What drove Abraham up that mountain was not the strength of his character. It wasn't even some kind of gold star of faith he was trying to earn. It wasn't a great worship playlist on his iPod. What drove Abraham up that mountain? We're three words.
The only three words that will sustain you during any difficult season of obedience. God Yeah. Faithful. Thanks for joining us today for the Summit Life podcast with JD Greer. I'm Molly Vitovich.
It's launch week for Pastor JD's new book titled Everyday Revolutionary. It's officially out at retailers October 7th, and we're giving it to everyone who makes a donation to Summit Life this month. a thank you for your gift. make sure you visit us at jdgreer.com. Today on the program, Pastor JD takes us back to Hebrews 11.
to show us that Abraham's story isn't ultimately about Abraham's obedience. It's about God's unwavering commitment to his people. And that same promise holds true for us in every trial we've seen. Hebrews 11.
So let's join us. There is an old story that I like to tell. That I want you to put into your minds to guide us as we think about this final chapter in Abraham's life. It's a story of the first time that I went rappelling off of Hanging Rock out in Danbury, North Carolina. As teenagers, my friends and I had taken up rock climbing as a kind of hobby.
And one day, one of them suggested that instead of climbing up the rock face, suggested that we should rappel down it.
Now, he claimed that he had done this many times before. As a 16-year-old, I was pretty dumb, and so I believed him. There were five of us out on the mountain that day, but somehow I got volunteered to go first. The fact that my expert friend didn't volunteer to go first should have been the first sign that something was amiss. But certain types of wisdom only come with age.
And so we tied my belay rope around a tree, and I stood with my back toward this 75-foot drop. And my friend told me just to lean back. I remember thinking, lean back, and it just felt wrong. And then in a flash, my ability to ascertain a person's trustworthiness matured more in the space of a few seconds than it had in the entire 16 years of my life up until this point. I put my life into the hands of a friend who consistently wrote checks with his mouth that his brain could not cash.
So I instantly became a lot wiser of a person, but still My manhood was on the line because when you were 16 years old, your manhood is always on the line. And I knew that this was a defining moment in the life of J.D. Greer. Men are made in these moments.
So are martyrs, of course, I would add, but I was more focused on the man part. I stood there for a few seconds trying to work up my courage. I prayed to receive Jesus into my heart again. That is not a joke. I did this, just in case those guys are right.
I just wanted to have all the bases covered, and then I held my breath, I closed my eyes, and I leaned backwards.
Now I'm sure y'all it wasn't any longer than a nanosecond. But it felt like an eternity as I Just drifted backwards into open air, suspended between heaven and hell. waiting to see if the rope would actually catch. And when it did, there I stood. There I stood perpendicular to the rock face and parallel to the ground.
Held above a 75-foot death drop by a rope that was secured to a flimsy tree, all engineered by a friend who could not hold down a job. In fact, when the rope Finally, when it caught, I remember the look on his face, he seemed pleasantly surprised. And he said, okay, now you got to jump backwards.
So once again. Calling forth every ounce of courage that I could possibly muster, I leapt with all of my might. And I sprung Maybe two inches. Down the rock face.
So I've worked up another batch of courage, another jump, six inches. Another four feet, then 10 feet. A few jumps later, I was standing there on terra firma, at which point I'm pretty sure I burst into the gift of tongues. I started to unhook from the rope, and I looked back up the top where my friends were, and I saw that my best friend was next up. I watched as he tied himself into the belay system.
Now, a few important details about this guy in particular. He was better looking than I was. He was more athletic than I was. He was more popular with the ladies than I was. I hated this kid, but he was my best friend.
From 75 feet below, I could hear him being given the instructions, but he was even more scared of heights than I was. And so, when it came time for him to lean backwards, he did not budge. That is, unless you would count, you know, shaking in terror. I could see him, you know, from 75 feet away, I could just see him going like this. After a couple of long, awkward minutes, He finally took one of his legs and he kind of searched down below where he was standing for a foothold on the rock face and he found one.
Then he found another one with his left foot and then another and then another and he slowly worked his way down the rock face one foothold at a time. Of course, that is not repelling. That is rock climbing using a repelling rope as your safety net.
