Oh, good morning to you all.
Let me tell you what you did this
morning.
You woke up this morning, you looked out
the window, you might have opened the door
and stepped out, and you said, you saw
that fog and the rain and the drizzle,
and you said, this is the day that
follows Wednesday, so it must be Thursday.
Very well.
I knew you would.
I just knew you would.
You probably finished it though in a different
way than I did.
Habits of a lifetime die hard, don't they?
I want this morning, I wish this morning,
if I may, to make a few closing
comments on the life of Abraham and then
move over to the life of Jacob.
I felt that time-wise we should not
spend any longer with Abraham, and then there's
chapter 22, and what do we do with
that?
We must make some comments, even though it's
only brief, on chapter 22 in connection with
Mount Moriah.
And as you will know, this is the
culmination of God's dealings with Abraham.
This is a high water march.
This is the place where we rise to
heights that previously we had not known, and
this is the point that's carried over into
the New Testament, which our Lord makes reference
Himself when He was here.
It was the ultimate in God's walk with
Abraham.
It was the ultimate in Abraham's walk with
God.
No higher point of experience could have been
had by any man when he was here
than Abraham had in chapter 22 of Genesis.
He has walked with the Lord, as you
know, from the time the God of glory
appeared unto him first in Ur of the
Chaldees.
He's come through Haran or Charon, he's come
down into the land, and from the land
he's gone down into Egypt with its disastrous
consequences.
He's come back up out of Egypt again.
He's had those dealings with Hagar in chapter
16 and chapter 21, and he's had the
experience with Abimelech, the king of the Philistines,
in chapter 20.
And now when we come to chapter 22,
we reach what I like to call, at
any rate, the ultimate in his experiences with
God.
I don't know of anything that's comparable in
the Old Testament with this passage that we
have here, and I doubt if any man
has come to the height that Abraham did
come in his acknowledgement, in his appreciation and
in his honoring of God as Abraham did.
So we're not going to go into the
details of the chapter.
We all know the story very well.
We know that Abraham did on this occasion
what he had done earlier when he left
Ur of the Chaldees.
He left the place where he was, not
knowing where he was going, because God appeared
unto him, and he said, Get thee into
the place that I will show thee of.
Take thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom
thou lovest, and offer him there as a
sacrifice or an offering unto me.
So Abraham rises up early in the morning.
He is going on a very difficult journey.
It's the last difficult journey of his life.
God has exacted of him the expression of
his faith such as none of us have
been required to do.
Through these varied experiences in receiving this son,
and you know as we were commenting yesterday
morning just exactly what was involved in Abraham
getting Isaac, and that Sarah being the mother
rather than Hagar, and you know all the
testings and the trials, and finally Abraham in
his advanced years comes to be the father
of the one whose the covenant promised.
And now that Isaac has grown considerably and
Abraham is much older even now than he
was, for he was 100 years old when
Isaac was born, when his heart laughed, now
what will his heart do?
How will his heart react now when God
says to him, Get into the place that
I will tell thee of, and take thy
son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest,
and offer him there to me upon an
altar for a burnt offering.
We are not told, but the instantaneous response
of this man of faith and trust and
confidence in God is sufficient to assure us
that there was no vacillation, there was no
doubting, there was no hesitation in the heart
of Abraham.
He didn't protest, he didn't have anything to
say to the Lord as to why this
should be.
I have waited all these years, and now
you have given me the promised heir, and
now you're requesting that I give him back
again in sacrifice.
No such comments are given to us, no
such reasoning of his heart, we don't know.
But we do know that he rose up
early in the morning, as it says here
in verse 3 of chapter 22, and he
prepared his animals and two of his young
men with him and Isaac his son, and
he made the preparation for the sacrifice.
And then it was on the third day
when God revealed to him, as we have
it in verse 4, he saw the place
afar off.
That so significant place, that so remarkable place,
that place that stands out and will stand
out forever in the history of mankind, and
doubtless in the history of the universe.
For it was here that we had another
comparable experience, you remember, in the connection with
the life of David the king, and also
something finally in the days of our Lord
himself.
They saw the place afar off.
I'm reminded of the words of the Master
in John chapter 17, and there were five
words there at the opening of that steward's
son's prayer, sometimes called the High Priestly Prayer,
that's only a small portion of the prayer
actually, the prayer rather is an account of
a steward's son speaking to his father concerning
the commission that was given to him, the
mission that he had now fully accomplished.
But those five words are, to me, the
most poignant words that we have between the
Master and his father in all the New
Testament, and they are these, Father, the hour
is come.
There is so much wrapped up in those
five words, or the two words even, the
hour.
Abraham is going to give us a picture
of exactly what was going on in terms
of human experience between the father and his
son on the journey to the cross.
It was but a three-day journey for
Abraham.
It was millennia or millennial long for the
father and his son.
