A Tested Faith

How far would you go to prove your willingness to obey God. Abraham went as far as it may be possible to go when commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac, the son of promise, the sun, through whom the Messiah was to come in a picture that foreshadowed the sacrifice of Jesus. This great test of faith marked the high point in the life of this great patriarch stay with us from Chicago. This is The Moody Church. Our weekly service of worship and teaching with pastor Erwin Blitzer today. Dr. Luther concludes his series on strength for the journey taken your next steps with God. A study in the life of Abraham. Later in our broadcast will see Abraham display a contested faith pastor Blitzer comes now to open our service. I invite you to take your hymnal in turn to number 17 Jesus what a friend of sinners.

Our great Savior number 17 are scripture reading today is by Eric Noss. Eric is an intern here at the church is a student at Trinity International University and some of you may recognize his last name. He is the father. Yes of little Rebecca, but the husband of Abby Noss who is at the director of our children's ministry, so he will be reading and then be prepared for 705. It is well with my soul.

And once we stand to sing will continue to stand until It Is Well with My Soul. All of Us Know That around the World. There Are Many People in the Body of Christ to Our Experiencing Suffering. Today We Want to Identify with the Persecuted Church, Even As We Meet Together. There Are Many of Our Brothers and Sisters Who Are in Jails, Many of Them Have Been Killed If Families Have Been Separated Simply Because They Love the Gospel. I Think It's Important That We As a Congregation in America Feel the Pain and the Hurt of Those Who Belong to Us. Thanks to Jesus. So Turn Now in Your Hymnal to Number 17.

Even As We Sing a Song That Affirms Jesus As the Savior of the World. I Shall Pray and Then We Shall Stand to Sing Our Father. We Do Praise Your Name Today That You Are a Lover of Sinners, We Thank You Today That You Have a Message That Is to Go to the World.

It's Effective in America and Canada and All the Nations of the Earth.

Even Those Who Suffer Mightily Because of Their Faith.

Today We Pray That We Might Honor Him and Then Remember Those Old Lord God Today Do Not Have the Same Privileges That We Do We Ask in Jesus Name, Amen. If You're Reading This Morning Is from Second Corinthians 4. Please Join Me in the Bold Print Therefore, Having This Ministry by the Mercy of God, We Do Not Lose Heart.

But We Have Renounced Disgraceful, Underhanded Ways.

We Refuse to Practice Cunning or to Tamper with God's Word, but by the Open Statement of the Truth We Would Commend Ourselves to Everyone's Conscience in the Sight of God. For What We Proclaim Is Not Ourselves, but Jesus Christ As Lord, but We Have This Treasure in Jars of Clay to Show That the Surpassing Power Belongs to God and Not to Us. We Are Afflicted in Every Way, but Not Crushed, Perplexed, but Not Driven to Despair Persecuted, but Not Forsaken, Struck down, but Not Destroyed, Always Carrying in the Body the Death of Jesus, so That the Life of Jesus May Also Be Manifested in Our Bodies, so We Do Not Lose Heart. Though Our Outer Nature Is Wasting Away Our Inner Nature Is Being Renewed Day by Day for This Slight Momentary Affliction Is Preparing Us for an Eternal Weight of Glory beyond All Comparison. As We Look Not to the Things That Are Seen but to the Things That Are Unseen for the Things That Are Seen Are Transient, but the Things That Are Unseen Are Eternal. Amen. In A Few Moments the Choir Is Going to Sing the Song We Are Not Alone and How Wonderful It Is That Thanks to Jesus We Are Not the Text Says in the Book of Matthew. Now the 11 Disciples Went to Galilee, to the Mountain to Which Jesus Had Directed Them and When They Saw Him They Worshiped Him, but Some Doubted. And Jesus Came and Said to Them All Authority in Heaven and on Earth Has Been Given to Me. Go Therefore and Make Disciples of All Nations, Baptizing Them in the Name of the Father of the Son and the Holy Spirit, Teaching Them to Observe All That I Commanded You. And Behold I Am with You Always, Even to the End of the Age. Thankfully We Are Not Alone in the Question before Us Is This How Much Is a Man Willing to Give to God, to What Extent Is He Willing to Be Obedient No Matter What God Asks Him to Do and What Are the Rewards of That Kind of Obedience. A Story Is the 22nd Chapter the Book of Genesis, Abraham's Willingness to Sacrifice Isaac to Chapter That Has Been a Problem for Some People.

