Thank you, Suncoast singers, for that blessing. And of course, it is God’s will to make us free. That’s the main thing. And he will set us free. And I want to praise the Lord this morning for many things.
Before I start this message, I’ll just say that yesterday I had somebody text me. You know, we’re in the midst of a journey and the journey is to set a lot of people free from their physical maladies, free from their spiritual diseases and their relational diseases. This is our goal. And over the last couple of weeks, we’ve had some pretty amazing things going on here. I’ve seen God working miracles and it’s been a real blessing to me.
And yesterday as I was driving home, I saw that I had a text that had come a few hours earlier and somebody had pledged $25,000 towards our project. Here where we’re getting ready to open the medical clinic and bless people. And actually, just as we were praying, you don’t see me, but I’m kneeling down in the hallway praying there as Pastor Page was praying, I heard my phone ding and I went back and I checked it. And I’m not going to read you the whole text, but this is the text I just saw. Said hello, Pastor Kelly.
And then they give their name when they said, I pledge $100,000 to your piece of land. May God be with you and your congregation. You’ve been a beacon of light and I’ll coordinate with you after Sabbath when you have time. Does anybody want to say amen? Now, I’ll tell you, we came into the weekend needing to raise about 150 and my guess is we’ll go out of the weekend with surplus.
Now, if God’s impressed you to give, I encourage you to follow his impressions because there’s more to do than we’re doing when we start. But I want to say praise God. And for the person who just texted me, if you happen to be watching online right now, I don’t know what the status is, but I want to praise the Lord for how He moves on people’s hearts. And if ever I’ve been in a project before where I know the Lord is leading, I know he is in this one. And we’re going to need that encouragement because we’re going to run into some challenges.
But I will say this where God guides, He provides. And I’m watching it happen. And I can’t tell you my faith is growing and it’s supposed to keep growing, and so is yours. So let’s everybody get in. Again, I want to encourage everybody do something.
This is God’s work. His signature is all over it. I can’t do $100,000, but praise the Lord for this individual who can and that they got a hold of us. But I can do something. Let’s all do it together and it’ll be our project as it’s God’s project.
Let’s pray. Lord, our lives are yours and we want to praise Your name for Your goodness to us. And I want to praise your name, Lord for your provision and so, Lord, now bless us in the reading of the Word, in the preaching of the Word. Give us understanding and willingness to obey and to let you be Lord of all things so that you can be Deliverer of our lives. And now, Lord, guide me. Set a watch before my lips, a guard before the door of my mouth, and make me as one of Your servants whose lips have been touched with a coal from off the altar. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.
I want to start this morning by praising the Lord for what he’s done in my life. As a young man, I was in a home that had many good things about it, but it did not have Jesus. And because of that, it had many challenges. I’m so thankful for my mother and my father, who’s now deceased. My mother is still with us, and I’m so thankful for that, celebrating Thanksgiving with her. But I want to tell you, when I met Jesus, everything changed. Now, the thing about me meeting Jesus that was different than some is that I didn’t grow up knowing Jesus.
Now, if you grew up knowing Jesus or thinking you knew Jesus, you might not know Him like He wants to know you and like the way he wants to set you free. I knew there were challenges all around me. And I’m so thankful to the Christian teachers that introduced me to God and how to have a living relationship with Him. Because I’m here to tell you today, there’s no better place to hide from God than in sort of knowing Him or going to church, but not really knowing Him. And there’s nothing as liberating as knowing the God who knows everything about you and can set you free.
Free from all the inherited tendencies, free from all the family habits, some not good, free from your proclivities and tendencies to evil. And as I read the Bible as a teenager all the way through, and I want to encourage everybody to read it all the way through, we’re coming up to the end of the year. We’re going to start a new Bible reading plan. I want to encourage you, read the Bible all the way through. And as I was reading it through, they taught me how to talk to God.
And as I talked to God, I began a journey of personal emancipation from my own guilt, from my own tendencies. And He showed me how to be the person he wanted me to be. He led me on in my life through my schooling. He introduced me to my wife. There were ups and downs along the way.
