Episode 16- The Perfect Sacrifice

This week we are talking about Jesus as the perfect sacrifice, and witnessing the Old Testament get revealed and fulfilled in the New. Our readings today are from Genesis chapters 15 & 22, John 19:17, Mark 15:16-20, Isiah 53:1-7, Isiah 1:18, Colossians 1:19-23, and 1 John 4:10. Thanks for listening!

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to the Full Armor of God podcast. My name is Taylor. I am so excited to host you for episode 16. Thank you for coming back for another week of the Lord's Wisdom. We have been leading up to this message the last couple of weeks, diving into Samuel's story. Last week we talked about sacrifice and what it is and the role that it plays. And today we are talking about the perfect sacrifice. So the last couple of weeks have been leading up to this message, and I am so pumped about this one because today we're talking about Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment, the perfect plan of redemption for all time. And it's gonna be so good. There's so many connections. The New Testament is revealed in the old, and the old testament is fulfilled in the new. It's just so good. So today we are reading mostly from Genesis chapters 15 and 22, but we're also gonna be jumping into a couple verses from John chapter 19, Mark chapter 15, Colossians chapter 1, and Isaiah chapters 1 and 53. If you feel like following along, all these verses are gonna be in the notes. I encourage you to read along with me or at least touch back on some of these chapters, if not all of them, sometime throughout this week. The connections that we're making today are huge. The weight of what we're talking about today is massive. I just encourage you, let this one marinate throughout the week. It's a heavy one and there's a lot to take in. So we're gonna take it one step at a time, but we're gonna go all the way back to Genesis chapter 15, where God enters into a covenant with Abraham. Now, before this, in Genesis chapter 12, God speaks to Abraham and he promises him three things descendants, land, and a worldwide blessing through him. The descendants are the Israelites, a humongous amount of people. The land is the promised land, and the worldwide blessing through him, spoiler alert, is Jesus, because he comes through the line of Abraham, through this descendant of descendant of descendant is Jesus. Jesus is a worldwide blessing. So Abraham has been told that all these things are going to come to pass, but he has no sons, he has no descendants yet, and he still doesn't know when this is going to happen. And actually, most of this happens outside of his lifetime. It happens after he's dead and gone. But the Lord comes to Abraham in a vision in chapter 15, and the Lord says, Do not be afraid, Abram. This is his name before God changed it to Abraham. He says, I am your shield, your very great reward. But Abram said, Sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless? And the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus. And Abram said, You have given me no children, so a servant in my household will be my heir. Then the word of the Lord came to him, This man will not be your heir, but a son who is your own flesh and blood will be your heir. He took him outside and said, Look up of the sky and count the stars. If indeed you can count them, then he said to him, So shall your offspring be. Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. He also said to him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it. Ur, you are, was the place that Abraham was living when God initially called him and told him to go to this new land. And where he's going to is the promised land. And verse 8, but Abram said, Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it? He's saying, How can I know that all these things are going to come to pass? Because you told me to leave this land, and now I'm coming to this one, but I don't know if I'm going to take possession of it. I still have no children. How am I going to know that all this is going to come to pass? In verse 9, so the Lord said to him, Bring me a heifer, a goat, and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon. Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two, and arranged the halves opposite each other. The birds, however, he did not cut in half. This might sound really random, but this was actually where we get the term, I'll cut you a deal. This was how you entered into an agreement, into a binding covenant, a binding agreement with someone in the ancient East. They would grab a handful of animals, and it was all specific. There was a cow, there was a goat, there was a ram, and they would slaughter them, cut them in half, and make an aisleway, really, of these animals halves lined up against each other. And you and the person that you were entering into this agreement with would walk through the pieces, would walk through this aisleway together with all the blood and grossness going through it. Really gory scene. But the idea was if one of you did not uphold your end of the covenant, your end of the deal, then it was expected that your fate would be that of the animals that you had just killed and cut in half. Like it was a real deal that you were stepping into with someone when you walked through those pieces. Now, this next part is key. In verse 12, as the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. So Abraham is sleeping. He's seeing what's going on, but he's sleeping. He cannot walk through the pieces. Verse 13. Then the Lord said to him, Know for certain that for 400 years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation, your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. This is God prophesying about what's going to happen. The Israelites are not a thing yet. Remember that story where Israel has 12 sons, and one of them is Joseph, and Joseph gets sold by his brothers into slavery, and he becomes like the right-hand man to Pharaoh. There are still not a whole Israelite nation. It's just him and the 12 brothers that are going