Our heads are numbered by You, Lord. Your eye is on the sparrow, and I know You watch over me. That is our testimony, Lord, through all of our life and our journey. Your eye has been on this little sparrow.
Lord, You have witnessed all of our trials and tribulations, and yet, Lord, You have guided us through them all. And Lord, we come to this point in our life this morning: Your return is soon. Lord, You need to take this sparrow one more step.
I just pray, Lord, that You will enlighten us this morning; that, Lord, from Your Word, we will not only be encouraged, but changed and prepared for Your soon return. Indeed, Lord, Your eye is on the sparrow, and I know You watch me. Amen.
Well, the Lord gave me that song this morning. I am not sure—maybe it was just for me—but I share it with you as well.
Well, this morning, we have been studying the life of Abraham, and now the life of Isaac. Today, we actually come to the last major act in Isaac’s life. So I thought it would be good if I could just do a brief review of Isaac’s life, because the Lord really watched Isaac all his life and brought him through to the end.
There are some lessons that we need to learn from this life. Actually, there is not a whole lot said about Isaac’s life in the Word, but there is a tremendous amount accomplished in this man, and it needs to be accomplished in us as well. So let us take a quick tour through the life of Isaac.
Genesis 22:9-10
And they came to the place which God had told him of;
and Abraham built the 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.
Genesis 24:67
And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent,
and took Rebekah, and she became his wife.
Genesis 25:5
And Abraham gave all that he had unto Isaac.
Genesis 25:11
And it came to pass after the death of Abraham,
that God blessed Isaac his son;
and Isaac dwelt by Beer-lahai-roi.
Genesis 25:23
And the Lord said unto her,
Two nations are in thy womb,
and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels;
and the one people shall be stronger than the other people;
and the elder shall serve the younger.
Genesis 25:28
And Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison;
but Rebekah loved Jacob.
Genesis 27:1-4
And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old,
and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see,
he called Esau his elder son, and said unto him, My son:
and he said unto him, Here am I.
And he said, Behold now, I am old,
I know not the day of my death.
Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow,
and go out to the field, and take me venison;
and make me savoury meat, such as I love,
and bring it to me, that I may eat;
that my soul may bless thee before I die.
This is after Jacob tricked his father into having him blessed, and you all remember that story.
Genesis 27:34-36
And when Esau heard the words of his father,
he cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry,
and said unto his father, Bless me, even me also, O my father.
And he said, Thy brother came with guile,
and hath taken away thy blessing.
And he said, Is not he rightly named Jacob?
for he hath supplanted me these two times:
he took away my birthright;
and, behold, now he hath taken away my blessing.
And he said, Hast thou not reserved a blessing for me?
Genesis 27:46
And Rebekah said to Isaac,
I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth:
if Jacob take a wife of the daughters of Heth,
such as these, of the daughters of the land,
what good shall my life do me?
Genesis 28:1-4
And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him,
and charged him, and said unto him,
Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.
Arise, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel thy mother’s father;
and take thee a wife from thence of the daughters of Laban thy mother’s brother.
And God Almighty bless thee,
and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee,
that thou mayest be a company of peoples;
and give thee the blessing of Abraham,
to thee, and to thy seed with thee;
that thou mayest inherit the land of thy sojournings,
which God gave unto Abraham.
These are the key events in our brother’s life. There are two major things that affected his entire life.
The first was when he was probably somewhere between the age of twenty-eight and thirty-five. We are not sure. His father went up to Mount Moriah, and he told his son that he was going to offer him as a sacrifice to the Lord.
Interestingly enough, Isaac did not run from that altar. But he submitted entirely to his father because he loved his father so much. He willingly went to the altar.
We know the story of how his father raised a knife to slay him. Yet Isaac resisted not and would have taken the knife, except the Lord spoke to Abraham and stopped him.
Brothers and sisters, what our brother experienced was a tremendous revelation of the cross of Calvary. We know that this speaks of the cross, where the Father sent our Lord Jesus to this earth to redeem man, and the Lord Jesus willingly went to the cross of Calvary.
As He hung there and the dark hours passed over His heart, for three hours darkness came. At one point He said, “My Father, My Father, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Then the judging hand of the Lord did not hold back the knife, but He crushed His own Son on the cross of Calvary because of your sin and my sin—because of His great desire, through the work of the cross, to redeem man and restore man from his fallen and lost condition.
