I'm titling this talk, The Death and Resurrection of the Promised Son. And so let's just read together Genesis 22, 1 through 19. And let me pray for us one more time before we start. Father, we do ask you to bless your word. Lord, we are so needy. We are your people and you are our God. We thank you for your covenant promises. We thank you, Father, that you have fulfilled them in your Son, Jesus Christ, for us. We thank you that he cried out, it is finished. Lord Jesus, we thank you that all the promises of God are yes and amen in you. We pray that you would soften our hearts as we meditate on the gospel, that we would understand more of the sacrifice that you are for us, Lord Jesus. We pray that you would intercede for us and that you would do great things in our midst and that what we do here would have effects even into eternity and that we would be built up and carry this word out and that we would build up others in your body and that we would seek the lost and Lord Jesus, we pray that you would be glorified above all things, that we would find satisfaction in you, but that you would be glorified in us because you have been glorified before your Father on account of your finished work. We pray these things in your name. Amen. Genesis 22, beginning in verse 1. After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, Here am I. 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, of which I shall tell you.' So Abraham rose early in the morning, and 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 arose, and went 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 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 laid it on Isaac, his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father. And he said, Here am I, my son. 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 of which God had told them, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. 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, saying, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, Here am I. He said, Do not lay your hand on the boy, nor 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 its horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 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. And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have 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 as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gates of his enemies. And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice. So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beersheba. and Abraham lived at Beersheba. If you were to go and try to download a number of sermons today on Genesis 22 just randomly, let's say you downloaded 150 sermons because there's a lot of them out there. There's thousands and thousands and thousands probably. I think you would find that the majority of them would deal with Abraham's faith. And they would deal with you imitating Abraham's faith. And they would say things like, what is your Isaac? What is God wanting you to sacrifice? Now, that's understandable, because when we come to the book of James, James is focused on Abraham having saving faith and that saving faith enabling him to offer up Isaac. Hebrews chapter 11 also is focused on Abraham's faith and his willingness to offer up Isaac. So it would not be wrong to do that. I think that it's not the only thing we would see in this text and that the writer of Hebrews and James are focused on the nature of saving faith that produces the fruit of obedience. And so they fixate on the father of faith and the great sacrifice that he makes. And that's very natural. And that's very important to us. And we can learn from that. And we need that. And we need to be reminded of that. And God put that in the Bible so that we would be reminded of that. But this passage also takes place in redemptive history in the context of the Abrahamic Covenant It takes place at the zenith of God's covenantal promises to men in general We've already said Abraham's like the greatest man that ever lived other than John the Baptist in Jesus because he gets all the covenant promises. If you read the Gospels, going to heaven means being with Abraham. It means being with Jesus, but they'll come from north, south, east, and west. They'll sit down with Abraham in the kingdom. Lazarus dies. He goes to Abraham's bosom. So, Abraham is promised heaven. He's promised the eternal inheritance. He's promised great descendants. He's promised that all the nations are going to be blessed in him. All of that is dependent on what? Well, it's all dependent on Jesus who is the seed. It's all dependent on the seed. Now, the seed promise goes back to what? Genesis 3.15. God would give the woman a male seed who would be the Redeemer. He would crush the serpent's head. God brings that seed through Noah, now to Abraham. Everything we've seen is dependent on the seed. Isaac is the seed Now you see that at the beginning of this text notice and in Hebrew. It's very pronounced medicine verse 2 God says comes to Abraham to test him Another reason a lot of people focus on the test in Abraham's response Obviously, it's in the text, but he says in verse 2 take your son your only son Isaac whom you love now in the Hebrew. It's this repetitious phrase and really it's saying take your son and Take your only son. Take Isaac. Take the son you love, basically. And God's doing that because God has just told Abraham to send Ishmael away. Ishmael has just been sent away. Ishmael