The Law Of First Mention

Imagine, if you, will facing a mountain, your only child holding your hand, and God has just told you to kill him. What would your response be?

I am a father of four beautiful, complicated, hilarious girls. I can’t imagine anything I wouldn’t do to keep them safe, make them happy, make life better for them. They are my pride and joy. Everything I am today is because of them. They depend on me to have it together. They count on me to provide for them. They trust that I am going to chase away the monsters in their closets and squash the bug in the shower. They do not question it. They simply trust me. I am sure this is how Abraham felt when God asked him to do the impossible. Sacrifice Isaac.

We have a man here who has longed for a child for decades. His wife, unable to satisfy that longing has given him a servant to lay with in the hopes a child would be born from their coupling. This works and God rejects him. Ishmael was not God’s plan. Abraham and Sarah are finally blessed with a baby of their own. This promised son. Now God is asking Abraham to sacrifice him.

We are not told how old Isaac was at this time but he must have been old enough to know how to sacrifice to God. He knew there was need of a knife, wood, and a sacrifice. He must have been old enough to know that only a sacrifice gets on the altar. What a beautiful type of Jesus laying down his life for mankind!

God sent Abraham to the mountain to sacrifice but lets take a look at what Abraham says. in Genesis 22:5. And Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the ^[a]lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.”

Wow. He specifically calls the act of sacrifice “worship”. I wonder what would happen if we would take the same approach in our lives? What God calls sacrifice, we should call worship. When we look at worship through that lens, it is easy to fast. It is easy to pray. It is easy to be kind to those who hate you. Those things are not a burden but are rather our form of worship.

Any time the word “worship” is used in the Bible, it directly points back to this original idea. Worship and sacrifice are interchangeable. John 4:24 They that worship/sacrifice must do so in Spirit and in Truth. Romans 12:1 I beseech^[a] you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice/worship, holy, acceptable to God, which is your ^[b]reasonable service.

Now, Worship Leader, lets get down to some topics none of us want to address. How are you sacrificing your time? How are you sacrificing your energy? How are you sacrificing your focus? Are you spending time in the presence of God through out the week? Are you spending time in the Word? Are you giving yourself to prayer and fasting? Are you spending too much time entertaining yourself instead of feeding your spirit man?

I am guilty of wasting time on things that have NO Kingdom impact at all. My wife and I are the worship leaders at our church and I can tell you the gospel truth: Our worship suffers when I have sacrificed my time, focus, and energy to anything outside of the Kingdom. It takes FOREVER for us to break through into His presence during worship. God means it when He says “Do no have any other god before me!” or in other words, do not sacrifice yourself to anything before you sacrifice yourself to me. God is not interested in your leftovers. He wants the first and best of all you have. Everything else gets your leftovers and there will be more than enough, I promise! Look at what He did with the fish and the bread. They started out with not enough and ended up collecting 12 baskets of leftovers. You will DEFINITELY have time to pursue other interests and passions. But not before sacrificing/worshipping God first.

All my love,

Ryan Richmond