Faith That Goes All In

All right, good morning, everybody. Welcome to the 1115 service, so glad you are here. Merry Christmas. If I don't get to see you before now and then, I hope you have a great time with your family. And I do hope you'll make plans to join us for one of our Christmas Eve services. They're all up at Pinnacle Hills Campus, the 23rd and 24th. We have added an entire service because last year was so large. So that should open up about 2,000 seats. And my best guess for you is I think the earlier you go, the better it'll be, whether that's the 23rd or early on the 24th. But in all reality, I have no clue. So best of luck to everyone in Christmas Eve. It's a ton of fun, but there's a lot of people. Great time to invite people to come with you to church. People are open to stuff like that. So hope you will make plans to be there and be a part of that. As Jeremy said, let's grab our Bibles. Genesis chapter 22 is where we're gonna be today. We are spending the majority of the calendar year in the book of Genesis. We have been through the first three chapters extensively. We've then moved to the life of Noah. Now we're spending the holidays with our boy Abraham, walking through his life. And really, I think we get to the climax of his story today.

And so I think you're gonna enjoy that. I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you've had to give up something. Here we are at the end of the year. And you may look at the scale and you're like, dude, I gotta give up dessert for like the month of January, but until then, I'm going strong, all right? Or you may say, man, I'm drinking too much Coke. I gotta give that up for a while. By the way, this will tell me a lot about you. Some people call it Coke, some people call it soda, okay? So if you call it Coke, no matter what brand it is, raise your hand in the room, all right? How many of you would say, I call it soda? Okay, all right. During the Lord's Supper, there'll be a time to get right with the Lord today. And I'd like to welcome you to the South where everything's a Coke, okay? Doesn't matter if it's Coca-Cola or a Dr. Pepper, if you really love the Lord, amen. Or if you're having Tex-Mex and you're spicing a little cherry Coke. You been there, done that? Just try it. Try it and come back to me, all right? But you may be in a position where you gotta give up something like that. You may have a more serious situation where you're like, no, I've had to give up friendships

or even friend groups because I'm trying to walk with the Lord and the people I've been hanging with are not helping me or we moved our family because God told us to move and so my kids had to leave their school and we left our friend group, we left our church. And so everything's just kind of in transition right now. That's a harder move right there. Or maybe you're like the Shores where God calls you to move and give up everything. Brian worked at Tyson and very established here in north of Arkansas and God says, I want you to be a missionary and give up everything and move to Africa. And so this is exactly where Abraham is. God calls him to give up something that's unimaginable. And let me remind you where we left off. We left off in Genesis 17. For their entire marriage, Abraham and Sarah had been infertile. They've been unable to get pregnant and yet God's been laying out this covenant. Like hey, you're gonna have a son. You're gonna be the father of many nations. Like through your seed, the nations of the world be blessed. And like bro, we don't have one kid, much less as Numer says, the sand on the seashore, the scars in the sky. And so all this infertility, God reiterates the promise to them in Genesis 17.

By Genesis 21, finally this promised son Isaac is born and really Isaac is this thing that God calls Abraham to give up and it's just an unimaginable ask. Today, the title of the message is we wanna have a faith that goes all in. For some of you, God is calling you to a faith that goes all in. Some of you have been half in, half out with the Lord. You've had like, you're dipping your toe in the water. When you're with this group of friends, you're in. When you're with that group of friends, you're not. When it's Monday through Friday, you're kind of in. Saturday night, you're not in. Sunday morning, you're in. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, that's how some people break up their lives and God wants us to have a faith that goes all in with him. So I want us to begin where the Bible begins right here in Genesis 22. We'll begin reading in verse one. Here's what he says. Says, after these things, God tested. I want you to underline the word tested, Abraham. Abraham, and he said, here I am, verse two. He said, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, underline that, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you, okay?

