Gooding, David: 6 - Contending for the Faith

Gentlemen, this morning I propose to abuse your extraordinary patience and long suffering yet further, and to use this first session to continue the theme that we were pursuing last evening, the use that the New Testament makes of the old, and the various ways in which it applies the message of the New Testament to ourselves. When we broke off our discussions last evening, we were considering some implicit allusions made by some explicit, sorry, some explicit allusions made by the New Testament to the old. And in particular, we were considering the explicit allusion in the Epistle of Jude to the practice of Cain, Balaam, and Korah. We then asked ourselves how we might discern what Jude means by his describing Christian false teachers as modern day Korahites. And we found that helpful to decide what Korah's rebellion stood for was to consider the whole context in the book of Numbers, where there is a whole series of rebellions, and to consider those rebellions, what they have in common and where they differ, so that by prudent differential diagnosis, we might come to a controlled, uh, interpretation of Korah's rebellion in the ancient world, and having determined what he stood for in the ancient world, we might therefore see the more clearly what Jude means when he says that modern false teachers in the church have perished in the gainsaying of Korah. Now I want to mention another category, and that is the category of implicit allusion. There are places in the New Testament, many of them indeed, where the New Testament writer alludes to the Old Testament without saying so. If, therefore, you took too seriously the modern dictum that has become so fashionable, that nothing is to be regarded as a type except the New Testament explicitly says it is a type, you would be in danger of, uh, uh, passing over without noticing this very rich vein of the New Testament's allusions to the old that come under this heading of implicit rather than explicit allusion. I take two examples. The first of them comes from First Peter in chapter one, where Peter addresses his fellow believers as the elect who are sojourners of the dispersion according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. You might, even at the very beginning, wonder why he has put these two things in that order, first obedience and then sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. Why not first sprinkling of the blood and then obedience? Surely we come under the blood first and are cleansed from our sins through the blood of Christ, and then we begin the pathway of obedience rather than the other way around. Why has Peter put, uh, the obedience first and then sprinkling of the blood. We should just remind ourselves, however, of the features of his chapter one that we noticed last night. His simile, we are redeemed with the blood, with with the blood of Christ as of a lamb, deliberately evoking the ancient Passover ceremony. And then his metaphor, gird up the loins of your mind, a metaphor based on the ritual of the Old Testament that required those who participated in the Passover feast to eat of it with their loins girded. And of course, we noticed that we didn't, uh, uh, dignify it with the, uh, description of implicit illusion. We did notice that he had one at the beginning. We are born again unto a living hope, unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away. And Peter doesn't take your hand and say, now, my dear infant, uh, uh, would you perceive the implicit illusion in what I'm talking about, you see? I say you have an inheritance. Did you know the Jews had an inheritance given them in Canaan? Well, he doesn't say that. He's more respect for your intelligence, gentlemen, and your general reading. Of course, if you're a newcomer to the faith and you've never read Exodus, nor yet Joshua or any of that, uh, uh, material, when Peter says that we are born again unto an inheritance, you'll say, thank the Lord for that. And it might completely escape you that, of course, this is an allusion to Israel being redeemed by the blood of the Passover of the Lamb and girding up the loins of, uh, of their bodies, if not their minds. They stepped out to reach their inheritance in Canaan. In the same way as his, uh, uh, description of our inheritance is an implicit allusion, so is this earlier phrase, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. When Israel came out of Egypt, they came to Mount Sinai, and there we are told that God made a covenant with them. Uh, Moses assembled the people and rehearsed the terms of the covenant in their ears. And they said, all the words which the Lord has spoken, we will do. Then Moses took the precaution of writing the terms of the covenant in a book, so that they should not thereafter be, uh, disputed, so that people should not subsequently say, we didn't realize that particular thing was in the terms of the covenant when we agreed to the covenant. You've added that since. He wrote all the terms of the covenant in a book, and then holding up the book, he read the book in the ears of the people so that they should see that he, what he was saying was recorded in this book. And then the sacrifices were offered, and Moses took half of the blood and he put it in basins. Half of the blood he sprinkled on the altar, and he took the book of the covenant and read it in the audience of the people, and they said, all that the Lord has spoken will we do and be obedient. When the people had