Genesis 22 - Beginning To Surrender

Main Idea: Surrender your life back to the God who provides everything for you.

• You must know God to be able to surrender. (vs. 1-2)

• You must obey God to surrender. (vs. 3-10)

• You’ll be blessed by God when you surrender. (vs. 11-19)

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

We are going to be in Genesis chapter 22. Genesis chapter 22.

This is the 11th message in a series that we've been going chapter by chapter, book by book, through the book of Genesis, specifically Genesis 15 through 22, with the life of a man named Abraham.

And Abraham's life is one that is really centered around the person of God, and though it's Abraham's story, his life, it's mostly an account of what God was doing in and through him.

Specifically, Abraham was called to partner with God, and God's goal in partnering with Abraham was to bring the Messiah into the world through Abraham's family.

That Abraham and his descendants would be a nation of people that had a relationship with God and showed all the other nations of the world what a relationship with God and right relationships with each other were to look like.

However, Abraham failed at this miserably again and again and again. For every time that he operated out of worship of God and love for people, he did something underhanded or terrible two times.

He sold out his wife to foreign leaders, not once, but two times. He tricked multiple national leaders and got incredible riches from them.

He married a second woman, an enslaved immigrant, committing adultery against his wife by marrying her, then allowed his wife to so mistreat the immigrant that she fled into the desert before God sovereignly sent her back with his own promise of

protection and provision. Abraham was a deeply flawed, imperfect person, but God still loved him. And the same is true for you and I today.

In fact, as we look at the rest of scripture, Abraham would be called the friend of God, which as we've been walking through, I don't know if I said like, this person is my friend, that person is my friend.

I don't know that from how Abraham acted that I would claim him as one of my friends. But the truth is this, God's relationship with you, his desire for friendship with you is not based on your holiness, your righteousness before him.

Instead, it's based on God's promise. It's based on his perfection and his holiness.

The access that we have to God is through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross that 2000 years ago, he died in our place, taking all of our sin and all of our shame on himself. And he gives us the opportunity to be reconciled to God.

Not on a trial basis, not on if you can perform enough, but on a finished basis. Even as Jesus is one of his last cries on the cross, it is finished. Even as we look at Abraham's life, he ate with Abraham.

We looked at that back in Genesis 18, that he shared a meal with Abraham, that he was one that was consistently talking with Abraham, even when, as in the end of Genesis 18, or in Genesis 16 with the Covenant of Circumcision, even though Abraham

sometimes like argues with God, that he says, listen, you wouldn't do this action, you're too perfect, you're too holy, to judge the righteous and the wicked alike. Even though sometimes he got into arguments with God, still God was his friend.

He talked with him, he ate meals with him. Even as we saw last week, Abraham praised to God, and there is this relationship that exists there.

But there's still the issue of Abraham's heart, that though at times he has worshiped the Lord, he has set up alters where he will praise and worship God, and give God, if you will, gifts, offerings from what God has presented him.

Much of Abraham's journey to this point has been walking a wicked path, a path that has not been according to the will of God.

Last week, we saw that God asked Abraham to surrender his first son, Ishmael, and he and his mother Hagar left to find God's new purpose for them. That even though Abraham deeply loved Ishmael, God said, I've got a different plan for him.

I'm going to take care of him and his mother. I'm going to make him a great nation. I'm going to protect and bless him, even as I'm going to bless your other son, Isaac.

And this week, God will ask Abraham to surrender the son of God's promise, Isaac. It's the title of today's message is Beginning to Surrender. Surrender is normally viewed as a bad thing.

Thoughts come up of the Battle of Yorktown, of compromise, of loss. You only surrender when you have no chance of winning or when the cost will be far too high to justify continuing the fight.

However, what we're going to talk about today is the kind of surrender that can be the best choice that you ever make. A surrender, a giving up to the God who always outgives us. You see, there's something incredible about the God of the Bible.

