Okay. What do you think of when you hear the word testify? Like some of us, it's like legal, right? Tell the truth. Whole truth, not but the truth, right? So it is that some of you come from church traditions where it's like, oh, I know what it means to testify. Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give you a witness of what God has done. Anybody know that one? Yeah. Some of you do. Anybody nervous now? Yeah. Some of you are. Listen, Psalm 66 says this, I love these words. Uh, it says, come and hear all you who fear God. Now, that fear business just means those of you who will treat God with reverence, it doesn't mean I'm afraid of God, but come on, y'all. And then this, let me tell you what he has done for me. That person's about to testify. They're about to give a witness. We're, I'm gonna invite you now to testify and to give a witness. And no, it doesn't mean it's open mic night, don't get, you know, it's, it's okay, but we'll do it in sort of a 21st century way with your, uh, with your phones. Go ahead and get your phones out now. And this is gonna be on the app. Those of you who have the app, those of you who are, uh, joining us online, those of you at, at each of our sites, lemme just say hello to each of you at Grants Trail, Fenton, mid Rivers, those of you in overflow here at Chesterfield. But the app is the easiest way for you to connect. You get the app, you can do all of that here. It is just in one sense, you'll help us with the end of the service. Like one phrase, how has God come through for you? Not, uh, merely, yeah, you know, God's good. God loves me. Those are all great testimonies. I wanna hear specifically how, when, like when did God come through for you? So y'all going ahead and tell us that, and you'll have all service to kind of load that up for us. And, and, and that'll help us at the end. Uh, we're gonna continue this exploration, uh, of the great mountains that we see in scripture. But more importantly, we're gonna continue to seek out this God who meets us on those mountains. So let me pray for us and we'll get started. Okay? God, I know today that many of us have already sensed and felt you and your presence, and you've just reminded us that you have us, and that you're leading us, Lord, and we're grateful for that. There are others here, not so sure. They're trying to figure you out. They're trying to figure us out. They're not even sure what to do with your word, with these stories that we keep encountering. Lord, I pray that in your, in your wisdom, in your love, in your mercy. Would you, would you help each of us? Now, you and I both know the story that we will encounter in a few minutes, and I have confessed to you how difficult it is, Lord, would you please help us, help us to hear your voice today for your glory? We pray this now in Jesus name. Amen. Okay. Y'all know when you're watching like something on Netflix or whatever your streaming platform is, and it's a series and you're just trying to keep up with the series, and almost always at the beginning of it, there is this recap. Do you know? And it just kind of reminds you of what happened in the previous episode. And then there's that little, that little box usually down on the right hand corner that says, skip recap. Remember that? And you're like, I got it. I got it, I got it. And you hit that and you just get to go forward. We don't have that today. Here's the recap. Okay? So sorry, but it's just for all of us. We started this series last week in kind of a surprising way because we went all the way to the end of our Bible. We went to Revelation chapter 21, and we saw that John, in this moment, this, this vision of the future was taken to a high mountain. There it is. And he was shown the end of the story. And this is when evil is contained and there will be no more death. It's right in that neighborhood of scripture where Jesus wipes away all tears. It's really powerful stuff. But right there we see these words. God will dwell with his people. He will dwell in their midst, and they will be his God. They will be his people, and he will be their God. I mean, it's just a promise. That was the plan. He'll be God, they'll be his people, and he'll dwell in their midst. That was a plan all along. And then we rewound the tape all the way to the beginning of the story in Genesis. And in Genesis, what we found was, was some, some very similar things. Now, I, I will tell you, one of the things that we noticed when we began to open this up was we saw that there was, there was something else here that, uh, that I, I think we should probably talk about for just a second. Um, there is, in the ancient imagination, this idea, this fascination with mountains. And so you can see it in a whole bunch of things from the, just, we talked about this, and there's just all sorts of cultures that begin to just look to mountains. And one of the things that we said there that, that we noticed was that, uh, these mountains began to represent no matter where you were, whatever civilization, it was kind of like, it was the place where heaven and earth seemed to meet. It was just like when you got to the mountains. That's, that's where you met the divine. Now, there's all sorts of stuff that was going on with that and, and we're not gonna really get into it too much. But the question was this, why is that something that ache