Pastoral Letter 172
Dear Members of St. Andrew’s Uniting Church, Friends and Adherents,
Grace and Peace to you all.
Last Sunday marked the 46th Anniversary of the Uniting Church in Australia. Lane Cove Uniting folks joined us for our Combined Service on the occasion and praised God for all those who worked hard and established the Uniting Church. Members from both congregations took part in the service doing the Readings, Litany, and Prayers. The LCU Chaplain, Liam Mckenna, gave the sermon titled “Radical Relationships” based on the two readings from Ezekial and the Gospel of John. He said, as God’s people we are expected to be united as the prophet Ezekiel prophesied in his vivid image of joining two sticks, representing Judah and the Israelites with one stick and Joseph and Ephraim with the other, so they become one in God’s hands. Thanks for all those who came from both congregations and joined us and those who participated. After the service we had Morning Tea and a time of good fellowship with our sisters and brothers from Lane Cove Uniting.
We are jut five weeks from our traditional annual Market Morning, which will be held on Saturday 5 August 2023 from 8:00 am to 1:00 pm. Set up will be during the week from Wednesday 2 August. Please be ready to help as we do every year and if you have any questions, please ask Virginia.
Please save the date Sunday 10 September 2023, which marks the 100th anniversary of the laying of the stone of our beautiful Sanctuary. We will have a special service at 2:00 pm with many guests, church leaders, families, friends, guests and dignitaries. We will have more details in the coming weeks.
If you will not be able to be with us tomorrow morning Worship Service, please light a candle, have a small roll of bread and a cup of wine or juice for communion and join us following the attached Order of Service.
Be safe and well, continue to pray, remembering those who need care, support and love. Please let me know if you or anyone else has prayer points.
Here are some prayer points for this week:
- Pray for world peace and ask for God’s blessings.
- Pray for the conflict of Russia and Ukraine and the suffering people.
- Pray for persecuted people who are abused, terrorised and facing hardship.
- Pray for the poor, the sick, the vulnerable, the struggling and the stressed.
- Pray for those who are facing natural disasters causing death, loss and pain.
- Pray for the children of Armenia and Artsakh, as Summer Overnight and Day Camps will commence.
- Pray for Soo-Tee and ask God for his quick recovery.
- Pray for the families and the children during this school holidays.
Best Regards,
Krikor
MESSAGE
Abraham’s Faith in God Tested
Genesis 22:1-19
What happens when God asks for “All in”, a full faith?
What happens when He asks us to trust Him with the most precious priority in our life?
God loves us and has to shape us, conform us into the image of His only Son.
Where does that shaping take place?
Where does faith shine like polished silver?
When it’s tested… When it’s required to prove itself.
How often does God ask us to be “All in”, a full faith? Not very often.
Abraham had learned to trust God’s provision over a lifetime of tests. Some he passed, some he failed. He left the Ur of the Chaldeans to go where God would lead him. He left his homeland, wealth and relatives.
Full faith? Pretty Close. Abraham lied about Sarah being his wife to protect himself. He failed miserably. Abraham and Sarah were promised a child, but because it took too long, they tried through Hagar, Sarah’s maid.
Abraham was an old man, maybe 115-120, when God said to him: “Take your son, your only son Isaac to the region of Moriah and sacrifice him there”.
God has always been faithful. God has always honoured His promises. God has never lied; He has never broken the covenant. Romans 4:21-22 says: “Abraham was fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised. This is why it was credited to him as righteousness.”
God will allow us to be tested.
Sometimes, we’ll pass, sometimes we’ll fail. Hopefully we will learn to trust God enough to grow into fully persuaded believers.
From time to time in our Christian lives we are challenged to surrender to God that which we hold most dear, that upon which we set our hopes, even that which God has given to us as a gift.
God promised Abraham a son, but his wife Sarah was barren. So, Abraham chose to have a son by his wife’s maidservant, Hagar. However, miraculously, Abraham later had a son by his wife in their old age. Consequently, Abraham sent away the maidservant and her son Ishmael. Then God stepped in, and called him to sacrifice his wife’s son, Isaac!
