So I encourage you then to turn to Hebrews chapter 11. We'll be continuing our series in that book, Hebrews chapter 11. Of course, coming to this chapter, I have slowed down quite a bit in our pace going through Hebrews. We weren't going real fast, but just slowed down a little bit more because these examples are so helpful for us. We saw with Abel how that faith procures righteousness. We see what faith does in this chapter. Faith procures righteousness for sinners. We look to God to make us righteous, that is to make us acceptable to him, and he does that in his way. With Enoch, we saw that faith leads to immortality in glory with God. By faith, we walk with God now. and then we're able to walk with Him forever and ever in glory. With Noah, we saw how faith responds to warnings, believing them and acting accordingly so that we are not judged, so that we, by the means that God has appointed, avoid judgment. With Abraham, we saw that faith brought obedience, so that believing God, he left his homeland to look for a city whose builder and maker is God. Because he believed God, he did not have to have that as a possession in his hand as long as he lived. He knew that God would make his promise good, and he trusted God, even though he never got any land here. He looked for a better place, eternal in heaven. With Sarah, we saw how faith gives us strength to do what God has promised, what would otherwise be impossible for us. She received strength to conceive a child when she was past the age by faith. With all believers, we see how faith causes them to see what God has promised in the future, and to live in response to that now, to live in the reality of that promise now. And today we return to Abraham again, only to see how he has matured in his faith, so that by faith he is willing to offer his son at God's command, believing that God is able even to raise up his son, if that is necessary, in order that God's promise go on. So listen now to God's word, Hebrews 11, beginning in verse 17. By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. And he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, in Isaac your seed shall be called, concluding that God was able to raise him up even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense. There we end the reading of God's holy word. Thanks be to God for his precious word. May he use it in our lives. Notice that first line, by faith, Abraham, when he was tested. It is so helpful to have models of people that have gone before us, of faithful servants of God. What if you had to be the first one? It would be much more difficult, wouldn't it? You have many people that have gone before, and you see, as we sang, how God brings them through fire and water and other things. Our Lord has highlighted Abraham in the Scripture as an example. He is mentioned again and again in both the Old Testament as well as the New Testament. We need more than just precepts, you see, about being told how to do things. We need to see the examples and illustrations of people doing things and interacting with God. And then we're not so surprised when we're familiar with this history. We're not so surprised when things come on us and we don't say, oh, what's happening? Everything's going wrong. If we know the histories, we know that that's the way it is and that God uses that. Before, Abraham was seen at the beginning of his call from God when he was mentioned earlier in Hebrews 11. And now when he's mentioned again, then it's when his faith has matured. And as I told you already, he passes the test that he is given, passes it very well. God is very pleased with the way he responds to this test. We have many examples to benefit from besides this. Biblical models are the best of all. There are many of them given to us by God in the inspired testimony of the Holy Scriptures. Having an inspired testimony is really helpful because it means that there's no exaggeration about what they did. We're given the truth. We're given the straightforward facts. It also means that we're shown their flaws as well as their strengths. The times that they fail as well as the times that they prevail. If you're not well acquainted, with the examples in the Bible, then you need to become so. You need to read God's Word. You can listen to God's Word. However you take it in, you need to come and know these stories in the Old Testament, because you will be very weak if you only have precepts without examples. Don't just learn about them as stories or information. Learn about them as examples of people living with God the way you are called to live with God. and you'll find great benefit from knowing the word of God. I'm sometimes saddened when I talk to some of our young people and I'll mention something about some character in the Old Testament and they're, oh, I don't really know about that. It shouldn't be that way. We need to know about these ones that are given to us in God's word. Now, that's one source of models and examples. Perhaps the second best place to look for models is among the living. Because those who are alive now that are examples to us, we need to learn from them. And we find that harder because we know what they're like. We see their weaknesses fully, but we need to learn from people that are alive today