Now, about 20 feet down the rock, the rock face went from basically this angle. Yeah, like You're coming down this way to this angle, upside down, meaning that there was no way for him to get a foothold. There was no way to get over the spot. That particular spot, he was going to have to let go of the rock altogether, and he was going to have to fully commit to the rope. But he wasn't ready to do that.
So I watched him hesitate. I watched him try to find a foothold, and eventually I watched as he gave up and climbed back up to the top and walked the trail back down to the base where I was. My friend had gotten to a place on the rock that could only be passed. by those who were fully leaning their weight on the rope. I share that because in the Christian life, there are places of obedience.
that you are never going to get over. Until you have fully trusted yourself to God. There are sacrifices you will never make. There are fields of obedience you will never walk in because you don't fully trust him yet, and you haven't fully, hands-off, committed yourself. To him.
And so God puts you through multiple tests throughout your life, multiple, let's just call them shifts of angle in the rock face. To reveal whether you have that kind of faith, whether you've gone all in, whether you're. Whether you're using him as a safety net or whether you've really fully trusted your life to him. And if you haven't done that, he wants to develop that faith in you when you're ready. That's what's going to happen to Abraham.
During Abraham's life, God put Abraham through three tests. Each one of those tests more difficult than the one before it. Test one we looked at a couple of weeks ago, it was the command to leave everything familiar, Abram. Leave all your creature comforts, everything you depend on for security, and follow me to an undisclosed location. I'm not even going to tell you where it is.
Just close your eyes and take my hand. Test two was for Abram and Sarah. God told them in their old age, I'm going to bless you with a child. A child that's going to spawn a great nation with offspring as numerous as the sand in the seashore. I know you're in your 90s, Abram.
But I want you to trust me that I can and I will do this. Today, you're going to encounter test number three. The hardest test of all of them, Hebrews 11, 17. By faith Abraham, when he was tested. There's our...
Keyword. When he was tested, he offered up Isaac. And he who had received the promise was in the act of offering up his only son. In other words, the one who'd left everything for God. And trusted God for this miracle baby, he was in the act of having to offer up that very Son.
Of whom it had been said through Isaac, that son Shall all your offspring be named? But if he's dead, And how is that going to happen? Verse 19: It happened because he considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead. Figuratively speaking, from which figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. Let's jump back to Genesis 22 to take a look at this story that the writer of Hebrews refers to.
Genesis 22, if you want to turn there, you can find it real quick. If not, just say there in Hebrews 11. Abraham had Isaac when he was 99 years old. And Isaac, Isaac at that point in his life, was probably about 15 years old. They called his name Isaac.
Which meant literally son of laughter because the whole situation was just absurd. Abraham and Sarah are over 100 years old at this point, and they've got a new kid in diapers. Genesis 22, verse 1. After these things, God tested Abraham. There's the word again.
Right? And he said to him, Abraham, Abraham. And Abraham said, Here am I. By the way, here am I. It's not just Hebrew for hello.
Here am I was the response of a servant to a master. It's Abraham saying, here I am, Lord. I am ready to obey. Which when you think about it is honestly pretty remarkable. Abraham's over 100 at this point.
He's already accomplished some pretty impressive feats of faith. You almost think that he'd be ready to say, look, I've done my part. I've been out there. I've done this. I left my homeland, left my security at age 75.
I had a miracle baby at age 99. I've done my part. But if faith is not something you show one time and then ride out for the rest of your life. Every chapter of your life brings new tests of faith. And that applies especially to those of you that are in your retirement years.
And so God said, Abram, here it is. Take your. Sign. By the way, scholars tell us that the language here In this story, the Hebrew language slows down dramatically. You see, up until this point, the story of Abraham has progressed at a pretty fast clip.
And this happened, and this happened, and that happened. But here in chapter 22, the pace just slams to a crawl. It's kind of like when you're running toward the ocean with your kids, and you hit the water, and suddenly every step just slows down rapidly. You should almost read it like this. He says, take your.
Sun. Your Only son. Isaac. Whom you love. And go to the land of Moriah.