I Suppose All of Us at Times and Wondered How God Could Ask a Man to Do That. Soren Kierkegaard, the Melancholic Gain of Another Century, Wrote a Book about the Struggle That He Had with Abraham Being Willing to Sacrifice His Son and Kierkegaard Concluded That Sometimes God Asks Us to Do the Absurd.

Kierkegaard I Think Understood the Problem of the Passage, but He Came up with the Wrong Solution You Can't Understand This Passage Unless You Realize That It Took Place in the Flow of Redemptive History and Therefore the Whole Issue of the Seed Which Has Plagued Abraham for Years Comes into Focus. This Happens to Be the 10th and Last Messages on the Series That We've Done on Abraham. We Must Also Realize That at This Time the 10 Commandments Had Not Been Given Child Sacrifice Was Common among the Pagans, God Would Not Have Violated a Command after He Had Given It. And so When Abraham Heard the Voice of God. He Heard It Correctly and Believe That He Had Heard It Correctly and Acted on It. But the Most Important Part of the Story Is to Realize That God Did Not Allow Him to Sacrifice His Son Is Not the Kind of a God That We Serve. But God Wanted to Come up with an Analogy Wanted to Come up with a Tight As the Word Is Sometimes Used of the Relationship between Hidden Himself and His Own Son. And This Is the Only Way He Could Do It.

Come to Think of It Than to Give Us This Awesome Dramatic Story Most Dramatic Story in All the Bible with the Exception of the Crucifixion, and so with That Background Were Going to Begin in Genesis Chapter 22 and That the Outline That I'm Using May Have Come My Predecessor Pastor Wears a Years Ago I Heard Him Speak on This and I Took down His Outline and Perhaps This Is His.

I'm Not Sure but It's Possible. But What Would like to Do Is to Look at This Story As If We Were Watching a Video. Now You Know That I Believe in Heaven Were Gonna Watch Video but Not from Blockbuster.

I Can Assure You, Not Those They Maybe Watch Somewhere Else but Not in Heaven but in Heaven I Think Were Going to See the Dramatic Stories That We Read about in the Bible. The Crossing of the Red Sea and the Sacrifice the Willingness of a Man to Sacrifice His Son for God. I'd like to Be Able to See Some and so What Were Going to Do Is to Move through the Passage of Looking at the Various Aspects of It, and Considering Is Dramatic, Heartfelt Story.

First of All, the Greatest Test. The Greatest Test, God Comes to Abraham and Devon. He Says That Here I Am, Take Your Son, Your Only Son Isaac, Whom You Love, Go to the Land of Moriah, and Offer Him There As a Burnt Offering on One of the Mountains of Which I Shall Tell You Look Take Your Son, Whom You Love, Lord, I Have Two Sons.

I Got Ishmael I Don't Want Ishmael. I Want Isaac the One You Love.

Take Him Take Your Most Precious Son. The Bible Says in Verse One God Did Test Abraham. It Was First of All a Test of Love Because the Question That Had to Be Resolved. Was This Did Abraham Love God More Than He Loved Isaac. Could It Be That This Boy Who Was the Child of Promise, Who Was Given to Sarah at an Old Age. Could It Be That This Boy Had so Embedded Himself into the Old Man's Soul That This Boy Amen More to Abraham Than God Was That Possible. That's What the Test Is Going to Show Whether That Happened or Not, Was a Test of Love When Goddesses Take the One That You Love. It Was As If God Was Taking a Knife, Putting It into Abraham's Heart and Giving It 1/2 Turn the One You Love. Take Him. It Was a Test of Love. It Was Also a Test of Trust God.

After All, You're the One Who Gave Him to Me. He Is the Child of Promise. He's the One That We Have Waited Years to Have If He Is Dead.

How Are You Going to Raise Seed and Fulfill Your Promises. Think Abraham Was Tempted to Disobey. I'm Sure He Was Tempted to Disobey God. How Are You Going to Fulfill Your Promises.

If He's Dead, but Furthermore, Why Did You Give Him to Me in the First Place and Then Take Him Away Hundreds of Parents.

