Genesis 22:1-14
Ultimate Test, Ultimate Trust Genesis 22:1-14
BIG Idea: God tests us show we can show Him what is in our hearts, but he also so he can show us how he provides.
Jon Krakauer in his harrowing book Into Thin Air tells the story of how he as part of a team of people attempted to reach summit of Mt. Everest 1996 and how they became engulfed by a deadly blizzard.
Krakauer not only describes the physical challenges of climbing Everest, but he also shows us how the expedition revealed people’s character.
He describes how Rob Hall a world-class climber from New Zealand is stranded in the blizzard with his client near the top of the mountain. Hall’s client runs out of oxygen, but Hall refuses to leave him. Hall ends up dying with his client on the mountain.
Krakauer describes this woman named Sandy Pittman, a socialite who goes on this venture to a dispatch pictures and information to NBC for broadcast.
She requires the native Sherpas to drag up a bunch of heavy equipment up for her the including her fax machine and Expresso maker. She seems to always needs to be the first person get a access to life-saving equipment. She ends up living, but she faced with danger on the mountain, she screams at the top of her lungs, “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”
Beck Weathers is a doctor who not really respected initially by Krakauer, but as the climb progesses Weathers displays more and more character. Weathers ends up getting buried under snow for 22 hours. People see him, scrape the snow ice of his face and leave him for dead. In an astounding feat of strength and spirit, Weathers stays alive. He gets up, walks and finds his way eventually to his team.
Climbing a mountain like Everest, will test you and reveal what’s inside you.
When we respond to God’s call to follow him, we too at times will experience “tests” that will reveal what’s inside us.
This morning, we’re going to be looking at Abraham’s greatest test.
God’s call to Abraham and Sarah is clearly into a truly “blessed” life, but that does not mean they will not face difficult tests along the way.
And God’s call to us sometimes involves challenging tests. If our relationship with God was an unbroken stream of “blessings” and perks we might only relate to God because of what He can do for us and that would be a pretty shallow relationship. Have you ever had someone relate to you ONLY because of what you could do for them? That was probably pretty a superficial relationship.
In the story we will look at today, we’re going to see how God leads Abraham into a difficult test? Why?
Because God wants to know what’s inside Abraham, he wants to know if Abraham really trusts him.
The test that Abraham is about to face involves his precious son, the only one born to his wife Sarah.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Genesis 22:1
God calls to Abraham. "Here I am," he replied.
1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied.
2 Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."
3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.
Abraham’s son Isaac, likely now a teenager (he’s at least old enough to carry all the wood needed for a sacrifice), was a priceless treasure to Abraham and Isaac’s mom Sarah.
For maybe 70 years or so Abraham and Sarah as a couple have been infertile…
In this ancient near eastern culture, NOT having a baby would have been a huge social disaster.
And Abraham and Sarah also had this deep personal yearning for a child… When Abraham was 75 and Sarah was 65 God promised them a child, but they wait and wait… When Abraham is about 85 and Sarah about 75 they are so desperate to have a child that they take matters into their hands and decide Abraham will sleep with Sarah’s maid-servant Hagar and they have a baby through this surrogate mother.
But then God reiterates His promise to Abraham and Sarah and tells them that it is through Sarah’s body, that they will have a baby. They both laugh in disbelief, but then sure enough when Abraham is 100 and Sarah is 90 they have a baby boy… They give their son the name Isaac which means laughter… Laughter was first associated with their disbelief of God’s promise… but now laughter was associated with joy of having their baby….
Sarah, says God has brought me laughter and everyone who hears about this will laugh with (or as the Hebrews can read “at”) me....
Can you imagine Abraham at 105 taking Isaac to Kindergarten with a perma-grin… Some 23 year old woman, asks you must “Grandpa?” Nope, “I’m the dad.”
Isaac, brings joy to his parents…
But, not only did Isaac bring laughter and joy to his parents, he would played a very important social function for his family.
Isaac would have been the one who would have been in line to inherit all of his parent’s estate. In our culture, if you come from a family say of 3 kids, the inheritance tends to be divided equally among the three.
