The Place of Faith

One extra announcement. Very early announcement, so the details are being determined, but the UCG Atlanta ski trip this year, you know, we have it every year, and the group comes through Knoxville. I know several of you come from this congregation. It's going to be on February 2nd. Sunday, February 2nd, details to come.

So I just wanted to give you that initial feedback. They're in Ober-Gatlinburg. They were exploring some different areas, possibly this year, that they were going to go to, but it looks like from Dr. Aust, they've settled on Ober-Gatlinburg again. So I think Grayson and I are going to try to go to that this year. God willing. We'll see how I get through the volleyball of Winter Family Weekend. That's always a little bit sketchy with how I'm going to come out of that with my body full intact or not, and if it does, then we will be at the ski trip. So with the title of our sermon today, The Place of Faith. I invite you to open your Bibles, and let's turn to Genesis chapter 15. Genesis chapter 15, and we're going to begin looking at verses 1 through 6. Genesis 15 verses 1 through 6. We're going to start off by reading three passages of scripture today. The first comes to us here in Genesis 15.

This is the first passage of scripture. We're going to take a look at the study in the life of Abraham today.

Genesis 15, and let's read verses 1 through 6. Fascinating moment. Fascinating man. We will see.

It says, After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward. But, Abram said, Lord God, what will you give me, seeing I go childless? And the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus. As a side note, Eliezer was the head steward of the house. And so, if Abraham remained childless by custom, Eliezer would become heir. So continuing verse 3, then Abram said, Look, you've given me no offspring. Indeed, one born in my house is my heir. Verse 4, And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir. Then he brought him outside and said, Look now toward heaven, count the stars if you are able to number them. And he said to him, So shall your descendants be. Verse 6, And he believed in the Lord, and he accounted it to him for righteousness. So let's stop there. If you'll skip forward with me now a few chapters to Genesis 21. This will be our second passage of Scripture to look at. Genesis 21, beginning in verse 1, we'll see now that God did provide this heir as Isaac is born here. Genesis 21, let's read verses 1 through 3.

And the Lord visited Sarah, and he had said, as he had said, And the Lord did for Sarah as he had spoken. For Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at a set time of which God had spoken it to him. And Abraham called the name of his son, who was born to him, whom Sarah bore to him, Isaac. One final passage of Scripture study, chapter 22, one chapter forward, verses 1 through 10. And this will be our primary passage of study today, and it's one of incredible significance here in light of the promise that God made to Abraham. Genesis 22, verses 1 through 10.

Now, it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, he said, here I am. And he said, Take now 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 Isaac his son.

And he split the wood for burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day, Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said to his young men, Stay here with the donkey. The lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.

So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, laid it on Isaac his son, and he took the fire in his hand and a knife, and the two of them went together. But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, My father. And he said, Here I am, my son. And he said, Look, the fire and the wood. Where is the lamb for the burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering. So the two of them went together. Verse 9, And they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order, and he bound Isaac his son, laid him on the altar upon the wood, and Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.

Let's stop there. Well, again, we come to this study of the life of Abraham. And when we look at this, at the life of Abraham in particular, what we discover is that the walk upon the pathway of faith, it involves facing incredible challenges. It involves trusting and promises. And it even involves things that seem too hard to accomplish and seem and appear too hopeless.

And anyone who's ever read their Bible will know that biblical faith is something that puts great demands on those who are prepared to embrace it. And in the Bible, we find many examples of what might be described as great tests of faith, but of all the tests, of all the tests, I propose that none come to us with as much of a chilling challenge as is contained here in Genesis 22. Other than the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, notwithstanding, not a single test that I can find in the Bible hits me the way this hits here in Genesis 22.

Why is that? Well, it's because of what God asked Abraham to do. He's not asking Abraham to part a sea. He's not asking Abraham to tumble walls or take on an army, even. He's asking Abraham to kill his son. That's going to be a test, isn't it? A test of faith. Is there any greater? Is there any greater? Those of us who have known the joy of taking a son or a daughter in our arms, or know the joy of taking a boy, a little girl, of a loved one in our arms, will begin to imagine what went through the heart and the mind of Abraham, a hundred-year-old man, when he first took this baby Isaac into his arms.

