Tests, Triumphs, Types, and Truth: Part 2

Genesis 22:1-2 NKJV  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.”

Genesis 22:9-17 NKJV  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; 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.

• Welcome back church!
  • If you are new to Christian Life Church this morning, welcome! You join us in the middle of a Four part series on Genesis 22 called “Tests, Triumphs, Types, and Truth”.

Show Title Slide

• This morning we are going to talk about God as the God who Triumphs!
  • We are going to talk about testing as a pathway to Triumph.
  • And we are going to talk about how through it all, God has always been all sufficient.
    • Now, Last week we talked about God as Jehova-Massah, The Lord who Tests.
      • We also talked about the name of God used here for the first time in scripture: Jehovah-Jireh… God who provides.
    • Because the LORD Tests Abraham, but the Lord also provided for Abraham.
• Now the test, if you missed it, was this “Would Abraham have the faith to trust God, even when God asked him to do the unthinkable… sacrifice his son Isaac.
  • And we dug into how painful and difficult that would have been for most of us… but how Abraham had the faith, as Hebrews 11 says, that God would even bring his son back from the dead if needed… after all, God had already promised this son of his, Isaac, would have ancestors that number as many as the stars in the sky!
    • “Can’t have kids if you are dead” Abraham reasoned… and “God can raise the dead” so it stands to reason that God will make a way, even when there seems to be no way.
• Now, I mentioned this last week, but I want to bring it up again. In Genesis 22 I see 6 names, or 6 attributes of God. Last week we went over two. This week we will go over two, of these names. The Six names are:
• • Jehovah-Massah (God who Tests)
  • Jehovah-Jireh (God who Provides)
  • Jehovah-Nissi (God my Banner/Victory)
  • Jehovah-El-Shaddai (God Almighty/All Sufficient)
  • Jehovah-El-Yeshuati (God My Salvation)
  • Jehovah-El-Emeth (God of Truth)
• Now this morning we are going to talk about God as Jehovah Nissa, God my Banner or God my Victory… and we are going to Talk about Jehovah-El-Shaddai… the Almighty All Sufficient God.
  • Let’s get into by talking about victory, by talking about TRIUMPH!
    • Point One this Morning is “Testing Provides Triumph”.

Point One – Testing Provides Opportunity for Triumph

Genesis 22:16-18 NKJV  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.”

• Why was Abraham blessed?
  • Why were his descendants multiplied?
  • Why were his descendants promised such great blessings that they would possess the gate of their enemies…
  • Why were the blessings of Abraham and his descendants so great that even the nations of the earth would be blessed through them?
    • Well we see the answer to those questions in this scripture…

Genesis 22:16-17a NKJV  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…

• Because you have done this thing.
  • Because you have obeyed…
  • Because you have taken the test and triumphed…
    • Because of the triumph, you have received blessings upon blessings.
    • And THIS was an incredibly hard test, so you will receive and incredibly abundant blessing!
• You know, church, there are some theologians who suggest that God blesses people and curses people seemingly at random.
  • That we have no part in the process, that we have no say in the matter… some people are just going to be blessed by God, and some people are just going to be cursed… and that is just the way it is…
    • These theologians quote Scriptures like Romans 9:15

Romans 9:15 NKJV  For He says to Moses, “I WILL HAVE MERCY ON WHOMEVER I WILL HAVE MERCY, AND I WILL HAVE COMPASSION ON WHOMEVER I WILL HAVE COMPASSION.”

• They say “See! God will have mercy on whomever He decides, it is completely up to Him!”
  • And that is true, church, it is completely up to Him.
    • But that doesn’t mean that there is no standard, that there is no litmus test…
    • That doesn’t mean that God is just up there all willy nilly randomly deciding who gets blessed and who gets cursed…
      • No, it simply means that GOD is the one who sets the standards… God is the one who creates the litmus Test.
      • God is Jehovah-Massah, the God who Tests.
        • He decides who is blessed based on Standards that He created… and that Standard is obedience…
        • That standard is triumphing over tests…
      • When God tests us, and remember from last week the way God tests us is through Obedience… will we obey when He asks us to obey?