But in this culture, the eldest son would get ALL the inheritance, because if the parents divided their wealth among all their children, then the concentration of the family wealth would be diluted and the family would lose their social position on the community. So the eldest son would be the sole inheritor of the estate, to maintain the family’s social position, and he would be a benefactor for the rest of the family.
And God had promised Abraham and Sarah to not only bless them, but God had promised that through Isaac all the nations of the world would be blessed…
So this son who brought joy was the one in whom they were placing hopes for the well being of their family and for the world.
But, God calls Abraham to sacrifice his son…
This would be like you getting a call in the middle of the night and the person of on the other line begins with the words “We regret to inform, you.”
Your heart sinks…
When God called Abraham to sacrifice his son, his one and only son with Sarah, his beloved son, his heart must have just sank.
And so he begins this long and lonely walk with Isaac. The writer slow motions this part the text is verse 3…
3Abraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey. He took two of his young servants and his son Isaac. He had split wood for the burnt offering. He set out for the place God had directed him. 4On the third day he looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5Abraham told his two young servants, "Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I are going over there to worship; then we'll come back to you."
6Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and gave it to Isaac his son to carry. He carried the flint and the knife. The two of them went off together.
7Isaac said to Abraham his father, "Father?"
"Yes, my son."
"We have flint and wood, but where's the sheep for the burnt offering?"
8Abraham said, "Son, God will see to it that there's a sheep for the burnt offering." And they kept on walking together.
Abraham is being lead into this hard test, because God wants to see what’s in his heart.
She how Abraham responds to this call from God to sacrifice his son.
9When they arrived at the place where God had told Abraham to go, he built an altar and placed the wood on it. Then he tied Isaac up and laid him on the altar over the wood. 10And Abraham took the knife and lifted it up to kill his son as a sacrifice to the LORD. 11At that moment the angel of the LORD shouted to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"
"Yes," he answered. "I'm listening."
12"Lay down the knife," the angel said. "Do not hurt the boy in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld even your beloved son from me."
Abraham passes with an A+.
Abraham son Isaac was his price-less treasure… the son on who his and his Sarah’s affections and hopes were placed. So, what enabled Abraham to obey God’s commandment to sacrifice his son?
The text tells us that he deeply feared, i.e. reverenced God.
And according to Hebrews 11, Abraham believed that even if he killed his son, God had the power to raise him from the dead.
Abraham so trusted in the goodness and power of God that he was willing to sacrifice his son believing that God could raise Isaac from the dead.
But God provided in another way….
As Isaac is bound up, lying on the wood, Abraham lifts his knife, but an Angel of the Lord shouts out Abraham, Abraham, lay down the knife…. Do you not hurt the boy, now I know you truly fear God!
13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide.
There are times when God tests us to see what is in our heart, to see if we trust him about all else, but when we respond to his test he always provides.
There will be times when God will test us to see if we truly do trust God above all else. As we respond, he will provide.
God will, in all likelihood will not ask you or me to literally sacrifice a child or someone we love, but He may ask us to make a kind of relative sacrifice of them so that he can see what is in our heart, so we can know that he provides.
For people who have children, there’s a lot of pressure in our culture to make them #1.
Moms today is your day, happy mother’s day! But for the other 364 days your life revolves your kids, especially when they’re young. It’s good to value our children, but when our culture encourage us to put our kids at very centre of our lives and in effect worship them, our culture has gone to far.
There are times when God will ask us to make a relative sacrifice our kids so we can show Him who is first in our hearts, but he also so he can show us how he provides.
I remember when my parents committed themselves to Christ when I was an adolescent; a number of things began to change for them.
One of the most concrete things that changed for them was that they responded to God’s call to tithe their income, i.e. to give away at least 10% of their income to God’s work.