How the emotions would have just overflowed in him. And the thought, you know, this is not just any tiny baby, as precious as they are, the thought of all that the future would hold for Isaac. Because it's not only special for one to arrive like this, but it was very, very important as we read, because through this boy, the descendants of Abraham would come, as we read, God foretold, one will come from your own body, he will be your heir, and then look toward the heaven, count the stars if you're able to count them, so shall your descendants be.

So again, it's important, very important, that this young lad not only make his way through the toddler years, through the elementary years, but it's very, very important that this Isaac make it to manhood and even to fatherhood then.

Now, with that in mind, let's take a look at this test that God designed for Abraham, and it was a test. First, you'll notice the context. Very important to notice the context here. We're not given too many details of the length of time which elapsed from Genesis 21 through Genesis 22. It just says that sometime later, chapter 22, verse 1, after these things. But in looking at the text, you can infer certain things. For example, verse 6, we're told that Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, laid it upon Isaac. So we might infer that Isaac had reached the age to at least be a sturdy youth, strong enough to be able to carry wood for a burnt offering. Possibly Isaac was in his early teens, at this point. So it was at that stage in life in which this test comes. Verse 1, now it came to pass. God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, here I am. Verse 2, and he said, Take now your son, your only son whom you love, go to the land of Moriah, offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I shall tell you. Take your son and sacrifice him. And when I immediately read that, if we come to the text, the holy text, and we come with a cleared mind, from the viewpoint as if we're reading for this for the first time, you can look at that and you would immediately say, if you're like me, well, is this my God? Could God do that? Is this the God to whom I've committed my life? Is this the actual God to whom I've dedicated myself to follow his direction? Well, it is. And some have balked at this, and some have even, if you look at some of the different things on the internet, there's many that deny even the authenticity of these verses because in their mind, this doesn't square with their notion of God. We talk a lot about how we have to be counter-cultural in our thinking, counter what our natural inclination is, our natural thoughts. Often God's ways are different than ours. So the key here is that not that events square with our understanding or our notion of God is it most important thing is that they square with God's notion of God, if you will. So faith is needed here. When things don't square, when things don't square, faith is needed because human reasoning comes along and it begins to deny these things. It ignores them. It explains it away. Faith comes along and faith confronts impossibility. Faith confronts what is seemingly super irrational. Faith says, if this is God's instruction, I can't ignore it. I've got to wrestle with it. So if it's not if it's not lining up, I've got to wrestle with this. We must wrestle with these things because often it's in these moments, these inconceivable tests where God's purposes are found. So Abraham was no doubt deeply wrestling with God's directions here. If you're thinking of the context, you know, Abraham would have been familiar with the surrounding religious practices. The Canaanite religion was an ugly one, very pagan, and they even had customary by their determinations. They would sacrifice firstborn sons, often, to their gods, their little g-gods. So Abraham would have been familiar with that, and he would have seen that in the pagan culture. So all this would have been flowing through his mind and, you know, wrestling with this. And he would need to get rid of, whenever that happens, we need to get rid of the noise. Noise sometimes comes to weaken our faith, and we need to grab on with certain fundamental aspects of God, who he is, let go of our human rationale, grab on to God and his character. God sees things that we don't. What did God know at this point? What did God know that Abraham didn't know?

Well, God knew that he wasn't going to have Abraham kill Isaac. God's faithful to his promises.

We know that because we've read the end of the story, but Abraham didn't know that. This is quite a test. So notice not only the context, but notice the cost. There's a cost involved, the cost of faith. There's always a cost. When we turn to the book of Hebrews, Hebrews 11, it's there in which we have highlighted those who were at the apex of faith, and we discover Abraham's at the heart of it all. So if you'll keep your marker here, let's just turn for a moment to Hebrews 11 as we consider the potential cost of faith.

And as we go through this, and anytime you do a study, a character study of those faithful in the Bible, always put yourself be thinking of how I would handle this. And when we're talking about costs, maybe place this in terms of a cost that you may be facing or one that you might face in the future. So look at Hebrews 11 in verse 8. We want to notice what it says about Abraham here.

