"The Substitute" Genesis 22 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Genesis 22, I'll read the text for us.

I'll read all the way down through verse 19.

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

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

So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac.

And he cut wood for the burnt offering, and rose and went to the place of which God had told him.

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

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

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

Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son.

He took his hand, the fire and the knife, and they both of them went together.

And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father, he said, Here I am, my son.

He said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

Abraham said, God will provide for himself a lamb for the burnt offering, my son, and so both of them went together.

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

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

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

He said, Don't lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him.

For now I know that you fear God, seeing you've not withheld your son, your only son, from me.

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

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

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

The angel of Yahweh called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, By myself I have sworn, declares Yahweh, because you've done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you.

I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and the sand is the seashore, and your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring all the nations of the earth will be blessed, because you've obeyed my voice.

So Abraham returned to his young men.

They arose and went together to Bersheba, and Abraham lived at Bersheba.

A number of years ago, 2015.

In fact, there was a mock trial in New York City put on as an annual fundraiser for a Jewish legal association there.

They would do mock trials every year and sell tickets to it.

And the one in 2015, the trial, was an accusation of charge laid against the prophet Abraham.

He was charged, posthumously, of course, of child endangerment and attempted murder.

The prosecution was led by career prosecutor and former governor of New York, Elliot Spitzer.

The state's case that he argued was that Abraham had a track record of endangering children, beginning with Ishmael and culminating in this.

Now it's up to the law to put a stop to it.

The defense team was led by O.J.

Simpson, defense attorney and Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz.

His bio has those reversed, but I like the order I give them in.

O.J.

defense attorney first, Harvard Law Professor second.

He claimed insanity.

He said, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, which was, you know, 300 people that bought tickets for this, I will prove to you beyond a reasonable doubt that my client was insane.

If you hear the voice of an angel from heaven telling you to do things and you listen to it, and he said something that I learned in at least in New York law, the insanity defense is often called the voice of God defense.

That's a threshold.

If you have the voice of God telling you to do things and you do them, you're the crazy one.

His closing argument, which was also on fire, he borrowed a line from his OJ trial where he said, if you think the Bible is legit, you must acquit.

If you have angels telling you what to do, you are insane.

The jury voted to acquit Abraham.

Reporters hung out outside the uh church building where the trial took place, or the synagogue where the trial took place, and asked the jurors why they returned a verdict of not guilty.

And it seemed that it was less to do with the legaless argument and more to do with the fact that most of the jury hated Elliot Spitzer.

What do you do with a story like this where there is a command of the Lord to the prophet Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, to sacrifice his son?

It is very common to say that this story doesn't exist or his story is not not true.

It's a Jewish fiction.

The Jews generally are self-hating people, and so it's fitting in the Jewish Torah to have the story, the introduction to the Jewish race and Jewish culture to be one of self-hating.

Of course, the patriarch is going to try to kill his son, the only hope of the Jewish race.

Jews have always hated each other, kind of logic.

That's a very common view in the Jewish world about this.

There have been philosophers throughout the ages that have tried to explain away this story or to argue that it's not uh true or historic.

And yeah, Al Muller has a just a really insightful observation on that.

The problem with all of those explanations is that after you listen to them, the story is still in the Bible.

Like you can explain all you want, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

When you're done talking, the story's still here.

It's still looking up at you from the pages of scripture, making you do something with it.

Like you have to wrestle with the fact that God told Abraham, as recorded in the Bible, to sacrifice his son.

Heck, if it didn't actually happen, the fact that it's in the Bible is even worse.

Not better.

Saying it didn't happen in the real world doesn't soften the story.

If you say it didn't happen in the real world, that implies that somebody invented a story like this to make a point.

And my my response to that is that's worse than it being real.

Taking it at face value is enough of a challenge for you.

Kierkegaard, Soren Kierkegaard, the philosopher, says the story is in the scripture to teach you the danger of thinking that you can hear the God's voice.

Manuel Kant says that the story is in the scripture to teach you that God doesn't confine himself to our concept of morality.

