Blog Archives - Yuba-Sutter Grace Church

It was all God's Doing (Genesis 22:1-19)

11/17/2018

God told Abraham to offer his son--his only son Isaac, whom he loved--for a burnt offering on the mountain of God’s choosing (v2). Abraham rose up early the next morning. He clave the wood. He set out to go where God told him to offer his son (v3). On the third day, Abraham saw the place afar off (v4). He told his two young servants to stay with the beast of burden. He told them that he and Isaac would go to yonder mountain and worship and return again (v5). Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac (v6). He took the fire and the knife in his hand (v6). Both Abraham and Isaac went together up that mountain (v6). Isaac spoke to his father. He said, “My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering” (v7)? “And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together” (v8). They came to the place God told Abraham to go. Abraham built an altar. He laid the wood on it. He bound his son. He laid his son on top of the wood on the altar (v9). Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called to Abraham out of heaven (v11)!

In all that Abraham did and in all that he said in this account, he did and said as God’s prophet (Gen. 20:7). He corresponds to God the Father in all that He purposed and promised and in all that He did when He took His Son and offered Him up for us all, all of His elect (Rom. 8:32-34). Moreover, all that Abraham did with his son Isaac, and in all that Isaac said and did, Isaac corresponds to the Son of God, who in obedience submitted Himself to His Father as the Lamb of God, to offer Himself for our sins (Php. 2:8; John 10:17-18; Heb. 9:12, 14, 25-26; 10:7-12; Rom. 5:6).

Notice: Abraham clave the wood. Abraham led his son. He took Isaac to the mountain to offer him as a burnt offering. He took his only son Isaac, whom he loved. Notice: he went with his son to the place of God’s appointing. Notice: he saw that place afar off. Notice: he took the wood there; he laid the wood on Isaac to carry it up the mountain. Notice: Abraham took the fire in his hand; he took the knife in his hand. He built the altar. He laid the wood that would consume his son upon that altar. Notice: he bound his son; he laid his son on that wood upon that altar. Notice: Abraham stretched forth his hand to take the knife to slay his son. In Abraham we see God the Father. Jesus said, “My Father worketh hitherto and I work” (John 5:17). This is the work of God the Father. He slew His Son (John 10:17-18; Zech. 13:7; Ps. 88:7; Rom. 8:32)!

As sinners, we are anxious to find warrant to trust Christ and find our refuge in Him. But here we see that it was God’s will and His purpose of grace to offer His Son. The offering of Abraham’s son was made to God. In all of this, we have a lesson that causes us both to tremble and endears our heavenly Father to us for His eternal grace! God offered His Son for sinners (2 Cor. 5:18-21)! He Himself offered Him. He offered Him to make atonement. He made Him the ransom for indebted prisoners to magnify His truth and grace, to bring us to Himself according to His eternal will (Eph. 1:4-7). It was He who purposed, He who promised, He who provided, He who offered, He who accepted His only begotten Son for sinners. It was His doing. Therefore, to remain indifferent or distant as if some change in me would give me confidence to come to Christ, or to think that by something other than Christ crucified I can worship God, is evidence of horrid unbelief, evidence that I do not know God. To know the true and living God is eternal life (John 17:3). To see His will and work in Christ, to know that by all that is holy and good He offered His Son to save sinners, is to know the work and character and mind and heart of God. The work of God the Father to offer His Son is every sinner’s warrant to look upon and look to Christ and worship God by Him (John 4:22-24).

“On the third day he lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.” The place afar off is the eternal will of God. God saw His eternal will fulfilled in Christ’s obedience in the offering of His Son as our Mediator (Heb. 10:7; John 17:4; 19:30). The wood laid on Isaac to carry up that mountain is God laying the cross on His Son, even the curse we earned by our sins against God (John 19:17; Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13). Abraham bound Isaac. God bound His Son. He nailed His Son to the cross (Acts 2:23). Isaac asked, My father, behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the burnt offering for the sacrifice. When Abraham answered, Isaac did not protest. Thus, Christ prayed, “Not my will, but thine be done” (Matt. 26:39-42). Abraham took the fire and the knife. God took the fire of His wrath and the knife of His justice and plunged it into the body and soul of His Son. He afflicted Him with all that His justice required to spare sinners. Abraham stretched forth his hand to slay his son. God the Father stretched forth His hand against His Son (Zech. 13:7; Acts 4:28). God commanded His Son to lay down His life for the sheep (John 10:17-18). It was the Father who bruised His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ (Isa. 53:4-10). Isaac made no protest. Christ was oppressed and afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth (Isa. 53:7). The Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior “...poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (Isa. 53:12). Abraham and Isaac went both together up that mountain. The Son of God, our precious Savior, did not go to the cross alone; His Father was with Him (John 16:32). He came to do His Father’s will (Heb. 10:5-18). The two servants came along to bear witness. Throughout scripture the law and the prophets bear witness to Christ crucified (1 Pet. 1:10-11; Luke 24:26-27).