Hebrews 11 verse 8, he was quite a man. It says, By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going. So he went out not knowing where he was going. You look at that, and that's incredible to think about. We want to know, you know, he did not know. He just obeyed. I look at that with wonder. Go down a few verses to verse 11. We recognize Sarah was beyond the age to bear a child. In the middle of verse 11, here in Hebrews 11, she bore a child when she was past the age. It's a great admiration for Sarah there. Then go down a few more verses to verse 17, and we stand before this verse in silence. First part of verse 17, By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac.

So let's ask, is this what faith is about? Is that faith? Is this faith? Obeying God no matter the cost. You don't know where you're going to. You're confronted with the impossibility of a situation, and you're asked to perform the inconceivable. Can you relate to this? You don't know where you're going. You're faced with the impossibility of a situation, and you're asked to do the inconceivable.

Let's try to put ourselves in the shoes here of Abraham. He looks onto his son. He had waited 25 years for this young baby. He's now raised Isaac to the age of maybe 13 or 14 years of age. Sees little Isaac running around as a toddler, growing into infancy. Finally begins to make progress toward manhood. He sees his son to whom he loves, and he sees the one to whom the fulfillment of God's promise would come, the multitude of descendants. And then God says, take him and sacrifice him. We need to get this here. We need to feel what Abraham felt, this cost. Let's go back to Genesis 22, if you will. If your mark was there, you'll be helped. You'll get there quickly. Genesis 22. Look at every phrase of verse 2 here. It's just like every phrase is put in a dagger in the heart here. Genesis 22 verse 2 again. God said, take your son, and you will be taken to your son, your only son, whom you love, and sacrifice him.

And if this is what faith is about, I don't know what this is about, you know, this kind of faith. I can't even imagine putting myself in this situation. And I asked myself this afternoon, as an individual, what leap of faith am I willing to take? What leap of faith am I willing to take that cost me like this? Because God may bring it to me. God may bring it to you. He may be bringing it to you now. What leap of faith am I willing to take? There's cost involved here. There is cost involved in the movement of faith. There's always cost involved. And God touched him right at the point where it would hurt. It would hurt. That's what God may choose to do with us, to teach us what it really means to depend on him. That's God's whole purpose for us, really. And if God can bring us to that point, well, thank you, God, to bring us to the point where we really, truly need him and rely on him. That's where we need to be. If you want to take it all, boil it down, we have to need God. We have to need him. Rely on him fully.

He'll touch us where it hurts. He'll touch our pride, perhaps. He'll touch our pocketbooks. He'll touch what we deem as our future plans. That's the cost. Here's the context, the cost that we see here.

Notice the consequence here. Let's notice the third C. I've broken these up in the C's. It helps me. Context, cost, and now consequence.

You see, if Isaac were to be sacrificed, then it would end the hope of any descendants coming through him. By all human calculations, Abraham's action would mean an end to God's divine plan.

As you read these verses, it becomes patently clear that the problem is, in fact, that what it seems is that what God has asked Abraham to do and what he's promised to do through Isaac, they didn't hold together. So Abraham's confronted with this test.

Would he go the way of human reasoning, which means disobedience? Or would he walk the path of faith, which means a radical transformation in how he views his life and the life of his family? That's always the way. It's always faith in the God who I know who he is versus human rationale. It's always the way. Those are the things that compete in our minds. And when I forget who God is, human rationale comes in, and that's the voice I begin to listen to.

And when you start listening to that voice, you can justify just about anything. You can justify just about anything once you can start going to that road.

And you move away from maybe what God is doing with you and working with you. It's looking at the future from the perspective of God who is an all-powerful God, or looking at the future from the perspective of our abilities. So, I ask us here today, are we facing the future with faith? This kind of faith. Biblical faith. Faith without safety nets. Faith out on the edge. Only one way to go.

Well, how did the Father of the faithful view these things? Look at verse 3. It's almost like there's a clinical dimension here in Abraham's movements. Verse 3 of Genesis 22. Verse 3. So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son. So, first of all, why did he get up early? Man, I would have been pulling the blankets up over my head, but he gets up early.

If there's one day he didn't want to face, it's this one.

