Address—G.H. Hayhoe
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
I'd like you to turn this afternoon with me to a well known portion in Genesis chapter 22, the first verse. And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham, And he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offered him there for a burnt offering upon.
Of the mountains which I will tell thee of. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his *** and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young men.
Abide ye here with the ***.
The lad will go Yonder and worship, and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son. And he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, And they went both of them together. And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father. And he said, Behold, here am I my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood. But where is the lamb?
For a burnt offering. And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. So they went, both of them together, and they came to the place which God had told him of. And Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the Angel of the Lord called unto him out.
Of heaven, and said Abraham, Abraham. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him. For now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of.
Son and Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah Jireh, as it is said to this day in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen. And the Angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said by myself, have I sworn, saith the Lord, For because that thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed.
As the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore. And thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice.
And just one verse in Romans chapter 12, Romans chapter 12, the first verse. I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. Well, as I remark to you young people, I'm sure that you're all quite well acquainted with his 22nd.
2nd chapter of Genesis. It's often read to us to us on.
On Lord's Day morning, and it brings before us a beautiful picture of God's great love in giving his son, just as Abraham was willing to go and OfferUp his son. It's a beautiful picture of what God has done. For in love he gave his son to die for us. And the Lord Jesus went to the cross of Calvary and accomplished redemption. That blessing might flow out freely to you and to me. And if there's anyone here this afternoon who is not.
Saved. I would seek to bring before you the importance of receiving the Lord Jesus as your own personal Savior. There can be no real lasting blessing in your life unless you know Christ is your Savior. You're just traveling on to judgment, and the pleasures you may be enjoying are the pleasures of sin for a season. They don't last. They won't bring you any real abiding happiness. And what if you did have the happiest life here in this world?
If you have in Christ, judgment is at the end, Just think of that rich man in hell. He was told, Thou in thy lifetime receiveth thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things. But now he is comforted in thour, tormented. And if you are choosing a path of earthly pleasures, I don't deny the fact that you may find some satisfaction in them. But I want to remind you that they're very short. It's only for a season and the end.
00:05:17
End of that path is judgment, but all at the when you know the Lord Jesus as your Savior, the end of your path is in His presence, where there are pleasures forevermore, where there is a joy and a happiness that's not just for a short time, but it abides forever.
But my thought in reading this passage was not so much to speak of the chapter as a type of God in the love that He had giving His only begotten son, but rather Speaking of Abraham just as a man of the feelings that no doubt went through his mind, and just what this meant to him personally. I question whether he entered into the typical meaning of offering up his son. I know that he acted in faith, but as far as understanding?
That that was a picture of God's love and giving his Son. I doubt if he understood that. No doubt he does now, because he has he has passed beyond death. And we know that when Moses and Elias talked to the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration, they understood what Christ was going to do upon the cross, because it says they spoke of his deceased that he would have accomplished at Jerusalem. But I do say that I doubt if Abraham at this time.
Understood just what it meant to take his son, but he did understand what it meant to be willing to give the one who was the very dearest of his heart to please the God whom he had learned to trust and love. And dear young people, this is what I want to bring before you. I want to look at Abraham as a man, a man of like passions with ourselves, A man who had experienced many things, and yet he was one who had real, living faith in God. Indeed he has.
The father of the faithful, it says they that are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. He was the one who believed God in spite of impossibilities. When God said that he was going to have a son, it seemed impossible. There was no natural way by which he could explain how this would take place. He couldn't go to the annals of history and find that there was an example somewhere of a person who had a child at that age, and therefore he.
Might possibly expect it No, there was no such thing. He had to believe God in what seemed like an impossibility. And it tells us Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness and believing God when we can't understand is what glorifies God if we only believe when we can understand. That's a matter of pure reason. It's a matter of natural understanding. You would believe any friend if you could understand the.
He presented to you, but when something is presented that requires faith and you can't get an explanation, but you believe the person who told you because you have confidence in him, that's faith. And dear young people, that is the kind of faith that God values and that is the faith that saves you. And I cannot understand how the Lord Jesus in those hours of darkness.
Exhausted the Lord of our sins. But I hope you can say, well, I believe it.