was Abraham's first son. Ishmael, humanly speaking, should be the heir. Ishmael was the son of the flesh, not of the promise. Ishmael was the son of Abraham's doing, taking Hagar to himself and trying to fulfill the promise. not waiting on God, not believing the promise. So God says, now that the promised son, who is a type of Christ, we'll talk about that, he's the initial fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant, that now that he's there, Ishmael's got to be gone. And essentially, Abraham is one son and only one son. It's not Ishmael, it's Isaac. And it's the son that he loves. Now, all that's super important. That's going to be important in the testing of Abraham. But it's also important in the typology of Abraham. Both the testing and the typology. I would put those both to you tonight. This account has to be dealt with with regard to the test and with regard to the type. Now, obviously, the test is easy. Abraham has this promised son. Abraham has all these promises. Now God's coming and he's saying, kill the promised son. And it's not just God saying, I want you to kill your son, which would be a test for any of us. But it's God saying, I want you to kill the son in whom all the promises I gave you are bound up. It's exponentially heightened beyond anything that you can imagine. It would essentially be like God saying to you, I will save you through your firstborn son. And then you have him, then he's like, now kill him. But you said you were going to save me through him. You said he was going to provide everything I needed. Now you're telling me to kill him. So it's the greatest test. I would maybe argue it's the greatest test in the whole Bible. Maybe the greatest test other than the test Jesus has is he faces the tree that any man ever faces. Jesus obviously faces a bigger test in the garden with the cup. But Abraham is facing a test of enormous proportion with Isaac and You do see the faith that Abraham had the faith that justified him back at 15 six The faith that by which he was accounted and credited righteous because he was believing in God's coming Redeemer He was trusting Yahweh is looking forward to the day of Jesus Jesus tells us that in John 8 58 But notice that what Abraham does He responds quickly verse 3 Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his young men, and his son Isaac. He wastes no time. It doesn't take a couple days. It doesn't take a couple weeks. Now, what's important also for us to note is that God is asking for the first time in human history for a human sacrifice. Never to this point did God ever command a human sacrifice. And every time after this until the cross, he forbids it and says it's an abomination and the greatest act of wickedness. Because that's what the pagan nations did. Until the birth of Isaac, God never commanded a human sacrifice, and after the birth of Isaac, He doesn't command one until Jesus. And we know, ultimately, He doesn't want Isaac, He wants Jesus. We know that, because we read the Bible and we see that. But at this point, Abraham has a seemingly insurmountable command from God because God is not only telling him to give up the only son in whom the promises are fulfilled, but he's asking him to do what he's never asked anybody else to do. And you see even the knowledge of sacrifice through this text. They know all about sacrifice. Sacrifice is huge with the patriarchs. God has instituted it back with Adam and Eve when he clothed them with the skins. Abel and Cain and Abel are sacrificing. Without the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sin. Abraham will tell his son later here, God's going to provide the lamb for the sacrifice, for the burnt offering. They know what burnt offering is. They know that God's wrath has to be propitiated. They understand all that. I think, in a sense, Abraham understands that God's asking him to offer his son as an atoning sacrifice. Now, this has got to cause Abraham all kinds of confusion. So when we come to Hebrews 11, turn to Hebrews 11 real quick. When we come to Hebrews chapter 11, notice verse 17. There in verse 17, we read, by faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offer up offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son of whom it was said through Isaac, your offspring will be named. Shall your offspring be named? He considered or reasoned. What is George, what is the authorized version say? He counted. What is the word that they use there in verse 19? He what? He reasoned. He accounted. He counted. Does anybody have reasons? Yeah, he concluded or he reasoned and that's going to be really important that God was even able to raise him from the dead from which figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. Figured at resurrection. So what Abraham does is Abraham says, OK, God's promised redemption. God's promised an eternal inheritance. God's promised all the nations of the world that are ever going to exist. Everybody in this room can be blessed and many will be blessed in the seed that God has promised me. Now he's fulfilled that seed. He said it's not Israel, it's Isaac. And now he's asking me to offer Isaac as a burnt offering. But I know Isaac is not the ultimate redeemer. I promise you, Abraham at this point knows Isaac's a sinner. And yet, he reasons. The writer of Hebrews says, by faith, he reasons. So what a man of faith does is he says, God has said this. God has also said this. So the only way I can reconcile this is if I kill him, God must be