Why would God ask Abraham to sacrifice his son? In Genesis 22, God gives Abraham the hardest command imaginable: offer your son Isaac as a sacrifice. Dr. Toby Holt walks through this famous test and the gospel it foreshadows.

Abraham obeys, traveling three days to Mount Moriah as Isaac carries the wood up the hill. At the last moment God stops him and provides a ram as a substitute. Abraham trusted God so fully that, Hebrews says, he believed God could raise Isaac from the dead. The scene foreshadows Christ — the beloved Son who carried His own wood up that same hill — except Isaac was spared, and Jesus was not.

Questions this study answers:

1. Was God really going to let Abraham kill Isaac? No. It was a test of Abraham's faith, and God provided a ram in Isaac's place. God never intended Isaac to die.

2. What did Abraham believe would happen? He trusted God to keep His promise — even if it meant raising Isaac from the dead. He told his servants they would both return.

3. How does this point to Christ? Isaac, the beloved son, carried the wood up Moriah, just as Jesus carried His cross. But where Isaac was spared, God did not spare His own Son.

"...now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me." — Genesis 22:12 (NKJV)

Dr. Toby Holt is President of New Geneva Theological Seminary, and his sermons have been downloaded more than 1.9 million times on SermonAudio. Find more verse-by-verse Bible teaching at newgeneva.org; support this ministry at newgeneva.org/give.

In Genesis 22, God put Abraham's faith to the greatest test.

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He asked him to sacrifice his son, Isaac.

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Now, why would God ask such a thing?

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Well, the answer lies in what happened on top of Mount Moriah.

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On the mountain, God stopped Abraham and spared Isaac

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and then offered a substitute,

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a ram that was caught in a nearby thicket.

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And in today's study, we'll see that this ram

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foreshadowed Christ's own substitution for you and I on Calvary.

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in planning through the sermon series on genesis i didn't script out exactly which week i'd be

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aware but i find myself on father's day looking at the text that is the most poignant text you

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could look at with regards of relationships between fathers and sons all right i'm going

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to reread verses one through eight and then we'll work our way through as time allows so verse one

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now came to pass after these things what things principally that isaac is born after these things

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Isaac's scroll and older. God tests Abraham and says to him, Abraham. And Abraham says, here I am.

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Then God says, take now your son. At this point, which son could he be talking about? How many

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sons did he have? He had two. Isaac, and what was the other one? Ishmael. You ever wonder if Abraham

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hears God's request and says, you know, give me your son, your only son, Isaac. If Abraham thought,

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you know, could I offer you an Ishmael, perhaps? We don't know what he was thinking, but God makes

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it clear. He says, I know which son I want. It's the son you love. It's the son through Sarah,

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your wife. Take this son, verse 2, whom you love, go to the land of Moriah, which is not incidental,

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and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. So,

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verse 3, Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey. Some believe that was out of

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obedience. He sprung up to go and do God's work. I prefer to think that he wrestled with this all

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night long, that he had the sort of pathos that we would expect a father would have, that he

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couldn't bear the thought of what he was called to do. He couldn't sleep, so he got up to do it.

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He got up to do it.

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This is a man of flesh and blood like you and I.

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He had to agonize over every ounce of what was going on in this text.

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But verse 3, he says he gets up early in the morning,

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he saddles a donkey, he takes two of his young men with him

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and Isaac, his son, and he split the wood for the burnt offering.

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Abraham, the father, did not leave the job to anyone else

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to split the very wood upon which his son would be sacrificed.

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So verse 5, we see he splits the wood for the burnt offering,

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he rose, and he went to the place that God had told him.

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Then on the third day, Abraham lifted his eyes,

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saw the place far off. And Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey. The lad and

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I will go yonder. We will worship and we will come back to you. Do you notice what I just said?

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We, we will come back to you. We'll get back to that in just a few moments. I want you to remember

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that's what he said. Stay with the donkey. The lad and I will go and worship. We will come back to

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you. So Abraham, verse six, took the wood of the burnt offering and he laid it on Isaac, his son.

