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[Music] [Applause] Let us give attention to the reading of God's Word. The book of Genesis, the twenty-second chapter, beginning the reading at the verse numbered one.

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"After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, 'Abraham,' and he said, 'Here am I.' He said, 'Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.' So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac.

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And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off. Then Abraham said to his young men, 'Stay here with the ass. I and the lad will go yonder and worship and come again to you.' And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife.

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So they went, both of them, together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, 'My father,' and he said, '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, 'God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.'

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So they went, both of them, together. When they came to the place of which God had told him, 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. Then Abraham put forth his hand and took the knife to slay his son.

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But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, 'Abraham, Abraham.' And he said, 'Here am I.' And he said, 'Do not lay your hand on the lad or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.'

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And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked. And behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, 'The Lord will provide.'

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As it is said to this day, 'On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.' And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

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The most profound problem which we as Christians must confront is the problem of human suffering. Now the non-believer who understands that all of life is simply the process of chance and fate, he has no problem with suffering. He can simply say, 'That's the way the cookie of life crumbles.'

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But the believer, the person who understands that a God of love is the maker and the sustainer of all things, such a one has difficulty confronting suffering. There is no dimension of our faith which demands as many intellectual concessions as trying to line up our belief in a loving God and the hurt that is in this world.

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Why are there so many crosses? His cross and our crosses. Well I think the answer to that question is to be found in this very hard reality. God doesn't come down from his cross and God does not let us come down from ours

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because sacrifice is basic to the meaning of life. This is the great scandal of our Christian believing that not even God himself could save us without sacrifice. As we look at any dimension of our lives, we will find in them, if there is worthiness there, sacrifice. Any parent who is worthy of the title has run the gauntlet of sacrifice.

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Any teacher who truly teaches is teaching herself or himself away. Any doctor who is more than a medical technician but is in fact a healer and a curer of women and men, such a doctor dribbles his life away sacrificially in the service of his patients. Even God, in loving us, had to love us by the way of sacrifice.

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So when I find myself on the cross, or when I stand weeping with those who are on their own crosses, I always at such moments have to stop by Calvary just to make sure that God is still dying on his cross. Because that's the only way I know to make our crosses all right. Sacrifice, you see, is at the very center of human experience.

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And that's what interests me about this story of Abraham and Isaac this morning. You know the story how God wishes to test the faith of Abraham and tells him to offer up his son, and so Abraham takes two helpers and his son, and they go off with the wood that has been cut for the sacrifice and with a torch, the flame to ignite the sacrifice, and with a knife with which to perform the sacrificial offering.

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And they come to the place, Mount Moriah, where the deed is to be done, and Abraham leaves the servants behind. And he takes Isaac and the wood and the flame and the knife, and they start up the hill. And then it is that the boy turns to his father and says, "Oh, my father, here is the wood and here is the fire, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

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See, the boy understands that for the offering to be real, there has to be something to sacrifice. You know how the story turns out. Isaac is prepared as the sacrifice, but as Abraham prepares to take his life, God stops Abraham's hand, commends him for his obedience, and provides a ram, which is then offered in place of the boy.

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But think with me about the young man's question, because it's aimed at the very center of where we live. He says, "Here is the fire and here is the wood, but where is the lamb?" And even a child sees it. That life is just gestures. Life is just props and paraphernalia.

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If there isn't about it, sacrifice, the altar, is at the very center of the human experience. So I think the greatest and most profound question which we can address to any dimension of our living is this. Where is the lamb? Where is the sacrifice? This question has been much on my mind at this time of the national elections.

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You know, Plato, in the oldest attempt to write out a system of government which we have, the Republic, says that power should only be given to those who do not seek it. But what do we see in our national election? We see certain individuals and certain parties doing everything they can to grab power.

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Now, we are terribly divided and disillusioned as a people, I believe today, and largely for one reason. We have discovered that too often our leaders are grasping and selfish and pleading and plotting for our votes. They are seeking that, and they are seeking that power without any sense of sacrifice. I think this morning of a young man, 15 years of age, whose greatest desire was to be in the British Navy like his big brother.

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And his mother gave him her permission, and so he bought all of his uniforms and he signed on to a ship and he had all of his belongings to deliver to the ship, and he went in to say goodbye to his mother, and at the very last moment she had a change of heart, and she began to weep and she pleaded with him not to go. Now, this was the greatest desire of his life, but out of his love for his mother, he did not go.

