Hello and welcome to our broadcast. We call it plain and simple. We're looking in Genesis chapter 22, trying to figure out what worship is. Verse number 5. Have your Bible ready. What we see in this portion of scripture when we get down to Genesis 22 and verse number 5 Abraham's about to go up on a mountain and slay his son and he says here in verse 5 Abraham said unto his young men abide ye here with the ass and I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again to you. You're going to go there and worship. Now, we have a preconceived idea of what worship is. I don't know that we understand it at all anymore. If you look in the life of Abraham, we see a man who lived by faith and a man who lived by the flesh. He was up and down, and so are you and I, and so is everybody else in this world who calls himself a Christian. We have two natures. When we get saved, God doesn't redo the old one, as we said in our last broadcast. What He does do is give us a new nature, and you feed the new nature, it's going to win. You feed the old nature, it's going to win. It's just that simple. Well, Abraham has been feeding the new nature, very obviously, because we come to Genesis chapter 22, and he is facing the greatest test that anybody could ever face. and he passed the tab. Now when we talk about Abraham living by faith, if you go into the New Testament and talk where it says there that he lived by faith in Hebrews 11, that word faith does not mean trust. Most of the time in the New Testament when you find the word faith it's talking about what you believe. Keep the faith, once delivered unto the saints. It's not trust, it's what you believe. And so living by faith is simply doing the things according to what we believe. Now, there's times when we do that and when we get in the flesh, there's times when we don't do that. So when Abraham was living by faith, he was living according to what he really believed. Now he comes to Genesis chapter 22 and verse number 1, it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt or test Abraham and said unto him Abraham and he said behold here I am he said take now thy son thine only son Isaac whom thou lovest and get thee into the land of Moriah and offer him therefore a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of now what a major major test and we see that he passed it Well, as you go down through this chapter, I was looking at it the other day, and boy, you could be in this chapter for a year just with sermon titles that pop out at you. First of all, in verse number one, after these things. Here's one, Take now thy son. You could preach that on Father's Day. Abraham rose early in the morning. Well, that's an interesting message. You'll find that anybody who did anything much for God in the Bible, somewhere it tells you they rose up early in the morning. Verse number 2, he said, I will tell thee. Very interesting sermon title, I think. And here's a major one, under the place. Verse 3, under the place. And then verse 4, he saw the place. And then in verse 9, they came to the place. And then in verse 7, a good question, where is the lamb? Where is the lamb? A lot of sermon titles here if you want to put them together. Well, anyway, we're focusing in verse number 5 on this subject of worship don't know that we know what it is anymore we've gotten so far away with it with what we call worship services we have some really good evangelical services I think and we try to get people to come to church and preach the gospel at them and nothing wrong with that but let's not call that worship that's not a worship service we need to learn what worship really is and what it isn't and so I'll read this verse again he said Abraham said unto his young man abide ye here with the ass and I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again unto you. Now as we saw in our last broadcast this is the outcome of a long time of Abraham worshipping God from one day to the next and we said that worship simply put is communication with the Lord and therein lies our secret of success And therein lies our reason for failure if we do not communicate with the Lord. He wants to communicate with us. How do we do that? Well, the Word, it's called the Word of God, it's His Word. That's how He talks to us. How do we talk to Him? We call that prayer. And so there you have the simplest form of worship is how much time we're spending alone communicating with the Lord. Abraham was doing a lot of that just prior to this great test. He was doing very little of it when he failed the test previously seen in the Word of God here. We read in verse number 10 that Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son, and the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham, And he said, here am I, yeah that's what he said in verse 1, he's just still on talking in terms with God. And he said, lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him, for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou has not withheld thy only son from me." Now I think this is very interesting and I've looked at a lot of commentaries, can't find anything on it. We kind of overlooked this where it says that he said, I know that thou fearest God. We're living in an age today when there is no fear of God before their eyes. That's where we're living. What is this fear and how is it related to worship? Are we more concerned about what people think than what God thinks? You know, it says in Psalm 94, verse number 9, His eyes behold everything. He knows what we're doing. Psalm 139, too, it says, There is not a word in my tongue, but O Lord, thou knowest it. Everything I'm doing, He sees. everything I say he hears. Does that not put some fear of God before me? I think it ought to. Proverbs 5 and 21 says, for the ways of man are before the Lord. Proverbs 15 and 3 says, the eyes of the Lord are in every place beholding the evil and the good. He knows about all of that. He said in Luke 8 and 17, nothing is secret that shall not be made manifest, neither anything hid that shall not be known. Does that not strike a little fear? I think it ought to. It says in 2 Corinthians 5 and 10, we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ that everyone may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad." That should strike a little fear. Now, I think we're inclined to think that fear is something