professed their obedience, then Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people and said, behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you concerning all these words. They professed obedience. Then they were sprinkled with the blood. And since Peter elsewhere in this first epistle has chosen by his terms, his simile, his metaphor, his allusion to evoke the history of the Passover, the idea of the inheritance, the idea of the journey. It is actually inescapable, is it not, to see here in this mention of sprinkling, obedience and sprinkling of the blood, an allusion to the covenant ceremony at Mount Sinai. We, of course, are not under the terms of that old covenant. The old covenant has been replaced by the new, but the principle is still the same. The terms of the New Tes- uh, New Covenant promise to write God's laws on our hearts. In saying yes to the Savior, we are yielding to him the obedience of faith, as Paul would express it in his epistle to the Romans. The gospel is made known for the obedience of all nations. We preach to the unconverted not just faith, we preach them a gospel that invites their obedience to the gospel. And when a new convert for the first time, or old converts for the millionth time, take the cup at the Lord's Supper, whether their hearts are overflowing with worship and praise or not, what they are doing is to say, yes, Lord, I take from you the cup of your new covenant, by which you undertake to write your laws on my heart and on my mind. Elect unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. An allusion then. But because it is an implicit and not an explicit allusion, it is an allusion you could so very easily miss unless you were conversant with the Old Testament history. Let me take now briefly a more extended example. I mentioned it to some of you last week, and I will not, uh, uh, weary you to excess, lest your heart should fail you altogether with sheer boredom. But some of you weren't here, so let me just call your attention to this particular example of an implicit allusion, indeed a whole series of implicit allusions, such as you find in the gospel by John, where John sometimes explicitly, but more often than not implicitly, alludes to the book of Exodus and the story that book has to tell. Exodus informs us, of course, of the country of Egypt in which Israel lived, in which they had now become serfs and slaves. That country was presided over by a prince by the name of Pharaoh. And when he enslaved the children of Israel and made their life miserable by hard labor, God eventually heard their cry and sent Moses to deliver them. And you will notice that that word sent is not a word that I have just invented to describe the situation. It is the issue, uh, that is explicitly made in the book of Exodus. Come now, and I will send you to Pharaoh, says God to Moses. And Moses subsequently asked, uh, God, he says, if I, if I go and say, uh, that you have sent me, if I go and say to the Israelites you have sent me, and they say, well, who is the name, what is the name of this God? What is the name of the God who has sent me, please, Lord? Moses is the sent one of God. And, uh, as I have just indicated, when he comes to the Israelites and they ask, well, now who is this God that has sent you? Moses is able to declare the name of God. Says God, you shall say to them, I am that I am hath sent me. Declaring the name of God. Moses also asked God at the burning bush, Lord, says he, if I come to them and they don't believe me, what shall I do? And God gives him a number of signs to do, so that the Israelites may believe him. If they don't believe the first sign, says God, well, do another one. And if they don't believe the second one, well, here's a third one you could do. Signs given to Moses so that the Israelites may believe that Moses has been sent by God to them. Moses eventually taught Israel to keep the Passover. And when they got out of Egypt and were going through the wilderness, Exodus tells us how God rained manna down from heaven daily in order to support, uh, his people through their wilderness journey. We need go no further. When we come to the Gospel of John, we may notice a number of things which, when read in the light of the Exodus story, become clearly allusions, implicit allusions to the book of Exodus. John is the gospel that records our Lord's teaching about the world in a way that none of the other gospel writers do, particularly towards the end of the gospel, this word is to be found on the lips of our Lord, and with it a title of the devil that is found only in John amongst the gospel writers. Our Lord refers to the devil as the prince of this world. The prince of this world cometh, says he, and hath nothing in me. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. In prayer to his father, he remarks that his disciples, whom God has given him, are not of the world, but I have chosen them and taken them out of the world. Further, in the gospel by John, our Lord is specifically described as the sent one. If he called them gods to whom the word of God came, says our Lord, as recorded in chapter ten, how say you of him whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world, thou blasphemest, because I say, I and the Father are one. Christ is the sent one. It is such a distinctive title of his in the gospel by John, that when John records the miracle of the giving of sight to the man born blind in chapter nine, who you rema- you may remember was sent to the pool of Siloam to wash and came seeing, John stays in his narrative a moment and says, pool of Siloam. You'll remember, gentlemen, won't you, what Siloah means, Shiloach in Hebrew. It means sent, S-E-N-T, that sent. And passes by rapidly, leaving you to work out why on earth he stopped to make that remark, and why the name of the pool, the sent one, is relevant to the story he's telling you. It is, of course, a title of our Lord. In his prayer to our Father, to his Father, our Lord observes, I have made known to them thy name, and I will make it known. The love wherewith thou loves me may be in them, and I in them. Every Sunday school scholar knows that the Gospel of John contains a number of signs with the explicit, uh, purpose, these signs are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. When it comes to the record of our Lord's sufferings at Calvary, it is John and only John who recalls the Passover regulation that no bone of the Passover lamb should be broken. And he testifies to us that although the Roman soldiers came with the intention of breaking our Lord's bones, they suddenly desisted, they break not his bones, for the scripture said, no bone of him shall be broken. John is likewise the gospel where our Lord makes explicit mention of the manna that came down from heaven, saying that it was his father that sent the manna down from heaven upon the Israelites, then proceeding to liken himself to the manna, and then contrasting himself with the manna. I am the bread that came down from heaven. I am not only the bread of life, but the living bread. The Israelites ate the manna in the wilderness, but they subsequently died for good as the manna was, angels' food according to the Psalms, good as the manna was, it wasn't living bread, any more than the bread we eat at our tables is alive. The difference between the manna and our Lord was that he was not only the bread of life, he was living. And all who believe him and receive him such that he enters in, have within them living bread, the very living Lord himself, and he shall never perish, gentlemen. I have to remind you of that. So then, a whole set of parallels between the fourth gospel and the Book of Exodus. If I say again, if as a new convert you were reading the Gospel of John, you would not perhaps perceive that these parallels existed, and that would be no great disaster, of course. You could easily get the meaning of the Gospel of John without seeing these parallels. Why should we bother to search them out? Well, I don't know, gentlemen, what your attitude to God's word is. I worked, I'm not a theologian, as you've long since perceived. I worked in, uh, the classical department. I taught Greek and Latin, ancient philosophy from a historical point of view. I had colleagues who were experts in Byzantine Greek literature. It was their glory and delight in their period of literature to search out allusions to and parallels with the older classical Greek literature. They took delight in it. Of course, we mustn't be mere theorists when it comes to scripture, m- m- must we? Why on earth shouldn't we delight in tracing the allusions of the New Testament back to the old? Is there any vast sin in listening to God's conversation intelligently? One of the first things that we are to add in the power of our faith, gentlemen, is knowledge. Don't be ashamed of adding it. For when God speaks, if we listen rightly, it is not mere knowledge, it's knowledge of God. There are many ways of getting to know God, I know. One of the most direct is listening to his conversation, and what delightful conversation is his. Can't be anything sinful in it. We're going to spend rather a long time in heaven, I gather. And a great part of the entertainment, gentlemen, will be listening to God's conversation. But of course it has deeper purposes, has it not? Allow me to remind you again of one of the functions of Old Testament pictures. They are to be thought models to help us analyze profound spiritual concepts and ideas. You might well ask yourself, if you were simply reading the Gospel of John, what has this business of declaring the name of God got to do with delivering people from the world? I do not know, gentlemen, whether you have ever faced the practical situation when you have decided that the congregation to whom you minister is perhaps taken up a little bit too much with worldliness. So what is worldliness anyway? How would you define worldliness? I was brought up in a community, God, I bless God for their memory, who were keen to love the Lord and to be unworldly. I think perhaps, looking back, they concentrated a little bit too much on the color of women's stockings. They'll say, in my youth, all women wore black or woolen stockings. Then fashions changed, and the ladies started to wear these sort of, um, I don't know what you call them, a sort of see-through stocking things of a, of a lighter shade. And the old, the bearded brethren stroked their beards and said this was very worthy. Fancy a lady coming to the Lord's Supper in these sort of biscuit colored see-through stockings. Shocking, they said. Worldly in extreme. But by and large, uh, the fashion took on, and black woolen stockings were almost impossible to get, so all the dear ladies, even the senior ladies, came to the Lord's Supper in these bis- biscuit color see-through stockings. Until the fashions changed again, you'll say, or at least they did in London, where fashions start, and it became the fashionable thing to wear black