that is there across all civilizations that maybe, maybe we meet, we wanna be close to God. Now, we saw in the scriptures that God created all of this, and he, we think the writer Moses, we think he was telling us that, that, that God created all of this and he created this world and it's fine tuned for life. But on this earth, God created a place like a specific garden, a sort of sanctuary. It's called Eden. It means delight. It's this garden of delight where everything was flourishing. It's not the whole earth, it's this garden. And he wanted humanity to dwell and to enjoy this garden. But what we also begin to see is that God is dwelling in their midst with them. This was the plan all along God's with them in the garden. Now, he didn't create the garden 'cause he needed a place to crash. He didn't create the garden out of loneliness or out of selfishness. God created the garden out of love. Remember, it's all about relationship. God says, I want to enjoy you. I want you to enjoy me. Now, there were some scholars who began to look at some other hints in scripture and some other things, and began to reason and do reason that this first Eden, this, this garden that really was in existence just might have been on a mountain. Now, there were hints and clues that we saw that had waters of where some of these rivers that were mentioned, we went through all of that. But it does, I'm, I'm not even gonna be dogmatic about that. I don't know if that's where Eden was. It doesn't matter. It makes sense to me that this place where heaven and earth meet this place where, where, where, where, where God dwelled with his people might have been on a mountain. Maybe that's why all throughout history people are aching to get back on that mountain. You see, the plan was that they were going to, to move into, into the garden and take care of it and, and expand it as they multiplied. And it wasn't, it was gonna be to the ends of the earth. Like you take all of this now and expand Eden all the way out to the ends of the earth, and you be my image bearers and you reflect my glory and we'll do this together. And that's the plan. That was what men and women were supposed to do, except they didn't our first parents. And when I say our first parents, I said last week, I do believe that, uh, that in a historical Adam and Eve, I do, I think there are many ways that you can get to that. The kicker is like the non-negotiable is who created all of this. And it's God the transcendent, eternal God created all of this. That means that you are not an accident. That means that God is up to something. But they rebelled against God. They said, no, I want to determine what's right and wrong. It'll be me. I'll be the boss of me. And they were kicked out of the garden. They were kicked off of the mountain, so to speak, and we've been aching ever since to get back. And if that was the end of the story, that would've been pretty depressing last week. But even in his judgment, even in that moment, if you were with us, God spoke a, a, a word of hope. God said, there will come a day when one is born of a woman who will crush the head of evil, who will deal with this serpent that poisoned the story. And that's how we left things. And it was hope, right? It was a good way to end things. And you almost wish that at that point that we could say, and they lived happily ever after. Except that's not what we see in those early chapters. You see the poison that ruined the story in Genesis three, it keeps seeping into early history. Now when every time I say early history, people start going, okay, well, I just wanna know, when did all of this happen? I don't know. We don't have enough details. What I will tell you is just about every scholar sees a break between, between Genesis one through 11 and Genesis 12 and beyond. Genesis 12 and beyond. It's a narrative. And things kind of just settle into a story the way we normally think of things. Genesis one through 11, not so much, it's just, it's just so, so different the way it's written. But we don't know what had happened. We just don't know what had happened. I mean, you heard me use a term last week. I I called it, uh, the undateable past. 'cause we just don't know. Now, there were people, there have been people who kind of tried to look at all of the details and see if they can, like, like one guy did this and tried to say, I know when it all began, usher did that, not that usher. We ain't good. Good, but we still good. Nobody. No, no. Okay. Not that usher. Not that usher. Bishop James Usher, he was an Irish monk, like late 15 hundreds, early 16 hundreds. He does all of this stuff and tries to put it all together. And he says, I, I, I know, I know when it all started, I know when the universe started. It started on October 23rd, 4,004 bc We don't know that. Okay? So don't, don't worry about that. And I'm not gonna goof on him. I think he was trying to do the right thing. I think he was trying to put it together. He was just working. He didn't have enough details. We don't know when this happened. If you look at these first 11 chapters, they are so different. The word that I would probably use to describe him as much as anything is big. They're just big, big stories, big themes, big failures, big interventions by God, like, I don't know, Noah and the flood, maybe we should talk about that in the spring. But