Last week we, we talked about this amazing
character, Abraham.
Of all the men that ever lived, he,
he had a title that no one ever
had.
Moses, David, Joshua, all the great heroes in
the Old Testament.
Nobody ever had one thing that Abraham had.
What was it?
Huh?
Friend of God.
Did you ever think God needed a friend?
We think he's kind of remote, somewhere in
eternity, doesn't need friends.
But he called Abraham his friend.
In fact, I don't think the hymn is
in our book, since it's a Baptist book,
but it's in Methodist books.
The God of Abraham prays who reigns enthroned
above.
Ancient of everlasting grace and God of love.
Jehovah great I am by earth and heaven
confessed.
We bow and bless the sacred name forever
blessed.
And Abraham was the friend of God.
Didn't he, didn't God say, shall I hide
from Abraham the things that I do?
And God has promised to share secrets with
those who trust him.
The secret of the Lord is with who?
TV preachers.
No bishops, sorry, popes.
No, hopeless.
But who does he share his secrets with?
Those that fear him.
You see, there's a holy fear as well
as a natural timidity, nervous fear.
Well, we've mentioned about these heroes.
I've told you before, let me repeat quickly.
If I'd been writing Hebrews 11, I wouldn't
have put this gang in here, I'll tell
you that.
Why should I put Abraham in?
He lied.
He deliberately went out of the path that
God chose for him.
I wouldn't have put Moses in this chapter.
He committed murder.
I wouldn't have put Noah in this chapter,
he got drunk.
There's a whole bunch of rascals in this
chapter, it's a rogues gallery actually.
So I wonder you're not in it, but
anyhow.
Not all the sailors are there yet.
On the other hand, there are some people
I would have put in.
I would have put Joshua there, he isn't
there.
He's there by influence, by faith, the walls
of Jericho fell down.
But goodness, what's it going to be in
a hero if nobody knows?
You've got to get some credit somewhere.
But you see, it's at the end of
the line.
The bottom line is the judgment seat of
Christ for everybody.
Whether we like it or not.
That's the bottom line.
The judgment seat of Christ.
Well, I'd better get on with the story.
Let's look in this...
Wait a minute, which chapter?
I marked it as usual last night.
Chapter 22.
Now let's say this again, remember.
As we've said so very often.
Faith, faith that he's going to be trusted
is going to be tested.
As I tell you rather humorously now, my
muscles are hard to find.
I have an exercise in my...
Somebody asked our Paul one day when he
was five years of age.
When you get old, what are you going
to work at?
He said, I'm going to be like my
daddy.
I won't work, I'll just be a preacher.
He's learned better since.
But if you don't develop...
You use a thing, you don't develop it.
And you won't develop faith sitting here or
looking at a blackboard.
This man is tested right down the line.
In the first place, God says to him,
get thee up out of thy country and
out of thy kingdom.
He tests him in his relationships.
Well, then when he gets up, it says
in the 51st chapter of Isaiah, I called
Abraham alone.
Did he go alone?
So he set off in disobedience.
He took Tira with him.
In Hebrew, that word Tira means delay.
Who was Tira?
He was the old man.
And you'll never get anywhere until you get
rid of the old man.
Then when you get rid of the old
man, you have a problem with the young
man.
Somebody asked me today, do you believe in
two natures?
Yes, not three.
The man that says he believes in two
natures, believes in three.
He believes in a spiritual nature, a sinful
nature and a human nature.
I don't believe in that.
I believe in a spiritual nature and a
human nature.
You see, the trouble with modern Christianity is
it isn't modern Christianity.
I asked a big shot guy who came
to see me today.
He's a millionaire, I think.
But anyhow, he was disgusted.
That's a pleasure.
Let me go up at my office disgusted
and delighted.
I said to him, is the sixth chapter
of Acts the norm for a beacon?
Who's in the sixth chapter of Acts?
Stephen.
What did he do?
Signs, wonders, miracles.
Any deacons in the First Baptist Church in
town, famous green acres like that?
Or anybody at Church of God?
Anywhere.
Now don't mention names, just say I said
it.
Where are there any biblical deacons?
He said, deacon, isn't a man a burnt
preacher?
And he does signs and wonders and miracles.
Now when were they put into death?
They put us to death if we were
apostolic.
Pentecost in the Bible again is married to
what?
Pain, prison, punishment, poverty.
What's it married to today?
Prosperity, personality, superstars.
We're a million, billion miles away from New
Testament Christianity.
And I told this big shot today, I
said, I'm looking for a church where you
can open the door Sunday morning and say
to that world outside which is scarred by
what happened at PTL and those other places.
