Week commencing July 10th 2022

Devotional Materials. Week Commencing Sunday 10^th July 2022

This is the last devotional materials to go out under Woodlands Table Tennis Club. If you wish to continue in these, then you are welcome to attend Angmering Baptist Church, services at 10.30am and (from 24/7) 6.30pm. Alternatively you can watch the morning service on YouTube uploaded later on the day or access the printed materials on the church’s website. I can continue to send you printed materials by email if you prefer. My email address is dlhbarnes@gmail.com

Call to Worship

For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. John 3:16,17

Hymn

‘From heaven you came’ MP 162 (Piano)

Graham Kendrick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nOrQij4Ttk

Opening Prayer

Heavenly Father, we thank you for yielding your Son up to us- the servant king. We offer you our gratitude and worship. We pray that you would draw near to us and speak to us this morning. Amen

Hymns

‘When I was lost you came and rescued me’ MP 1127 (Guitar and violin)

Kate and Miles Simmonds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ4xkBNRwXc

‘’Hallelujah, my Father’ MP 206 (Guitar and violin)

Tim Cullin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhq-hV0i-90

Reading. Genesis 22: 1-19

¹Sometime later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. ²Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

³ Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.

⁴ On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.

⁵ He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

⁶ Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together,

⁷Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

⁸ Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

⁹ When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.

¹⁰ Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.

¹¹ But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied.

¹² “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

¹³ Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.

¹⁴ So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”

¹⁵ The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time

¹⁶ and said, “I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son,

¹⁷ I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies,

¹⁸ and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

¹⁹ Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And Abraham stayed in Beersheba.

Prayer

Lord, we thank you for all your goodness toward us. We thank you for today. We thank you for those who have given us guidance, counsel, advice and good example. We thank you for those who have encouraged and comforted us, who have brought a smile to our faces even when things were difficult. We thank you for times that keep us humble, that make us remember how much we need you.

We remember before you all who are facing various trials at this time. Those who are sick and bereaved. Those who are lonely. Those who face difficult circumstances of various kinds. Lord be near to them, guide and sustain them, pour out your peace in their hearts that they might trust in you and be delivered from all fear.

Most of all we thank you for Jesus Christ who is always present with us. Our friend and our peace.

Hymn

‘You are my hiding place’ MP 793 (Piano)

Michael Ledner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sKGTzn1qT4

Sermon

Many years ago a flamboyant atheist spoke in America. He claimed to have the ultimate proof that God does not exist. After giving his lecture he closed it with a proposition he made with God- on the spot, “if God exists, let Him strike me dead within fifteen minutes”. In the meantime he cursed God, blasphemed and did everything imaginable in order to make God angry. People watched in hushed silence. As the seconds ticked away and came to the fifteen minute mark, tension filled the auditorium. Then the man made his pronouncement “See, there is no God”. But while the auditorium was still deathly quiet a boy shouted from the back “Sir, do you think that you can exhaust the patience of God in fifteen minutes?”

Like that atheist there are many who seek to test and analyse God. We put ‘God in the Dock’¹ He must act and answer according to our terms. We do, however, become rather nervous at the thought of Him testing us! But our passage concerning Abraham’s offering of Isaac teaches us first of all to

Expect tests from God

We may feel threatened by such a phrase. We may ask “why should God make life difficult for me?” But the boy’s answer to the atheist indicates the true scale of things: God’s patience is not exhausted in fifteen minutes. God has His own agenda.

God is supreme. He is the Judge. Not us. He is ‘from above’ and we are ‘from below’ (John 3:31, 8:23). We are the limited ones.

In the same way we are limited when we think our lives belong to us, and that we can make them as safe and comfortable as possible. Actually our lives belong to God. He has higher priorities for our lives. These include the development of faith and obedience. It is because of God’s great love that He does not allow us to stay as we are. Rather, He is intent on making us glorious creatures fit for heaven. The development of faith and obedience in our lives are His highest priorities in this development:

“Trials have come” says Peter “so that your faith, of greater worth than gold which perishes even though refined by fire- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:7).