It even went back from before time was,
certainly as Peter says, before the world was
ordained.
And how long that was we cannot measure,
we cannot compute, that the father and the
son were moving together all through these pages
of human history, through these pages of the
Old Testament, through the lives of the prophets,
the sayings of the prophets, the sacrifices of
Israel, the countless sacrifices of the Levitical priesthood,
and on down even into the days of
the New Testament.
These two have been traveling together from before
the world was, with this, the place, in
view.
And our Lord says, Father, the hour is
come.
I cannot tell you at times how that
appeals to me.
There is more depth of pathos, there's more
depth of feeling, there's something awesome about those
words.
You'll recall in the Gospel by John particularly,
we read frequently, they couldn't do this, they
couldn't do that, that couldn't happen to him,
something else couldn't happen to him because his
hour was not yet come.
And then in the garden when he was
betrayed, and Judith came with the band, he
said, this is your hour, and the power
of darkness.
But just before that happened, standing on the
edge of the garden, he lifts up his
eyes to heaven, and he encompasses, he brings
together all the previous thousands of years, and
the plan from before the world was, he
brings them all together, and he looks to
his father and he says, Father, the hour
is come.
What tremendous things are wrapped up in those
words.
And then the Master followed by saying, Father,
glorify thy son, that thy son also may
glorify thee.
And I don't know how you associate that
or what meaning you put upon that, because
it is often linked with passages later on
in that chapter, John 17, and the Lord
is looking forward to the time when he
shall be resurrected, he shall be glorified, he
shall be caught up into heaven.
May I suggest to you, rather, that it
can be linked with those five words, Father,
the hour is come, because it is directly
associated with those words.
That's when the Master said it.
These are the circumstances under which he said,
Father, glorify thy son.
Take you back in measure, perhaps, to chapter
12 of John, when the Greeks came up
to the feast and they said to Philip,
I suppose they picked Philip because he had
a Greek name, and they said, we would
see Jesus.
And Philip and Andrew go to the Lord
and they say, there are some folks here,
these Greek folks here, and they want to
see you.
And the Lord said, the hour is come
that the Son of Man should be glorified.
Except the corner if we'd fall into the
ground and die divides alone, and who he
would ever have been alone, singularly alone, solitarily
alone, in all the fullness of his own
personal completeness, if he hadn't fallen into the
ground to die.
And it was only because he was to
go into the ground to die, that corn
of wheat was to fall into the ground
to die, that it bore much fruit.
You and I are here this morning as
the result of that corn of wheat falling
into the ground and die.
But what he had said was, it now
is the hour that the Son of Man
should be glorified, except a corn of wheat
fall into the ground and die.
It abideth alone.
When is a man then to be glorified?
When he dies to self and lives to
God.
For if we live to self, we die,
but if we die to self, we live.
And the Lord has given us himself as
the example and proof of that.
Now that the Son of Man glorified, except
a corn of wheat fall into the ground
and die, it abideth alone.
And it was through that death he was
to be glorified, as well as to glorify
God.
So he looks to heaven and he says,
Father, the hour has come.
Glorify thy Son.
Where?
How?
In the hour, by the cross.
So Abraham and Isaac journey together, as we
have in the early part of this chapter.
Let me call your attention to the fact
that as they're going, they're talking.
But you have several times mentioned about this
offering.
At the close of verse 2, offer him
there for a burnt offering upon one of
the mountains that I will tell thee of.
He hadn't told them yet.
And then in verse 3, towards the close,
he claimed the wood for the burnt offering.
And then farther down, verse 6, Abraham took
the wood of the burnt offering, and so
on.
And then Isaac says at the close of
verse 7, Where is the lamb for a
burnt or ascending offering?
And Abraham replies in verse 8, My son
God will provide himself a lamb for the
ascending offering.
Now, this story is so very well known,
and it is used so frequently, that perhaps
we have come to a final conclusion as
to what the teaching really is.
And it is used often in Sunday school,
as every Sunday school teacher knows, and every
Sunday school teacher has used, I suppose, as
a picture of reconciliation, a picture of substitution,
particularly.
And the substitution we teach in the boys
and the girls in the Sunday school here,
a marvellous picture.
Isaac is to be the offering, he's laid
upon the altar, and then there's a provision
made for him.
And so our Lord became the provision for
us poor, miserable sinners.
And he becomes the sin offering for us.
Well, you will see that repeatedly, it is
not a sin offering, and it is not
a sinner finding a substitute.
That is an application, but that cannot be
the interpretation.
When I was a young Christian, I used
to hear frequently, it said very dramatically and
very definitively off the platform, that the Bible
passages only have one interpretation and many applications.
And, of course, I accepted that as being
the final word on the subject for a
long time, until I began to read a
little for myself, and do a little thinking
for yourself.
That can be dangerous, but anyway, try it
once in a while.
