"From Eden to Eden -- Exploring the Saga of Salvation History"

Part IV: Kids, Horror Movies, and the Gospel Truth

Sermon by Dale Wolcott

December 9, 2000

(All scriptures are from the New King James Version unless otherwise noted.)

Abraham and Sarah were too old to have kids. But God had promised a son. And so, even though Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90, they had baby Isaac. They were so excited and so happy and Abraham took such good care of little Isaac. Before he could even talk, Abraham prayed with him. And before he could understand, he told him all about God and how much he loved him. They would go out under the stars at night and look up at those beautiful stars shinning in the sky. And Abraham told Isaac all about God’s Plan, and how someday God’s Son was going to be a descendant of theirs. Isaac loved to worship at the altars with his father Abraham and even as a little boy he heard God speaking to his heart, He said, "I love you Isaac." And Isaac said, "I love you, God, too." Isaac decided that he was going to follow God no matter what happened. He grew and grew until he was a young man.

God was looking down at Abraham’s family. And even though they were a good family, He thought, "You know, Abraham’s family really doesn’t understand yet. They don’t understand My Plan." The angels in heaven didn’t understand completely either, and neither did all those beings out in the universe. And so God thought, "I’m going to have Abraham and Isaac act out my plan."

So late one night Abraham was sleeping and he heard a voice, "Abraham, Abraham ..."

Abraham knew that was God talking to him. God said, "Take your son, Isaac, and go to Mt. Moriah. He will be the lamb on the altar."

Abraham had heard God’s voice before, but this was something different. Did God really want Isaac to die? "Oh, God, I can’t do that, it’s too hard! Please God, please don’t let me have to do that." But Abraham was used to obeying God and so he got up and he went and woke up two servants, and said, "Get some wood ready, get some food together, we’re going to Mt. Moriah."

And then he went into Isaac’s tent. He looked down on Isaac and tears washed down over his face. "Isaac, Isaac, wake up, we’re going to Mt. Moriah. We’re going to worship God there." Isaac got up; he obeyed just like he always did.

That day the little group walked and walked. They saw Mt. Moriah in the distance far, far away. That night they made their camp and Isaac slept. But Abraham went out away from camp and he prayed. He talked to God, he poured out his heart, "Oh God, please don’t let this happen to me, please. I don’t want to kill my son!"

All the next day they walked. Abraham was silent. He was thinking and praying all day. That night they camped again. And that night while Isaac slept, Abraham went out and talked to God again, "Oh God, please, I can’t, I can’t do it," he prayed. But after a little while, Abraham realized that God was talking to him. And he said, "Okay, I’ll do it. I’ll obey. I WILL do what you say. I’ll trust you. You can bring Isaac back from the dead. You have told me that God is going to send His Son in my family, so I’ll trust you."

The third day, they saw Mt. Moriah, it was close now. And Abraham told the servants to stay at the bottom of the hill, and just he and Isaac would go up. So Isaac carried the wood and Abraham had the knife and the fire in his hand. And finally Isaac said to his father--it’s a question he’d been waiting all this time trying to figure out how could he ask his father--but finally he said, "My Father?"

Abraham said, "Here I am!"

Isaac said, "Where’s the lamb for the offering?"

Oh that hurt Abraham so much, but he couldn’t tell Isaac yet, and so he just said, "God will provide."

Silently they went on up the hill, stopping every now and then. (Remember, Abraham was an old man.) They came to the top of the mountain. Abraham and Isaac repaired the old altar there. They got it all ready. Abraham put the wood on top of the altar and then he told Isaac about God’s command.

Terror filled Isaac’s eyes, "NO!" He couldn’t believe it! But then he looked into his father’s eyes, and he saw only love there. He saw how his father was suffering and what agony he must have been going through these last three days. And he said, "Okay, I trust God. We must obey." And so they hugged each other and they cried and they prayed together. And then Isaac climbed up on the altar.

Abraham prayed once more, "Dear God, please forgive us, we haven’t always trusted You, but I know now more about what You are doing, what You’re going through to send us Your only Son. Amen."