Thank God, if you can, by grace I can say I believe it. I rejoice at those wonderful words. It is finished. The Lord Jesus finished the work. But in our Christian life there are many things that we can't understand, and this is where faith comes in. If we can understand them, then we don't require faith. We just require a normal amount of intelligence. But God demands the submission of our minds. The gospel is made known to all nations.
For the obedience of faith. And so here Abraham, I say, was a man of like passions with ourselves. As we look back in his history, we remember that he was an idolater. He dwelt in ur of the Chaldees. He no doubt was a great man in that place, and could have come to something in this world. But the God of glory appeared to him when he dwelt there and said, Get thee out from my kindred and from my country.
And come into a land that I will show the of. And Abraham acted upon the call of God. He came forth. It wasn't easy. And perhaps your confession of Christ as your Savior is something that has really cost you something. There are young people here who have Christian homes. And when you confess the Lord, your father and your mother rejoice. They were thankful. But there are young people here, and when you confess the Lord, your father and mother were displeased.
00:10:07
And they thought you had gone crazy. They couldn't understand why you'd be willing to put your faith in the Lord and part with loved ones and friends to follow Christ. This was the place Abraham was in, and he left his country. He left his kindred, and he came out and finally reached the land that God had told him of. Well, you would expect when he had done this that the path would be a smooth and easy one. But it was not.
And God doesn't promise you that when you're saved your path.
Is going to be an easy one, Paul told the young believers in the book of the Acts. We must through much tribulation, enter into the Kingdom of God. When those people believed in Christ, they suffered the loss of their goods. Some of them paid for their faith with their lives. It was not an easy thing we've come to expect in this modern day, and that to confess Christ is a thing that makes a life somewhat easy.
But dear friends, I want to tell you that when you.
You accept Christ as your Savior. God does not promise you a smooth and easy path, but He does promise you some wonderful things, things that more than compensate for what you lose because you have peace in your heart. Isn't that a wonderful thing? Peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ? Only if you don't have peace with God, what a loss is yours.
But to go through life in the joy of knowing that no matter what happens.
Whether death could come suddenly, whether sickness should overtake you, or whether the Lord should come at all is perfect peace. Christ is your Savior. And then too, as you go on through life, through the as we sang in the hymn, through time and its changing scenes, that there's one who always stands by your side. All this is lovely. Think of those two on the road to Emmaus as they walked along with discouraged hearts, feeling so sad.
Because the one whom they loved had been taken from them, and they thought they had lost him forever. And while they were discussing all this, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. And if you're discouraged this afternoon, I want to tell you, Jesus is beside you and he's drawing near. And he's listening to the conversation you have with your friends when you talk about the things that discourage you.
None of the problems that you have, he draws near to listen.
And he cares, He is interested in the affairs of your life. He knows what it costs. Because the Lord Jesus has trodden the path of faith before us. And his path was not an easy 1. And so Abraham, when he came into this land, what did he get? Well, he didn't even get a peace that he could call his own. He was only a stranger in a Pilgrim there. And then a famine broke out in the land, a famine. And poor Abraham, after having.
Obeyed the call of God. Why did God allow famine to come? And perhaps you said the same thing. Well, now I am saved. Why is it that my path becomes difficult instead of easy? Why is it that it seems there's a famine of friends in my life? There's a famine in the meeting where I live. There's trouble, there's difficulty. Things are hard for me. Well, Abraham experienced this. He was a man of like passions with ourselves. He entered into the very things that you enter into in the.
Way of faith. And I am so thankful that God has written down such things in His Word, because if it wasn't for this, we might expect that we were the only people that had these kind of problems. But God has given us in great detail in his Word the problems and the trials of those who have sought to follow Him. So here we find Abraham with a famine. Well, what did he do? Well, just what we've often done. He tried to run away from the famine. He was discouraged.
Then he went down into Egypt, and down in Egypt he got wealthy. He gained a great deal financially, he gained a great deal materialistically, but he lost in his soul. He lost in his soul. And when trouble comes in your life, isn't it easy to go into the world? Isn't it easy to turn to worldly things as a sort of an escape from the problems that come up? I know that you've experienced this. I have too. There's no young person here that's honest with.