to make up the 12 tribes of Israel. But he saves his family, his brothers, and his father, and they come to Egypt to this land of Midian so that they can prosper there. And they do. And once they grow too numerous, then in the next book in Exodus, the Egyptians start mistreating them and enslave them for 400 years. So none of this has happened yet. And then after the 400 years of slavery, God says, in the fourth generation, your descendants will come back here. Come back to the promised land that you are standing in right now. But he says the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. You might be thinking, what the heck does that mean? There were certain groups of people that were living or about to go settle into the promised land where Abram was standing right now with God. Remember how there are groups of people in the promised land that when the Israelites come into the promised land, they say, Oh my gosh, there's no way we can do this. They're bigger than us. There's no way that we can take them out and claim this land as our own. Caleb and Joshua were the only ones to say, No, no, we can do it. God said this is our land to come into, and he is going to be with us. He is going to be the one driving them out before us. But there was work to be done. There were people to drive out of the land. And the Israelites coming to drive those people out of the land was God's judgment on those people. The Amorites was just one group of those people. Okay, let's continue in our story. In verse 17, it says, When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham and said, To your descendants, I give this land from the wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, Kenazites, Cadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Gergeshites, and Jebusites. That list of all those groups of people, those are all the groups that are going and about to settle into the promised land right now, and they're going to live out sinful upon sinful upon sinful lives. Remember, we talked about the demon worship, we talked about child sacrifice. The Israelites coming into the promised land is God's judgment on them. God is really truly the one driving them out of the land because he promised right here that it's going to belong to Abraham, to his descendants. But he says their sin has not reached its full measure. It's not yet time to drive them out of this land. I love that he's laying out like exactly what's going to happen over the next hundreds of years. The Israelites, they're not even a thing yet. The guy Israel has not been born yet. He's years down the road, and his descendants are years down the road. And even before that, God tells Abraham, You are going to become a worldwide blessing. Jesus threw the line of Abraham. That's thousands of years down the road. It's just incredible. God sees all of it, He sees the whole playing field. Now there's something here that I really don't want us to miss. In verse 17, the sun had said, darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot and a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. These are the two things that pass. Abraham is in a trance, like sleeping on the sidelines, not able to pass through. He's watching all of this unfold and he's hearing what God is telling him, but he's not doing anything. He's just observing. Now, why would there be a smoking firepot and a blazing torch? Here it is. God's presence all throughout scripture is symbolized by smoke and by fire. When the Israelites were being led by Moses, ultimately led by God from Egypt into Exodus, through the Red Sea, through the waters, God parts the sea. Moses leads the people through it. The things that are before and behind them are a pillar of smoke and a pillar of fire. And when they were wandering, being led by God through the wilderness, there was a pillar of smoke by day, or a pillar of cloud by day that they would follow, and a pillar of fire by night. And they would set up camp wherever this pillar stopped. They didn't go unless God went. When Moses is called by God, he's speaking to God through the burning bush. I mean, all throughout scripture, the Holy Spirit is symbolized by fire. Like God's presence is symbolized by fire and by smoke. So a smoking firepot and a blazing torch. This is God, he passes through twice. He knew that man was and is imperfect and wouldn't be able to stay true to him. So he put the payment on himself. God promised Abraham descendants, he promised him land, he promised a worldwide blessing through him. This was generation after generation of being connected to and committed to and devoted to God. And he knew all the ways that man would stray for him. He just laid out the next thousands of years of descendants on what was going to happen. He knew all the ways that we would walk away from him. He puts the promise and the punishment on himself. Now, when God promised that Abraham would have a son, a legitimate son, he said, Your wife, Sarah, is going to bear you this son. Now, for years after God told him this, he still had no son. Sarah had not become pregnant. So out of frustration and impatience, Sarah tells her husband Abraham, here's my servant Hagar. Maybe you can get her pregnant and have a son through her. Because clearly it's not working for me. So even though that's not what God told them to do, that's what they do. And Hagar has a son named Ishmael. Now, Hagar, once she becomes pregnant, starts becoming mistreated by Sarah because Hagar is giving Abraham the one thing that Sarah seemingly cannot. So Abraham and Hagar have this son named Ishmael, and God tells him, You're going to have descendants upon descendants. And Sarah is going to bear you a son. In chapter 17, verse 17, Abraham fell face down before the Lord, who's speaking to him. He laughed and said to himself, Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of 90? And Abraham said to God, If only Ishmael might live under your blessing, like I already have a son, look, he's here. Then God said, Yes, but your wife, Sarah, will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. He