and not be too proud to do that as they show us how to meet the problems and challenges that we have today. And they show us sometimes how not to do that as well. But Hebrews will later tell us to learn from the example of the elders in the church. Paul speaks about the powerful example that the Thessalonians had in his day as those who received the word in much affliction and that their testimony went out in all the areas so that people saw that and they said, this is how you respond when persecution comes. And he presents himself. He says, imitate me as I imitate Christ. One of the good things about living examples is that you can't mold them. There may be something that convicts you that's about them. You can't just pull that away and have this example that you've kind of manufactured. to challenge you about those very things that you might be resistant to. Jesus talks about the tendency that we have to... The Jews in this day had to garnish the tombs of the fathers that had gone before them. They had all these people that they admired so much. But the ones that were alive, the prophets that were alive, they stoned and killed. They hated them. Why is that? Because they could escape. The ones that were dead couldn't come and confront them. And their examples should have, but they weren't reading them rightly. and we shouldn't miss that. Then another important place to find examples, though, is from church history. I have an inspired record of church history, I mean, since the apostles, but we have many wonderful examples. Of course, I'm not talking about the vain traditions that grew up in the church, the way they did also in the Old Testament. Jesus confronted this problem that was going on in His day, and He warned us about it. We don't follow the things that they did that were not according to the Word of God, that were added to the Word of God, and say, we're following the traditions of the Father. Why aren't you following the traditions of the Father? But some churches went so far in that regard that they introduced ancestor worship. In other words, they were so interested in their ancestors, they started worshiping them, which is what the pagans had always done. You read about that all the way back in the Old Testament. They always worship their ancestors and they begin to elevate them and make statues of them and kiss them and even pray to them and ask for their help and protection. And this is all idolatry. It's offensive in the eyes of God. There's not a trace of any such practice in the New Testament. And you have people like James that was martyred, or Stephen that was martyred, and they don't set him up and say, when you come to church, then bow before Stephen and ask him to bless you and help you. There's no mention of anyone doing that. Mary, she died during the time that the apostles were ministering. There's no mention of any of that kind of thing. These are vain traditions of men that have been added. So I'm not talking about that when we look at church history. But we must be careful that we don't overreact to those sinful things that have been done in the church, that we do not benefit from the example and writings of those that have gone before. because there are many things that we as a people don't get as a whole, and we need to be challenged by those that went before. Sometimes we might not think they were quite right. We might think they were a little bit extreme on that, but we don't even do that at all. We don't even think that way. Maybe about humility or something like that. They have a much more developed sense of what it is to be humble before God or to fear God. Things like that, that we don't get very well. So we benefit from looking at them. The Reformers also were very, very careful, a lot of people don't realize this, not to bring things that hadn't been believed in the church before them up until their time. Not that they blindly just accepted whatever the church had said, but looking at the scriptures and seeing that there were faithful men all through history that believed and followed the scriptures, they didn't wanna come up and say, oh, we learned this new thing about God now, and 1,600 years after, we learned this and that about God, and we're gonna present these new doctrines that we just discovered. If any of them had said something like that, they would have rejected that man as a heretic. And we don't realize that, because that's the way people think today. Oh, look what I found. Nobody ever saw this before. If nobody saw it before, you're wrong. You're wrong. The things that God has revealed to his people, they have enjoyed as a heritage all through the years. So history is important for us. If you look at, as an example of the Reformers' writings and stuff, if you look at John Calvin's Institutes, and you look in the back of the index, and pages of quotes from people like Augustine or many of the different men that had gone before. He always backs up what he's saying. This is something that so-and-so said as well, that sort of a thing. Okay, so we need models. And Abraham's example presented to us as a model alerts us to that. Abraham's example also reminds you that your faith will be tested. That's what we're shown especially in this particular passage that we're looking