If you have your Bibles, this evening, would you turn with me to Genesis chapter 23. We’ve got so little time and so much to cover. Genesis 23.
My first year in college, I was involved in Bethany Bible College’s Extreme Discipleship program… it’s the same program Andy Broad did his first year @ Bethany. In that program, we did a lot of hands-on ministry, including two missions trips: one to New York City and one to Washington DC.
On our way down to DC, we took two 15 passenger vans, with our leader Mike McNeil in the lead van and another leader and us in the van following. Let me tell you something really important about Mike: it is very important to Mike that we make good time. These are long trips and he wants to spend the least amount of time possible on the road. It’s a great ideal, but, well… it’s not the greatest at times. Let me translate: Mike McNeil…does not stop… for bathroom breaks… You see where this is headed?
So, we’re about an hour or so from the last stop we just made and Mike announces: we’re not stopping for another two hours or so. Well, about that time, guess what happens… yea… I suddenly have to go. And I mean HAVE. It wasn’t a little ooo, I could really use a bathroom break. It was a “the flood-gates have been thrown open and we’ve got to make a pit stop!!”
Well, remember when I said Mike doesn’t stop for bathroom breaks? I wasn’t joking…TWO HOURS, people, two stinkin’ hours. And to make matters worse, everybody thought it’d be soooo funny to make water noises while we drove. “Hey Jordon, you know what helps me when I have to go, thinking of water falls!” “Hey Jordon, do you want some soda?” Yea…that’s including our leaders.
The worst of it was, I really trusted them too. I mean, I knew we couldn’t stop every 20 minutes for a bathroom break, but come on. Well, luckily, I made it to the bathroom…barely. And needless to say, I lost a wee bit of trust for those guys. Just a bit…
Sometimes our trust is misplaced. But there is One that in whom we can always place our trust. We can follow after Him through whatever may come, we know that He knows what is best for us.
Tonight, if you have your Bibles with you, would you turn to the book of Genesis, yes, Genesis, chapter 22, starting in verse 1:
1 Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!”
And he said, “Here I am.”
2 Then He said, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and 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.”
3 So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. 4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off. 5 And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad[a] and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”
6 So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and the two of them went together. 7 But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!”
And he said, “Here I am, my son.”
Then he said, “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
8 And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together.
9 Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. 10 And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.
11 But the Angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!”
So he said, “Here I am.”
12 And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
13 Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 And Abraham called the name of the place, The-LORD-Will-Provide;[b] as it is said to this day, “In the Mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”
15 Then the Angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, 16 and said: “By Myself I have sworn, says the LORD, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son— 17 blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies. 18 In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.” 19 So Abraham returned to his young men, and they rose and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba.
This is a well-known passage that centers on God’s test of Abraham’s devotion to Him. In essence, we see Abraham express the ultimate act of worship to God, where he holds nothing back, where is willing to give His all to God. Abraham, in this story, exhibits the true heart of worship.
I believe that we can learn something through this story. It’s very easy to get caught up in our consumer world. We look for commodities to suit our lives and sometimes this spills over into our spiritual lives. We read the Bible, we pray, we come to Church, we sing songs and through it all, we are looking for how we can benefit. How can I get something out of this? How is this blessing me? Human nature is so me-focused that it draws away from the true heart of worship.
What is worship? What does it look like? What does it look like when we find the heart of worship?
True worship is the exact opposite of our consumer society. Our consumer word is about taking, it is me-centered: I want, I need, give me more stuff! But worship is God-centered: When the world says, “How can this benefit me?”, worship asks, “How can this benefit God?” When the world says, “How can this bless me?”, worship says, “How can this bless God”.
It’s a lifestyle that Abraham exhibited; a lifestyle that shows says no matter what, I will follow Him, holding nothing back, no matter what He asks of me, I will follow Him. This is the heart of worship. Tonight, I want to share three characteristics of the Christian’s heart of worship; what does it look like? And how do we put it into practice?