says, I will bless Ishmael. But Isaac is the one that my covenant and my worldwide blessing is going to flow through. Ultimately, Sarah ends up sending Hagar and Ishmael away. She frees Hagar from slavery and lets her go. So Abraham and Sarah have Isaac. And in chapter 22, it says, Sometime later, God tested Abraham. Tested is the key word. He said to him, Abraham, here I am, he replied. Then 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. That's a pretty lofty command. Verse 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 told him about. So he's walking around. There's got to be mountains everywhere. But God tells him, I need you to go to this specific place, this region of Moriah, and I will show you which mountain you're going to climb up. It doesn't say which one, it just says the region of Moriah, and God shows him the mountain. So on the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 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. Verse 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 up together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father, Abraham, Father, yes, my son, Abraham replied, The fire and the wood are here, Isaac said. But where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham said, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And the two of them went on together. 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. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, Abraham, Abraham, here I am. He replied, 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. 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 on the burnt offering instead of his son. 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. There are so many things to point out here. We're gonna pick this apart. In verse 5, Abraham starts out by saying, We will come back to you. I and the boy, we're gonna go worship and we will be back. Although it is a wild request, Abraham knows that he and Isaac are going to come back. He knows that God would not have him kill his own son, this son that he is promising a worldwide blessing through and hundreds and thousands of descendants, he wouldn't have him killed. Abraham knew that God would not take the life of his son Isaac. I also want to point out that Isaac is not like a wee lad. He's not some child that's being forced to go up the mountain that's being tied to the altar against his will. He is a grown man at this point. Remember those verses we read from chapter 17 where Abraham is laughing at God saying, Am I really going to have a son at 100 years old? Is Sarah really going to bear a child at 90 years old? If Sarah had Isaac at the age of 90 and she died at the age of 127, which is what the texts say she does, and many Jewish texts link her death close to this event on Mount Moriah. This probably could have put Isaac in like his mid-30s when this happened. Isaac has enough physical strength to carry a significant amount of wood up this mountain. Abraham is in old age, and Isaac is most definitely stronger than him, and he's the one carrying the wood up this mountain. And Isaac knows that there's no sacrifice. He's more aware than a child would be, perceiving that something is missing from the sacrifice. But he trusts his father and his God, anyways. If he was in his 30s, he definitely could have overpowered Abraham, but he was willfully submitted. I mean, the devotion of both Abraham and Isaac here is incredible. Why would God have Abraham complete all of these steps just to have him not go through with any of it? A couple of reasons. Abraham was being tested, and he proved the genuineness of his faith. He said from the start, the Lord will provide, we will be back. God, as we know, does not delight in sacrifice. It's our hearts that matter more to him. He was revealing Abraham's heart and God detest human sacrifice. It has no place in his plan, in his will. Not only that, this whole story points to Jesus, the ultimate sacrifice. I'm so excited to get into this. This mountain, this region of Moriah, is the same region of the mountain that Jesus was crucified. Jesus was crucified on, there's a bunch of different names for it. The main one is Galgotha. It means the place of the skull or the hill of the skull. It's also called Calvary. It's different translations throughout time. But Galgotha and Mount Moriah are heavily linked. They are in the same immediate geographical location. They're in the same ridgeline. They're the same area. The terrain changes throughout these hundreds of thousands of years because there are people settling, tearing down cities, building up cities, conquering towns, leveling cities. I mean, the terrain is going to change. That's why it makes it so difficult for biblical scholars and theologians to pinpoint exactly where the events of Abraham and Isaac and the events of the crucifixion happened. If you look up Galgotha, it is in the region of Moriah. That is not a coincidence. This place that Abraham went was in the region of Moriah. And we don't know which mountain God tells Abraham to go on. He just says, Go to this region, and God says, I will show you the mountain. Why would God have him go up any other mountain? Anyways, on to the next thing. In John chapter 3, verse 16, that famous verse, for 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. Back in Genesis chapter 22, God tells Abraham, Take your son, your only son, whom you love. That sound familiar? After all these events happened, it says the angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Same language. And I want us to catch here that the Lord says, I swear by myself, I will surely bless you and make your descendants numerous, even when your descendants turn from me, even when your descendants walk away from me and worship other things, I will stay true to my promise to you and my promise to them. That's why he walked through those pieces two times, because he knew that Abraham's descendants and every generation to come after that was not going to be faithful, like he