Though he often calls on us to give of ourselves, to give of our time, our emotions, our finances, our faith and more, we can never out give our Father. In fact, everything that we have is already a gift for him.

So any surrender of anything that he's given us is simply returning to him what he's already given to us. Today, we're going to learn this truth that we should surrender our life back to the God who provides everything for us.

Surrender your life back to the God who provides everything. And this morning, we're going to see three truths about surrender from the life of Abraham. If you will join me in prayer as we ask God to speak to us this morning.

Dear Lord, thank you for today. God thank you that in our weakness, in our temptations, you are always present. Lord, we ask today that you would help us to see that surrendering to you is not just the smartest decision, but it is the best decision.

Lord, for our walk with you, Lord, for the true happiness, for the life that you have called us to, it comes through recognizing you have given it all. And Lord, whatever you ask back, it is for a good, sovereign purpose.

And so Lord, may we trust you, because Lord, you have always been faithful to us, and so we can believe you. We love you, God, and we pray all of this in the name of Jesus, amen.

The first truth we're gonna see about surrender this morning is that you must know God to be able to surrender. You must know God to be able to surrender.

Even as I talk about surrendering some things back to God, if you've not been around church for long, you might think, okay, that sounds really scary. What kind of stuff am I gonna have to give back to God?

I think we can see a few things here from verses one and two of the passage.

After these things, after all of the difficulties with the local king there in Jerar, king of Bimelech, after all of the difficulties with Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, after all of the hardships of giving away Sarah again and God

sovereignly returning her back to Abraham, after the hardships with Hagar and with Ishmael, after all of those things, it says God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and here I am, he answered. This verse in particular is a very important hinge

point. If you don't see this phrase right here, God tested Abraham. Your view and your opinion of the rest of the passage is going to be massively discolored. This is a test.

This is, if you will, Abraham's final exam that all throughout from chapter 12 on, now it's where we are at 22, 10 chapters of scripture, Abraham's been learning things about God.

He's been learning about what a relationship with God is supposed to look like, the terms of the relationship, if you will. And he has failed that relationship many times.

If you will, the pop quiz is, he has not done particularly well on, but now it's time for this final exam. And there's a test that he must go through.

Verse number two, Take your son, he said, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.

Now, I want to acknowledge number one, if this makes you uncomfortable, it should. The reason it should make you uncomfortable is this is never, again, how God speaks to anyone. There is no other portion in Scripture in which this is the test.

This is an incredibly unique moment in God's revelation where he asks for a human sacrifice. Here, a burnt offering. This is a going up offering.

This was something that would, in one part, be an offering that the Israelites would offer a couple hundred years later for sin, for atonement.

It would also be something that you give just in consecration and worship to the Lord, that you would say, God has been so good to me. He has given me.

Normally, it would be like an ox or a bull or in some instances, a goat or a sheep you would offer as a burnt offering. And it would be of total consecration to God to say, God, this is yours.

And here in this moment, though human sacrifice was very common in the ancient Near East and the Babylonians and the Egyptians and the Canaanites, they all practiced this actually for about a thousand years or more after this.

The Israelites were specifically prohibited from ever sacrificing a human. And so here there's something weird that's going on. And any discomfort you feel is intended by the Lord, that you would say, this isn't normally in the character of God.

He doesn't ask for this from his people. He asks for obedience and to treat others well and with kindness, even as he has treated us. But now in this moment, Isaac is being requested as an offering.

And Abraham, when he came to this, he had two things that he knew about God that influenced what he thought about this. Because he had known God, now this would have been possibly about 55 years or so that he had been walking with the Lord.

This would take place about 25 to 30 years after Isaac was born. So I also want to get that out of the way. This is not the story of some little kid like being taken on the worst road trip ever by his dad.

Isaac is a man, a grown man, with a very, very old father at about 125, 130 years old. And here, Abraham knew two things. Number one, God keeps his promises.