That hasn't felt just exactly the same as Abraham, and you've just run down into Egypt to escape a famine. When trouble came, you wanted to get away from it, but you might have prospered materialistically, you might have gained financially. But I ask you, did you gain in your soul as the result of going away from him? Did the Lord Jesus become more precious?
00:15:04
Or did you lose the sense of his presence? Did you lose the things that are dearest in life, in life to the Christians?
That's what happens. And that's just exactly what happened with Abraham. And they are down in Egypt. He lied about his wife, he lost his Pilgrim character, and he brought trouble into his own home.
And then the next thing that broke out in his life was he just had one other person that had faith that he could really have some kind of fellowship with, and that was Lot.
That is, he had his wife and then he had Lot, and Lot was a sort of 1/2 hearted Christian, but he was better than no companionship at all. It's nice to have at least somebody that loves your Savior, even if they're not wholehearted in following him. Well, Abraham had Lot, but after a little while Lot left him too. Yes, there was a quarrel broke out and he lost the only friend, the only believing friend he had.
What a, what a loss this was. Have you felt such a?
There's been somebody that's been a friend to you and you lost a friend and you just feel sort of as if there's no one that cares. God cares. He cared about Abraham. His eye was upon Abraham and all these things. And immediately when Lot left him, the Lord appeared to him and said, fear not Abraham, O the Lord wouldn't forsake him. He never does forsake his own. He never leaves us alone, but he.
Because bit by bit wean us from those things that we lean upon apart from Him. Dear young people, the Lord Jesus is jealous to have your whole heart. He's not satisfied with half of it. He's not satisfied with 2/3 of it. He wants your whole heart and mine. He died to win it. He's not going to be satisfied until all His own are supremely blessed and His joy will exceed ours. His joy in having us there and our.
In being there. And so here we find Abraham after Lot had left him. Then we find the Lord giving him a word of encouragement and cheering him. And then we know how that God dealt with Lot when he was down in Sodom, and Abraham held no bitter feelings toward him. I think this is very lovely. Has something happened, some quarrel? Don't hold a bitter feeling. Be sure. No matter what happens, dear young people, don't allow.
Better feeling to live in your heart. It's one of those weeds. The Bible calls them roots of bitterness, and they grow in our hearts very easily. Our natural hearts are very good soil for these kind of roots of bitterness. None of us are immune from this. And Abraham could have let these roots of bitterness grow in his heart because Lot hadn't acted very nicely. He had taken first choice, and he had.
Started the quarrel with the herdsmen of.
Abraham But we find that when life got into trouble, Abraham risked his life. He risked all that he had and took his family and his trained men, and they went down and rescued Lot, rescued Lot and brought him back. But Lot didn't learn the lesson. And perhaps you say, well, I tried to help someone and in spite of all I did for him, he didn't appreciate it at all. Neither did Lot. Lot didn't appreciate what Abraham did.
And I don't think Abraham, I don't think Lot ever knew.
Either that later on when the Lord was going to judge Sodom that Abraham interceded for him, he didn't know that Abraham was there interceding for him on the top of the hill when Lot was down there in Sodom. And if there's any feeling of bitterness rises in your heart, be sure that you intercede for the person who has treated you wrongly, and this will be a great help to you and to get rid of those roots of bitterness.
Well, then, after this victory at Sodom, why, it tells us that the king of Sodom offered great things to Abraham. He offered him some of the riches of.
Sodom, but he turned them all down.
But now I don't intend to speak of all the different things. And I would mention too that there was failure in Abraham's life. He he failed in connection with Hagar. He was, he looked back upon his life and he proved the goodness of God, but he also proved his own weakness and failure. But now when we come to this chapter, you would think that these trials would be behind.
But here it tells us in the first verse and it.
Came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham, and in the second verse and he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, which I will tell thee of.
00:20:20
What a test this was for Abraham.
To be asked to take this son, this son Isaac, for whom he had waited so long. He had waited for years amid all those difficulties and troubles that I was Speaking of, and hoped and longed for this promised boy. And at last God had given him to him. And I suppose he had come to the point in his life where he thought, well, at last the Lord has come in. It seems the greatest of my problems have been left behind.