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And that sacrifice, which he made then at 15 years of age, became the leitmotif of his whole life. He was sacrificial as a young man and as a mature man and as an older man. When his country came to him and asked him to assist in writing the Declaration of his Nation's Independence, he went. When his country came to him and asked him to take up arms and to lead the forces against the British, he took up arms.

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And then at last, finding retirement at his beloved home, Mount Vernon, when his country came to him and asked him to go and to write out that document on which the future of his country would be built, he went. And then, returning to his home again, and knowing for the first time in many years' return of health, when his country came and said, "We want you to be our first president," he answered the call.

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George Washington was first in war and first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen because he never placed his own desires before his service of others. The leitmotif of his life was sacrifice. And today, we see individuals doing everything they can to grab that, to hold on to that,

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which he only took up as an act of sacrifice. You know, last summer, we as a country knew three very great weeks. And I shall never cease to be thankful to God that I could be on hand for the 1984 Olympics. And I shall never, ever forget what went through me when that flag was carried into the Coliseum,

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or when the granddaughter of Jesse Owens ran that torch around that oval, or when Rafer Johnson carried that torch up those steps, or when our tall and vigorous, sun-crowned young athletes came marching forth into that place, breezed there a man with soul so dead that he couldn't be caught up in that moment.

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And why? Because when we saw that flag, and when we remembered Jesse Owens, and when we recalled again the sacrifices of Rafer Johnson, and when we looked at those kids who had single-mindedly and at great sacrifice and devotion

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prepared themselves with everything that was in them to offer themselves to the glory of their country in that sporting event, when we saw all of those things, we were reminded of what in fact has made America great, that in America which God has used to bless this country. And we wept our tears, and we laughed our laughter, and we enjoyed our joy,

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because we were called again to the vision of sacrifice for the good of all. This morning I ask, where is the lamb? Isn't it ironic that the central question addressed by the two presidential candidates and the two vice presidential candidates to us as a voting populace,

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the central question that they ask to us again and again is this, "Are things better for you now than they were four years ago?" Not are things better for us, not are things better for our country, not are things better for the world, are things better for you?

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And that is the question of selfishness. That is not the question of sacrifice. Where is the lamb? And I think of this question when I think of the suffering of the world of business here in our Three Rivers area.

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We have incredible stress here, and the steel industry for a variety of reasons is in disarray. And blue-collar workers are being laid off, and 16 of them now have committed suicide. And white-collar workers, and let's not forget that, are being laid off also. A man who one day is praised as being greatly valued by his company, the next day is told he is redundant.

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And those who are counseling those individuals tell me that they are falling into complete emotional collapse and disarray. And the valleys in which we live are filled with a deep and profound hurt. And our businesses and our labor unions are doing what they can to retrain our people and to give them skill diversification. And some companies are even paying considerable sums in order to assist people with the process of outplacement.

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But my sisters and brothers, I want to say to all of these people this morning, where is the lamb? You know, the history of business, like the history of every other aspect of life, has in it some rather dark pages. When William K. Vanderbilt, the president of the New York Central, was asked, for example, "Do you not run your trains for the public good?" he responded, "The public be damned!"

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And we've seen too much of that. And we know that some of our industries did business with the Nazis while we were at war with them. And we are treated to the sad spectacle of organizations which hold high the flag of free enterprise and yet fall all over themselves to do business with communist nations, to do business with nations which bear within their own philosophy

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the inevitable seeds of their own decline and destruction, and that decline and destruction is held off and delayed by the infusions they receive from those who are militantly opposed to the philosophy but still go to them for the buck. We've seen these kinds of things, and they trouble us deeply, but you know, I kind of thought within myself that when these times came, that we would see the world of business put its arms about its own people

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and hold them at whatever the cost until happier days are here again, that at least there we would see that kind of sacrificial caring, the evidence of the lay. But the only place you really see that is in the oil industry, and the layoffs go on to the right and the left, and it's all for the sake of that little number at the bottom of the quarterly report which indicates the profit.

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And you know who's looking at that number? We are. The stockholders. We want to see profits. We want to see dividends. And if we don't get profits and we don't get dividends, then we unload that from the portfolio, or we get rid of management, or we say close the plant, and we don't think about the men and women

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with white collars and blue collars who have given their lives to the process of building that and making it what it is. Where is our concern? Where is our compassion? Are we willing to make no sacrifice? Where is the lamb? And what about in our homes?