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his son was going to carry the very wood upon which he would be sacrificed up the hill to which

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he would be sacrificed upon so he laid that wood on Isaac his son and he took the fire in his hand

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he took the knife and the two of them went up together but Isaac spoke to Abraham's father and

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said my father I said here I am my son then he said look I see the fire and the wood but where

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is the lamb for a burnt offering Isaac knew what worship looked like and worship was regularly

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sacrificial. But there was no sacrifice at Abraham's arms. So he asked, where's the lamb?

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Just imagine as a father, just imagine as a parent who knew what was about to go down,

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or expected what was about to go down. How that just had to be a dagger at his own heart. Where's

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the sacrifice, dad? Dad, where's the sacrifice? How do you answer that question if you're Abraham?

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Well, we know how he did answer it. He said this. He says, my son, God will provide. God will provide

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for himself, the lamb for a burnt offering. And so the two of them went on together. All right,

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let me stop here. In verse 1, there's a word. There's a word that describes the entirety of

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this chapter, and it's the word test. Came to pass, verse 1, after these things that God tested

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Abraham. Now, are tests good or are tests bad? What do you think? I remember when I was a kid,

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I didn't like no tests. The teacher says, there's going to be a test today. That was automatically

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a bad day. Generally speaking, we don't love tests. On the flip side, though, we do like tests that

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we're prepared for. We do like tests that validate our skills. We do like tests that validate our

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talents. We do like tests when they make us look good on the outside of that test, on the outcome

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of it. Tests are not necessarily bad. They give you the ability to validate your preparation. So

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in that sense, tests are a good thing. And you should want to be tested in life. You should want

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to be tested, because that's the arena where your experience and your success ultimately comes from.

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Your experience, sometimes through scar tissue, but your experience, your success, your virtues

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are sharpened and honed in the arena of testing. So tests are not necessarily bad, but you and I,

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we prefer to define the parameters of our own tests, and that's where God says, not so much.

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You and I, if we could only be tested on the basis of that which we knew we could survive or

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succeed in, we'd do tests all day long. However, that's not the way God works. God puts tests on

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our radar. God puts tests on our radar that we don't necessarily see coming, that we don't

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necessarily want, and we wonder if we can survive, or at least if we can succeed. Now, for a godly

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husband and father like Abraham, Abraham would survive all manner of tests just to get this far

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along. At this point, this is a hundred-year-old man. Abraham had seen tests upon tests upon tests.

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even in his time walking with God, he'd seen all manner of tests. There's all manner of ways in

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which his faith had been tested. With that said, there was no test, no test like this,

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that this father had ever encountered. Nothing like that. And be reminded, those of us of an

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older generation, there may be tests on your radar in the future, as old as you might be today,

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that are harder than what you did in the past. But the promise that God offers you this morning is

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this, that when you face those tests, he'll be with you just as he was in the past. That's the

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Psalm 23, the idea that God walks with us. Even when we walk through the valley of the shadow of

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death, he does not leave you for a single moment when you walk through it. He doesn't say you won't

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face it. You will face it. You have faced it in many cases. And he says, I will be with you. Just

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as I was then, I will be yet in the future. Whatever the case is, this test here, it's like

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nothing i suspect any of us have ever been asked to submit ourselves to you see isaac as we talked

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about before isaac is the apple of abraham's eye he had two sons he had ishmael but ishmael was

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through hagar was not through his wife he cared for ishmael too but isaac was the apple of his eye

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this was the son of promise this was the son of his wife sarah this was the son of his old age

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this was a son that was miraculously conceived even though they were exceptionally old abram if

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you had asked Abraham on the three-day journey, he's walking, he's got to be just sweating and

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he's deep in thought the whole time that they're walking. And if you had asked Abraham at that

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moment, say, Abraham, tell you what, if right now you could give your left arm not to have to go up

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and slay your son of Moriah, would you do it? He'd say, take it. If you said, Abraham, what about your

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own life? Would you lay your own life for your son? Abraham would say, take it. Abraham would have