And I discovered that that's a very acceptable
statement, because somebody of importance said it, and
somebody else of importance picked it up and
repeated it, and if you repeat anything enough
times, everybody takes it for granted that's the
way it is.
But that's not necessarily true, I may say
to you.
I can give you several examples from the
Scripture, where the Bible has two or more
interpretations, made so by the Spirit of God
Himself.
He is not restricted to one interpretation of
any passage.
I know there may be multiple applications, I
realize that, but nevertheless, it is not true
that the Bible passages only have one interpretation
and many applications.
Now, I know you don't want any examples
for that, because you'll find them yourself, but
nevertheless, that is so.
Now, we have used this passage here in
Genesis 22 as a sample of the sinner
being delivered, and so the Lord is the
ram caught in the thicket, I have no
question about that, and then the one who
should be upon the altar slain is relieved,
and He has provided a substitute for him,
and then we apply that to the sinner
and to the death of Christ.
But it is not so.
There is no suggestion of a sin offering
anywhere here, there's no trespass offering anywhere here.
This is a burnt offering, this is an
ascending offering, and repeatedly, as I have pointed
out to you, in this chapter, it is
always stated as a burnt offering, always stated
as a sin offering, whether it were to
be Isaac himself, or whether it were to
be the ram of consecration in the thicket,
it was always to be a burnt offering.
When you say that spoils the picture, no,
it doesn't spoil the picture at all.
In fact, it enhances the picture.
If you want to say, well, the ram
caught in the thicket by its horns was
the substitute for the man, for the boy,
yes, very well, but does that alter the
fact that it was to be a burnt
offering?
Isaac was to be a burnt offering, he
was to be an ascending offering, and why
are you and I here if we, in
our entirety, in our whole life, spirit, soul
and body, have not been meant to be
to God constantly an ascending offering?
I suggested to you last evening that there
are seven offerings in the New Testament priesthood
which a priest may offer.
Here is one of them.
The Christian himself is to be an ascending
offering, a burnt offering, with nothing for anyone
else but wholly for God.
And Isaac was to be that ascending offering,
that burnt offering, and yes, there was a
provision made.
And the angel of the Lord, it's remarkable,
I think, here, that he should be called
the angel of the Lord, because it is
the same one who in verse 1 says,
God Elohim, the triune God, did test or
prove Abraham.
The same one who is the angel of
the Lord in verse 11, and at the
close of verse 18, he says, thou hast
to obey my voice.
So, when the angel of the Lord speaks
and says, thou hast to obey my voice,
it's the voice of verse 1, the voice
of the triune God.
Now, the angel of the Lord comes to
Abraham at the time when his hand is
raised to sway his son, and he calls
to him out of heaven, and he shows
him a substitute.
So, there's a ram caught in the thicket,
and I've wondered about that, and I don't
want to strain these things too far, but
I have wondered at times that this ram
caught in the thicket with its horns, it
says, is not a picture of the master
when he was here in his consecration of
life.
And let me suggest to you that this
probably is the mountain sheep, the two-pronged
mountain sheep, and because it speaks of his
horns in the plural, and may I suggest
to you that it's the title of the
Lord Jesus as he was here, as he
came, the consecrated one.
But what do the two horns represent to
us, do you suppose?
Well, may I say to you, let me
suggest this to you, that you remember he
said in John chapter 12, again, he said,
now is my soul troubled, and what shall
I say?
Shall I say, Father, save me from this
hour?
How can I say that?
Because it was for this cause came I
unto this hour.
That's why he was here, in total, in
full consecration, to be the whole burnt offering
first to God.
Now that's on our behalf, I recognize that.
While there is part of the burnt offering
of himself that was strictly for his father,
it was, the burnt offering was to be
accepted for the offerer, you remember, in Leviticus
3.
So, the burnt offering, while it was wholly
for God, the whole thing went up in
smoke, as an ascending offering to the Lord.
Nevertheless, the offerer was associated with the offering.
So, our Lord was here.
Well, what are the horns?
Well, I like to think of it this
way, anyway, if you'll allow me the privilege.
I like to think of the fact that
the very fact he was here, he said,
for this cause came I.
How did he come?
He came via the Virgin's womb.
Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not.
The sacrifice and offering of transgression for sin
thou didst not delight in.
But a body hast thou prepared me.
You follow that from Exodus 21 through Psalm
40 and on to Hebrews 10, because that's
the story, as you recall.
The born ear, in Exodus 21, the servant
forever.
When you come to Psalm 40, you read
it again, mine ear has he digged, or
opened, or bored through.
And that's where he says, sacrifice and offering,
and burnt offerings, and offering for sin thou
wouldest not.
Then said I, lo, I come in the
volume of the book it is written of
me.
I delight to do thy will, O my
God.
So, he speaks about the born ear, and
he speaks about the sacrifice in Psalm 40.
When you come over to Hebrews chapter 10,
Psalm 40 is repeated, but it's added this
to it.