And I want you to offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, of which I will tell you. This son represented everything to Abraham. This son was the fulfillment of God's promise. He was the focal point of all Abraham's hopes for the future. Everything Abraham wanted in life, everything he and Sarah had ever hoped for about the future, the one single thing that made Abraham's life a success.
was this child. And now God says, take that child, that son. Your only son, the one that you love, and I want you to offer him up to me as a... Burnt offering.
Now I know you asked the question. How could God? Command something like that. And I'm going to deal with that in a moment. But for now, let's just see it for what it was.
Let Isaac represent the one thing that you treasure and trust the most in life. The one thing that makes life worth Living to you. If you're young, maybe that's a dream that you have, a dream of getting married, having a career. If you're older, maybe it's something that you already have: your family, your retirement savings, some milestone that you've reached in your career, or maybe it's your dreams for your kids now. Whatever it is, something happens, and you're asked by God to give that thing up.
That request might come in the form of an act of obedience. God says, hey, walk away from this and do this. It might come through some involuntary act of suffering that God puts you through. God takes something out of your life that you love and you depend on, and you don't know why. The word son is used ten times in these verses.
Take your son. Your only son. The son that you love. God is asking Abraham about the most important thing in the world to him and saying, Abraham, do you trust me with that? It's a heavy question.
In fact, you'll notice from this point on, nobody really talks. It was just silence. The gravity of this test is Almost unbearable. Tim Keller says that the hardest test of faith Are the ones where God seems to take you off of the path of blessing and put you on the road to disaster? The places where what God asks of you seems to go opposite the entire trajectory of your life.
Opposite the path of blessing, opposite of where you always thought you were headed in life, for example. You're in a situation. Where you know that to tell the truth is gonna lead to the loss of money, maybe even your job. Or how about this one? You're called to do volunteer work in the church.
Even though your own children aren't following God. Or you're a Christian parent with a teenage son who is dying of cancer. And now you're being called to continue obeying and serving God, trusting that God is a powerful, loving, and wise God in the midst of all of this, even though it does not feel like it. Or maybe it's refraining from Sex outside of marriage. It feels like you are depriving yourself of something that could really provide comfort and companionship for you in a challenging season of life, and everybody around you does it, and you seem like a.
A total oddball not to, or maybe it's resisting the homosexual desires in your heart. And that just seems like it's only going to lead to unhappiness and loneliness in life. And you're being called to trust God that his way is better, even though it doesn't feel like it to you. They're saying yes to go onto the mission field. And it feels like you're going to go backwards in life, away from security, away from retirement, away from all the things you've earned, and toward instability.
And it just makes no sense. Everybody thinks you're crazy for even considering it. Or God's calling you to go overseas, but to do so means leaving behind grandkids. Who you think needs you, or maybe it's the other way. Maybe for you to go means leaving behind parents and they're objecting.
And you're like, God, I hear you calling, but this doesn't feel like the right thing. Dr. Keller says this, you're not really in a test until your wisdom. Seems to contradict God's wisdom. You have not been tested until it looks like to obey God will lead to a kind of death.
And it will require some resurrection. When God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham saw only death, but he trusted that somehow God. would resurrect him.
Some avoid tests by Refusing to consider the possibility that a loving God would want anything other. than our immediate comfort. But if you've got a God who only fulfills your short-term desires and never contradicts you. You don't really have a God. You are your own God.
In other words, if obedience has never been hard for you. I mean really hard. Then I doubt whether you're really actually following God. You might have added religion to your life, but you're not following him. Because in the Christian life, there will be tests.
where what God asks you to do is totally the opposite of everything that you think should happen. Everything you always assumed would happen.
So Abraham rose early in the morning. saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac, and he cut the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day. Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from Afar the third day, y'all. This journey took three days.
I'm pretty sure in three days I would have talked myself out of this. Wouldn't you? Real faith, real trust isn't shown by your exuberance at the beginning. Real faith is shown by your follow-through to the end. That's it.
Real quick, where? Or if you started off obeying God in something only to fall back. from that thing on day two or three. Maybe it was a command that God gave you to break off a relationship. But stop some bad habit, to start some new habit, to read the Bible each day, to pray nightly with your spouse, to take out your grandkid once a week and spend time with them.
Maybe it was a financial sacrifice. God called you to tithe. You knew it? It was clear? You went back, you made it the first month, and it started off so well.