at today. The scripture makes this plain overall. We're told again and again to expect the testing of our faith. Our Lord tells us that testing will be so severe that even the elect would deny the Lord if he didn't shorten the testing time. That means it's going to be hard, it's going to be severe at times in our lives with testing. We need to expect that and not be surprised when tests come. James says, count it all joy when you fall into various trials and temptations. It's interesting when we read the account about the test of Abraham's faith mentioned in our text. When we read it back in Genesis 22, it says that God tested Abraham. We need to think about that a little bit, because what does James say? James 1.13, a lot of people don't know this, let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone. You say, well, yeah, but that's the word tempt. It was the word test that was used, that God tested Abraham. You know what, that's the same word in the original. It's exactly the same word. We have a different English word, and the different English word is useful because the word can be used in different ways. And it's actually well to translate it the way it is translated. But at the same time, we need to understand that God does test us. But what it means in James is he does not entice us to sin. That's what Satan does. When God tests us, he tells us that it's bad to go the wrong way. He might present something to us that's very difficult and where we would be tempted to go the wrong way, where we find it hard to keep on following God. He does do that. But He doesn't say, oh, you ought to go and follow that false teacher over there. God never says that. That's what Satan does. He encourages us to go wrong. So God doesn't tempt us like that, drawing us away, enticing us to come away in a sinful way. He always pushes us to go forward and to serve Him and honor Him. But He certainly does bring actually the very same occasions that Satan brings God brings like maybe I should say that God brings Satan brings, but Satan is often an agent that God uses as Satan comes to test us and want to destroy us like he did with Job. And God sends him and uses him to test Job, his servant, and to show Job's faithfulness and to purify him while Satan is doing it to try to show that Job is a reprobate, that he has nothing to do with God, that he doesn't love God. and all of these things. So there's a very different agenda going on. But God and Satan are actually both testing in their own way that they test in those situations. God, of course, does not allow Satan to do anything except what he has planned for our good. So, we will be tested, and God is the one. Don't miss that. God is the one that brings the test. It doesn't just, something bad happens. Where did that come from? It always has God at the back of it. Yeah, there's other evil agents that were involved, for sure, but God is the one at the back of the thing, orchestrating it all. Okay, what are some of the ways, then, that God brings good through testing? Well, he enables us, when we're tested, to bring glory to him. That's what Abraham did in this situation. He showed how important God and his salvation were in the way he responded in this test. We bring honor to God when someone is being persecuted and they stand faithfully for the Lord. They bring glory to God. They show that God matters more to them than life itself. When you're tested and you praise God through the test and you follow him and you are faithful to him, it brings glory to God. Testing is also good when we fail because it exposes weaknesses that we have that need to be corrected. And that's something that God does sometimes. He brings a test and we don't do so well. And then we realize that we need to repent and we need to change and we need help and we need to grow. And in God's grace, if we're his people, then we will grow through those times. Our failings can be very helpful for us. We need to humble ourselves, confess our sin, and turn to him. Testing is also beneficial because it strengthens our obedience of faith. Say that you have a brother who is an unbeliever, and he's coming to visit for a week, and you've just started in your home. You said, man, I really need to have family worship with my kids. And you've started in my family. You've just started that in your home. And oh, my brother's coming to visit. What are you tempted? You're tempted to forego that. Oh, my brother won't like that. But after wrestling with it, You decide that you're gonna go ahead and do that. You're gonna go ahead and do it because it's pleasing to the Lord. What just happened? You strengthened your obedience. Where was the level of your obedience at first? It was like, oh, my brother's coming. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. But then it was strengthened when you worked through it. You said, no, I need to do this. I need to do this, it's pleasing to God. And you went forward. Your obedience to God was strengthened through the test. If you never had the test, your obedience wouldn't be strengthened. Maybe the test will be even magnified when your brother comes and maybe he's very nasty about it. And then you have more testing. You don't know what will happen. God is over that. Another benefit of testing similar to that is that we learn to trust God more. Suppose the testing is that you've got an important family event coming up, maybe it's a wedding or something, and you get sick. right at the time of the event, and so sick that you weren't even able to go. What are you doing, Lord? Why did You bring this about? And you have to work through that and say, my Heavenly Father has demonstrated His faithful love to me. He's demonstrated His love to His people. I know that He has brought this for my good. I can't see that. It doesn't seem good to me. And you work through that and you grow in your trust for God and being able to leave it in His hands. So trials will help you to grow that way. Now, Abraham's example of obedience that is given to us here is very challenging because it was an extreme test that he was given. Abraham, it says, offered up Isaac. And he who had received the promises, that's Abraham still of course, offered up his only begotten son of whom it was said, in Isaac your seed shall be called. Abraham, we're told here, the language is interesting, he actually offered up Isaac. As we saw in Genesis 22, the Lord tested Abraham by commanding him to go to Mount Moriah and offer his son in the place that he would show him as a burnt offering. I just might mention on a side point that that was the place where later David offered the sacrifice when the plague had come, that then became the place where the temple was established. And then became the place, of course, where the Lord Jesus was ministered and where he ministered and where he was given as the offering. So here he is as a burnt. He told him to offer his son as a burnt offering. A burnt offering was an offering in which the sacrifice was utterly consumed. It was called a dedication or a dedicatory offering because it represented something completely given to God, completely dedicated to God, what we are not. The reason you have to have a sacrifice is because you're not that. And so here's one that is completely given to God, completely consumed on the altar for God to represent us in our weakness as a substitute for us. The sacrifice was completely given up. It was also an offering for sin, as all of the offerings were. They're sacrifices for sin, and so it included that. The burnt offering was kind of an offering that, it was more general in a way, it almost covered everything, if you will. You know, the need for righteousness, as well as the need for atonement. So the test for Abraham ultimately came down to two things here. Is God's salvation an important enough matter that you, Abraham, that you are willing to offer the one who is most precious to you in order that this salvation might occur? And the second thing, do you truly accept that salvation is not something you can orchestrate, but something you must leave entirely in the hands of the Lord who promised it? Interesting to think about those things, isn't it? Do I have to make salvation happen? Do I have to make sure nothing happens that will endanger salvation? Or do I leave that to God to do the saving? Our text speaks of it as something that Abraham actually did. That he actually did offer his son. Now we know that God stopped him before he actually took the knife to him because God had another sacrifice that he had really prepared. But you see, Abraham was in motion in carrying out what God had asked him to do. He was offering his son. And God stopped him. And so he is credited as having offered his son being stopped in midstream. The difficulty of this test, of course, is obvious on the face of it. But it is emphasized both in Genesis 22 and also here in Hebrews, how difficult it was. First, it says that Abraham was the one who had received the promises. God had said, I will bless you and give you a son. But we know that his wife, we've seen it, his wife was barren. They had grown too old. to have a child where it's physically impossible. Abraham had prayed and waited, and he had waited, and God had told him, even in his old age, that they would have this child. And miraculously, God had fulfilled his promise, as we saw, when Abraham was as good as dead. It was like a resurrection, that what was dead in them was made alive, and they were able to bring forth his son. Now God says, take that son, You receive my promises, take what was given you by promise that you waited for, you didn't have for a long time, then it was given you. He didn't get the land, right? He didn't get that promise yet, but he got this son. I says, offer him as a burnt offering. Abraham might have said, why did you give him to me? Why did you give him to me if I can't have him, if I can't keep him? He didn't say that though. Second, Isaac is referred to as Abraham's only begotten son. And in Genesis 22, it says a son that he loved. It emphasizes it. The difficulty of taking him off and sacrificing him is, we can't even fathom that. Abraham dearly loved his son. He was his only true son in the sense that, yeah, he had Ishmael at that time, But he had to, at God's orders, to remove Ishmael from the house because his mother Hagar was persecuting Sarah. And God said, and Sarah objected to this. And God said, yeah, listen to your wife and send him away. This was his son, his only son that had the promises and was going