Here I Am | Dr. Joel Gregory

0:15 I want to thank you, Pastor Tim, for the invitation to be back here yet still once again at Times Square. This is an esteemed gift and grace to meet with you this Tuesday evening. And I bring you greetings from your brothers and sisters in Christ down in the state of Texas and at Baylor University and other friends. Pastor Tim blessed us by coming to Waco not long ago and making an enormous impact in the message that he brought. And I join with you in solidarity in these days of fasting and prayer. And Pastor Tim, the Lord spoke to me today to literally join with you, even though I'll be back down there. I want to stand in solidarity with you beginning Sunday evening in fasting and prayer with you and for you.

1:18 Would you open the Word of God or pay attention to the screen to the first book of Scripture, Genesis 22. If I were to write something over this message, I would call it simply, Here I Am. Genesis 22 presents us with what must be, for those who've never heard it, the most astonishing passage in Holy Scripture. Our Jewish friends have a name for this passage. They call it the Akeda, which means the binding. And you'll see what that means as I read into your hearing Holy Scripture. Genesis 22. After these things, God tested Abraham.

2:18 He said to him, Abraham, and he said, here I am. He said, take your son, your only son, Arzach, whom you love. Go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I shall show you. So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac. he cut the wood for the burnt offering, set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place away.

3:13 Then Abraham said to his young men, Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I will go over there. We will worship, and then we will come back to you. Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the night. So the two of them walked together.

3:37 Isaac said to his father Abraham, Father, and he said, Here I am, son. He said, The fire and the wood are here, but where's the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So the two of them walked on together. when they came to the place that God has shown him Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order he bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son but the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham.

4:33 And he said, here I am. He said, do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God. Since you've not withheld your son, your only son from me. And Abraham looked up and saw a ram, caught in a thicket by a horn. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

5:07 So Abraham called that place, The Lord will provide. As it is said to this day, on the mount of the Lord it shall be provided. Please pray with me. Eternal God, I pray that by the power of your spirit, these words about an event long ago and far away might slip the bonds of paper. and anointed by your power, we too might say tonight when you call us by name, here I am. I pray you'd free us from the distractions of this day and by your spirit enable us to focus on this word. In Jesus' name, amen.

6:01 Here I am. Guidepost Magazine is a popular Christian devotional magazine. A while back, Guidepost asked its thousands of readers, has God ever spoken to you? Ann Logan of St. Louis was one of hundreds who responded. She said, yes, I was in bed, wracked by pain in my back. and God said to me, I will take care of you.

6:37 Janice Gedded of Comstock, Michigan did not believe that God spoke to individuals today until she was sound asleep when it was time to pick her daughter up from school. And God spoke to her, waking her up to get her daughter. As if that were not enough, Then, when she prayed in church that her mother would be baptized, God spoke to her and said, it is already done. And three months later, her mother was baptized. And then, when she was in the hospital with back pain herself, terrifically searing, the Lord Jesus said to her, my back hurt even more than that. Now she believes that God speaks.

7:32 Ken Taylor translated the Living Bible. He did that because on a day when he was reading the King James Version, God told him, write something in modern English. And he did it. MLK was in a tiny home in Alabama in 1956. when terrorists outside were threatening to bomb the home. He was in his kitchen in the middle of the night, and the Lord said, I will be with you always.

8:10 And in that moment, the American Civil Rights Movement was won. What do you think when someone says, God speaks personally to you today? Now, there are some people among us, even in churches, who react to that about the way they would react to someone who said, I saw a UFO. Oh, really? And they stand back with their mouth open.

8:42 And let me say this, I've been in situations where I did wonder if God was speaking. Pastor Tim, when I was in seminary, there was a lunch bunch that would pile into a car at noon, and we would go eat at a fast food place and there was a very pious fellow in the back seat who always wanted to pray about where to go. Oh Lord, McDonald's, Whataburger, Arby's. Now quite frankly, I thought the cheese had fallen off his cracker. That's a southern expression. I don't know. I didn't know if the elevator went to the top, but that set aside. Does God speak? You say, of course, he spoke to Moses. Perhaps more than anyone else in Hebrew history, he spoke books to Moses.