Listening to This Message of Asked That Question of God. Many Times Why Even Bother Giving Me This Little Boy Dies after a Month, Why Give Us a Child of You Know That the Child Is Going to Have Some Disabilities and That the Child Is Not Going to Live. Why Give and Then Take Away That's the Dagger That Was in Abraham's Heart. Yes, Abraham Was Tempted to Disobey Two Questions Always Come up in the Trials That God Always Number One. How Much Do You Love Me, and Number Two How Much Do You Trust Me.

Those Are the Two Questions Will Never Be Asked to Do What Abraham Was Asked to Do Today.

You See, If You Hear a Voice Telling You to Kill Your Child.

You Know That It Is the Voice of the Devil. It Is Never, Never, Never, the Voice of God.

This Was a Situation That I Already Explained That Was Very Unique and of Course the Murder If That's What We Call It Never Happened. But God Does Ask Us This Question, Do I Mean More to You Than Your Relatives Than Your Friends and Your Children.

Jesus Says He Who Loves Father or Mother More Than Me Is Not Worthy of Me and He Who Loves Son and Daughter More Than Me Is Not Worried of Me. God Says I Want Your Whole Heart and Even Your Family Has To Be Number Two Is the Greatest Test. Let's Move on to the Greatest Trust. It Says in Verse Three Abraham Arose Early in the Morning, Saddled His Donkey Took His Two Young Men with Him and His Son Isaac and He Cut the Wood for the Burnt Offering, and Arose, and Went to the Place, but God Had Told Him about. He Was on His Way to Mount Moriah about 50 Miles from Beersheba. Some of Us Have Been to Mount Moriah Mount Moriah Is Actually the Place Where Solomon Built His Temple. This Is in Second Chronicles Chapter 3 Verse One and That's Where the Dome of the Rock Is Today When I've Been in the Dome of the Rock.

A Number of Different Times and You See That Big Human Rock and of Course Souvenir Hunters Have Been Chiseled out Parts of It That I Believe Is the Place Where Abraham Offered up Isaac Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock Mount Moriah Second Chronicles Chapter 3 Verse 150 Miles They Now Travel Together in Three Days. Scripture Says Abraham Rose Early Hunting Gift of Obedience, God Had Implanted in His Heart to Think He Told Sarah. I Doubt It. He Knew That This Was Something That He Was Going to Have To Do Alone and He Takes Isaac, and to Young Men and Together They Walked and Even Though Father and Son Are Walking Together. They Are Separated by Breaded Secret. Together They Walked in Every Step That Abraham Takes Another String Breaks in His Heart, and They're on Their Way to That Fateful Journey, and Then They Get to the Base of the Mountain. They Journey Together. From This Point on, Because Abraham Says to the Young Man. He Says I Want You to Stay Here and the Lad and I Are Going to Go Yonder and Worship and Then Were Going to Return Why Did the Two Young Men That Accompanied Them.

Why Did They Have To Stay at the Base of the Hill. Remember, God Wanted a Picture of the Relationship between Himself and His Son. This Is Really a Picture of Calvary.

And When Jesus Went and Died on Calvary. What Happened There Was between Him and His Father Has Secret between the Two of Them That You and I Can Only Ponder and Think about That. We Can Never Understand. We Can Never Get Our Minds around What Happened on Calvary and That's Why Believe That Darkness Covered the Whole Land Because the Transaction Was Being Worked out. When the Son Who Was Perfect Was Suddenly Declared to Be the Most Wicked Evil Criminals of the Universe. He Became Legally Guilty of Murder and Adultery. Legally Guilty of Injustice of Cruelty of the Worst Possible Sort He Became the Sin for Us, the One Who Knew No Sin and What Was Going on There and Calvary Was a Secret between the Father and the Son and No One Could Enter into It. So Abraham Says to the Boys. You Stay Here, the Lad, and I Will Go Yonder and Worship and Who Carried the Wood It's Isaac Because Isaac Represents Jesus Who Carries His Own Cross. But Notice the Text.

Who Is It That Carries the Knife and the Fire It's Abraham That's What It Says Verse Six and Abraham Took the Wood of the Burnt Offering and Laid It on Isaac His Son and He Took in His Hand. The Fire and the Knife and so They Went Both of Them Together Who Killed Jesus Who Killed Jesus.