But I want to tell you, it was 40 years ago this November that I met Collen and the joy of having Christ in a marriage, the love the kindness, the tenderness that can be between two people is a piece of heaven on earth. And from that relationship with Jesus and from the beauty of that marital love, there’s so much for her to give in her fourth grade classroom and me to give with my church family and God made and is making a fountain out of a life that could have been a drain.
And I just want to praise the Lord for the beauty of holiness, kindness, gentleness, patience, things against which there is no law. And I want to appeal to you at the beginning of this sermon that I’ve entitled in the Mountain, the Messiah and the Apocalypse. I want to appeal to you at the beginning of this sermon that knowing Jesus will be the scariest journey you’ve ever made because he knows everything about you, your thoughts.
He knows about your motivations. He knows things nobody else will ever know. But if you let Him be Lord of all things, he has the power to cleanse, forgive and free. And so I want to say at the beginning, I’m going to say some difficult things in this sermon and they will be hard for different ones to hear. But I want you to know real religion is a sincere presence before God where nothing’s hidden and there’s an exploration of your personal, emotional, relational intimacy with God.
And on that journey, problems will come out of that because the Prince of Darkness is the Lord of this earth. So when you make the Prince of Light the Lord of your life, there’s going to be some problems. But I’m here to tell you, I’d rather be free on the inside than burdened on the inside and untroubled on the out. So I’m just appealing to everybody at the beginning of this message because some of the things I say this morning are going to be difficult. Sometimes people want to know what’s wrong with the church.
Well, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with the church. Many churches are filled with people who are not born again. And they’re not born again because nobody’s challenged them to face themselves. This is what the law of God does. It challenges you in action and in principle and in motivation.
And when you have weak people in your life, people who won’t stand for principle, when you have people in your life who don’t really love you and rather keep things smooth than actually solve a problem, then you have a problem. And when there’s preachers who won’t preach the truth, which will create sometimes frustration and anger, but also liberty, because this isn’t a game. This is not a speech. This is an encounter where we call this the divine worship hour. We’ve just prayed for the Holy Spirit to be here more than once.
And the amazing thing is I’m talking to several hundred people at once, but only Holy Spirit can apply it to you individually. And so God comes down into moments like this and He communicates. But when you have a church that’s working the wrong way it’s the absence of the spirit working in the people’s lives. Because when God works in your life, you change, you grow, you desire to be like Him.
I love to tell the story that was in the Reader’s Digest at one point in time about two women sitting in the hairstylist and they’re sitting there talking. And of course there’s no place like the barber or the hairstylist to catch up on what’s going on around town. And one lady says to the other, did you hear that Barbara was born again? And the lady both sitting there underneath one of those things. Do they use those things anymore? Do they put those down on, your know, sitting there?
And the one lady says back to her, well then why did she have to come back as herself? So, I want you to think about this. There’s a divine encounter that’s to happen between God and man and we’re to be changed because we have that living encounter. Now I’m going to talk today about three major abrahamic faiths judaism, Islam and Christianity.
And if we could, could we bring those pictures up? I want to thank you to our AV team. I want to talk to you about what’s going on over in Jerusalem just a little bit. This is the Dome of the Rock. It is an amazing building that’s been there for almost 1400 years. The top of it used to be covered in lead, so it wasn’t this beautiful gold.
It is the most recognizable landmark in the city of Jerusalem when you get a picture from any distance away. Now it is on what is called the Temple compound, the Al Aqsa compound. Now, depending on whether you reference it to its Jewish history or its Islamic history, this is the third most sacred site in all of Islam. It is only behind Mecca and Medina. And what makes this site so sacred to the Islamic faith is that Muhammad was transported from Mecca here in one night, as the story is told.
And there are two buildings on this property. There is the Al Aqsa mosque and there is the Dome of the Rock. Now, at the Al Aqsa Mosque, according to the history of the Islamic faith, Jesus, Abraham and Moses all came and participated in ritual prayers with Muhammad. Now then Muhammad proceeded over to where the Dome of the Rock is and you can go into the Dome of the Rock and there is a piece of the rock showing where Muhammad ascended to heaven. Now this is the oldest sacred building in the Islamic faith.