But days two and three, metaphorically speaking, they came and you just stopped. Again, you do not show your faith by your enthusiasm on day one. You show it by your commitment on days two and three. Good, J. D.
Verse five. Then Abraham said to the young man, Stay here with the donkey, and I and the boy will go over there and worship. Interesting. Word he chose right there, right? What he's doing is an act of worship.
Then watch this. After we do that. We will come again to you. Did you catch that? We Me and Isaac will come again to you.
Abraham was convinced that somehow they were both coming back. Abraham didn't know how God was going to do it. In fact, it seems like Abraham assumed that God would just resurrect Isaac after he had killed him. He didn't know what was going to happen, but he said he knew God's got a promise to fulfill, and I don't know how he's going to do it. I just know that he will.
Abraham by this point was used to following God to places he didn't know. with no idea how he was going to get there. Just close your eyes and take my hand. Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering. He laid it on Isaac his son.
And he took in his hand the fire and the knife.
So They went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, My father, Abraham said, Here am I, my son. He said, Behold the fire. The wood. But where is the lamb for a burnt offering?
Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. Honestly, y'all, that might be the greatest human statement of faith in the whole Bible. God will provide for himself a lamb. And y'all, now we see what Abraham has been doing for those three days and that dark silence. He's been reminding himself of the promises of God.
He's been rehearsing those promises again and again in his mind. He's been thinking about God's character. He'd probably replayed that encounter in Genesis 15, I told you about, where God took responsibility for both sides of the covenant. He rehearsed that again and again. He's like, God, you said, and God, you promised, and I believed.
Yo, this is important. What drove Abraham up that mountain was not the strength of his character. It wasn't even some kind of gold star of faith he was trying to earn. It wasn't a great worship playlist on his iPod. What drove Abraham up that mountain?
We're three words. The only three words that will sustain you during any difficult season of obedience. God? Faithful. Yes, he is.
Always. Always faithful. And when And when they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood and Order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on The altar on top of the wood. By the way, kudos to Isaac here. If Isaac were strong enough to carry the wood, he surely would have been strong enough to evade a frail old man.
But here he is crawling up on the altar trusting God and his daddy. The only way Isaac Would have done that was that he had inherited his daddy's trust in God. He'd heard his dad talk about the faithfulness of God and He saw his dad live out that trust daily in front of him, and somewhere along the way, Abraham's trust in God had taken root in Isaac's heart. And now he obediently trusts God and his dad and climbs up on the altar. Verse 10: Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
Let me take a moment now to address the question that many of you asked at the beginning: how could God command something like this?
Well, Abraham recognized that this wasn't some kind of arbitrary murder command. If so, Abraham could have just stabbed Isaac in the tent. No, something much deeper was going on. You see, the offering of the firstborn in the Old Testament symbolized the debt that every man owes to God. Throughout the Old Testament, God lays claim to every Israelite's firstborn because it represented their very lives.
At the Passover, God killed the firstborn of every household that didn't have the blood of a firstborn lamb on the doorpost. In the Hebrew sacrificial system, God required the firstborn of the cattle or the sheep to be sacrificed to him, as well as the firstfruits of the grain. The firstborn sons, Numbers 8, 17, also belonged to him and could only be redeemed back to the family by means of a sacrifice. In other words, Jewish culture. Maintained that the life of the firstborn was forfeit unless some sort of redeeming sacrifice was made.
God was showing that there is a debt that every person, every family, owes to him and it goes to the very depth of our lives. That's why Abraham understood what God was asking of him. Tim Keller says it this way: if Abraham had thought God had told him, kill Sarah, and then I'll know that you'll love me, he would never have done that. He would have concluded that he was hallucinating because God would not have commanded senseless murder like that. But when God said, offer Isaac.
When God said to offer Isaac Abraham knew exactly what that meant. The first one represented his very life. His very life. the debt that every man owes to God. You're listening to Summit Life with Pastor J.D.
Greer. We'll return to our teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to quickly tell you more about Pastor JD's new book. Culture is louder than ever. and more divided. Every day we hear of violence, strife, angry rhetoric, and chaos.