While the Bible Says in the Book of Acts Wicked Hands Crucified Him, but God Had a Part in It. It Was Part of the Plan of God. And That's Why We Read That Jesus Was Smitten of God, and Afflicted. And the Lord Has Put Him Grief and It Pleased the Lord to Bruise Him. The Father Carries the Knife and the Fire and the Sun Carries the Wood and Together They Marched to the Top of the Mountain. Isaac Asks a Question in Verse Seven He Says Father. Father Says Yeah, Here I Am, and He Said to Behold the Fire in the Wood but Where Is the Lamb for the Burnt Offering the Question That Is Asked from Genesis to the End of the Book of Malachi in the Old Testament Where's the Lamb. Every Time the Israelites Brought an Animal to Be Sacrificed. The Real Question Is Where's the Real Lamb We Got All of These Lambs Here We've Got All of the Sheep. We've Got All of These Goats That Are Being Sacrificed Turtledoves but Where Is the Lamb. The Lamb, and Centuries Later, John The Baptist Stands on the Banks of the Jordan River and Says, As Jesus Is Coming to Him, Behold the Lamb of God Which Takes Away the Sin of the World and Abraham Says God Will Supply for Himself a Lamb and Isn't That What Happened on Calvary. God the Supplied for Himself a Lamb, so That You and I Could Be Redeemed and so Finally We Get to the Top of the Mountain and of the Old Man Begins to Build an Altar Says in Verse Nine Here of Course We Have To Use Our Imaginations.

He Begins by Taking Rocks That Are Furthest Away Because He's Trying to Stall for Time, and He Begins to Build That Crude Altar Stone upon Stone and He Builds up and Then Finally He Has To Reveal to Isaac Isaac You Are the Lamb Did Abraham Weep Course Wept. This Was the Son That He Loved Remember. Could Isaac Have Run Away Absolutely Scholars Debate How Old He Was. But Somewhere between 15 and 20 Easily Good about Run the Old Man Who Is Now 100 Years Old. Actually More Than 100 Years Old so He Could about Running.

He Codified Him Apparently Becomes a Willing Victim Were Reminded of the Words of Jesus. No Man Takes My Life from Me, but I Lay It down.

I Have Power to Lay It down and I Have Power, Bring It to Life Again. But I'm Dying Voluntarily Here. I'm Being Put upon the Altar and That's What Happens in the Life of Isaac and Abraham Is Beginning to Wonder Now, Obviously, As He Began When God Spoke to Him the First Time How in the World Is This Going to Work Because after All, This Is the Boy That God Gave Me. Who Is to Be the Seed of the Nation That Would Eventually Bring about the Fulfillment of the Promises Including the Redeemer Bible Says in the Book of Hebrews and Whenever You Find a New Testament Commentary on the Old Testament Always Go with What the New Testament Writers Said I Very Important. We Can't Improve on the New Testament Says in Hebrews Chapter 11 Verse 19 That by Faith Abraham Was Willing to Offer up Isaac Believing That God Was Even Able to Raise His from Dead, from Whence He Received Them Figuratively Speaking. Remember, There Had Not Been a Resurrection. Now We Look Back and Say Will.

Jesus Was Raised in Is Going to Be a Resurrection, but There Was No Resurrection That Abraham Could Point to. This Is Why He's the Father of Faith. This Is Why When the Bible Speaks about Him. He's Talked about Is a Friend of God Three Times but Also Also Demand That We Are to Ambulate the Man That We Are to Believe Because When He Offered Isaac on the Altar. He Said to the Two Young Men.

Your Member We Are Going to Go to This Mountain, and We Are Going to Worship and Then the Whole Idea Is Clear in the Text We Are Going to Come Back to You Old Man Expected a Resurrection Because God Is God and If Isaac Is to Be the Child the Promise, Isaac Will Be the Child of Promise, Even If Abraham Kills Him Because God Is God and We're Not Well Verse 10 the Angel of the Lord Speaks Notice It Says in Verse 10 That Abraham Reached out His Hand and Took the Knife to Slaughter His Son. But the Angel of the Lord Called to Him from Evidence.

It Abraham, Abraham, and He Said Here I Am, Do Not Lay up Your Hand on the Boy Do Not Do Anything to Him. For Now, I Know That You Fear God, Because You Have Not Withheld Your Son, Your Only Son, from What Is a Man Willing to Do in Obedience to God's Been Proven Some of You Perhaps Have Seen Rembrandt's Picture of This Some Dead like to See the Original Lifts Apparently in St. Petersburg in Russia.