stockings. Now, we in our country town were always behind the times, but one Sunday morning I vividly remember there came to our church a young mother of a thing, and she was wearing black stockings. Oh, how worldly, said the elders. When all the other sisters were wearing the biscuit colored see-through stockings. It becomes a little difficult to define worldliness if you insist on defining it in terms of the color of the stockings that women wear. That is not to say that Christian women and Christian gentlemen, for that matter, should be careless about the way they dress. If we're to be sensitive to the Lord's will, we should be sensitive to it in small things as well as in greater things. The color of stockings cannot be the essence of worldliness, can it? And how do you describe worldliness to your younger generation so that you can help them to avoid it? What is worldliness? We're prepared to follow the allusions in John back to Exodus. Where the prince of this world is matched by the Pharaoh of Egypt. You will have a thought model designed and, uh, recorded by God in his word, in order for us to analyze and perceive one aspect of worldliness from which God's people need to be delivered. What that aspect is, I must not, I must not yield to temptation and try and describe here. But I do like to stress that in seeing these implicit allusions to Old Testament, we are not just engaging in dilatante literary exercise. We are to profit from the wisdom of God's inspiration and use these Old Testament pictures as thought models to think with. Similarly, you may put yourself the practical problem, right, if we have, uh, got some concept now of this particular aspect of worldliness. What has declaring the name of God got to do with delivering people from worldliness? Osei comes now to exceedingly practical matters, doesn't he? I suppose it is good to stand up before a Christian congregation and berate them uphill and down dale for their worldliness and exhort them to have finished with worldliness. That is necessary on time. It's not the only tactic, perhaps not the best tactic. If the prince of this world has allured the hearts of the believers so that instead of loving the Father, they are now engrossed in loving the world. How will you correct this misdirection of their love and affection and bring back their love and affection from the temporary passing things of this evanescent world? How will you bring it back to love the Father and thus defeat the strategies of the prince of this world? Will not bring back the love of God's people to love the Father simply by stern ex- exhortations or denunciation. Our Lord did it by declaring the name of the Father, and all the wonder of the glory of God and his character, and so filling the hearts of his people with the glory of the wonder of the Father, that their affections were drawn out to him, and by that same token, their love of the world diminished. And that, gentlemen, if I may say so as one preacher to another, is a far more difficult thing to do than just get up on your hind legs and denounce worldliness. Isn't it? Be practical, they say. Oh yes, I know. But here's a soldier at the front in the First World War, in the mud of the trenches. And he gets a parcel from home, and in the parcel is a tin of cocoa and a love letter from his wife. Well, the old tin of cocoa will help him in the mud, to strengthen him and comfort him and make him fit for the ensuing battle. But what will he fight for? The thought of a woman at home that loves him still and is being faithful to him in spite of all competitors that might be on the scene. He'll die, gentlemen, with a love letter in his pocket rather than the tin of cocoa. And if we will help ourselves and help our b- our brethren and sisters, not to love the world, but to love the Father, it means that by God's grace we've got to know the Father. And it's not impractical to spend a great deal of time making known the name of the Father in all its wonder, that his people might fall in love again with God. Uh, so much, so, so much then for this matter of implicit illusion. They are always worth looking out for, and when you've found them, by God's grace, use them as God intended we should. Now I want to go to one other matter that often comes up when people discuss this, uh, uh, uh, use of the Old Testament. The critics will tell us that, uh, one of the bad things about typology is that it neglects the literal meaning of the Old Testament passage concerned. Treats it as though it were not historical, but treats it as though it were an allegory. And imposes on it this allegorical meaning to the complete exclusion of the literal historical meaning. And if that is what typology does, well, typology must be a very bad thing, surely, we all agree. The answer to it is, of course, that true interpretation of the Old Testament does not exclude the primary historical meaning of the passage. But on the other hand, if we start with the original historical literal meaning of the passage, that will not automatically exclude the possibility that the original historical story carries with it higher levels of meaning beyond the literal and historical. I know that that is anathema also to some critics. The Bible, they say, has only one meaning, full stop. And they say it is a dangerous thing to suppose that a passage might, uh, convey two or three levels of meaning. Some s- make a distinction there and say there's only one meaning, but, uh, many levels of significance. All