Let's just pause there for a moment. We're not told exactly how old Isaac is in this. If you were raised in church, you most likely have this idea of when you hear this story, you think of Isaac as a little boy because that's what we often see. If you were in Sunday school class and your teacher turned on a little movie of the story, he's often like an eight or 10-year-old boy. Or if you're older and you were taught with characters on a felt board, somebody's like, felt board? Don't even worry about it, okay? You're too young to even know what was then. But they're often just pictured as a little boy. What's interesting is if you go to the very next chapter, chapter 23, Sarah, the mother, dies, and at that point, Isaac is 37 years old. Now, we wrongly sometimes think, okay, chapter 22 ends tonight, chapter 23 begins tomorrow. It's not like that. Sometimes there are years and years of gaps between chapters. And so most people, most scholars believe that he is somewhere probably between a teenage year age of a boy to early 20s. Just FYI, as you're thinking about this in your mind.

He's not giving a lot of details here. Abraham is just told, hey, go to the land of Moriah, to the mountain of which I will show you, and offer your son as a sacrifice to God. Now, look at verse three. It says, so Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. And then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship. And I want you to underline the last four words, and come again to you. So Abraham goes to the land of Moriah. He sees Mount Moriah is what we often think about. Let's just say I'm Abraham and I'm walking with these two dudes and I'm walking with my son Isaac. And we are walking, walking, walking on this journey. And then finally in the distance, you see Mount Moriah. Can you imagine as a father, your stomach dropping of like, this is the place that God is asking me to kill my son. I told you to underline those last four words right here, of me and the boy will go over and worship and we will come again to you. Anybody else find that odd? Like it's odd because God is telling him,

go and sacrifice your son to me as a burnt offering. And then he tells these two guys who are with him like, hey, me and the boy, we're gonna go over here to the mountain to worship, but we will come back to you. Like, what is this? Is this faith that somehow God's gonna deliver him? Is this like, just hope of like, surely God is not going to ask me to kill the son that he has just finally given to me. Think the next passage kind of enlightens that a little bit. Look at verse six. It says, on the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from, sorry, verse six is better this way. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son. And he took his hand, in his hand, the fire and the knife. And so they went, both of them together, verse seven. And Isaac said to his father, Abraham, my father, and he said, here I am, my son. And he said, oh, we got the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? And Abraham said this, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So they both went together. Isaac is a smart kid. He's like, dad, we got the fire, we got the knife, we got the wood, we're missing the lamb. Where is the lamb? Like, what animal are we sacrificing to the Lord? How does Abraham reply?

God will provide for himself the lamb. Pretty cool. Let me give you a word about faith. If you got your journal there, why don't you write this statement down? Real faith shows itself when there's no visible reason to have it. Real faith shows itself when there's no visible reason to have it. You ever been there? Like, you got no reason for hope, and yet you got hope. Or you got no reason for faith, but somehow you still have it. It's one thing to have faith when everything's going really well in your life. It's another thing when, like, everything's hitting the fan. So when everything's going well, you got momentum in life and in your family, even spiritually, like, you look at everything, you're like, dude, the business is going great. The career's going great. My family's doing well. The kids don't hate us. We're all together right now. My health, I just got back from the doctor. Checkup went well. It's one thing to have faith and believe, God, when everything's. Cool. On the flip side of that,

when you just went to the doctor and the doctor says, this is not good. It's one, it's another thing to have faith in. Or when you look at your business and say, man, this did not turn out the way I thought it was gonna go. I mean, I've risked everything for this and now I'm in this situation. You've got dysfunction in your family that's about to come to the surface in the next four days. And you're like, do we wanna do this on Christmas Eve dysfunction or Christmas Day dysfunction? And you're like having to work through all that, right? It's another thing to have faith in those types of situations. Everything that Abraham had ever been through, I believe led to this moment. So we begin his story in chapter 12, we're all the way in chapter 22. So these 10 chapters tell what we know of his life story. And I would say everything that God had done in his life had prepared him for this very moment, looking at the mountain, walking with his son, who's saying, dad, where's the lamb? Is he gonna panic in this moment or is he gonna have faith in the moment? By the way, I think some of you are at that same point in your life where there's a mountain in front of you, maybe it's a major mountain of decision or it's a mountain of adversity

