This sermon delves into the importance of surrendering to God, using the story of Abraham and Isaac as a focal point. It emphasizes the need for total surrender, faith, and obedience to God's authority, highlighting the spiritual warfare that believers face and the victory found in Christ. The sermon also touches on the significance of Isaac as a man of prayer, total surrender, and seeking the Holy Spirit's leading in life.

Thank you for coming out on this nice, warm Wisconsin morning. I was, as I said last night, raised in Louisiana, and we didn't quite have stuff like this. But I lived in Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado for about almost 25 years, so I know what it's like. Let's pray. Our Father, thank you for this beautiful day. This is a day that the Lord had made, and we will rejoice and be glad in it. We thank you for the sun that's shining. That helps out a little bit. And now, Father, we ask that you would have mercy upon us this morning and that you would meet with us. Now, thank you, Lord, that you just reminded me, as I asked you if you had something to say to me, and you said, without me you can do nothing. Thank you for that reminder, and that is true. Without you, we can do nothing, and so we can't have a meeting here of any profitable effect unless you meet with us. We thank you that you love us. We thank you that you died on the cross for our sins. We thank you that at Calvary, you secured our salvation, and you defeated the enemy, and we thank you for that. And now, I ask that your word would accomplish that, would you please, that you would help me to share what I should and not share what I shouldn't. And I pray for any that are without Christ here today or maybe someday watching one of these DVDs. And now, Father, we thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, I think I'll start off reading another little bit from Brother Ganahl. This whole book, it's just really powerful. You should find great strength and encouragement in the knowledge that your commission is divine. God himself underwrites your battle and has appointed his own son the captain of your salvation, Hebrews 2.10. He will lead you on to the field with courage and bring you off with honor. He lived and died for you. He will live and die with you. His mercy and tenderness to his soldiers is unmatched. Historians tell us Trajan tore his own clothes to bind up his soldiers' wounds. The Bible tells us Christ poured out his very blood as balm to heal his saints' wounds. His flesh was torn to bind them up. For bravery none compares with our Lord. He never turned his head from danger, not even when hell's hatred and heaven's justice appeared against him. Knowing all that was about to happen, Jesus went forth and said, Whom seek ye? Satan could not overcome him. Our Savior never lost a battle, not even when he lost his life. He won the victory carrying his spoils to heaven in the triumphant chariot of his ascension. There he makes an open show of them to the unspeakable joy of saints and angels. As part of Christ's army, you march in the ranks of gallant spirits. Every one of your fellow soldiers is the child of a king. Some, like you, are in the midst of battle, besieged on every side by affliction and temptation. Others, after many assaults, repulses, and rallyings of their faith, are already standing upon the wall of heaven as conquerors. From there they look down and urge you, their comrades on earth, to march up the hill after them. That is their cry. Fight to the death, and the city is your own, as now it is ours. For the waging of a few days' conflict, you will be rewarded with heaven's glory. One moment of this celestial joy will dry up all your tears, heal all your wounds, and erase the sharpness of the fight with all the joy of your permanent victory. Every chapter, every page is full. Now, the subject that I'm supposed to cover is warfare, and I just want to read a few verses to show you that the Bible does talk about this subject. Exodus 14, 14, which is a good one. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. One of the things hard for us to do in battles is to be still. Above all, taking the shield of faith wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked. How many times the enemy gets in because we drop our shield of faith, and the fiery darts come in. It is a real battle, just as real as any battle out there in the world, this battle, the spiritual battle. Another verse, 2 Timothy 2, 3, 4. Thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. Verse 4. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. Luke 10, 19, and 20. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. 