What you need to know is that it was completed in 691 AD. Of course, for hundreds of years, from 70 AD onward, it was somewhat of a vacant space because the temple was destroyed. The Jewish temple was destroyed here in AD 70. There have been two Jewish temples. And right now we are in a moment in time in which many are expecting there’ll be a third Jewish temple.
Now, what makes this mountain so significant is that it is believed to be the place where not only these things are reported to have happened, but also this is this city. Now, we believe Jesus was sacrificed outside the gate, but this is where Abraham brought Isaac to offer him up as a sacrifice. And this makes this place exceptionally significant.
So we have three world religions that look at this spot and they see major moments here where something significant in their faith happened. Now, you have to remember what Jesus said. He said, don’t think that I came to bring peace. I came to bring not peace, but a sword. And I want to tell you today the reason that religion is so powerless, and I’m going to talk about Christianity for a moment is that it’s nominal. And many people walk into churches, but they’ve not knelt down in their own home day by day and prayed. They’ve not opened their Bibles.
They don’t know the living savior and consequentially. We have in place all kinds of religious faiths and experiences where there is great disappointment and trauma to come to the individual because they’ve equated their experience with the group experience. Now take your Bibles and turn to the Gospel of John. John, chapter eight. And I want to look at a very difficult conversation that Jesus has.
John, chapter eight, beginning with verse 31. There are Bibles in the pews. I encourage you to open them up and look at them and not just listen. You’ll learn more and God will speak to you through more than one sense. Verse 31 says, “so Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed in him, if you continue in my word, then you are truly disciples of mine.” Now, make sure you notice these are Jews that believed in Jesus, “and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”
Now, I just want to pause right there, and I want you to know something. The truth still makes people free. If you’re impatient, if you’re unkind, if you’re rude and disrespectful, if you’re selfish, if you’re lazy, these are all binding sins on you.
If you’re addicted, these are besetting sins. But I want you to know something. There’s nothing like being free from all the meanness and the darkness that goes with sin. And you may think you’re free because you’ve shed yourself from the guilt that comes when the Holy Spirit speaks to you. But I’ll tell you what, when you ignore the guilt the Holy Spirit brings over lawless and loveless behavior, you’re not free. Real freedom is in letting the love of Christ flow through you to a lost and broken world, starting in your home. Well, they didn’t like the idea that the truth would make them free. They were already obedient Jews. Verse 33. They answered him, we’re Abraham’s descendants and have never been enslaved to anyone.
How is it that you say you will become free? Now they’re offended, and there’s nothing to stop you from hearing the truth, like being offended. But if you’re humble, God can speak to you. Remember, after David was confronted by Abigail, when David was getting ready to slay all of Nabal’s household because Nabal had insulted David’s servants, abigail confronted David. David would write a psalm, and he would say, let the righteous strike me, and it’ll be a bomb to me.
If you have somebody in your life who will tell you the truth, you have the chance of being free. If everybody around you just gets out of your way, then you’re probably stuck, enslaved in your supposed freedom, which is not freedom at all. The Jews had been enslaved. They had been exiled. They had been taken away from their land.
How could they say this with a straight face to Jesus? That they had never been slaves to anyone? They had been in Egypt for hundreds of years. Verse 34. Jesus answered them, truly, truly I say unto you, everyone who commits sin is the slave of sin. Now, it’s one thing, friends, we saw baptism this morning. It’s one thing to be chased by sin. It’s another thing to let sin reign in your hearts and in your minds to live a carnal life. Jesus has the power to set people free. Verse 35.
The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son does remain forever. So if the Son makes you free, you’ll be free indeed. I know that you are Abraham’s descendants, yet you seek to kill me because my word has no place in you. I speak the things which I have seen with my father.
Therefore, you also do the things which you’ve heard from your father. All right. Conversation’s going downhill. They answered, and they said to him, Abraham’s, our Father. And Jesus said to them, if you’re Abraham’s children, do the deeds of Abraham, but as it is, you’re seeking to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God, this Abraham did not do you’re doing the deeds of your father.
They said to him, we weren’t born of fornication. We only have one God. And Jesus said to them, if God were your Father, you’d love me. For I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I’ve not even come of my own initiative, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I’m saying?