One of the Museums, but You Can See Replicas and in Art Books. You Can See Pictures of Rembrandt's Painting of Abraham and Isaac, and It Is Dramatic yet Just Stare at It for A While Because in the Picture What You Have Is Abraham Already Having His Hand on Isaac's Throat so He Has One Hand like This on the Boy's Throat, Ready to Strike It and His Other Hand Is up like This with a Knife and the Angel of the Lord Wraps His Hand around Abraham's Wrist Don't Do It Abraham Don't I Know How Much You Now. Love and Fear God. That's Where the Analogy Breaks down When You Get to the Cross Because When Jesus Died on the Cross.

There Was No Hand from Heaven, There Was No Rescue from the Cross He Cried up and Said, My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me, and the Father Did Not Come Out Of Heaven and Prevent His Death or Rescue Him. But Jesus Went to the Whole Way You Are Me.

He Died for Sinners.

What a Dramatic Story. We Talked about the Greatest Test. The Greatest Trust, and Now the Greatest Truth in the Greatest Truth Is That God Is Going to Provide for Himself a Sacrifice. Notice in Verse 13 Abraham, Lifted up His Eyes and Looked, and Behold, behind Him Was a Ram Caught in a Thicket by His Horns, Abraham Went and Took the Ram and Offered It up As a Burnt Offering. Instead of His Son. So Abraham Called the Name of That Place. The Lord Will Provide Jehovah Gyro Means the Lord Will Provide As It Is Said to This Day on the Mountain of the Lord Shall Be Provided Literally. The Phrase Means God Will Provide. God Will See to It. Some of You Are Going through a Struggle You're on the Mountain and Who Knows What Surprised God May Have for You That You Don't Know Anything about and You'll Open up Your Eyes and Realize That God Made Provision for You That You Could Not Have Predicted the Lord Will See to It. I Think of the Number of Times in My Life When I've Been in a Predicament Not Knowing What to Do and in the End I Look Back and Say Yeah the Lord Lord Saw to It.

The Lord Provided and so Abraham Takes This Ram and Sacrifices. The RAM in the Place of Isaac, the RAM Is Now at Picture Also of Jesus, You Say Well I Thought You Said That Isaac Was Isaac Is, but Isaac Can Only Take Us That Far. Abraham Was Not Allowed to Kill His Son. He Was Prevented from Doing so so so Isaac the Typology Breaks down after Isaac Is Rescued from the Altar and so in Order to Complete the Picture. God Takes This Ram That Is Caught in the Thicket by It Horns That Abraham Sees Any Kills It, and You'll Notice That the Text Says in the Last Part of Verse 13 He Offered It up As a Burnt Offering.

Instead of His Son. It Is Now a Substitutionary Sacrifice Which Is Exactly What Jesus Was When He Died on the Cross He Died.

The Bible Says He Was Just but He Died for the on Jost. He Died for the Ungodly.

Remember I Told You the Story before but It's It's a Story Love to Tell about a Woman Who Is Very Very Opinionated and Very Opposed to the Gospel.

She Was Open to It, but She Had Her Own Vision As to What the Gospel Should Be and so with a Smile on My Face, and If You Ask a Question like This, Please Always Smile When I Ask a Question like This and Not Smile or If You Do It That Way. You Might Not Be Able to Smile Afterwards but I Said, Would You Consider Yourself to Be Ungodly Are You Kidding Course Not. I'm Not Ungodly I Said You Know That's Really Too Bad. Then Jesus Didn't Die for You Because the Bible Said He Died for the Ungodly. I'm Glad Personally That Jesus Died for the Ungodly. Because I Am Ungodly and I Think in a Moment of Honesty You're Ungodly to and so the Bible Says That Jesus Died, the Just for the Unjust Jehovah Gyro the Lord Will Provide in the Lord Provided for Abraham.

Imagine the New Conception of God. Abraham Had When He Came down from That Mountain Hole We Can Read the Rest of the Story and I Hope You Do about How God Reiterated the Covenant God Says.