It's scarred and it's scarred by the coming
atom bomb and whatever you've got.
Open the doors and say to the world
outside, this is that which is spoken of.
Where is it?
It may be your condition of being a
member of your church.
You have to speak in tongues to do
something else and that's all right.
But where is the church that can open
the door and say, this is that?
Come and see Pentecost repeated.
I believe Pentecost is the norm that God
never intended a church with backside.
He intended every deacon to be like Stephen.
Then he got an evangelist by the name
of Philip in the 8th chapter.
What did he do?
Signs and wonders and miracles, cast out demons
and everybody in the synagogue clapped their hands.
They were happy.
It didn't say that.
What did it say?
It says the whole city rejoiced.
I got my friend today and he's going
to buy one copy of Azusa Street.
Do you have some with you tonight, John?
You won.
You'll have to loan it.
Okay.
Get that book Azusa Street.
Then get the other one.
Seven pioneer Pentecostal preachers.
If those don't put you on your face,
you must be dead.
I mean that happened in our day in
England in 1926 and 7.
Men were not ordained.
Men with almost no Bible knowledge went into
cities and rented buildings, holding 2,000, packed
them in in a week and turned thousands
or literally thousands away.
And in two weeks, 924 people went through
the inquiry group.
There isn't a man on TDA in the
inquiry group.
Go from Billy Graham to Oral Roberts to
Jimmy Shruggetts.
Everybody come up and say a word.
This stupid business, close your eyes and bow
your heads.
Supposing a girl said that to her boyfriend
just going to the wedding.
She said, well, darling, I've lived for this
day, but just tell a preacher that when
I walk down the aisle tomorrow, ask everybody
to close their eyes and bow their heads.
Wouldn't that be wonderful?
He'd say, get out of here.
It'd be any sense anyhow.
What is it embarrassing about going to the
front to get a relationship with God?
People ought to be glad to act upon
their hands and knees.
Just crawl down the aisle to be reconciled
to God.
Crawl down the aisle to get rid of
condemnation and bondage and sin.
But no, no, we make it so easy.
We're just about taking the cross out of
Christian living.
And yet Jesus says you cannot be a
Christian without bearing the cross.
You take up your cross and follow him.
Well, there's the introduction.
Shall we go on?
Genesis 22.
He came to pass after these things.
After what?
Well, again, the first thing, Abraham was tested
with his family, tested with his nation.
Then he goes on a trip with the
old man.
He has trouble with the old man.
The old man dies.
Then he has trouble with the young man.
He's rescued, not from death.
I think one of the most common sins
in the world to be is ingratitude.
Even amongst us, we don't have gratitude.
Why, most of us would have been in
jail or in hell tonight but for the
grace of God.
So what's this man doing?
The old man, he got rid of the
old man.
He didn't want to go on.
He didn't want to go down into the
promised land.
And so now you have the young man.
And Abraham says, Lot, if you take that
side of the valley, I'll take this.
If Lot had had half an ounce of
being a gentleman, he'd have said, You rescued
me when a contract was out for my
life.
You take the job.
No, he says, he chose the well-watered
plains of Jordan.
And he pitched his tent.
The very slant of his tent post showed
his interest.
He pitched his tent towards Sodom.
The next chapter is in Sodom.
The next chapter is out of Sodom.
It's a very expensive thing to disobey God.
Lot chose Sodom.
Why?
Because he says it was like unto Egypt.
Why did he go to Egypt?
Because his bungling old uncle took him there.
Again, I say, if you want your child
to go to hell, buy him a TV
all for himself in his back room and
destroy him.
When this young man went to Egypt and
he saw the ways of Egypt, sensual, earthly,
sensual and devilish, he wanted to go that
way.
So he went and he became the mayor
of the city because it said he sat
in the gate.
That's where the judges sat.
That's where the authority sat.
That's why the Bible says, the gates of
heaven.
It doesn't mean gates.
It means the authorities who sit there will
not prevail against the Lord.
But this young man goes and he gets
fascinated with the city and then he becomes
the mayor of the city.
Then he asked Terul, after the young man
he asked Terul again.
Terul tested on the level of his parents,
tested on the level of his nation, tested
in his relationship with the young man, tested
as to whether he treasured the things of
this earth, more than spiritual things.
And then he goes on.
Now this is the sixth and final testing
in his life.
What does God say to him?
Look at this quickly with me.
He said, he said, Isaac.
Go back a minute please to chapter 17
and verse 19.
I'm sorry, verse 18.
And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael
might live before thee.
What had happened in between?
Do you remember the test that came?