Growing up, our family didn’t have a lot of money. I grew up as one of 5 kids in a single income family. My dad worked in a quasi-government job, as a journalist with the C.B.C. I think an outsider could have looked at what my mom and dad were giving to the Lord and thought they’re sacrificing some of the interests of us 5 kids… reasoning that because their giving to God, they are not be able to provide materially as much as they would otherwise be able to for their kids…
But what my parents have said, after about 25 years of honoring God with their income is this, “Before we began to tithe, we never had quite enough, we were always falling a little short. But since we began to honor God in our financial lives, we’ve always had enough, sometimes it’s been tight, but we’ve always had enough.
And my mom and dad’s example of generosity has been an extraordinary legacy to me, that has shaped my attitude toward giving.
In a sense, God was tested my parents hearts to see if he was more important to him than their income and what their entire income could do for theirs kids or God and they responded and God has provide for their/our family in some extraordinary ways.
When God seemingly asks to sacrifice our kids in some way for HIS sake whether sometimes we find as was the case with Isaac, there is no real sacrifice involved, either because what we thought he was asking us, he doesn’t in the end require of us or when he does require the sacrifice of us, he provides through some others means for us and kids to be blessed.
God tests us (not so much because he wants a particular thing from us) but so show we can show Him what is in our hearts, but he also so he can show us how he provides.
It may be that God asks us to offer our child or some other kind o relationship to God that so he see what is in our heart and so he can show us that he provides.
Or it may that he asks us to offer be willing up our career to God.
Sherron Watkins is a, wife, mother, and a former vice-president of the Enron Corporation, which was one of the world’s largest corporations in North America. Watkins had begun to recognize that the accounting processes at Enron were moving from irregular to creative to fraudulent.
After doing some research Watkins discovered that Enron's financial statements had been inflated profits over 1999 and 2000 by $800 million, which in turn inflated stock prices and put stock holders at great risk.
Watkins initially hesitated about confronting her superior about the fraud, afraid that she’d be fired. She was the primary breadwinner for her family and her family depended on her income, but her faith in Jesus Christ did not allow her to stay silent.
Watkins had spent all spent a couple of decades struggling as a woman to climb the corporate ladder in a male dominated world, now God seemed to be asking her to sacrifice her career to honor him. She was understandably nervous, but she stepped forward put her career “on the altar” and told the truth to her CEO and later before congress…
Doing the right thing eventually cost Sherron a six-figure Enron salary… but she passed the test, demonstrated to God that her relationship with him was important than her career…
But the God the God who provides, resurrected her in some then unimaginable ways. She went to be named by TIME magazine as a person of the Year 2002, described by the media as a bright light of courage in corporate black hole. She’s been given a platform to speak on integrity she would never, if she would have caved and stayed silent or quietly transferred to another r company.
Her test revealed that God, not her career, not even her family’s financial stability was her true and that God provides.
God in our journey may lead us places of hard testing because he wants what’s inside, he wants to know whose we are, do we belong first to a human being, a company, ourselves…or God? It’s so not much our kids or our relationships or our money or our careers that he literally wants, but it’s our heart.
He asks us offer things up to him because he wants to know what’s in our hearts and when we respond to God and give him these things, he either as in the case of Isaac “resurrects” the sacrifice and gives us back our Isaac or he resurrects something else because God not just the God who tests, but he also the God who provides…
So, how do we become people like Abraham? By looking to the one he was looking forward that Abraham was looking forward to. In John 8:56 Jesus said that Abraham looked forward to my day. Somehow, Abraham in a dim kind of way, Abraham knew that one day God would offer himself as kind of a sacrifice for the world. Abraham seemed to be able to discern God’s willingness to offer himself wholly to him and was thus able to offer God his beloved son Isaac to God…
And hundreds of years later, on a Mountain not far from Mount Moriah where Abraham prepared to offer his beloved son as a sacrifice, God offered his son, also a child of promise with a miracle birth, but that time God did not hold back the knife, he allowed his son to be pierced and killed so that moral debt of our sins before God could be paid.
It’s as we understand that God who did not spare his one and only son, Jesus Christ, but freely gave up him for us and then raised him from the dead, that we will become like Abraham, people who can offer up to God all that he asks of us, knowing that he is the true center of our lives and believing that can he provide.