Indeed, I'm Going to Bless You and I'm Gonna Bless Your Seed and God Is Going to Pick up Now. Isaac, of Course, Is Alive and He's Going to Become the Father of a Great Nation, and so Forth and and His Whole Conception of God Was Different When He Came down from the Mountain. One of the Reasons I Want to See It on Video As I Just Want to See What the Different Expression When Abraham Went up to the Mountain and As to What He Looked like When He Came down from the Mount Having Proof That He Feared to God, Having Proved That He Loved to God and God Comes to Him in Fresh, Brand-New Ways. One of the Greatest Lessons That We Can Learn from This. First of All Worship Always Involves Sacrifice Worship Always Involves Sacrifice. You'll Notice It Says in Verse Five the Lad, and I Will Go Yonder and Worship and Then Will Come to You If You Say What I Always Thought That Worshiping Was Coming to Church and Singing the Right Hands. Well It Is That If You Come to Moody Church. God Knows You Sing the Right Hands.

Don't You We Make Sure That You Do and What Wonderful Hymns We Sang Today. Jesus, What a Friend of Sinners and It Is Well with My Soul. So I Thought That Was Worship We Worship the Fruit of Our Lips, but Biblically Worship Means That I Bring Myself.

I Bring an Offering in the Old Testament in the Temple. They Always Came with Something for God, Even When We're Invited out for Dinner Somewhere Thanks to the Good Memory of My Life. We Stop and At Least Via Box of Chocolate Somewhere Bring to People. Amazing How Many People Come into God's Presence Sunday after Sunday after Sunday and They Bring Him Nothing.

Worship Always Involves Sacrifice and Then We Have Romans Chapter 12.

Give Your Bodies a Living Sacrifice Wholly Acceptable to God. That's Where It Starts.

It Begins by Saying God You Have Myself First. Let's Worship and Jesus Chided People Who Thought That Because They Said the Right Words and Saying the Right Songs That They Were Worshiping and He Said No, You're Doing It in Your Heart Is Far from Me. Worship Is Sacrifice Second Lesson and That Is That When God Wants to Expose the Idols in Our Lives. He Sometimes Chooses What Is Most Precious to Test and What Is Most Precious, but Our Children but Let Me Ask the Question This Way, What Would It Take for You to Turn Away from God.

God Took Your Children Would You Turn Away from God.

If God Allowed You to Go through a Difficult Marriage You Go through the Gut Wrenching Process of the Divorce Would That Make You Turn from God. What Is It That Is in My Life and in Your Life. That Means More to Us Than God, so That We Can Actually Just Dispense with God and Turn against Them If Things Do Not Go Our Way and If He Does Not Cooperate with Our Vision of Happiness.

I Suppose That the Greatest Idle in Our Lives Actually Is the Idle of Happiness. We Think to Ourselves.

I Deserve a Vocation in Which I'm Happy I Deserve a Marriage in Which I'm Happy I Deserve I Deserve Living Situations in Which I'm Happy and There's Nothing Wrong with Improving Those, but I'm Simply Saying That Sometimes What What Our Happiness Is so Bound up with What We Want That We Lose the Larger Vision of Obedience and Love of God Which Lies at the Root of the Greatest Commandment, Thou Shalt Love the Lord Thy God with All Thy Heart with All Thy Soul.

That's the Greatest Sin Is to Not Love God with Your Whole Heart and Everything Flows from Their Doesn't It the Summer I Was at Bug House Square No Miles South of Here at the Newberry Library and I Was Giving My Defense of Christ to an Audience That Was Not Entirely Receptive. A Few of You Are There so You Know You're Given a Bullhorn and Then You Can Say Anything That You like and I Was Getting a Defense of Jesus and People Can Interrupt You.

It's It's Great Fun.

I Meal They Can Shout at You, They Can Say Things That We Wouldn't Say in Church and and You Just Enjoyed the Banter, but When It Was over. There Was a Woman Who Was Very Indignant. She Said to Me Because I Ended by a Personal Testimony at the Age of 14, Accepting Jesus She She Said to Me She Said What Sin Did You Commit by the Age of 14, for Which You Needed Forgiveness. I Guess She Thought I Was Gonna Say What You Know I Actually Killed My Brother but I Didn't Do That Felt like It Many Times. Problem Is, He Felt like That to with His Brother. I Looked at Her and I Said You Know What My Problem Was I Broke the First Amendment Shall Love the Lord Thy God with All Thy Heart with All Thy Soul with Old-Line Mind.

I Said I Broke That Commandment. And She Just Looked at Me and Walked Away.