That was our condition, brothers and sisters. So actually, this great key event in Isaac’s life is Calvary, the key to your life. Is it not because of Calvary you are now a son of the living God? Is it not because of Calvary your sins are no longer a burden that cannot be shaken off, but have been lifted because of Calvary and the price that the Lord Jesus paid in His blood for your sins?
Even the guilt, the Lord takes. What a tremendous event in Isaac’s life. Brothers and sisters, shall we never forget that tremendous event in our own life that we remembered at this table this morning, when the Lord died for our sins and that we might be redeemed.
The second great experience in Isaac’s life was Rebekah—the marriage to Rebekah. We remember the story of how his father said, “I want you to go out to the family and get a wife for Isaac.”
Eleazar went out, the servant representing the Holy Spirit, who worked in her heart to prepare her, bring her back, and present her to Isaac.
You know what is so amazing to me about that little story? The first love was obvious. They fell in love at the first sight of each other. Both their hearts had been totally prepared.
Is this not a story of God’s great purpose for His Son, of how He desires a bride for His Son? We, as the church, are to be His bride, brothers and sisters. Today, the Holy Spirit is at work. He is at work in our hearts to prepare us and bring us to that day when we will see our Lord and Savior face to face.
He will receive us as His bride. Two tremendous events so affected our brother’s life, and, brothers and sisters, affect our life. You see, this bride is a matter of God’s heart. This bride is a matter of what God desires—God’s great eternal purpose.
In His Son might inherit all things, and His Son might have this helpmate, this helpmate that will walk with Him through eternity, heart to heart, always in first love with each other. It is going to be an amazing venture that we will look forward to.
But these two events patterned our brother’s life, gave him the purpose of his life, and showed what God was after.
This tells us something: the cross and the bride. What it tells us, brothers and sisters, is that without the cross there can be no bride. Without the cross, there can be no bride. The cross had to come first, and then the bride.
It is through the work of the cross that the material—Christians born again into a new life, a new creation in Christ—is formed. That is what happens when we accept Christ: a new creation, proper material for the bride. Yet that material has to be built and formed into the body, into the temple of God, and eventually matured as a body that can become the bride of Christ.
It is imperative, brothers and sisters, that the cross be allowed to do its work in our life. Without the cross, no bride. It is essential that the cross be allowed to work on our self-life.
What is that? What is a self-life? Well, it is our likes, our dislikes, our opinions, our hopes, our dreams, our loves, and our desires. It wants to be preserved above all things—above all things.
And it must be laid on the altar: everything.
Sometimes we have to go through deep experiences with the Lord, where He brings us to that place where He says, “There is one more thing. One thing yet you lack.” That is what He said to the rich young ruler.
The ruler had come wanting to be a follower of the Lord, wanting to be His disciple, wanting to enter the kingdom of heaven. The Lord said, “One thing thou lackest: sell all thou hast, and come and follow Me.” And he went away sadly because self could not let go of what he had gained. He could not give it all up.
We are thankful that that Scripture goes on to say, as the disciples said, “Lord, who can ever do that?” Who can really give all up? Who can do that?
The Lord finally says, with man—with the self-life—it is impossible. It cannot give up. But with God, as our brother said this morning, all things are possible. It is because of Him in your life that it is possible.
So, is it possible to lay yourself on the altar? Yes. Isaac learned that lesson, and we too must learn that lesson. In order for God to have what He wants, the Isaac must go on the altar—the self-life.
The Holy Spirit must also be allowed to work on our natural life. Now, what is that? What is our natural life? It is our soul: our reasonings, our feelings, and our will.
We all seem to have a tendency to be strong in one or two areas. Some are really reasoners. If it does not reason the way they think, they have a hard time. Others are feelers: “It just does not feel right.” Others are those of a strong will: “If I will, I can do anything. I am strong enough. I can make it.”
Well, all these falter in being able to live the Christian life, brothers and sisters. These are your natural abilities that God has given you. It is the essence of your soul: the mind, the will, and the emotions.
He does not destroy it, but it does have to come under the work of the cross and be submissive to the Lord, to the Holy Spirit, to the spirit that is in you. The spirit needs to be in control, not the natural life.
“Lean not unto thine own understanding.” “Not My will, but Thine, be done.” “Father, do I have to drink this cup?” The natural life must come under the control of the spirit.