9:40 He obviously spoke to Abraham. But are we to understand that those were rare exceptions back then, but God doesn't do that anymore. Dallas Willard, the late deeper life advocate who taught at the University of Southern California and wrote a book incidentally called Hearing God, said if you had been back there in the days of Abraham, he would have spoken to you the same way that he spoke to Abraham. And if Abraham were here today, he'd speak the same way. He speaks to you. God does speak to individuals. Jesus, Jesus said, my sheep hear my voice and I call them by what?

10:40 Name. This evening, I want us to dwell for a few moments at that point in this famous passage. Now, there's many angles of vision on this passage. Usually we talk about it from Abraham's angle of vision. Sometimes you can talk about this from Sarah's angle of vision. Incidentally, Isaac was her son too. And yet in this passage, she says nothing. In fact, she never says another word. Or we could speak about this from Isaac's viewpoint. The rabbis said he could have been anywhere from 16 to 30 years old. What was it like as he discovered on that mountain when he was being bound what was about to happen? Or we could talk about it from the viewpoint of those two servants who were left behind. They're anonymous, incognito servants. What was it like to see Father Abraham disappear and have to wait and wonder what was going to happen?

11:38 I guess we could preach about it from the viewpoint of the ram. Really? He was just out there minding his own business. And then like there was a GPS in his head. He wound up caught in a thicket and became the most famous ram in history.

11:59 But tonight, I want to talk about it from a different angle of vision. In this passage, three times, Abraham says, Here I... I am. And I want to hand you this, if I could put it in a single sentence. And that is when you say to God, calling your name, Here I am. It can change everything. Let me take this apart for you.

12:33 When you say to God, Here I am, you have no idea how that may change the future. Let me put this in the context of Genesis. Abraham has just had two events that traumatized him. The prequel to this was what happened with Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Ishmael. If you know the story, very frankly, when Sarah doubted she could conceive even though God had promised it, she gave to Abe her young handmaid, Hagar. He slept with Hagar. She had Ishmael. But then God came through with his promise and a 90-year-old Sarah gave birth to Isaac. You don't have to be a psychologist to understand then there might be trouble in the tent.

13:30 It was Hagar and Ishmael. Sarah and Isaac, and remember Sarah said, get him out of here. That was a trauma. That was Abraham's son sent out to the wilderness. And then on top of that, he got involved in a fight over water rights. You can read about it. In that ancient desert world, water was everything. And he had to negotiate the use of an oasis. And I'm sure Abe was back in his tent in Beersheba, wanting to just breathe hard, exhale and rest. When God called his name. in the midst of those difficult times. You know, I wish God always spoke to me when God was in his heaven and all was right with the world, to quote Robert Brown. Quote Julian of Norwich, the first woman to write Christian devotionals, all is well, everything is well, all matter of things is well, but sometimes God speaks not in the easiest time, but in the midst of a hard time.

14:33 And here he says, Abram and Abram says for the first time here I am and then God tells him this incredible thing it's actually a quartet of words to identify his son I want you to take your son now your only son whom you love Isaac I expect every word of that was like a stab in his heart. But then God told him what nobody expected. I want you to take him. And the Hebrew word ola means one thing. I want you to slit his throat and burn him on an altar. Can you imagine the shock of that statement to Abraham?

15:35 the shock of that statement for those who read this for the first time in fact it's so troubled even the ancient rabbis that god would command abraham to break the sixth commandment before the sixth commandment had even been given murder your own son. And the rabbi said, maybe Abraham misunderstood. Maybe he wanted him to take Isaac up to a mountain like Mother Hannah brought Samuel to Eli and dedicate him. But no, no, that word always means in the Old Testament a burnt offering.