able to raise him up from the dead and fulfill the promises. You already have resurrection in the thinking of saints in the Old Testament. That's really important. A lot of people say resurrection wasn't taught in the New Testament. It's in the Abraham account. Abraham concluded in his brain that God was able to raise Isaac from the dead. And just as an aside, normally I don't make a lot of applications in these. purposefully. But that's how true believers live by faith. We take God's word. We see our circumstances. We say, I don't like this. I know this is true. I act in faith and I go through those tests in faith. Doesn't mean they're not difficult. Doesn't mean they're not painful. Doesn't seem that Abraham went to Sarah and told her anything about this. He doesn't delay. He makes haste and obedience. His faith is shown to be what it is, James says. Now, You see how God honors that, gives Isaac back, stops him, stops Abraham from killing him. Abraham even lays the wood on Isaac so that he carries it there. I mean, Isaac is helping Abraham obey God. Now, so the test is clearly outlined in the scriptures, Hebrews 11, James 2. What I want to talk about specifically is the type. Any Reformed theologian worth their salt is going to tell you that Isaac is a type of Jesus. I mean, it's just unarguable. Isaac is the son of Abraham. Jesus is the son of Abraham. Isaac is figuratively killed and raised to life again. Jesus is killed and raised to life again. Isaac is the promised seed in whom all the blessings of God rest. Jesus is the promised seed. who establishes all the blessings for his people. There are innumerable examples of how Isaac is a type. I want to read to you something that Matthew Henry, the old commentator, wrote. It was miraculous. Yeah, even though his birth was. Right, right, right. Give me a second to find this. Yeah, you see his confidence that God is going to raise him from the dead, even him saying we will return to you. Yeah. So, It's clear that Isaac is the beloved son of his father. He's the only beloved son of his father. Jesus is the only beloved son of his father. The covenant is dependent on Abraham's obedience at this point, but only in so much as even Abraham himself is a type of Jesus. Matthew Henry will make all these points too, so I encourage you to go read him. But in so much as Abraham is a type of God the father offering his son and also a type of Jesus in obeying the command of God, the covenant is established. You see how God says to Abraham, because you have not withheld your son, your only son, I'm going to establish my covenant with you. So Abraham is in that sense a type of Christ. Isaac is a type because he is the beloved son of his father. He is the only human sacrifice God ever commands in the scripture other than his own beloved son. He goes with his father. He obeys his father. He doesn't grumble with his father. He doesn't rebel against his father. Even when his father places him on the altar, and he's 13 years old here, he doesn't rebel. So, you see that picture. Now, what I want to talk about tonight, specifically, is the biblical theology of death and resurrection. This is the first clear time we have a picture of death and resurrection in the Bible. Peter in 1 Peter 1 10 through 12 says that all the prophets foretold they had the spirit of Christ in them and they foretold the sufferings of Christ's death and the glories that followed resurrection. So that what we can essentially say is that the entire Old Testament is about death and resurrection. Now, where would there have been death and resurrection before this? things we've looked at. Because I think there's a very clear example of death and resurrection before the Abraham account. Well, I'm thinking with Noah, the flood is essentially death. Remember, baptism points to the death of Jesus. Jesus calls his death a baptism in Mark 10. I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am until it's accomplished. And then he says to Peter, James, and John, can you be baptized with the baptism I'm about to be baptized with? So his death is baptism. The Red Sea crossing is death and resurrection. Israel goes in and comes out a new creation. All the enemies of the Lord are destroyed in judgment. The flood, first, is death. God brings death in judgment and then brings resurrection. When the ark lands and Noah comes out into a new creation, it's a type of the resurrection. All of those deliverance accounts, judgment and deliverance is death and resurrection. Let me say that again. Judgment and deliverance in the Old Testament is death and resurrection. Every act of judgment and deliverance. Judgment on Egypt, death. deliverance to Israel, resurrection. And those are all preparing us for the death and resurrection of Jesus. This singularly is preparing us. And I actually believe that there's an intimation here that God wants a human sacrifice, not Isaac. But a lot of commentators are afraid to go here. I am not. God ultimately didn't want animal sacrifice. They were all typological of the death of Jesus. They were all types of the true sacrifice Jesus. And so I actually think here as early as Genesis 22, God is telling his people, if you were an Israelite, if you were living in the days of David and you read back, something should have triggered in your mind. Why would God have commanded human sacrifice? And if you understood that an animal cannot truly and fully redeem an image-bearer, that it's not even a rational creature of equal on