Instead of the born ear, what you have
is a body hast thou prepared me.
Now, the Lord is here in his human
body, and this body has been specially prepared
to be the burnt offering.
So, the fact he is here in the
flesh, this one horn I suggest to you,
and the fact that he being God is
here, or he says even as man before
Abraham was, I am, my father and I
are one.
The very fact that you have someone here
who combines in himself the human side, or
the human body, and the divine side, for
he is God and man complete, he's caught
in a thicket by the horns.
Because he says, for this cause came I
unto this hour.
If I were not here, then this might
not have happened, but because I am here,
it has to happen.
So, the one who is present in John
chapter 12 is the God man, and he
is caught for the sacrifice of the burnt
offering.
So, we may see pictures and types of
our Lord wherever we look carefully.
And so, as it was in this case,
the angel of the Lord spoke to Abraham,
stayed his hand, and then he looked and
he saw the ram caught in the thicket
by his horns.
After Abraham then, relieving his son, puts the
ram upon the altar and offers him for
a sacrifice, then it says the angel of
the Lord calls unto him again, and that's
verse 15.
And then he makes a very strong statement,
and he says this if you notice, verse
16.
By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord,
because thou hast done this thing, and hast
not withheld thy son and only son, that
in blessing I will bless thee.
And so, he goes on to the multiplication
of his seed, and in thy seed, verse
18, shall all the nations of the earth
be blessed.
And Christ comes to the front in the
word of the angels after the sacrifice has
been made.
God puts himself under oath.
Now, you will recall Psalm 110, verse 4,
that says, The Lord swore and will not
repent, thou art a priest forever after the
order of Melchizedek.
And when you go over to the epistles
of the Hebrews, that whole theme is developed
of a priest under oath, and the contrast
is made between the Levitical priesthood, the Aaronic
priesthood, and the Melchizedek priesthood, because the one
is a priesthood by oath, and the other
is a priesthood by inheritance.
It is hereditary, and so the sons of
Aaron each successively passed on the high priestly
office to their successors.
But our Lord, being a priest after the
order of Melchizedek, there is no cessation, there
is no termination.
He has neither beginning of days, nobody went
before him, he succeeded no one in his
office, he does not have end of life,
he shall never have a successor after him.
He is the high priest forever after the
order of Melchizedek.
You recall in the high priest's palace on
the night of our Lord's betrayal, when the
high priest put the Lord under oath, and
said, We adjure thee by the living God,
thou tellest if thou be the Christ or
not, and he said, Thou sayest, and so
on.
The high priest renteth garments.
Now, what does that indicate?
Well, in the Old Testament you'll find it
indicates different things.
Sometimes it's an exclamation of very much a
surprise, a punishment.
Sometimes it's an exclamation of grief when they
rent their clothes.
And then, as the case of Samuel and
Saul, it indicated a cessation, a termination of
an office.
And I suggest to you, when the high
priest rent his garment that night when the
Lord stood before him, it was the termination
of the Aaronic high priesthood.
There was to be no high priest after
that, as far as theology is concerned, and
there never again will be.
It's the last high priest after the order
of Aaron that ever was to stand representatively
in the presence of God.
Because, you say, well, but then you read
about the high priest in Acts chapter 5.
I know you do, but the rent garment
that night, as far as I can consider,
the rent garment that indicated that there's no
more a high priestly service.
The veil of the temple is rent in
twain, and the rent garments of the high
priest correspond with the rent veil in the
temple, and now there's no more Aaronic high
priesthood.
And there never will be again.
Now, some of you are going to say
to me, yes, but Brother Dave, over in
the prophecy of Ezekiel, rather, we have priests
after the order of Zadok offering sacrifices in
the millennium.
That's true, and there will be animal sacrifices
offered again in Jerusalem, and likely elsewhere, in
the millennium.
I don't have any difficulty with that, do
you?
Yes, some of you do.
Well, I know a lot of people do.
I don't have any difficulty whatsoever with the
animal sacrifice in the millennium period.
But, however, did you notice, though, the sons
of Zadok are to be engaged in the
priestly ministry, but there's no high priest in
the millennium after the order of Aaron.
Why?
Because that's when our Lord takes his place
as the Melchizedek high priest for the nation
of Israel, and that'll be after the battle
in the valley, as I suggested to you
the other night, and Genesis 14.
Very well, then.
So, what God is doing, he is putting
himself under oath.
One of the rare occasions when God puts
himself under oath, but he says, Abraham, I
swear by myself that because you have done
this thing, and you have not withheld your
son, your only son from me, I am
going to do this, and this, and this,
and I am going to bring in through
you the seed which is Christ, Galatians 3
tells us, in whom all the nations of
the earth shall be blessed.
It's the ultimate.
It's the high point.
Nothing else could Abraham ever have desired, and
I think that's why it says he called
the place Jehovah-Jireh.