16:18 Do you ever wonder how Abraham recognized the voice of God or how do you recognize it? because he'd heard it before. When his father Terah left Ur, which was in what is today Iraq, the family heard the word of God, marched out to nowhere when Abraham's brother Haran died. Then his father at 205 years of age died. And Abraham kept hearing that word of God. And now that word came to him in the strangest, contradictory way. Here's the thing about it. We know this story, but Abraham didn't know the story. It unfolded to him one verse at a time before there were even any verses.

17:14 Abraham didn't have the example of an Abraham. Remember those people who did something first, and then you can't remember who did it second? If I asked who was the first person on the moon, you'd say Neil Armstrong. Probably nobody can say number two. If I asked who was the first African American to play Major League Baseball, many could say, why, you know who that was, April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson. You'd have to be a real baseball fan to say number two. same way with Abraham we're talking about him because nobody had been asked to do something like this before Abraham didn't have the example of an Abraham Abraham wasn't doing this thing oh well four thousand years from now Joel will be talking about me at Times Square Church no Abraham Abraham was terrified.

18:14 Perhaps the best book about this is by a Danish Christian philosopher, Saren Kierkegaard. The whole book is on this chapter. It's called Fear and Trembling. You see, Abraham was a man with a promise and a problem. The promise was, I'm going to give you a son when you're 100 years old and your descendants will be more numerous than the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore. And now, against that promise, God gives him a problem. You take that son, slit his throat, and burn him after you've done it. Should have come close to me. If you walk with the Lord Jesus Christ faithfully today, you're going to also live between promise and problem. and believe God knows how to do it.

19:11 Can I say that again? you're going to say, here is God's promise. Maybe you were called into ministry and he calls you into ministry and you're ready to go out and conquer the world for Christ. And then you wind up in a place that's a problem. To dwell above with the saints in love, that'll be glory. To dwell below with some of the saints, I know that's a different story. promise and problem you fall in love you get married you take holy vows and then you find out he's not mr. right he's only mr. half right God made a promise, but you've got a promise.

20:06 You go to work, you've prayed about it. Oh, Lord, give me a job. You get the job you knew you wanted. It's going to be heaven on earth. And then about the second Monday morning, there's a promise. What it means when you say, here I am, is to be well. Look, if you looked at the bottom of Abraham's sandals, if there was anything engraved on them like forensic files, you know that show? One step said promise. Another said problem. Because he said, here I am. and you know that's how it was with the first followers of Jesus did you ever think about blank checks you know when you give somebody a blank check you sign it and what you hand it over to them and they fill it in the fancy French word for it is carte blanche anybody that word carte blanche means blank paper it was all the way back in history Charles II, when he was the king of England and was deposed by Oliver Cromwell, needed the other nobles to help him, and he gave them a carte blanche, a piece of paper with his name, King Charles II, help me and you fill this in any way you want to.

21:33 The French aristocrats used to do that with their mistresses. They'd write their name and say, here, take this down to Neiman's, get anything you want to. It really wasn't a Neiman's, but anyway, they said that. It means to sign something and let someone else fill it in. That's exactly what happened between verse 1 and verse 2. Here I am, carte blanche, and then God filled it in. Do you know that's what it is to follow Jesus? He walked by Peter, Andrew, James, and John Fisheries Incorporated.

22:11 And he said, drop it all and follow me. And they gave him a carte blanche. He walked by Matthew at the Roman Internal Revenue Service and said, follow me, and Matthew gave him a carte blanche. You see, Matthew didn't think, ooh, if I do this, I'll get a gospel named after me. No, no, no. He gave him a blank check. When you respond to here I am, you're giving him that blank check. but that's not all look at the second here I am sometimes when you say here I am you have to explain to other people what God is doing in your life Everything slows down in this passage.