right, I shall not quarrel about terms, but I want now to refer to a very well-known Old Testament story by way of illustration of the principles involved. I refer to the story of Abram's sacrifice of Isaac on Mount Moriah, which by generation of generations of people has been taken to be a type of the sacrifice of Christ. They have enjoyed the images of thought here of Abraham the father walking together with his loved son to the place of sacrifice. They have seen in it foreshadowings of that great sacrifice at Calvary, when the Father walked with the Son to the place of the consummation of his obedience unto death. But others have risen up to say that that is all false, that is merely imagination. The Old Testament story of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac was never intended to be a type of the sacrifice of our Lord, the giving of the Son by the Father. And they say that this typological use of the passage has destroyed the literal meaning and the lesson that rests on that literal meaning. And that is a very bad thing if a, if typology goes and does that. Well, what was the, uh, uh, what is the lesson to be taken from the literal meaning? Well, they say, of course, the story tells you it came to pass after these things that God did test Abraham. The story of Mount Moriah is a story of God's testing of Abram's faith. And it is further, as James points out, the testing of Abram's faith that brought him to justify his profession of faith by his works. Was not our father Abram justified by his works when he offered up Isaac upon the altar? There, they say, is the lesson. That is the lesson that you should be preaching when you sort of preach the story of Mount Moriah, not all this typological stuff. You ought to be preaching the plain lesson that rests on the historical text that Abraham was tested, was required to justify his faith by his works, and he did that by offering his son upon the altar. So now, gentlemen, what do we do? Well, first of all, of course, we shall accept the plain, straightforward, basic, uh, lesson of the passage. It is indeed rightly used by James as an example of justification by works. Well, for myself, I think, if James will excuse me, I shall want to go back a little bit further even than James and observe the context of this story in the book of Genesis itself. For it is context, surely, that determines thought flow and therefore interpretation. And the context of the offering of Isaac upon the altar is as follows. Let's start in chapter twenty one. First, the story of the birth of Isaac according to God's promise. And with the birth of Isaac, Sarah's concern for her son and his well-being. And when she saw Ishmael mocking her son, she asked Abraham, she called on Abraham to cast out the bondwoman and her son. For the son of the bondwoman shall not inherit with my son, the freeborn son. She was concerned for her son's security of inheritance. Have this older chap, the son of the slave around, might endanger the security of the inheritance of Isaac. And motherlike, she was concerned with the security of inheritance for her own son, and Ishmael had to be cast out. Thus far, the first half of chapter twenty one. And the second half of chapter twenty one is the story of the Philistine king Abimelech. And he came to Abraham on one occasion and spoke with Abraham, Genesis twenty one twenty two, saying, God is with thee in all that thou doest. Now therefore swear unto me here by God that thou wilt not deal falsely with me, nor with my son, nor with my son's son. For according to the kindness that I have done unto thee, thou shalt do unto me and to the land wherein thou hast sojourned. So if the first part of the chapter was, was about Sarah's concern for her son, the second half is about the concern of the Philistine king for his. And if you had been the Philistine king, you might have grown concerned as you saw the great, the great powerful sheikh, Abraham, living and traveling in your part of the world. The Philistines lived in cities. Abraham was a nomad sheikh, but Abraham was so powerful he had an army of eight hundred servants that he could equip to fight as an army and take on a whole batch of kings and overcome them. And if you were a Philistine, you would be concerned as you saw this exceedingly powerful sheikh moving around in your lo- locality. You would fear the day when this mighty sheikh might rise up, perhaps when you had gone, and begin to attack your son and rob him of his wealth and his power. So here comes a father to Abram about his son, worried about the security of his son, and seeking to make a covenant with Abram and get Abram to make a covenant with him that he would respect the Philistine son and do nothing to endanger his security. The best the Philistine king knew how to do was to call upon Abram to swear an oath by his God that he would respect the security of the Philistine's son. So Abram swore an oath. And as a result, Joel say, when he had sworn an oath, verse thirty one, called the name of that place Beersheva, the well of the oath. And Abram, says verse thirty three, planted a tamarisk tree in Beersheva and called there on the name of the Lord, the everlasting God. He planted a tree by the well of the oath. Notice then, if you will, the flow of thought between these incidents, Sarah and her son and the question of his security, and Philistine and his son and the question of his security, and now the new element, the swearing of the oath, and the well called the well