to go on with what God had promised. This was very hard to take this son that he had waited so long for. Third, Abraham was commanded to offer the Son in whom all of his hope of salvation rested. You see, this is really, this is on another level. Salvation of the world depended on this Son bringing forth a nation that would have in it a Son, that would be the Messiah, that would be the salvation of the world. In your seed, all the nations of the earth will be blessed. And now God says, sacrifice Him as a burnt offering. How could He then bring forth this great nation with this great Savior that would bring salvation to the world if He's dead? If He's offered as a burnt offering? If He's offered for sin, how can the promise be fulfilled? Those would be questions that would naturally haunt Abraham. What do you do when you find out that God wants you to do something that is very difficult and that has the appearance that it would destroy and ruin his kingdom? What do you do? Maybe you realize that you need to confess sin. that you have been hiding. You think that's going to ruin my testimony, that's going to ruin my example to other people if I confess the sin that I've been hiding. It'll wreck my example before the world. So you're not sure whether you should do it. You know, God says. Or perhaps you're reluctant to speak God's truth about something with friends and stuff like that. Like maybe, you know, same-sex relationships or something like that. You want to tell them what God says about that. You hide that. because you know that it will turn people, it'll turn people away from God, I want to bring people to God. I heard a preacher say, Robert Shuler, I'll name him. He said, I don't talk about sin because that keeps people away from God. I don't want to discourage people, he said. You see the point there? I'm going to figure out how salvation is going to work. And I'm going to orchestrate it so it will work well and God will be able to save people. No, you have to trust God. People do get offended when you talk about sin, when you talk about hell. So we're not going to talk about it? You see, that's the point we're talking about here. Or maybe you have to tell your family that you can't go to a church that is compromised and that no longer preaches the gospel. You know what's going to happen. You're going to say, oh, who does he think he is, that arrogant fool? Like, what's he trying to prove? Judgmental? Pharisee? You're going to get all these labels. I'm going to be a wretched, stinking example. That's not a good idea, God. I'm just going to compromise. I'm just going to go along. Maybe you'll destroy your relationship with your own spouse, your mother and father. Another example, maybe you're an elder. There are people who need to be disciplined, but you know that some people won't like it. Maybe they'll leave the church, and so you start to think politically. OK, if we do that, do that, do that, what will happen? Maybe this, maybe this, that kind of thing. To obey God would seem to be the means of destroying his kingdom. Maybe meeting for church. You're in a country that has become oppressive. and meeting for church would mean that there are gonna be arrests and executions and imprisonments. You say, God, surely you don't want your people to be imprisoned and executed, do you? This will destroy your kingdom. Let me ask you something in history. We talked about history. What happens in history when people are persecuted and executed and all of these, imprisoned and all these things for their faith? What happens? What does almost always happen in the church? I don't say every single time, but most of the time, the church grows like crazy when that happens. You think about some of the Persian countries. The church is multiplied there under severe persecution. How does that work? It doesn't make sense to us. But God, Your people are being destroyed. No, they're not. They're going to glory. And other people are saying, this is real. And they come and follow Him. This has happened again and again in history. So you see, I'm saying this to you because we need to be fortified as God's people. To be strong. We can't be whistling around all over the place and compromising. We need to be firm and strong to go forward in the Kingdom of God. We need to see how it was that Abraham had the strength. How was it? What was the secret that Abraham had? That he obeyed God when he was tested in this way. By faith, he offered up Isaac. That's how you obey when God asks you to do something that seems like it will destroy his very kingdom and something that is distasteful to you. It's really not complicated. You simply do what God tells you to do and leave it to God to figure out how he is going to keep his promises. You don't have to worry about how he's going to keep his promise. He made the promise, and he asked you to do something that seems contradictory to that promise. Go ahead and do what he says. It's up to him to keep the promise. Yes, God has commanded Abraham to do something that seemed to go completely against what he had promised. How can the one who is supposed to bring forth the nation, that will bring forth the Messiah, that will bring forth salvation to the world, how is his destruction going to further this purpose that