God transcends our own concepts of morality, so he intentionally does something that would be immoral to for us to recognize his authority.

What do you do with this story?

It's not enough to simply say it's a test of Abraham's faith, of course it is.

This is a story that is given to you in the Bible to teach you a lesson.

I want you to look at verse one again.

After these things, God tested Abraham.

That key word in verse one, tested, is going to be the guiding word to understand the story by.

You won't understand the rest of the story unless you have come to terms with what verse one is teaching.

This thing is given to be a test to Abraham.

The ground rule for everything else that happens in chapter 22 is that it is all structured around a test for Abraham.

It is less an example for us of how to live or the nuances of hearing God's voice or whatnot.

What this chapter is designed to do is to test Abraham.

And you know how the test is going to end.

You know it even by reading it, because this is written by Moses.

Moses was a descendant of Isaac.

Isaac at the start of chapter 22 has no children.

So by virtue of this being written down, you, the reader, enter this story knowing that Isaac lives.

This is like, I hate to use movie illustrations, but this would be like the movie where you it starts off at some point in time with the hero and then it flashes back.

And the rest of the movie is the story of this hero in danger, but the movie started with you seeing the hero.

You know he will survive till the end.

If they made a sequel, you know at the end of the first one the hero's still alive, in other words.

As you enter Genesis 22, you know Isaac lives.

Because there are the Jews.

They have the law.

This is the part of the Torah that comes through Isaac.

And so what is the test about?

Well, the test is given to Abraham to teach him.

That's the way these kind of tests often work in the Bible.

The test is not designed to teach God.

Abraham had this lesson earlier back in Genesis 18 with his negotiation with God.

Do you remember if there's 50 righteous, 40 righteous, 30 righteous, 10 righteous, are you going to do this?

That negotiation wasn't for God to figure out how low he would go.

You understand that, right?

God knew how many righteous people were in Genesis.

Remember at the end of it, the angels say, all right, if there's 10 righteous, we won't destroy it.

BRB, we're going to go destroy it.

God knew how many righteous people were there.

The test is given so that Abram would learn.

And the same thing is true here.

God knows Abram's heart.

God knows Abraham's faith now because God gave Abraham his faith.

This test is designed to reveal Abraham's faith to himself.

Abraham has had opportunities to learn that, as Dan preached this morning through the Abraham narrative with the Abrahamic covenant and the promise of a son, and that's a promise that was seemed to be withering on the vine.

It didn't appear, it didn't appear, it didn't appear.

And then there is the son, Isaac.

This is a test given to Abraham to reinforce that.

And you understand that tests, sometimes tests are designed for the teacher's benefit, so the teacher can tell what the students have actually learned.

I taught high school Spanish for many years.

I understand these two kinds of tests.

Sometimes I'd give the students a test so that I could figure out what they didn't know.

If everybody gets the same question wrong, I should have taught that.

But other times I give the test, especially if I have a more talkative class or a more, you know, a class requiring some discipline.

The test has a different function then.

The test then is given to them to show them how little they know.

Sometimes a class needs confidence.

You can give them a test so they learn how much they know.

Tests have a pedagogical function, even for the student.

And this is that kind of test.

This is a test given to Abraham so that Abraham would learn about his own faith.

But it is bigger than that.

I'm going to give you an outline as we go through this.

The outline here is going to be six ways Abraham's faith teaches us about Jesus.

Six ways Abraham's faith teaches us about Jesus.

And I'm using the word teach here intentionally.

This is a test given to Abraham.

It's a test designed to teach Abraham.

We now are not learning so much about our own faith from this.

We are, through Genesis 22, learning about what Abraham learned.

Learning about the object of Abraham's faith.

This was a test given to Abraham to teach Abraham about the nature of his faith.

The nature of Abraham's faith is in a son, as Dan mentioned this morning.

It's in a future son, it's in the Savior that's coming.

That's where Abraham had placed his faith.

His faith was in God, but the exact content of that faith was in the Son that would come to him.

So Abraham's faith is in the Messiah, in the future Son that would be born.