It must be the day in which he would begin the journey to the death of his son. The day he got up early. So he's facing the hard task resolutely. It's got to be done. And you look at verse 3 and 4. He saddles the donkey, lays the wood of the burnt offering on his son. Another question to ask, is there no emotion in this at all? I think there is. You might describe verse 3 and 4 like the scales, like you can imagine scales. Maybe if the grocery store scales had two sides to it. On the one side of the scale, there's common sense. There's human affection. There's lifelong ambition. Common sense, human affection, lifelong ambition for himself and for his family. And then on the other pan, if you will, Abraham places trust in God. And trusting God outweighs for Abraham any and all considerations here. Faith and trust must outweigh it all. So we ask ourselves today, which way has the pan fallen in your life? Maybe recently. Which way is it tipping as you face the future? Abraham's test is our test. It really is. We want to bring this to our heart today. When you look at verse 4, then on the third day, it says, verse 4, Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off. What does that tell you?

Well, day one, he gets up with his son and walks. Day two, he gets up with his son and walks. Day three, he gets up with his son and walks, and he sees the place in the distance. Plenty of time to think. Plenty of time to change his mind. Plenty of time to devise some other way.

Plenty of time to take another road, conjure up a U-turn. He kept going. He kept going. Why? That's faith.

What a picture it is here, verse 6. Verse 6, so Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, laid it on Isaac his son, took the fire in his hand, took a knife, and the two of them went together. There must have been, you know, the next picture that is here given to us is they're embraced in conversation here, all the while carrying the materials for the sacrifice. So you have the offeror, the father, and the sacrifice, the son, walking together. The inevitable question then comes from the son. Verse 7, he had been no doubt dreading this question. Verse 7, but Isaac spoke up to Abraham, spoke to Abraham, his father, and said, my father, you know, I bet that those words ran up and down his spine, my father, here I am my son, and he said, look, the fire, the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? And in the answer that he gives them, he makes it clear, his trust in God, certainty. This is the model response, by the way, to any agonizing question. Verse 8, Abraham said, my son, God will provide. He will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, so the two men, two of them went together. If you find yourself with a question that does not have any rationale answer, reasonable answer, here's your answer. God will provide as a parent, as a grandparent. I know you've counseled your young ones who are in your care, and you maybe have said things like this. Maybe your parents have said this to you. Well, I'm not sure, but I know God will provide. It's quite a thing to teach our young ones.

God will provide. So the two of them went together to where? Verse 9, then they came to the place of which God had told him. Here's the place.

This place would have no doubt been etched on their minds from this point forward. I've got to quote a lyric. The lyric came to mind. The Beatles, in my life, there are places I remember in my life. Some have gone, some remain, some have changed, some for good, some for better. That's true. There are places in our life, inevitably, that are etched with great significance. Maybe it's the place when you finally surrendered to God's calling. Can you think of that moment? Was there an actual moment or was it a period of time which you actually surrendered to God? Maybe the place in which God spoke to you in a particular way and set you on the pathway to his appointing. I assure you again, this place would have been etched on this father and this son's mind. What is this place? It's the place of obedience, is what it is. There's actually a little bit of geographical context here. It's interesting to note this is in the vicinity of where Christ's sacrifice occurred. But geographically, it's not as important as understanding that this is the place of obedience more than anything. But again, that's the ultimate significance. This is the place in which God had told him to go. It's not a place where he took himself. And again, Abraham was simply in the place of obedience. The more I read these verses, it isn't that Abraham is per se a hero, perhaps. I don't know if I would title him as a hero in the Bible. He is. There's no doubt. But I think more accurately, he's just he's a man of he's an obedient man of faith.

That's what we're striving for. Are you an obedient man of faith? Are you an obedient woman of faith who never gave up, never gave up in the purposes that God put before him? Because you read through Genesis and you realize Abraham blew it about as much as he, you know, got it right.

So we're confronted by the inevitable truth that Abraham is an example to us in that primarily he eventually came to the place of obedience. This is where we're trying to get. She's not in this congregation, but there was a lady in one of our sister congregations who lost her husband recently and asked her how she was doing. And she said, I'm doing okay.