And I think now I've come to a place where things are beginning to straighten out. Have you come to that place sometime? And after facing problems, perhaps difficulties, and going through a lot of the things in your life, you finally have come to the point where you think now things are beginning to straighten out. I think things are coming along the way. I'd like them to now and then. What a what a disappointment if I can speak in this way for the Lord.
To come to Abraham and say, take that son that you love, the one who's the dearest to you on earth, and take him and offer him up as a burnt offering to the Lord. All this was a great thing in the life of Abraham. In other words, the Lord was saying, Abraham, who is dearest to you?
Your son or me who is dearest to you and dear young people.
This is particularly the challenge that I want to bring to your heart and mind this afternoon.
Now, what is dearest to you? Is the Lord Jesus the dearest person to your heart? Are you content if he should take away everything from you that you might have him and that you might enjoy him and his love? Well, this was a great challenge, I say to Abraham, and it's a great challenge to us because as we sang in the little hymn this morning.
Love that transcends our highest powers demands our soul.
Our life, our all. The Lord is not satisfied with anything less than our whole heart, I say. And this is what he wanted from Abraham, and he wanted Abraham too, to realize that even if everything was taken away, that the Lord still loved him, the Lord still cared for him.
And the task to Abraham was, did he believe that God was perfect in his goodness? Because sometimes we measure God's goodness by the material blessings that we receive. But His goodness is not always seen by these things. Lazarus, the poor man at the gate of that rich man, could never measure God's goodness by his material blessings. He was a beggar. He was full of sores.
How could he ever measure God's goodness by his practical experiences of life? But he had faith and he believed God. And if you and I measure God's goodness by the practical things of life, why then our sense of His goodness will be up and down, will be discouraged. We'll be up when things go the way we wish. We'll be down when they go the way that we don't like them to go.
But if our sense of his presence and of his.
Love, if the confidence in Him remains in our hearts, why then we can say like the prophet Habakkuk, he said, though there is no hurt in the stall, though the fig tree doesn't bloom. If everything fails, he says, yet will I rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.
And dear young people, I believe the Lord brings us to this point in our lives.
I believe He brings us to it. And here we find Abraham. After all that he had been through, he could not say, well, the trials are all behind. The greatest one was facing him right at this time when the Lord asked him to take this son whom he loved. And God particularly said that he didn't say take Isaac without adding that phrase.
Whom thou lovest? The Lord knew what Isaac meant to Abraham.
And perhaps there's someone or something that's specially dear to you. The Lord knows what that means to your heart. And you say, I can't live without it. I can't part with it. Well, the Lord may be saying to you, yes, if if I am enough, you'll have to part with that too. And the Lord allows this in order to show us that the only true way of Christian peace and happiness is to have the sense in our souls.
00:25:23
That Christ is all, that He is sufficient when everything else has failed.
Well, this was a difficult thing I say for Abraham and it says in the third verse and Abraham rolls up early in the morning. I believe that Abraham didn't delay because he knew that if he delayed it would be too difficult because when God calls us to action, why we mustn't delay? Tells us about Gideon that when he was called to OfferUp his son.
Or rather, when Gideon was called.
Called to offer up a sacrifice to the Lord, and cut down his father's altar to Baal, it says he did it that very night. When the Lord wants us to do something, why he would have us to do it at once, because delay in the things of God is dangerous. When the Lord makes known his will, as we have been having in our chapter in John's epistle, it takes the form of a command to the heart, and it tells us that he saddled his *** and took.
Of his young men with him and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering and rose up and went unto the place of which God had told him. Yes, he not only rose up early in the morning, but here there was a preparation to be made. He got the wood ready. He saddled the *** God, his young men he had. He had the courage to take action, even although he knew that this action that.
He was going to take was going to be the hardest step in his whole life, and yet his confidence was such in God that it tells us in Hebrews Chapter 11 That this is what it says that accounting that God was able to raise him from the dead, from which also he received him in a figure. He had such confidence in God that he said, well, if God calls upon me to offer up my son, he will not be my debtor.