This is a chapter that's given to teach Abraham about the substance of that faith that he has.

Our series going through Genesis right now.

Jesus in Genesis, we're covering these, well, one, two, three, four, five, six different ways you see Jesus in Genesis.

We looked at seeing Jesus as the seed in Genesis 3, the promise of the Savior who would crush the head of the serpent.

We've looked at seeing Jesus as the Savior from the ark that rescues people, as Peter said, that it's the baptism that corresponds to this, that you're saved through your faith in Christ.

In a few weeks, we'll look at Jesus as Salem as the Prince of Peace or the King of Peace.

This morning we saw Jesus as the Son, the substance of the promise given to Abraham, is the person of Christ who will be a son.

Then next Lord's day, we'll look at Jesus as the scepter, the king who will rule.

But tonight we're in Genesis 22 that Jesus is the substitute.

This is what this test is given to teach Abraham that Jesus is the substitute.

And it begins first with God requiring a sacrifice.

This is the first thing the test is teaching Abraham that God requires a sacrifice.

You see this in verse 1.

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

He said, Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, 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.

Even though Abraham is a member of the covenant community, they're really only a member right now, even though Abraham is the father of the Jewish race, he is in a relationship by faith with God.

He's already put his faith in God.

That faith was credited to him as righteousness.

We saw that in chapter 12, again in chapter 15, again in chapter 17.

Abraham's faith has been solidified and cemented and credited as righteousness.

He is in a saving relationship with God at this point.

Nevertheless, God still requires a sacrifice from him.

And that's because Abraham keeps sinning.

That's the way God made the world, that when there is sin, he requires a sacrifice.

That's a fundamental point of how God oversees the world.

It's a universal fact that sin produces death.

The wages of sin is, and so because of that, God requires death to atone for sacrifice, to atone for sin.

There is no true sacrifice without the shedding of blood.

Cain and Abel, you can go back to that encounter.

Abel is offering the shedding of blood, Cain is offering grain.

Grain does not atone for sin because grain cannot receive the wrath of God.

I assume grain could be burned into fire or whatnot.

There are sheaf offerings and different kinds of offerings, wave offerings in the Old Testament that are more about you providing for the Levites than they are about atonement.

Sacrifices that are about atonement require the shedding of blood.

No sooner than Adam and Eve sinned did God kill an animal to cover their sin.

That is the pattern throughout the Bible.

And that is the pattern here.

Even though Abraham is in a saving relationship with God, God still requires the death of something to propitiate his wrath.

As long as sin increases, death abounds all the more.

When sin abounds and death abounds, God's wrath abounds, and God's wrath is poured out in something that requires to die, death.

We saw in the Genesis, in the flood narrative in Genesis 8, that Noah brought with him extra animals on the ark in order to sacrifice.

Noah gets off the ark, the world has been purged of its sin, so to speak, and yet he still has to offer sacrifices.

God is worshipped through sacrifices.

That's kind of the most fundamental element of this story.

You enter it, the command to sacrifice Isaac.

Sometimes you can lose the forest for the trees here.

Zoom out and see the forest here.

The command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac reinforces that God demands sacrifice.

He requires it.

Secondly, God requires sacrifice.

Also, the sacrifice will be an only son.

And verse 2, take your son.

Notice the phrase is repeated, your only son Isaac.

That's the command to him.

Abraham has a unique relationship with God through faith.

Isaac has a unique relationship with Abraham.

Isaac is not, strictly speaking, Abraham's only son.

You understand the other one named Ishmael, but there are other sons running around too.

You find out the end of Abraham's life.

There were other, you know, from the handmaidens and whatever other half-brained attempts Abraham had to fulfill God's promise, there were other sons.

Isaac's not the oldest son, he's not the first son.

Why is he called here by God your only son?

And the answer, of course, is because Isaac is the recipient of the covenant.

He's the recipient of the promise.

He is the unique son, and that all of the promises of God are resident in him.

And as much as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1 that all the promises of God are yes, yes, yes in Christ, all the promises right now at this point in time are yes, yes, yes in Isaac.