And she goes, I'm just trying not to sin. That was her exact words. Trying not to sin. And it just it took me back when she said that. But that this is and I come across this story and that's what it was about. Just faith in God and no matter what is here and testing me, I'm going to have faith and I'm just going to stay on that path of obedience. I'm going to stay on because a lot of things you don't know anything. You couldn't put your hand on anything other than I know what I need to do. And I'm going to take one step at a time on that path. I still need to get to the depth of that comment she made, but it's quite profound to me. There's a little bit of that here, for sure. Abraham is a primary example to us again that eventually came to the place of obedience. So I wonder in my life, we can wonder together, how much more would we discover of the abundance of God's love and the adequacy of his provision if only if we would daily ensure one thing, and that is we're at the place of obedience. As you think of God's call to obedience, our minds go to Christ's words, if you love me, you will obey my commandments. It's obedience. He didn't say, if you love me, you know, you'll walk around with butterflies in your stomach or something. Or if you love me, you'll be caught up in all the wonders of this or that. And all that's true, of course. We may well, you know, that's good and proper. But he said, if you love me, you will know you love me because of your obedience, no matter the physical circumstances.

And so it goes back to the understanding that God has a far greater eternity-focused plan for us, well beyond this physical, well beyond it, much greater.

This is the time, then, to walk in faith. I don't know what's happening here, but I know what's right, and I trust you, Father. I'm going to walk in that way. All those questions, I can almost see Abraham repeating those things in his mind as he's going toward this event.

So, it's the place of obedience. So true Christianity, no matter what the worldly pulpits say, true Christianity is not a glandular condition. It's not in the glandular condition. It's not whether you feel like it. Do I feel like praying? Do I feel like going to worship God on Sabbath services? Do I feel like this? Christ says, I don't care how you feel.

Obey me. Obey me, and I promise you, you will discover the abundance of my Father's love and the adequacy of his provision. You'll discover it. Absolutely.

Many of us have not reached this place of faith. We're not yet in the place of obedience.

Again, some of us are holding back on God because we want to know all the details. I'm guilty of that. I want to know all the details. If I know all the details, then I can trudge forward to it. I want to know specifically what you have in store for me, and then I'll start obeying toward that end. No, God says, no chance. Obey me, and I'll let you know in due time what I have planned for you. That's faith.

Are you in a place where God may speak to you and is leading you forward, and you're walking in obedience, not knowing where you're going? Or are you waiting for God to reveal to you the whole package, but what He has in mind for your life until now, until Christ returns?

The package is not coming. The package is not coming. There's many people stalled out waiting for the package. Everything, God, the whole package revealed. God's purposes in our lives, it unrolls day by day. It's like a scroll, if you want to imagine it. God's purposes unroll like a scroll as He tells us as we go where He wants us to go. Because you'll notice, verse 2, God tells Abraham to go to the region. I just find this interesting. And then He says, I'll tell you where to go from there. So verse 2, go to the land of Moriah and offer Him there in the burden offerings on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. So go to the region, then I'll tell you the mountain to climb. Some of us have not scaled the mountain because we're not even in the region yet. We haven't even gone to the region. You got to get to the region. Then God reveals the mountain.

So this is the consequence. This will become the place where Abraham would sacrifice his son. Obedience and sacrifice cannot be separated. Obedience and sacrifice cannot be separated. If you know nothing of sacrifice, you will know nothing of faith. It's that simple. They're hand in hand. Sacrifice is faith's beginning. So if many of you had an actual beginning point where you were knocked rock bottom, you know at that moment you had to make a sacrifice before you could begin that journey to faith. Sometimes sacrifice, it's the beginning of faith. You have to sacrifice things. Sacrifice things. If you want to be my disciple, Jesus said, take up your cross every day. And he said it, Jesus said that to crowds and crowds, and gradually the crowds and crowds became smaller and smaller. So he wasn't in the business of drawing the biggest crowd. He was in the business of creating the smallest, most useful nucleus of men and women that he could use. And he didn't call you and I to the lowest common denominator. Rather, he made it as difficult as possible to get on the path of faith and to stay on it. And he said, if you want to come and die, come. If you want to live in obedience, then there's going to be sacrifice. What are you prepared to sacrifice? What has been on your mind that you know you need to make a sacrifice on and you don't know how you can do it? You're not on the pathway to faith.

