Praise the Lord for this
new day. The Lord blessed us with a wonderful day yesterday, in the upper
fifties, sunny and mild. The crocuses and daffodils are trying to make an early
appearance, and the birds of springtime are making a joyful noise to the Lord.
Sweet spring is around the corner, but with some rather
unpredictable weather for this evening, we will not be meeting for fellowship
and Bible study.
On March 13, 1993 this area received a
crushing 30" of snow, paralyzing the entire region, closing schools for two
days. Praise the Lord that March 13 this year will not resemble the blizzard of
93.
Praise the Lord that His
grace is sufficient in all our life situations. One of the paradoxes of life is
that times of testing are times of transformation. We don't like them, we dread
them, and we wish they would go away, but testing times are transforming
times.
Genesis 22 brings us to the mountaintop
of the testing of faith (Genesis
22:1-4). The Lord God asked Abraham
to offer Isaac, his beloved son, as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah. We do not and
cannot fully comprehend the ways of our Lord. His wonders and His mysteries are
inlaid in all His actions and invitations. As we look at the unfolding story of
His redeeming love we see that it would be on the very same mount that Solomon
would later build his temple so that every day sacrifices would be made
(Genesis
22:5-7).
There we find
the question that has rung through the portals of time: Where is the lamb?
In Genesis
8, the first lamb was slain on
behalf of the people that God might look down and forgive their sin, and it was
a lamb provided by God. From Noah to Calvary, the question would ring again and
again: "Where is the lamb?" Ultimately it would be fulfilled as John the
Baptist, with the Jordan River running past his feet, answered "Behold, the Lamb
of God, who takes away the sin of the world" (Genesis
22:8-12). The testing of our faith
brings transforming in our lives.
There comes a time when God
speaks to each of us to say, "What do you love the most: do you love Me or do
you love the things I give you?" The demand of the faith is that we let go of
the "things" and cling to the Lord God. The demand for Abraham was that he give
God the pre-eminence in his life.
This great story was only a
prefiguring, a dim foreshadowing of what would happen 2,000 years later when One
greater than Isaac stepped onto the scene. It is written, "Abraham, take your
son, your only son." Once again it is written, "For God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son." Abraham loved his son dearly. Some 2,000 years
later at the Jordan God spoke following His Son's baptism saying, "This is my
beloved son, in whom I am well pleased."
In Genesis
22 it is interesting
to note, "Isaac bore the wood on his back," and 2,000 years later, on the Via de
la Rosa the Lord Jesus Christ would bear His own wood to another mount called
Calvary, and it would be the wood of His sacrifice for us. It is written, "God
will provide the lamb." As always, the only sacrifice acceptable to God is the
sacrifice He Himself provides. In Hebrews
9:26, we read, "Now has Christ
appeared once for all to do away with sin by the sacrifice of
Himself."
Two thousand years later
Jesus, one far greater than Isaac, said, "I have the authority to lay my life
down and to take it up again." Perhaps today God has us on the
way to our own mountaintop of testing. Maybe we are already there. it is only
on the mountaintop of testing that the true quality of our faith is
revealed.
In Jesus our
Lord,
Brown.
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