Have We Forgotten?

Grace Church Albion IN

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00:00-41:16

Transcription

The speaker discusses their interest in politics and the importance of remembering the Christian foundation of the country. They emphasize the need to remember and respect history, including the sacrifices made by previous generations. The speaker also discusses the erasure of certain historical events and the importance of sacrifice in achieving good things. They highlight the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus and discuss the mental, betrayal, mockery, and crucifixion sacrifices he endured. They then mention the trust and sacrifice shown by Abraham. I like political things and I like the fact that our country was founded on Christian beliefs. I was able to go to the Capitol building and that really inspired me to see the fact that God was so involved in our founding and it's like, man, I was never taught this. You never hear about these things growing up and the fact that we are a Christian nation and even more importantly now as we remember the sacrifices that were made on Memorial Day, it's so important to remember our history and I think that we have forgotten. I mean, if you think about it as a nation, as people, have we forgotten the sacrifices that were made? So we're going to look at that today but before we get started, let's go ahead and go to God in prayer. Dear God, we come to you today to remember, to remember the sacrifices that you've made for us ultimately and the sacrifices those around us have made so that we could be free to worship you. We pray that you'd just be with us in a powerful way this morning and purify our minds and our hearts. In Jesus' name, amen. Deuteronomy 32, 7 says, remember the days of old, consider the years of all generations. Ask your father and he will inform you, your elders and they will tell you. We don't give enough respect to the older generations. I think this is a natural thing in our culture today to kind of push aside the older generations and to make everything revolve around the younger generations, which, you know, it's good to bring them up. But even down to like the style of clothes, it's like, why are we letting middle schoolers and high schoolers define what's cool? I mean, they define what's cool as far as styles and stuff and I think that's just the weirdest thing, you know, like what should define as cool is like my grandpa wearing New Balances, you know, but actually that came back around, I guess. But you know what? What defines cool? But we go back, we look at history and it's so important to remember history. If we forget the sacrifices that they made, we not only lose out for us, we not only lose track of where we need to go, but we truly dishonor them. We're hating them and we're neglecting them. The very ones that rescued us, the very ones that gave us the freedom to worship, to be here and we lose our foundation. So history is being erased. One example is anybody know what in the world a Hoosier is? You know, a Buckeye is a nut, right? We got a bunch of nuts over next door to us, but we have the Hoosiers actually was named after Harry Hoosier. I don't know if you know this, but during the second great awakening, there was a black pastor and this was just wilderness back then, you know, in the late 1700s, this wilderness. So he came over here. There's a few settlers and he went from town to town, powerfully communicating the word of God and would convert town after town after town. And all of a sudden these people were changing. There was a light inside of them. And so the people that saw those people that have changed because of Harry Hoosier, this black pastor that went around, they called them Hoosiers. Did you guys know that? They literally erased not only a pastor that went around, but a black pastor that went around. So talk about racism. How about we bring that stuff back? That's just such a common thing. And if you go to the Indiana Historical Society and look up, what's the definition of a Hoosier? Never one mention of Harry Hoosier. In fact, they admit, oh, we're not really sure that the very website that defines our history as a state doesn't have this information on it. Just amazing how we've forgotten the past. So important to remember the past. Our country was founded on the fact that we are created by a creator. It says, we hold these truths to be self-evident in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And what happens when those rights are being violated? This. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it and to institute a new government. When a long train of abuses and usurpations pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government. So when a government gets too powerful, which are we on the verge of that right now? A little bit. We are seeing a reset back to how it was during the days of the king. And then a few influential men got together and they're like, we're done with this. You have to be organized about it. We're done with this. We're done with this document, knowing that they're going to have to give this up. He says, and for the support of this declaration, they threw everything at this to support it. With a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. These guys are very influential, many of them rich, had everything going for them. Why in the world would they throw all that away? We see a few people like that, that don't care about the money stuff rising up a little bit. We need more of them though. But they're willing to give their lives. But what helps them in that motivation to be willing to give their lives? Divine providence. The fact that we can always go back and