2 Corinthians 10, 3 through 6, which is a major passage as far as I'm concerned for us. For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalted itself against the knowledge of God, and bring it into captivity, every thought to the obedience of Christ, and having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled. Give us help from trouble, Psalms 108, 12, and 13, for vain is the help of man. Through God we shall do valiantly, for he it is that shall tread down our enemies. Psalms 44, 5. Through thee will we push down our enemies, through thy name will we tread them under that rise up against us, for I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me. Just a few verses. Last night, I didn't get to Jacob. Hopefully I'll get there today, but I think for sources, our outline beginning sources, and we covered the beginning lessons and concluding statements, and this morning I'm probably going to go into Abraham's life a little bit more. There's something there I think I should cover in a little bit more detail. We'll see how it goes, but I'm building the foundation for spiritual warfare from the beginning in the book of Genesis, and the war goes all the way through the Bible, and we'll see where we go, how we end up. I was just thinking of a story, how sometimes we try to handle things ourself, but like I said last night, when I was in the Air Force, I was stationed back in Omaha, and that's where a Bible college was that I started attending part-time. When I got out, I kept going full-time, but I was just beginning to share Christ, learn how to share Christ. The man that discipled me, he is still going. He has trained hundreds of missionaries and pastors over these last 40-something years, and he had discipled me, and we memorized Scripture, and I was learning the Bible from him over in Turkey, Izmir, Turkey, Smyrna. It was actually 17 miles from that church, one of the seven churches, and we memorized Scripture, and then we tried to witness. I was just beginning, and I just remembered a couple more stories happened over there, how you can have warfare. I'll just go ahead and share these with you. One of the things that happened, I was raised in a Southern Baptist church down in the South, and there was a Southern Baptist chaplain there, and not all good chaplains are good, but we had a little Bible study going twice a week in our dorm, and we would sit around. We memorized Scripture, check each other, going through some little Bible study books, and we got called in by the chaplain one time, and he said, I hear you guys have a Bible study in the dorm, and he said, you're going to have to stop it, and we said, stop it? He said, hey chaplain, these guys have beer parties. They tear the dorm from one end to the other. They tear it apart. They riot. They're wild. We just have a little quiet Bible study with a few of us in a room. Well, he said, well, I'll tell you what, boys. You can keep having your Bible study if I can get credit for starting it. It's helping make more rank. You think that? You're crazy. You're kidding. Matter of fact, I was teaching a Sunday school class in the chapel, and one kid, we were going through, I think we hit drinking, and he said, hey, the chaplain goes over to the officers club and drinks all the time over there. What do you think about that? Oh, brother. Same chaplain, and then a little bit later on, there was nothing to do over there but go to the snack bar or go to the movie or go bowl unless you're going to go on a tour and go sightsee around the country, and so we started working with the young people there. There was nothing for them to do. They might get on the bus and go downtown or something to Izmir, and so we started working with them, teaching them the word, doing some activities with them, and we got a call in again from the chaplain, and he said, boys, it's over. You can't work with these young people anymore. They said, what? We're just teaching them the word and working with them, trying to keep them off the streets and give them some stuff to do, some activities. They're having a great time. He said, I'm sorry, boys. It's over. You're not going to do it anymore, and you see how the enemy will work against you, and many times you don't even know it. You don't even think about it, but it's a battle that goes on continually. Somebody said if we could see what's going on with these spirits, it'd scare us to death, but so we asked a question. Well, why? He said, well, the base commander's wife doesn't want you guys around her daughter, and she told me if I wanted to make any rank to stop it. It's over, boys. That's my beginning of learning some things about this, and when I got back to Omaha, and I was just learning. I had been working on the gospel, and I was training another. I refueled planes. I was training another young man, and so I built up enough courage to share the gospel with him, and so we went out, and we refueled the general of the Air Force, the top general in the Air Force, his plane, and we're sitting there, and I said, okay, I'm going to share the gospel with him, so I shared the gospel with Steve, and I said, you want to get saved? You want to give your life to Christ? He says, yeah. I said, you do, and he got saved. Later, followed the Lord, was baptized, and last I heard, he was going on with the Lord, but I got back, and the boss, the sergeant, he was the meanest, toughest guy. Reminds me of one of them gorillas. He called, hey, what you been doing? We're a little bit late. If I said, oh, well, we swung over to the club and picked up a few beers, he said, where's mine? He said, but I said, well, I was sharing the gospel with Steve out there a little bit, and boy, he just, I could see the devil coming right out of him. I mean, he got mad, really mad. Now, like I said, if I'd said, we went over there and got a few beers at the club, you know, he said, that's fine, where's mine? But the enemy was there, and he pulled me out into the hangar, and he began to chew me up one side and down the other, and