In the mouth of the Lord it shall
be seen or perceived, and may I relate
that to the Lord's words in the gospel
by John, Abraham your father rejoiced to see
my day, and he thought I was glad.
What day was that?
It was the day when the Lord promised
to him under oath he would bring in
the seed, not seed as of many, Galatians
says, but one, and so he's promising to
Abraham now that the result of this experience
wherein Abraham did not return, did not keep
his son rather, but offered him up to
the Lord, he's promising him the Christ, the
Messiah, Jehovah-Jireh, in the mouth of the
Lord it shall be seen.
Well, there you go.
I never did like these quartz cloths.
I used to like the wind-up kind
because they could run down before you were
finished, and now they are finished before I'm
run down.
That's modern technology for you.
Turn with me now with you briefly for
the few moments I have left to chapter
28, and I want to have time for
just a few comments in closing this morning
regarding Jacob.
There are six times in the life of
Jacob when the Lord appears to Jacob, and
these are very instructive too.
We have a different man altogether than the
one we have just been considering.
I have stepped over Isaac, the Lord had
appeared to Isaac, but then we don't have
time, we have to be selective, so I
just want to make a few comments about
Jacob.
Now, the story of Jacob and Esau in
connection with the blessing of the birthright you
all know very well, and you know that
the consequences of that was the whole thing
was instigated by his mother, Rebecca.
She paid a and
especially in relation to the things of God
as the birthright blessing was, must of course
reap the consequences, the sad consequences.
Subterfuge never has had room in the purposes
and plans of God, and so when the
Lord looks at Nathanael in John chapter 1,
he says, Behold an Israelite indeed in whom
there is no guile.
Not a marvelous thing to say.
An Israelite indeed in whom there is no
guile.
You say, why did you mention Nathanael?
Because he's closely linked to the experience of
Jacob.
Jacob, because of his treachery in gaining the
blessing which stood, the priestly blessing of the
father, he hears via his mother that Esau
is sworn to kill him.
It's going to work vengeance on his brother
because he took away his birthright, you remember,
with a mess of lentils, and now he's
taken away the blessing by deceit with the
venison which was goat meat, and also the
hairy garments.
So that was Rebecca's doing, her whole thing,
and so he's now made afraid of Esau's
brother.
That fear of his brother is going to
last for over 20 years.
But Esau had said, now the old man
is ready to die.
I'll wait till he's dead, and we have
the days of mourning, and then I'll slay
my brother Jacob, and I will get the
birthright.
Well, he couldn't do it, of course, as
Romans chapter 9 tells us so clearly.
God had chosen Jacob to be the covenant
-carrying vessel, and Jacob it must be.
Regardless of his own twisted pathway, the covenant
of God made before the boys were born
must stand.
And so Esau says, well, the old man's
ready to die, I'll just wait till he's
gone, and then I'll get my own back
on Jacob.
Well, now, don't be too sure about the
old man passing away that quickly, you see,
because they were sure he was just about
ready to go.
He couldn't see any longer, and was it
you folks that were telling how my little
grandson told me that my wife and I
have been around long enough now, it's time
we were going?
Well, he thought that when he's five years
old.
He's eight now, he hasn't been mentioning to
me anymore.
He's got different things in his mind now.
He has all kinds of things.
Don't ask him where he got them from,
but he comes up with all kinds of
stink prayers when he goes to bed at
night.
You know, he tells the Lord what kind
of a wife he wants.
I don't want an ugly one, and I
don't want a fat one, he told the
Lord the other night.
And I was there on one occasion, there
was a thundering lightning storm on, and we're
getting ready for meeting, and the little guy's
standing at the front door, and it's lightning
and thundering.
He comes back in and goes into the
bedroom where his dad was getting dressed for
meeting.
He said, Papa, I was just talking to
God out there.
He said, oh, well, what did the Lord
say?
He said, well, I don't know for sure,
but boy, he sure talks awful loud.
He's getting his answer by thunder, you see.
Well, he comes up with all kinds of
things.
When we were down visiting the last time,
my wife and I, my wife's trying to
get him away from the ninja turtles and
some of these other things, you know, so
she tells him, you know what you should
do?
You should be a missionary to the pygmies.
Pygmies, he said, who are the pygmies?
Well, the little fella's just about your size,
but they're old, of course, and the people
there now aren't going to be there all
the time, and by the time you grow
up, you should be a missionary to the
pygmies.
Well, his mother told us afterwards, we remember
to tell him that she told us, after
we'd gone, the little guy says to his
mother about his grandmother, he says, who does
she think she is, Miss Prissy, telling me
where I have to go?
And, uh, well, we thought the thing would
die there.
Well, we got a call from his dad
a little while back, and he said, you
know what Noah's saying now?
What is he saying?