rely on God to have our back. Even in death, we can have victory in Christ. So it's pretty awesome that we have a relationship with the foundation of life itself. There can't be any good without sacrifice, if you think about it. Everything good comes from sacrifice. Going to work every day. You know, like, why do we have to go to work every day? Well, because I'd like to eat and pay my mortgage. Now if you don't go to work, you probably won't eat and you won't be able to pay a mortgage. And if somebody else is helping you out, they had to go to work to help you. You know, there's always sacrifice involved with anything good. Without sacrifice, there's no freedom. We'd have no money to live. Without sacrifice, there's no satisfaction in life. We go through hard things. When we work, we can come home and be like, yeah, I did a good job. Look at this money I got. Look at this thing I accomplished. It took sacrifice. Like the biggest sacrifice recently was doing the junior high golf team. You know, I'm not good with middle schoolers and stuff. I'm still learning this whole teenage thing, but it was one of the best things I've ever done. It took sacrifice, but now I know a little bit more about teenagers. And it was way outside of my comfort zone, so it makes everything else seem kind of easier. Without sacrifice, most importantly, we would have no life at all, because Christ paid the ultimate sacrifice. And without that, there's no life at all. This isn't actually real life, if you guys didn't figure that out. Real life begins after we die, and the reality of that life is way beyond what our brains can imagine. And we're going to look back on this life and think of it as a dim reality of what is real. Have we forgotten the ultimate sacrifice, the sacrifice of Christ? Christ dreaded the sacrifice. In Matthew 26, 36, he says, Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane and said to his disciples, Sit here while I go over there and pray. And he took him with Peter and his two sons of Zebedee and began to be grieved and distressed. Then he said to them, My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death. Have you ever been so scared that you thought you would die? You get into such a dark space, pushed into a corner, that you thought you were going to die. I don't know if I can say I've felt that intensity, but I'm sure some of you have. But he says, Remain here and keep watch with me. And he went a little beyond them and fell on his face and prayed, saying, My father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not as I will, but as you will. So the first sacrifice was a mental sacrifice. The mental thought of, oh, man, I'm not only going to have to die, but in the worst way I could possibly imagine. Second sacrifice of Jesus was his betrayal in Matthew 26, 14, it says, Then one of the twelve, named Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priest and said, What are you willing to give me to betray him to you? And they weighed out thirty pieces of silver to him. From then on he began looking for a good opportunity to betray Jesus. Nothing worse than a close friend who has spent years with you that turns their back on you. For what? Money. The third sacrifice, he was mocked. This is more getting back to the mental. Matthew 27, 28, They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him. After twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and a reed in his right hand. And they knelt down before him and mocked him, saying, Hail, King of the Jews! They spat on him and took the reed, and began to beat him on the head. The fourth sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice, crucifixion. You know, crucifixion was made plain and simple, that says pain and simple, I think, in that next one. It says, Crucifixion was a death reserved for slaves and the low life. We don't often think of that. Yeah, it's the lowest of the low. In fact, in their communities, they wouldn't even talk about it. It's like curse words to talk about crucifixion. The word to crucify, soru, was not spoken at all. It was considered profanity. And that shows you they actually found a heel bone to show that it actually happened. They found an actual heel bone to show that crucifixion was a thing. We're going to look today at the trust and sacrifice of going back to what foreshadowed this moment of Christ's death was Abraham. God wanted to plant the seed in the Jewish hearts of what their Messiah was about to do in the future. Abraham had an amazing amount of trust. And what is trust? Trust is assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something, one in which confidence is placed. So we often talk about the bridge. I think that's one of Scott's favorite analogies here. I'm going to have him test this bridge out and see. But would you guys trust that bridge? Maybe not so much. It looks like it's about to collapse. And then you fall to your doom and death below. I'd be like, no thanks. But this next one, I would trust that bridge. When you look at Christ, when you look at the truth, you can trust it. You know it's real. When you look at what the world has to offer, it's a little sketchy. I'm not sure that you'd want to trust that. But many people go in that wrong direction and they fall into the water. Abraham trusted in this way that we see often here in the famous verse in Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, trust in the Lord with all of your heart. Lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will make your path straight. Pretty clear promise if we do that, trust God. I know any time I doubt God, I always go back to that, just in my mind, trust God. A few weeks ago, I had a coworker, another