And then he lifted the knife in the air, ready to bring it down. When suddenly at that very moment, a voice called, "ABRAHAM, ABRAHAM .... now I know that you trust Me. Don’t do anything to Isaac."

And so, Isaac and Abraham were SO thrilled, they were SO excited. Abraham helped Isaac off the altar. They looked around and there in the bushes they saw the ram caught, that God HAD provided. They went and untangled him and they put him on the altar to die instead of Isaac.

Abraham and Isaac hugged each other. Abraham said, "Now I know what it’s going to be like, what God is going through to send His Own Son, His Only Son to die for us. Isaac said, "Now I understand; God is sending His Son in my place to die for me."

Thank you Jesus for coming to die for us!

As you boys and girls go back to your places, I hope you’ll listen to Pastor Dale as he talks, so that you’ll understand better what Jesus has done for us!

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive as an inheritance.

And he went out, not knowing where he was going. . . .

By faith Sarah herself also received strength to conceive seed, and she bore a child when she was past the age, because she judged Him faithful who had promised.

Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born as many as the stars of the sky in multitude; innumerable as the sand which is by the sea shore. . . .

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac: and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, of whom it was said, "In Isaac your seed shall be called, "concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense. [Hebrews 11:8-19]

Abraham "believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness."

Know therefore that those who are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. [Galatians 3:6, 7]

Therefore . . . let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us,

and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

[Hebrews 12:1, 2]

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Sermon

Kids, Horror Movies, and the Gospel Truth

It wasn’t a horror movie, but the residents of East Lansing, Michigan, may have felt like they were living a horror movie. It was the spring of 1999; the Michigan State University (MSU) basketball team was in the Final Four. When the Spartans lost in Florida on a Saturday night, 7,000 disappointed fans in the streets of Lansing started setting cars on fire at random.

By 7:00 the next morning, eight vehicles had been burned, including a police car. Tear gas was hanging over the streets of East Lansing. Altogether, 61 fires were reported that night. Twenty-four people ended up in the emergency room at Sparrow Hospital.

East Lansing Police captain Louis Muhn said, "I have never seen anything this bad in twenty-six years of law enforcement." Perhaps the most frightening incident of the whole evening was when the drunken crowd tried to tip over an ambulance that had come to rescue one of the injured rioters.

And that was just a bunch of "good," ordinary Michigan kids with too much booze under their belts, reacting to a basketball game!

Violence. Casual violence. Horror movies. Action movies. CNN movies from Gaza or the West Bank; or East Indonesia; or West Africa; or East Lansing.

How do children learn to be violent? What can Christian parents do to keep our kids safe?

What does the Bible have to say to parents and grandparents at Christmastime, 2000?

Before we open the Word, let’s pray together. "Father, as we come to this profoundly disturbing Old Testament story, we pray that the Prince of Peace Himself will guide our minds to understand what it really means. It is in His name that we pray. Amen."

Open with me to the book of Genesis. Human violence began at the very gates of the garden of Eden. A month ago, in installment two of our on-going series "Exploring the Saga of Salvation History," we focused on God’s Grace at Edengate, Genesis chapter 3. But in the very next chapter, chapter 4, Cain murders his brother, Abel.

The end of chapter 4 tells how, just a few generations later, blood feuds had become a way of life for Cain’s descendants. (Genesis 4:23, 24).

By chapter 6, God is telling Noah that the earth was so filled with violence (Genesis 6:13), that a global flood was the only solution. (Bro. Norman Moll zeroed in on that story 3 weeks ago in "Noah’s Mayflower and the Very First Thanksgiving.")

But the Flood was not a permanent fix for humankind’s post-Edengate penchant for violence. In just a very few more generations, a man named Nimrod became famous as "a mighty hunter" and warrior "against the Lord." His name meant "the rebel," and he and his relatives founded a series of cities in present-day Iraq, including Babylon, Nineveh and another very important one not far from Babylon, called "Ur of the Chaldees." Nimrod is the first person referred to in the Bible as having a "kingdom." He was an empire-builder, a powerful man who got what he wanted by physical force and violence. (Genesis 10.)