The Greatest Sin You Can Commit to Have a Child, a Vocation, Something in the Place of God. That Means More to You Than God Himself. That Is Idolatry and That Is Sin. Abraham Proved What Is It That God Needs to Do for You before You Draw near to Him so on till He Resolves This Difficulty until I Get Justice. I'm Not Can Have a Thing to Do with God until I Can Understand His Ways until I Can See What God's up to and What I'm Looking Everything to Do with Them. That's Idolatry.

Because Your Withholding Something from God There's Something That Means More in Your Life Then Does the Final Lesson Is of Course That Will Never Give up the Creature Will Never Give up the Creature until We Have Been Satisfied with the Creator Will Never Give up the Creature until Were Satisfied with the Creator. Only When We Are Willing to Say God Your First Your Number One. Then of Course All of the Other Things Fall into Line. But As Long As We Are Narcissistic Filled with Unrecognized Self Absorption, and That by the Way, Is the Greatest Hindrance to Progress in the Spiritual Life Is Unrecognized Times Self Absorption As Long As Were There, You See, We Are Not Going to Be Able to Love God and When We Don't Love Him Will Always Put Them in Second Third Fourth Fifth Place. So the Angel Comes Out Of Heaven Insist, Abraham, Abraham Is Here I Am Now I Know That You Fear God, How Much Is a Man Willing to Do for God.

Abraham.

Abraham Tells Us Anything, Anything He Asks Is That Your Heart Today Is That My Heart Today. Jesus, When He Was Here on Earth. Centuries after Abraham 19 or 20 Centuries Later Said to Some of the People Who Were Criticizing Him and Accusing Him of Saying That He Was God Which of the Did, and Which He Was. He Said Your Father Abraham Rejoiced to See My Day and He Saw It and Was Glad. Maybe Jesus Had the Story in Mind How Is Abraham Saved What Happened to His Sin.

He Was Saved on Credit. God Says I'm Going to Take Your Sin. Abraham and I'm Going to Put It Away over Here on a Shelf, Figuratively Speaking, Because I Know That Someday a Redeemer Is Going to Be Born, the Lamb of God Who Takes Away the Sin of the World and When He Comes. Your Sin Will Finally and Completely Be Dealt with.

There Is No Other Way to Be Forgiven, Then the Lamb That God Supplies for Himself and for You and for Me. Let Us Pray Now Father Only You Can Expose the Idolatries of Our Hearts. Only You Can Say to Us to See This Title to See That Idle As We Can See Ourselves Where We We Are Too Blind or Too Self Absorbed You by Your Spirit Do What We Can't, Would You Show Us How Many of You Today Say Pastor Lutzer Got Us Talk to Me about Some Idols in My Life That I Need to Deal with, Would You Raise Your Hands.

Please. All throughout the Auditorium. Would You at This Moment Say Lord I Will Deal with the Idols That You've Exposed Father. We Do Come to You Thanking You That Now so Many Generations, and Centuries Later, We Can Look Back on a Story to Inspire Us to Love You More Than Anything Else and to Sacrifice for You Teaches These Things Lord, We Pray and Don't Let Us Go until We've Heard Your Word about Our Hearts in Jesus Name, Amen, Amen. Would You Stand Please and Tim Is Going to Come Here and Lead Us As We Sing 596 on Today's Moody Church. Our Pastor Lutzer Spoke about Tested Faith Last in a 10 Part Series on Strength for the Journey Study in the Life of Abraham.

We Hope This Series Has Strengthened Your Faith in the God Whose Purposes Are Never Thwarted and Was Care for You, Never Diminishes No Matter How Long Your Journey. It's No Secret That America Is in Crisis. Pastor Lutes Has Written a Powerful New Book, No Reason to Hide Standing for Christ and a Collapsing Culture. This Book Can Point the Way for Your Walk with God in the Difficult Days Ahead As We Face Economic Failure, Racial Strife and Moral Decadence. No Reason to Hide Will Be Sent As Our Thank You to You for Your Gift of Any Amount to Support The Moody Church. Our Just Call 1-800-215-5001. Let Us Know You'd like to Support Moody Churches Ministry, Call 1-800-215-5001 or You Can Write to Us at Moody Church Media 1635 N. LaSalle Boulevard Chicago, IL 60614. You Can Also Go Online moodyoffer.com That's moodyoffer.com Join Us Next Time for Another Moody Church. Our with Pastor Erwin Lutes Are in the Congregation of Historic Moody Church in Chicago. This Broadcast Is a Ministry of Moody Church