God keeps trying to get this story back on track. And people keep making these big, big failures. By the time you get to chapter 12, everything narrows down. Like if you think of it as a movie, it's a wide angle shot. And then everything comes in tight on one story, on one family, and you settle in on the story. But if I had to sum up this, it's big. And the sin just keeps creeping into everything. Uh, at the end of chapter 11, the last big story is this like odd, weird, ridiculous story of, of, of, of, of people thinking, well, wait, wait, wait, wait. We can close the gap. Let's build a tower. Let's build a mountain that can reach to heaven. We'll be the gods. It sounds so ridiculous, but yet it also sounds a little bit familiar to me. God says That's it. And he scatters people. And that's kind of how those first 11 chapters end. But the question you ought to be asking yourself is, well, what about the plan? What about the promise? God said he was gonna, like, there would be one who was born and he's gonna put things back in order. And there there's gonna be like the gap is gonna close between heaven and earth. What, what, what, what did God do in this ugly, violent, ugly mess of a world? What did God do? What's he gonna do? Well, lemme tell you what he's not gonna do. He's not gonna give up. That's right. Anybody willing to testify to that? God will not give up. This story is now gonna zoom in. The pace is going to slow down and God is going to now take this story and turn it. There's a big course correction that's about to happen, and it changes everything. This is a moment. Listen up, y'all. God is about to speak to Abraham. Genesis, chapter 12 verse one. Then the Lord said to Abraham, okay, so now we probably ought to talk about that for a second. Uh, later, God changes his name to Abraham. I'm just gonna call him Abraham throughout. Okay? Uh, Abraham meant father. Abraham means father of many. I heard one pastor say, Abraham means daddy. Abraham means big daddy. So and so. And, and in the story, it'll kind of all make sense to you, okay? But what he says here, the Lord says, now leave your country, your people, and your father's household and go to the land. I will show you some background. Abraham and Sarah, his wife, grow up in a pagan culture. It's the Sumerian civilization, one of the oldest civilizations. We know where he came from. They were known for worshiping the moon. God, pagan scriptures tell us that his father worshiped these so-called gods. You see, whatever else is going on. Abraham doesn't really have a background with the one true God. Like he, he just doesn't. I mean, it's quite possible that he and Sarah worshiped these gods. So you know what happens next? Grace. Grace, he didn't deserve a lick of it. And God breaks in and says, Hey, hey, you gotta get out of there in the Hebrew. It's really forceful. I love the King James, the old translation. It says, get the out. You gotta get out of there and you need to trust me and I'll show you where to go. You know what that means? That means Abraham knows what it's like to start a spiritual journey. He didn't have a Bible, he didn't have a family history. He didn't know anything. But God in his winsome powerful way said, just take the next step. I'm just asking you to take that step. And then I'll show you the one after that and the one after that. And he begins a spiritual journey. And the next words that he gives to him are the words that we believe really just turns the story. This is so huge. It's so monumental what he says here. See, if you don't notice a word that keeps popping up, I will make you into a great nation. And I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you. And whoever curses you, I will curse. And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Do y'all pick up on the word bless, bless, bless. God is going to bless not just Abraham, but all of history now through his subsequent family tree. Something's gonna start here. And really there's a hint of something you see, I'm gonna bless you. But what's gonna happen someday through the children of Israel, there will be one who is born, who will crush the head of evil. This is a hint of what is to come. God is go. He's not just choosing these Israelites, he's choosing the world. I'm gonna bless everybody. And Abraham, it starts right now. This whole story is chockfull of, uh, in pop culture. We would call 'em Easter eggs, like little things that you look at and go, oh wow. So that connects you, you guys familiar with Easter eggs? I mean, it's just those kinds of things. Uh, you Star Wars fans, uh, sorry, Phantom Menace, do you? Okay. So, but that movie, like, there's the whole scene of the Galactic Senate and there's all of these different aliens that are there, and then there's like one, you have to kind of look at it real quickly and it zooms in and in one of those little pods or like, they all look like ets, you know, like phone home, that et they're all there. It's just kind of a funny little thing and go, oh, there's ETS family. They're a part of it. It's just these little Easter eggs that are there you ever typed, uh, do a barrel roll on Google. Go home and do that. Just do a barrel roll on Google and watch the screen. Just do a barrel roll. It'll do it. These are little Easter eggs that are just out there, kind of weird. Some of them call back to something