Well, he told him the other day, he's
got to go and be a missionary to
the pygmies, and I said to him, I
don't know where did you get that idea?
Well, he said, my abuela told me, that's
what I have to do.
Well, he says, how in the world are
you going to get to the pygmies and
be a missionary?
I don't know, but abuela will take care
of the whole thing.
So, she's not Miss Prissy anymore, she's the
instigator of a future missionary.
Well, Jacob is going to experience the consequences
of his deceit, so he's fleeing for safety
from his brother Esau.
Now, as I said, they thought the old
man was going to die, and when Jacob
comes back 20 years later, the old man
is still there.
Well, I thought I had buried mine a
while ago, I don't mean my father.
My father died at 98, and he was
a Christian for 88 years, and that was
a long lifetime.
No, I'm talking about the old man that
we carry with us.
We think at times we have him ready
for burial, a nice, decent, honorable burial, but
it is not so.
Now, when Jacob is fleeing from the wrath
of his brother, you remember in Genesis chapter
28, he comes to a place which was
called Luz at first, and then came to
be called Bethel later on, and it's a
wilderness place.
And then we have in verse 11, we
read about that place, the barrenness of it,
he took up the stones, and he put
them for his pillows, and laid down that
place to sleep, and he dreamed, and behold,
a ladder set up on the earth, and
atop it reached to heaven.
Now, when we come to John chapter 1,
we discover what this ladder represents.
You see lots of pictures, of course, about
the ladders that cross, right?
But I think John 1 gives us a
different slant on that, and the Lord interprets
this passage here, in John chapter 1, when
he's talking to Nathanael, because when he commented
about Nathanael, and said, An Israelite indeed, in
whom there is no guile, Nathanael heard it,
and he said, Rabbi, how do you know
me?
And the Lord says, When you were under
the fig tree, mind you, he had to
get out from under that fig tree to
know who the Lord was, when you were
under the fig tree, he said, I saw
you before Philip called you, and Nathanael, because
he was a guileless man, he could see
that what other people couldn't see, and immediately
he said, Rabbi, thou art the son of
God, thou art the king of Israel.
What a remarkable confession to make, but that's
for the man of the pure heart.
Wasn't that how we started?
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they
shall see God, and he looks at Jesus
of Nazareth, and he says, thou art son
of God, this divine character and title, thou
art the king of Israel, this monarchical title
and character, he saw it just in a
flash like that, and the Lord said to
him, because I said when you were under
the fig tree, I saw you, and I
knew you, seeing was the knowing, do you
believe, let me tell you, you'll see something
greater than this, now what's greater than seeing
a man, being, and knowing him to be
the son of God and the king of
Israel?
The Lord said, hereafter you shall see the
heavens open and the angels of God ascending
and descending on whom?
Son of man.
Ah, is it greater to see him then
as the son of man, who is going
to open the heavens and bring into a
permanent relationship of reconciliation and blessing, earth and
heaven together?
What's going to link earth and heaven together?
A man, my friend, from whom the angels
ascend, for he is the source of the
blessing of the days yet to come, and
upon whom the angels of God descend, this
is the ladder that Jacob saw.
Notice what it says, it was set up
on the earth, that's his humanity.
The top reached into heaven, that's his deity,
and this is the one through whom Jehovah
stands at the top of the ladder, and
he speaks to the sleeper, the fugitive from
justice, running from the consequences of his sin,
but nevertheless the son of the covenant, he
speaks to him, and he speaks to him
about a marvelous promise, and with this I'm
going to have to shut down here.
Let's look what he said, atop it reached
the heaven, the angels of God ascending and
descending on it, that's Christ, the Lord of
Jehovah stood above it, and he said, I
am the Lord God of Abraham thy father,
and the God of Isaac, the land whereon
thou liest to thee will I give it
unto thy seed, and thy seed shall be
as the dust of the earth, thou shalt
spread abroad to the west and to the
east, to the north and to the south,
and in thee and in thy seed shall
all the families of the earth be blessed.
Plural again, I mean singular again, you see,
that's in the singular, thy seed, and behold,
now notice this for a pilgrim, a wanderer
who's to suffer the heat and the drought
and the famine and the deceit and so
on, and the treachery of the Syrian for
20 years, behold I am with thee, and
will keep thee in all places whither thou
goest.
Jacob lying at the foot of this ladder,
fleeing from the results of his own duplicity,
received a covenant promise from God of his
continual presence anywhere, everywhere.
You say, must have been marvelous for him
to have known that.
Did he remember it in the cold of
the night when the wolves were tearing the
lambs, and he was responsible for the loss?
Did he remember it when he was out
in the desert or out in the barren
fields with the sheep in the heat of
the day?
Did he remember it when Laban changed his
wages 10 times?
Did he remember that God had said, behold
I am with thee, and will keep thee
in all places whithersoever thou goest, and I
will be with thee, I will not leave
thee alone.
What a marvelous promise!