Isaiah 1:18-20 NKJV  “Come now, and let us reason together,” Says the LORD, “Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool. [That’s the Gospel]  (19)  If you are willing and obedient, You shall eat the good of the land;  (20)  But if you refuse and rebel, You shall be devoured by the sword”; For the mouth of the LORD has spoken.

Luke 11:27-28 NKJV  And it happened, as He spoke these things, that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!”  (28)  But He said, “More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

James 1:25 NKJV  But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does.

• You know, the Lord has been really getting this into our DNA as a church… it has been such a thick theme in this new year… Obedience leads to blessings.
  • And God want’s us to be a blessed church, which means God wants us to be an obedient Church.
  • But for there to be obedience, there must be a command to obey.
    • Therefore, catch this beautiful nugget of wisdom… If obedience brings blessings, and obedience can only come with a command to obey… and testing is when God gives us a huge command to obey, one that takes an extraordinary amount of faith…
    • If we know all of this to be true, then we can say “Thank God for the testing, because it leads to the blessing”.
      • Thank God for the testing, because it leads to the blessing.
      • If you are to triumph over the test, then you are sure to live a life that is blessed!
        • And if we can get THAT into our Ethos, then we can look forward to the testing, because we know that with each new testing is an opportunity for new blessings.
          • Let me share a real life example, then I will tell you why it is important to think of God as Jehovah-Nissa, God my Banner.
• The hardest test I took, in the worlds sense, was the SATs. Anyone here take the SATs?
  • Now listen, I hated school… my moto in high school was “D is for Diploma”. I wanted to do the bare minimum to pass high school…
    • Well, turns out this was a bad idea, because while it is true, I did get my diploma… I did so with a GPA of 2.4…
    • Now it turns out that universities, especially the ones I wanted to attend, don’t much like accepting students with such a low GPA… And while I had passed High School technically, I now had the challenge of getting into college.
      • This is where the SATs came in… it was an incredibly hard test, but one that I really wanted to pass…
      • If I would have taken the SATs and did poorly, then the SATs would have been a curse on me and my life…
    • When I took the SATs, for once in my life… I actually tried… I tried hard… I took it seriously… I studied and prepared… I took my time… I double checked my answers…
      • And I scored a 1540…
        • Now a perfect score on the SAT is 1600… which means that I only missed 2 or 3 questions… I only got two or 3 questions wrong…
        • That put me in the 99^th percentile of students! I passed the test!
    • All of the sudden my 2.4 GPA did not mean ANYTHING! With a score of 1540 I could get into any school I wanted except for maybe Harvard or MIT, and even then, I would still have a chance.
      • In fact, I only applied for two Universities after passing the SAT and both of them accepted me immediately.
  • Why do I share that? Because the test, the SAT became a source of blessing for me.
    • Before I took the SAT I could have only gotten into community colleges… but after I took the SAT I was able to get into any university I wanted.
    • Therefore the SAT, the TEST, became a source of blessing…
      • So it is with God…
        • Listen, I had a 2.4… but I passed the test and immediately was blessed.
        • Maybe you are in a place in life right now where your spiritual GPA isn’t all that great.
          • You have made some bad decisions, and you are living with the consequences of those decisions… if that is you, look forward to the tests that God is sending you… because these are opportunities to change it all around…
        • Abraham had a pretty spotty GPA in life himself.
          • There were moments where he excelled in life, and moments where he failed miserably.
          • Sure he defeated kings in faith…
            • But he also lied to kings in moments of faithlessness.
          • Sure he had to faith to have a child at 100 years old with his 90 year old wife.
            • But he also slept with his Egyptian slave impregnating her… because he had lost faith that God could give a child to Sarah.
        • If you looked at every victory of the faith and every defeat of the faith in Abrahams life… MAN… I don’t know that he would pass the 2.0 mark…
          • And then came the biggest test ever… would Abraham have the faith to obey God… even when God asked him to sacrifice his only son…
          • Abraham passed the hardest test ever given to man… and as a result he go the biggest blessing…

Genesis 22:16-18 NKJV  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.”