Everyone here has had to face examinations at School/University or within their chosen occupations. Let’s face it- we all feel reluctant about undergoing such ordeals. But think back, if I was honest, I wonder if I would have truly mastered my subjects unless I had been tested in some way? It was not that I was disinterested. I found the subjects interesting. But would I have mastered them, when outside me there were so many distractions and inside me the pull to take things easy.

But if this is true of examinations, then how much more in the tests that God gives us to try our faith. His tests give us the opportunity to apply what we have learned. They sober us up and show us where we really are and how we need to grow. They check our pride and arrogance. It is doubtful that we would grow in faith at all unless God tested us for we are prone to spiritual indiscipline and easily become self rather than God honouring.

God’s testing then is necessary to ensure our development in faith, which is the highest priority.

Before we move on to explore the quality of Abraham’s faith we need to deal with the ethical problem of God asking Abraham to offer Isaac.

The problem of offering Isaac.

It is one thing to accept God’s prerogative to test us. Isn’t it quite another to accept the nature of Abraham’s test here? Is it right for God to ask a father to kill his own son?

We have to say that God had no intention that this offering should be carried out. He hates child sacrifice. God merely asked in order to test Abraham. A happy outcome was pre- determined.

For one human being to ask another to offer up their son in sacrifice- even if there was no intention to take the life- would be cruel. But God is all knowing, all loving, holy and wise. He was in complete control of succeeding events. He knew the full implications of asking this of Abraham and the benefits that would result. Man can never know these things. His knowledge is finite, his motives mixed and his estimates of outcome unreliable. God is God. Man is man.

God’s asking of Abraham made possible this supreme act of faith and obedience on Abraham’s part. It made possible this tremendous example. It is the nature of Abraham’s devotion we are to focus on in this episode. This is how the book of Hebrews in the New Testament sees it. Hebrews 11 lists the great men and women of faith. Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac is recorded as an example of faith. In the supreme test Abraham exercised faith.

But what does exercising faith involve? Does Abraham teach us anything about this? It’s easy for people to say ‘have faith’ but what does this mean in practice?

Exercising faith

First we see for Abraham that faith meant faith in God’s promise.

Abraham immediately obeyed God’s order by faith. He knew that God’s will never contradicts God’s promise, so he held on to the promise God had given him earlier. That promise is found in Genesis 21:12 “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.”

Abraham so believed that promise that he considered even if God allowed him to slay his son, He could raise Isaac from the dead. Hebrews 11:17-19 says “By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. “Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.”

Abraham told the two servants “I and the lad will go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you (Genesis 22:5). Abraham had no intention of bringing back a corpse. His faith was in God’s promise.

Secondly Abraham’s faith was faith in God as Provider.

Two statements reveal God as provider

Verse 8 ‘God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering’ and the name ‘Jehovah- Jireh’ (verse 14) which means ‘the Lord will provide’. As he climbed Mount Moriah with his son, Abraham was confident that God would meet every need. He had faith in God’s character, particularly in His ability to provide.

The nature of faith

Looking at Abraham’s faith, perhaps you have begun to wonder about the adequacy of your own understanding of faith?

Up to now you have thought of faith as a lower form of knowledge. There is a story where a preacher declared in his sermon ‘that there is a congregation out there is a matter of fact; that they are listening to me is a matter of faith’

Perhaps you can improve on this definition. For you faith is belief, accepting certain things are true. For you ‘I believe in God’ means something like ‘I believe that there is a God’. But this understanding of faith is still inadequate.

Biblical faith as we see in Abraham includes belief, but it goes further, it involves active trust.

Faith as active trust

Faith is a decision. It involves an act of will to trust God. To have faith in God is to entrust yourself to Him. Faith is like an anchor, linking us with the object of faith. An anchor secures a ship to the ocean floor. So our faith links us securely with God. Faith is anchoring ourselves to God and resting secure in Him. When the storms of life come a mere knowledge about God will be of no help. We must be anchored in God.

The same can be said for God’s promises. We must enter into them and actively benefit from them.