mortgage loan officer, which I am, get let go. I'm like, okay, things have been very slow. It's been a very rough time. Bytonomics may have something to do with that. But things have been really slow, scary slow. So I started to look at like how to get my CDL. And I was seriously thinking about doing that. And I'm thinking, I might not have a job much longer. So I'm like, wait a second, what am I doing Googling this and that? Step back, let's pray about it, right? So I sent out a notice, well, Fawn and a few people close to me, I'd, hey, pray for me, because I need it. The next day, I get the whole angle of book of business. Like, oh, maybe that's an answer to prayer. Then the day after that, the day after that, the day after that, for the next 10 days, I get a new loan. I get a new loan. And it's been months of nothing. Sorry. God answers prayer. But it takes a bold confidence. And this word, batak, not buttock, that's a good transition. Batak means bold confidence. And that's what trust is. It's boldly confidence. You have no doubt that it's going to take care of you. In Genesis 22, 1, let's pick up with Abraham here. It says, now it came about after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, here I am. And he said, take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will tell you. And I'd be like, what are you asking of me, God? You're going to make me take my son whom I love. But the worst part for me would be like, I'm going to have to travel 400 miles to do this? Why couldn't I just do it in my backyard? I always try to find the most efficient way possible. So I probably literally would be saying, God, is that really necessary to go way out of the way? I tend to try to take some shortcuts in life. Paul will tell you that. But he had absolute trust. He's like, God, you know what you're doing, I guess. So he goes ahead. And you know, God's asking for it all here. He's asking for the son whom he loves the most. You know, even Jesus was looking for a way out of the struggle. But here, Abraham's like, okay, God, let's do this. God asks for it all. Are we willing to give it all to God? Like, he was so willing to do that. Are we willing to give it all for our family? Are we willing to give it all for our country? You know, we have a lot of veterans here and some sons and daughters in the military, they're willing to give it all. Now, we're in a spot where our country right now needs good people in the military like we've sent. But this says, I was once willing to give my life for what this country stood for. Now, I give my life to protect my family from what this country has become. There might be a day that it's gone too far and that's about the case. But I'm not going to give my life to protect my family from what this country has become. You know, like, I don't represent a lot of what this country has become. So, Abraham, in verse 3, goes on and rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey and took two of his young men with him and Isaac, his son, and he split wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. He didn't know why he was doing it. I want to know the why in things, you know, especially at work. I want to know why do we do it that way? But that's kind of annoying to your boss when they just ask you to do something. But Abraham had a great attitude here. He's like, okay, God asked for it all from Abraham. You know, our nation has asked for it all from many people in the past. And I think about all the different wars, you know, who died in the most, how many Americans died in, or which war the most Americans died in. Anybody know that one? The Civil War. So, 625,000, that's why we don't want this to happen here. That's why voting is the only thing that separates us from a civil war. Because that's a thing we can do peacefully. If we take away voting, there's no peaceful way to have our people in power. So, that's why it's important for it to be fair, right? The American Civil War, 625,000 deaths. World War II, 405,000 deaths. And that's why World War I, 100,000 deaths. You think about the struggle that these people have seen. You think about the late 1800s, early 1900s, that 100-year period. And you wonder why these people were so frugal and had so much integrity and relied so much on God back then. The Bible from school. Well, they're seeing their own people, their sons and their daughters, their brothers and sisters, dying around them. And then we've had a real good time of peace here in the last 100 years. But why did they join if it was likely that they would die in the Civil War, for example? They were being selfless. They were willing to die for freedom. And they knew freedom took sacrifice. It takes blood. Freedom isn't free at all. It comes with the highest cost, the cost of blood. And then Ronald Reagan says this. Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. This should scare us a little bit. We didn't pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same. Or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. If we are pushed too far back into a corner, you know, just like during World War II, the Germans just almost took over all of Europe before they finally kicked into action. They're like, oh, gosh, gee whiz, we better go ahead and do something because they're going to end up taking over the whole world. We need to stop evil before it starts spreading. But unfortunately, it usually takes something that directly affects you, like 9-11 or something like that to wake you up, unfortunately. I always like this next one. It says hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. That's where we're at right now. Good times create weak men, kind of right there. Weak men create hard