23:08 If you look at it just as a literary thing, the narrative slows down. Abraham doesn't want to do this. You can read it. You see, he was a wealthy patriarch, a desert sheik. Genesis said he had 318 people on his household staff. He didn't cut his own wood. He didn't saddle his own donkey. But this morning, he gets up and cuts the wood, slows down the narrative. he saddles the donkey he puts the fire in a portable fire pot the narrative slows down and the reason it does is what happened a few days later three days on the way when Isaac who could have been anywhere from a teenager to a 30 year old asked the obvious he says father and for the second time Abraham says here I am here's the wood here's the fire where's the sacrifice I expect Abraham had expected and dreaded that moment for three days and then he gives him an answer which on the surface sounds like a sugar coated pill a placebo as if he's dodging it well the Lord will provide in one way that sounds like an easy answer in a devotional book as if he's sidestepping the obvious but you see when you have to explain to other people what god is doing in your life that's the answer you can give them I'm standing there at the worst, hardest kind of funeral to me.

24:58 Here is a young mother in a casket, three little children, so short they're trying to stand up on tiptoe and look in at the pallid face of their deceased mother, and there's a father standing behind them, terrified at what has happened. and all I could say to him was, God will provide. here's a godly deacon engineer at general dynamics one of the godliest men I ever knew his wife in care facility for Alzheimer's he got up every morning went and fed her breakfast talked to her even though she didn't have a clue who he was spent the morning went home went back at night fed her dinner and looked at me as if to say how do I explain what God is doing in my life and I said God will provide.

25:58 You see, let me say this. If you're going to follow the Lord Jesus, sometimes you'll have to explain to other people what God is doing. Oh, yes. A mother, a father, a son, an associate, they'll come to you and say, what's happening here? And you'll have to say, God will provide. It was like that for Eva Self. Eva Self was in North Carolina, a little mill town, as was the case. Her mother had worked for 50 years at the same textile mill, 17-year-old girl from a working family. She planned in her life to get married right out of high school, go to work at the mill just like her mother and see what God did. When? She was in a car accident. She waited in a room for a doctor to come in, felt strange, couldn't move.

26:52 He told her, Eva, you're paralyzed from the waist down. You'll never walk again. She was a Christian, but bitterness, depression, terror, all of that came to her. How was she to explain to others what God had done in her life?

27:13 She said, here I am. And she wrote the name of the Lord Jesus Christ over. You can read her book. She's spoken to more than 200,000 women about what God has done in her life. She's been on focus on the family repeatedly with Jim Dobson. She's spoken at Moody Bible Institute. God gave her the opportunity to explain what he was doing in her life. And he's magnified that. I wonder if I'm preaching to someone here and you have to explain to someone else what God is doing in your life. If you do that, you say, here I am, and you can say, God will provide.

28:05 But let's lean into this. One other way. Because you see, God did provide. The good news in this passage is that Abraham, who didn't know what was happening, lived between promise and problem, found out that God did provide. Here's this ram, thick-headed, stubborn, with a divine GPS in its head. At just the right moment, God provided. Sometimes when you say, here I am, God will stop what you're about to do because he's going to do something better. Look at this.

28:56 Here's the third time Abe says, here I am. Do you see it? He has a cleaver up in the air. That's literally what the word means, not just a knife, a cleaver, a meat cleaver in the air. I can't even, no one could imagine this scene. I don't think it can be painted. You know, I don't know how old Isaac was. If he was a teenager, maybe he was docile and submissive. If he were 30 years old, I think there was a struggle when he recognized, I'm it. bound hand and foot, a struggle, cleaver in the air.

29:42 And an angel of the Lord says not once but twice, Abraham, Abraham! and stops what he was about to do because God had something much better. Now come close to me. Here's where I'd like to sit down at your kitchen table over a cup of coffee and say, why could he hear him the third time? Because he'd gotten used to hearing him the first and the second. Now come close to me. There's going to be moments in your life when the knife is in the air, so to speak, when all of life is hanging in the past. And you will recognize his voice because you've heard it before. it's tight but it's right this is serious stuff life brings us moments just like that and you need to get in the practice of hearing God's voice even when it doesn't seem to make any sense let me put it this way you take a piano student if you've been a piano student with a strong teacher you've had to learn how to play scales it's mind-numbing playing scales they don't sound good, your fingers get tired, you get tired. It's practice for that day when you can look up and sight read music. You don't like piano? Here's a father at the deep end of a swimming pool treading water. And he says to his son beside the pool, jump.