The first characteristic is this: When we find the heart of worship, we remember God’s faithfulness in times past. We remember God’s faithfulness in times past.
In the life of Abraham, God had been very faithful to His promises. He promised Abraham a new nation, brought Him to a new land, promised Him a son in his old age, and come through on all those promises.
God is a faithful God, amen? The book of Deuteronomy 7:9 says, “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commands”
When you look throughout the Bible and specifically in the Old Testament, a lot of the worship centers around God’s faithfulness to Israel in times past. God’s faithfulness in times past gives hope for the future. Look at the idea of the Passover. The Passover feast was a time to remember how God faithfully delivered His people out of Egypt and gave them the land He had promised.
To be people with a true heart of worship, it is important to constantly be reminded of God’s faithfulness in our lives. It is so easy to find yourself in a situation, like Abraham, and we forget, like Israel so often forgot.
Remember when the people of Israel were in the desert after being delivered from Egypt? How many times would something happen, like running out of food or water, and they would almost immediately forget how faithful God had already been to them. And what happened then? They lost hope.
In our world, it is important to be reminded of God’s faithfulness to us, both individually, as a local church, and as the body of Christ. That’s why we set aside times to remember. We take communion, we observe Easter, we observe Christmas. We do these things because they remind us of God’s faithfulness in times past.
Jesus, at the last supper admonishes us in this. Through the act of communion, we are reminded of God’s ultimate act of faithfulness: the giving of His Son. We are reminded of Christ’s sacrifice for us, of His broken body, of His shed blood. We are reminded of God’s promise of redemption and His faithfulness to that promise.
The author of Hebrews proclaims in chapter 10: Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful...For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise.
We sang the song this morning, my hope is built on nothing less than Jesus blood and righteousness. And it’s the truth, this evening. Our hope is found in nothing else, but that. And His blood…his righteous, they were outpourings of His faithfulness. Our heart of worship is rooted in the faithfulness of God!
This evening, the second characteristic of the heart of worship is: when we find the heart of worship, we hold nothing back from God.
Look at the life of Abraham, God had given him so much. We learn that Abraham was wealthy, he had it going on. God had blessed him. And then God gave him the ultimate promise of a son, and not just a son, but a great nation through that son.
The amazing this, and God does this a lot, is that He did it in the most unusual way. Abraham was nearly 100 years old when Isaac was born, something that He never thought possible. So ridiculous did it sound beforehand that Sarah laughed when an ANGEL (get that…an angel) told them she would give birth. But God came through in the most amazing ways.
But God had to know one thing from Abraham: who was the most important to him: Isaac or God. Through this whole story, you see this as being a test of Abraham’s allegiance. Where does his heart lie? With God or with His son?
I shared this story with the youth group a few weeks ago and had each of the teens think silently about something that is really important to them. I told them to picture that thing in their mind. And different things came to mind. For them it was things like computers, cameras, relationships, friends. Then I asked the simple question: what if God asked you to give that up?
Most of you know how much I love my guitar… now, just for the record: not the most important thing to me (that’s my wife), but it’s an easy example. I love my guitar. I love playing it; I love the way it sounds. At one point my guitar was worth more than my vehicle. That tells you how great it is. But what if God told me to take it, throw it on a bed a rocks, douse it in gasoline and chuck a match on it?
I think the older we get, the question gets bigger. It was easy as a 16 year old to say, “Sure, I’d give everything up” because what did I have? But as we grow, as we’ve lived life longer, we have more and more to lose. We have cars, we have houses, we have friends, we have spouses, we have children, grandchildren. But what if God asked us to give those things up?
You see, God gives us great things. Each and every one of us has been blessed beyond belief. I don’t think anyone here would argue that.
But the temptation is to take the gifts that God has given us and elevate them. Sometimes, these things become even greater than God in our lives. The gifts of God take the place of God Himself. He has given us so many good things with the purpose of bringing glory to Himself…with the purpose of worshipping Him, but instead we worship the gifts. Instead of worshipping Him, we put our time and energy into preserving the gift. The gift becomes more important than the Giver!