times. It's a cycle. And this guy, I like to, there's not many people alive that can remember World War II and World War I, but this guy was. He was interviewed several years ago. His name is Carl Deckel, and I want you to see his take. He's from the Greatest Generation, by the way, and I want you to see his take on where the world stands right now. I don't know. I've lived a good life. I've had a lot of love, happiness, happiness, smiling, telling everybody that everything was beautiful every day. If I went into my church and didn't say everything was beautiful every day because I was sick, and I'm not that way. I mean, I sincerely believe in this old world that everything is beautiful. I mean, if I wake up in the morning and see these plants out here and all those flowers that are in there and the green grass on the ground, that's beautiful. And people don't realize what they have. And then nowadays, I am so upset that the things we did and the things we fought for and the boys that died for it has all gone down the drain. Our country's all to hell in a handbasket. We haven't got the country we had when I was raised. Not at all. Nobody will have the fun I had. Nobody will have the opportunity I had. It's just not the same. That's not what I was. That's not what they died for. I'm so sorry. I'll be all right. It just takes the time to get over it. You know, I just... My wife, my niece, she's sitting here like this, all this going on. I just can't believe it's just not the same. That is what we fought for. John 15, 13 says, Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends. The greatest generation, they laid down many lives for us. We're so far away from that generation, we don't understand that concept of sacrifice. Continuing with Abraham, it says, On the third day, Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance. So he's traveled 454 miles from Heron to Salem, which is like going from here to Pigeon Forge, if you've ever been there, except for on a donkey. I can encourage you guys, take a vacation and try that. Grab a donkey. There's a lot of donkeys up in LaGrange County. I know a lot of Amish guys up there, so grab one. Take yourself a three-day trip. It takes three days, according to the Bible, and then you'll be there. Then you ride the carousel. It took him three days. If God asks me to do something difficult, give me two seconds and I'll talk myself out of it. It's like, I'm from a pretty weak generation. I'll admit that. But this symbolizes, the three days is really important because it symbolizes the three days that Jesus was in the grave. And there's so many symbolizations in this story, but three days Jesus was in the grave and Abraham's mind, Isaac was already dead. He had already surrendered the fact that God asked me to kill my son. He's already dead in my mind. Imagine that trip. Is he thinking about the memories? Is he thinking about this or that? He's already dead in his mind. And also, where did this take place? So he looks up. He sees this hill. What's on that hill now? Well, it's the Dome of the Rock. So inside the Dome of the Rock, they say that that's where Abraham was sacrificed. I think we got that picture, yeah. They say that's where they think that Abraham took Isaac to sacrifice his son. And, you know, that's God's city, so I wouldn't be surprised. But they say even there's a little cutout there where the Ark of the Covenant could have been, so that would have eventually became the Holy of Holies. And eventually, we have this next picture right across, not too far away, with an eye shot where Jesus died. He could look off in the distance as he's dying and see the place where Abraham sacrificed his son. And not a pretty place, that place of the skull. They turned it into a trash dump, in fact. And it was something that people didn't talk about. You know, as people passed by on the road, they would see people being crucified and the lowliest of the low. One day, I don't know if you ever get a chance to look up Ron Wyatt. He was walking by there, and he's an archaeologist. He found so many different awesome things. And he just heard a voice, crystal clear, saying, the Ark of the Covenant's down there. He's looking at this ugly-looking rock face. He's like, what? And they start digging down there, and they see the crosshole plugs where they would put the crosses in these plugs. And he tunneled through. It took him a long, long time. I think it was years of tunneling. Directly under the cross, he finally found a cavern. He's like, oh, that's weird. And he looked up, and there's a crack up there. And he says that he found the Ark of the Covenant. I mean, this guy is pretty credible if you follow him. And on top of the Ark of the Covenant was this dried substance. And that dried substance was coming down through this crosshole plug, and it was blood. So imagine that. Christ died exactly on top of the Ark of the Covenant. The blood dripped down on the top, provided the atonement, the sacrifice. That sounds biblical to me, but take it or leave it. So Genesis 22.5, Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey, and the Latin will go over there, and we will worship and return to you. Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife, so the two of them walked together. So many parallels in this story. The sacrifice to take away sins. Abraham knew how important the sacrifice was to take away sins with Jesus and Isaac. Isaac was Abraham's only son, God the Father's only son. He rode a donkey into Jerusalem. Isaac carried the wood up the mountain. Jesus carried the wood of the cross. The ram got caught in the thorns. Jesus was placed a crown of thorns on his head. Isaac was agreeing to be sacrificed. Jesus was agreeing to be sacrificed. And both took place on Mount Moriah, outside of the city of Jerusalem. And God ended up, in both cases, providing the lamb. One just happened to be Jesus himself. And for Isaac, there was a substitute, fortunately. And Isaac represents us. There's a substitute coming in. You guys know what Jerusalem means, where that word comes from? In the Hebrew, the first part of that word is Jaira. You may have heard of Jehovah Jaira, my provider. So Jaira Salem means the provider of peace. So Jerusalem is the center of the place where peace was provided to the world through the sacrifice of Christ. But also in the future, where ultimately the only situation where we're going to have peace in this world is when Jesus is going to be the prince of peace sitting on David's throne in Jerusalem, which Jerusalem means the provider of peace. So all this pointed to the need for sacrifice. Abraham was familiar with sacrifice. Are we familiar with sacrifice? Sacrifice is being willing to give up the things that mean the most to you. That's where sacrifice comes in. You know, worship doesn't begin until we sacrifice. You know, worship is sacrifice. But it gives us perspective on the heaviness of the sacrifice God made and what Abraham was thinking in his mind. He knew that sin was a heavy burden. It was a great thing. So it must take a great thing to cure it. So he's willing to give his son. But the one thing that makes us realize we need Jesus, the one who sacrifices our depravity, the fact that we're sinners. Malcolm Muggeridge said this, The depravity of man is at once the most empirically verifiable reality, but at the same time, the most intellectually resisted fact. So depravity or our sinful nature, the fact that we are sinners and depraved is so obvious, but also so resistant. And why is it resistant? It points to our need for a rescuer. And people don't want to admit that they need a rescuer. You know, they think they can handle it on their own. We can't handle it on our own. We have to realize that we need a rescuer. There's been a lot of depravity in our world. It manifests itself in physical ways. You know, our depravity can sometimes be mental. You have a bad thought. But the world manifests depravity in different ways. We have Stalin and Hitler and Mao Zedong and Islam. So Stalin, we'll start with him, 62 million people estimated to be dead because of his dictatorship. Hitler, we know him the most well, 21 million dead. And Mao Zedong, 49 million people dead, all because of ideologies, they wanted to mandate their ideology, their anti-God ideology. But what's even more that we don't talk about? Islam, 270 million people dead. And remember, it was invented in 600-some A.D. Over 1,400 years, they estimate, I don't know how they really know that, but 270 million people, nine times the casualty of Stalin and Hitler combined. So ideologies that are anti-God are killers, physical killers, but they also are killers and separators from us, our relationship to God. They take people away from God or scare them out of trusting in God. Such an evil, evil thing. Isaac spoke up here in verse 7 and said to his father Abraham, Father, yes, my son, Abraham replied, the fire and wood are here, Isaac said, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Poor guy that shows his innocence. He is kind of like a lamb at that point. He's a little innocent. Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And the two of them went on together. Then they came to a place which God had told them, and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Now Isaac has to be thinking, wow, that provided sacrifice is me. Did he run? No. Even Isaac trusted in that moment. Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord, it says the angel of the Lord, so this very well could be Jesus himself, there amazingly, called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here I am. He said, do not stretch out your hand against the lad and do nothing to him for now. I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your son, your only son, for me. This was to demonstrate what was to come, but also to show the faith and the rock solid trust of Isaac and Abraham. If not Isaac, who, what was going to be provided for the sacrifice? God always provides just in the nick of time. Verse 13, it says, Abraham looked up and there in the thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. What was the significance of this ram? You know, Jesus is called rams, lambs, but basically the same thing. Jesus is called the lamb of God. He was going to come and take away their sins. We know that lambs were sacrificed and rams were sacrificed in the past to take away sins. Because in Leviticus 16, 21, it says, Aaron the high priest shall place both of his hands upon the head of the life goat and shall confess over it the iniquities and transgressions of the Israelites, whatever their sins, putting them on the head of the goat and it shall be sent off to the wilderness. And then the ram's horn, what do they use that for? They use that to look forward to the second coming of Christ. But the blowing of the horn reminds them of their forgiven sins. The Jews would remember that ram caught in the thicket. They would hear the horn blowing. They called it shofer, the ram's horn. And it also reminded them of the coming of the lamb of God. It was significant during the Feast of Tabernacles. In the seventh month on the first day of the month, you shall observe a sacred occasion. You shall not work at your occupations. You shall observe it as a day of blowing the ram's horn. I don't know, I think that would get boring. I like to play piano for a little bit. I'm going to go on to something