that happened. Some of them are just there to kind of have fun with when you see them. Some of them are hints of what is to come. Why don't you guys help each other? Now I'm gonna give you three different Easter eggs. You lean over and tell the person next to you what the Easter egg is and kind of what it represents. Okay? So let's see how many of these you get. We're just gonna do it real quickly. Here's the first one. Go ahead and lean over and help each other. We're telling you what it is. It's a screenshot from Iron Man. You see it? Alright, Let's just show it to you here, circle it up. There it is. You see that three years before he shows up in the movie franchise, that's Captain America's Shield. Little hint of what's to come. Here's the next one. This is from Incredibles two. That's your hint. Incredibles two was made by Pixar. That's your next hint, going ahead and help each other. Anybody got this? 1995. The first movie was Toy Story. In Toy Story, there was a planet, uh, a pizza planet car that was there ever since. Almost in every movie in Pixar, that car shows up. They just kind of tuck it in. It's just a little Easter egg. Alright, here's one that some of you will definitely be able to help your friends with. Go ahead, explain this TikTok shot. Anybody here heard of? I believe her name is Taylor Swift. Somebody. How many of you get this one? Anybody here understand what this one was? It was an Easter egg that she put out on her TikTok account 10 months before it happened. That's the Easter egg. It was a hint that her next album, her 12th album, would drop on Aug in August of 12 or her on August 12th, I think it was at 12:12 AM So what are these? These are kind of just goofy little Easter eggs. So am I saying to you that in the scriptures, that God just puts little Easter eggs into, oh, isn't that neat? I just found that out. No. What I want you to see now is that these represent a thread that goes through the whole story. The sovereign God had this figured out. He's not surprised. He's not intimidated. And so all throughout the story, we're gonna see these little, you could call 'em Easter eggs. You could call 'em hyperlinks, where there's just a thing. Y'all know what a hyperlink is when you're reading something on the internet and it's like, oh, I wonder what that is. And it's kind of underlined, or it's highlighted, and then you click on it and it clicks through and you're like, oh. So that's what it means. This whole story is full of these moments that show us that God is in charge. The sovereign God knows where this is going. Lemme give you just one example. We just read one here. So what you'll see in verse three there, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed. Now, click on that. Click all the way through on that. And it might take you to someplace like, uh, revelation seven, which tells you at the end of the story, the people of God will be comprised of folks from every tribe, tongue, and nation. So real early in the story, God is saying, I know where this is going. It's going, bless everybody. So Abraham, 75 years old, follows him, takes the step, God leads him. He starts learning. He learns about God. Uh, God shows him the land and says, this land's gonna be yours. It's all for you and your descendants. It's what we call the promise land. It's all there. He begins to worship God. Now remember, he's starting probably from way back. He doesn't know a lot. He starts building altars to worship God. With that implied is sacrifice. Sometimes these sacrifices, these altars take place on mountains. I could show you one in, in Genesis 12, anybody remember the word for mountain or high place in Hebrew? Ha. Yes. Thank you. Ha. So this is happening, but what I want you to hear now is Abraham is not the guy that you know and think of as a hero of the faith at the beginning of the story. This guy's a work in progress. Remember, he's just starting from scratch. He doesn't get it. I mean, he does some things amazing. Like he takes that first step, he trusts, he surrenders, but then there are other times not so much. There are other times that that, that he, he makes huge mistakes and he gets way off track. He lies when he's in a jam. He's a bit of a coward. He does some things like, uh, like some of the mistakes he makes with his wife. It's a miracle she's still talking to him. And then they both really have a problem with waiting. So God makes this promise to an old man, but they don't have any kids yet. God decrees this. It's like a a, we call it a covenant. And when God speaks, man, I'm telling you what it'll happen. He renames him Abraham before they have any kids. You're gonna be the father of many. Yeah, but God, you promised that nothing's happening at one point. We don't even have time to go into the heartache of this story we have before. But, but at one point, Sarah and, and Abraham take things into their own hands to try to force the timing of the plan. She takes her handmaiden and brings her into Abe's tent. Abraham, this is Hagar. She works for me. Let's speed this plan up. One, don't the two of you going ahead and make a baby and we'll just push this plan forward. Horrible idea. I mean, just me saying it. You're like, well, that's not gonna end well. And it didn't, it unleashed like generational conflicts that we're still dealing with today. God's plan all along