or it's a mountain of something in your life that you look at and you say, man, I don't know how that's gonna turn out. And everything in your life, everything that God has done in your life has led you to this moment of, will I respond to the Lord with faith or will I respond with panic? God has prepared you for what he has prepared for you. You realize that? Like everything that Abraham had gone through in his life, God was in preparation mode for ultimately what he was preparing for him. This moment on Mount Moriah in Genesis chapter 22. And so here's the question for us, will we panic right now? Will we have a shaken faith in the midst of uncertainty or will we just have an all in faith? Look at verse nine, story continues. Said this way, when they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. So you get in the picture? He has laid his teenage son, early 20 son, laid him down on the altar of wood, strapped him down. Okay, verse 10. Then Abraham reached out his hand

and he took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. You imagine me and Abraham like, oh, praise God, finally. Okay. And he said, here I am. Verse 12, he said, do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son from me. I want you to, in your Bible or journal, I want you to underline two things. Underline the words fear God and then underline the word withheld. I wanna talk to you about that and these two things together. Abraham has done what God's asked him to do. Strapped his son down, knife in hand, finally an angel. Abraham, don't do it. This was all a test. Do you realize that God can test you in your faith? We often don't think of the Lord that way, but we're told here that God tested Abraham and he said, why would God test us? I think sometimes it's a revealer of where we're at, so God puts us through a test. We're like, man, I'm not quite as far along as I thought, or man, I wasn't quite as faithful in my faith as I thought. Sometimes it's to challenge us in our faith.

He said, well, what is God concerned about here with Abraham? He points out those two things. Does he fear me and will he withhold his son? That's it. Does Abraham fear me and will he withhold the precious promised son that I have finally given to him? We're about to take the Lord's Supper here in just a few moments as we wrap up our service today. We do this really on the beginning of every, the front end of Christmas, whatever Sunday that is, usually as a church, and I think this passage is perfect for a Lord's Supper Sunday. So why do you think that? Here's why. I think there are two questions of faith here that God is asking of Abraham that I think are great questions of our own faith as we enter into a time of communion before the Lord to really evaluate where we're at with him. So write these down. Number one is this. Here's a question for your own life. Let me make this very personal in your life. Do you fear the Lord? Do you fear the Lord? There is somewhat of like a modern-day movement in the church to dumb down the fear of God, and they say things that are partially true, and I've said every one of the things I'm about to say.

You know, having a fear of the Lord doesn't mean you need to be afraid of God. It means to have a reverence for God and an awe of the Lord. But man, you can go boldly into the throne of grace because of what Christ has done for you. Amen to that, everybody? Like, amen to all that. It's just partially true. If you don't get anything else, I want you to just like hear me loud and clear. We should be also, in the base meaning of the word afraid, we should be afraid of an all-powerful God who can do whatever he wants to do. It's not either or, it is both and. And you hold both of these things from the Bible in your hands of, yeah, I don't have to be afraid of the Lord. Like, I can go directly to God because of Jesus. And also, there's a holiness factor of God that you best believe you better be afraid of God. There should be a level of fear in your life when you say no to something that God has asked you to say yes to. I'm gonna say it to you again. There should be in your life, and it is a revealer of your spiritual condition if there is not a level of fear in your life when you willingly say no to God when he has asked you to say yes to him in some way.

I believe Abraham was afraid of what God would do had he said no to God. I think he'd live with such a fear of God that he knew he had to obey the Lord. Hear me loud and clear, church. We need more of the fear of God in our lives, not less of the fear of God in our lives. We need more genuine fear of God, not less. You say, oh man, I just don't know if I buy that. Let me give you your own personal study over the holidays. Do a simple Google search for fear of God. Do a simple Google search. If you've got Bible concordance or something, just read what the Proverbs alone have to say about those who fear the Lord and those who do not fear the Lord. How the blessings of God follow those who have a fear of the Lord, and really how the curse of God follows those who have no fear of God whatsoever. God is the authority, I am not. Okay, I think it's a good Christmas thing to say together. Can we say that together? God is the authority, I am not. One, two, three. God is the authority, I am not. Doesn't that feel good on your heart? Some of you are like, no, it didn't at all. Like God is the authority, and I am not. But listen, I think Lord's Supper Sundays