a physical level, let alone on the image of God level, An animal, though a rational being, yes, could be a typological sacrifice, but could not be an adequate sacrifice. Ryder of Hebrews makes that super clear. But that a human could, and that it had to be a human. But the Bible also makes clear that the father can't pay for the son's sins and the son can't pay for the father's sins, that every man bears his own sins, Ezekiel. Nevertheless, there's an intimation that God's going to provide a human sacrifice. God himself is going to take a body, become a person and be sacrificed. Interesting. This is on Mount Moriah. What else was on Mount Moriah in redemptive history? The temple. The temple. is built on the spot, pretty much, where Abraham is called to offer up Isaac. What happens in the temple? Sacrifice. Let me say real quick, and then I want to come back to the mountain theme here, because I think that's important, because Jesus is crucified not far from Mount Moriah on another mountain. And the mountain, there's a biblical theology of mountains that I think is very important. But with the death and resurrection theme, like I've said, every judgment and deliverance is death and resurrection. Here, the writer of Hebrews very clearly tells us. Abraham offered him up and received him back figuratively. Death and resurrection. The promised seed has to die. The promised seed has to be risen. And the gospel couldn't be any clearer. The promised seed has to die. The promised seed has to rise for the blessings to occur. Very quickly, when you go through the rest of the Old Testament, there's lots of other deaths and resurrections. For instance, Daniel in the lion's den. Daniel is put in the lion's den. The stone is rolled over it. The stone is rolled away and he comes out. That's death and resurrection. How can I say that? Because Jesus likens his death and resurrection to Jonah going into the belly of the fish and coming out again. Jesus does that. So then I can go back in the Old Testament and say, hey, wait a minute. They rolled away the stone and he came out. Daniel just underwent a death and resurrection. God stopped the mouth of the lions. He went in the den, stone rolled over, stone rolled away, resurrection. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego went into the fire. Death came out, resurrection. Now, those are all typological pictures and they're all over the place in the Old Testament. I even think with the life of David, David oftentimes dies, in a sense. He's being fleed. Everybody's rejecting him. Nobody will take him in. And then all of a sudden, he'll be brought to power again and reign and have all the people with him. There's all these little pictures. Joseph in prison, death and resurrection, humiliation, exaltation, all of this. So. And the 19 judges? Explain that. The 19 judges? No. With death, figuratively, judgment. Oh, with the history of Israel. Yeah, absolutely. Actually, Bill's absolutely right that with Israel, if you read the book of Judges, Israel sins, gets judged, cries out to God, God sends him a deliverer, brings him out. Death and resurrection. Then they sin again. And there's a lot more to it. But that is true that judgment restoration is a picture of death and resurrection, as are all these other typological pictures in old covenant history. of the humiliation and exaltation of these people. Yep. You have you have Moses. You have Moses in the river being drawn out. You have there's they're all over the place. And I don't want to press this too much tonight. But what I do want to say is that when you read your Bible, you should be reading it with a view to where is death and resurrection? I mean, the prophets. The whole history of prophetism in Israel is a history of God preaching restoration to a people that he's just proclaimed judgment to. The exile of Israel into Babylon is death, and they're coming out as resurrection. So that what all that is preparing us for is the ultimate death and resurrection of the Son of God, the true Israel, the Son of Abraham, the greater David, the greater Jonah, the greater Noah, the greater Moses, Jesus, who dies and rises, death and resurrection, judgment and restoration, exile and redemption, humiliation and exaltation. All of that is preparing us for him. So that again, this is not just biographies for us to follow, though that is part of it as they walk by faith in him. But there's a gospel foundation to all of this. Now, You also see more of this gospel foundation in the lamb and the sacrifice, don't you? Abraham understands the principle of substitution. When Isaac says, my father, here's the wood, here's the fire, there's the altar, where's the sacrifice? And Abraham says to him, my son, God will provide the lamb. I think Abraham understands God's going to provide the ultimate sacrifice of sacrifices. Now, He's not going to know his name is Jesus. He's not going to know all that we can know. But he gets substitution. He gets that it's God's sovereign provision. God will provide the lamb. He gets that it has to be a lamb without blemish and without spot. It has to be a blood sacrifice. He gets that God has appointed these things. And he gets God's covenantal faithfulness in providing that. And I think it's interesting when you look at Genesis 22, go back there briefly. I think when you look here, you see a number of really fascinating No sooner does Abraham willingly go through, and by the way, that is clearly a picture of Romans 8, when Abraham goes