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given anything. He would have taken a round loaded in the chamber a thousand times over and

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against what he was asked to do so with his son, to sacrifice his son. However, as we saw in verse

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three, in spite of the love and the affection that he had as a father for his children, in spite of

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that, verse three says he rose early in the morning to be obedient. Now again, as he's walking, what's

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he thinking? What's he thinking about with regards to this decision? Well, there's two things that

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had to be going through his mind. The first was probably this, confusion. On some level, wouldn't

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you have been confused if you were Abraham? No. What would you have been confused about? Well,

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number one, you probably would have said, is this the character of God? I've been worshiping God for

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years, Abraham would say. I've walked with him. Is what I'm asked to do in the character of God?

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And that had to be confusing. Secondarily, it had to be confusing for this reason. He was familiar

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with the concept of children being sacrificed. The pagans did this. There's an evil pagan god

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called Molech that the pagans, the Canaanites and others worship. There was fertility gods. One was

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named El. They slaughtered, they sacrificed children. So in his historical context, amongst

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his greater contemporaries, there were others who did such a thing, who gave their children as a

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sacrifice to their gods. And at some level, Abraham had to be going, I didn't think my God is like the

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God of the Canaanites or the God of those pagans. He had to be confused. Secondly, he had to be

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fearful. I don't want to lose my boy. I don't want to lose my son. Abraham was a loving father.

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We can't reduce him to an automaton that just was faithful and just was obedient. He was faithful.

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He was obedient. Don't lose that. He was absolutely faithful and obedient, but he was not an automaton.

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He absolutely parsed through this the same way you and I would, the same sort of rigor and anxiety

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and agony of heart as he contemplated these things. But even as he contemplated these things,

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even as he agonized over them there was three things that overrode his feelings on the matter

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and the first one was this the first one was this that god had told him to do it was of greater

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import than what he thought about doing it you understand you and i sometimes we work differently

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the greater secular world definitely works differently we think mostly about what we want

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to do, and then we do principally what we want to do. Abraham did not want to do this. He did not

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want to do it, but God told him to, and that took priority. In your own life, how many things has

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God told you to do through the pages of his book that you chafe at doing? Why? Because you don't

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want to do it, because it's hard, because it's difficult. What do you do in those moments? Well,

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if you have the priorities of Abraham, you start with his premise. God has spoken, and irrespective

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of what I think or feel or want about what he has said, I will do it. Because he's God and I'm not.

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That's a good foundational principle. Abraham believed it before this. He believed it during

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it and he believed it after. Secondly, as we said a few months ago, worshiping God is inherently

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sacrificial. You and I have lost touch of that in our culture. Even in our church culture, we've lost

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touch with the sacrifice component of worship. But Abraham didn't. Abraham did not. Sacrifice was

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inherently part of what worship looked like. You couldn't miss it. You go to temple worship in the

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Old Testament throughout the years as they go into the monarchy and the kings and the like. Sacrifice,

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whether it's the tabernacle, whether it's the temple, whether it's in the wilderness,

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sacrifice was part of worship. Abraham understood that even if we forgot. He understood that

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sacrifice is part of how you worship your God. So he had that in mind too. Thirdly, God had said

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something, though, that helped him. Even as he contemplated how much he hated what he was being

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asked to do, God had said something that kept going through his mind, that I think helped him

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to take another step. What had God said? What had God said? Maybe years passed. What had God told

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Abraham that he couldn't get out of his mind, even as he's walking to slay his son? What had God said?