just then he began to use the Lord's name on me, and I said, wait, you can do whatever you want, but you can't use my Savior's name against me. He said, I'm going to take you tomorrow morning, and I'm going to get you court-martialed. You tell me the devil doesn't like you to share the gospel? That's the first one, and I don't know how many since then, but that was my first one, and I'm just scared to death, and so I went home back to my apartment, and you know what I did? I prayed all night. I don't do that very often, but I prayed most all the night. I come back the next morning, that sergeant, he'd come over to me, he took me back out into the hangar, and he had his tail stuck between his legs like a little puppy, and he was all beat to pieces. God must, I don't know what God did to him that night, but he was all beat up. He apologized to me, said he was sorry, and from that time on, no one dared do anything against me. He would protect me, anything he could do to help me out. God answered prayer. The devil, you have the victory every time you get into a battle. You have the victory. You just have to do what it says in the Bible, stand versus the devil. All right, let's see if I can get over close to the Word of God here this morning, and see where we're going to go. Watchman Nee said, God put Adam under authority. Last night, we spent most of our time over there in the beginning of Genesis. God put Adam under authority that he might learn obedience. Failed his lesson. God put all under Adam, creation, and Eve. Eve came out from under the head, taking her covering off, so when she was under Adam, she was protected. Adam's under God, he's protected, but when she come out from under him, she come out from under authority, and guess who moves in whenever we get out from under God's ordained authority? The enemy comes in, and so got us into a lot of trouble too. To rebel against God's representative authority was to rebel against God, so when she rebelled against what Adam had told her, then she rebelled against God, and so as our obedience increases, Nee said, our actions decrease. In other words, our self-will goes down as our obedience to God goes up, our self-will, living for self, goes down, and God's activity or God's work increases in our life. That's why many times we don't see much of God working in our life, because God's just there, but he's not, he's not, he's just prominent, but he's not preeminent, and God has to be preeminent first in our life, so to learn about victory, to learn right and wrong, this is what the devil drew man into, learning about right and wrong, they were innocent, and so to draw them into right and wrong was to move them outside of God's will. God doesn't want us knowing about all this evil out here, it's a horrible life, it's a horrible world that our children have to grow up in now, you know, I'm 68 years old, and it was not too good when I was in the 50s and 60s, but we had no idea it'd be so bad now, and so we have to really protect our kids, it's really bad. Now, redemption is to bring us back to the place where we find right and wrong in Christ and not in ourself, so when we receive the Spirit of God, the Spirit of God himself will check us and teaches us right and wrong. All right, this section here, I'd like to go through with it, but it's actually starting in Genesis 11 and going down through Genesis 25, and I got a whole list of those that honored God and dishonored. I got honor, honor, dishonor, dishonored from different ones, chapter 12, 13, 14, 15, going on down through there. In the life of Abraham, Abraham dishonored God many times, whenever we dishonored God, we're out from under his authority, we're disobedient, we're bad, but the latter part of his life, getting down there, it's just in Abraham, it was honor, honoring, honor, honor, honor, honor. He had enough scars and wounds, and it didn't pay to disobey. There's a song, one of our friends and one of my professors, we had a wonderful time together, and as a matter of fact, we're going to go try to see him over here in Minnesota next week, but he taught us this song about Jonah, and I'm not going to sing it for you, but it was about Jonah. When God tells you what to do, you better do it, you better do it. It doesn't pay to disobey, there's another way to it and things like that, and about Jonah. Now, let's go into some scriptures, I might bounce around a little bit, I'm going to go back over to Genesis, we're going to stay there, I don't have beginning sources, being a friend of God, might cover a little bit about Abraham being a friend of God. I want to get to Jacob, I don't know when I'll get to Jacob, but that's my goal, to get into the life of Jacob, and then we've set the foundation, and then we can go learn other things. There's some lessons that are light, there's some lessons that get pretty deep in the area of spiritual warfare, and I'm not any professional or nothing like that, I just pastored a little church and had a lot of wars, made lots of mistakes, got a lot of battles that I've gone through, got some right now that we're going through. One thing I've learned in these things, and I'm really good at bunny trails, if you hadn't noticed, is that one thing when I've asked God to teach me about churches, I'm traveling around, driving here, flying there, and I'm learning these