to offer up Isaac, and God says, I see that you have not withheld your son, your only son from me. The language almost echoes Romans 8, if God did not spare his own son. but gave him up for us all. The language of Romans 8, you almost wonder, was Paul meditating on this passage as he meditated on the gospel? God did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all. Abraham did not spare his son, but gave him up. God stops him, and notice, no sooner does Abraham go through that test than verse 13, he lifts up his eyes, he looks, No sooner does God say, essentially, I don't want Isaac. I want another lamb. I have another lamb. Abraham lifts up his eyes. He looks and sees a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. Now, I know I'm going to get charged with some kind of funky dispensational typology here, probably. I will risk that, even though I don't like that charge. I do think, because thorns come from sin, and the only reason there are thorns in the ground is because of Adam's sin. God curses the ground, that's why you have thorns and thickets. And that Jesus wears that on his head. They are a symbol of sin. The ram is caught in the thorns, as it were, in the thicket. That's a picture. That's a preparatory picture. You could argue with me on that, but it's incumbent on you to tell me what it means. If you can't, you should think about accepting that. Because clearly there's a relationship between sin and thorns and thistle and Jesus wearing the crown of thorns on his head. And clearly Jesus is called the lamb that was slain and the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Maybe the fact that it was a male ram was a thing back to the male seed, the seed of the woman, the Lamb of God would be the seed of the woman, the male child, maybe. But here's the most interesting thing. Abraham knows that that ram that God provides in the thickets is not the sacrifice either. How do we know that? Verse 14 of this chapter is one of the most interesting verses in the entire Bible. And I owe this, I owe this to my buddy, Peter Van Doodward, who showed me this in seminary. I thought it's one of the most amazing things. Abraham called the name of the place. The Lord will provide. That's the English translation of the Hebrew. Then the Lord will provide. The Lord will provide. As if the Lord really hasn't yet provided the sacrifice of sacrifices, Abraham is still looking forward to the coming seed. It wasn't Isaac. It wasn't the ram in the thickets, even though that ram was offered. There's a seed coming. There's a lamb coming. God is going to send the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then this is amazing. Moses is writing this 400 some years after this account. Moses lived 400 years after. Writing this 400 years after this account and Moses knows God has not sent the lamb. How do I know that? Because he says, as it is said to this day, Think about that. Moses is writing this 400 years after Abraham called the place the Lord will provide, looking forward. And Moses is essentially saying he hasn't provided yet. And we know that. And we're waiting. We're waiting for the Redeemer. As this place is called to this day, the Lord will provide. the Lord will provide. Now, I told you I would give you a little biblical theology of mountains quickly. Let me do that. I think Mount Moriah is important. I didn't hit on the fact that Noah's Ark rested on Mount Ararat the last time when we looked at the Noahic Covenant. But remember, I told you many, many, many weeks ago that a lot of scholars, I think they're right, believe that Eden was a place God sat on a mountain, because in Ezekiel, God talks about his garden on the mountain. That Eden was a place God sat on a mountain, and the garden was a subsection of Eden, the garden of Eden. And that God dwelt with his image bearer in Eden, in the garden, on the mountain. It was a temple. The temple's going to be built on a mountain. Temple Mount. King's house and the temple built on the mountain. When the ark comes down, and I told you guys, I think the ark is a temple because Noah's in there with creation. God's dwelling with them as he's pouring out his wrath around them. That's and have the three layers just like the temple went over that. I don't know if you've heard that, heard me say that, but pretty convinced that the only places in the Old Testament where there's measurements are the ark, the tabernacle and the temple. So tabernacle temple dwelling places, God, the ark is the ark comes down and it sits on a mountain. Um... Everything that was with Adam in Eden is, in a sense, with the second Adam, Noah, on the ark, on a mountain. Now God tells Abraham to go up and sacrifice on a mountain, the mount on which the temple is going to be built. And then, ultimately, when we come to the New Testament, it's not a physical mountain, but it's Mount Zion, because the sacrifice has happened. God has provided the lamb. God's dwelling has been restored with man. We are now the temple, because Christ was the temple. God's spirit dwells in us. We are going to dwell in the heavenly Zion, Mount Zion above. God is going to bring heaven and earth back together. But you have all these mountains, even Sinai, which I skipped. You have all these mountain themes in the Bible. And I think it is significant that all of this is taking place on a mountain and that it's focused on sacrifice, because ultimately, what would restore the presence of God to man was sacrifice, the sacrifice of Jesus.