was, look to me, trust me, even if you have to wait, I got this. I got the whole thing planned out. Come to me. So it's a bit of a stop start with him. This a Abraham who was a shepherd, a warrior, a uh, a patient uncle, a a uh, a diplomat, a judge. And now, finally, finally, after all the stops and starts in the waiting, he's gonna be the father of the promised one. Now we're in Genesis 21, and what we read here is that the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, I promised you this would happen. And the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age. Abe is now a hundred years old, but by golly, they got the promised son, the one that they had been longing for. And Sarah, they name him, uh, after a near Eastern word for laughter. They name him Isaac. I love this. She says here, she explains it. Next. She said, Sarah said, God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me. Um, I'm pretty sure that happened, right? I mean, glory, glory. Hallelujah. Sarah, uh, how old are you now, girl? I mean, that's, I mean, this was a big thing, but life is good for them. They finally get the promised son. He's got a huge, uh, piece of real estate. Uh, uh, like, like, like he's, they're, they're happy. He just negotiated a piece with the king in that region. Everything is going well. He would testify. God is good. Woo. He came through for us. What a cool thing. And then we turn the page to chapter 22. It's the difficult story that I warned you was coming. You see what we read next at the beginning of chapter 22, sometime later. Remember that phrase by the way? Sometime later, God tested Abraham. He said to him, Abraham, here I am. He replied in the Hebrew, this is a really important phrase, Hani. It means God. Like, look at me. I'm here. I'm ready. Behold, I'm ready. Then God said, take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Mariah. I sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain. I will show you early the next morning, Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants at his son Isaac, when he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering he set out for the place God had told him about. Now there's more to the story and we'll get to that. But one of the things we keep saying around here is, it is okay when you see the text to begin to pull it apart and to come to God and say, wait, I don't understand this part. Let's do that with each other. Now, would you just turn to each other and uh, and and those of you at the sites your pastors are gonna walk through and they're gonna tell you to, to give them some questions that you have. What questions do you have about this story? What, what bothers you about this story? What do we need to talk about here in just a minute? So you guys going ahead and talk to each other, pastors, ping me with some of those questions that you have at the sites. Let's just talk to each other for just a minute if we could. Okay? Okay. Alright. Lemme just tell you some of the things that are coming in from, uh, ooh, they keep going here. Uh, isn't there a better way to taste test him? Uh, why was Abraham so willing? Somebody in Fenton said, yeah, uh, it seems unfair isn't sacrificed contrary to God's character. It seems harsh and cruel. Um, Fenton, why would God make Abraham wait so long and then ask him to kill his son? Mid rivers? What is a burnt offering sacrifice of a child? Hard to comprehend. Okay, so I think they're covering a lot here. Let's see if we can get to that. Anybody else have anything here? I wanna just hear some of the questions and then we'll start answering them. Is there anything else that we need to cover? Is that pretty good? Why the sacrifice? Why sacrifice? What's up with sacrifice? Yeah. Okay. Did I know know that this was happening? Or say it one more time? Where are you? Did Isaac know that this was happening? Did Isaac know that this was happening? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay, we'll come back to that. I think there's a, a clue here in the story that that helps us with that a little bit. Uh, yes. Sarah know. Did Sarah know? Yeah, moms keep asking. Now. What did Sarah have to say with us? Yeah. Okay. Well, let's see if we can cover some of these now because you guys are all over it. Uh, first of all, um, let's see. In what order do we do these things? Let's talk about sacrifices and burn offering. Somebody at Mid Rivers was saying, what is a burn offering? These are things that you, that you see throughout. Now we're, before God gives all the law to people in Leviticus, but a burn offering in a general way was a kind of atonement offering. You were bringing this offering and it is an atonement. God, would you forgive me? That's, that's the basics of it. But you still get to this idea of why sacrifice. If you look throughout history, and again, it's interesting to see these echoes throughout history, uh, from India to the Americas, to the Canaanite culture around this story. Sacrifice keeps coming up. It's a thing that happens. And in most cases, it's like there's this sense of, you know, there's a gap between me and, and God. There's a gap between me and the creator. And sacrifice is somehow that's gonna close the gap. I mean, that's what you see. Now here's what's different about biblical sacrifice. Just about every other one of these cultures that you see, sacrifice was