What a difficult test for any man to undertake. Yet Abraham had learned to obey God’s voice. His faith saw beyond the bewilderments and difficulties of his present situation. It is part of our Christian obedience to recognise that all our relationships belong to God. This was Abraham’s experience. And because he passed this test, and because of God’s much greater sacrifice that underlies the truth of this history, we need never again be puzzled with the question of human sacrifice.
God called: “Abraham!” And he said to Him: “Here I am.” God said: “Take now your son.” Which son? “Take your only son.”
But surely Abraham has two sons? We must remember that Ishmael had been disinherited, and sent away, and Abraham had no way of knowing if Ishmael was still alive. “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love.”
Jesus says: “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of Me, anyone who loves his son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me” (Matthew 10:37).
So even in those natural bonds of life, whoever we love, we must love God more! This was the challenge to Abraham as he went to one of the mountains of Moriah, believing that God was telling him to sacrifice the son of God’s promise, upon whom he had set his hopes, and the hopes of mankind. Abraham was obedient. He saddled his donkey and took two servants and his son towards the place that God had shown him.
It took him three days to get to the place of sacrificed, I wonder what the conversation was like, did Abraham sleep? We don’t know, but after three days’ journey when they arrived at the mountain he left the young men with the donkey – and made a wonderful proclamation of faith, he told the servants to stay put while “I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you” (Genesis 22:5). This is an amazing statement and is perhaps the first indication of Abraham’s understanding of the situation.
We can imagine how heavy his heart was as he chopped some wood for the burnt offering.
We read in the New Testament: “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son… concluding that God was able to raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from the dead” (Hebrews 11:17-19).
We must sympathise with young Isaac as the wood for the burnt offering was placed upon his shoulders. Ironically, his father carried the more dangerous elements necessary for the sacrifice: the knife and the fire.
Isaac began to ask questions: “Father?”
Abraham echoed his response to God “Here I am”, but we can hear the following words almost choking him, “Yes, my son.”
“But where is the lamb for the burnt offering”, asked the son.
And in another prophetic flash of faith, Abraham replied: “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son” (Genesis 22:8).
We can see how far Abraham was willing to obey God. He built an altar and tied his son and was ready to strike him with the knife when God intervened. Again, Abraham heard his name called from heaven, and again he replied: “Here I am.” Then came the words at which Abraham’s heart would have jumped for joy: “Do not lay a hand on the boy.” Don’t do anything to him and do not harm him.
It remains of course, that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin.” Looking around, Abraham saw a ram caught in a thicket. Here was a sacrifice in place of Isaac. Abraham received Isaac back, as if from the dead.
Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide” – “Jehovah Jirah”. Moses uses this title to explain a common expression: “To this day as it is said. On the mount of the Lord it will be provided” (Genesis 22:14). God’s provision is not seen in terms of our gathering wealth to ourselves, but as an indicator that it is the Lord Himself who will provide the ultimate sacrifice.
Let us now look at another drama that stands at midpoint in history between ourselves and Abraham.
A man has wood placed upon His shoulders and He is led out of the city of Jerusalem, away from the Temple Mount which is believed to be the site of Abraham’s offering, to another mountain of Moriah, Calvary Hill.
All that Abraham and Isaac went through is re-enacted here, but without any voice from heaven to prevent it. The offering is now being made not by man, but by God. The Lord Jesus Christ described by John the Baptist as ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,’ was the sacrifice, not only for Isaac, but for all who will believe.
There on the Cross He bled and died and was laid in a tomb. But that tomb is now empty. Not only figuratively like Isaac, but Jesus is really raised from the dead.
The wage of sin is death. But Christ has paid the full price for all the sins of all His people. The free gift of God is righteousness and new life in Christ Jesus.
Abraham was promised: “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” That seed is Christ. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness (James 2:23).
Do we believe, do we trust in the blood sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only Son of God?
“God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life…” But “he who does not believe stands condemned already” (John 3:16-18).
How great is our faith in God?
When God tests us, as He tested Abraham, will we pass the test. We hope and pray that never asks us to sacrifice something very dear or special to us, as He did with Abraham.
But God tests us in some other ways.
All we need to do is to pass the test and be faithful to Him to the end.
Amen!