God has called us to be willing to follow Him, no holds barred. He wants us to be willing to give up the things that are most important to us. We see that in Abraham. Isaac had the potential of taking the place of God in Abraham’s life. He was the son of promise. He was to be the son through whom a great nation was founded. Scripture noted that Isaac was the son, “whom you love”. God was testing Abraham by seeing what was #1 in His life, God or God’s gift.
God wants to know that He is #1 in our lives. Scripture calls Him a Jealous God. He does not share well. He is not content to share His throne. You see, He is also the only one WORTHY to be #1 in our lives. He needs to be #1, all else must be below. He must increase in our lives!
We need to be willing to hold nothing back from God. Are we willing to sacrifice our Isaac on the altar? Are we willing to follow Him, holding nothing back?
This evening, we want to follow after God. We want to serve Him with the true heart of worship. We have already shared how to have the heart of worship, we must remember His faithfulness in times past and we must hold nothing back from God. Thirdly, when we find the heart of worship, we must trust that He will provide. We must trust that God will provide.
Take a second, if you would, and look at the passage we started with this morning, look at verse 5 with me, Abraham tells his servants “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”
Then look at verse 8 when Abraham replies to Isaac inquiry about the sacrifice: “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.”
Through this whole ordeal, Abraham believed that God was going to come through. He didn’t know how, but somehow he knew that Isaac was going to be coming back with Him.
This is going back to our first point: Abraham believed in God’s faithfulness. God had promised to Abraham that Isaac would be the son through whom a great nation will spring.
And even though, Abraham was willing to go the distance, willing to lay his son on the altar, he believed that God would come through, some way, somehow.
The book of Hebrews has a chapter that many call the halls of faith. We see the true nature of faith: being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. And we see the Abraham’s faith commended in verse 17: “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, 18 of whom it was said, “In Isaac your seed shall be called,” 19 concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.”
Faith is obedience to God no matter the cost. Some people get bogged down in questions like, “What about child sacrifice? Isn’t that wrong?” See, the thing is: the question here was never, “Is child sacrifice wrong?” Or even whether Abraham would have done it. The question here was did Abraham have the faith to trust God to provide?
In our lives, God will ask of us to do things that we do not understand. He will ask us to step out into the unknown and trust that God will come through for us. It may be making a lifestyle change, maybe a change in jobs, maybe a change scenery. He asks us to take a step of faith, believing that He will catch us.
This evening, do we trust that God will provide for us? Abraham had no idea how God would get Him out of this. He had no idea that an angel would call out in the nick of time and then that he’d turn around and see a ram caught in the bushes. But he trusted that God would provide…somehow, some way.
And this must be our attitude, this evening: trusting that no matter what that God will provide.
God wants so desperately for us to worship Him, not just with our words, but with our lives and with our hearts. He wants for us to find the true heart of worship. A heart of worship that does not seek what we can get for ourselves, but what we can give to God.
He wants us to remember His faithfulness of times past. He wants us to hold nothing back from Him. And He wants us trust that He will provide. These are the characteristics of the heart of worship.
This evening, as we close, I want to invite you to accept God’s challenge to us. In each of our lives, God has given us the Isaac challenge. Remember the rich young ruler: would he follow Jesus and give everything he had to the poor? That was his Isaac challenge. Annanias and Sapphira from Acts 5 sold everything they owned and brought the money to God. But they held some back, even though they claimed they had not: this was their Isaac challenge.
And tonight, God is giving us our own Isaac challenge. Are we willing to accept? Are we willing to make Him our #1? Are we willing to make the sacrifice to worship Him, as Jesus said, in spirit and in truth?
Tonight, I believe that we each need to accept the challenge, and with it, find the true heart of worship. When God becomes #1 in our lives, when He is the center of our lives, like Abraham, He will bless us beyond measure.
Let’s pray this evening.