This was God’s will. He promised Abraham that in his Seed (Christ), all nations of the world would be blessed (Gen. 22:18; Gal. 3:7-19). This is how God fulfilled His promise. He provided Himself a Lamb for the burnt offering (v8). The Word was made flesh (John 1:14): Emmanuel, God with us (Matt. 1:23). He who died is rightly called “the mighty God, the prince of peace, the everlasting Father” (Isa. 9:6). "Behold the Lamb of God" (John 1:29)! The Father took the Son of His love, His only begotten Son, and delivered Him up for us all (Rom. 8:32). The revelation of His will to Abraham or to us did not come all at once. But it did come (Eph. 3:5-11). And it is now repeated over and over and over again throughout scripture, reverberating by the Spirit of God in the hearts of chosen sinners! This is the message of all of scripture: Christ, the Lamb of God, chosen, appointed, provided and offered by God the Father, received as a sweet-smelling sacrifice by which God saves sinners by His infinite, incomprehensible grace, and brings them to Himself (Eph. 1:4-7; 5:2)! This is the heart of God. This was on His mind from eternity. This is His doing. This is His great glory (Ex. 33:18-19; 34:6-7; 2 Cor. 4:6; John 17:1-4).

Abraham told his servants, “I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you” (v5). Every sinner so given eyes of faith to see Christ crucified as God’s offering and justifying grace for ungodly sinners will worship here. There is no other altar than the altar God has built and on which He offered His Son, even the altar of the person of our Lord Jesus Christ (Heb. 13:10; Matt. 23:19).

Tremble in awe as you look here. Stand in awe at our great God and Savior. Do not leave this place. See the heart of the everlasting God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Know the heart and eternal purpose and incomprehensible provision God made in His Son. Consider that God did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for sinners (Rom. 5:10; 2 Cor. 5:18-21). In so looking, come to God by Him! This is God’s doing. Stand still and see the salvation of the LORD. This is the ark of the testimony opened in heaven (Rev. 15:5). This is your warrant to come to God. Draw from this well of salvation (Isa. 12:3). To neglect this so great salvation is the unpardonable sin (Heb. 2:3). Agree with God’s law. You are guilty. Your sin is all your fault. You deserve God’s wrath. And you will not and cannot do anything about it (Rom. 1:18-3:20). Then, while paralyzed in that state, look here: see the heart and will and promise and provision and work of the everlasting God in offering up His Son! Worship God only here. Worship Him here only. This is the altar and the offering by which sinners are accepted. Take from Christ here. As a sinner needing mercy, find your all in Him (Col. 2:9-10; Heb. 4:3, 10; Isa. 45:21-25)! May God in His sovereign grace so give you and me to do so, both now and forever (Col. 2:6).

"Upon a life I did not live,
Upon a death I did not die;
Another's life, Another's death,
I stake my whole eternity" -- Horatius Bonar

Rick Warta

All of our enemies are subject to Christ

11/12/2018

“All the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. 13 And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea. 14 And they that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that was done. 15 And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid. 16 And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with the devil, and also concerning the swine. 17 And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts” (Mark 5:12-17).

When the man possessed with a legion of devils was under the bondage of satan and when the pig herders watched their pigs feeding contentedly, those pig overseers were at peace. But when the devils entered the pigs, causing them to run and choke themselves in the sea, and the man who had been possessed sitting at Jesus’ feet, clothed, in his right mind, peacefully resting in the presence of the Son of God, the pig herders were afraid and begged Jesus to leave them.