Through every time that he gave up Sarah, and the Egyptian pharaoh could have kept her, Abimelech king of Gerar, he could have kept her, God returned her.

In the times when Abraham went into battle to try and rescue Lot, he could have been killed, but God kept him alive. Sarah, Abraham's wife, that was very well along in years, she could have never been able to have children, but God kept his promise.

So Abraham knew one thing about God, he keeps his promises. And number two, God had promised descendants through Isaac. Therefore, Abraham knew this, and this is what we would read in Hebrews 11.

God would either renege on his request, that he would say, no, I don't actually want you to sacrifice Isaac, or God will raise Isaac from the dead, because God was so insistent, especially in the relationship with Ishmael, that Abraham would have his

lineage, that the Messiah would come through the line of Isaac. And so, if God was so insistent on that promise, then it meant that whatever God was testing Abraham with, he knew the end result would be Isaac alive and having a family.

Hebrews 11, and I can't remember the exact verse off hand, would say this, By faith Abraham offered up Isaac, and he that had received the promise offered up his only son. He says, accounting that God was able to raise him up even from the dead.

And actually, as the writer of Hebrews talks about it, he says, and it was kind of like he raised him from the dead for reasons that we'll see much later on in the passage. So number one, you must know God in order to be able to surrender to him.

If you don't know who God is, you will never give your life to him.

If you don't realize the love that he has for you, the work that he accomplished in the person of Jesus Christ on the cross and in rising from the dead, if you don't understand that God is love, if you don't understand that God is light and in him,

there is no darkness at all, you will never surrender to him. Today, do you know the God of the Bible?

Abraham, in this chapter, he surrendered his hopes for a future and a legacy based on the fact that he knew who God was and he knew how God could work. The God who resurrected Sarah's dead womb could resurrect Isaac's body.

For you today, do you know the story of Jesus? Do you know his identity? That 2,000 years ago, he came, and he was born of a virgin, that he was completely sinless in everything that he said and did.

He never did anything that went against God's word or character. Every thought that he ever had, every word that he ever said, every action that he ever took was perfectly in line with God's holiness.

But he was taken and he was crucified and beaten and buried.

And scripture says that he did it, taking our sins on himself so that he could give us his righteousness, so that the punishment that we deserved for our sin, separation from God forever, that Jesus would take the punishment for our sins so that we

could be reconciled to God. And then three days after he was buried, he rose again from the dead as we're going to celebrate together in just a couple of weeks on Easter Sunday.

And as he rose from the dead triumphant, now he freely offers salvation to all of us. That whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And God doesn't care where you've been.

He doesn't care what struggles you have gone through. He doesn't care how much you have harmed others. He loves you.

He wants to forgive you. And he wants to make you new by his Holy Spirit, his own presence living in you. That is the God that we are called to surrender to.

That we give up, if you will, our own self-direction, and instead we choose to walk his way. We give up our own definitions of right and wrong, and we rely instead on his word to tell us what we ought to do.

We abandon, if you will, our own life purpose and mission, and we ask him, God, what is it that you would have for me to do? For those of you that do know Christ as Savior today, will you take time this week to know the God of the Bible?

Will you spend time in his word? Will you spend time in small groups together with other believers hearing from the word of God? Will you be in church even this Sunday?

You guys are already doing great. You're already doing some of this. I want to encourage you, keep on.

Do you know the God of the Bible? Because you must know God to be able to surrender. Then we see in verses 3-10, you must obey God in order to surrender.

You see, Abraham didn't just trust that God was able to resurrect Isaac.

He didn't just trust that God would renege on the request that, oh no, I know God and he's faithful and he's loving and he's kind and he's never asked me to do anything evil or unkind or mean to any person. And so I'm going to trust.

Well, he didn't just trust. He also obeyed. Verse number three, so Abraham got up early in the morning, saddled his donkey and took with him two of his young men and his son Isaac.