Is it because you cannot hear my word? It’s going to go farther downhill. Verse 44. This is Jesus talking to the church. You are of your father, the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there’s no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks his own nature. Some versions say his native tongue, for he’s a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you don’t believe me. Which one of you convicts me of sin?
If I speak the truth, why do you not believe me? He’s challenging the integrity of their spiritual experience. And today I want to challenge yours. When somebody says something to you and they love you and they’ve told you the truth in love, is your first impulse anger towards them. This is the kind of anger that, given time to be fomented and fertilized by the devil, would lead to the same murderous designs that they had for Jesus.
Why? What was his great sin? He spoke the truth. And by the way, at the end of time, the murderous desires of the masses will be to extinguish from the earth those that speak the truth in love. Verse 47 he who is of God hears the words of God. For this reason, you don’t hear them, because you’re not of God. The Jews answered and said to him, did we not say, rightly, you’re a Samaritan, and you have a demon? You see, the Jews were racist, and they hated the Samaritans. And if you wanted to slam somebody around, just call them a Samaritan.
We use other names. Now, Christians don’t, but the world does. Jesus answered, I don’t have a demon, but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me, but I do not seek my glory. There’s one who seeks and judges. And truly I say unto you, if anyone keeps my word, he’ll never see death. The Jews said to Him, now we know that you have a demon. Abraham died, and the prophets also. And you say, if anyone keeps my word, he’ll never taste of death. Surely you’re not greater than our father Abraham who died. The prophets died too.
Who do you make yourself out to be? And Jesus answered, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my Father who glorifies me, of whom you say, He is our God, and you have not come to know Him. But I know Him. And if I say that I do not know Him, I will be a liar like you.
But I do know Him, and I keep His word. Verse 56 is very important for the sermon. This morning. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. And he saw it, and he was glad. So all the Jews said to him, you’re not yet 50 years old, and you’ve seen Abraham. And Jesus said to them, truly, truly I say unto you, before Abraham was born, I am. And they picked up stones to throw at Him. But Jesus hid Himself and went out into the temple. Now, I’m here to say something today that’s going to be a little difficult.
I want everybody to listen humbly. You came here of your own accord. But I’m going to tell you there’s three major Abrahamic faiths, and I’m going to tell you what the downfall of all three Abrahamic faiths are going to be. There’s Islam, there’s Judaism and there’s Christianity. And I’m here to tell you today that there will be a remnant out of all of these groups of people who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus.
But I want you to know that all three of these Abrahamic faiths will reject truth at some level. As a matter of fact, all three of these Abrahamic faiths will reject the deity of Jesus. And I’m going to explain to you how it’s been done. Islam rejects the deity of Jesus as the son of promise, through whom the saving of the world would come and through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Judaism also rejected the incarnation of Jesus and the cross and the resurrection.
And I’m here to tell you today, before the prophetic experience that describes the last trauma of this earth is done, Christianity will reject Jesus also as the lawgiver and Lord of all things, including the one who wrote the Ten Commandments and is coming to enact the judgment. That is a result of the principles of those ten words. When it’s all said and done, God will have a remnant. He will call people out of Babylon, which is a Bible word for confusion. They will come from all of these faiths and from many others.
But at the end of the day, the one thing that you must know about the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ is that he claims full divinity with the Father. And that’s why they took up stones to stone Him, because when they said, you’re not even 50 and you’ve seen Abraham, when Jesus said, before Abraham was I am, He was using the verbiage of the Old Testament encounter with Moses in Exodus chapter three. And if you read the New Testament, it’s very clear to the Apostolic Church that broke out that they knew that Jesus was the one who showed up in the garden and dealt with the sin of eating and the curse. They knew Jesus was the one that appeared to Abraham. It was that spiritual rock that followed them, providing water.
But this morning, where I want to focus is on the statement in verse 56. Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and he was glad. Now take your Bibles and go back to the book of Genesis, chapter three. Let’s start in the very beginning, genesis, chapter three. And I want you to understand that in the midst of the betrayal of God’s trust to keep the garden, there was still hope. Eve was beguiled by a snake. Adam chose to sin by eating the fruit that Eve brought to him. I’m not going to read it all, but we do have an encounter, and the encounter is when God comes down and they hide from Him. Verse eleven. Well, verse ten, this is what Adam said.
