to the test.

Let me ask you a question.

Do you relate to God more out of manners or understanding?

Because there's a lot of people in the church that relate to God out of manners.

Well, I would never ask God for, I wouldn't put God to the test.

And God's like, You ain't even testing me.

You're boring me with your manners.

Ask for, hey, when God says ask for a sign, step up, my man, and swing for the fence.

God says, make it as deep as Sheol or as high as heaven.

It don't matter to me.

And to get the magnitude of what's going on here, let me read you the last part.

After he says, Here then, O house of David, is it too little for for you to weary men that you weary my God also?

God says, Hey, you're all jammed up.

Take it back, hey, yeah, I don't want to do, and I don't want, uh God says, Hey, never mind.

I'll give you a sign.

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

Behold the verse.

Virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel.

All that came forth out of the context of people in a full-blown anxiety attack.

The heart of the king and the people shook as the leaves of the trees in the wind.

They were surrounded.

They said, There's no way out of this.

And God said, Hey man, come on.

Ask me for a sign.

You think this is over?

No.

And in the context of that, God says, Hey, I give you a sign.

A virgin's going to conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.

God was saying to these people at a very low point in their life, hey, I've not forgotten you.

I'm not bugged out.

I'm here.

Matter of fact, I'm going to give you a sign that I'm always going to be with you.

So why do I tell you all that?

Why do we look at all those things?

Because I want you to understand, God understands the magnitude of what he's asking, but he also understands the bigness of what he's doing.

That's the thing that we lose in all this.

He understands what he's doing.

Do you?

Do you realize that sometimes God's not asking?

He's inviting you to experience something that is going to change the way you relate to God for the rest of your life.

Let me ask you this question.

Have you ever had a moment?

Have you ever had a circumstance or an incident that changed the way you related to God for the rest of your life?

That just, it so left an indelible impression on you.

You walked away and said, you know what?

I'm never going to think that way about God again.

I repent of that.

That was wrong.

That was too small.

I'm going to think about God in bigger terms than I've been thinking about God.

Because the use of this Hebrew particle, gnaw, is one of those five instances in the Bible where God kind of says, Here you go.

The fourth thing we take away from the text this morning is simply this is that obedience is an act of worship.

Obedience is an act of worship.

Look at verse 3.

This is what the text tells us after God says this, it says, So Abraham rose early in the morning.

Just, I don't want to spend a lot of time on this, but let me just kind of underline that in your mind.

So Abraham, God had told him the day before, hey, I want you to take your son, your only son, whom you love.

His name's Isaac, by the way.

That's how intimately acquainted I am with everything having anything to do with you.

By the way, Abraham, I get this.

I get what I'm asking you, and I get the do you get the magnitude of what I'm doing, though?

And the Bible says the very next day that Abraham woke up early in the morning.

We used to say this to our girls and they hate it.

Especially now that they're 19 and 13.

I still say it, they just roll their eyes.

Really, Dad?

Really?

And I say this slow obey is no obey.

Really?

Really?

I'm 19.

You should be obeying a lot quicker.

Abraham obeyed quickly.

The Bible says this in verse 3.

So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac, and he cut the wood for the burnt offering.

And he arose and he went to the place of which God had told him.

And on the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.

And then Abraham said to his young men, Stay here with the donkey, and I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.

Now they walked for best we could tell, two and a half days.

And there's no recorded dialogue.

Let me give you a question I want you to think about.

If you had two and a half days to talk to your kids, what would you tell them?

Can you imagine they're walking along for two and a half days?

There's no nowhere anywhere do we have a record of what they talked about or that they even talked.

They may not have even talked.

If you had two and a half days, what would you say to them?

What would you cram into that?

Obedience is an act of worship.

What do I mean?

I fear that we've lost the goal of obedience these days because most of the teaching in the church, it's about these principles and processes which ensure the outcome that we want.

I don't know that that's obedience as much as that is manipulation.

You got to be careful that we're not just kind of, hey, I'm gonna do this and this and this and this, and this ensures that I'm gonna get what I want.

That's not obedience.

Obedience has as its goal not just my satisfaction, but God's glorification.

I want to bring glory to God.

I want to do that which I was created for.

He said, What do you mean?

It's an act of worship.

Look at the latter part of verse 5.

They get to the place, they see it, and Abraham turns to the two guys, his two servants, and says, Stay here with the donkey.

I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.

Where in the world did the word worship come from?

Did God say, Hey, I want you to take your son to a promise keepers' conference?

I want you all to sing songs and cry and hug each other, come back, tell me what it was like.

No, God said, Hey, I want you to sacrifice your son.

And Abram got up early the next morning, saddled the donkey, and said, You know what?

I'm just acting in faith here.