The promise of the Savior is in him.

Isaac, in that sense, is the unique in covenantal son.

And that is the kind of son that God requires.

The uniqueness of Isaac doesn't mean that God requires less from Abraham because of Isaac.

Rather, God requires more from Abraham because of Isaac.

The covenantal son is the chief focal point of this offering.

He's told to go take him up and offer him on a mountain.

Verse 3 Abraham rose early in the morning.

Abraham is being faithful.

He's eager to obey here.

If there was ever a morning to sleep in, it would be this one.

But he's up in the morning, he saddles his donkey.

He took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac.

He cut wood for the burnt offering.

He rose and he went to the place of which God had told him.

He sets out.

He's turning his back on, again, this is the second time in Abraham's life.

He's turning his back on his family, he's turning his back on the land in which he's from in order to obey the voice of God.

God called him out of Ur and he left his family earlier.

Now God is calling him, in a sense, out of where he is to go to what is now Jerusalem and sacrifice Isaac, the place where God will show him.

So he's on his way.

The object of the sacrifice will be his only son.

Abraham is demonstrating he loves God more than even his own family here.

It is a heartbreaking scene for precisely this reason.

Obviously, Isaac was Abraham's favorite son.

He tells him that he sent Ishmael away.

I mean, how many times do you think Abraham looked at Isaac and said, I love you more than anyone in the whole world?

Probably.

Something like that.

Maybe because of his faith, he would even follow that with I love you more than anyone in the whole world, except God.

Christian parents understand that nuance.

You tell your kids, oh, I love you more than anything in the whole world.

I love God more.

That's the nature of a Christian parenting relationship.

The more you love the Lord, the more your kids will in turn love the Lord, and the more that you direct their hearts to the Lord, the more they love you.

They grow in love for you as you direct their love to the Lord.

That's the wonder of a Christian family right there.

Certainly Abraham had that on display.

And now that nuance is on display for Abraham.

He gets a chance to, the test here is going to expose to his heart that he really does love the Lord more than even his unique covenantal son.

She reminds you of the phrase, the scene in Pilgrim's Progress where Christian early on in the book is running towards the celestial city and he's his family holding on to him.

Do you recall his family holding on to his legs and his jacket and begging him to stay?

His kids, his wife, or weeping, asking him to stay.

Why would he want to leave his family?

Why would he want to leave the city where they have a life?

And you remember Christian plugs his ears and runs for the celestial city, telling him, enough, enough.

He won't listen to them anymore.

He he must go forward towards the light.

That's this scene here.

Nothing's going to hold Abraham back, and he pushes forward.

Learning here, the sacrifice God requires is his only son.

And of course, you understand how this is just giving you the shape.

As I mentioned, we started the series in Genesis.

Well, these stories here in Genesis are giving you the shape of the promise, the shape of the Savior for later.

It's not filling in.

You don't get the Savior's going to be born in Bethlehem.

You don't need to get that his name is going to be Jesus.

You don't get the details yet, but it's giving you the outline here.

And right now, the part of the outline that's new for us here in Genesis 22, the new part of the outline is that it will be an only son that's sacrificed.

That's new.

So when you get to the New Testament, it doesn't surprise you when God gives his one and only son, to use the language of John 3 16 or John 1 14, is his only begotten.

The sun.

God doesn't command Abraham to do anything that God won't one day do Himself.

Thirdly, the sacrifice produces worship.

Verse 4.

The third day.

This would be about a day walk for a 30-year-old.

But Abraham's not 30.

And he spent the first half of the first day splitting wood.

So it's taken him three days to get here.

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

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

So the donkey has carried the wood this far.

Jesus is going to walk the same path, by the way, in one day.

It's taking Abraham three.

He's got the donkey.

He's going to leave the donkey.

I am the boy.

Notice how he refers to Isaac.

The Hebrew word here is young man.

He's not six.

He's not twelve, maybe a teenager.

It's probably hard to get his age just from this kind of description, but he's a young man.

We're going to go over there and worship.