of the oath, and the fact that Abraham is living by the well of the oath. You would have to be a little dense, and none of you are that, gentlemen. You would have to be a little dense to fail to see that when you come to the great climax and ending of the next story, we are told, verse nineteen of chapter twenty two, so Abraham returned and his young men, and they rose up and went together to the well of the oath. And Abram dwelt at the well of the oath. Only now, of course, the oath that Abram has in mind is not just the original oath that he swore in the name of God for the benefit of the Philistine king. The oath concerned is the oath that Abraham has just heard the very angel of the Lord pronounce out of heaven. By myself have I sworn that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thee. And this oath of God is about what? Well, the story of Genesis twenty two is about Abraham and his son. All of you cannot escape the flow of thought. Sarah and her son, the Philistine king and his son, and now Abram and his son. And similarly, the question of security. Where shall Abram find security for himself and for his son and all the succeeding generations? Finds it at last in this glorious oath of God, sworn to him on Mount Moriah, secure. Just now, let us take a test from the New Testament. There is a place in the New Testament, outside the Epistle of James, actually, where the writer makes reference to this story in Genesis twenty two. It is the epistle to the Hebrews in chapter six, is it not? God, being minded to show more abundantly unto the heirs of the promise the immutability of his counsel, interposed with an oath, that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us, which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast. Gentlemen, do tell me, what is the point of Hebrews six where it is referring to the story of Mount Moriah? Tells you itself. Mount Moriah is a lesson in security, which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, entereth into that which is within the veil. And the writer to the Hebrews is concerned to point out at what point in his experience Abram received this oath, and with it this tremendous assurance. The oath came not at the beginning of his career in Genesis fifteen six. the oath came at the climax in Genesis twenty two. and having endured and demonstrated his faith to be genuine by his works, Abram received this oath of confirmation. The writer is urging the Hebrew believers thus themselves to endure, to demonstrate by their works that their faith is genuine, and thus, like Abraham, to receive the very security of God's oath in their hearts, an oath likened to an anchor. So now, we've combined two things, haven't we? James is right, of course. You might have known that gentleman to start with. Uh, this is the story of Abrams being tested and his demonstration of his faith by his works. But the context of Genesis, and now the epistle to the Hebrews chapter six is pointing out that this is the path to security. Yes, but now we come to the story itself. Before we do that, I better inquire of the timekeepers whether I have many more minutes left. I'm fine right now, that's unusual. So good, the sun is shining, that's unusual too. This is a day of unusual things. Let's come back to the story in Genesis twenty two. This is Abram going up the mountain to be tested, to see whether he will, by his works, justify his faith. And what is the test? The test is that he is being asked to surrender Isaac. To demonstrate that his faith is in God and God only. Now there's a problem. In Genesis fifteen, Abraham was justified by faith when he believed God that God would give him a son, and through that son, a multitude of descendants. And the gift of a son was a gift of God's unconditional grace, a free gift, independent of Abraham's works. Listen how Paul deals with the topic through many of his epistles. It was a gift. It wasn't a, a, a, an offer that God made that Abram had to cash in upon by doing the necessary works. Indeed, that idea was a mistake. Sarah entertained it at one stage, and so did Abram, and God had to cancel it all out. When I prof- promised you a son, said God to Abram, I was not giving you an exhortation, try and produce one, and I'll give you a little help. It was a genuine promise, independent of works. God, by a miracle, gave him a son. A free gift, like the gift of salvation. But now Abram is called upon to justify his faith by his work. Give me back the son, says God. Oh dear. What a test. See whether the man's faith was in God and God only. Abraham started out. As they walked together, Isaac poignantly asked the question, my father, here is wood, here is fire, where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said the best he knew how to say, what could he tell the boy? God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering. So they walked until the distant pinnacle of the mountain dissolved into an altar built with Abram's own hand. And no lamb came by. No apparent provision. Must Isaac then be the lamb, be offered up. And Abram took his son and bound him and put him on the altar, and he raised the knife. Really? Was God, in the interest of testing Abram's faith, going to take away the free gift that he had originally given him? And so should it turn out to be that the free gift wasn't a free gift after all. Never, gentlemen. The faith had to be tested. Abram had to show by his works that his faith was real. When it came to the point that Abram