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Well, God had said this earlier to Abraham. He says, Abraham, it is through Isaac that your

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offspring shall come. Now think about that. God had told Abraham, Abraham, you will have a son,

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and he will be the means unto which you'll have this great progeny. Through Isaac, your offspring

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shall come. Now God had made that promise, and Abraham thought through all the other promises

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God had made, and God had kept them all. God had done everything he'd ever told Abraham he was

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going to do. So Abraham had this track record where he's like, well, God keeps doing what he

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says he's going to do. And he's told me to go and sacrifice my son. But at the same time, he's also

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told me that through Isaac, I will have all these children, all these seed. Now, how did he reconcile

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that? How would you reconcile it? What would you conclude at the end of that? On the one hand,

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you're there, you're supposed to slaughter your son. On the other hand, the son is supposed to

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be the means by which you're going to have all these children. What would you conclude if you're

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Abraham, while you're walking three days, what would be your conclusion about what was about to

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happen? What do you think? In order to reconcile the

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promise through Isaac, I will have all these grandchildren and great-grandchildren

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and the like, but he's going to die. What would you then conclude had to happen after

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he died? Ah, you would conclude

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while you're walking three days towards Moriah, you conclude, yes,

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I'm being asked to kill my son, but

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what? God. God must then plan to raise him up. God then must plan to resurrect my son because

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that's the only way he can have any grandchildren, right? He knew God had promised what was about to

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happen. And he knew he was being asked to slay his own child. And so what he did is he worked

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that through and he said, God must be planning to resurrect Isaac. Now, that would be speculation

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if I was just sitting here just kind of spinning that thing. That's probably what he was thinking.

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but it's not speculation because that's exactly what the book of Hebrews tells us was going

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through Abraham's mind. Listen to this from Hebrews chapter 11. By faith, Abraham, when he

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was tested, offered up Isaac, and he would receive the promises, offered up his only begotten son,

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of whom it was said, in Isaac your seed shall be called, by concluding, listen to this,

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By concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead.

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You see this?

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Yes, Abraham was torn.

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Yes, he was agonizing.

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Yes, he wanted no part of doing this.

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He hated it.

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This was the worst test in terms of what it meant,

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how it cost him sleep and the agony that he went through.

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And at the same time, he held God to his promise.

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Through Isaac, your seed shall be called.

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Through Isaac, you will have grandchildren.

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Through Isaac, you will have great-grandchildren.

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And so Hebrews 11 tells us what was going on in his mind.

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And he concluded as he was walking up Moriah itself,

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he concluded, I will do what God has told me to do,

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but I trust, I trust and I have faith

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that that will not be the end of my son's story.

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Abraham fully expected to sacrifice his son

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when he got to the top of that mountain.

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He fully expected to sacrifice Isaac.

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But here's the thing, he also fully expected to get him back.

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And that's why he told his servants what?

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We'll be back.

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We'll be back.

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Sorry, I couldn't help myself.

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We'll be back.

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He tells his servants, we'll be back.

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You stay here.

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You watch the donkey.

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Me and my son, the lad, he calls him, are going to head on up.

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But we will be back.

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See, he concluded before he even raised that knife what God was going to do.

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Fortunately, fortunately, God was going to do something far, far better.

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Let's look at verses 9 through 12.

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Verse 9, then they came to the place that God had told them to go to.

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And Abraham built an altar there, and he placed the wood in order,

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and he bound Isaac, his son, and he laid him on the altar upon the wood.

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And Abraham stretched out his hand, and he took the knife to slay his son.

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But, one of the greatest transitions in all of Scripture, verse 11,

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but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said,

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Abraham, Abraham.

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And he said, here I am.

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And he said, do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him.

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

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All right, in verse 9, we read that they came to the place God had told them.

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It was a specific place, not accidental.

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It's specific for reasons we'll get into in a few moments.

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But they went to a specific spot on Mount Moriah.

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And Isaac took the wood upon his own back, and he carried it all the way up the mountain,

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which, again, is not incidental.