And then notice this phrase come again to you.

First, notice that Abraham says, We're going to go worship.

He's parking the donkey, he's parking the young men, is taking his own young man with him.

He's going to go up the hill to worship.

Abraham says that, I think, legitimately, like that's his actual intent.

He's being commanded to do something horrible and unspeakable, and yet his trust to the Lord is such that he's going to worship the Lord all the way through it.

This is the way true sacrifice for sin always functions.

When there is sacrifice for sin, the corresponding response to it is worship.

When you recognize that sin is atoned for, you respond by worshiping.

There's all the Psalms of Ascent that the Jews would sing on their way to and from the temple for Yom Kippur for the Day of Atonement.

They had songs that they would sing to worship.

The Halail songs, Jesus himself will sing as he goes before the Passover and He will be the Passover Lamb himself.

There is a connection between sacrifice and worship.

Even when we take communion, we often sing before and after we take communion.

There's a connection of worship to sacrifice.

When you recognize the sacrifice atones for sin, you worship.

And the reason that's true is because you recognize that your sin separates you from God.

Sin is what mutes worship, sin is the wet blanket thrown on worship.

Sacrifice cuts a hole in the blanket and restores your relationship with God so that you respond, knowing your sin is atoned for, with worship.

So Abraham here, journeying for days with his son, an unspeakable thing he's being asked to do, but his response is worship.

He's not merely gonna go offer his son as an offering.

He's also gonna go worship.

Notice that Abraham added that phrase?

God told Abraham to go make the sacrifice in verse 2.

Where did worship come from?

Abraham adds that.

He's the one who says, we're gonna go do the offering and worship.

In Abraham's mind, the sacrifice and the offering and worship are synonymous.

This is a little lesson for us, for Abraham as well, but for us that as you approach God and worship, that as you approach God through sacrifice, there's always worship attached to it.

That's because sacrifice is not ritualistic but heartfelt.

You know it's heartfelt because the little disclaimer, the little phrase at the end of that verse, that I'll return to you.

He doesn't say, I'll return to you, though.

I and the boy.

It's first person plural.

We will go worship, we will come again to you.

Abraham has confidence that he's going to come back down the mountain with the son.

We'll be back.

Now, at this point, you recognize that Abraham is operating with two contradictory facts.

That Isaac is the son of the promise, Isaac is the one God has given the promise to, Isaac is required for God's promises to be fulfilled.

Many nations are gonna come from Isaac, blessings for the nations are gonna come from Isaac, the Savior is gonna come from Isaac, that's all true.

Also, he's gonna go sacrifice Isaac.

That's also true.

Those are the two competing facts in Abraham's mind.

They can't both be true, and yet they are.

And Abraham approaches this dilemma not by ignoring or sloughing off one of the truths of the other, but by just embracing them both and thinking, you know what, this looks like a paradox on Tuesday, but on Wednesday it'll sort itself out.

So yeah, uh I'm gonna go sacrifice my son.

We'll see you tomorrow.

Now, how can you say both those things?

Well, Hebrews let you know that Abraham said both these things because by faith he believed that God would resurrect Isaac.

That was Abraham's operating principle right now, is that God, who gave me a child in old age, could certainly resurrect this child.

Abraham learned the lesson that if God has brought me this far, if he's given me the Son, he'll give me the other things that are less complicated than the Son.

The Son was a big miracle.

Now these other miracles are just about the Son's existence.

Those are easy for God to do.

If he gave me the Son, he can do all the other stuff.

That's Abraham's thinking.

To us, it seems contradictory.

To Abraham, it seems contradictory in verse 5.

And yet he embraces it.

He embraces it to go worship.

Next, God will provide the sacrifice.

Sacrifice will be provided by God.

Verse 6.

Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son.

So the donkey shirted out for the sun.

He took in his hand the fire and the knife.

So both of them went together.

This is a period of walking, I would imagine, up the mountain.

We don't know the exact location of this, but I mean the topography is the same now.

As you walk from Jericho down into Jerusalem, you do go down the hill.