And when the time came, obedience was an act of worship for him.

Is obedience an act of worship for you?

Fifth thing the text tells us is that God tells a big story.

God tells a big story.

And let me just say this before I show it to you in the Bible.

And God's been telling a story for a long time.

Look at verse 6.

Tell me if this reminds you of anybody.

And Abram took the wood of the burnt offering and he laid it on Isaac, his son.

And he took in his hand the fire and the knife.

And so they went both of them together.

And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father.

And he said, Here I am, my son.

And he said, Behold the fire in the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

Did you hear it?

By the way, we don't know exactly how old Isaac was.

Some people believe he was as old as 37 years old.

He was old enough to carry wood.

So what do you mean God's been telling a big story?

When the Bible says that he put the wood on the shoulders of his son, in your mind you should picture Jesus carrying the cross.

See, God started telling this story way back in Genesis.

And now, by the way, this is subtle.

The Bible's so subtle if you don't understand it, you miss it.

Because he says, and his son turns to him, and they're walking along there, and he says, Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, behold the fire in the wood, but where's a lamb for a burnt offering?

And Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.

So they went on both of them together.

They get up there, it's not a lamb, it's a ram.

Remember that?

It's a ram caught in the thicket.

See, what God is doing way back in Genesis 22 is He's saying, Hey, hey, I'm gonna provide a lamb.

In the meantime, all through the rest of the Old Testament, you're gonna practice animal sacrifices for your sin because they're gonna cover your sin.

But when Jesus shows up and John the Baptist sees him, he says, Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world.

See, God's been telling this story.

God tells this big story, and he's been telling it for a long time.

Last thing the text tells us this morning about getting better at trust is simply this that God is still telling his story.

God is still telling his story.

What do you mean?

Verse 9, when they came to the place at which God had told him, Abraham built an altar there and he laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.

And then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.

But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham, and he said, Here I am.

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

And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns.

And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

And so Abraham called the name of the place, the Lord will provide, as it is said to this day, on the mount of the Lord, it shall be provided.

Now remember when I first started, I told you to underline those words as it is said to this day?

What do you mean God is still telling the same story?

Here's one of the most mind-blowing things about this.

Abraham goes through this incredible ordeal of hearing God say, This is what I want you to do.

He goes out there in obedience to God as an act of worship to God.

God speaks from heaven, stops him, he turns around, sees a ram caught in the thicket, has this incredible thing.

And then, look at me, look at me, beloved.

This is the hardest thing for us to do.

Abraham, he submits his story, the part that he does to what God does.

You say, I don't know what you mean.

Look at what he calls the place.

Look at verse 14.

So Abraham called the place, Abraham trusts God.

No?

No?

Abraham called the place, the Lord will provide.

As it is said to this day, on the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.

Abraham's part in the story is not memorialized.

Matter of fact, it's subordinated to God's role.

Why?

Don't miss this, beloved.

We'll be done today.

Because left to ourselves, every one of us in this room will say, Well, I'm not Abraham.

I could never do anything like that.

And that's why the Bible says what it says there in verse 14.

He's not calling you to be Abraham.

He's speaking to you today to remind you that God's still God.

Remember those seven words I had you underlined?

As it is said to this day on the mount, the Lord will provide.

Don't go to your community groups tonight and kind of go, well, I could never do that because I mean, God better not ask me to do that because I'll tell you what, I could never do that.

God's not asking you to do to be Abraham.

He's asking you to remember that God is still God.

And the God that was faithful back in Genesis 22 is just as faithful today.

And sometimes when he tells you to do something, it's not just, hey, I'm asking you to do something.

It's an invitation to step into that which cannot, you don't have words for.

You just can't get your head around.

And so if you're balking at something today, if you're kind of like, I know God's telling me to do this, but I don't just think about what he's asking you to do.

Think about the God that's asking you to do it.

And ask yourself, what is the track record of this?

What could we be getting into here?

Because God's kind of inviting you to something.

It's not an ask.

The more you understand about the nature of God, it's not just an ask, it's not just a request for obedience, it's an invitation into the character and the nature of God.

That's what makes trust doable.

That's what makes whatever he says to do.

Hey, I want you to do this.

Got it.

Got it.

It just says an act of worship, God.

I got it.

I fully understand.

That's why we sing.

For we never can prove the delights of his love until all on the altar we lay.

What do you need to lay down on the altar today?

Let's pray together.

The story's not about Abraham.

Because God knew we'd cop out and say, Well, I'm not like God.

He's the father of many nations.

He's the father of our faith.

Whatever.

No.

You don't have to be Abraham.

But you do have to live your life in such a way that it acknowledges that God is still God.

And God is still faithful.

And can you live your whole life and subordinate your story to God's story?