You know, I am going to tell you about your natural life: it wants to be the pilot, not the co-pilot.
I do not know if any of you all have been involved with flying. I know a few of you have. But I was on the flight test team of the C-5A. It was a ship we used to test the structural integrity of the airplane. We would go up and do all kinds of crazy maneuvers to overload the aircraft in different places in the wings and the fuselage.
I remember one time we took it up to about thirty-eight thousand feet. We were in the desert out in California. He nosed that thing over, hit the throttle full, and we started driving toward the desert floor just as fast as we could. Everything on the plane started shaking like crazy.
What they were trying to do was put a lot of stress on the tail section, because that maneuver does that. I do not know how many thousand feet we dropped, but at one point we could hear over the radio, “Pull out! Pull out! Pull out! Pull out!”
He yanked back on the wheel, and it was a struggle, but he got it out. Finally, he said, “What is wrong? What is wrong?” They said, “Well, we just noticed the stress on the wing bolts, on the bolts that hold the engine. You have overloaded them by 120 percent.”
Now, thank the Lord that we overdesign things, right, Kenny? I am still here today because whoever designed those bolts made them a little bit stronger than they needed to be.
But it was interesting. Through that whole time of testing, which took us about three months, we had a pilot and a co-pilot. The co-pilot was always there. He was always faithful. He was the backup man.
He was always checking instruments, checking the plane, and checking everything he could, back-checking all that the pilot was going to do. He had a very essential job.
But, you know, he would have loved to have been in that left seat. He wanted to be the pilot. But he could not. That was not his place.
That is the natural life. It wants to be the pilot. You do not lose your mind, will, and emotions in Christ. You actually set them free to finally follow the Lord, so that His will will become your will, His passion will become your passion, and His mind will become your mind.
You will be of like mind and like heart together. So our natural man needs to become the co-pilot, and it does not like that. It struggles against it.
Actually, when you get into the life of Jacob, you get a perfect example of the natural life and the self-will trying to control rather than the spirit. So remember that: you need to be a co-pilot before the Spirit.
Without the cross, there is no bride. That is what it is all about.
Now, in addition, I will try to be quick because I want to get to the last part. There are two other key events in our brother’s life that were absolutely necessary to his growth, to Isaac’s spiritual progress.
What were these? Well, I read it earlier. It said Abraham gave all to Isaac. He gave everything to Isaac. All of his inheritance went to Isaac.
In other words, all that Abraham had received from the Lord, all that he had received in this life, all the blessing concerning the nation of Israel—that the nation would come out of him—was to be passed on to Isaac.
Now, in Ephesians 1:3, the Lord has made it very clear. He says we have been blessed with all spiritual blessings. I do not know if we have really laid hold of our inheritance as we should, but it has certainly been made available to us in Christ—all spiritual blessings.
You might say, “Well, how do I get in Christ?” In 1 Corinthians 1:30, it says, “But of Him are ye in Christ.” In other words, God puts you in Christ.
When you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ, according to the Word of God, He put you in Christ. That means all that happens to Christ, all the work of the cross, all that Christ is—except His deity—is yours. It is amazing what we receive.
A lot of times we say, “Well, I have received salvation,” and indeed you have, if you have accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your Savior. But something much more tremendous than just receiving salvation has happened to you: you have received Christ. That is why you are saved.
We think of things when we should be thinking of Christ. You see the difference, the vast difference there? Yes, I have been saved, but I have been saved because I received Christ, and He is my Savior. It is guaranteed when I accept Christ.
The Word of God says not only is He our salvation, but He is our wisdom. Thank God, we really need wisdom in this day. He wants to be your wisdom. He is your sanctification.
Sometimes we struggle to be better Christians, and the Lord says, “No, no. What you need to do is just continue to receive Me, and you will be sanctified.” Not receive Him in the sense of receiving that new birth again, but in the continual receiving of His life, like we take at the table each week. Daily, we take of His life.
He is your redemption. You have been redeemed and purchased by the blood, but more than being redeemed, brothers and sisters, you have a Redeemer. You have a Person.
It is all because, when you accepted Christ, God put you in Christ. He says all that is of Christ is now yours.
You are in Christ. You know what that means? It means you are crucified. Christ was crucified, and you have been crucified. Why? Because you are in Christ. Christ rose from the dead. That means that you rise from the dead because you are in Christ.