Seems most likely to me that Abraham would have left the donkey and the men at the bottom, down by the brook down there.

And he's going to climb up what would become later the Temple Mount.

And he's going to offer Isaac up on the top of the Temple Mount.

So that's a, you know, it's a it's a significant hill today.

I mean, it's been graded for thousands of years.

I'm sure it was even more extreme then.

It's going to take him a while to zigzag up that hill.

Some of you have even walked that hill today with like the steps up and everything.

There were no steps back then.

It's a significant event to get up that.

But Isaac goes up it.

I mean, Abraham goes up, and Isaac carrying the wood in his back.

While they're walking, verse 7, Isaac says to his father Abraham, My father! You're probably not going to hear a more desperate cry than that.

Isaac is doing math.

There's wood, there's a knife, there's fire, there's gonna be a sacrifice, and the donkey's down there.

That leaves me, which is not an outrageous conclusion.

They're living in a world where the nations around them sacrifice their children on the reg.

I mean, this is the normal way these other nations worship, is they offer their children in fire to their gods.

So this is not an unthinkable thing for Isaac's mind.

This would be probably the obvious deduction he would make.

This is what all the other nations do this.

Why wouldn't his dad?

That's what's behind his question.

Abraham says, Here I am.

Isaac says, I see the fire in the wood.

Where's the lamb?

Abraham says in verse 8, God will provide for himself the burnt offering, my son, which strictly speaking at this point is true.

God provided Isaac.

I mean, this is this is the whole Genesis narrative up until chapter 21 is how God provided Isaac.

It was it was a lot of prayer, it was a lot of conflict, it was a lot of angelic visitations.

There was a lot going on to get Isaac here.

Certainly God provided Isaac, and that's what Abraham is hanging his hat on.

God will provide the burnt offering.

Abraham doesn't know the details, but the shape of the gospel that Abraham's drawing here, the shape of the gospel is that the sacrifice will be a son, it will be an only son, it will produce worship, and this only son who produces worship as a sacrifice for sin, he will be provided by Yahweh.

God provides his sacrifice.

Isaac is literally carrying around the implementation of his death on his back with the wood there.

This is a picture of Jesus carrying the cross, probably in the same area, dragging his own cross on his back.

This is a picture of you carrying your own sin around.

Paul says, you carry your body of death with you.

The wages of sin is death.

You carry around your fallen nature with you.

What justifies God putting you to death, you're carrying around with you all the time.

Jesus carried his cross to his death.

Isaac is carrying the wood up the hill to the same place.

I mean, this is a pretty gripping and brutal image of people marching to their own death with the tools that will be used to kill them.

And yet, despite the tools being on Isaac's back, despite our sin nature being with us, we understand that God is the one who provides the sacrifice.

It won't be the wood that kills Isaac, it won't be our sin if you're in Christ that will kill you.

God is the one who provides the sacrifice for his children, which means, fifthly, the sacrifice will be a substitute.

And this is the key point of the narrative.

All this comes into focus right here.

The sacrifice will be a substitute.

The main point of this text.

Verse 9.

They came to the place of which God had told them.

God had a specific place in mind.

Abraham built the altar there, laid the wood in order, and he bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.

Abraham reached out his hand, took the knife to slaughter his son.

This is a very particular point that God had in mind.

Abraham grabs the knife.

This point you're going to see again in the pages of scripture.

Abraham grabs his knife to go to slaughter his son.

Verse 11, the angel of Yahweh called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham.

And Abraham said, Here I am.

Same way he responded to his son.

The angel says, Don't lay your hand on the boy or do anything for him.

For now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son.

There's that repetition of your only son from me.

Abraham lifts up his eyes and look, behold, there was a ram caught in the thicket by the horns.

This is not the first time we've seen this phrase, lifted up his eyes.

It is a unique phrase to Abraham, but he does it a bunch.

Abraham 13, Genesis 13, God tells Abraham, Lift up your eyes and look at the promised land on one side and Sodom on the other.

God tells Abraham, Lift up your eyes and contrast the land of the righteous versus the land of the devil, really.