“I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. And God said, who told you you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? And the man did a real and noble thing and he blamed it on the woman. He said, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, what is this you’ve done? And the woman said, the serpent deceived me and I ate.”
Now, there’s plenty of blame casting going on. You can see the first effects of sin. No real love and thoughtfulness. Certainly nobody’s going to bear the cross for anybody else there. It’s just blame, blame, blame. “Then the Lord God said to the serpent, because you’ve done this, you’re cursed more than all the cattle, more than every beast of the field. On your belly you will go and dust. You will eat all the days of your life. And I’ll put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. And he shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise Him on the heel.”
Now this is the first prophetic promise of the Bible. And what is a statement of is that mankind was never to know evil and the horrors of murder and war and torture and hostage taking and the destruction of the innocent. Man was to never know betrayal and mistrust and lying and deceit. Man was to never know impatience and cruelty. None of these things was man ever to know. But as soon as man knew them, God showed up and He was going to deal with the problem. He could have obliterated hHis children if that was His nature. But He’s a loving heavenly Father.
He went in search of them because they no longer had a desire to find Him. But when He found them and He saw the pitiable condition they were in, the pitiful estate, He said to them, who told you you were naked? The beautiful coverings of light were gone because now their hearts have been infected with evil. And when finally it was clear that it was all messed up and the new ruler of the world would be Satan, God said, Jesus said, He’s the one that came down to fix this problem. Jesus said, someday the offspring of your wife, the blessed prophetic offspring, is going to put this thing back right?
And this is how He’s going to do it. He beguiled you with words to steal your inheritance. You were to be the lords of this earth. Now He’s the Lord of this earth, and He’s going to cause you to die. Believing in Him has robbed you of life eternal. You’ve rebelled against the simplest and smallest law I put for you, don’t go to the tree, don’t eat at the tree. But what I’m going to do is I’m going to give a baby of promise who is going to grow into a man, and he’s going to become the new king of this earth. Again, for all that want Him, He’s going to step on the head of the serpent. But as He’s doing it, He’s going to pay the price for all mankind and He’s going to die. Now, I want you to think about this promise right from the very beginning.
This is the seminal promise through which the plan of salvation will be developed and shown as we go. And we know that when God comes to the book of Exodus and He calls His people out of Egypt, not only are the Ten Commandments written down, they are a record of the very essence of who God is. But we know immediately after written down, God gives the story of how this is going to work when He sets up a wilderness sanctuary, there’s going to be death. A lamb is going to die. The lamb is going to be an innocent substitute for the guilty man.
The blood of that innocent one’s going to go into the house of God and it’s going to cleanse and the blood is eventually going to be taken into the Most Holy Place and it’s going to vindicate and judge and bring an end to the night of sin. But before there’s Exodus chapter 25, there’s genesis chapter 22. Go there with me. Genesis chapter 22. Three abrahamic faiths. Any one of them can become a covering for something less than sincere. Genesis chapter 22, the story of the substitute. Now, it came after these things. Verse one that God tasted tested abraham. He said, Abraham.
And he said, Here I am. Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will tell you now, I’m here to tell you Abraham had other sons. He had a son by Hagar called Ishmael. But God had directed Abraham to send him away because he was tormenting the life of Isaac. He had other sons by Keturah.
But when God references to Isaac as his only son, what he’s referencing to is an amazing promise that this is the only son of faith. Now, God blessed all the other sons, but this son is unique because the promise in Genesis three that there would be a baby who would grow into a man and turn the kingdom back over to the human race in time. This baby is a baby of faith and promise. It is a gift from God. Sarah could not have children, and they waited for 25 years before this baby was born.
And it just so happened that all of the next two generations would have women who couldn’t have babies. And so all of the babies of the first three of the progenitors of the Christian faith, the Jewish faith, all of them were barren. So not being able to have a baby at 75, Sarah is told she’s going to have a baby. Actually, at 65, Abraham is 75.