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Our homes are covered with wall-to-wall carpeting and all the conveniences that we can imagine, and yet they're also full of catastrophe, and you know that, cold wars and generation gaps and divorce. Many of our homes have become little more than motels with restaurants attached where people come and sleep at different times and eat at different times.

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And it has been my observation, and also, thank God, my experience, that the homes that are healthy homes are homes in which some people have made some great sacrifices, where some people have given up their prerogatives and their options and their opportunities and their powers for the sake of other members of the family.

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Too many of our homes today are bypassing Mount Moriah. I wish our parents would spend more time loving each other and then telling their kids about it. You know, there's a direct correlation between the love between a husband and a wife and the love that exists between the parents and their children,

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and I wish more dads would tell their kids just how wonderful their mothers are and how more kids would see their mothers putting a rosebud on their dad's plate at breakfast. And I wish more of our parents took time to listen to their kids. I know you're battered all day long with people who are clambering for your attention,

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and when they come to you at night and want to talk, sometimes it is a great sacrifice to listen. There was a little boy who came up to his daddy and wanted to tell him about his sore finger that he had hurt that day, and his dad tried to listen, but he was caught up in other things, and he finally turned to the youngster and he said, "Well, you hurt it this morning. What can I do about it now?"

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And the kid looked at him and said, "Well, you could at least say, 'Oh.'" I wish our parents would develop the capacity to hear with a third ear, so that when a youngster says, "Are you going out again tonight?" they translate that immediately into, "I wanted to be with you tonight."

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And I wish that a lot of our parents would stop praying for their children. Yes, you heard me. Stop praying for their children to be good and better, and stop praying for your wife or your husband to be good or better. You are not married and you do not have children in order to make them good or better.

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Your function is to love. Start praying for yourself that you might be more loving, that patience might grow in you, and compassion and the spirit of sacrifice. And if you begin to love like that, then believe me, the betterness will come. And I wish that more of our families would see God in little things.

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Not only on Easter and Christmas, but also on the Fourth of July and Memorial Day, and in the garden, and watching a family television show together periodically, and when babies come and when grandparents go. And I wish our kids would be taught a reverence for truth when they go to school,

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and a thirst for knowledge when they do their homework, and patience in the development of handicrafts when they learn to build things with their little fingers, and it's their play on the little league field. I know all of these things take sacrifice.

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It takes time to do these things, and you have to read in order to learn how to do them well, and you have to share with others. But you see, that's the spirit of the Lamb. And what I'm asking you is when you go home today, don't have roast preacher for lunch.

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Ask instead this question, "Where is the Lamb in our house and in our family?" And where is the Lamb in the church? The church in America knows great difficulties today, and some people say it's the spirit of the times,

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and some people say, "Well, it's the age we're living in," and some people say, "Well, it's demographic deterioration." I am not going to patronize you or pamper you by saying that, because each and every one of us, if we have any sense of honesty,

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will know that the great problems of the church are not outside it; they're inside it. The problem is not that we're in Babylon. The problem is that Babylon is in us. We have people who won't even join the church,

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but who will hover about the outside reaping its benefits. But they won't even make the sacrifice that's involved in some public confession of their oneness with the body of Christ. And we have other people who belong to the church, and who have come in and have come every week with their tools,

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and who polish them in the act of worship and then put them carefully back in the box again to be kept there until the next week. And during those intervening days, they do not do one thing to help to build the kingdom of God. I looked just this last week at the mail that comes to my desk from fundraising agencies.

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Some comes and it says, "If you do this, we'll do this." I mean, "You send us a contribution, and we'll send you a Bible, or we'll send you an autographed picture of the Pat Boone family," or something of that kind. Give a little, and you get a little.

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And then there's the appeal to immortality. "If you send us $100, we will write your name in letters of gold on a piece of parchment and seal it forever in a hermetically tight mayonnaise jar." And the idea is that if you do this, you know you're going to be remembered.