are a great day to be reminded you're not in charge of your life. You are accountable to somebody. You will stand before God one day. I will stand before God one day, and we need to live with a genuine fear of the Lord should we try to say no to God when he's asked us to say yes. So do you fear the Lord is the first question. Here's the second question. Is there anything you're withholding from the Lord? I don't know the answer to this question, but I think you will. Is there anything that you are withholding from the Lord? This Hebrew word here, right here, I'm gonna circle it for you. The Hebrew word for the word withheld right here in verse 12, it carries the idea of restraining something that could have been given. And a little deeper dive on this, it conveys an intentional conscious choice to not give something that God has asked you to give or do something that God has asked you to do. So these are the moments in your life where you say, God says, I want you to give this, do this, give up this, and we intentionally, consciously restrain from the Lord and say, I do not want to do that. Now, we're in Sunday morning church, which is usually the place where we lie to ourselves

and lie to other people, right? And you hear something like this and you're like, man, I would never do that. I mean, my wife might. My husband probably does, but I don't, I'm not like that. I would venture to say, if the last seven days of your life and my life were placed on the screen behind me and we said, Lord, show any ways that Nick Floyd has consciously and willingly restrained from giving you something that you've asked you to give to him, to you, or to do something you've asked him to do. I imagine every one of us, if we were held accountable like that, there'd be something on the screen pop up that would be in the last seven days, some area that we said no to God. What has God asked you to do that you have not done yet? Maybe he's asked you to forgive and you've yet to forgive. Maybe he's asked you to be actually the one who tries to reconcile. Like, you go on the offense there, but you've not done it. Maybe he's asked you to change jobs, but you haven't, or move your family, but you haven't. Maybe he's asked you to get more involved at church, but you haven't yet. Or what has God asked you to give that you have not given to him? Are you withholding the tithe from the Lord? Are you withholding forgiveness?

Like I said a moment ago, are you withholding, you are straining forgiveness from someone else? Or are you withholding a kind word or an encouraging word from somebody in your life? In what ways is God asking you to go all in with your faith? And I think those two questions are a revealer of an all in faith. Do I fear the Lord? And is there anything I'm restraining from the Lord or withholding from the Lord? Look at how the passage ends, verse 13. It says, and Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and behold, behind him was what? A ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide. As it is said to this day, look at it with me, underline it, on the mount of the Lord, it shall be provided. So God provides this ram, he's about to kill his son. Abraham, Abraham, yes, Lord, don't kill your son. And he looks behind him and caught in a thicket is a ram that would become the sacrifice. If you are new to the Bible, and no doubt there are people in here who you just became a Christian

or you're not even a Christian yet, but you are here, you're trying to learn the Bible. And I wanna give you the benefit of the doubt today. If this is the first time you've ever heard this story, here's what's probably going on in your mind. What in the absolute world is going on in this story? Like, what kind of book am I reading? What kind of church did I enter into? Are they about to do some kind of weird seance thing? Like, what's going on here? I don't understand why God would ask a father to kill his son. And what I want you to understand here is that the story of Abraham and Isaac is really not about Abraham and Isaac. I mean, it is, because it's their story, but really what God was pointing to, listen to this, 22 chapters into a very long book. He's pointing yet again in the book of Genesis to the fact that a savior would come who God would sacrifice his own son for the salvation of the world. It's a crazy, crazy Bible picture here. And this ram becomes a substitute in the place of Isaac. Remember having a substitute teacher in high school? Okay, this is the person you lied to, made fun of, did stuff like that. Some of you, during the Lord's Supper, you need to repent of something you did 30 years ago to some poor substitute teacher,