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either and once the wood was there once Isaac was there we see there in verse 10 that Abraham goes

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and he lays down the wood upon the altar and then he lays his own son upon the altar and at this

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point as an aside you would think that his son could have resisted Isaac we believe is a young

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lad he's not an infant and he's not a small boy he's old enough to carry all this wood up the hill

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people think he's either from a teenager up to his 30s I really don't know scripture isn't clear

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but he's old enough not to have been sacrificed if he didn't accept it you understand this his dad's

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100 years old isaac had the ability if he wanted to to resist but we don't just see abraham's

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obedience here we see isaac's obedience the patriarchs are really fascinating the more you

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study them but isaac is obedient at this time and then abraham takes the knife and then just at the

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inflection point just at the point when it's about to be lowered he hears a voice it had to be the

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greatest voice the greatest interlude in all the scripture and the voice says stop the voice says

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abraham abraham do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him for now i know you fear the

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lord because you did not hold back anything from me the test was over all right let's look at our

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final verses for today we'll look at verses 13 through 14 and we'll stop there verse 13

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then abraham lifted his eyes and looked and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket

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by its horns and so abraham went and he took the ram and he offered it up for a burnt offering

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instead of his son and abraham called the name of the place the lord will provide as it is said

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to this day in the mount of the lord it shall be provided all right in our earlier verses

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the sacrifice has been removed. Isaac has been unbound. I think R.C. Sproul said that if you

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wanted to see the Guinness Book, World Records, fastest knife drop in history, it was Abraham

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dropping that knife the minute God said stop. He just couldn't wait just to drop that and to untie

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his son and to hold him close. And then he notices something he didn't notice before.

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There was a substitute that was probably there all along, but a substitute that was provided

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for the sacrifice. Now let's talk about that substitute with our remaining time here this

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morning. You know, it's been said that Genesis 22, which is the text we're looking at today,

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is one of the clearest expositions of the gospel of Jesus Christ that you will ever find

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in the Old Testament. In other words, the text we're looking at this morning is not merely about

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father and son being Abraham and Isaac. This text is principally about God the Father and his son

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Jesus. And when we read in this text about a substitute that interceded the intervener that

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was provided at this time to die instead of Isaac, we're really reading about Jesus. Now let me

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explain this further. If you think about Isaac and you think about Jesus, they had a lot in common.

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Both of them, you would say, were miraculously conceived, would you not? Both Isaac and Jesus

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were miraculously conceived. Mary gave birth, though she knew not a man. Sarah gave birth,

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though she was very, very old.

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With that said, they both had this miraculous conception, so to speak.

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Not immaculate conception, but miraculous conception.

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They were both children of promise, too.

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God had said that these children would become ahead of their birth.

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Secondly, both were offered for sacrifice by their fathers.

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Both Jesus and Isaac were offered for sacrifice by their fathers.

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Thirdly, both carried the wood of their own sacrifice on their back.

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You have two individuals. You have Isaac and Jesus.

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Both are to be sacrificed by their fathers.

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And both went to the point of sacrifice, bearing the wood that was there to sacrifice them on their backs to the place where they were going.

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Fourthly, both were offered for sacrifice in the exact same spot.

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It's a place called Moriah. You might know it by another name. It starts with a C. Calvary.

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God says, Abraham, go three days to a spot I will show you.

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And it's not an incidental spot.

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Scholars, theologians have understood this for centuries.

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The place where Abraham was called to go to sacrifice his son is the same spot where Jesus died.

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The same spot where God the Father sacrificed his only son.

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So they carried the wood of their sacrifice on their backs to the same spot on this globe.

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Fifthly, they were both obedient to doing so.

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Isaac and Jesus were both obedient.

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What did we read earlier in Isaiah 53?

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Jesus went as a lamb silent to the slaughter.

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Isaac did the same here.

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Isaac did the same here.

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And finally, a final point.

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There's actually many more points, but for our purposes,

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there's one more point that resonates with me.

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Both fathers, both fathers anticipated the sacrifice of their son,

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but both fathers also anticipated resurrection.

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Both fathers also anticipated resurrection.

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This is the gospel in the Old Testament, but there's one big difference.

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And the big difference is this.

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Isaac was spared.

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Isaac was spared, but Jesus died.

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This morning, in closing, let me once again offer you the gospel

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that is clearly provided for us in Genesis 22.

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Isaac, Abraham, Jacob, David, Paul, you, me,

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we all have this common issue,

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and that is that you and I are sinners.