The assured presence of God.
Did he say it to him every day?
No.
Did he remind him of it every night?
No.
Did he come once a year in 20
years to tell him?
No.
Why?
He had given him this covenant promise at
the beginning, and that was to stand for
the rest of his life.
Has God made a covenant promise with you?
Do you have this individual relationship with God
that you know your pathway is determined by
Him?
He will be with you in all places
whithersoever you go.
Lo, I am with you all the days,
1928, even to the end of the age.
All the days, the good days and the
bad days, the bright days and the dull
days, I'm with you all the days.
Forgive me a little story, and I'll close
this up so you know I'm going to
quit.
I often don't do that because when I'm
speaking and I have my Bible open, everybody
else has their Bible open, and I do
that, I see the Christians, they close their
Bibles, they close their ears, they shut their
eyes, and they wait for me to quit,
and I have the best thing I want
to tell them yet, but they don't hear.
Well, recently, in the last year and a
half, we were visiting Cuba, my younger son
and I, and we took this long journey,
10 hours, we drove in a rented car
down to the eastern part of the island
to visit an assembly at the foot of
the mountains that has been growing and being
prospered and blessed by the Lord in these
recent years.
It was a long journey, we didn't find
anywhere to drive, to find anything to eat,
you buy everything with rations, Coupa, we didn't
find anywhere to buy something to drink, and
we drove for 10 hours until we got
to the far end of the island, and
then when we got there, we walked out
through the fields to the foot of the
mountains, and there was a group of about
90 Christians waiting for us, they apologized because
some of them hadn't come down from the
mountains, and so on, couldn't all be there,
and anyway, it was in a morning, Wednesday
morning, when they weren't having normally a gathering,
but they'd come together, and the ladies had
put their big black pots out in the
open air there, and they were cooking up
lunch.
Don't ask me what the ingredients were.
So when we got there, the brethren said,
now we're going to have a meeting, now
you've come to visit us, you haven't been
here for all these years, so we're going
to have a meeting, and I said, oh
really, how long?
Well, they said, lunch won't be until 1
o'clock, and this was 10 30, so
don't stop until lunch, and then after we
have lunch, we'll have another one the same
length, you know, so that was an hour
and a half each.
That's a little bit longer than 40 minutes,
but anyway, I said, well, all right, and
I thought to myself, now what will I
tell the saints here for three hours today?
I've got to speak for three hours, so
I decided in a few minutes, I decided
that I would take up a little study
with them on the manner in which all
the Gospels terminate, the ending of the four
Gospels.
So I started off at Matthew 28, of
course, and that promise that I just quoted
you that the Lord said, go into all
the world and teach all nations, preach the
gospel to every creature, and then he said,
oh, I'm with you all the days, and
I stress what I've just said to you,
all the days, the good days and the
bad days, the days at home and the
days away from home, when you're alone and
when you're with others, all the days, he
said, I will be with you all the
days, no matter the circumstances, and I made
a point of that.
Well, the Lord puts off into the test
the things we say, doesn't he?
I even caught a glimpse of recognition from
some face there.
I just saw one, but it does happen.
We make certain statements, and we make certain
confessions, and we make certain professions, and the
preacher makes certain statements like that, and the
Lord says, oh, yes, very well.
Now, let's see how that works.
We're traveling home two days later after the
little conference was over.
We're traveling home, and we're driving a rented
car, government-owned, of course, everything's government-owned,
and on the way down, we had a
flat tire.
Well, there's a spare there, so we put
the spare on, and we got down right
to the last town, and there was a
big balloon came out of the side of
this tire we had just put on, so
I said, oh.
Now, you must understand that in Cuba today,
you can't buy, borrow, beg, steal, or otherwise
acquire a tire.
You can't.
You just can't, so forget it.
It doesn't matter how much money you can't.
You can't acquire a tire, so we put
this tire on with the big bolts on
the side of it, and we started back
up this long trek through the heat of
the day back towards the area of Havana.
Well, we got outside a large city called
Ciudad de Ávila a few miles, and the
balloon burst inside of the tires, so the
spare was flat on the way down.
That is, the one was the spare, not
the one we had originally had on.
It was put in the trunk flat, and
now this one was the spare tire.
It's blown to shreds, to pieces.
It's gone, and there we are at the
side of the road, miles from nowhere, and
we get out and look at the thing,
and there's another brother by the name of
Capote with us, and he said to me,
he said, this is something.
Where do we go from here?
We've got four wheels, but we've only got
three tires, so my son got out, and
he said, well, let's jack it up to
see what we can do, so they're jacking
up the tire.
While they're jacking up this tire, I had
to take all the luggage out of the
trunk.
I was the old man on the job.
I could stand and watch these boys work.
That part was all right, but while they're
working away there, someone said, by the way,
I think I heard the preacher say yesterday
that, Lo, I am with you all the
days, and I think he said good or
bad.