He split wood for a burnt offering and set out to go to the place God had told him about. What I find so interesting here at the very beginning of verse number three, it says he got up early in the morning.

Now, I've got a toddler, so every morning I wake up early in the morning. But here, that was not the case. I don't know if I would be so quick to begin that journey to offer up my son.

But here, Abraham, he trusts the Lord. So he obeys him and he obeys immediately. He gets up early in the morning, he saddles his donkey and he takes with him two young men and his son Isaac.

Split wood for a burnt offering. He prepared to obey God, even though he didn't know how everything would play out. He says, and he set out to go to the place God had told him about.

Verse number four, on the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. Here, this will kind of be a reoccurring motif throughout the rest of scripture.

This on the third day, obviously, we know as Christians, like Jesus rose on the third day. That's a real, real big part of our faith, one of the biggest.

But here, Abraham, on this third day comes this day of testing, this day of revealing what God was going to do. And he sees this place. And then in verse five, Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey.

The boy and I will go over there to worship. Then we'll come back to you. Notice there, he doesn't say, the boy and I will go over there to sacrifice.

Though he certainly could have could have said that. He doesn't say to make an offering. He says to worship.

Our surrender, our telling God, you can have what you have given me back. God, you've given me this relationship, and God, I'll give it back to you. You do what you want with it.

God, you gave me this possession for a time, and now I no longer have that car. I no longer have that boat. God, I trust that you have good plans for what you are receiving back from me.

There, they go to worship, and then he says, then we'll come back to you. Abraham's assumption was God is going to act. Again, because he knows God, he's able to go and obey God.

And he doesn't view what he's about to do as drudgery. He doesn't view it as something that, I guess I have to do this. It's something he's eager to do because it worships and obeys God.

Are you eager to worship God? If it involves taking some of your time, if it involves taking some of the gifts and abilities that God has given to you, are you willing to worship him with what he has given?

Verse number six, Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac. In his hand, he took the fire and the knife, and the two of them walked on together.

Frankly, as Christians, they should also remind us of the son of the father that had the wood laid on his back, that he bore up that road from Jerusalem to Calvary 2,000 years ago.

This whole story is one of the big ways that the New Testament talks about Jesus' giving up of his life for us, about his surrender of his life for you and I to be reconciled to God. So here the wood is laid on Isaac, they go up together.

Then Isaac spoke to his father Abraham and said, My father? And he, and he replied, Here I am, my son. Isaac said, The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

I think of our Lord on the cross, that when he cried out, My God, My God, instead of hearing, Here I am, my son, Jesus echoed the words of the psalmist, Why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from me?

And Christ cried out for his father, knowing from all eternity past, scripture tells us Jesus was the lamb of God, slain for the sins of the world before the foundation of the world. This was always the plan of the Trinity.

If the father planned it, the son performed it, and the spirit applies it to those that believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior. And here, though Isaac gets to hear the voice of the father, Jesus on the cross heard nothing.

And the sky went dark, and the earth shook so that you and I would never be forsaken. That is Hebrews 13 says, be content with what you have, for he has said, I will never leave you or forsake you.

And here, Isaac says, the fire and the water here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? For you and I today, we might wonder, how are we going to be right with God? How are we going to experience forgiveness?

How can I reconcile with anyone else? And the answer is, where is the lamb? Who provides our salvation?

Who provides that renewed walk? Who gives us our purpose and our reason to live? And Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.

Then the two of them walked on together. In your life today, every person that comes into the world has a need for the forgiveness of God. We are not born into right relationship with God.

And if you have any doubt on that, I would invite you to come over to the nursery on a Sunday morning and see my toddlers, see other kids around, and you will very quickly see we are not born doing right by God and by others.

Instead, we are all born alienated from our father. But that's why Jesus came, because he is not willing that anyone would perish, that anyone would experience separation from God, but that everyone would come to repentance.