Benediction:
20Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, 21to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
BIG Idea: God tests us show we can show Him what is in our hearts, but he also so he can show us how he provides.
Jon Krakauer in his harrowing book Into Thin Air tells the story of how he as part of a team of people attempted to reach summit of Mt. Everest 1996 and how they became engulfed by a deadly blizzard.
Krakauer not only describes the physical challenges of climbing Everest, but he also shows us how the expedition revealed people’s character.
He describes how Rob Hall a world-class climber from New Zealand is stranded in the blizzard with his client near the top of the mountain. Hall’s client runs out of oxygen, but Hall refuses to leave him. Hall ends up dying with his client on the mountain.
Krakauer describes this woman named Sandy Pittman, a socialite who goes on this venture to a dispatch pictures and information to NBC for broadcast.
She requires the native Sherpas to drag up a bunch of heavy equipment up for her the including her fax machine and Expresso maker. She seems to always needs to be the first person get a access to life-saving equipment. She ends up living, but she faced with danger on the mountain, she screams at the top of her lungs, “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!”
Beck Weathers is a doctor who not really respected initially by Krakauer, but as the climb progesses Weathers displays more and more character. Weathers ends up getting buried under snow for 22 hours. People see him, scrape the snow ice of his face and leave him for dead. In an astounding feat of strength and spirit, Weathers stays alive. He gets up, walks and finds his way eventually to his team.
Climbing a mountain like Everest, will test you and reveal what’s inside you.
When we respond to God’s call to follow him, we too at times will experience “tests” that will reveal what’s inside us.
This morning, we’re going to be looking at Abraham’s greatest test.
God’s call to Abraham and Sarah is clearly into a truly “blessed” life, but that does not mean they will not face difficult tests along the way.
And God’s call to us sometimes involves challenging tests. If our relationship with God was an unbroken stream of “blessings” and perks we might only relate to God because of what He can do for us and that would be a pretty shallow relationship. Have you ever had someone relate to you ONLY because of what you could do for them? That was probably pretty a superficial relationship.
In the story we will look at today, we’re going to see how God leads Abraham into a difficult test? Why?
Because God wants to know what’s inside Abraham, he wants to know if Abraham really trusts him.
The test that Abraham is about to face involves his precious son, the only one born to his wife Sarah.
If you have your Bibles please turn to Genesis 22:1
God calls to Abraham. "Here I am," he replied.
1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied.
2 Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."
3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.
Abraham’s son Isaac, likely now a teenager (he’s at least old enough to carry all the wood needed for a sacrifice), was a priceless treasure to Abraham and Isaac’s mom Sarah.
For maybe 70 years or so Abraham and Sarah as a couple have been infertile…
In this ancient near eastern culture, NOT having a baby would have been a huge social disaster.
And Abraham and Sarah also had this deep personal yearning for a child… When Abraham was 75 and Sarah was 65 God promised them a child, but they wait and wait… When Abraham is about 85 and Sarah about 75 they are so desperate to have a child that they take matters into their hands and decide Abraham will sleep with Sarah’s maid-servant Hagar and they have a baby through this surrogate mother.
But then God reiterates His promise to Abraham and Sarah and tells them that it is through Sarah’s body, that they will have a baby. They both laugh in disbelief, but then sure enough when Abraham is 100 and Sarah is 90 they have a baby boy… They give their son the name Isaac which means laughter… Laughter was first associated with their disbelief of God’s promise… but now laughter was associated with joy of having their baby….
Sarah, says God has brought me laughter and everyone who hears about this will laugh with (or as the Hebrews can read “at”) me....
Can you imagine Abraham at 105 taking Isaac to Kindergarten with a perma-grin… Some 23 year old woman, asks you must “Grandpa?” Nope, “I’m the dad.”
Isaac, brings joy to his parents…
But, not only did Isaac bring laughter and joy to his parents, he would played a very important social function for his family.
Isaac would have been the one who would have been in line to inherit all of his parent’s estate. In our culture, if you come from a family say of 3 kids, the inheritance tends to be divided equally among the three.