things, and I've put my list. One of the things, the first thing it says, every church is somebody's kingdom. If God is not there, and Christ is not head of the churches, he's supposed to be the head, and the Holy Spirit is working, but one of the things there was that you had to have, we have to have unity, we have to have one accord, we have to have that. If we don't have that, then ground's given to Satan, and so I've learned I have to have that in my fellowship, and I'm thankful for a little church that we're a part of, where they love us, and I've learned that is one thing you cannot do without. It's just like with a little child, you tell him to do something, he says no, well, wait till your dad gets home. Maybe mom better go ahead and deal with that right there, but we have to have that. That's a powerful thing to have, and in our home, the enemy wants to divide. If we get over into that area, dividing is one of his main weapons. So, I've got this list of things, put it on the altar, that's one of the things that Satan wants us to do, is hang on to something, and we get into the life of David. I want to share the gospel a little bit with you, not David, but Abraham, about putting it on the altar. You see, if he had not put Isaac on the altar, Isaac would have been his idol, and God comes along, and he says drop it. Now, when we were out in Wyoming, in the first church that I pastored, between us, where we lived, and the church a couple blocks away, there was a man that ran a rock quarry, and I'd visit with him every now and then. One day, he was needing a little extra help, asked me if I could help him, and I said, yeah, sure. So, I went out there and helped him, and he did it again. I helped him, and so he'd call me every now and then, and I'd go help him out there at the rock quarry. I worked with the guy that did the dynamite, and so one time, he said, well, listen, if you ever need any little extra income, you just come on out here and work, and so it got to be where I was trekking out there pretty often, because it was pretty good money, and we didn't get maybe that much. We lived okay, but then the Lord came along one day, and he said, drop it. Yes, sir. You see, inside of us, we have desires. Men have desires to work, and then we have desires to make money, and they're legitimate. That's a legitimate thing, but that can become an idol, and so when God says, put it on the altar, we better do it, and so he tasked us. So, um, submission. Here's Abraham. I'm going to go to Genesis 15, 6. You might think, you're ever going to go anywhere. Who knows? We'll see. Um, 15, 6. I'm glad you're familiar with most of these things, but in 15, 6, God had just revealed to Abraham. He gave him what we call the Abrahamic covenant. He said, one, I am thy shield, thy exceeding great reward, and then Abraham had said, and two, Lord God, what wilt thou give me? See, and I go childless, and the steward of my house is this Eleazar of Damascus, and Abraham said, behold, to me thou hast given no seed, and lo, one born in my house is mine heir, and behold, the word of the Lord came unto him, saying, this shall not be thine heir, but he that shall come forth out of thine own bow shall be thine heir. And he brought him forth abroad and said, look now toward heaven and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them. And he said unto him, so shall thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness, a key principle for life. Matter of fact, without it, you won't be saved. You won't go to heaven if you don't believe. So many people prayed prayers and think they're saved, even told they're saved and whatever, but unless they have faith and they're really trusting the blood of Christ to cover their sins, and when we do that, some kind of miracle happens and we're born again, God comes in. But without faith, it's impossible to please him. Without faith, we can't get saved. So here is a lesson on this. Submission to authority is the key act of faith. And we get into warfare, if you believe you're beaten, you are. If you believe you have the victory, you do. And the devil is always trying to beat us down and put doubt in there, yea hath God said, and all these things. When we get into the different battles, Matthew Henry said, the more honor and favor God confers upon us, the lower we should be in our own eyes, and the more reverent and submissive before God. So the more victories we have, the lower we should go, realizing that God gave us. Remember when the disciples came back and said, Lord, even the demons are subject to us. He said, don't gloat about that. Don't, don't, don't focus on that. Focus on the fact that your names are written in heaven. He said, go down, stay low, and God gives you the victory. Matter of fact, when we get victories, the enemy comes right back in, right behind the victory and tries to nail us again. We probably, I don't know if we'll talk about pride much. We probably know enough about that to know that gets us into a lot of trouble. But what Abraham do, and he went off. So God had this relationship with Abraham. And 17, after God was done to him, he took him through the covenant where he split the animals and all these things like this. But Jesus talked about these things with Abraham. He said, your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. And he saw it and was