• Now this brings me to our final point this morning: God Almighty is My Victory

Point Two – God is All Sufficient

Genesis 22:7-8 NKJV  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.

Genesis 22:13-14 NKJV  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; as it is said to this day, “In the Mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”

• Let me ask you a question church… who put the ram in the bush?
  • Did Abraham preemptively place the Ram in the bush?
  • Or maybe it was sheer luck that put Ram in the bush.
    • No, that is not what Abraham believed… Abraham believed, even before it happened, that God would put that Ram in the bush… saying “God Himself will provide the lamb for the burn offering”.
• Abraham didn’t know how… but Abraham knew that God will provide… Jehovah-Jireh, the God who provides.
  • To take that a step further… God is not just Jehovah-Jireh, but also Jeovah-El-Shadia… God Almighty, God all sufficient.

El Shadai
אֵל שַׁדַּי
God Almighty / All Sufficient

• Before you can believe that God WILL provide, must believe that God CAN provide.
  • Before you can believe that God is Jehovah-Jireh, God who provides… you must first believe God is El-Shadai… God All Sufficient, God Almighty.
    • What a miserable place to be in to think “I need provision for God, I need help from God, I need saving from God… but there is no way that God can save me… No way that God can provide for me… no way that God can get me through this.
      • It sounds silly, but I have talked to many, MANY people who believe that God can not save them… He would if He could, but they are too far gone, so why even try.
      • I have met people who think the only way they can survive is to steal, or sell drugs, or other nefarious things… they want God to provide for their family, but they are not sure that He can.
      • I have known MANY women who think they only way a man will love them is if they disobey God and have pre-marital sex with these men…
        • These women want a godly husband, they believe that God WOULD provide a Godly husband if he could… but that’s just not how men are any more… there are just not enough Christian men… so they enter into sin in order to take matters into their own hands.
  • Church let me tell you, the same God who is Jehovah-Jireh is also Jehovah-El-Shadai…
    • It was of no effort for God to provide the Ram for Abraham and Isaac… for every Ram was created by God and obedient to God’s will.
      • He owns the cattle on a thousand hills, what is one ram to Him?
    • And whatever God is testing you with… GOD ALREADY HAS THE PROVISION IN STORE FOR YOU… IT IS ALREADY THERE.
      • It is not just that God will provide, it is that God CAN provide… and, let’s get a little prophetic in here… it is not just that God CAN provide… it is that God has ALREADY provided… if you would just be obedient… if you would pass the test.
        • When Abraham told his servants “Me and the Lad are going up yonder to worship” The Ram was already there.
        • When Abraham told Isaac “God will provide a lamb”
          • The Lamb had already been provided.
• How many times have I prayed for provision from the Lord… only to find a check in the mail latter that day… The check was already in the mailman’s bag, already on it’s way to my house by the time I prayed… It has happened multiple times in my life…
  • God provided before I even knew I needed provision… because He is El-Shadai, God almighty, God all sufficient.
• And Because of that Fact I also know that God is my Victory… That is our final point this morning… God is our Victory. I will make it short, but this point is too sweet not to mention… God is My Victory.

Point Three – God is My Victory

Genesis 22:10-13 NKJV  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.

• Do you notice who is talking to Abraham?
  • It is not “An angel of the LORD” but it is “THE Angel of The Lord”
  • That means this is Jesus talking here… this is a Christophany” an appearance of Jesus before He was born in the flesh.
    • God stopped Abraham from slaying His son, it was God’s intervention that stopped the knife… it was also God who provided the ram…
      • “Yes we know pastor… God is the God who provides and God All Sufficient… you have made that clear”.
    • Yes, but that is not what I want you to catch here… what I want you to catch is that it was God who brought the victory.