Are you prepared to change your job?

That's a big one. Some of us have made that decision, lost a job to get on the path.

If you need encouragement, talk to one of those individuals. They will let you know how God swooped in, picked him up during that impossible situation. Are you prepared to turn the whole thing upside down, go for God in the place of obedience and sacrifice, if that's what he asked you to do? If he doesn't ask you to do it, are you ready for the ultimate test to come, perhaps? There's a particular word to young people here in verses 9 and 10. If you look at verses 9 and 10, it seems to indicate very strongly that for these events to take place, that Isaac would have not only been needed to depend on his father's faith, but he would have needed to have his own faith in God. You know, Isaac was old enough to put up a fight, like I mentioned my son, I'm not sure.

If I could make him physically do something he didn't want to do.

But in verses 9 and 10, you look at this and you think, man, this is quite some young man. Verse 9 and 10, they came to the place of which God had told him. Verse 9, And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order, and he bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. So did Abraham do this by force? There's no indication there of that. So if he didn't wrestle him on it, then Isaac went on it himself.

You know, and says quite a bit about this young man, willing to trust God as well. Trust his physical father as his physical father trusted his spiritual father. Abraham must have communicated very effectively to Isaac and his teaching along those three days in which they were walking. The Lord will provide Isaac.

You can just imagine the conversations as they walked. Maybe Abraham asked the other two to walk behind so he could talk to his son during those three days.

Maybe that was a gift from God those three days so he could prepare for what was about to come. Abraham would have presumably said here at this moment, I don't know what's going to happen, son.

But I do know God loves you and I do know you're at the central part of his purposes in his future. And that's true of every young person here today. You're at the central part of his purposes in the future. We can say that without a doubt. So, I don't know, substitution, resurrection, we don't have to worry about it, son. God will provide. God will provide in your life as well. That's the word to young and old. You may be at a particular place in your life where you're having to answer this very question right now. You're wrestling with this. How will God provide?

The answer is you don't know. So, what do you do know? I know God loves me. I know he's got great purpose for me. So, I'm going to walk on the path of obedience until God in his purposes and his timing reveals it to me. But I got to get to the region. I got to get to the region so I can scale that hill. I can scale that mountain. This is your story. Verses 11 through 14. We see the provision came of a lamb and it stopped the sacrifice. The lamb was put in his place. Verses 11 through 14. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham, so he said, Here I am. And he said, Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. And Abraham called the name of the place the Lord will provide, as it is said this day, in the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.

So no wonder Abraham called this place the Lord will provide. After all this, what do you think they said to one another? You know, what a dramatic scene. You know, Abraham, stop. And then both he and his son look over and there's a ram in the thicket. You can imagine him looking back at his son.

Begins to unbind him, the embrace. They may have just sat there for a while, you know. Amazing, amazing moment.

Only possible by faith. Abraham, Isaac could have only gotten to this place by faith in God.

What a gift here, you know. God is working out his purposes. He's thinking of all that he's going to do through Abraham, all that he's going to do through Isaac. Eternal purposes to come, way bigger than the physical.

And they had faith in that. They placed their faith in God.

Well, we'll begin to conclude. As we observe these events, we realize that this was an inconceivable test. Rather than it breaking Abraham, it brings him to the summit of his life. In the beginning of a lifelong walk with God, it was a final just moment for him. A climax. And it occurred here. And Abraham would not elect human intellect, human reasoning, or prevent him from climbing the summit and all that God had in store for him.

He responded in trust and faith. And I want you to know, every juncture along your path of faith, there are challenges in these regards. Do not think that God is not involved in your life. Every aspect. Every aspect. And he's moving with you and he's putting challenges in your pathway and then he's swooping in to help you make the right decisions. Stay on that path.

These tests will potentially break us. Don't let it. Don't let these tests break you. When you're in these moments, raise your eyes, raise your voice, and say, the Lord will provide. So maybe, may these tests advance you to the summit of the mountain, the place of faith, until you finally reach that relationship and that moment with God Almighty.

We'll conclude services and then we'll have the Bible study shortly to follow. Thank you, Mr. Levitter, for that powerful message. If you'd all please take your hymnals and rise one last time. We'll end services before the Bible study.