God has made? How is that going to happen? But you see, Abraham recognized it was not up to Abraham to figure out how God would keep his promise if he offered Isaac as a sacrifice. It was up to God to figure that out. Abraham knew that he could leave it with God. By faith, Abraham obeyed God when he was tested. By this time, Abraham had enough experience with God that he knew that God would find a way to keep his promise. He had trusted all along from the day that he had been called out of Ur that he would give him an inheritance, a city whose builder and maker is God. We saw that. Abraham was strong in that way. He came, he just kept looking for, he looked for something more than in this world. He knew if God was gonna bless him, God was gonna give him an inheritance, it was gonna be an eternal inheritance. It wasn't gonna be something you just have for a while in this world. So he was good. We've seen that. But he also had seen how God kept his promise to give him a child when he and his wife were not only barren, but also too old to be physically capable of having a child. He had seen that too, and his faith got stretched with that one. Abraham said, hey, you got another heir for me? Like, am I supposed to go to my servant? Or how is this supposed to happen? And then he got Hagar and tried to have a child that way. And God kept saying, no, I'm going to give you a son. I'm going to give you a son. And then he did. And Abraham learned from that. And so now he concluded, if God has asked me to offer this son, he'll deal with it. He knows how to deal with it. He's going to take care of it. He tells me to offer him as a burnt offering. He can raise him up if he wants to. He'll do whatever needs to be done so that his plans will not be foiled. Abraham knew he could leave it with God. He knew that God would keep his promise. He knew that God was faithful and full of love. He trusted God. He did not think that God was up to something devious that was going to harm him somehow, but he trusted in the living God. He knew that God was a God who put himself in impossible situations to show his people that nothing is impossible with him. They needed to see that, that they might believe that he really could save them and that he really could bring them into his glorious house forever. That seems impossible. But with God, all things are possible. It isn't possible with man, but with God, all things are possible. Abraham knew that if necessary, God would raise him from the dead. That's exactly what our text says. Verse 19, Abraham concluded, he reasoned this out. So there was reasoning going on. It wasn't like he just emptied out his mind. He said, okay, God asked me to do something contradictory to everything that he's promised about the whole future of his kingdom and everything. Okay, I conclude as I think about that, if God needs to, I'll offer him up, God will raise him up. It's amazing, isn't it? Abraham was so confident that he said God will take care of this. God was able, it says, he concluded that God was able to raise him, Isaac, up even from the dead. Now I'd ask you, do you trust God? Or do you second guess Him? Do you follow Him faithfully and fully and leave it to Him to figure out how to keep His promises in order to bless you? Or do you hold back your sacrificial service for fear that if you follow Him, it's gonna spoil things? Abraham would not, I don't believe that he would have been able to offer up Isaac if God had given Isaac to him right after he was called. It was right after he came out of Ur. He came to the Promised Land. Just, you know, Sarah gets pregnant. Here's the child of promise. Great. And God says, go offer him. Abraham's like, what? It would have been a different story because Abraham went through all of those other things where he did say, how can this be? How can this be? And then God did it. And now he's ready. He's prepared. That's how God works in your life. That's an encouragement to you, you see, because I say, do you follow him faithfully and fully and leave it to him to figure out how to keep his promises and bless you? Or do you hold back sacrificial services? Abraham. would not have been able to do that at first. It's something that you grow into. You learn to trust God. You learn of His love over the years of seeing His faithfulness. He had grown to the place in His relationship where now He was able to do this. We don't even see any faltering in His example here. He was sure that the Lord would make it good. That gives us hope. that God is at work in us. Abraham didn't start out like this. He became like this. This is what God does in his people. At the same time, though, you know, you have different kind of people. Some people have really tender consciences. Some people are kind of have resistant, harder consciences. But don't take that that God's going to change you. Oh, yeah, God hasn't changed me yet. So I've got no responsibility. I don't have to worry about this stuff. No. No, that's not the message here. The message is, yeah, we're weak and God's gonna work in us and we're gonna grow and mature. But at the same time, you ought to trust God more than you do now. Don't say, I'll just wait because I'm gonna grow. No, you have much that Abraham did not even have to help you in your