wherever you lived in Arkansas or wherever across the nation, okay? This is the person who would come in when your teacher was sick or on vacation, and they would take the place of the real teacher. They were a substitute for the teacher. In Genesis 22 and the rest of the Bible, here's the picture. Jesus comes in and he takes your place and he becomes your substitute. Now, I'm gonna give you a big Bible word here that we are introduced to in 22, and it really goes through all the way through the Bible. It's this idea of substitutionary atonement. And we can define substitutionary atonement in these four words. It is Jesus in my place. Jesus in my place. So the punishment for your sin that you should have paid, I should have paid for our sin, Jesus becomes our substitute. Now, because of our sin, the Bible says that we are all sinners. We're born with a sin nature. You don't have to teach your kids how to sin. It just comes naturally. It comes naturally to you as well and to me as well. And this sin creates a gap between us and God, and we can't get over that gap on our own. Bible says that because of this sin,

not only is there a gap between us and God, but we'll spend eternity in a real place called hell, separated from God. So separation from God while we live on earth, but also separation from God for eternity. And Jesus comes in and he's the only one who can fill the gap. And he steps into this situation and he is the one who because he is your substitute, he can provide an atonement or a covering for your sin. You may hear me say this and you say, man, you got no idea what I've done in my life. And in fact, you had no idea what I did last night. And to be honest with you, I don't know what you've done in your life, and I don't know what you did last night, nor, frankly, do I really even care, because I know the extent of the atonement, that anybody who will bow the knee to Jesus Christ and repent of a life of sin, you will be saved. And this atonement that I'm speaking about can cover your own life. The blood of Jesus Christ is enough, no matter who you are, what you've done, no matter if this is your very first time in church, no matter if you found this message somewhere on the internet, and you're like, listen to this bald guy from Arkansas speak, this atonement is enough for you. And I would say to you this,

he's the only atonement. You can't close the gap, you can't cover your sin, you can't come to church enough, you can't be a good enough person, only Jesus Christ, through being your substitute, can atone for your sin. If you look back at the end of verse 14, I wanna end with this, it's just incredible. Abraham, name that place the Lord will provide, and then it says it again, he calls it on the mount of the Lord it shall be provided. You want like one of these like mind blowing Bible things I'm about to share with you, you ready for this? This whole story ultimately points to Jesus, I've already told you this, but do you realize that this ridge of mountains where Mount Moriah is, is the same ridge of mountains where Calvary is. In other words, on Mount Moriah, God provided a ram as a substitute for Isaac. And on Mount Calvary, this same ridge of mountains, God provided his own son and killed his own son so that his blood would become an atonement for us as he was the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Is that not wild, y'all? We place this Sunday specifically on this day for this reason, you may think to yourself, shouldn't we be reading about Mary and Joseph right now? I mean, isn't that more appropriate?

Isn't that the Christmas story? Here's what I tell you, Genesis 22 is the Christmas story. It's the Christmas story. In fact, the whole book is the Christmas story of God saying, listen, I'm sending somebody for you. And so Jesus didn't come to earth just to come to earth. It's a good thing to remind ourselves here on this Christmas Sunday. Jesus did not just come to earth to feed some people and to heal some people and make everybody feel good. Jesus came to earth to die. He came to earth to be our substitute. And you cannot separate the birth of Jesus from the mission and from the death of Jesus. And that's what we see right here in Genesis 22. I don't know how many of you ever heard about this thing called the Septuagint. Anybody ever heard that term? Our Old Testament was written primarily in Hebrew, or in Hebrew, New Testament primarily in Greek with some Aramaic mixed in. And so when you have your Bible in your lap today or on your phone, the Old Testament that you are reading was translated from the Hebrew to English because you're an English speaker, okay? But there's this thing called the Septuagint, which was the Old Testament translated into Greek. So here's a little fun thing for you as we'll wrap up with this. The same word used in verse 12

about how Abraham did not spare his son, but gave him up is the same root word used for spare in Romans 8, 32. Look at the screen with me. Here's what the Bible says. He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? The message of Christmas is that God did not spare his own son. The message of the Lord's Supper, same message. God did not spare his own son. I want you to grab the elements that you received when you walked in today. And I'm gonna give you some instructions today. If you'll notice, there's a little film on top. That's how you get to the bread here. And I always tell people, when you do the juice part, just hold it away from your clothes. I'm wearing khakis today. Sometimes it has a little splattering of grape juice, which does not come out, by the way. And so I just wanna encourage you to be careful as you open it. But let me give you more spiritual instructions. If you did not receive these elements, why don't you just raise your hand if you need them. Some of our men are walking around. Oliver, way up here at the top, we have some people. We'll get to you, just hang on.

