November 15, 2009
Scripture:
Scripture:
Luke 17:11-16
We can see ourselves in these lepers. We were lost in our sins; “having no hope and without God in the world.” Nothing within these lepers could heal them. Their healing had to come from outside themselves. It’s the same with us. Jesus had to give Himself to die for our healing. ‘With His stripes, ye are healed’, Isaiah tells us. May we follow the example of the Samaritan Leper and give Jesus the thanks and honour He is so worthy of.
Hymn 342 - Jesus came from Heaven
Prayer
We’ve been looking at the story of a father and a son. The son is Isaac and the father Abraham. This story takes place in Genesis 22, and we’ve seen how God has asked Abraham to kill and offer up his son Isaac as a sacrifice. But not only did God tell Abraham what to do, He told him where to do it. Abraham couldn’t just go out into his backyard and do it there. No, there was a special place that God told him of, called Mount Moriah, and that was where he had to offer Isaac. This story is a type of Jesus dying on the cross. Jesus was the Son. God was the Father. Here, at the beginning of the Bible, we get a picture of what God planned to do years and years later.
Genesis 22:2 We’ve seen how the place where Abraham is to offer up Isaac is important, but let’s think of something else. When we think of the Cross, we often think of the sufferings of the Lord. However; here, in the type of it, we don’t get anything about Isaac’s sufferings. Who is suffering here? It’s Abraham. Any father could sympathize with him, could feel the pain that he felt as God asked him to take his son, build an altar, and then place him on that altar and offer him as a sacrifice. Abraham doesn’t murmur or complain, but we know that he must have been suffering.
Vv.3-4. Mount Moriah was far away - three days’ journey. For three days this hung over Abraham. Can you see him trudging along thinking,“I have to offer my son. I have to kill my son.” As we said, we often think of Jesus’ sufferings, both from man and from God. We seldom think of how the Heavenly Father suffered as He brought His Son to Calvary, and had to inflict such sufferings upon and abandon His dearly Beloved. This is the only chapter in the Bible that gives us a glimpse into what He felt.
Now we might ask, “Why three days?” Well, three is a very important number in the Bible. Three speaks of Divine Perfection. Man is made up of three parts, the body, soul, and spirit. The first mention of the number three is in Genesis 1, where it speaks of resurrection. 1 dimension gives us distance, 2 dimensions gives us the plane, but if we have 3 dimensions we have what is solid and real. It also speaks of completion; we have a complete Godhead: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Here, we have a complete test. And at the end of that third day, Abraham lifts up his eyes and sees the place.
Vv.4 & 5. How come Abraham says that Isaac will come back? Wasn’t he going to offer him as a sacrifice? Here we see Abraham’s faith. He didn’t know how, but he knew that somehow, Isaac would be brought back to life. V6. Isaac carried the wood, and Abraham carried the knife and the fire. The knife speaks of death. The fire speaks of judgement. The wood speaks of a body. In order to have the sacrifice, Isaac had to carry the wood. In order for Jesus to be the sacrifice for us, He had to put on a body. The body is what the knife and fire would touch. So too, to save us. “They went both of them together.” The Son and the Father were present at the cross. It was by the Father’s hand that the Son died. But He rose again, as we’ll see next time.
Last week, we were talking about v. 10, “eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared.” For us, this can be enjoying our reading of the Word, and taking it to share with others. Read John 6: 53 - 56. The Lord is talking about salvation; we can see Him taking our place. He is also talking about communion: our enjoyment of Him.
So now, v. 12, they understood what they heard and they went out to do it. When we come away from a meeting or a conference, do we ‘chew over’ what we have heard? We should be enjoying the Father and the Son, and letting that enjoyment overflow to those who weren’t able to be there. Think of Samson’s riddle: “Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness.” Samson killed a lion, the ‘king of the jungle’ and out of that came sweetness. When the Lord was killed, he defeated Satan and out of that came salvation.
V. 13 : The day after these events, the chief of the fathers got together to have their own meeting with Ezra. Those who were ministering are now being ministered to. This sounds like a good idea: all the brothers getting together to encourage each other with the Word. In this special meeting, they discovered that the Jews should be living in booths during the seventh month. This was something that had not been done since Joshua, v. 17. They were going on for the Lord, but some truths were not being lived out.
This feast of tabernacles was the greatest feast in their history. It is a type of the Millennium, which will be a very important time for the Jews.
Hymn 200 - Tis the hope of His coming
Prayer