He had fought off every trial that he
had, except when his wife came and said,
I can never bear children, I'm 90 years
of age.
Take no serpent, it's a custom.
And immediately the baby is born, put that
baby on my lap, and according to law
it's my baby.
And the man who had obeyed God and
disobeyed God disobeys again.
What happened?
Ishmael was born.
And here he is crying to God.
What does he say?
Verse 18 of chapter 17.
Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might
live before thee.
Why?
Because he's a child of the flesh.
So what does God say in this chapter
we're reading just now?
Chapter 22.
It came to pass after these things.
Verse 1.
God did test Abraham and said unto him,
Abraham, and he said to old Abraham, he
said, now take now thine only son.
But he had a son.
And according to the law of the Old
Testament, the law of the firstborn, the firstborn
got a double portion of everything.
But God completely ignores Ishmael.
He was born of the flesh, and he
stood against the child of the spirit.
God will never honor flesh.
When the oil was put on the head
again of the priest, in Psalm 133, it
says the oil was on his head, it
ran down his beard, onto his garments, and
onto the floor.
It never touched his flesh.
Never.
There's no anointing of flesh.
You say that man's talented.
If he got saved, listen, that man's talents
may be his biggest hindrance to God.
It's self-sufficient.
He's trained.
He's confident.
He isn't afraid of God.
He's been a politician.
He can argue.
He can reason.
He has a good memory.
And maybe those things are in his way.
God says, no, I'm not taking Ishmael.
Oh, he would have been glad to get
rid of Ishmael at this state.
Take thou thy son, thy name is Elijah,
whom thou lovest.
See, there it is.
And get thee into the land of Moriah,
and offer for him on a burnt offering
upon one of the mountains.
I will tell thee of.
Let's say, for instance, here is, for argument,
here's a mountain.
God says you to go up there.
He's down here.
And it tells you that he takes a
three-day journey there.
Verse 3, Abraham rose up in the morning
and saddled his ass and took his young
men with him.
And Isaac, his son, and prayed the wood
for a burnt offering and rose up and
went into a place which Abraham, God had
told him of.
On the third day, Abraham lifted his eyes
and saw the place afar off.
I don't know whether you use a little
graphic thing like this we do in England.
They say there's many a slit between the
cup and the lip.
Do you use that phrase?
You don't?
Well, the educated people at the front do
and the people at the back don't.
Some went to night school so they can
think at night.
The others can only think in the day,
you see.
There's many a slit between the cup and
the lip.
The famous C.T. Studd changed that.
He said there's many a slit between the
call and the ship.
That wonderful old man I fellowship with him
many times.
The founder of the Prairie Bible Institute.
I believe one of the greatest Bible schools
in the whole world.
You can send your children there at ten
years of age they can still stay there
till university age.
It's one of the finest schools.
It's discipline, Marco.
But he told me once, he said when
we have our great conferences out of every
hundred people that come to the front to
go to the mission field only ten of
them ever go through and only one out
of the ten go to the mission field
then the nine stay at home.
Out of a hundred.
Oh, yes, yes.
When we were youngsters there used to be
a song called Just a Pair of Sparkling
Eyes and a Pair of Ruby Lips.
And it doesn't take the devil some girlfriend
can knock you out for the rest of
your life or some sparkling young fellow.
This is a chance of a lifetime.
Get married.
I preached at a certain university a few
years ago.
It was packed.
About nine hundred students there.
I got late and I came in and
sat at the front bowed my head and
somebody knocked my knee.
I looked and there was a woman who
asked, God, this young woman I've never seen.
Do you remember me?
I said, no.
Oh, she said, just over three years ago
you preached when I on Isaiah 6.
Roll, roll, go.
I said, I preached that a few times
around the world.
She said, well, you said, look, leave it
in the hands of God.
Don't dare to move unless you're absolutely certain.
And you said, you go home and put
your name on the top of the paper
and put down what's wrong with you.
And then when you've run out of material
pray and ask God, what else is wrong?
Well, the Lord showed me these things wrong.
This thing wrong.
One thing impatient.
I was going to marry the most handsome
man in America.
And you said, you talked about a vision
of a holy God, a vision of a
lost world and a vision of self.
And you said, that world is calling and
God is calling you.
But go home and talk to God.
So she said, I went home.
And the Lord said, no, no dating with
that fellow.
And she said, but Lord, he's the most
handsome man in America.
Any girl will want him.
She said, well now, he's coming.
And I looked, here's this handsome young guy
coming.
And she said, three years afterwards I went
to a meeting and he came to me
and said, Hi, remember me?
Yeah, I remember you all right.
Why do you remember?