Yeah, right down here as well. Just keep your hand up, they'll find you, okay? Right up here in the middle section, guys, if you don't mind, whenever you can. Here's the instructions, okay? The Lord's Supper is something that Christians do. Okay, it's a Christian thing, it's a Christian practice. And so we respectfully ask if you're not a follower of Christ, number one, we're so thrilled that you're here. But what we would tell you is this, that why don't you just respectfully observe, or not partake, but just observe what's going on around you and watch what other people are doing. And there's a reason why we are doing this. This is something instituted by the Lord for us on the church calendar to regularly do together. And so we do this several times a year throughout this. And so the bread here symbolizes the body of Jesus that was broken for our sin. All the way up there at the top, top right there, they're still looking for him, next to the sound booth. And the grape juice signifies the blood of Jesus Christ, which was shed on our behalf. And so we believe these are symbols. This is not, it doesn't turn into the body and blood of Jesus. We believe these are symbols to point us and remind us of what Christ has done for us. And so think about this, in the church calendar, God gives us a get back Sunday.

I'll just call it that. It's where you get back to be where you need to be with the Lord. And so if you're here today and you're like, man, Nick, man, I've just strayed from the Lord in this area of my life or that area of my life. This is the time. The Bible talks about not taking this in an unworthy manner. In other words, you don't flippantly take it. It's where you fear the Lord. Bible even tells us that some have gotten sick and some have even died because they partook of the cup in an unrighteous manner. That's enough to freak everybody out, right? And so I want you to ask yourself those questions. Do I fear the Lord? And is there anything in my life that I'm withholding from God? Here's what I'd say. If you ask those two questions of the Lord here in just a moment, here's what's gonna happen. God, through the Holy Spirit, will speak to your heart. And He'll say, yeah, this area of your heart right here, this part of your life right here is away from me. You need to come back. And this is what we do, okay? And so on this Christmas Sunday, we're gonna partake of this in just a moment. We're gonna have some time of just music by itself. Then we'll start to sing some.

We built time in the service. We have like 10 minutes left in the service, okay? So we are not in a rush. So you just pray. This is a time to get right with the Lord. Lord, I confess that I've been off in my life in this way. I repent in this way. I'm coming back. Would you forgive me right here? And you come back to the Lord, okay? On this Christmas day, this Sunday is normally a time that's different throughout all the other times of communion where we really try to encourage you to take this as a family. So if your family is here today, I wanna encourage you even in the crowded space, you can kinda lean down the row and just look together and say, hey, let's huddle up and let's take this together. But we're gonna have some time of reflection. Why don't we just bow our head, close our eyes. Our staff is gonna make their way to the front of each aisle. And they're doing this really for one primary reason. That's if you're here today and you've never trusted Christ, and maybe you're here and you heard me talk about how you're separated from God in need of a Savior, how Christ can be your substitute. And if that's never happened in your life, these men and women are coming

for this express purpose right here, that you could come to them as we begin to sing in just a moment. And all you gotta do is say, I need to give my life to Jesus. And we will lead you to faith in Christ in a very private manner here today with just you and that person. You don't have to come on stage, not gonna have to say anything in a microphone, just you and that person. So I'm gonna pray and then I just want us to have just a moment of reflection. Lord, in just a moment, we're gonna take of the bread and we eat in remembrance of you. Your body that was broken for us is by your stripes that we have been healed. And Lord, in a moment, we're gonna partake of the juice and we are reminded of your blood. And we just say it out loud so that everybody can hear it, without the shedding of your blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. So Lord, we thank you for your provision. I pray for those who are in this room who've never trusted Christ. I pray, Lord, that today would even be the day, no matter if they're a child or a senior adult, anywhere in between, that today would be the day that they turn to Christ in faith. Thank you for the cross.

It's in Christ's name that we pray, amen.