r- raised the knife, and had he proceeded another foot, the free gift that God had given him would have been removed. Then the angel of the Lord himself interposed, called out of heaven, said, Abram, lay not thine hand upon the child, because now I know that thou fearest me. God now had the evidence that he demanded, that Abram's faith was genuine, and it's all that God demanded. And when the point came that if Abram would have proceeded, it would have turned justification by faith and the gift thereby into a nothing and removed the gift. God intervened. And tell me what happened now. You say the sacrifice was aborted and abandoned. No, it wasn't. No, no. The sacrifice continued. It had to be taken to its limit. But instead of the sacrifice of Isaac being taken to its limit, Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw a ram caught by a thicket in its horn. Abraham ran and took the ram and finished and consummated his sacrifice by offering the ram in the place of Isaac. The shortfall, the necessary shortfall, was made good by the substitute. And Abraham's sacrifice, therefore, brought to its consummation, not in Isaac, but in the ram. And what the significance of it, gentlemen? Abram named the place. Ah yes, what did he name the place? Because if you listen to the name that God gave it, uh, that Abram gave it, you will perceive the chief significance of the whole event as Abram saw it. And Abram named the place thereof, the place of my greatest experience of devotion to God. The place where I triumphed in faith and was an overcomer. Nonsense. And he called it. Or the name of the place, Jehovah-Jaheb, the Lord will see, and the Lord will provide. Abraham is not talking about his own sacrifice. Not boasting in his own works and what he did. Not the place where my faith triumphs, but the place where God provides the substitute that made good the shortfall and allowed Isaac to live. Jehovah Jireh. In the mount of the Lord it shall be seen. What a marvelous place for this substitute to occur. It occurs in the process of Abram's practical testing in life to see whether by his works he can show his faith is genuine. But when the point came that had the testing proceeded further with Abraham, it would have removed the free gift that God had originally given. And the shortfall of the sacrifice was made up by the substitution of the lamb. Now, gentlemen, what will you do? Will you be a literalist here? And the whole message is this, that God, having asked the sacrifice, stopped it and then was content with a, with a little lamb, with a little ram. Was God Almighty content that Abram's great sacrifice should be consummated by just a animal that didn't know what was happening? Your Christian instinct will forbid you doing that. It will say, no, no, no, no. If this is a story, a momentous story of this celebrated event in history, that God provided the ram to cover the shortfall, that the sacrifice of obedience might be complete. That surely is a picture of another land. When our obedience was incomplete, as it must be for the very best of us, this side of glory, another lamb that God provided to take our place and consummate the sacrifice of devotion. All my brothers, it has a very powerful practical point. We are required of God Almighty himself to provide evidence that our faith is genuine. Not merely that, uh, the world has a right to see that our faith is genuine by our works. It's God himself that demands to see the evidence. The angel of the Lord called out of heaven, not now Sarah knows or the Philistines know, now I know you fear me, because you have not withheld your son from me. Who say that God knew beforehand that Abram was loyal. Well, so he did, by his foreknowledge. There are different kinds of knowledge, you know. I know that it is very cold at the North Pole. I know it because I've read it in books. I know it because I can imagine it, but I don't know it by ever having felt it. I don't know it by the knowledge of experience. God, who knows all things in advance by his foreknowledge, is not content to know things by foreknowledge. He demands to know things by actual experience. Calls upon us to supply the evidence that our faith is genuine. Be a serious thing if the evidence weren't there, wouldn't it? What do you say to that, my brother? If the Lord Jesus himself comes to you and says, my good man, as he said to Peter, do you really love me? What would you say? Lord, you... you know I love you, Lord. That denial yesterday, oh, what a terrible thing it was. My wretched inconsistency. But Lord, you know my heart. You know I love you. Suppose the Lord says, and where are your works, my good men? What would you say? Lord, my works are marvelous, actually. I was totting them up myself the other day, and I thought I had a few too many, actually. I- I made, uh, somewhat less I could have scored a hundred um percent. Uh, my works are pretty decent than what might you'd be thinking about them, Lord. You wouldn't, would you? You would have said, Lord, I, by your grace, I, I have endeavored in the trials of life. Demonstrate my willingness to sacrifice for you all I have. Lord, if you're thinking about my works, they come short, don't they? Does that mean ultimately, therefore, because the evidence of my works necessarily comes short, then the free gift of salvation that I was originally given must be taken away? Oh, thank God, no. There is a substitute, and in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen. Substitute God himself