glad. Think about this. Abraham is getting the picture that there's a Messiah coming and Isaac's going to be the type of the Messiah. And so Abraham, he saw heaven in the promise of Canaan and he saw Christ in the promise of Isaac. Somebody said this. And so God wants us to see Christ. And once, once we see Christ as our savior, we see Christ is also our victor. And so as we go into the battles of life, Romans 4, 20, he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, strong in faith, giving glory to God. Genesis 18, 14, moving on back over here in Abraham a little bit. 18, 14, is anything too hard for the Lord at the appointed time? I will return unto thee according to the time of life and Sarah will have a son. Well, we went through this thing and he, he's telling Abraham he's going to have a baby. Sarah overhears it and she's got a laugh. Now, Matthew Henry said it was a laughter of delight. I don't think so. She wouldn't have gotten reproved, but it was a laughter of doubt. Now she's old, he's old, but here's the principle that God wants us to continue to learn. Submit to authority. As a matter of fact, someone said submission to authority is the key to learning. We obey first and understand later. Abraham, take your son and sacrifice him. He didn't understand that, but he's going to obey and then he's going to understand later. Listen to what Ann Sullivan, who tutored Helen Keller, said. I saw clearly that it was useless to try to teach her language or anything else until she learned to obey me. I have thought about it a great deal and the more I think, the more certain I am that obedience is the gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of a child. So, obedience is the gateway. It's a gateway to victory. Submission to authority is the key to intimacy with God and there's where we come to Abraham. He becomes the friend of God because he would obey God and he walks with God. When I graduated from college, I was a senior class vice president and the president gave the senior speech and he said something, I think he got it from Tozer, but he said, he who walks with God walks with God alone. So many times we want crutches. We want to lean on somebody else or lean on this or what, but God wants you to walk with him and he wants to bring you into an intimate relationship with him and one of the tools he uses is like old Boo. Boo was a bad boy. I made him stay home. I showed one little girl last night. She wanted to take him home. I said, oh, but anyway, the enemy is going to be used by God to push us close to him. So, whenever things come in, there's a key principle we need to learn. We gaze at the circumstance or gaze at what's happening, but we come back and I mean, we glance at the thing like that and we keep our gaze on God. Satan wants us to keep our gaze on the circumstance, the problem, or whatever, and the more you look at it, the bigger it gets. He's an exaggeration. Remember a story about Otto Koenig. Anybody ever heard of Otto Koenig? A lot of you. You remember the story how his wife had some kind of physical problem, whatever, and he thought she was going to die and then he took and took authority over her, rebuked Satan. If he had anything to do with this and all of a sudden the pain just went down to a little pain. So, he exaggerates these things. We have to keep our focus on God all the time. When we had our revival in 1985, the evangelists started and he heard news that his brother got hit in the face with a baseball bat and he recognized because he had had enough warfare that this is just a distraction from the enemy and so then we go to prayer on it. Submission to authority is the key to intimacy with God. I think I'm going to take you back over to Genesis 22. We talked about this last night a little bit. I was going all over the place, but Isaac, here's submission to authority is the key to intimacy with God. In Genesis 22, and you know this, Isaac is a type of Christ. He had a miraculous birth. He's a type of faith. He came by belief. Abraham had to believe it. I mean, when your mom and dad are so old, it was a miraculous birth and God does things like that. Nothing's too hard for him. And also, Isaac was a type of the gospel of the cross and the grace. Some people, you know, when Nicodemus came to Jesus and he said, are thou a ruler of Israel? And you don't know anything. He's sharing the gospel with him. You must be born again. The gospel is through the Old Testament all through there. It's there. And this is one of the types of the gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection. Abraham was a fanatic for God. He takes the knife. He believes God's going to raise him from the dead. That's what Hebrews says. And this is what got God so excited. Take thine son, thine only son. And the key to intimacy, sanctification of the son for the sacrifice. He went into the place Moriah, which means scene of Yah. And here's a principle in that. In verse 5, Abraham said unto his young men, abide ye here with the ass. I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again to you. So we're coming back. He had all the promises of God were in Isaac. Now God has given you some opportunities to maybe be stretched. Maybe you're going through a stretching right now. All the promises of God are for you. All the devil wants to do is knock your faith down into the