trust of God. You have all that history. You have all those examples. You have seen even God's plan fulfilled that Abraham only heard about in a shadowy way of God's Son, our Savior, coming into the world. You have seen that whole plan unfold in the marvelous way that it unfolded. You have seen how God gave His only begotten Son to die on the cross because to Him our salvation was that important. God gave His Son because to God our salvation was that important. You see the love of God manifested that Abraham had not yet seen in that way. And yet Abraham was able to do what he did. If you would embrace His great love and faithfulness to us as His bride and to you as His redeemed Son and bride, you would find it easy to surrender yourself entirely to do His will, even when it seems like you're destroying yourself, you're destroying His kingdom. You would leave it, you would leave it to follow and trust, you would follow and trust and obey, you'd leave it to Him to do the blessing. Yeah, you would leave it to you to do the following and the trusting and the obeying, and you would leave it to God to fulfill the promises and carry out what He said He's going to do. Your part is to believe, to trust, to obey. His part is to carry out what He's promised. Don't get the two mixed up with each other. Talking about the early church fathers and such, and our fathers that went before us. I read that in John Chrysostom this week in his commentary on Hebrews. And it was so powerful. So many people recognized that. It was funny because I don't always read him, and I was on one of my Bible apps, and I saw Chrysostom's commentary, and I thought, oh, I'm gonna take a look at that this week. And I looked at it. What a powerful picture. Yeah, God is you. You leave God with what he's been given to do. You do what you've been given to do. You don't worry about God's business. He'll take care of the promise. He'll see that it happens. That's what mature faith does. That's what we are growing into. We have every reason to trust him. And I tell you what a grand reward comes when you trust the living God. There's a reward in that. At the end of verse 19, it tells us that Abraham received Isaac in a figurative sense. The words here are hard to translate, hard to kind of figure out just what they mean. But I think the best way to understand them is that God provided the ram in place of Isaac that we read about, in place of him for the sacrifice. And so it was for Abraham as if Isaac had been brought back to life. Because as far as Abraham was concerned, he was dead. He was ready to offer his son, and he was in the act of doing that. And then God said, no, here he is back. I'm taking this ram in his place. beautiful picture of the substitution of Christ in our place. Our sacrifice is not sufficient. Of course, the ram wasn't sufficient either, but it was figurative. He received him back in a figurative sense. The ram was a figure of Christ and what he would do, a type of Christ. The word translated figurative or figurative sense, there's one word that's translated figurative sense in our version, is parabole. You hear that word? Parable. He received him in a parabolic sense. The word is used of the parables of Jesus. It is only used, that word is only used one other time in Hebrews, and it's in the exact same way that it's used here, to refer to the sacrifices of the Old Testament as a parable or figures of what we now have in Christ. They were figures representing what we have in Christ. What was that ram? It was a figure of the one that would take Isaac's place. That's what we're being told here. The promise was given with the ram as God provided the ram. He said, Abraham said in response to that in the mount of the Lord, it will be provided. It's Abraham called the name of the place, the Lord will provide, as it is said to this day, in the Mount of the Lord it shall be provided. Now that's a better testimony than the Jews realized, isn't it, of Christ? Because what it's saying is, all those years as they had, Abraham had this, God's gonna provide the sacrifice, God's gonna provide the sacrifice, and they offered all their sacrifices over the years, and they said, all those years, in the Mount of the Lord it will be provided. How did God provide? He sent His only begotten Son to be the burnt offering, the sacrifice, the righteousness, the sin offering, to take away our sin. Genesis 22, 15. Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven and said, by myself, now remember the angel of the Lord is I think here for sure Christ, often it's Christ. So the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven and said, by myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son. Blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is by the seashore. And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice." That is a beautiful, beautiful thing. He got the promise that he thought he seemed to be giving up. he got back because of what he gave up. The whole promise was brought back to Abraham in that ram in a figurative sense. Isaac was brought back. And so was the whole blessing that was promised in Isaac of a great nation that would bring forth a great savior that would redeem the whole world. All of that, Abraham got back in that ram. that