has provided to carry the shortfall and to complete the sacrifice. By the one man's obedience Obedient. shall Shall the the many be constituted right. We started, gentlemen, with the plain straight meaning of the context, the question of security for some. We noticed the recurrence of the biggest security that men on earth know, the oath of God himself. We saw how both those ideas carried on into chapter twenty two. Security for the son. Abram under test. How he obtained the ultimate security, the very oath of God. I hope you won't accuse me now of neglecting the straight historical sense of the passage. Nor am I about to cross it out when I say that behind the offering of Isaac upon the altar, there looms another and a bigger story and a higher level of significance. Out of the very fact that to cover the shortfall of Abraham's sacrifice, God himself provided the ram as a substitute, and the sacrifice was completed. And Abram celebrated it not as a triumph of his faith, but as a wonder of God's provision in that very situation of trial. But if you think of God providing a substitute, that shall be seen and remembered every time you climb Moriah's mount, the mount of the Lord it shall be seen. Your thoughts will be flying to another scene altogether, when God himself provided the lamb. And who did the lamb turn out to be? Another son of another father who provided for us sinners, walked the whole way, and was offered on the altar. There was no angelic hand that stayed the sacrifice, but it was completed to its last drop of Are obliques. obedience. It is not magical. It is not bringing rabbits out of any hats. It is a sheer wonder of God's word. God's word is multidimensional in its significance. And in my more irritated moments, I talk of some expositors, but that's an unchristian thing to do, isn't it? I talk of the most modern, uh, uh, exegetical flat earthers. I insist there's only one dimension. Well, God bless that there is one dimension, so that's good. But God's word, like his universe, is not one dimension, gentlemen. It's multi-dimensional. If you put a coin on the table and photograph it with an ordinary camera, you'll get a, a one-dimensional image, by and large. If you put the old coin there, or if you like a bottle, and you put on it a split laser beam, you'll get not a one-dimensional image, you'll get a hologram. You'll be able to see the front and the back simultaneously. This is God's inspired word, given by inspiration of God. When God, by his Holy Spirit, shines on it, what you get, gentlemen, is not a one-dimensional image. You get a multi-dimensional image. None of it is arbitrary. It all inheres in the basic principles of the original historical story. Praise God for the sheer wonder of his work. You will say, gentlemen, we are all different, aren't we? But if you would allow an old man to indulge in confession, would you know the thing that has saved me by God's grace, during my life? You see, I have not been tempted like some, and I speak with bated breath, who knows I might be. To extravagant, iniquitous dealings in stocks and shares on the market in order to build a better hope and have an ocean going off or something. That isn't where the battle has lain for me. The battle in my life has been, is this God's word? And is the salvation that therein is recorded real? Or is the whole thing a psychological self-deception? The thing by which God has kept to me is not the exhortation of my fellow believers to live as I ought. God knows I need it. Pray let them never cease, for I'm an impossible old theorist, and I need constantly to be reminded to behave as I should. But the thing has kept me a Christian at all, the way God has from time to time, in my small capacity, shown me the sheer wonder of his word, until I say no human author could have written it. This must be of God. Like when you hold up a British banknote to the light of day, you'll see the watermark inside the paper. So when God's Holy Spirit shines through his inspired word, you see the watermark of divine inspiration, and one's faith is secured, without which it would be useless to go on and talk of practical and applied Christianity. Remember that little thing, gentlemen, in your teaching and preaching. There are occasionally some, sometimes in your audience, men and women under trial, and they wonder whether there's anything in Christianity or whether it's simply a story like Red Riding Hood that grandmothers tell to little children to quieten their fears when they go to bed at night. Sometimes, alas, it is treated like in so-called preaching. And in your, in your audience, there could be men and women whose faith is sorely tested. Is there anything in the business at all? Or is it a lot of myths? And anything that you, by God's grace, can do to show them the wonder of God's word, that this is the very mind of God. That is a marvelous thing you can do. Secure the faith of men and women who are under intellectual doubt, difficulty, and bonfire. Well, we've spent a lot of time on that. Forgive me for my lack of due sense of proportion. Now, these are important principles, Jim. We are about to launch again on the study of judgment, and we shall want to know what authority we have for interpreting the book of Judges, and how should we rightly do it, so that it should not be merely an historical account of far gone dead, but a lesson that, by God's inspiration, speaks to us in ours and is to be profited from and applied in our daily. Let's take our break now.