dust all the time. They had got said, look, you got this job. You quit your job. You'll never get a job. That was a stupid thing to do. And all this stuff and all these things. So here's Abraham going there and he's going to sacrifice his son. And he has the two men there, the two witnesses. They didn't go there and actually see what happened. But here's the principle. All actions of God toward us are premeditated. All the actions that God have for us, all the things that come into your life are thought through. This wasn't just, Hey, I think today I'll take over him and I'll really test him. No, this was a premeditated plan for Abraham. God has a plan for you. He knows your thoughts. He knows what he's going to do in your life. And it's like, you know, I like to think my life has been straight down the path. It's like, you ever play golf? Back when I was a kid, I played golf. And five years ago, I think or six, I played a golf game. But when I played golf and I hit the ball and I don't do it very often, it's that way or that way or that way. And so I played two rounds in one, you know? So we'd like to say I am walking down the straight path. No, it doesn't work like that. We get drawn off here in the ditch and then we come back over and sometimes we overcorrect. And so our path is like a zigzag. It doesn't matter that you fail or you fail. God will pick you up and bring you back. It doesn't matter. You know the thing about, here's the, here's about maturity. Maturity is only the amount of time that you stay down. In maturity, we stay down, we kick ourself. We say, why did I do that? And we might stay down for months or weeks or whatever. But a mature believer really can recognize it. Boy, I sinned. The devil got me. And he can do that in a second, in a second. It's the amount of time you stay down. And we might get knocked down, but not knocked out. Paul talked about these things, how he got hit all the time. So the, the working of God in Abraham's life was a premeditated thing. And he had the two younger men there. And you think about, you had the Isaac, you had the Isaac and Ishmael. Later on, you have the Jacob and the Esau. And it just seems like you always have the black and the white, the bad and the good going together. Now he takes them to the place. The place, I've got a little statement here. The place, Moriah, is where God meets with you at the cross. It might be when you got saved or later on, you have some kind of crisis at the cross, is where God is going to bring you to the cross. And many people like the young rich ruler, when he come and he wanted to go to heaven and Jesus said, okay, go sell all that you have, give it to the poor and come follow me. That was a cross. At the cross, you make a decision of who you were really going to love and who you're going to really follow. And the enemy seems to be always there. Hey, if you give all your money away, one, you're going to look stupid. And two, how are you going to live when you get old? If you follow this man, if you follow this man called Jesus, you're not going to be old. And we don't know how it turned out, do we? It's almost like God says, you're the young rich ruler. Are you willing? Are you willing to give it all? Jesus gave his all. Will we give our all? So the place is where God meets you at the cross. They have the wood and the fire, verse five, and they have the knife and there's the three hours of, of darkness. He had three days to go there. And Jesus had the three hours of darkness. God shrouded Christ because that was a very intimate time where Christ is paying for our sins on the cross. And the father forsook him. He said, my, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? He had to turn his back because Jesus took all of our sins upon him. I can't imagine what he did, but he, he, all our sins were put upon him and, and God, the father turned his back on him. And at this point now in Abraham's life, it's like, it's the darkest hour of his life too, but he's going up Mount Moriah. He's going, he's got the knife and they got the wood and they got the fire and Isaac notices there's no sacrifice. And of course we know when they came to the place in verse nine, God told him up and Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar of the wood. And Abraham stretched forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son. One of the key things in this whole passage is Abraham had told Isaac, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. So they went both of them together and we know that that's a double type. God will provide himself as the lamb for a burnt offering. When God tests you, and this is a testing for Abraham, like nobody ever had, and I talked about this like, like this, it's like a dark cloud would come over your life sometimes and there'll be like no hope. And these fiery darts come in. If we drop our shield of faith, we can really get burnt. And so here he is, when God takes you into the thick cloud, what is God doing to Abraham? I mean, all the promises, what is God doing to him? And you know, when Jesus was going through Gethsemane and he's going, you got the demons all the time throwing these thoughts and mocking and everything. Here's the principle here from this. When God takes you into the thick cloud, when God takes you through the deep waters, when God takes you through a