very negative, and the fear of God is not very negative, it's something that's very positive. For instance, in Proverbs 22, verse 4, it says, by humility, and the fear of the Lord are riches and honor and life." That's pretty positive. There's something good about that. How about Proverbs 16 and verse 6, by the fear of the Lord, men depart from evil. Well, that's not negative. That's a good thing. You want to wrestle around in the evil? How about Proverbs 9 and verse 10? It says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Well, knowledge is a good thing, that's not negative. Proverbs 10 and 27, the fear of the Lord prolongeth days. Well, that's a good thing, that's not negative, that's very positive. How about Proverbs 15 and 33, the fear of the Lord is the instruction of wisdom. You like to have some wisdom? There's how you're going to get it. How about Psalm 111 and verse number 5, O fear the Lord, there is no want to them that fear him. Well, no one. Okay, Proverbs 14.26, in the fear of the Lord, is strong confidence. You want some confidence? You want to be able to get along with the things of the world that's going on today? Well, it's by the fear of the Lord. Proverbs 19.23 says, The fear of the Lord tendeth to life, and he that hath it shall abide satisfied. You want to be satisfied? It all stems back to this thing about fearing the Lord. And fearing the Lord all stems back to this thing about worshipping the Lord and communicating with the Lord and realizing that one day we are going to answer face to face with him concerning how we live things out in this world as Christians. How about Psalm 31 and 19? Oh, how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee. That's a good thing. How about Psalm 34 and number 7? It says, The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him, and delivereth them. See, this fear is not a negative thing. It's a very positive thing. Psalm 145, 19 says, He will fulfill the desires of them that fear him. Well, how does this relate to Abraham and his worship? Well, in Psalm 5 and verse number 7 it says, But as for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercies, and in thy fear will I worship. How about Psalm 25 and 14? The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him and he will show them his covenant. That's exactly what happened with Abraham. God said, shall we withhold things from Abraham of our secrets? No, let's tell Abraham our secrets. Why? Because of the worshiping factors in Abraham's life and the communication that he had with the Lord. How about Psalm 25 verse number 12? What man is he that feareth the Lord? Him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose. That's exactly what's going on in Abraham's life right now. And so in Genesis 22 and verse number 12 we read, the Lord said, I know that thou fearest God, I know that thou fearest God. Major thing here as it's connected with the subject of worship. Well, we see in verse number 13, And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. And Abraham called the name of the place Jehovah-Jireh, as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen." What a statement! Well, in verse number 15 we have some more communication here with the Lord. It says in verse number 15, And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. And so in verse number 19 we find Abraham returned unto his young men and they arose and went together to Beersheba and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba. Well he spent some time there and then when we get to chapter 23 Sarah is now a hundred and twenty-seven years old and she died. It says here Sarah was a hundred and seven and twenty years. These were the years of the life of Sarah. And Sarah died in Kirjath Arevah. The same is Hebron in the land of Canaan. And Abraham came to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her. Well, chapter 23 deals with the funeral arrangements for Sarah, a very interesting chapter. He ends up getting this cave in which she is buried, and he wants her buried there because this is the promised land. Now, he pays for this site, even though it's going to be his. It's the promised land, but it's not his yet. And so that's exactly where he wants to be when he is raised from the dead. He wants to be in that area that God has promised him. It's a very interesting chapter. I want to conclude this message with thoughts about the two natures. I think it's extremely important. The Bible refers to the inward man. the new man, and it refers to the outward man, or the old man. And we're either going to be led by the Holy Spirit, or we're going to be led by the devil. And if the Holy Spirit is leading us, the Bible tells us very plainly that the Holy Spirit deals with our spirit. Man is a three-part being, a body, soul, and spirit. The soul is the mind, will, and emotions, and the Holy Spirit doesn't deal with that. He deals with our spirit, and then our spirit should dictate to our mind, our will, and our emotions. Well, on the other side of that coin you have the devil, and he deals with the mind, the will, and the emotions. And you can see how in Genesis chapter 22 and verse 1, when God said, I want you to go and I want you to kill your son, how emotional that would be. Well, he was not dealing with his emotions here. He was being led by the Spirit in his spirit, and that is extremely important. We have seen in previous broadcasts, whichever nature we feed, that's the one that's going to grow. The spirit has a spiritual appetite, and the flesh has a worldly appetite. And so we need to starve the old nature. If we starve the old nature, it'll become weak. but starving that is not enough, we need to feed the new nature and it will become strong and that is exactly what Abraham had been doing if you study the timeline here and how he was setting up his altar, how he was communicating with the Lord, how he was worshipping the Lord And so when God said, take thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him for a burnt offering upon the mountain, which I will tell thee, Abraham rose up early, and he went. He did exactly what he was supposed to do, because he had strength in that new nature. My advice is to do the same. Well, we're out of time. Tune in again tomorrow. We'll try to make it plain, and we will try to make it simple as we get into the next chapter.