Coming to chapter 11, we find that God saw Nimrod’s empire-building activities as a potential return to the pre-flood levels of violence in the world, and He stepped in. In chapter 11 He defused the explosive situation in a very creative way; He scattered the people by changing their linguistics; you remember the tower of Babel story.

Originally, Nimrod had called his city "the gate of the gods." ("Bab-ilu" in Akkadian.) But after the language mix-up, there was at least one group of people, speaking what came to be known as the Hebrew language, for whom "Babel" or "Babylon" now meant "confusion." One of those Hebrew-speaking people was a man by the name of Abram, later known as Abraham.

That brings us to chapter 12. Genesis 12 is a watershed chapter in the saga of salvation history. Up through chapter 11, the Bible is telling the history of the whole human race. (Chapter 10 is sometimes called, "The Table of Nations.")

But starting with chapter 12, the Bible story zeroes in on one man and his family -- Abraham. The rest of the Old Testament, and most of the New Testament, tells the story of that particular group of people: Abraham and his descendants, who came to be known as the Jewish or Hebrew people, or Israelites. (God was not ignoring or abandoning the rest of the world, but He chose to focus His efforts to bring the world back to Eden by working through one particular family, through whom Jesus would come.)

Abraham’s family had not heeded God’s command to scatter out from the area of Babylon. They were still living there in one of Nimrod’s cities. But God saw in Abraham a man with a tender heart; a man through whom He might hope to turn the tide of violence, and bring Peace on earth, good will to men.

Let’s read Genesis 12:1 together, "Now the Lord had said to Abram: 'Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you.' " As we read in the Scripture a few minutes ago, Abraham obeyed, "and he went out, not knowing where he was going."

Note verses 2, 3: "I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you; and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." This promise to Abraham is repeated again and again: God is going to use you and your children to bless the world!

In several places in the Abraham story, God uses the word "seed." Modern versions, including New King James Version, say "descendants," but the literal Hebrew word is "seed." (You recall Genesis 3:15, spoken at Edengate: the "Seed" of the woman would someday bruise the serpent's head.) So God is working out the saga of salvation history; the story is unfolding.

As the story of Abraham goes on, it says "Abraham believed God." (Gen. 15:6; Romans. 4:3).

Several decades passed, and sometimes Abraham had trouble believing God. For one thing, he and his wife Sarah were still living in tents; they didn’t own even a square foot of ground in this land of Canaan that God said He was going to give to him. But there was something else even worse than that: Abraham and Sarah were getting old; Sarah nearly 90 and Abraham approaching 100; and they still didn’t have any kids! "How can I become a great nation without any kids?" thought Abraham.

You may remember how Abraham tried to help God out, and took a second wife; that’s in chapter 16. He and Hagar had a child that ended up causing a lot of trouble. (It has caused trouble to this day because that child became the ancestor of the Arabs who are still at war with the Israelis.)

But finally, you come to chapter 21, and the Child of Promise was born: the seed of the woman, born by a miracle, their only begotten, dearly beloved son. (It sounds like the Christmas story, doesn’t it? That’s no accident!)

They were so happy with that baby that they named him Isaac, meaning "Laughter."

And Isaac grew and he learned to walk, and he learned to talk, and he got potty trained and he learned to care for the animals and the tents. Everyone who’s been a parent knows what a marvelous joy it is to watch your own flesh and blood blossoming and blooming and becoming, turning miraculously into a unique, alert, questioning, learning, functioning human being. And best of all, as Abraham and Sarah watched Isaac become a young man, they saw him learn to love and trust and worship the God of Heaven; to worship as Adam and Abel had done at Edengate; as Noah had done at the end of his epic voyage.

And so Isaac learned from his dad and mother that God had a very special plan for his life. His descendants would become a great nation, and someday from that nation the Savior would be born. In his family all nations of the earth would be blessed.

And then came the fateful night when God spoke to Abraham again. Turn to Genesis 22.

We heard Nancy tell this story to the children a few minutes ago. Let’s read verses 1 and 2: "Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."

Then He said, "Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you."