In Genesis 18, he lifts up his eyes to see the angels coming to judge Sodom.

Later on, he raises his eyes when Sodom's on fire.

He looks to Sodom with desperation in his heart, wondering if Lot was delivered.

He, of course, he never finds out.

Now it's the same phrase again to him.

Abraham lifts up his eyes.

And this time, behold, verse 13 says, a ram caught in the thicket by its horns.

The other times Abraham lifted up his eyes, it was just judgment.

Judgment, judgment, judgment.

Sodom, Sodom, Sodom.

But now it's a ram.

Now it's a ram.

God gives him what he had believed by faith.

Abraham wasn't looking for the ram.

Of course he wasn't even looking for it.

And yet that's how God provided.

Abraham didn't have this part of the promise yet.

He didn't have the substitutionary nature of the promise.

He had the only son part of the promise, he had the sacrifice part of the promise, he had the atonement part of the promise.

He had all that.

He didn't have the substitute part of the promise.

That was the part of the shape in the connected outline of what Jesus looked like in Genesis.

That was the peace that Abraham didn't have yet.

But now he's got it.

It will be a substitute.

Of course.

It's not going to be the one that deserves death that will die.

It will be somebody else.

God will provide somebody else to fill in the gap.

Of course.

That's the most significant lesson from this chapter.

That's the significant lesson that Abraham took.

So he grabs the ram right away, of course, and offers it up as a burnt offering.

I'm sure Isaac was more than happy to help.

Verse 14, Abraham called the name of that place, Yahweh will provide.

It's even said to this day, on the mount of Yahweh, it shall be provided.

And by the way, people say, how do you know this is the same mount where Jesus was sacrificed and where David buys the threshing floor?

It's that phrase right there, as it said to this day, on that mount, Yahweh will be provided.

That's the mount that carries on in David's legacy where he buys the threshing floor.

Remember, David goes here to buy, he buys this piece of property.

And the person says, if you're going to build an altar there, let me just give it to you.

And David says, I can't offer a sacrifice to God on a piece of land that didn't cost me anything.

Of course I'm going to pay for it.

And that's the very place where Jesus is going to go to be condemned to death ultimately.

Crucified.

Solomon will build the temple there, but it's Yahweh.

David will buy the land, Solomon will build the temple, but it's Yahweh that provides the sacrifice.

And that is true all the time.

And that was the lesson Abraham took from this.

Abraham, when this whole thing is done, Abraham walks away and says, That place has got to be called God provides the sacrifice.

There can be other lessons from this.

But the main lesson is that God provides the sacrifice.

The sacrifice will be a substitute.

We carry the wood of sin, we carry the means of our death, we carry the justice that requires it, but it is God who stops the blade.

It is God who offers the sacrifice for our own sin.

Now take Isaac aside.

You deserve death for your sin, but God provides a sacrifice instead.

And finally, there's more lessons I could give you from this, but I'll end with this one.

The substitute will come through a covenant.

Remember, this is all future looking.

You get that even with the phrase, on the Mount of Yahweh, it will be provided.

There's a future sense.

It will be provided.

It will be provided.

Noah gets off the ark, he's looking forward to the future sacrifice.

Adam's looking forward for the future sacrifice.

You know it's because the name is Seth that way.

I mean, it's always looking forward.

Isaac's looking forward to the whole Jacob and Esau conflict after with Isaac's two sons, where they are wrestling over the uh the birthright.

They're always looking forward.

The whole point of Genesis is they don't know where the seed is, but he's forward.

And so here after all of this, Abraham puts his eyes forward.

The substitute will come in the future.

The ram is just a picture of this.

Like it's just a picture.

The sacrifice, the seed will live on in Isaac, the promise of a substitute.

That's future.

It's not this ram, it's future, a future ram that will be the substitute.

Of course, Abraham doesn't see the two joining.

He doesn't see the promise of the seed and the substitute becoming the same thing.

That's the great mystery of Jesus that he is the seed and he is a substitute.