Can you imagine going through something like this?

And just when you retell the story, you leave your part out and you just talk about how faithful God was?

What do you need to lay down today?

What impending decision are you thinking about?

That it kind of concerns you, it might even scare you, but today you might just hear God kind of just saying, no.

No.

Let's think about this for just a minute, beloved.

Father, we ask you for that grace to trust you more, to stop relating to you out of our willingness and instead relate to you out of your nature.

God, give everybody in this room, if it hadn't happened already, Lord, give them some experiences with you that leave an indelible impression upon them that changes the way they relate to you for the rest of their life.

Because they've tasted and seen, they can't go back.

They've seen you.

They've seen you do what only you can do, and it ruins them for the ordinary.

Spare us, God, from ordinary relationships and an ordinary life.

That doesn't mean, God, we want it to be sensational.

What we mean by that is, God, we want to be faithful.

We want to be done with all these less wild lovers and these half-baked excuses that we use to explain away our inactivity.

And so, Lord, thank you today that you're kind of inviting us into the gnaw.

Give us ears to hear, we pray in Jesus' name.

What everyone said.

Amen.

Amen.

Thanks for your presence today.

If you're our guest, let me say thanks for being a part of our service.

When you came in, you're given a little worship folder.

It has information about our church.

But on the far right side, it has a little tear-off portion.

If you've had a chance to fill it out, you tear it off.

And on your way out this morning, would you just drop it one of these wooden boxes by the door?

That's where we receive our offering.

In that worship folder, there's different stuff about things going on in our church.

Let me highlight three or four things we want you to be aware of, some opportunities for connection.

First of all, our summer mission trips applications are now available online.

We'd love for you to come and be a part of what God's doing.

We have trips.

We're going to Haiti, Guatemala, and Romania this summer and Costa Rica.

We just had a men's group get back.

We have a medical mission trip this summer to Costa Rica.

If you'd like information about that, Don Minton, our spiritual formation pastor, is over over missions.

He'll be available.

Love to talk to you about that.

Second thing I want to remind you of is that Secret Church is coming up.

Secret Church, people are like, what is that?

It's an incredible opportunity.

They take a different topic.

Like this time, it is uh scripture uh in in the age of cynicism.

And so uh you get a workbook if you pay 10 bucks, it's worth the 10 bucks to get a workbook.

But a guy named David Platt, who used to pastor a church in Alabama, wrote the book Radical, just just just the guy that just kind of takes God at his word.

He's now uh the president of the International Mission Board.

Uh but he teaches, uh, and it's not like from 5:30 till 11:30 non-stop.

We take breaks, there's snacks involved, but but it is it's like drinking from a fire hydro, I'll be honest with you.

Uh and it is an incredible opportunity to have the way you think about scripture in this case enhanced and deepened, okay?

If you have any questions about that, we would love to uh answer anything.

Third thing I'll remind you of is that community groups are tonight.

Uh our community groups are sermon-based discussion groups.

Uh, they meet in homes all over our city on the first and third uh Sunday.

Most of them meet on the first and third.

Some of them meet on different nights of the week, but we have a little card out in the lobby that's available that says, hey, this is this is where the groups meet.

You're welcome to check one out.

You can visit two or three until you kind of find what's a fit for you.

Uh but they gather, they have some food and fellowship time, and then they get down to the purpose for which they exist, and that is to process what we heard here this morning, okay?

Uh last thing I'll remind you of is our men's breakfast.

Is this coming Tuesday?

Um, I'll be speaking.

It's out in the warehouse from six to seven o'clock in the morning.

You're more than welcome to come.

If you've never been to one, it's free.

We have taquitos and water burger and some other stuff for breakfast.

And right now I'm teaching different things from the book of Philippians.

The book of Philippians, a random piece of information, is one of the only books in the New Testament that's not written to speak to an issue.

It's written for one purpose and one purpose only: encouragement.

Paul writes it to the church at Philippi and says, I just want to encourage you.

So, men, on Tuesday morning, I just want to encourage you with some things.

And so don't think, oh, I'm gonna go take my whooping and start my day.

I can't wait for that.

No, we want to encourage you.

We want to pray for you, and then you can get out the door by 7 o'clock if you need to, or you can linger and just hang out like Dennis Scott does.

All right.

He's not in here to defend himself.

Uh yes, he is.

Anyway, hey, if we can do anything, we can pray with you about anything.

Myself and some of our staff and elders will be available down front.

Stand on your feet.

Let me speak a blessing over you.

Hold your hands out.

Of course he knows.

That's why he's asking you.

It can feel impossible, but what it is, it's intimate.

It's you living the life you were created to live.

Depart now and step into the know of what you were created for.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Bless you.

You're dismissed.