And so God provided Jesus that he would be the sacrifice, that Jesus would take the abandonment, Jesus would take the punishment, and we would receive a heavenly father, that we would have forgiveness of sins, and we would have an eternal home with

him forever. Here Abraham has confidence in the promise of God, and he continues to obey even when I am certain that this question broke the heart of Abraham, that he didn't know what God was going to do.

Verse number nine, when they arrived at the place that God had told him about, Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood. He bound his son Isaac and placed him on the altar on top of the wood.

Especially around the time of Christ, the descendants of Abraham and Isaac they would tell the story in this particular way, that Isaac requested his hands and feet to be bound by his father because he said, because God has told you to do this, I

don't want to climb off the altar. And as I think about Jesus, that he with nails in his hands and in his feet, as the song says, he could have called ten thousand angels to come and rescue him.

It's what he told Peter in the Garden, as Peter tries to, you know, by violence save Jesus. And Jesus says, don't you know that I can call on my father and a legion of angels will come and rescue me? He says, but this is what needs to happen.

I wonder what are we willing to surrender to the Lord? I promise you this, a lot of times I have to caveat my promises. Because this time I can promise 100%.

You will never ever ever be asked to do a human sacrifice. And I can also promise you, you're never going to be asked to burn anything as a Christian. That's not the way that God has us doing things anymore.

What are you willing to give up to the Lord? It's not going to be the same for every person.

I'm not saying, hey, God wants any of you that have a car that's newer than 2005, sell it, give the money to the poor, give the money to the church, and you have to drive pre 2005 cars. It's not what God has.

It might be some of you that God is asking for treasure, for finances from you, that Matthew 5 and 6 tell us that where our treasure is, there our heart will be also. For some of you, that's not what God is asking.

For some of you, God is saying, I want you to be involved in the work of the ministry, that you would be loving and serving others, you would be praying for others, you would meet practical needs for someone else.

For some of you, God is calling on you to surrender some pride in your life, to surrender some sin that you are holding on to in defiance of the Lord.

Whatever God has asked you to surrender, I promise you, what he has surrendered for you is so much more. Verse number 10, Then Abraham reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son. You must obey God to surrender.

Obedience to God is rarely easy, but it is always right. It's rarely easy. Abraham had to get up early in the morning.

He had to split some wood at like 125, 130 years old. I know none of you in the room right now are that old, and some of you might say, I don't know if I'm like splitting wood at my age and taking a trip. But here's what Abraham was doing.

And he walks for three days. I know for some of you, walking 30 minutes might be a little bit of a stretch. And here Abraham walks 30 days, and then he ascends this mountain, the Mount Moriah.

I also want you to know that obedience to God means nothing without faith in God. Even as Abraham told the two men that he left at the foot of the mountain, he said, we will come back. He told Isaac, God himself will see to the lamb.

He will provide the lamb. Can I encourage you today, don't do religious things without genuinely believing in God's ability to work? Hebrews chapter 11, verse number six says, without faith, it is impossible to please him.

If you don't believe that God is going to use some specific action, don't just go through it for the motions. Do it because you genuinely believe that God is able to work in and through you.

Obedience means stepping out into unknown and fearful possibilities. That Abraham had to prepare for a burnt offering.

He has, even as we just read in the previous verse, this knife that Isaac is bound, and there were certainly fearful and unknown things that he was interacting with.

But if we're going to surrender to God, it demands our obedience even when that obedience is uncomfortable. And obedience means following God obeying leaders into his will.

And you can look at Isaac's willingness to go along with what his 125, 130 year old father was doing. And this is what Jesus exemplified for us, that he went willingly to the cross because of the plan of God.

And here, as Isaac is following Abraham, so we too are called to follow faithfully. Will you obey God and choose to share your faith over the next couple of weeks? The call of Jesus is to go and make disciples of all nations.