I think he said it doesn't matter the
circumstances, and I think he said it doesn't
matter where you are.
The Lord said, Lo, I am with you
all the days.
The preacher's standing there saying, well, Lord, I
know where we are, but I don't know
where you are right now, and anyway, what
do we do when we can't buy a
tire?
What are we going to do?
We're hours from the end of our journey.
Well, nothing bonded.
They jacked it up and took that one
off, and that was no good.
That was dredged, so they took the one
out of the trunk, and they went across
the highway.
Now, you stay here with the car, and
we'll get the first thing back to town.
Along came up on the great, big, lumbering
Russian tractors, agricultural tractors.
They threw the tire up on there and
climbed up on, and my boy explained to
them what had happened to them.
He said, all right, let's go to town,
so they headed back to the town we
had left, and he took them through a
lot of winding streets, and they ended up
in a little old wooden shack, and there
were three black men in there working, and
there was a police car sitting there, and
these policemen had two tires in there getting
them mended, so when the Russian tractor driver
said, now look, you just get off here,
and these men will look after you if
there's anything can be done, so they got
down.
They went in with their tire, and there
was a man came in off the street.
They didn't know who he was.
He came in off the street about the
same time as they did, and he said,
what's going on here, and my boy said,
well, we're visiting from Canada, and we've had
trouble on the highway, and he said, are
you both from Canada, and Capote, he doesn't
know any English, you know, Capote, the Cuban
brother, he's down there and hunched down beside
the tire on the floor, and my boy
said, and Capote looks up, and he says,
yes, and that was the end of it,
so he said, the man turned to the
black men that work in there, he said,
and there's two policemen standing by waiting to
get their tires looked after.
He said, drop what you're doing and attend
to these men.
They're visitors to our country, so they came
over and took the wheel, and they took
it apart, and they said, yes, we can
put a patch in it.
We can do this and that and the
other thing, and so they fixed it all
up and put it back on the wheel
and blew the tire up, and my boy
said to Capote, he said, I wonder how
we're going to get back out where Dad
is.
The man standing by overheard it, and he
said, where are you, man?
Oh, he said, we're so many miles out
on the highway, or kilometers out on the
highway, outside of Cicodiagula.
Oh, he said, that's all right, I'll take
you in my car.
So, they got in the car, and the
tire fixed, and went back out to where
I was waiting out there, under the juniper
tree, incidentally, and they came back with the
tire fixed, and they're putting the tire on,
and this man's hunkered down beside them, and
he said, where are you men going?
I said, we're going back to La Salute.
We're going back to Havana area.
He said, you can't go to Havana without
a spare tire.
He said, if you get on the Autopista,
and you head back to, at this time
of the day, in the heat of the
day, and he says, if you have a
flat tire there, he says, you'll rot before
anybody finds you, unless the vultures find you
first.
So, he said, you can't go back to
Havana without a spare tire.
Follow me.
So, we get in the car, and he
got in his car, and we followed him
to the very same old shack, back into
town, and he went to the men, and
he said, take the spare tire out of
my car, and put it in the trunk
of these men's car.
So, we wondered, what's this going on?
So, sure enough, went over, and took the
spare tire and wheel out of his car,
put it in the trunk of our car.
He said to us, now, have a good
trip.
And my son said to him, what do
you owe me?
Oh, yeah, he said, you don't owe me
anything.
He said, you are a visitor to our
country.
We must look after our visitors.
So, Alfred, he took out a couple of
brand new ballpoint pens he had, and a
stick of gum, Wrigley's experiment gum, the best.
And he said, well, can I give you
these?
Well, you have no idea what a stick
of gum, or a little box of chiplets
is worth in Cuba.
What the young folks do, they take a
stick of gum, but they take the and
they put it in their shirt pocket.
That's a sign of prestige.
If you have the wrapper, you don't have
to have anything in it.
But if you have the wrapper, you stick
it in your shirt pocket.
And just watch out, now, you belong to
the elite, because you have a wrapper out
of a stick of gum.
So, he had them, and you should have
seen a big smile come over his face.
My, he said, thank you so much.
That's just wonderful.
Come around to my mother-in-law's house,
and I'll give you some cold drinks before
you start up.
So, we went around, and had a cold
drink, and took a picture of the man
and his wife, who was there, and sent
it to him later on.
I wrote him a card.
We had a letter back from him.
And we're going on our way back again,
and I said, by the way, who was
it said about, oh, I'm with you all
the days?
Who is this man?
Where did he come from?
Who was he to tell the black men
to leave the policeman alone, and fix our
tire?
Who was he to say to us, you
can't go there without a spare tire, and
give us a tire.
Give us a tire.
Well, the entertained angels and the wearers, and
the Lord, oftentimes, it's like Abraham with a
bimilic, and like Jacob later on with a
bimilic.
I said,