He will give back to me more than He takes away from me. And if he takes away my son in natural life, He'll give me him back to me from the dead. And if the Lord takes away anything from you, why, He has something better in store for you. He has something better than what he takes away. You'll never make any sacrifice for the Lord that he won't have something better for you.
In store. Well, here he was already and it says.
On the fourth in the fourth verse. Then on the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off.
Why did God make this a three day journey? Wasn't it hard enough for Abraham to be called to OfferUp his son without having to take a three day journey to the place?
This was something else. And by the way, this is the third day of the meetings, isn't it? The last day? And perhaps you've come here and maybe as the days have passed by, instead of feeling encouraged, there may be some young person in your discouraged and at the end of the three days you feel, well, I, I realize that I'm going to have to make some sacrifice to follow the Lord. I know young people come to a conference.
Feeling, I know that they come and they realize that following Christ is often a life of sacrifice. It's a life of giving up for the Lord. And so here was the third day.
And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and what did he see? The place where he was to OfferUp his son. And it may be there's some young person. And as they end these meetings has come, you say, Well, I wonder what's ahead for me.
I wonder what's ahead. And you see the place afar off, and you know there's a test coming in your life, a supreme test. You young people, perhaps you go back and some of you say, well, I can get lots of boyfriends and girlfriends in the world. I can find them. And you face this kind of a sacrifice. And the altar, as it were, stands at a distance. And you say, what am I going to do when I go back home?
Am I really going to follow the Lord? Am I really willing to put him first to make him the object?
Of my life, and live for him well. Abraham looked, and he saw the place afar off, a place where he was going to give up the dearest object of his heart, the one whom he loved the most. Could he do it? Could he do it well? It tells us here in the fifth verse, Abraham said unto his young men. Abide ye here with the *** and I, and the lad will go Yonder and worship, and come again to you.
00:30:27
To me, it's as though he said, I know these young men won't understand. I know they won't understand what's facing me. And dear young people, the world doesn't understand. They don't understand what it means to follow Christ. But you do. He saved your soul. He's given you a home in heaven, and he knows what it means to follow him. But he's had a more difficult path than you and I He's trodden that path and he knows what that pathway means. And when he asked Abraham.
To do this, Abraham never realized. I don't believe that this was a little picture of what God's own son was to do on that cross of Calvary.
Well, Abraham left the young man and he left the *** and he said we'll go Yonder and worship. Isn't this lovely? His mind was made-up. His mind was made-up. On the third day he said whatever it's going to cost.
I'm going to put the Lord first. Whatever it's going to cost, the Lord is going to be first in my life. If it means that giving up of the one who's dearest to me, Well then he said, I'll do it and I'll come back and I'll face my young men victorious because the Lord has been given His right place all. May the Lord give you, dear young people, true decision and purpose for Him.
There never was a day when it was needed more than today.
Purpose of heart decision for Christ. This is a day when it's so easy to be carried away with those things in this materialistic world that would lead us away from the Lord and bring us sorrow and unhappiness. Abraham knew what the path of disobedience meant at one time, and he had taken that path, and now he's not going to.
With the Lord's help, he's not going to do it again. And so he goes out.
When he starts, and can't you imagine his heavy footsteps as he walked up to that Mount Moriah with his son beside him, and his son didn't realize what was going through his mind. He said, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And they went, both of them together they went, both of them together, they went on. And oh, how lovely it is to know that Abraham had this faith and confidence.
That step forward, counting upon God and every step he took, he had confidence that no matter what faced him, God was greater than the circumstance and victory was certain in the end. And he walked on up till they came to that place. And it wasn't something that he could just sit back and say, well, I'll leave it all with the Lord. It's an action to be taken and an action that seemed against himself.
And this is the hardest thing to take an action, to take an action which we know is going to cost us a great deal in following Christ. Abraham took that action. He took his son. He bound him. He lifted up the knife as though he said, I believe God. He'll never ask me to do something if it's not for my good. I've proved him in the past and I'll trust him for the future. And he took up that knife to bring it down upon his son.
He trusted God, and did God come in? Yes, isn't this lovely? The Lord called to him out of heaven, and said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything to him. For now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only Son from me. And so he turned from the sight, and there he looked, and there was the ram caught in the thicket by his horns.