Abraham's figuring all this out.

He takeaway is that God will provide that sacrifice.

And it is the angel who provides the union of the sacrifice with the covenant.

The angel in verse 15 comes to him a second time and says, By myself I have sworn, declares Yahweh, because you've done this and haven't withheld your only son.

I will bless you, I will multiply your offspring, and the offspring here is Isaac, as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore, your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies.

In your offspring, again, Isaac here, shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you obeyed my voice.

This is the transference.

The covenant is reiterated here and is transferred now from Abraham to Isaac.

There is no mystery anymore about where the seed resides.

The seed resides in Isaac.

The promise from Genesis 3 will come through Isaac.

Isaac will give it to Jacob through treachery and villainy and all of his shenanigans.

And from Jacob will come the 12 tribes of Israel.

From the fourth of Jacob's sons will be Judah.

The seed will come through him eventually to Jesus Christ.

You understand the narrowing of this promise.

Even right here in Genesis 22.

That God demands an atonement for sin.

That atonement must be an only son.

But God will provide a substitute.

And that substitute will come through his own covenant.

Notice the phrase in verse 15 By myself I have sworn.

What a cool phrase that is.

By myself, God says.

I mean, who's God gonna swear by?

People might swear by somebody that they love.

I swear to my mother's grave, kind of thing.

Who's God gonna swear by?

Who does God love so much that it will it'll vouchsafe his truth?

So you know God's telling the truth, he's gonna swear by who?

Himself, of course.

This is Titus 1, verse 2, that God promises to himself.

Titus 1:2

Hebrews chapter 6, from times long ago, God swore by himself, because there is nobody greater for him to swear by.

Hebrews 6 · chapter mention

You get the window of that right here.

By myself, God says, I have sworn, I will provide the substitute.

He will be an only son, he will come through Isaac.

Abraham's offspring will be as numerous as the sand, but one of them will be the seed that crushes Satan.

One of them will bring peace between God and the nations.

One of them will be like Isaac, an only son.

Of course, it falls to the New Testament to pick up the identity of the only son, that it is indeed Jesus of Nazareth.

So as you zoom back out in Genesis 22 and you wonder what all is happening in this story?

Like, how do you make sense of a story where God commands someone to sacrifice his son?

It just has to be the boomerang.

This story has to be the boomerang.

You read through it, and by the end of it, it hits you in the head.

You're watching this, you're tracing the promise through Genesis 22.

What do you do with this?

You see, this is pointing so far forward to Jesus.

This just keeps outlining over and over and over again who Jesus will be.

So that when I get to the New Testament, I can't act surprised.

When I get to the New Testament, I can only say, of course I knew God would provide the substitute.

Of course it would be God's only Son.

Of course he would die at death to atone for sins.

Of course he would.

Of course you could only worship God through faith in that covenant that he would bring.

Of course.

It was all laid down here back in Genesis 22.

God, we're grateful for the story of really dramatic faith.

What could have been cataclysmic faith, but you rescued at the last moment of the prophecy of your son.

We're thankful for our Lord Jesus Christ, who fits the shape of what we just read perfectly.

He fills it in from the inside out.

Of course, he is the true Son of Heaven, the only begotten Son of God.

He is your unique, only begotten, eternal, one-of-a-kind son.

Of course, you have many children.

We are sons and daughters.

But we're all adopted into Christ.

Your true Son.

We're thankful for that.

He's our substitute.

We deserved death for our sin, not just physical death, but eternal death for our sin, and yet you've spared us by pouring out the judgment we deserve onto Christ.

As he dies in our place, we can live through our faith in him.

We're thankful that you provided a way to escape wrath.

And that way prophesied all the way back in Genesis 22.

We even see in the story there the significance of three days wandering up to the mountains to the mountains of death.

And yet only to rise again.

Of course, you descend into the grave.

From that same mountain, you descend three days in the earth in Sheol and then rise again to the newness of life.

That too is our model.

That too is the pattern.

Those who die in the flesh will live in the spirit.

We long for that day.

We give you thanks for it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.