We have tremendous promises from God. The Lord has promised us the Holy Spirit’s comfort, guidance, peace, a shelter from the storm, a way where there seems to be none, a supply for every need. Our tendency is to ignore these promises and go our own way, worrying, fretting and taking matters into our own hands.

We forget we serve a God who laid the foundations of the earth. We forget our Father is all powerful, and all things which exist were made by Him. We see only our problems. Our fears shut out the vision of His power and glory. We get afraid, we panic, we question and doubt.

Let your faith rise to the truth that God has you in the palm of His hand. How difficult it must be for our loving Father to understand why we do not trust Him when we are down and in need. God must think to Himself ‘Don’t they know I have graven them upon the palms of my hands? I could no more forget them in their hour of need than a mother could forget her suckling child…and even though a mother could forget her child, I cannot forget a single child of mine (Isaiah 49: 15,16).

Faith involves acting on your trust in God and His words.

So, we are to expect tests from God, and we are to learn to exercise faith- active faith in God’s promise, knowing that Jehovah Jireh is our provider.

A third lesson we can learn is a challenge:

Yield what is most precious

Abraham’s example teaches us that faith is not really tested unless the issue matters to us.

Isaac was Abraham’s only son. The future of the covenant rested on him. He was a miracle child, the gift of God to Abraham and Sarah in response to their faith. Abraham and Sarah loved Isaac very much. They had built their future around him. When God asked Abraham to offer his son it looked like Abraham was wiping out everything Abraham and Sarah had lived for.

C S Lewis in his book ‘A Grief Observed’ states how ‘You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you’ He admits it was easier to entrust other Christians to the Lord when they died, but when it came to the death of his wife he wondered if faith was really there to do so. He uses the following analogy “It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it? Truth faith always has this element of risk from our viewpoint’

Faith involves yielding to God what is most precious. This can appear to be risky and unreasonable.

Applications

Are you facing a trial in an important area of your life? God is calling you to yield that issue to Him. This may mean a difficult step of faith

Perhaps the trial affects your family life. You have brought your children up as best as you can. You have disciplined and cared for them. But one or more has become ungrateful. They take your love for granted. The relationship is precious to you. This is a sore trial. But God prompts you to faith, active faith. To yield the relationship to Him and to actively forgive. To forgive is part of your faith in God in the matter. How unreasonable, but this is when faith is truly faith.

Perhaps a crisis comes into your life. It seems so overwhelming, that it appears to be impossible to trust God. It was a great shock to Elizabeth and I when our son Michael was first diagnosed with autism. He was diagnosed when he was two and a half years old. He is now thirty. Since the age of nineteen he has been in residential care. There’s one of two ways to look at life with Michael. The first is to focus on the unfairness and the inconvenience of life with him. To give you an idea of the scale of the difficulties involved, Michael wasn’t toilet trained until he was eleven years old.

We had to lock the other children’s bedrooms, otherwise Michael would have been in ransacking their rooms! And not forgetting to lock the lounge door- one year Michael singlehandedly ruined Christmas by opening everyone’s presents before Christmas Day. On one occasion we found him sitting on the floor surrounded by glass. He had used a chair to climb up on to a table and had literally swung on the light fixture that had a mock mini chandelier effect. I don’t know quite what had influenced him- perhaps Errol Flynn as Robin Hood swinging from the chandeliers in a sword fight, but there he was, sitting there, surrounded by broken glass, amazingly unharmed. Michael had many bizarre behaviours, and still does. As a number of you know, Michael has not allowed anyone to cut his hair for six years. He will not allow anyone near his head. Meanwhile his hair has become unrecognisable as hair. It’s not only long, but discoloured, matted and looks like old rope folded on his head, and mould is growing in there. The decision has been made to have it surgically removed in hospital under general anaesthetic.