The pig farmers were content when the man was possessed. But they were afraid of Jesus and begged Him to leave them when the man was freed from satan and the pigs perished. They valued pigs more than men. They were concerned when pigs perished but were unperturbed when a man was captive to satan. They were afraid of Jesus. They begged Him to leave them.

What can we learn from this?
- First, devils are stronger than men. They took possession of the man. They controlled him. They tormented him. The dwelling place of the possessed man was with the dead. Night and day he cried and cut himself with stones in the mountains and among the tombs. Though men had often bound him with chains and fetters, he had plucked the chains off and broken the fetters in pieces. No man could tame him. Men gave him up as hopeless. His was an impossible case for man. He is a picture of every man by nature.
All men are captive to satan by nature. Captivity to satan is the result of sin. Satan kept his goods (the man possessed of devils) in peace in his castle until a stronger than he came (Christ, Luke 11:20-22). Until Christ overcame the strong man, the man was in bondage, fearful, uncontrollable and out of his mind. But when Christ came, he ran and worshipped Him. When Christ commanded the devils to depart, he sat in his right mind. This is a perfect picture of an uncontrollable sinner subdued by grace.
- Only Christ can deliver men who are bound by satan. Though no man could tame the man, the devils obeyed Christ. Christ has power over the unseen powers of darkness and evil (1 Pet. 3:22; Matt. 28:18). Devils are subject to His word (Luke 10:17; 1 John 4:4; Rev. 12:11; 1 Pet. 5:9-9).
- The Lord Jesus gave the devils leave to enter pigs. Pigs are unclean animals. They represent reprobate man. Sheep cannot live on what pigs eat. Believers cannot live on works religion. Believers can only live on Christ. But pigs return to their wallowing in the mire of their own works.
- That Jesus gave leave to the devils to enter pigs shows that He is the Judge. He gives life to men at His will, and brings judgment on others because of their sins (John 5:22-23). If we are subject to satan’s control, it is because Christ allowed that control to satan. The devil takes men captive at his will because of God’s judgment against us for our sin. "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are, to whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or obedience unto righteousness? But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you" (Rom. 6:16-17). It is just for God to judge us at the hand of our enemy. But our Judge must be our Savior! He who afflicts us for our foolishness, must save us by His grace (Ps. 107). May God grant us repentance unto life (2 Tim. 2:24-26)! We obey the Gospel of Christ from the heart, and so obey and worship Christ from the heart, by God-given faith, when we rely on God's grace to us in Christ, that by His obedience in death, we are cleansed, freed and made righteous before God (Rom. 1:5; 10:16-17; 16:25-26; 1 Pet. 1:21-22; Rom. 3:24-26; 5:9-10).
- Those Christ frees from satan sit in His presence, clothed, in their right mind, at rest and in quiet submission at the feet and in the presence of the Son of God! Salvation is deliverance from captivity to satan (Col. 1:13; Heb. 2:14). Salvation always puts us in our right mind, at peace and in rest before the Son of God, worshipping Christ. A right mind is faith in Christ: faith that sees the truth of salvation in Christ, faith that lives upon Christ, depending on His saving grace and work, and hoping in His promises of eternal life that we will appear before Him in His own righteousness (Ps. 17:15; 1 John 3:2; Gal. 5:5).
- Those who love unclean pigs more than Christ’s sheep are afraid of Christ. Fear of Christ is the only reasonable response of a sinner in the presence of the almighty Judge of men and angels, to whom the darkness and the light are both alike (Ps. 139:12). Christ sees the darkness inside of us as the noonday sun. Sin produces terror before the all-seeing eye of the One who loves righteousness and hates iniquity. Only grace can give us a sight of Christ to see that though we are sinners, He is the almighty Savior of sinners! We are saved by His grace (Mark 5:33-34; Eph. 2:8-9).
- With a God-given sight of Christ as our just God and Savior, we hear His life-giving, soul-calming words to come to Him, to look, to call, to take, to eat and drink, to draw from the wells of His salvation (Isa. 12:3; Ps. 116:13). Seeing Christ as the One who honored God in His law and justice, and who made known His grace to sinners-- forgiving our sins for Christ’s sake (Eph. 4:32) and giving to us His justifying righteousness by grace (Rom. 5:17-19)--we are irresistibly drawn to Him (John 1:17; 6:44-45; Matt. 11:28-30; Acts 13:39).