You ought to just sit down and read this chapter sometime soon. We heard the story earlier, so I’m not going to retell it now, but if you’ve ever been a parent, as you read this chapter you find your heart thumping, and your adrenaline pumping, just bringing the words into your brain. If they made a movie out of this, they would probably rate it at least PG, maybe PG-13. Can you visualize this on the silver screen: a father with his knife upraised, pointed at the heart of his own son. Talk about a horror movie.

Some people think the whole Old Testament is more like a horror movie than it ought to be. Why is there so much killing? And why so many bloody sacrifices? Is the God of the Old Testament perhaps a different God than we find in the manger in the New Testament? Absolutely not. In fact, the most graphic horror story in the Bible is a New Testament story; the story of the cross of Calvary.

Turn to the New Testament, to Mark chapter 8. The point of this whole Story, this grand saga of salvation history, can be summed up in three points:

#1) Sin causes terrible trouble, and violence, and pain; that’s why God’s Law is important. It’s the violation of that law that has caused all the trouble; BUT

#2) God has chosen to solve the problem of pain by taking the pain upon Himself. He has entered the vortex of violence, and by absorbing the violent consequences of sin in His own body as He hung on the cross, Jesus has broken the cycle of violence for all eternity. That why Grace is important.

And when Paul says that God "preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham" (Galatians 3:8), he surely was thinking of this story in Genesis 22.

#3) So this story is not a horror story at all; this was God’s vivid way of teaching Abraham that He, God Himself, will provide the Lamb, if (and this is #3) we will simply trust Him 100%. That’s Faith.

When trusting God takes higher priority in my life than anything else; higher than the companionship of my wife, as in Adam’s case; higher than the approval of my friends, as in Noah’s case; higher than my own precious child, in Abraham’s case; when I’m willing to let it all go if that’s what it takes, then He gives it all back to me.

That’s why Job could say, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him" (Job 15:13). Are you there at Mark 8? Note verse 35: "Whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it" (KJV). That’s no horror movie; that is the gospel truth!

This morning one of the families in our church has requested the privilege of publicly dedicating their new little one to God. They are going to lay their little one on the altar this morning, just like Abraham did.

Before we do that, let’s go back to this story about Father Abraham and apply it to parenting in this Millennial generation.

I want to speak to you parents who are dedicating a child this morning, and to all the rest of us who have kids and grandkids: How can we help these kids to be less like Cain and Nimrod, the children of violence and rebellion, and more like Christ, the Prince of peace? That’s an uphill battle in today’s world. (Later in January we’re going to be taking an in-depth look at what the Bible teaches about "Christian education in a post-Christian world.")

I don’t have to tell you that violence is epidemic in America, especially in young America. In September, 2000, the U.S. government issued a report on violence in the media. This was a result of the Columbine High School tragedy in 1999. It concluded that the nation’s largest entertainment companies "routinely and deliberately target young children" with slick advertising campaigns for publications and TV programs that are "full of excessive violence and gratuitous sex." [CNN via internet, 9/13/00]

As it was in the days of Noah, and in the days of Abraham, so it is today; the earth is filled with violence. Yet Isaac grew up different. Later stories show that Isaac was known as a peace-loving man (see especially Genesis 24).

What can parents learn from Abraham? 

Lesson #1. You can model faith. When Abraham heard God’s voice in the night, it says in verse 3 that "he rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey...and arose and went." in verse 7, as they’re climbing Mt. Moriah, Isaac asks about the lamb, and in verse 8 Abraham models faith even though he’s totally torn up inside: "God will provide for Himself the lamb." We see this also in verse 5: "We will come again."

If your children see you doing what God says, and hear you trusting God to do what He says, they’ll assume that when they get big that’s what they’ll do too. When Nancy and I still had our little ones at home, they’d routinely come out of their bedroom in the morning to find their mama curled up in her upholstered rocker in the living room with her Bible or an Ellen White book on her lap, and they’d snuggle up beside her. It’s no surprise they developed a good strong personal devotional habit later on.