And 25 years later, there’s a baby born. When they’re long past the baby bearing years, this son is a gift from heaven. Only God could make this happen. And God now is asking for him back. He’s probably about 20 years old, somewhere in the early teens, late teens, early 20s. Verse three. Abraham obeys. He rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him and Isaac, his son. He split the wood for the burnt offering and he arose and he went to the place where God told him.
On the third day, Abraham raised his eyes and he saw the place from a distance. This mountain, this mountain that people are arguing over now, the one I showed you at the beginning of this message, Abraham said to the young men, stay here with the donkey and I and the lad will go over there and we will worship and return to you some see in this story, a statement of faith. Here I believe they are right. And I do want you to know the first time the word love is used in the Bible, it’s used in this chapter as to how Abraham feels towards his son.
Verse six. Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, laid it on Isaac. His son took in his hand the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked together. Isaac spoke to Abraham, his father, and he said, My father, he said, Here I am. Three times, Abraham will answer, here I am.
In this chapter, he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Now, you have to remember what this experience was like. Abraham woke up in the middle of the night hearing God talk. To him, Isaac means laughter. 25 years of heartache and wondering and waiting, having faith, stumbling occasionally is being tested now. Will Abraham obey? Sleepless nights, moments full of prayer? All of these pilgrimages before have been full of joy and celebration as they went to worship God. But today, Abraham’s heart is heavy, and he’s probably gone three nights, at least two nights. He’s on his third day without sleeping.
He doesn’t want to laugh. He doesn’t want to talk. He can hardly believe what God is asking him to do. And finally, Isaac, who is delighting in another journey with his dad, says, you know, dad, we’ve been on this journey for three days, but it just dawned on me. We don’t have a lamb.
And on the way up the mountain, abraham makes a prophetic statement. He said, God will provide himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. So the two of them walked on together. And I think, since the Bible goes out of its way to say that Isaac spoke, I think we could assume that it was a journey of silence.
Then they came to the place which God told him. Abraham built the altar there, and he arranged the wood and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. And I want to hit the pause button here. There are three distinctly spiritually defining moments for three critical men. When we talk about the journey of faith, when we look at God connecting the dots on the promise to provide a child that would deliver us from sin, we see the experience of the flood and the Tower of Babel. And right on the heels of the Tower of Babel, we have the story of Abraham.
It’s as if there’s a new beginning. Abraham is a faithful man. He will be called God’s friend. He will become the epitome of the father of the faithful. But for each of these men, there are three Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There are three pivotal moments that transform their relationship with God into an experience with God. For Abraham, it is the journey to Moriah. For Isaac, it is the journey to Moriah. By this time, Isaac is plenty old enough to reject the plan. He’s plenty old enough to reject his father’s authority.
So we see Abraham willing to slay his son, his son willing to be an offering. And then we see in Isaac’s son, Jacob, we see a night of wrestling. What I want you to see is that being associated or being close to God, being around people of God, doesn’t make you a child of God. You have to have an experience with God where something changes, where you encounter Him in a way that your surrender is full and complete. Not complete as in it’s full enough for the rest of your life. But there’s something transformational.
And this is what’s happening now with Abraham. He binds his son. He’s obviously not a weak man. He’ll live 50 more years after this encounter, and he lays his son on the altar. I don’t know how one could imagine taking the life of your own child, especially a child of promise, a journey of almost 50 years. But I do know this when he finally takes the knife in his hand, it will be with an agonizing swiftness. And I love how the book Patriarchs and Prophets describes this moment. As Abraham goes to take the life of his son, his hand comes up and there’s no hesitation. And the God of heaven sends a messenger to grab onto his hand and to stop him.
And he calls out, Abraham, Abraham. And he says, here I am. And he said, do not touch your hand against the lad and do nothing to him, for now I know that you fear God since you’ve not withheld your son, your only son from me. Then Abraham raised his eyes and he looked and he behold. He saw a ram caught in a thicket by his horns.
And Abraham went and he took the ram and he offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. And Abraham called the place the Lord will provide. And it is said to this day, in the mount of the Lord, it will be provided.