Whatever is true of Christ is going to be true of you. God did this, brothers and sisters. You may not understand it, but it is a spiritual transaction, something that He does. It is His grace to do this.
You have it without price. You did not have to earn it. It is yours because you have accepted Christ and God has put you in Christ.
Let me clarify this matter of being crucified with Christ just a little bit, because it is a key to your Christian life.
A lot of times we hear it said that Christ died in my stead. Have you ever heard that? You may have said it. “Christ died instead of me.” That is really not accurate.
If you look at it that way—that Christ died instead of me—then what you are really saying is Christ died, but I lived. You are still alive. Christ died for your sins, but you are alive to try to live this Christian life, so to speak, on your own.
He took your place. Well, He did, but there is a much more accurate representation of what happened at Calvary, brothers and sisters. He did not die just to take your place. He died as your representative there—your representative.
Just like a lawyer represents you, He represented you there on Calvary’s cross. What does that mean? It means that He acted there in your name, in your place.
Just like He would say, “Jerry Amon is who I am representing here as I die on this cross, and he is going to die with Me because I die.” Let me try to explain it a little differently, because it is critical.
The Lord Jesus Christ—it says that all the fullness of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily. He was the full and exact representation of the Godhead. All that God the Father thought, all that God the Father is, all that the Holy Spirit is—all of that dwelt in Christ bodily.
He is the exact representation of God on this earth when He was here: the exact representation of God. You could not really separate Him from God at all. They were one. Do you see that side?
Now, at Calvary’s cross, He was the full representation of you and me. So much so that He took your sins and my sins upon Him. It says that He even became sin itself.
He fully represented you on Calvary’s cross before the Father. The Father judged Him, and when He judged Him, He judged you dead—crucified. There was no value in that Adamic life that you received from your mother and father. It will not make it in the kingdom. It will not make it in the Christian life. It has to go.
So God does it judicially. The old man has been crucified on Calvary’s cross. When Christ died, you died with Him. The old man—in Romans, it speaks of the old man being crucified in Christ. That is what it is talking about.
It is not that He died and you lived. No. He died as you on that cross. All the judgment did fall on Him. He received the physical agony; we do not. But we are dead in Him.
How do I know that? Because the Word of God says you have been buried with Christ. Now, if you had not died on Calvary’s cross, why would you need to be buried? You do not tend to bury live people. You bury someone when they are dead.
So you have been buried with Christ. That is what baptism is about. It is saying that you have touched the reality of your death and burial in Jesus Christ, and also your resurrection.
That is what is represented in baptism, and that is what your faith lays hold of when you are baptized. There is spiritual reality there.
So it is not that Christ died and you lived. You died with Him, and you were buried with Him. Praise the Lord, the old is done away with. That old creation is gone in God’s eyes. But there is more. There is more.
You are raised with Christ. Now, you need to be clear about that. Being raised with Christ does not mean that the old man was resuscitated, that life came back into the old man and he came out of the grave.
No, you arise a new creation in Christ. You are a new creature. There is a new creation in here—something I did not have before Christ, but now I do. A new creation, a risen life, has been brought into my life.
Being a substitute on your behalf is not accurate. He was your representative there, and you have died. It is a fact.
Why is this so critical? Because, brothers and sisters, you are facing death every day: death inside trying to crush you, death in your circumstances, death in the pressures of life, trying to pull you down, trying to break you, trying to take away your active living in the life of Christ.
The life of Christ can never be taken away, but death is trying its best to destroy your active living in that life. How do you overcome death? How did Christ overcome death? It says He went into death and swallowed it up. That is the same for us.
So you do not think I am saying something wrong, 2 Corinthians 4:10 says:
Always bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus,
that the life also of Jesus may be manifested in our body.
What does this mean? It means that your death in Christ has to be made operational. Your burial in Christ has to be made operational. Your risen life in Christ has to be made operational.
The way that works is when you are under attack, you can declare: the one that has been attacked is dead. The one that is being attacked is buried. You cannot attack Christ anymore, and that is the life that I now live—the resurrection life.
So you have gone into death, swallowed it up, and come out in resurrection life. That is the way you overcome: by faith laying hold of what Christ has done on the cross, and what is available to you because God has put you in Christ.
Now, the second thing—the other side of the coin that we learn from this life of Isaac—is not only that we are in Christ, but Christ is in us. That is the life needed to live daily.