We can focus on these things, or learn to focus with the lens of faith. That God has permitted Michael to come into this world as he is. That does not mean God created Michael the way he is. Genesis tells us everything God created was very good. (Genesis 1:31) Autism is not very good. It impairs function, it does not enhance it. Michael has the mental function of a three year old. The Bible is clear sin, suffering and death came into existence as the result of the fall- after Adam and Eve disobeyed God, not before (Genesis 3) The evidence of struggle and death in the fossil record is not a record of what has taken place from the beginning of existence, but is a record of what happened since the world wide flood.²

It has helped Elizabeth and I to see that it is the Lord’s confidence in us as Michael’s parents to entrust someone as precious as Michael to us, so we learn to grow in faith and love, and so serve Michael better. The Lord has always provided what Michael has needed. It was a wonderful answer to prayer that Michael was given his own flat, and now we have heard this week that the operation to cut Michael’s hair will go ahead on the 19^th July. Much sooner than we expected, and again we are grateful to God for His answer to our prayers in this respect. Further we have an assured hope- a certain hope- that one day Michael will be fully restored in heaven to the man God always intended him to be (1 Corinthians 15:35-58, Revelation 21:4)

Faith. Yielding to God when it appears unreasonable to do so, but this is when faith is truly faith.

Perhaps the trial affects your work. You work conscientiously and serve others. You gain some satisfaction from your work, but in your company you notice the ones who ‘court the boss’ are rewarded. The quality of their work is secondary. God reminds you of His word that you yield up your job and keep doing it ‘as to the Lord and not to men’ (Colossians 3: 23, 24). Keep your integrity. How unreasonable! But this is when faith is truly faith.

Do you feel reluctant to yield your most precious things to God? The faith involved can be so painful and seem so unreasonable.

We can be reassured because we come to One who has given up what is most precious to Him

Father and Son

In Abraham and Isaac we see a beautiful picture of our Heavenly Father and His Son Jesus Christ. The Father loves the Son, but like Abraham, the Father did not spare His Son but delivered Him up for us all (Romans 8:32)

In Isaac’s case, a substitute died for him, but nobody could take the place of Jesus on the cross. He was the only sacrifice that could finally and completely take away the sins of the world. God provided a ram, but Isaac had asked about a lamb. The answer to the question ‘Where is the lamb?’ was given by John the Baptist ‘Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1:29).

How painful for the Father, how unreasonable that He should give up His beloved Son for us. For men and women who have rebelled against Him and rejected His ways. What a wonderful gift.

Saving faith

The New Testament makes it clear we have to do something to accept the gift that God offers. This in itself is an act of faith. John writes that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16) Believing involves an act of faith, based on all that we know about Jesus. It’s not blind faith. It is putting our trust in a Person. In some ways it is like a step of faith taken by a bride or a bridegroom when they say, “I will” on their wedding day.

Here is one way of taking this step of faith. It can be summarised in three words:

Sorry. You have to ask God to forgive you for all the things you have done wrong and turn from everything which you know is wrong in your life. This is what the Bible means by ‘repentance’

Thank you. We believe that Jesus died for us on the cross. You need to thank Him for dying for you and for the offer of His free gift of forgiveness, freedom and the Holy Spirit.

Please. God never forces His way into our lives. You need to accept His gift and invite Him to come and live within you by His Spirit.

Make the following prayer your own if you would like a relationship with God through Jesus Christ:

Prayer

I am sorry for the things I have done wrong in my life. Please forgive me. I now turn from everything which I know is wrong.

Thank you that You died on the cross for me so that I could be forgiven and set free.

Thank you that You offer me forgiveness and the gift of your Spirit. I now receive that gift.

Please come into my life by your Holy Spirit to be with me forever.

Thank you Lord Jesus. Amen.

 

¹ C S Lewis has written a very helpful series of essays under the title of his book ‘God in the Dock’ where he counters various objection raised against the Christian Faith.

² For an over view of the origins debate please ask me for a copy of ‘Creation & Evolution. Why it matters what you believe’ by Colin Garner, Emeritus Professor of Applied Thermodynamics. Please also see ‘Noah’s flood. Washing away millions of years’ Dr Terry Mortenson (DVD), for the world wide flood and its impact on geology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fP4_la6JZtg

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Song (Listen as played through PA speaker)

‘God will provide a lamb’. Michael Card 

Chorus
God will provide a lamb
To be offered up in your place
A sacrifice so spotless and clean
To take all your sin away