fiery furnace or whatever, it is to separate you unto himself. When Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego come out of the fire, let me tell you what, they had a testimony of walking with Jesus because there were four in the fire, wasn't there? You'll always come out better through your trial when you come out by faith. You got to go in by faith, you got to stay in by faith, and you got to come out by faith. Abraham is known as a man of faith. And so this was his crucifixion. I just was thinking about going back over to Romans, and maybe I will at this point, so then we'll move on over to another section. But I'm going to go back to Romans 3. Romans 3, 4, and 5 are so full of rich stuff. Romans 3, this one I want to show you, the gospel was there, we don't want to miss that. If you don't know if you're saved, if you don't know if you die today, where you go you got doubt, and that's what happened to me. When I'm 17, 18, I'd lay in bed and say, I'm not sure, my good deeds outweigh my bad deeds. You know, I hadn't, dad has said I've been a rebel, and I had some doubt. I was supposed to have been saved at 10, but I had some doubt. I wasn't quite sure. I hadn't got this figured out. It didn't matter how many deeds I did. That's not the issue. The issue is that Christ died on the cross for my sins, and he paid. There's no way I could ever work enough to earn my salvation or to keep my salvation. You just, for by grace you save through faith, that not of yourselves, it's the gift of God. You got to receive the gift by faith. There's only two things you do with a gift. You receive it or you don't receive it. You try to pay for it with one penny, then you have helped earn it. And I didn't know that at that point. Now look at the scripture in Romans 3, 21 through 26. Later on, we'll come back on some more principles, but just, I just want you to see the beauty of the gospel here. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteous of God, which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that work for it. If you've got a Bible that says something like that, you need to get rid of it. Because the Bible says upon all them that believe, all them that believe, for there's no difference for all have sinned and all comes and come short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation, that's the word for a mercy seat, where we get mercy. We go to the mercy seat to get mercy from God, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God to declare, I say at this time, his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of him which believeth. Salvation is you seeing by faith that Christ died on the cross for your sins, and you are repentant of yourself, your self-effort, your sin, and everything about yourself, and you by faith will place your soul in the hands of God, and you will believe what he said, that he died on the cross for your sins. It's by faith. So many have, you know, they want to walk the aisle and pray a prayer, okay, I'm saved, I'm saved, but they never really had faith in the blood of Christ, and all they've got is this memory of walking the aisle or whatever, and that's what I did. I had walked the aisle and prayed a prayer. I didn't even remember praying the prayer. Mom and Dad took me to the pastor, but this is the gospel, so when Abraham is taking Isaac up there and putting him on the altar, this is all to show us the gospel. Now, all the way through the Bible and all the way through our life, the enemy is always there to oppose the gospel and to oppose us and anything he can mean, so God would provide the sacrifice, and he himself would be the sacrifice, and that was the lesson there. In case, let me give you, go over to Galatians 3. I'll give you one more passage back here to share the gospel with people. Romans, if you just read through Romans 3, 4, and 5 with lost people, it might help just to read through there, and also Galatians 3, 8 through 13 is another good passage just to show, because so many people, they want to trust law or they want to trust their good works or their traditions or whatever, but Romans 3, verse 8, and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith preached before the gospel unto Abraham. Abraham is seeing the gospel. He is being involved in doing the gospel, saying, in thee shall all nations be blessed, so then they which be of faith are blessed with faith for Abraham, for as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse, for it is written, curses everyone that continueth not in all the things which are written in the book of the law to do them. And you think about the Jews had the law, and the law was all that was was a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ, but they never got past the law to Christ, a lot of them, and of course they died in their sins, for as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse in 10 and 11, but that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God is evident, for the just shall live by faith, and the law is not of faith, but the man that doeth them shall live in them. Christ had redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us, that is written, curse of everyone that hangeth on the tree. All right, I think at this point I'm going to move on and close up on this and ask a question. What is God after in your life? Whatever God is