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Now let's finish up our teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD. Uh Here is Abraham with the knife now suspended in the air, verse 11. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham, and he said here and Aye, speak, Lord. Your servant is listening.
The angel of the Lord said, Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me. Abraham passed the test. Abraham showed that there was nothing he would not entrust to God. There was no place he would not go with God.
And Abraham lifted up his eyes and he looked and behold behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. Abraham went out and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in the place of his son. Watch this.
So Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah Jireh. That's literally what it says. The Lord will provide. As it is said to this day. On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.
In Hebrew literature, what you name a place is extremely significant. Because, whatever you name it, encapsulate the significance of whatever happened in that place.
So, isn't it interesting? that they call this place the Lord provides instead of how Abraham obeyed. You see, something more important than Abraham's impressive obedience is demonstrated here, and it is God's commitment to his people. And God's commitment to us is more important than our commitment to Him. And his commitment to us becomes the basis of our commitment to him.
You see centuries later another son, another one and only son. whom the father loved. Would walk up A mountain, in fact. Get this. It was that same mountain.
Scholars tell us that Mount Moriah was Precisely where Calvary, the place Jesus died on the cross, would have been. Just like Isaac, that son. would also willingly crawl up. On the wood in obedience to the Father's command. This time, however, the knife would not be stopped in midair, it would slash straight into the heart of Jesus.
In other words, on the very mountain. Where Jesus would die, a drama was enacted hundreds of years before Jesus was even born. Abraham plays the part of God the Father. Isaac plays the part of Jesus God's Son, but only, only up until the moment that God stops the sacrifice and points to a ram. caught in a thicket.
At that point, the story diverges because Jesus would actually die unlike Isaac. By the way, the ram caught in the thorn bushes was caught by his horns. That's not a random detail. It's trying to show you the ram would have been unblemished. Jesus was the unblemished Lamb that the angel was pointing to who would take Isaac's place.
And Jesus, the true Lamb of God, would willingly stay on the altar as the Father plunged the knife of justice into his chest for our sins. And because of that, we know. Just as God said to Abraham that the Father truly loves us. since he has not withheld his son his only Son from us. You see, this story is not first and foremost about Abraham's commitment to God.
It's first and foremost about God's commitment to Abraham. That's why the mountain was commemorated as the Lord will provide Jehovah Jireh, not how Abraham obeyed. Y'all, when it's all said and done, and you look backwards. Over your life, the thing that will stand out is not your great sacrifices for God, but His steadfast faithfulness to you. Picture first and foremost.
And Jehovah Jireh on Mount Calvary, what he did for your sin.
So let me use our last few moments here to clarify three things. Tell you a story. And then I'll be done. Here's the three things I want to clarify. The nature of God's test.
Number two, why we need those tests. And then, number three, how to pass them. Number one, the nature of God's task. Let's talk about that first. As I said, throughout your whole life, as you walk with God, God will at times take away something that you think you need to.
See if you really actually trust him. That might happen again through a command that he gives to you, like he did to Abraham. He asked you to walk away from something, some security, something you enjoy that you just feel like you need that for life and happiness. It might also happen, as I told you, through some involuntary suffering he puts you through.
Some unanswered prayer. You're convinced you need something, and for whatever reason, God's not giving it to you: a spouse, a job, a baby. Healing of some kind. And in that moment of weakness. When whatever earthly thing you depended on or thought you needed is withheld from you.
You don't get asked out on the dates. You don't get the promotion. The divorce goes through. The cancer screen comes back positive. In that moment, you discover firsthand that God is.
better and he is more reliable than whatever it was you thought that you needed. Could I use a silly example in a really serious moment? When I was a kid, I was deeply impacted by that final scene in Star Wars where Luke is trying to guide his X-Wing fighter down. that crevice and the death star to that single exhaust shaft. where he can fire his torpedo and blow up the Death Star.
You tracking? As Luke is nearing the spot where he's going to fire his torpedo, he turns on his targeting software. Even with the help of that software. It's going to be a nearly impossible shot, and the pilot just in front of him. Whatever guy's name was, he just missed.
But now Luke has got his chance. But as he gets close to the moment of taking his shot, he hears a voice. Telling him to put away his targeting mechanism and just use the force. Luke does it. Pushes it away.