Yes, there was a ram, a substitute and all. And dear young people, your sacrifice and mine will never be as great as Christ's. Just think of His sacrifice. He was the ram caught in the thicket by the horns. Himself He gave our poor hearts to win. Was ever love Lord like thine from the paths of folly and shame and sin, and fill them with joys divine? And so Abraham came to the very point where he was willing to give up.
That which was dearest to him, that then the Lord came in, the Lord came in, and that Ram would speak of Christ. And I'd like to think of how after this in Abraham's life, he faced difficulties. In the next chapter, his wife died. In the next chapter. We know that the servant goes and chooses a bride for Isaac. But there were joys and sorrows in his life ahead. But it seemed to me after this he went through.
00:35:24
The circumstances in peace.
It isn't, it isn't that that was the end of his troubles, but he went through them in peace. And why did he go through them in peace? Because he had learned what it was to trust God to know that He was superior to every circumstance that he must be. And He wants to be to your heart and mind the dearest object. So the Lord called to Abraham the second time out of heaven, called him the second time, not this time to OfferUp his son, but notice.
What it says in the 15th verse, the Angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven, saying, The second time saying, By myself, I have I sworn, saith the Lord, For because thou hast done this thing, and hath not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, Yes, God call down and told Abraham.
That in blessing He would bless him.
But I also wanted to call attention to this fourteenth verse. And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah Jireh. If you have a margin, you'll notice that this means the Lord will provide. Where did he learn this?
Or you say, well, the Lord has been very good to me in my Christian life. Yes, and He's been good to me. But where did Abraham learn this? It was when he was called upon to offer up the dearest object that he had here upon earth, when he was called upon to make the greatest sacrifice of his whole life of faith. And there he learned the Lord will provide.
And so I say to you, dear.
Young people, the Lord knows what it costs to follow Him, and I can't stand here and promise you that in following Him things are going to work out smoothly. I can't stand here and promise you that the things that you desire the most are all going to work out so smoothly and nicely. You may read this in books and novels that are written by men, but in real life and in the Bible it doesn't seem to work that way, does it?
But in in the Bible, what God teaches us is that when he removes these things on which we lean, when he removes those hopes that we have, it's because he wants to be everything to our souls. And I don't believe we can ever say with real meaning the Lord will provide until we have come to the place where he tests us, where he brings us to the place.
Where he takes something that perhaps is the nearest and dearest to us and then says to us, Am I enough to fill your heart when that's gone? Am I enough to satisfy you when all those other things have failed? And can our hearts respond and say, Jesus, thou art enough the mind and heart to fill thy patient life, to calm the soul, thy love, its fear dispel as.
Into your faces, dear young people, and I know that life is ahead of you and I know that it's not going to become easier. It's going to become more difficult. Oh, I long that your hearts would be really and truly one for Christ. I don't mean that you should be saved because I believe most of you are saved. I'm speaking to those that love the Lord. But all what my desire is that Christ would be everything to you.
You'll never, never have a happy Christian life.
Unless you realize that Christ is enough to fill and satisfy your heart, and that no matter what else may fail, no matter who else may fail, He is still the same. He loves you, He cares for you, and He seeks your blessing both now and for all eternity. But He is going to pass you through things that are going to loosen your tent pegs, if I can speak in that way that are going to make you.
Realize that things here fail, but it's only to make you lean harder upon Him, to prove more that He is sufficient, until you can say with meaning in your heart, the Lord will provide. And where did Abraham learn that? He learned that at the place where earthly things seemed to fail. And there he said, the Lord provides. The Lord provides. And so if he's brought you to this point where your hopes are doused on the third day, you see the place.
00:40:15
Far off and you're faced with a great decision. May the Lord give you grace to step forward. You have to leave the world behind and step forward and go to the place and say he's sufficient. He will not fail you. Dear young person, He's enough and he can give you the strength. And when in his presence you review your life, you look back and call the place where you learned that lesson the dearest and sweetest place in your whole Christian experience. May those words.
Be more real to us in life. The Lord will provide.