Oh, wait a minute.
Honey, I want to tell you something.
The night that Ray Mill preached, I went
home.
I said, Lord, that's the girl I'm going
to marry.
He said, yes, that's right.
Three years from now.
And he said, I've come to tell you
I want to marry you.
And he said, I went home and said,
Lord, she's the most beautiful girl in America.
Every guy will want her.
I'll never get bored.
He said, I'll keep her for you.
So three years after they met.
And the Lord had told each of them
the same thing.
Three years from now you can get married.
So some of you bachelors cheer up.
Three years from now you may make it.
Some of you girls take off your robes
of misery.
You see, there's an appointed time.
I'm the one who believed in the sovereignty
of God over the world.
I believed in the sovereignty of God in
my own life.
There's a timing in the affairs of men.
It's not just as the point says.
There's a Shakespeare, but I won't quote him
anyhow.
But you see, there's a timing.
Okay.
There's men who slip.
He's down here and he has a three
-day journey up there.
Let's say for a moment he sleeps at
night and he wakes up and the room's
shining on the boy.
And God has said, Take thine own miss.
That's my darling child.
My wife won't have any more babies.
She's a hundred years of age.
Didn't you think he went through misery?
Don't you think he could have said why?
Don't you think he could have offered a
hundred excuses?
But he sleeps.
He keeps going on.
You see, something happened to him as I
mentioned last week.
Cain, Cain built a city.
John saw the city.
Abram looked for the city.
And it was a fact that he had
a promise of God.
I am with thee.
He says, I will be with thee.
I will strengthen thee.
I will help thee.
And because of that he has come to
them.
When we were talking about Noah, you remember
Noah building his ark for a hundred and
twenty years.
Don't you think he went through a million
heartbreaks, headaches, tummy aches, heartaches, headache?
A hundred and twenty years people scorned him.
They ridiculed him.
Don't miss the beat there.
He said it's going to rain.
It has never rained in the history of
the world.
Dew fell every morning and watered the earth.
And this crackpot preacher says there are going
to be holes in the sky and holes
in the ground and the water is going
to go up and the water above is
going to come down and he is going
to go sailing in a boat.
Isn't that wonderful?
They have never even seen a boat.
Now don't think God is going to go
before you and iron out all the difficulties.
He's not.
There's a testing of faith and for a
hundred and twenty years.
Well, why did he hang on there?
I'll tell you why.
Number one, said his family would be saved.
Number two, God said he would destroy the
earth.
Number three, he said my spirit shall not
always strive with men.
Well, why in God's name is the church
so bankrupt today?
Because Jesus says as it was in the
days of Noah.
There's a doomsday hanging over the world right
now where time is running out and we're
doing nothing.
I've told you, if you know a church
on fire for God, tell me and I'll
go.
A church where when you come in you
don't go out the same.
The brooding of God is there.
You've been in his holy presence.
Not every day he goes.
If you'd heard him whipping that saw you'd
have heard his groanings of his spirit louder
than this saw.
He's building a houseboat for himself.
He's building a casket for the rest of
the world.
Every day he goes to work.
This is one day and then a judgment.
One day and then God's mercy is running
out.
And God says to our generation and I
remind you again of all these people in
Hebrews 11.
Not one of them ever had a Bible.
They subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped
the mouths of lions.
Women received their dead raised to life again.
Of course they lived in lovely homes, air
-conditioned.
The women all wore fur coats.
Sure they did.
They wandered about in sheepskins and goldskins.
Those were their fur coats.
Now the pastor's wives go to Neiman Marcus
and buy one.
They wander about, destitute, afflicted.
And the world says let's get rid of
them.
They're not any good.
And God says of whom the world is
not worthy.
Just a different angle.
All people say, Well, who wants to be
insane?
If the world is insane, I'm glad to
be...
If the world is sane, I'm glad to
be crazy.
Who wants to be like those clowns?
So clever with their B.A. degrees.
They just know how to get B.E
.D. and they know how to get A
.I.D.S. and they know how to
do every devilish thing but they can't break
the power of sin in their lives.
There's only one that's able to do it
and that's through the old rugged cross.
So for three days he takes the girl
every step.
Verse 4 says, And the third day Abraham
lifted up his eyes and saw the place
with fire.
Abraham said to his young men, Abed, ye
here with us, and I and the lad
will go yonder and worship and come again.
Isn't that safe?
We'll come again.
You stay here.
You know, you can't do all your dealings
before people.
Some things are privately with God.
There's no showmanship here.
I and the lad will go yonder.
We'll come again to you.