figuratively, parabolically represents our Lord Jesus Christ. That was the reward of Abraham's faith that he received in a figurative sense. But if you believe, you will receive the living Christ Himself. Yes, we still have Christ in a figurative sense in one way, that He is not here among us. He is promised to us, the future city that is promised to us. We have the bread and wine that figuratively give Christ to us, that represent Him to us as we look for Him and we yearn for Him. the waters of baptism that represent Him washing us and cleansing us, but we have Him in the actual sense as our Savior because He has now already been revealed. He has been revealed in the world, He has come into the world, He has already been crucified, He has already been raised again. And now He who reigns in glory as our priest is there to rule us and to intercede for us. And He will overcome again bodily, or He will come again bodily to take us to His Father's house forever. At the supper, He is the Savior who is given. that is represented. Not the Savior who is promised, but the Savior who is given in that way as a sacrifice for our sins. And he is also the Savior who is promised to come again. We have in the Gospels news of the past about what was done. They're called Gospels good news because it's about what was already done that we have received. And yes, we're waiting between what has already been done and what is yet to be done. So what I'm saying to you is, if you believe and you trust in God for salvation, what does He give you? He gives you not Christ in a figurative sense, but Christ as given and crucified for your sins. You already have that sacrifice given for your sins that you can rest in and trust in. And yes, something future. You look forward to the fulfillment of all the blessing of the nation that is the city of God forever and ever in heaven. For our trusting God to save us, what do we get? What's the reward? You get a Savior who saves. That's what you get. Let's fully trust in the Lord when we're tested, whether it was sickness, broken relationships, weariness, persecution, sacrifices that He calls us to make for His kingdom. Whatever it is, let us trust Him. See His love, even in what He's already done, and you will be much more disposed to trust Him and to fully give yourself to Him, knowing that in losing your life, you find it. That in forsaking your homeland, you come home. That in leaving father and mother, you find father and mother. Christ is our reward when we believe. He was Abraham's in a figurative sense and ours now is a crucified, risen, reigning, returning savior. Give your precious Isaac, whatever it is, to him and he will give you a hundred times as much in return. Please stand and let's call on the name of our God. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we praise You and we thank You for what You have done for us. O Lord, we praise You and thank You that You are the one that we can fully trust in, and You have given to us the privilege of seeing so much now of what You have done. Abraham didn't have so much of that. But He did have some of that, where you had promised a son when it was impossible, and then gave him that son, and then told him to offer that son. And then He was able to believe that you would make the promise good that was all in that son. We thank you, Lord, that you promised him a son forever, that he would have not just in this world, but forever and ever. And Abraham was focused on that. And he believed and he trusted you. And we praise you, O Lord, for the example that we have. And we pray that you would help us to have strong faith. that you would help us trust you, O Lord, for you are our God, you are our Redeemer, and you have been faithful to your people all through the ages. And we have no doubt that you will be faithful in the ages to come. Father, we face things as a people today in our land. That looming difficulties and hardships that we see on the horizon, some of them are already reaching us in certain ways. And father, we pray that we would have the boldness and the confidence and the faith and the trust in you and in your love. that we would have it as a firm foundation in order that we might be able to serve you and to go forward through times of affliction and hardship, that we would not turn away from our Lord, but we would go follow and follow hard after you, O Lord. We know, Lord, that even if we are still find ourselves to be very weak and we do We know, Lord, that you will work in us and you will prepare us. And we look to you to do that. But may we never use an excuse that because of our weakness that we cannot do this. May we go forward in your name, O Lord. And may we see your hand. And may we see you fulfill your promises to us, your people. You are our God. You have redeemed us. You have called us. And you will magnify your name and bring blessing to your church. You will fulfill all that you have spoken. Thank you for already sending Jesus, who is our crucified, risen, reigning, ascended, coming again Savior, who as a priest is now interceding for us. We have everything, every hope, every reason for hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. He will accomplish His purposes, and we praise You, O Lord, in His glorious name. Amen.