else. But they blew this ram's horn all day so you would have the air filled with this horn that reminded them of not only Abraham's sacrifice, not only the coming of the Messiah the first time, but the looking forward to the coming of the one to bring peace on earth the second time. And this ties into Rosh Hashanah during the Feast of Tabernacles. Rosh Hashanah was the time that looks forward to the coming of Christ. It says the best known ritual of Rosh Hashanah is the blowing of the shofar, a musical instrument made from an animal horn. The shofar is blown at various points during Rosh Hashanah prayers with a total of 100 blasts on each day. While the blowing of the shofar is a biblical statue, it is also a symbolic wake-up call, stirring the Jews to mend their ways and repent. Kind of like you hear the tornado sirens every Saturday or whatever day it is. It's like, oh yeah, I need to be a little bit alert. Something may or may not come in the future. I really hate when they do that when it's kind of stormy weather. Because then you're like, is this a test? It's right on noon. But surely a tornado could come at noon. And you just never quite know. But it does get your attention. And that's what this is for. Really, it says, sleepers, wake up from your slumber, is what the call to that was. Examine your ways and repent and remember your Creator. It was a call to repent, a call to remember, and a call to wake up from your sleep. Paul gives us a wake-up call in Ephesians 5-6. He says, let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. So wake up. There's a lot of deception out there. Therefore, do not be partakers with them, for you were formerly in darkness, but now you are our light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light, for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord, and that's the story of our life, trying to figure out how to best please God. And it doesn't always work out for us, because we're fallen creatures. Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them, for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret. But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. For this reason it says, Awake, sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. Now, is he talking about the physical dead? No, he's talking about the spiritually dead, spiritually ineffective, those people that walk out the doors and do absolutely nothing for God. I know I go through many days, and I was like, what did I do for God today? I need to take a step back. I need to wake up. Am I asleep as a Christian? This story of Abraham-Isaac was to provide clarity on this coming Messiah, to wake up Abraham and Isaac and the future generations. Wake up and know that he is coming again someday. God talks about the chauffeur here in 1 Corinthians 15.50. It says, Now I say, this brethren, that the flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all sleep, but we will be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. So that word trumpet comes from that word Southpix, basically a war trumpet that boldly announces God's victory. That's what these rams were doing there announcing a victory that's already occurred. So not only are we remembering the victories in the past where Jesus died on the cross, but the coming victory of where he conquers and sets up his throne. In the Old Testament, trumpets were used to call God's people to war and announce victory. That's a military clarion that proclaimed the Lord, that the Lord inspired and empowered the victory on behalf of his people. In verse 53, For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will put on the imperishable, and this mortal will put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. And then to finish with Abraham. So Abraham called that place, the Lord will provide. Jehovah-Jireh, Jerusalem, the provider of peace, the very name of that city. Why is it so fought over? Because that's Yahweh's city. That's not Muslim's city. That's not any other religion's city. That is God's city where he will reign again someday. And he said to this day, on the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided. And God's preserved that name for thousands of years, starting with this story. This is where Jerusalem was founded, with this story of Abraham-Isaac. And then at my grandma's house, I'd always see this picture in their bathroom of all places. But you walk in there and you see this picture, and it says, I asked Jesus, how much do you love me? You ever ask that? How much do you love me, God? Then he stretched out his hands and said this much. How much do you love? How much do you love your family? How much do you love your God? Are you willing to stretch out your hands and give it all? The sacrifice was not easy. The sacrifice was not easy. The hundreds of thousands of people that have died for our freedom was not easy. Not only for them, but the family members that gave up, that family member. But we know that we have victory. There is no more death. There is no more stinging death because we have the victory and we can conquer through him. And we are thankful for those that have given their life. We are thankful for those that have sacrificed it all for us. Let's turn that into worship and be grateful as we go from this place. Let's go ahead and close in prayer today. Dear God, we do come to you with grateful hearts. We many times forget the sacrifice and the sting of that, and the suffering, and the mental torture that must have been for you to go through that. We thank you so much that you did that. Help us to always remember that of us wanting to serve you better. Help us to serve you better as we go out these doors. In Jesus' name, Amen.