a way to kind of manipulate the gods. It was a way to sort of appease them and go, look, now we got you where we want you. That's not what's going on here. If you get to, uh, one Samuel 15, we read in the Bible that God says, obedience is far better than sacrifice. I'm more interested in your heart. These things, they're not going to atone for you. Ultimately, these rituals, that's not what closes the gap. It's your heart. Do you trust me? Do you trust what I'm saying about me, about my love for you and about this thing called sin? You see, God keeps trying to teach a primitive people. I say primitive people, like we've gotten much better. But God's trying to teach a primitive people that his holiness can't look away from sin. And something's gonna have to, something's gonna have to make things right. There's gonna be a justice of some sort here. It's the only thing that brings meaning to life. And so as he's teaching people, part of what he's saying is, I want, I want it to, I want it to cost you something. So take a ram, a bowl, a lamb, a goat, take something, and you're now going to, you're, you're gonna sacrifice this, this, this animal. To me, it, it sounds so brutal, so difficult, but I need it to cost you something because I need you to know that I think sin is a big deal. And then the whole thing starts to point to what it's gonna cost him. You see, for us to forgive anybody of anything, it costs us something. You're, you're, you're absorbing that hurt. God's going to one day absorb this pain. God's going to deal with this, but it will ultimately cost him everything. Now, let's keep going a little bit, because one of the things was about child, what this seems, this is like child sacrifice. Isn't that against his character? Absolutely. God will not allow this to happen. We're gonna see this. God is not going to allow this to happen. In fact, that whole child sacrifice thing, it's why years later in this particular area, he says to this one civilization, you guys have been offering up your children to the idol molech. And it's done on this, this twisted civilization. I've given you enough time. And this thing is stopping like that civilization done. So God takes this real seriously. I think part of what's going on here is that God is trying to show us that there is no one human that could ever be a sacrifice. There's no one who is strong enough pure enough to, to, to, to, to, to take on all of the pain, all of the suffering, all of the evil, all of the sin upon himself. There's no mere human who could do that. There's a little hint of what's to come, but I don't think he was the child that you are thinking he was. Like a lot of times you'll see paintings or you'll hear these things and go, how on earth could he take a sweet little 7-year-old boy and do that? I don't think that's what the text is showing us. You see, for one thing, the word that gets used there to describe, uh, son or child, it really can be a young man. I can show you places in scripture where it even refers like to a soldier. Most scholars say that Isaac was at the least in his late teens, maybe twenties, Jewish tradition has him in his mid thirties when this happens. You see, we're gonna see that he's actually more of an adult as he goes through this, which means, to answer your question, yes, I think Isaac knew was go what was going on. And I believe Isaac in his own heartbreaking way, participates in this even if he doesn't understand it either. And that's a test. It's a test. What's a test? A test is something. It reveals something, it brings something to the surface so that you can see it. Let's come back to that in just a minute. But I do believe it's revealing some things. Abraham like he follows him, he obeys it says the next morning to me, I don't wanna be too, I don't wanna read too much into it, but I gotta think Sarah now knows what's going on. 'cause this conversation happens. And then the next morning, by the way, we don't even know what that night went like for Abraham. Do we? I can't even imagine. But it's dawn now. And if you read the narrative, uh, he's gonna take two servants with him and they're gonna go make this three day journey. But before they do that, they gotta prepare the wood for the, for the burn offering. He's splitting the wood is really what it means. He tore, and by the way, wood in the Hebrew, it's the word eights. It's the word we use in the Hebrew, it's tree. You see it in the Genesis account and all these trees, its, it's the same word, the tree of the knowledge of good evil. Same word. It's em, the tree of life, same word. So these guys are, are, are, are like splitting, tearing like trees and preparing for this offering. They're packing things up. It's a three day journey. Eventually they, Abraham sees the mountain that God had pointed out at some point. He tells the two servants, you guys stay here. He and Isaac keep going forward. When you get to the mountain, you read, uh, I think it's in verse six. You read that Abraham puts the wood onto Isaac and Isaac carries it up the mountain. That's why we think this is not a little 7-year-old boy. This is a young man. At least he's the one. He's the one. Y'all listen to me. Now. The father places the burden of that torn and split tree on the sun, and he's the one that's gonna walk up the mountain. You seeing something here? Abraham an old man. I