Children learn what they live. My dad used to say, "Religion must be caught, not taught." This is not a 100% guarantee. Every child has a free will and some will make wrong choices no matter what. But you can tip the odds toward good choices by making good choices yourself. If you want your kids to not like violent video games, you’ve got to not like violent entertainment yourself. But if they see you laughing at some crazy wrestling match on TV even once, they’ll learn to laugh too. (The same thing is true about bone-crunching NFL action. Football is a violent sport!) And if you turn it on after you think they’re in bed, the night will come when they’ll learn that’s what big people do, and that’s what they’ll expect to do when they get big (if not before). Children learn what they live.

Lesson #2. There’s another even more important lesson to be learned from Abraham’s example as a dad: Come down to verse 9. God had said [verse 2], Take your son, your only son, the one you love, the child of promise, the seed of the woman, the miracle baby, and offer him as a burnt offering to me. Devote your boy wholly to me. I gave him to you; will you give him to me? It had to be the hardest thing he’d ever done in his life, but look at verse 9: "Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar."

I don’t know which is more incredible: that Abraham could actually tie those ropes, or that Isaac, a strong young man, was willing to be tied! Parents; grandparents; there it is, Lesson #2, You can surrender your children to God.

A few weeks ago I got a call from my son in Georgia. He started asking me about some medical symptoms I’d had 25 years ago, when he was just a baby. Of course that brought back memories, because I ended up sick for five years, with two major surgeries before I got back to normal. It was not fun for me, or my wife, or my kids. I figured he was asking on behalf of a friend, or someone he knew at work. So I told him a little about it, and I said, "Why?" and he got quiet, and then he said, "Well I’ve been having the same symptoms."

After he hung up it hit me; he’s just about the same age I was when this happened to me! I sank down on my knees and said, "Lord, he doesn’t need that. His little boys don’t need their daddy to have that. Lord, please spare him." And the Lord may spare him. He’s doing fine, and the odds are won’t go through what I went through, because my situation was quite unusual. (And by the way, it was not cancer, so please don’t anybody go out of here and spread the rumor that the pastor’s son has cancer!) But a day or two later as I was praying I realized I wasn’t surrendering my boy to God, and I changed my prayer. I’m still praying that he doesn’t have to go through what I did. But I’m also saying, "Lord, if you know that’s what he needs to keep him humble and close to You, to save him and his family for eternity, it’s OK. It’s OK."

My brother, my sister, when we as dads, as moms, can surrender our dearest treasure totally to their Heavenly Father, that’s when we’re most likely to get them back forever.

You know why it’s so hard to really give our kids to God? Because my kid is me, and what I really don’t want to give up is me. Listen to this from the pen of Ellen White (Evangelism, p. 342): She’s talking about fathers; She speaks of "wise management at home, kindness, meekness, forbearance, combined with firm principles," and then she says that if a dad does this, "then be assured that [that] husband is a house band; he binds the family together with holy cords and presents them to God, binding himself with them upon the altar of God" [emphasis added]. Wow . . .

There’s one more lesson I see for us here: Let's review what we've seen so far: First, Abraham modeled faith and obedience. Second, Abraham surrendered his child to God; which really means he surrendered himself.

Now Lesson #3: Abraham led his son to see Jesus.

When we hung these banners in our church sanctuary, we purposely put the story of Abraham and Isaac directly across from the story of Jesus, with the cross at the center of them both. Jesus said, "Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad" (John 8:56). When Isaac saw that ram in the thicket, and it took his place on the altar, do you think Isaac understood the plan of salvation? He saw the end of the saga; the big picture. He knew he had a Savior.

Parents, grandparents, the greatest gift you can give your children is to somehow help them to stand with you at the foot of the cross of Jesus, and see Jesus dying in their place. That’s when their heart will be broken and melted, and Jesus Himself will untie them from that altar where you’ve placed them, and He’ll set their hearts free to become all He has in mind for them to be. He really will!

So now it’s time to bring this little one to the altar for a special dedication prayer. Mom & dad, bring your songbook with you; we’re going to sing hymn #379, "We Give This Child to You," and we’ll sing it to the very familiar tune, "Blest Be the Tie That Binds."

[Dedication prayer; others invited to include their children by raising their hands; prayer offered for them.]