Everywhere you can find people, help them get to know Jesus, to experience salvation and to begin to walk with him. Will you step out into some of that unknown and some of that fearful territory in order to tell others about Jesus?

Frankly, it's a great time of year for it. You can even just invite someone to our Easter service. It's on April 20th, it's on 420, and no jokes about that.

But we've got Easter that's coming up and you can be inviting people to do that. And that might be a little scary for you, but following in obedience to God is always worth it.

For some of you, God wants you to take a step into unknown possibilities and serve, even in the children's ministry.

I want you to know, I don't even have like anyone specific in mind as I'm saying this, felt the Lord lay it on my heart earlier this week.

Some of you, you've grown up in church, you know all the Bible stories, and you have been sitting for 10 or 20 or 50 years now.

And God might be telling you, it's time to get to work, it's time to pass on the baton to the next generation, that you would help future generations know about Jesus. I want to challenge you to step out in faith.

And certainly in all of this, Jesus is our perfect example of obedient surrender, that the one that deserved it all served everyone.

Even as he would say, the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve others, and to give his life as a ransom for many. And lastly today, you will be blessed by God when you surrender. You'll be blessed by God when you surrender.

Verse number 11, Abraham's got the knife, but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham, he replied, here I am.

I think especially those of us that are parents, we all like breathing a giant sigh of relief in that moment, and I'm going, oh, okay, thank you, Lord. I really did not want to do that. Like, I love you, I want to obey you.

Then God said, do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now, I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your only son from me.

All along the way, Abraham's been giving up everything else that God has given when God hasn't asked him to give those things up. He was like, hey, you know, Pharaoh, here is Sarah. And God didn't tell him to do that.

Later along the way, it was, oh, hey, God, you know, here's a lot that I'm going to send away. And God didn't tell him to do that. And he goes, okay, well, here's Hagar and Ishmael.

And Sarah, you just treat them however you want. And they go away. And God didn't tell him to do that.

All along the way, Abraham's been surrendering, but he's not been surrendering to God. And now in this moment when God puts him to the test to say, listen, do you love what I've given you in Isaac?

Do you love what I've given to you more than you love me? Which do you love more, the gifts that God provides or God himself? And here, when given the choice, Abraham says, no, God, I choose you.

I don't know how it will work because I know you. I know your promises. I know you're faithful.

But God, I choose you over the gifts and my hope for a future. My hope for future generations to come, I place in your hands.

For you today, do you value what God has given you, the places that he's placed you, the people around you, do you value them more or do you value your relationship with God?

If you will, what does it take for you to start rejecting God's will and start listening to something else? Do you have something that you go, oh, well, I know God says this, but I really like this.

What is it in your life that perhaps God might be telling you to surrender, to give back? Verse number 13, Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in the thicket by its horns.

So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son. Goes back to what Abraham said earlier, God himself will provide the lamb. And I love that in this story, obviously, God is there and we know that Jesus is God.

We know that you have Abraham there. And just as God the Father gave up God the Son for us, so Abraham here is offering Isaac and Jesus is Isaac. He's the one that went willingly, the one who was to be offered for the sins of the world.

And then here, though Isaac is spared and Isaac is safe, Jesus was also the ram, the one that was offered in place of here, in place of Abraham's son.

But 1st John 3.1 tells us, behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us, that we should be called the children of God. That God gave up his son, so that we could become sons and daughters of God.

In John chapter 1, where we were last year in our sermon series, we read that to those that believe him, believe Jesus, he gave the right to become children of God, to become sons of God, even to those that believe on his name.

What a wonderful thing it is, that you and I do not have to die for our sins. We do not have to make atonement. Instead, Jesus paid it all.

Verse number 14, In Abraham, name that place, the Lord will provide. So today it is said, it will be provided on the Lord's mountain. Here the Lord will provide, perhaps the most literal rendering of it would be, God will see to it.

This would be the kind of somewhat famous song that you might hear on the radio and might have heard online. The song Jaira, this would be kind of where that phrase is taken from the Lord will provide, Jehovah Jaira.