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There's no sacrifice in that. And there's a letter that comes, printed out by a computer, so it looks like it's coming to me, but you and I both know how that's done. And the letter says, "I've just returned from a round-the-world tour,

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and I spoke to over a million people, and sometimes as many as 50,000 in one crowd. And the Lord God blessed the times, and many were led to Christ. We must hold up our hands as we continue this ministry." And I think to myself, "Yes, we send our money off to big organizations like this,

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and we don't talk about the Lord Jesus Christ to the person who sits at the next desk." We feel like we're doing something by supporting these vast organizations. But where is the lamb? Where's the sacrifice in that? Or you get the little picture of the sad-eyed girl, and it says, "This is Maria, and she is sad,

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and there are many other little girls who are sad also because they are hungry, and they are diseased, and they are ignorant. And if you will just send $15 a month, then you can take care of Maria, and for each $15, that'll be another Maria taken care of."

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And it's much easier to do that than it is to go to the divorcee next door who has a teenage kid with cancer and no health insurance, and pitch in there. And each and every one of us knows and understands, don't we, in our heart of hearts, and let's be honest now, that the reason it costs us more for a pound of apples

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picked in Mercer, Pennsylvania, than it costs us for a pound of bananas picked in Honduras, is the economic imperialism that this country exercises in Honduras. And you're not going to atone for a sin like that with $15 a month.

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Where is the lamb? I compare that with Chuck Colson. You know Chuck Colson, the Watergate criminal who met Jesus and his life was transformed. Did you know that while he was in prison serving out his term,

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the eighth-ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, a man who today is the governor of Minnesota, went to the President of the United States and asked him if he could go and serve out the rest of Colson's sentence for him,

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so that Colson could go home and be with his wife and his children, who were in deep distress. Now that is sacrifice. Now that is offering.

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And can't you imagine how that thrilled the heart of Chuck Colson? How he must have felt when his brother in Christ held up the lamb like that. I remember being caught between trains in Edinburgh once and going over to the Scottish National Gallery

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to look again at Salvatore Dali's great painting of Christ as St. John of the Cross. Christ on the cross suspended up in the heavens and his face is falling forward so that you cannot see his countenance, only his hair. And I stood and I looked at that picture and there were all kinds of crowds there.

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And they filled the room. There were old couples out for a Saturday afternoon and there were young couples hand in hand and there were two school groups and there were young servicemen and servicewomen and you know,

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there were people there who looked like they owned the place and other people there who looked like they cleaned it. But every one of them, when they got in front of that picture, stopped and looked at it.

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Behold, the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world, the loving sacrifice of God stopped them and compelled them to look. And people are not compelled by the church because when they look at the church, they see pulpits,

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they hear preaching, they see people, but they want to know where is the Lamb, where is the sacrifice. It's all summed for me in that movie, The Pawn Broker. Did you see the movie, The Pawn Broker?

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About that old Jew named Naserman who ran a pawn shop? He saw his wife and his children killed in a Nazi concentration camp and then he had his pawn shop again and he had to deal every day with people coming in,

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pawning their most precious possessions just in order to keep their bodies and souls together and seeing so much suffering and hurt, he built all kinds of walls and barricades about him until he felt nothing

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and then a boy, a boy named Jesus Ortiz came and loved him. He wanted to be his son. But there were too many walls and too many barricades and Naserman would not let him in.

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And then one day, Jesus saved the old Jewish pawnbroker's life. He stepped in front of him and caught the bullet which was aimed at the pawnbroker. And the boy dies, his head being held in the hands of the old Jew.

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And the pawnbroker gets up and with every step he takes, you can see what's happening, how the walls are being torn down and the barricades are being broken away and he goes back into his shop and on the counter there's a paper spike.

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You know what a paper spike is, a metal base and a spike that sticks up and you put papers on there, you don't want them to blow away. Finished business, you put it on there. And it's sitting there on the counter.

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And he walks over to it and he looks down at it and then, very deliberately, he takes his hand and he plunges it down, down, down, till the spike runs it through.

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And when I saw that, I knew. It took me right back to Calvary and a spiked Jesus. Or a shot Jesus. You see, the way to get into a heart is the way of sacrifice.

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Sacrifice is the only key that opens the heart. That opens the heart so that the one whose heart has been stony and selfish and sealed comes out and gets spiked himself in an act of sacrifice. So, look at your hands today.

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Are they spiked for anyone? For God? For country? For family?

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The hands of Jesus are very frail, for they were pierced with a nail. But only those hands reach heaven at last who by that same nail are held fast.

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Let us pray. Father, I see the fire and the wood. Where is the Lamb? Amen.

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[Music]