He lived by the well of Beer-lahai-roi, which means the well of living water, the well of revelation where you really see the Lord, and where that living water really comes for your daily life. He lived there at that well, and we have shared on that well already.
But it means that the life of Christ is in you to live daily. Not the natural life in control, but His life in you, drinking the living water.
You remember the story of the woman at the well. She was going to get some water, and the Lord said, “If you would have asked Me, I would have given you living water. If you take of it, you will never die, but it will become a well in you springing up in life.”
That is what we received in Christ. But now we find that Christ is in us as a wellspring of life. That is the Christian life.
Now we can walk in newness of life. We can learn to live by the law of the Spirit. What is the law of the Spirit? It is that life in Christ. It is that life in Christ.
Often we try to live by our willpower as Christians, to overcome. It will not work. It will fail. If you are living by your will, I can tell you how you know.
If the Christian life has become a duty, if coming here on Sunday is a duty, if fellowshipping with the saints is a duty, if prayer is a duty, if reading the Bible is a duty, then it is willpower.
Why? Because the law of the Spirit of life, which you received in Christ, is life in you. Brothers and sisters, it loves the Word of God. That life of Christ in you loves to fellowship. That life in you loves to pray.
It is natural. It is an automatic part of that life. It is not something you have to struggle with.
So it is kind of a decision on your part: “Lord, which life am I going to try to live by? This old one that God has already crucified and buried? I certainly do not want to dig him up again.”
I need to learn to live by this new life, the law of the Spirit of life. It tells you there is an unction within. There is an unction within.
So we discover through the life of Isaac some key things. God’s great desire is for a bride. The cross is the way that the bride will be made ready to live this Christian life, to be prepared and made ready.
We need, in faith, to know and realize that we have been put in Christ and all is available—all the spiritual blessings. We also need to realize that Christ lives within. There is a new life there. It is a risen life, a resurrection life, that we have to learn to live by.
Our natural life will want to be the pilot, but it can no longer be the pilot. The Holy Spirit is the pilot. The life of Christ in you is the pilot.
This brings me to this last major act in Isaac’s life. Interestingly enough, near the end of his life, he calls in Esau and says, “Esau, I am ready to die, and I want to bless you. I want to give you the blessing.”
“You go make one thing I really love. Make venison that is just out of this world. You know, I just love it. So before I bless you, I would like for you to bless me. I would like for you to go out, kill a deer, bring it back, fix it just the way I like it, and then I will bless you.”
Brothers and sisters, what is this man thinking? He has had such a deep work of the cross. He has had some revelation given to him as to the preciousness of a bride, even though he may not have understood all of that.
He has lived by the well of Beer-lahai-roi—living waters. His father Abraham had passed this blessing unto him. What was that? That out of them would come a great nation, which would be a testimony to God on this earth: the nation of Israel.
Not only that, the Lord had told him very distinctly, even though it was through his wife, “The elder shall serve the younger.” So what is our brother doing?
I submit this, brothers and sisters: he has lost sight of the vision that God had given him. He lost sight of what God had raised him up for—to pass that blessing on to the line that would become the nation of Israel.
It had been very clear. Abraham, his father, had passed that on to him. It was not direct revelation like Abraham had, but it had been revealed to him: “This is God’s desire for Isaac and for your descendants.”
But God had also told him Esau was not the one. It is Jacob. “The elder shall serve the younger.”
So what has happened to Isaac? He has lost sight of the vision. He has lost sight of the goal. He has lost sight of the purpose. He has lost sight of that eternal purpose in God’s heart, and it has affected him. He is ready to bless the wrong one.
Why? I wonder. Was it lost? Well, I thought of a few things that could be.
One is simply human affection. It is very clear: he loved Esau. That was his first love besides his wife. That was the one he clung to. It was kind of a heart thing. He was really attached to Esau more so than Jacob.
He put Esau above God’s will—earthly affections above God’s will. It is easy to do, is it not?
Secondly, it could have been that he was leaning on tradition instead of what God wanted. In other words, that was the tradition of the day: the eldest son got the inheritance. That was the way it was supposed to be. But God had already told him it was not going to be that way.
But he kind of clung to that, I think. Thirdly, I think in his own eyes he felt like it was the right thing to do.
I mean, this son is a man’s man. He is a hunter. He goes out. He is a provider. Jacob just hangs around the tent. You know, it just seems right that this is what I ought to do. It is the right thing to do. It was right in his eyes, obviously.