But in this culture, the eldest son would get ALL the inheritance, because if the parents divided their wealth among all their children, then the concentration of the family wealth would be diluted and the family would lose their social position on the community. So the eldest son would be the sole inheritor of the estate, to maintain the family’s social position, and he would be a benefactor for the rest of the family.
And God had promised Abraham and Sarah to not only bless them, but God had promised that through Isaac all the nations of the world would be blessed…
So this son who brought joy was the one in whom they were placing hopes for the well being of their family and for the world.
But, God calls Abraham to sacrifice his son…
This would be like you getting a call in the middle of the night and the person of on the other line begins with the words “We regret to inform, you.”
Your heart sinks…
When God called Abraham to sacrifice his son, his one and only son with Sarah, his beloved son, his heart must have just sank.
And so he begins this long and lonely walk with Isaac. The writer slow motions this part the text is verse 3…
3Abraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey. He took two of his young servants and his son Isaac. He had split wood for the burnt offering. He set out for the place God had directed him. 4On the third day he looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5Abraham told his two young servants, "Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I are going over there to worship; then we'll come back to you."
6Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and gave it to Isaac his son to carry. He carried the flint and the knife. The two of them went off together.
7Isaac said to Abraham his father, "Father?"
"Yes, my son."
"We have flint and wood, but where's the sheep for the burnt offering?"
8Abraham said, "Son, God will see to it that there's a sheep for the burnt offering." And they kept on walking together.
Abraham is being lead into this hard test, because God wants to see what’s in his heart.
She how Abraham responds to this call from God to sacrifice his son.
9When they arrived at the place where God had told Abraham to go, he built an altar and placed the wood on it. Then he tied Isaac up and laid him on the altar over the wood. 10And Abraham took the knife and lifted it up to kill his son as a sacrifice to the LORD. 11At that moment the angel of the LORD shouted to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!"
"Yes," he answered. "I'm listening."
12"Lay down the knife," the angel said. "Do not hurt the boy in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld even your beloved son from me."
Abraham passes with an A+.
Abraham son Isaac was his price-less treasure… the son on who his and his Sarah’s affections and hopes were placed. So, what enabled Abraham to obey God’s commandment to sacrifice his son?
The text tells us that he deeply feared, i.e. reverenced God.
And according to Hebrews 11, Abraham believed that even if he killed his son, God had the power to raise him from the dead.
Abraham so trusted in the goodness and power of God that he was willing to sacrifice his son believing that God could raise Isaac from the dead.
But God provided in another way….
As Isaac is bound up, lying on the wood, Abraham lifts his knife, but an Angel of the Lord shouts out Abraham, Abraham, lay down the knife…. Do you not hurt the boy, now I know you truly fear God!
13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide.
There are times when God tests us to see what is in our heart, to see if we trust him about all else, but when we respond to his test he always provides.
There will be times when God will test us to see if we truly do trust God above all else. As we respond, he will provide.
God will, in all likelihood will not ask you or me to literally sacrifice a child or someone we love, but He may ask us to make a kind of relative sacrifice of them so that he can see what is in our heart, so we can know that he provides.
For people who have children, there’s a lot of pressure in our culture to make them #1.
Moms today is your day, happy mother’s day! But for the other 364 days your life revolves your kids, especially when they’re young. It’s good to value our children, but when our culture encourage us to put our kids at very centre of our lives and in effect worship them, our culture has gone to far.
There are times when God will ask us to make a relative sacrifice our kids so we can show Him who is first in our hearts, but he also so he can show us how he provides.
I remember when my parents committed themselves to Christ when I was an adolescent; a number of things began to change for them.
One of the most concrete things that changed for them was that they responded to God’s call to tithe their income, i.e. to give away at least 10% of their income to God’s work.
Growing up, our family didn’t have a lot of money. I grew up as one of 5 kids in a single income family. My dad worked in a quasi-government job, as a journalist with the C.B.C. I think an outsider could have looked at what my mom and dad were giving to the Lord and thought they’re sacrificing some of the interests of us 5 kids… reasoning that because their giving to God, they are not be able to provide materially as much as they would otherwise be able to for their kids…
But what my parents have said, after about 25 years of honoring God with their income is this, “Before we began to tithe, we never had quite enough, we were always falling a little short. But since we began to honor God in our financial lives, we’ve always had enough, sometimes it’s been tight, but we’ve always had enough.