mean, he could barely make it up the mountain. He takes the knife and the fire, the fire, the way the Bedouins would do it, even to this day is you've got an ember and you wrap it in husk and that's how you keep it so that you can start a fire. They get there, they start going up the mountain. At some point, Isaac asks the question, he's been wanting to ask for three days. Hey dad, where's the lamb for the offering? Sort of cryptically. But very honestly, Abraham says, the Lord will provide son. Now we're to this moment and there's just, we don't know. I, we don't know. But what is described next is that Abraham binds Isaac. Now, I want you to just imagine a couple of things here. He's old enough, he could have left, Isaac could have left, he could have escaped his dad, but he stands there on the mountain for the sacrifice. I don't know if they said anything to each other. It's in, in Hebrew. It's uh, the, the Jewish people will call this Ada Iza. It's the binding of Isaac. I don't know if they're talking, but this is really intimate. It's face-to-face. Is he saying father? Is there any other way? I don't know. Maybe the whole thing took place in silence. Maybe Abraham could barely make eye contact. I don't know. But now he lays him on the altar. He raises his, his his knife. And I don't wanna be graphic here, but I gotta think he's thinking, God, please let this be over with quickly. The last thing a father wants to do is to watch his son die a slow agonizing death on that mountain. He raises the knife. Abraham. Abraham, yes, Hani. I'm here. I'm here. Do you see me? That's really built into the word there. See me, God. Behold, I'm here. I'm ready. Now what? Don't lay a hand on that son of yours. Don't touch that young man. I know that you trust me. Don't just don't. He looks up. He sees a ram caught in the thicket. They offer the ram instead. Remember, it's the heart. It's not the sacrifice. It's not a ritual. It's the heart of, of the, of the worshiper. And so this now happens and Abraham gives us these words. In fact, I want us to, I wanna explain what you see here. Uh, Abraham called the place the Lord will provide in the Hebrew ywe y. Now we kind of take an English crack at that and we say it a little bit differently than the Hebrew. We say Jehovah jireh. That's where that comes from. Yah, the Lord will provide. And to this day, it is said on the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided. But y'all listen to me. Now, this test still seems gamey and cruel and manipulative to some of you. And I cannot give you the full explanation. We are in the mystery. I will tell you that God does test him, that he does bring this character to the surface. God knew that he would, God knew what he was gonna do and he knew what Abraham was gonna do. But now Abraham knows that his faith is that deep. And this story begins to teach us in different ways. I will also tell you that when you get this is, this is in the New Testament. Now the book of Hebrews says, uh, that Abraham reasoned that God, that that God could even raise the dead. And so in a manner of speaking, he did raise Isaac back from the dead. The reasoning here is Abraham's going into this thing and saying, you know what God can, God can do, God can resurrect, if he gave me this boy once, he could give him to me again. I don't know. I do know that when they were there at before they got to the mountain, and he did, and he says to the servants, just, just stay here. I'm gonna go back. He says, in the language there, we'll both come back down the mountain. I don't know. I don't know. What I know is in that moment of surrender, God showed up in that moment of, ah, I trust you. God came through. God sees it through. That's actually one of the ways that you can translate the Hebrew there. God sees it through. What I do know is to you today on your dark and windy mountain. When you are going through something I believe God will provide, I believe God will see it through for you. And some of you at this moment are going, who do you think you are? You don't know my story. You don't know what's going on in my life. My friend died, she divorced me. Anyway, the test came back positive. My kid's messed up so bad and he's so far away from God. He won't even talk to me. I'm the one who's dealing with this raging anxiety. I'm the one nobody will speak to at school. Who do you think you are? Listen, it's not me. I'm not telling you that, that that, that we're immune from living in this broken world. I'm just telling you that in this broken world, God shows up and God provides, and we have to keep reminding ourselves of that again and again and again because the Lord is good for it. The Lord has done this. Now let me just take you a little bit further here and then we're gonna worship. Here it is. Listen to me. We have to remind ourselves of these things. Yes. One of the ways we do it is scripture. Uh, like, like if, if I were to really just kind of go down this road, uh, it, it's, it's uh, sometimes we, we tell ourselves, sometimes we tell each other these great things. So we do it in worship. Sometimes we whisper, sometimes we sing through tears. Sometimes we have to shout because the storm is so loud. But Paul gives us a great line here. And I think most of you have heard, at least this first part, if God is for us, who can be against us, right? Do you know what his argument is here? If God could be for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son. He who took this horrible story all the way to completion. This He, he gave him up for us all. Will He not Also along with him, meaning Jesus graciously give us all things. Do you know what this is doing? This is reaching back to the story of Mariah. Paul is saying, God is for you. I mean, if he's for you, who could be against you? How do I know that? 