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Now, we said earlier this morning that the reason that's problematic

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is because of the consequences of sin.

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The reason sin is bad is not only because it offends a holy God,

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which is bad enough,

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but also because the consequences of offending a holy God are what?

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the wages of sin are death death that's the wages of sin you know the reason i always ask us to

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repeat that because i want us to remember what we've been purchased back from the wages of the

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things you did wrong yesterday the wages of the things you've done last week let alone the

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culmination of all those things for many of us across decades the wages of that is death that

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is what would await us that is what our future would otherwise hold we would be the ones on the

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sacrifice, we would be the ones on the altar, and we'd be the ones dying. That's what our future

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would hold because we've earned it. The wages of sin is death. But the good news of the gospel is

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this, that God looks down upon us in our fallen state, in our fallen condition. He recognizes that

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we are sinners. He recognizes not only that we're sinners, but we're rebels and enemies with him and

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his crown and his throne. He recognizes that he sees that, and yet out of his great love and out

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of his mercy, he determines to save us. He determines to purchase us back from sin and death

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by giving that which is most precious

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to a father's heart, his only son.

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Your hope, your future, your salvation

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was purchased by God giving for you

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that which was most precious to himself.

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On Moriah, Jacob was spared,

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and a substitute, a substitute was sacrificed

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in Isaac's place.

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You're the Isaac.

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In the same way, a sacrifice,

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a sacrifice for sin is necessitated,

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but God has substituted his own son in your place.

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You and I are the Isaac in this narrative.

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We are those.

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We are those laid down on the altar.

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We deserve what's coming to us,

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but God has provided a means for our atonement,

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a means for our salvation,

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and that is by having his own son

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laid down in the law place, so to speak,

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and have the wrath of the Father poured out upon him.

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And because he pays our price,

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because he carries our penalty,

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Because he pays the debt in full, you and I have hope.

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And because that's true, because that's true,

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when God looks at you right now,

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if you trust and believe in his only begotten son,

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when God looks at you right now,

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he doesn't see you as a sinner that you are.

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He sees you as a child clad in a white robe

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of his own son's righteousness.

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A substitute was provided on Calvary.

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A substitute died in your place.

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The father looked down upon his only begotten son

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and it pleased the father to crush the son

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is what we see in Isaiah 53.

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And praise God it was someone other than you and I.

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With that said, when we sin, when we transgress, when we do that which is wrong,

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when we embrace sins, when we have pet sins.

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You ever have one of those?

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I got my pet sins.

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Dear heavens, think of the cost.

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And then rejoice and know this, that you don't have to pay it.

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This morning's text, we see a picture of the gospel.

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This morning, if you're on the outside looking in, it matters of faith.

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If you look at religiosity, if you look even at Christianity,

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you don't know what to make of it, and you're kind of inspecting it from a distance.

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So let me ask you this. Assuming you were to reject Christianity, what would you have left

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when you stand before your maker? Assuming there is a God, assuming he made you, and assuming he

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gave you laws to follow, and assuming you didn't follow them, what are you going to do on that day?

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What do you do with your guilt? You're guilty of breaking your own society's rules. You're guilty

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of breaking the laws of your own household, let alone a thrice holy God. What are you going to do

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with your guilt on that day? Are you going to stand before God and say, well, God, I was better

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than Bob down the street, Pete from accounting. You should look at him. He's something else. But

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me, I'm better than them. Most people in our culture and our age think they can work their

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way into heaven, think they can offer God something that will satisfy him and satisfy his

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wrath dear heavens what can you offer god that is greater than that which was offered on calvary

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what can you offer god through your works and your good deed doing that is greater than the

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blood of his own son poured out for you the answer is nothing and that's why we say we're saved by

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faith alone through grace alone and christ alone if you're trying to work your own way into heaven

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this morning, stop. If you're doing good deeds, continue to do those, but stop trusting them as

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the means of your salvation. Turn to the substitute. Turn to the paraclete. Turn to the intercessor.

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Turn to Christ through faith and live. Let's pray.