All of us should know that one of God’s names is Yahweh Ure. Some pronounce. It Jehovah Jireh, the god who provides. But what I want you to understand is that when Jesus is locked in a battle with those Pharisees and he says to them, Abraham rejoiced to see my day. And he saw it. What he was referring to was Abraham on Mount Moriah and the three agonizing days of journey and the willingness to take his son’s life. What Abraham was seeing is that the price of our sin, the price of our rebellion in the garden, the promise of the Son, could never be fulfilled through an animal. It was going to be fulfilled through the Son of God Himself.
And when Jesus would come as the ultimate promise made in the garden reiterated to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob all the way down through the lineage. Jesus himself, who is the creator of the Universe and the creator of every one of us, is the only one that could pay the price for all of our sins because we are in Christ. He is our creator. And the only one large enough to pay the price, the corporate price of sin for a human race is Jesus.
Jesus cannot just be another man. Jesus is either a consummate prophet of falsehood or he is the consummate fulfillment of the promise. In the garden, Jesus comes because God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself. Jesus was the Word, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He was the light that was among us.
But they rejected the light and they loved darkness. And humanity is still faced with the same decision. You can argue with the incarnate God who will declare Himself to be before Abraham in the encounter with Moses. I Am the I Am. You can reject the message of Jesus or you can embrace it and know the same liberty that Jesus gave and continues to give.
I’d like for you to turn to your Bibles over to the Book of John, chapter three. John. Chapter Three the Story of Nicodemus. In John, chapter three, Jesus is too controversial a figure for Nicodemus to see him in the daytime, so he comes at night. He’s a Pharisee, one of the leading teachers, and when he comes to see Jesus, he doesn’t want his friends to notice.
Chapter three, verse one, it says, now, there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night, and he said to Him, Rabbi, we know that you’ve come from God as a teacher, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him. Now, you need to know something. John will set up his gospel to show you that Jesus is the creator of the world. In him, all things were made. Nothing was made that was not made unless it was made by Jesus.
And I want you to see that from the very beginning, Jesus will confront those around him and make enemies almost. This man will not become an enemy like the men of John, chapter eight, but he will give people a chance to hate him. If the dividing line is the truth, we know that you’re a teacher. He was so much more than a teacher.
Jesus answered and said to him, truly, truly I say unto you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he’s old can’t enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born? Can he? And Jesus answered, Truly, truly I say unto you, unless one is born of water in the Spirit, that’s a reference to baptism. He cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
That was born of the flesh is flesh, and that was born of the Spirit is Spirit. Don’t be amazed that I said to you, you have to be born again. The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but you don’t know where it comes from and where it’s going. So is everyone born of the Spirit. And Nicodemus said, how can this be?
And Jesus said, how can it be that you’re the teacher of Israel and you don’t understand the most basic thing about the renewal of the human heart? You see, friends, Jesus was not willing to let Nicodemus relegate him to just another teacher. Jesus was the man of Isaiah 53 from whom we hid our faces. We are healed by his stripes. He becomes what John the Baptist said He was the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world.
You can’t be cleansed by an Old Testament offering of a lamb or a ram or a goat, and you won’t be cleansed by a New Testament offering if the temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem by any kind other kind of offering. And by the way, the Jews not only rejected the deity of Christ, they rejected the cross and the resurrection. And there is no antichrist that’s going to break in and do what the true Christ came to do. When he came to confirm the covenant, he had a special relationship with the Jewish nation. It is no longer with the Jewish nation, but it is with those who will have a living transformation upon whom the Spirit will come and convict and a new beginning will happen inside of a person.
Drunkards become sober. Liars become honest. The profligate become true. These are the miracles of a life reborn when you understand that he who spoke the cosmos into existence scattered the stars and the galaxies, put the universe on hold to come here and redeem man made in his image, made with free choice, Jesus came to give us a choice. Again.
When we think about the bruising of the head of the serpent, we come to the place where we see Jesus brought before the Sanhedrin, convicted of no crime except suggesting that he would do something on that holy mountain. When they finally found a way to crucify Jesus, they said his great crime was that he would tear down the temple, that if they tore down the temple, He’d rebuild it. Well, you need to know that 40 years after Jesus death, the temple was torn down. But the temple Jesus spoke of was his life. And this morning, there is a message.