As an aside, maybe next time that you're thinking about, yeah, God is my provider. And you're singing through Jaira.

Just remember, God's provision means that there was something that was lacking, that there was some desperate need that God himself had to provide for. So God's provision doesn't always mean my 401k, you are enough.

It often means there is going to be needs and holes in your life that the Lord himself will meet in his time and in his way.

And you might have that moment where you are just like up right against the end and you've got the knife going before God goes, hey, I'm sending a check. Hey, I'm sending a friend. Hey, I'm filling this need in this way.

God's provision means that we can trust him in our difficult circumstances. And so it is true, Jaira, you are enough. And here this phrasing, it will be provided on the Lord's mountain.

Several centuries later, Mount Moriah would be the place where the Temple Mount would be placed. And where God's people would come to offer all of the sacrifices mentioned in Leviticus.

And every time they would go there, they would remember the story of Abraham and Isaac, that God will provide for their needs.

And there might be a time where they were nervous about their crops, nervous about their harvests and bringing their tithes to the Lord. But God said, listen, just like I provided for Abraham, I'm going to provide for you.

Do you trust today in God's ability to provide? Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven. I will indeed bless you and make your offspring as numerous as the stars of the sky and the sand on the seashore.

Your offspring will possess the city gates of their enemies. And all the nations of the earth will be blessed by your offspring because you have obeyed my command.

God reiterates all of his promises to Abraham, and he says, what you were counting on, my faithfulness? Yeah, I'm still faithful. I'm still going to go through on everything that I told you.

Verse 19, Abraham went back to his young men and they got up and went together to Beersheba, that well of the seven, and Abraham settled in Beersheba. You'll be blessed by God when you surrender.

When you surrender today to the Lord, you will get the blessing of hearing God's voice, his Holy Spirit.

When you surrender to God, when you obey him and listen to him, you get the blessing of knowing that you have pleased your Father, that you're headed towards well done, you good and faithful servant, that there is that crown of righteousness that

awaits you and all those that love the Lord's appearing. You get the blessing of seeing God provide for what you need, even as Philippians 4 and verse 19 tells us that my God will supply all your need according to his riches and glory by Christ

Jesus. When you surrender and obey and listen to God, you get to experience God's promises coming true repeatedly in your life.

And certainly for those that have turned to Christ and asked for his salvation, it's the greatest blessing of all, that we are reconciled to God forever, that our relationship with God isn't based on our ups and downs, but is based on the finished

work of Jesus. I want to ask you today, if you don't know Christ as Savior, if you've never repented from your sin and turned to him in faith, will you choose today to surrender, to believe that what Jesus did is enough for you to be reconciled to

God, that the punishment that he paid, that's the punishment paid in full. And there is no more wrath left for you from the Father. Instead, Jesus, the Ram, was the perfect offering that was required.

And so now, if you repent from your sin and turn to Jesus, turn from your own direction and embracing your way, and you turn to Christ, that you can experience forgiveness and life forever. Today, will you surrender?

Will you surrender your life back to the God who provides everything for you? You got to know God in order to surrender. Maybe that might be the next step that you're taking today, that you might want to know a little bit more about this Jesus.

If you're here today and you do not know Jesus as Savior, I would love to talk with you either in just a moment when the gals are singing through our final song for the morning, or anytime this week, I'd love to set up an appointment with you and

talk about what it means to know Jesus as your Savior, to experience that forgiveness from God. Perhaps you might be one that you know God, but you haven't really been obeying Him in surrender.

Would you choose to, even if it's hard, even if it's difficult, surrender whatever it is that God is asking for you, and begin to obey and take those steps.

And then for everyone today, know that whatever you surrender to God, you will be blessed by Him, even as He blessed Abraham, again, reiterating all of his promises, and what a joy it is to walk and to stand on the promises of God.