And my mom and dad’s example of generosity has been an extraordinary legacy to me, that has shaped my attitude toward giving.
In a sense, God was tested my parents hearts to see if he was more important to him than their income and what their entire income could do for theirs kids or God and they responded and God has provide for their/our family in some extraordinary ways.
When God seemingly asks to sacrifice our kids in some way for HIS sake whether sometimes we find as was the case with Isaac, there is no real sacrifice involved, either because what we thought he was asking us, he doesn’t in the end require of us or when he does require the sacrifice of us, he provides through some others means for us and kids to be blessed.
God tests us (not so much because he wants a particular thing from us) but so show we can show Him what is in our hearts, but he also so he can show us how he provides.
It may be that God asks us to offer our child or some other kind o relationship to God that so he see what is in our heart and so he can show us that he provides.
Or it may that he asks us to offer be willing up our career to God.
Sherron Watkins is a, wife, mother, and a former vice-president of the Enron Corporation, which was one of the world’s largest corporations in North America. Watkins had begun to recognize that the accounting processes at Enron were moving from irregular to creative to fraudulent.
After doing some research Watkins discovered that Enron's financial statements had been inflated profits over 1999 and 2000 by $800 million, which in turn inflated stock prices and put stock holders at great risk.
Watkins initially hesitated about confronting her superior about the fraud, afraid that she’d be fired. She was the primary breadwinner for her family and her family depended on her income, but her faith in Jesus Christ did not allow her to stay silent.
Watkins had spent all spent a couple of decades struggling as a woman to climb the corporate ladder in a male dominated world, now God seemed to be asking her to sacrifice her career to honor him. She was understandably nervous, but she stepped forward put her career “on the altar” and told the truth to her CEO and later before congress…
Doing the right thing eventually cost Sherron a six-figure Enron salary… but she passed the test, demonstrated to God that her relationship with him was important than her career…
But the God the God who provides, resurrected her in some then unimaginable ways. She went to be named by TIME magazine as a person of the Year 2002, described by the media as a bright light of courage in corporate black hole. She’s been given a platform to speak on integrity she would never, if she would have caved and stayed silent or quietly transferred to another r company.
Her test revealed that God, not her career, not even her family’s financial stability was her true and that God provides.
God in our journey may lead us places of hard testing because he wants what’s inside, he wants to know whose we are, do we belong first to a human being, a company, ourselves…or God? It’s so not much our kids or our relationships or our money or our careers that he literally wants, but it’s our heart.
He asks us offer things up to him because he wants to know what’s in our hearts and when we respond to God and give him these things, he either as in the case of Isaac “resurrects” the sacrifice and gives us back our Isaac or he resurrects something else because God not just the God who tests, but he also the God who provides…
So, how do we become people like Abraham? By looking to the one he was looking forward that Abraham was looking forward to. In John 8:56 Jesus said that Abraham looked forward to my day. Somehow, Abraham in a dim kind of way, Abraham knew that one day God would offer himself as kind of a sacrifice for the world. Abraham seemed to be able to discern God’s willingness to offer himself wholly to him and was thus able to offer God his beloved son Isaac to God…
And hundreds of years later, on a Mountain not far from Mount Moriah where Abraham prepared to offer his beloved son as a sacrifice, God offered his son, also a child of promise with a miracle birth, but that time God did not hold back the knife, he allowed his son to be pierced and killed so that moral debt of our sins before God could be paid.
It’s as we understand that God who did not spare his one and only son, Jesus Christ, but freely gave up him for us and then raised him from the dead, that we will become like Abraham, people who can offer up to God all that he asks of us, knowing that he is the true center of our lives and believing that can he provide.
Benediction:
20Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, 21to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.
posted by Shigematsu at 1:32 PM
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