And the power of the force guides that torpedo right into the shaft and boom, that star turns into galactic dust.
Now, let's be clear. Star Wars is not a Christian movie.
So, I do not regularly draw spiritual inspiration from the Star Wars franchise, but there is a picture in that that I love. Because maybe God has taken out something that you thought that you needed. A friend, your health, a support at work, a savings account, something. And now he's about to show you the meaning. of my strength is made perfect in weakness.
You know listen, not everything in life that seems bad actually is bad.
Sometimes God takes out good things from your life so you don't turn them into idols. and start to depend on them in the place of God.
Sometimes God takes out even good things so that in our weakness we learn to depend on Him. See, and that leads me to number two. Why we need God's tests. You know, put very simply, we turn even God's best gifts into idols. John Calvin, the reformer, said that the human heart is an idol factory, turning even the best of God's gifts into idols.
Idols are not usually in and of themselves bad things. They're usually good things we turn into God things that then become bad things to us. Isaac's probably the best biblical example of that, right? I mean, y'all, if there ever were a child that were a gift from God, Isaac would have been it, right? He was God's miraculous miracle baby.
That he gave to fulfill his promises to Abraham. If ever there had been anything you could consider a gift directly from God, Isaac would have been that kid, right? But it's possible, you see. To turn even the best gifts that really are from God, it's possible to turn them into idols. And that's what Abraham had done with Isaac.
Sen you see is like a sin is like a judo expert. Takes your forward momentum. and uses it against you. Sin takes the best things God has put into your life and turns them into liabilities for you. Y'all listen to this.
This is counterintuitive. But if you've never realized it before, you need to realize it right now. Because this is Mm. Dead on true. The greatest potential enemy of God's work in your life is not your sins, it's not your bad habits.
The greatest enemy of God's work in your life. is the good things. that God has put into your life. Your marriage, your family, your job, the good gifts from God that you start to depend on in place of Him like. Isaac had become for Abraham.
Isaac was Abraham's son, his only son. The only thing he lived for anymore. The greatest threat to God's work in your life. Tim Keller says, are your onlys. Your only if only I was married Everything would be great.
If only my career achievements were better. Then my life would have real significance. If only I had a boyfriend, if only I had kids, if only. I could make another 50,000 next year. What is that only for you?
Do you want to know what your Isaac is? Ask what you obsess about. Ask what you're most driven to obtain. What do you most worry about losing? What have you worked the hardest for in your life?
For some of you, you've worked night and day. You've worked harder than anybody else around you to become a success, and there's nothing wrong with that. Except that you did it because you thought success gave you value and significance. Just like Abraham thought a son would give him those things. Your Isaac is anything which the thought of losing When you think about losing that thing, it fills you with absolute despair.
What is that for you? It's not a bad thing, it's always a good thing. For Abraham, it was his son, his only son.
So God had to deal with that. God's tests decenter things that have displaced God in our hearts.
So again, what would it be in your life? It could be marriage, could be a girlfriend, could be your family, could be getting pregnant, could be. Maybe your only is getting into a particular school. Maybe it's getting to some level in your career, getting some amount of money in the bank. For me, I'll be honest.
At times it's been the success of this church. I mean this church by some measures is is successful, right? And we recognize that as the blessing of God. We celebrate. what God is doing, but you know Veronica and I.
We ask ourselves all the time, is this our Isaac? Is this our only? Just our only our son, our only son, the son that we love. The sun we could not imagine being without.
Now, just to be clear, I don't think so. I'm not planning to offer you up on the altar, so relax, okay? But every year, every year, I've told you, as part of our January fast, our 21-day fast. Veronica and I lay our involvement in this church on the altar. And every year we say, God, do you want us here?
Do you want us to lay this down? And thus far, every single year, he said no. He does not want us to leave, but... But see, I do that. Not because I have any desire to go anywhere.
I just don't want this good blessing to become my Isaac. That's not good for you and it's not good for us.
So every year I want to put it on the altar and I want to tell God, God, I love this church. But you, you are my only, only. You and you alone, you're my life and security and significance and hope. Y'all, those horns are so easy. To say But they are so hard to live out.