Jesus is the Lamb in the book of Revelation. Who’s worthy to open the scrolls? Jesus is the great. I am. Jesus is the one who walks with us. Jesus is the only one. Because God was in Christ reconciling the world we’ve been if we accepted crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, we don’t live. But Christ lives within us. Only Jesus could redeem the human race. So what the promise in Genesis three does is it boils down to this fact. Man has a problem. He’s now naturally bent to sinning. He’s a slave to a carnal nature. He can’t break free.
Sometimes he doesn’t even want to break free. But the Spirit of God searches the earth, seeking to win. And redeem preachers and parents and teachers proclaiming the liberating word of God. What they do is they speak truth. Truth has the power to convict, and it has the power to set free.
And just like Abraham had a transformational experience on Mount Moriah, he saw the plan of salvation. He saw a substitute for mankind, not a ram. Of course it was a ram. But it wasn’t a ram that God told him to take an offer. It was His Son. And it is in the offering of God’s Son that our redemption is paid for. And we can do nothing to add to it or to earn it. It is a gift from God, the mountain, the Messiah. And the future trauma of this earth is one last attempt to bring people into the knowledge, the willing knowledge, to receive a Redeemer who’s paid the price for their sins. The world has troubless times.
In front of it, I want to assure you, it’s teetering like a top that’s lost its centrifugal force, and eventually it’s going to lose its pivot point and fall onto its side. When it does, there’ll be trauma on the face of the Earth. But I need to tell you, friends, this world’s not our home. Jesus has promised us a place in heaven. And it is that place to where our hope is, and that we’re going.
And this morning, my appeal to all of you is to receive anew the living Christ, the Christ who has the power to renew the human heart. One person, our head elder, texted me after the first sermon. He said, you know, David was looking for a place to put his temple. God didn’t give him a place to put the temple. But what God did say is, I’ve written my laws on David’s heart. Those laws Jesus can write into our heart. He can remake our being to where being kind is what we desire to do. Being patient, being loving, being suffering, being courageous, being true, being faithful. These are all gifts that come from God.
I’m here to tell you, friends, the world’s poised to fight over a piece of real estate that no longer has any meaning in the plan of salvation. Jesus was crucified just outside the gates of the city. Abraham offered Isaac up. Almost. It all pointed to the offering of God’s. Son, jesus is not just another teacher. Jesus is the Creator redeemer of the universe, and he wants to be the creator redeemer of you and me.
And this morning, I’m appealing to everyone listening to me here today. Unless a man is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Doesn’t matter where your church membership is, although truth matters. But what does matter is that in sincerity of heart, Jesus is Lord of your life.
If He’s Lord of your life, your name’s been written down in the Lamb’s Book of Life, just like Pastor Conrad talked about. And once your name is written down in the Lamb’s Book of Life, you’ve started a journey which Jesus can get you all the way home, and Jesus will get you all the way home if you let Him be Lord of your life. But whereas Christianity will reject the law of God in the future, just as Judaism and Islam has rejected the deity of Christ, there is a new rejection coming. And there will be a faithful few.
And I believe this church, which is truth. They keep the commandments of God and they have the faith of Jesus. Yes, the lawgiver on Sinai wants to write his laws on our heart. And this morning am I appealing to you. Let Him write. Let Him speak. New life. Let that cleansing flood flow. Let there be a new beginning. Doesn’t matter what the outcome is. Don’t be afraid.
Be set free inside and walk in. Newness of life. Yes. When Jesus was lifted up on the cross, he said, I’ll draw all men to me. No one has ever loved you like Jesus. Nobody’s lived, served and died for you like Jesus. He is the Son of God. He’s paid the price, and now He’s inviting you. I’m inviting in your life. Lift Him up. Let Him be. Lord of all things, may God bless us on this Thanksgiving Day. The chiefest thing for which we have to be thankful is that God sent his very own dear son to redeem us and make us His sons and daughters. Again, let’s stand as we sing our closing hymn.