Abraham took the wood and the burnt offering
and laid it upon Isaac his son and
he took fire in his hand and a
knife and he went both of them together.
Well, isn't that something?
Isaac spake to Abraham his father and said,
My father, and he said, Here am I,
son.
And he said, Behold, the fire and the
wood, but where is the lung for the
burnt offering?
And Abraham said, My son, God will provide
himself a lung.
Go quickly.
Don't look at it.
The seventh chapter of the Acts of the
Apostles says what?
That God Almighty, the Holy God, appeared to
Abraham where?
In a hell hole called Mesopotamia.
It was a super night club.
It was an enlargement of, what do you
want to call it, Las Vegas?
And all those other dirty holes.
They had all the sensuousness and they worshipped
demons and they worshipped snakes.
And then in that rotten place, God appeared
to Abraham.
It doesn't say that.
It says the glory of God appeared to
him.
Do you think he's so right into eternity?
What's the glory of eternity?
There's a lad in the midst of a
thorn.
You see, we're so short-sighted.
We're so rationalistic.
We're so thoughtful.
We've so many fanciful, wonderful interpretations of the
Scripture.
Friend, you don't always need the Scripture as
a sedative.
There are times when you need the Scripture
to bind up a broken heart.
There are times when I need it to
pierce me with its sharp-twedged sword and
God to work on me.
We're only here a little time.
Remember, friend, once I will pronounce this death
over you, there's no U-turn.
If you're on the broad road at least
to the extent you've never held, there's no
U-turn.
Once you die, there's no turning the road.
Once you die on the narrow way, there's
no turning the road.
It's straight on the narrow road to the
judgment seat of Christ.
It's straight on the broad way to the
great white throne.
That's going to be the most staggering thing
that's ever happened.
He talks about the King of kings and
Lord of lords.
He's the judge of judges too.
And his sentence is final.
There's no court of appeal beyond it.
Once the sentence is passed, boy, it's doomsday.
You'll never persuade me in a hundred attempts.
You can't persuade me that the Church of
Jesus Christ today, I don't care how fundamental
and apostolic it professes to be, you'll never
get me to believe that the Church today
believes in hell.
This one thing needs to stick in your
mind.
It's in mine.
It's been for months.
Hell has no exits.
A million roads in, not one road out.
It says concerning heaven they go in and
out, day and night.
It doesn't say that about hell.
Once in hell, it's forever and ever and
ever.
It's doomsday.
No repentance, no preachers, no mercy, no love.
All the human depravity, exaggerated as you like
and there it is.
In that sense, hell to me is the
drainage pool.
You have a cesspool to your house.
Hell is the cesspool of the ages.
Even demons are going to be there.
I believe that the moment hell is empty,
I believe the first person into hell will
be the false prophet and the beast.
But anyway, it's going to be occupied finally.
Okay.
Verse 9.
He came to the place which God had
told him of.
Notice he's taking directions from God.
Look at verse 11 for a moment.
The angel of the Lord called to him,
Out of heaven, Abraham, Abraham.
Look at verse 15.
The angel of the Lord called unto him,
Out of heaven.
Isn't that amazing?
You don't find that again until the heavens
are open and Jesus is being baptized and
a voice from heaven says, This is my
beloved son.
And God has given the same thing to
Abraham here.
You're my son.
I'm asking great things.
Verse 9.
He came to a place which God told
him of and Abraham built an altar.
Look at it.
He's building an altar.
What do you do?
He goes to his son.
He says, Isaac, get over to the end
of that rock, that flat rock, and they
build an altar.
Wouldn't that be agony for the father?
Don't you think his son is thinking, What
in the world is all this about?
But he says, Daddy, you've got a basket.
You see, they used to carry a basket
like you do, but it was a basket
made of metal and they carried fire in
it.
That was a custom.
And he said, Daddy, you've got the basket
there with the fire.
You've got the dagger in your hand.
Where is the lamb?
God will provide himself a lamb.
But again, think of the boy.
Supposing you went to your 18-year-old
boy and said, Come on, we're going up
hunting.
And you said, Let's build an altar.
Then you said, Lay down.
Do you think he knew that you were
coming?
Then he tied his feet up and he
died.
Do you think he'd punch you on the
nose or kick you out of the way?
He was led as a lamb to the
slaughter.
He's typical of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What do you think he felt like lying
there on his back with the sun blazing
down on him?
Daddy has a big dagger over him.
You know, Doro wrote that, gave us that
first picture of the praying hands.
Doro, the German.
He also has a fantastic picture of Abraham,
a long bearded man, and the boy is
laid out on a stone slab and he
has a dagger in his hand.
What do you think the boy felt like?