When God asks you to obey with your only, when he asks you to walk into some chapter that feels like Death. Are you going to trust him there? Here's number three, how to pass God's tests. Abraham shows us that we can gain the confidence to pass these tests from three places. The first one is knowledge of God's character.
If you've been patiently waiting in Hebrews 11, I'm coming right back to you. Here we go. Hebrews 11, verse 19. Abraham considered that God was able to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did actually receive him back. Abraham knew who God was.
He knew what God was capable of. Abraham had experienced God's ability to bring life to his sexually dead body and to give him a miraculous son, even in his old age. He'd seen God provide for him again and again and again. And Abraham said, Surely God will provide for me here. The Lord has promised good to me.
His word my hope secures. He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures. And so Abraham made up his mind: wherever he is, that's where I want to be. Because wherever he is, no matter how bad or dead it seems in this place, he's the God of resurrection. I don't know how he's gonna do it.
But he's declared those intentions for me, and there's a resurrection coming. And if I'm not near him, then no matter how good this place seems, no matter how alive it seems, it's ultimately only death and destruction. It's a city without foundations. Faith's conviction is that God is good and that seeking Him is worth the effort. It starts with knowing who God is and how He feels about you.
Remember Martin Luther's statement I've given you: faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace.
So certain of God's favor. That he would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Faith is being certain that God's favor is extended towards you and that. And that that is What he's pursuing in your life. It's good.
Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace.
So certain of God's favor. It would risk death a thousand times trusting that. Second place we get confidence to lean our wait on God is remembrance of God's past faithfulness. Again, this was Abraham's third test. He'd seen God be faithful again and again and again.
He knew God would not let him down now. When they came to take away Polycarp, who was one of the early church's first martyrs. Polycarp was 86 years old. He'd been discipled personally by the Apostle John. They gave old Polycarp a chance to renounce Christ.
His reply very famously was 80 in six years He has never let me down once. Why would I turn my back on him now? That's what Abraham said. Abraham could joyfully sing that song we love to sing here at the Summit Church: All my life you have been faithful. All my life you've been so, so good.
At the summit church, we often will say this: God's past faithfulness in our lives. is his pledge of future faithfulness toward us. I'd encourage you to take some time to review God's faithfulness in your life. Recently I met with a guy in a church, his name's Todd Wilson, he does this thing called life mapping. People in ministry, people in leadership, where you trace out what God has done in your life as a way of helping clarify what He might be calling you to do in the future.
As part of the exercise, I had to map out the history of my life. And as I did, I was overwhelmed, y'all, again, at the goodness that God has woven into my life. And rarely did it happen through my, not only my planning for it, but even looking for it or asking for it. I'm usually not smart enough, honestly, to even be aware. of what I need.
God's goodness came through my parents. I was reminded how God put the right guides into my life at just the right times, how Veronica came into my life, how different friends and counselors. And words of warning have come into my life without me even knowing that I needed to hear them. Again, at just the right moments. Summit team members.
that I wasn't smart enough to know that we needed, that just honestly kind of showed up. At just the right time, sent here by God to provide some insight or guidance or skill that we needed. All my life, you have been faithful. All my life, you've been so, so good. 80 in six years have you been faithful to me.
Why would I turn my back on you now? How do we pass God's tests? First, we've got knowledge of his character. Second, we have Number two, we've got to. remembrance of his past Faithfulness and then number three or lastly Look to the lamb.
Look to the lamb. That's the last thing we learned from Abraham as you look to the lamb. I think of those last final defiant faith statements that Abraham made. Don't worry, Isaac. God will provide for himself a lamb.
And then Abraham said to his servants, don't worry. We're both going to come back again. Abraham was convinced the resurrection was coming. He didn't know how. But he knew that somehow a lamb was going to be involved in that restoration.
God will provide for himself. A lamp. And here we are now. Much more clearly now, we see who exactly that Lamb was and how he would provide that resurrection for us. We know it's not just that God would provide for Himself a lamb, but that God would provide Himself as the Lamb for us.
