, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to, Genesis 22, and for those of you that will be leading the discussion in the care groups tonight, and perhaps tomorrow, the discussion, sheet is, here on the pew, the first pew, here in front of me with some suggested questions, not that you have to use these questions, but, we hope you'll use this as a resource as you lead your care groups in discussion, around, the message from God's word this morning, and I do hope that you are making plans to join with your brothers and sisters in a care group. Tonight or tomorrow night. If you're not presently in a care group and you would like to attend one today, just go to the care group table, over there in the alcove, and there's a list of the care groups that are meeting today and their locations. and they'll be happy to direct you to one of those care groups that you can attend, this weekend.
But Genesis chapter 22, we are continuing in our series through the book of Genesis, and as we continue in this series, we come this morning to Genesis chapter 22 and verse 1, and my goal this morning, and this is painful for me to stop here in the middle of the story essentially is to cover verses 1 through 12, and if you want to give a title to the message today, it would be Abraham the Ted. God-fearer Abraham The tested God-fearer. The story that we come to today represents the climax of the story of Abraham and we will be spending at least 2 weeks in this momentous chapter of Genesis 22 in an attempt to cover all that the Lord would have for us in this chapter. The part of the story that we're gonna focus on Today, verses 1 through 12 features the words, God tested Abraham in verse 1.
And in verse 12, we hear God saying to Abraham, now I know that you fear God. Indicating for us that the purpose of the test that God imposed upon Abraham was to determine the full measure of Abraham's fear of God. You'll be interested to know that this is the first time that we see the word test. In the Bible.
How many of you like tests? No one. OK, a couple. this is the first time we see the word test and amazingly of all the tests that we find later in the Bible, this is the toughest test that is ever imposed upon any character in the Bible....