was going to be faithful. There's a couple more connections here. In John chapter 19, verses 16 through 18, it says, Finally, Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So the soldiers took charge of Jesus, carrying his own cross. He went out to the place of the skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others on each side, and Jesus in the middle. Jesus carried his cross. Jesus carried his own wood for his own sacrifice up the mountain in the same region that Isaac did. And then in the last part of this story, there's a substitution for the sacrifice. Abraham looks up and sees a ram caught in the thicket. Many thickets are made of these prickly plants with thorns that get tangled together. In Mark chapter 15, verses 16 through 20, it says the soldiers led Jesus away into the palace, the praetorium, and called together the whole company of soldiers. They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. And they began to call out to him, Hail King of the Jews. And again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. And when they had mocked him, they took off the purple robe and put on his own clothes, and they led him out to crucify him. Jesus died with a crown of thorns in his head. Jesus is the Son of God, God in human form. And he could have saved himself at any moment, just like Isaac could have overpowered his father. But I want to point out that both sons, although they could have gone against their father's will, both sons were willfully submitted to the Father. Isaiah chapter 53, verses 1 through 7. These are the Lord's words through the prophet Isaiah. God is giving a prophecy about Jesus, the perfect and complete sacrifice. This is way before Jesus was even born. It says, Who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? He grew up before him like a tender shoot, like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, familiar with pain, like one from whom people hide their faces. He was despised and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. Yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our inequities. The punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray. Each of us has turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of all. Did not open his mouth. He was led like a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before its shears is silent. So he did not open his mouth. Seven hundred years before Jesus was born. God told the world through Isaiah the play-by-play plan for the redemption of mankind, that our sins would be put on him, that he would be pierced for our transgressions, that he would be crushed for our inequities. The book of Isaiah, it's a book that's about 60 chapters long. In the first 40 chapters, it's God condemning the Israelites. But within that condemnation, there is also a message of hope. And then the last 20 or so chapters is God's redemption plan for them. That's what we just read in chapter 53. The Israelites are about to be taken into exile because of their sins, because of how they have not followed the Lord. And the Lord says, Okay, I'll give you what you've been asking for. And that's not me. But even in that message of conviction, he is still giving them encouragement. And we're going to see that in Isaiah chapter 1, verse 18. He says, Come now, let us settle the matter, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be white as snow. Though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool. Even when his people are running so far from him, he does not turn his back on them. His words to them are the same to us, that even though you are not choosing me, I will still choose you every time. He walked through the pieces twice for you and for me. We're going to read a couple verses from the book of Colossians in chapter one. We're starting in verse 15. This talking about Jesus. It says, The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. In verse 19, it says, For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, in Jesus, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross. Verse 21, it says, Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior, but now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish, free from accusation. That is the crimson turned to wool, the scarlet turned to white as snow. The story of Abraham and the flaming pot and the torch, that was God showing that he would pay the price. And the story of Abraham and Isaac on that mountain was God showing again that he would provide the sacrifice, that he would pay the price. Abraham and Isaac walking up the mountain together was an act of faith. And it foreshadowed Jesus walking up Calvary with his cross, with the Father, willfully submitted. That was an act of love for us. It was the act of love for us. It all points back to Jesus. It all points back to the Lord and his great love for us. At first in John 3:16, it starts out by saying, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son. Our last verse from the book of 1 John, chapter 4, verse 10. It says, This is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. There is so much to learn from his word. There is so much to gain from reading his word. And I'm so thankful that we are here reading it and learning together. Friends, it is all love. It is all about God's love for us. This incredible redemption story is all about the Lord chasing after you and I. I wish I had a bigger word for love because this is an all-encompassing, unconditional, undescribable kind of love. That it's nothing that we can produce on our own. It's just something that we receive from Him. And friends, my prayer this week is that we would all let these stories, let this message just wash over our hearts, over our minds, over our days, and continually come back to this place where we realize that the God of the universe loves us personally, loves us dearly, loves us deeply. That's all I've got for us today. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week. I'll be praying for you, and I can't wait to see you next week. God bless you.