31:13 The son looks at the deep water. He jumps and finds out his father. We'll catch him. You see, all of life is a practice to say, here I am for moments like this when the ram is caught in the bush. God does that. Could I take a leaf out of my own life's journey?

31:47 I've been preaching since I was 16 years old. It's been a hard 30 years. somebody woke up on row 30 right back there I saw you back there I've had all kinds of experiences preaching since I was a teenager when I was 27 years old I was pastor of a church in South Waco PhD student at Baker University my life was very hard running back and forth from doctoral research classes to a growing church, but a troubled church. And in the middle of all that, the pastor search committee from a big church, Pastor Tim, with a TV ministry in four states. It's way before the internet. Network affiliate TV ministry said, we want you to come be our pastor at First Church Big Texas.

32:44 It wasn't big, but that's it. And I was ready to pack my bags. they came the fourth time day to seal the deal that morning I woke up sicker than I'd ever been in my life now I've preached sick but I've never preached that sick in fact I was so sick I preached seven minutes and lost my voice they walked out like they'd seen a ghost I never heard from him again I thought but your big chance is gone. No.

33:22 That was a day when I had to say, here I am. The next three ministers who went to that church encountered a firestorm for which I was not even begun to be prepared as a 27-year-old. I would have never finished the degree. I would have not gone to the next church which had inside of it all the rest of my life in ministry unfolding. Because when a knife was in the... I wouldn't be here tonight. I can assure you, if I'd gone to that church, God, God said it. And even unwillingly, I had to say, here I am. And let me tell you something. Somebody here tonight's discouraged because you're facing circumstances that are disappointing. You thought this was going to happen and that happened. I want you to know that all things work together for the good. and when the knife is in the air.

34:21 You need to be practiced to hear his voice. Well, they unbound Isaac. They sacrificed that ram. And they named the place. Jehovah-Jar, which being translated is, the Lord will provide. Incidentally, when God does something, you give him the credit. Abe didn't name that place. Look what I did. You know, we mere finite mortal human beings almost like to hug ourselves to death. It's a bad way to go, self-hugulation.

35:07 The Lord. And you say, where's Jesus in all of this? Thank you for asking. The Lord Jesus Christ said in John's Gospel, Abraham rejoiced to see my day where did he see it Right here. When he put that wood on the back of Isaac, somehow he saw the foreshadowing of a greater son who would carry a wooden cross. Good count. Here's the astounding thing. What God did for Abraham's son,

36:08 a substitute, God didn't do for his own son. at Calvary there was no ram in the bush Isaac foresaddles Jesus but only up to that point now here's the remarkable thing did you see what the angel said now I know you fear God you have not withheld your son your only son from me now listen what God told to Abraham, you can say to God, you did not withhold your son, your only son from me. Thank God there was no substitute.

37:07 for the substitute. Come close to me a minute. Somebody tonight needs to say to God, here I am. Somebody tonight needs to hand him that carte blanche. Have you ever done that?

37:39 Now, you may love him. You may be following him. But you have never said, here I am. Here's a blank check. you fill it in would you bow with me a moment every head bowed every eye closed I didn't come just to make a speech. I came hoping that there might be a verdict in somebody's life tonight. that one somebody you hear. God is calling you by name. And it's your time to say, Here I am.

38:30 And to stand up from where you are and come to this altar and say, I'm signing a blank check tonight. Eternal God, I pray that the Spirit, freely given, might speak tonight here at this crossroads of the world to somebody who for the first time ever will say, here I am.

39:07 I've signed the check of my life. You fill it in.