after in your life, the enemy is against it, and God's after something in your life. He's always working to get us conformed more to the image of Christ. I don't think he's ever sitting and saying, okay, that's good, that's good enough. No, he's going to keep working on us until Jesus, until we look like Jesus. I was, when we had a revival, we went to a conference in Ellery, Ohio, and another buddy preacher of mine in that first church, we were there, and across the platform walked a man, Bill Orr, and I'll never forget what what Wes said. He said, there goes Jesus, and wherever that man went, Jesus went. They call him the singing postman, and the children that followed him and flocked to him like, like he was Jesus, and he was just filled with Jesus. Wouldn't you like to be like that? It takes some process. God took so many years of Abraham's life to fulfill his will, and you know, he had to give up his dreams and the death to his vision and just submit to God and all of this. So submission to God's authority was key to intimacy with God. You have to let him have his way with thee. I'm a rebel at heart. I'd like to have my way, but I'm learning it's best to let God have his way. Okay, I'm gonna probably skip over here. I don't know what time we started here. Maybe this would be a good place for a break, because I'm going to jump into Isaac a little bit. Maybe we'll just do that, and I'm going to share with you why Isaac is so important in the area of spiritual warfare. He's a type, he's a type of Christ, obviously. Here's Isaac for just a little bit of introduction. He's gentle. He's mild. He's meek. He's more a shepherd like Christ. He's not a warrior except over wells, and we maybe should talk about the wells, because there's a lot of spiritual warfare lessons there. He wasn't perfect because he did what his father did. He went there and had fear. Abraham had a half lie. He had a full lie about his wife and got into trouble, but he was a child of promise. Galatians 4.28, I think it is, about Isaac. There are spiritual principles in his life that we can learn. He had less of Abraham's triumphs and less of Jacob's failures, one author said. So, he's sort of in between these two. He represents sonship, obedience, Hebrews 5.8. He had the wealth of his father Abraham passed upon him. His wife bare him no children. He had struggles there, and Rebecca, and we had Rebecca and Rachel on the line going down through there. He had just one wife. He did a little bit better there. He had spiritual desires also. He was a man of prayer, Genesis 24. Someone said they wondered when Abraham was done at the altar if Isaac didn't stay there and worship God himself. Genesis 22.19, I had a note there for that, but just some thoughts. You think about it. He represents the surrendered life. He could have been maybe 17 years old, whatever. I mean, are you going to let your dad tie you up, put you on a pile of sticks, and raise a knife over you? Hey, my dad has gone wacko. I'm out of here. What are you going to do with that rope, dad? Where's the sacrifice? You're it, son. I mean, talk about faith. There was some faith in Isaac. You have to die to yourself, total surrender. He was a man of total surrender in that area. Abraham had the altars, and Isaac had the altars too. He was a man that seeks the Holy Spirit's leading. Going into Romans 8, he was a man after the Spirit. Romans 8.4, after the Spirit. We're going to come back after a little break and look into his life a little bit. Eventually, we'll get to Jacob. Now, I'm more like Jacob. Oh, wow. He must have been a Cajun. My dad was full of friends from South Louisiana. My mom was from Arkansas, had a lot of Germans. Her dad was a Snyderan, but there's enough of that. Wow, French. You know the Cajuns. My grandmother's side come from Acadia, Nova Scotia, with the strong French. If you mix the French with the Indians down there, you come up with a wild breed, but Acadian. I got an excuse. Do you? We're going to come back to this man, Isaac, after our little break, and look at God, how God works in his life, and how the enemy is always there. Matter of fact, there's a study going through the Bible showing God's move and Satan's counter move, then God's move all the way through. It's an interesting study to go all the way through and see. You see, God is interested in winning souls. God is interested in you getting saved. He's interested in us being used to save souls. The whole thing is the battle for souls through the Bible, and so the warfare goes on, but God's given us a victory. Let's stand and have a closing prayer, and we'll take a few minutes for a break, about 10 minutes maybe, and then we'll come back. Father, thank you for these lessons. These are just simple lessons, but I pray that as we move on and we go through this, that your Word would accomplish that which you please. Father, we have some rough battles going on in our country and in this world, and maybe in our hearts, and maybe in our families, and you want us to be the victor. You want us to stand. You don't want us to be turning our back and running, and we get shot in the back because there's no armor back there, and you want us to understand our position in Christ and how powerful we are in Christ, and I pray now your blessing on what we just had, and then bless our break here in Jesus' name. Amen.