Ultimately, I think he did it because that is what pleased him the most. That is what really pleased him. That is what brought him joy. That is what he thought was going to bring him happiness. He was going to please himself by giving the blessing to Esau.
He lost sight of the vision that God had given. He lost sight of God’s purpose. He lost sight of the fact that the nation that was supposed to come from him was to be a testimony of God on earth, and it had to come through the proper line.
He lost sight of all of that in his old age—lost sight of that vision.
But thank God, in the end, after a little probing from his dear wife—which she was absolutely right to do—he finally brings in Jacob and says, “Do not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.” Actually, Esau had already taken one.
He says, “Do not take one of the wives of Canaan, but go to your mother’s father and get a wife from the proper line.” Listen to this. This is what he finally does to Jacob:
And God Almighty bless thee,
and make thee fruitful, and multiply thee,
that thou mayest be a company of peoples;
and give thee the blessing of Abraham,
to thee, and to thy seed with thee;
that thou mayest inherit the land of thy sojournings,
which God gave unto Abraham.
Hallelujah. Through God’s divine providence, finally our brother Isaac’s eyes are turned to see once again what God is after and what God desires. He proceeds to act on that in faith. He returned to his senses.
Brothers and sisters, the point is pretty obvious, I think. God has an eternal purpose. He is looking for that bride. It affects everything in your life and in my life because that is the central purpose in God’s heart. It is God’s heart.
That is what pleases God. It was not what pleased Isaac, but it pleased God. Finally Isaac did come through.
But there is a danger in losing sight of that eternal purpose, losing sight of what you have been called to, losing sight of what God is calling you to do.
I wrote something down. There is a Scripture that says, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” I know we have heard that before. It is in the Bible. Through lack of vision, people perish. They go the wrong way; they go astray.
I ran across something yesterday that is similar, but it makes a good point: Life becomes an obstacle when we lose sight of the goal.
Life becomes an obstacle. Do you feel like your life is just an obstacle? When the goal is in sight, honestly, life is a challenge. But we know in Christ that these challenges are for our good.
God has made it such a way that we might increase in our knowledge of Christ, increase in spiritual strength, and be prepared as a bride for the Son. So life is a challenge when the goal is in view.
But when it is not, it is just an obstacle. It is a struggle. Everything becomes an obstacle.
His eye is on the sparrow. His eye is on you. It is a matter of reaching a goal.
Recently—I will end with this—I recently saw on television the movie Secretariat, you know, the horse. Actually, that horse was born and raised about ten miles from my house, where I live up in Elmont—Doswell, where he was born and raised.
As I watched that movie, it occurred to me that the owner, Mrs. Tweedy, I believe, had it in her heart that this horse could actually take the Triple Crown: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont.
It was a bit of a struggle. In the Kentucky Derby, when they put him in the race, he came out last out of the chute. But he was such a strong horse that by the end of the race, he had actually taken over the lead.
The same thing happened in the second race. He came out last out of the chute, but he had such a desire to race and run and, you know, to be first, I guess. He overcame. He ran past all the other horses, and he took first place.
In the last race, it was almost as if he knew exactly what he needed to do. He had the end in view.
When he came out of the chute, he came out first. He never gave up the lead. In the Belmont—the longest track of all of them, a mile and a half—he ran his heart out.
He won by thirty-one horse lengths. Thirty-one horse lengths. Nobody was even close to him. You talk about a horse having a goal in view. Man, it was an amazing story to me.
I say that to say this, brothers and sisters: let us not lose sight of the goal. God has made all spiritual blessings available in Christ, and His life is in us to reach the goal.
We do not really have to struggle like he did in those first two races. We can blow out of the chute and press on all the way.
Even with the obstacles of life, may they become the opportunity and the challenge that the Lord needs in our life to get us to finish the race.
Well, you know, our brother Paul said to run to finish the race. Paul finished his race. Now it is our turn.
Lord, we come to You today. We are so thankful, Lord, for the great provision that You not only made to Isaac, but You have made to each one of us in the cross, Lord Jesus, and in Your risen life given to us.
Lord, we thank You that we can press on because we are in You and You are in us. Lord, we are thankful that You have given us a glimpse of the goal. You have given us a glimpse of Your eternal purpose for this bride.
Lord, grant that we not lose sight of that goal. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.