Jesus, the Lamb of God, unblemished, you crawled up. Onto that altar voluntarily and took into himself the knife of God's wrath so that we could live. Jesus, who actually was killed and actually resurrected from the dead, so that I could be brought to new life and experience the power of that new life and all the dead parts of my life. And now I know, I know, I know now that the Father loves me because He did not spare His Son, His only Son, the Son whom He loved, so that I could be saved. And now I know that my God will supply all my needs according to his riches in Christ Jesus, because he that did not spare his only Son, would he not also with him freely give us all things?
And I know, Psalm 27, 10, that though my father and mother have forsaken me, If that ever happened, that the Lord would take me in. Isaiah 49, 15. I know that a woman would never forget her nursing child, right? But she wouldn't have no compassion on the son of her womb, yet even these may forget. God says, but I'll never forget you.
I've engraved you on the palms of my hands. The walls of your life are continually before me. Jeremiah 31:20, he says to me, Aren't you my darling son, my dear son? I'll remember you always. My heart yearns for you.
I will surely have mercy on you, declares the Lord. See, I know whom I have believed. And I'm persuaded that he is able to keep that which I've committed to him against that day. Faith is a living bold Trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. It doesn't want to hold on to the rock face, it just wants to hold on to the rope.
One of our leaders just got back from a mission trip, and they told me this story. One of our Indigenous church planters in this area had previously been a medical doctor. As a doctor, his life was relatively easy, at least financially speaking. But he sensed God calling him to ministry. He said yes.
He thought, you know, he was wealthy enough. He thought he'd saved up enough to make sure that he could make the transition. He just Abraham the moment and Took the plunge. But he said, almost exactly to the day that I resigned from my practice, my son. Teenage son was diagnosed with leukemia.
He said, I wasn't phased at first. I was following God. God would take care of me. He'd even done the smart thing and financially prepared for some emergency like this by saving up his money. He'd be okay.
Before long, he thought the funds from this new church plant that he was starting would kick in and he. His son wouldn't see any change in the care. Trouble was the church kept hitting roadblocks. They were trying to do it in some areas that weren't real financially well off, and it took a lot longer to launch that church than he'd anticipated. He said he watched as his savings account just dropped and dropped and dropped and dropped and dropped and dropped and dropped.
And one day it bottomed out and hit zero. He said, I was crushed. I was Christian. She says, I cried out to God. I even confessed.
To God, it was bitter to him, God, you were supposed to take care of me. I said yes to follow you. You're supposed to take care of everything. You haven't done your part, God. He said, but then during our next medical visit, after I was at zero, literally nothing left in my bank account.
He said the doctor's called me in. Awkwardly. He says, These guys were friends of mine. I'd worked with them before. He says, They weren't sure what was going on.
These doctors, he said, had a lot of experience in this. And one of them just held up a X-ray. and said, your son's leukemia is completely gone. The doctors had checked and rechecked the results and it was gone. This church planner told us.
It was only afterwards that I felt the Spirit of God speaking to me. And he said, One, I had to get you to zero. Because only then would you learn to trust me.
Now, this man says, I live by that faith.
Now I'm so glad you taught me that lesson. By the way, through that faith, he's already planted four churches. One's right in the middle of the biggest drug cartel area in the entire region. Our team got to be there on the ground and see it.
Now a few things number one That's why you should go on short-term mission trips because you get to see first-hand stuff like that. And number two, I'm not saying that every time, if you wait long enough, there's a healing from leukemia just around the corner. That's not always what happens.
Sometimes God's goodness is in letting us struggle and depend on him, and sometimes it's in taking us home.
So I'm not saying that healing always comes. What I'm saying is that those who wait upon the Lord will always find him faithful. I'm saying that faithfulness takes different forms, but it is unfailing.
Some of church, the faith that you showed at the beginning of your Christian life, The faith you showed to surrender your life to him and follow him will not be enough to propel you to the end. You're gonna have to trust God again and again and again and again. Where's he asking you to trust him at? That's it for today. A final reminder that Pastor JD's new book is titled Everyday Revolutionary.
Examining biblical examples like Daniel and Peter, this book helps everyday Christians stand firm in truth without losing grace. Whether you're navigating difficult conversations, political pressures or a fear of cancel culture, you'll find a better way forward. a way that lives quietly but testifies loudly. Request your copy today at jdgreer.com. See you next time for Summit Life.
Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries. Uh