Sinners are afraid of an almighty, all-seeing God. But fear of the Savior is the fear of unbelief. Sinners ought to fear God the Judge. He will not clear the guilty. But grace gives faith in Christ as the Savior of our souls from all of our enemies, especially the root enemy: our sin against God. Grace enables us to see that though satan is stronger than we, that though we are by nature the children of wrath even as others, yet by God’s word, though hell-deserving and helpless and hopeless in ourselves, we can and must look to Christ and find Him to be all of our salvation, to the glory of God.

Rick Warta

"Who shall change our vile body" (Php. 3:21)

11/12/2018

“Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself” (Php. 3:21).

Do you know why we will receive a glorious body like Christ’s? Because before God we are clothed in His righteousness. We appear before God in His beauty, and by God-given faith, by the Spirit of God in us, we trust His beauty, not our own. He will change our vile body to be like His glorious body because the Spirit of Christ dwells in us (Rom. 8:10). We have a nature created in righteousness and true holiness (Eph. 4:24). Though our body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of Christ’s righteousness (Rom. 8:10). The Spirit of Him who raised Christ from the dead dwells in us. Because Christ lives, we shall live (John 14:18-19). He shall therefore raise our body from death (Rom. 8:11).

We are justified before God by the work of Christ alone. Being justified in Christ, the Spirit of Christ has entered us and lives in us. He is God’s holy, incorruptible seed in us, by which we are born of God (1 John 3:9; 1 Pet. 1:23; John 6:63). Our new nature is holy because the Holy Spirit of Christ is in us. We are joined to the Lord by His Spirit (1 Cor. 6:17). We therefore cannot die because we are one with Him who is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25-26). We will not only be raised, but we will be raised incorruptible. God will make His sons known when Christ comes again (Rom. 8:19). He will openly make us appear to be what we truly are in Christ and what we are because Christ is in us.

Christ in us is therefore our hope of glory, our confident expectation that we will receive a glorious body, the possession Christ purchased for us by His own blood (Col. 1:27; Eph. 1:14). When we see Him, we will be changed; we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is (1 John 3:2). We shall be conformed to His image (Rom. 6:14; 8:29). We will behold His face in righteousness because it is in His righteousness that we are dressed (Ps. 17:15; Isa. 61:10).

Our body must be like His glorious body because we are one with Him. We were one with Him in eternal election (Eph. 1:4; 1 Cor. 1:30). We were one with Him in His representative life (Rom. 5:19). We were one with Him in His substitutionary death (2 Cor. 5:21). We were one with Him in His burial and in His resurrection (Col. 3:1-3). We are one with Him where He is now seated on the right hand of God (Eph. 2:5-6). We are one with Him by His Spirit in us. Even our body is one with Him (1 Cor. 6:15)! We must live by faith in Christ and by the sure persuasion of what we are in Him (Rom. 6:11). We must live out what is true and what we therefore know and stand upon by the word of God alone. That the members of our body are Christ's ought to cause us to tremble in fear and live in hope, as we live out the salvation God has given us and is now working in us (Php. 2:12-13). We shall be glorified together with Him (Rom. 8:17).

If your only hope is that in Christ’s death, you died to sin (Rom. 6:3-11); that in Christ's burial, your sins were forever forgotten by God out of mind (Ps. 31:12; 88:4-5; Ps. 103:12; Heb. 10:14-19); that when Christ rose, you rose with Him (Eph. 2:6); if by the God-given persuasion of these from the Gospel, Christ is all of your hope before God (Eph. 1:13-14), even all of your life (Col. 3:1-2); then you shall be glorified together with Him. In light of these facts and the sight of them that faith affords, “Seek those things which are above, where Christ sits on the right hand of God. Set your affections on things above, not on things in the world” (Col. 3:1-2).

If Christ is thus your hope, then you are dead to the guilt and condemnation of sin, and your life is hid with Christ in God. You now live upon Him by faith (Col. 3:3; John 6:35-56; Gal. 2:20; 1 Pet. 2:24). Therefore, when Christ who is our life shall appear, we shall appear with Him in glory. We shall be changed. Our bodies shall be made like His glorious body! Death’s sting has been removed because, for all who are Christ’s, it lost its sting when it stung our Savior (1 Cor. 15:53-58).

Rick Warta