'cause he took the story of Mariah all the way to its completion. God in his mercy gives up his son and the son obediently says, yes, father, I'll do that. He provides a blameless substitute. When, when Abraham said on the mountain of the Lord, he will provide, it's a little bit of a prophecy. He's saying, the Lord will one day provide, there is a blameless substitute who is good enough, who is pure enough, who is powerful enough, and he will take it all upon himself and every sacrifice throughout the Old Testament points to the day when God says, I'm gonna pay the price, we're going to absorb the cost. And that'll be the end of it. Yes, yes. By the way, do you know where Mariah is? Centuries later. It is on the exact spot where the temple is built. If you've ever been to Jerusalem and you've ever stood at the Western wall, you are looking up at Mariah. This is the place where sacrifice after sacrifice happened for centuries. And it was all pointing to the day when there was one who would make the sacrifice. I'm telling y'all, we're not far from it. When we're a Mariah, we are not far from the place where my savior Jesus walks outside the city walls of Jerusalem with a tree on his shoulder and pays the price for all of us. This isn't an Easter egg. This is the story of Easter. Quick check here. Anybody seen God bring something back to life? Maybe it's a marriage, maybe it's a career. Maybe it's your health. Maybe it's a friendship. I'm telling you, you don't get to the power of the resurrection unless the one true lamb of God, the perfect son of God dies on the cross, dies on that wretched tree for us. That's how I'm forgiven. This is is where we go. And I I'm just saying from here on out, we need to, yeah, y'all come on out, singers come on out. Let's, let's remind each other of this. Is anybody here at the end like overwhelmed with God's love for them? Like we still have questions. If that's you today, let's talk. But is there anybody else here who in just a second's gonna be willing to, I don't know, testify? And I'm not talking about like a really quiet sort of mm-hmm. You know, I'm with you. I'm talking, is there anybody here who, because of what God did for you, because God came through for you, is there anybody here who will be willing to make that statement in a bold and visible way? Now, let me just get us started here. Uh, I I want to see if we could, Randall, uh, I wanna see some of the samplings of what you all sent in earlier. Ooh, God saved my brother from dying during a leukemia battle when the doctors said there was no hope. While my home burned from a fire one Sunday morning, gob kept my kids, my husband and I safe with him at church. He walked with us through our son's heart surgery and he gave us doctors who saved his life. Two months ago. At 21 years old, Jesus saved me from a life of addiction, healed my mind. And 25 plus years later, he continues to show himself as faithful to me. And I don't think he's done. God solved a medical complication and stopped an emergency surgery on my wife and our two unborn twins. That the doctors themselves called a miracle. I'm telling you, we could do this together. Now, here's how we're gonna do this, guys. I, I don't, I don't even like some of you're like, oh man, I didn't use the app. I didn't get it. We're gonna flood you with stories in just a second, but I want to give each of you at our sights a moment now to still say, to still give witness to what God has done for you. Okay? So let's just start with this. Uh, anybody else ever seen God Like sustain a marriage through tough times and storms and you don't just love each other, you're flourishing? Anybody else? Would you stand with me? If you are, let's just don't clap. Would you stand with me? Anybody here seen a healing in your family? Yes. Anybody here seen God answer a prayer about a loved one? Anybody here seen God? Like protect them? Give them a job. Bless them. Anybody here still undone by your baptism a few months ago? Is there anybody here who is still undone that God has forgiven them? Listen to me. Lastly, is there anyone here who is like, others have said to me, I can't stand because I'm on the mountain and it hasn't come through yet. Is there anybody here who is willing even in the storm on that dark and windy mountain to say, God, I'm willing to say I'm ready. Will you please come through? If you are, then I'm gonna ask you to stand with us because what we're gonna do now is what we set up front. Let's testify to this God who I absolutely believe will come through for you. Tell the truth if he's good when you, we have a story, church of how if God, hallelujah. Glory Hall. Hall. Hall, hallelujah. Hall, If you have questions and you would like to talk to us, come find us. If you would like prayer right now for God to come through, come find us. We are so glad you're on this journey with us. Let's keep doing this together. Amen.