Jehovah-Nissi
יְהוָה נִסִּי‎
The LORD is my Banner / Victory

• How many of you guys know this iconic picture?
• Show “Marines Iwo Jima.jpg” in “images for CLC services” folder
• This is a picture of 4 marines planting the American flag on top of a hill on Iwa Jima in WW2…
  • The Battle of Iwo Jima last 5 days… but eventually victory came.
    • Now let me ask, who won the battle? Did these 4 marines who are raising the flag win the battle?
      • No. The battle was won by more than 100,000 American soldiers, more than 500 warships providing artillery and naval support, and hundreds of American aircraft providing close air support and constant bombing runs.
  • The Battle of Iwo Jima was not won by the four marines pictured in this iconic photograph… the Battle of Iwo Jima was won by AMERICA… with all her might and all her wrath.
    • The reason this photo is so symbolic is because the American banner flying on top of that island says “AMERICA HAS BROUGHT THE VICTORY”.
• And so it is with God our Banner! HE IS OUR VICTORY.
  • Abraham did not bring the victory on that mountain with His son that day.
    • God brought the Victory.
  • Abraham didn’t stop the knife from coming down on His son… God did.
    • God brought the Victory.
  • Abraham didn’t provide a Ram for the sacrifice… God did.
    • God brought the Victory.
• All Abraham Had to do was obey… THAT IS IT… God, did the rest. God brought the Victory.
  • God is Jehovah-Nissi… He is the banner that we plant on top of the conquered hill as we say “GOD IS MY VICTORY”.
• So when God tests you church… remember that He will provide… Jehovah-Jireh…
  • In fact, He probably already has provided, because He is All Sufficient… El Shadai…
  • And at the end of the Day, as the Lord Tests you, as He does all of the Righteous… if you would just simply obey, then you can say “Jehovah-Nissi” God is my banner, God is my victory!
• Now let’s conclude this sermon where we started… by talking about the blessings of obedience.

Conclusion

• Deuteronomy 28:1-14 NKJV  “Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the LORD your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the LORD your God will set you high above all nations of the earth.  (2)  And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, because you obey the voice of the LORD your God:  (3)  “Blessed shall you be in the city, and blessed shall you be in the country.  (4)  “Blessed shall be the fruit of your body, the produce of your ground and the increase of your herds, the increase of your cattle and the offspring of your flocks.  (5)  “Blessed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.  (6)  “Blessed shall you be when you come in, and blessed shall you be when you go out.  (7)  “The LORD will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before your face; they shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways.  (8)  “The LORD will command the blessing on you in your storehouses and in all to which you set your hand, and He will bless you in the land which the LORD your God is giving you.  (9)  “The LORD will establish you as a holy people to Himself, just as He has sworn to you, if you keep the commandments of the LORD your God and walk in His ways.  (10)  Then all peoples of the earth shall see that you are called by the name of the LORD, and they shall be afraid of you.  (11)  And the LORD will grant you plenty of goods, in the fruit of your body, in the increase of your livestock, and in the produce of your ground, in the land of which the LORD swore to your fathers to give you.  (12)  The LORD will open to you His good treasure, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season, and to bless all the work of your hand. You shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow.  (13)  And the LORD will make you the head and not the tail; you shall be above only, and not be beneath, if you heed the commandments of the LORD your God, which I command you today, and are careful to observe them.  (14)  So you shall not turn aside from any of the words which I command you this day, to the right or the left, to go after other gods to serve them.
• Gospel Call

Join us this Sunday at either 8:30AM or 10:30AM for worship followed by this message from the Word of God. Christian Life Church of Cedar Rapids. 2808 Schaeffer DR SW, Cedar Rapids, IA   52404. www.CedarRapidsChurch.com