First Sunday in Lent –
Genesis 22:1-18 - 1 Some time later
God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am,"
he replied. 2 Then God said, "Take your son, your only son,
Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah.
Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you
about." 3 Early the next morning Abraham got
up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son
Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the
place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham
looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He
said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go
over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you." 6
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac,
and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on
together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham,
"Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. "The fire
and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt
offering?" 8 Abraham answered, "God himself
will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them
went on together. 9 When they reached the place God had
told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He
bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10
Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11
But the angel of the LORD called out to him from
heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. 12
"Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to
him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your
son, your only son." 13 Abraham looked up and there
in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram
and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So
Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said,
"On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided." 15
The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16
and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have
done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I
will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the
sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of
the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring
all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me."
Those
who have or have had little children in the house know exactly how it
goes! Once the children start talking,
the questions start coming. Why? How?
How come? When? Where?
Examples of this are easily found in my house. What time is it now? What does the little hand mean? What does the big hand mean? Why?
How many more minutes until we have to go to bed? And while all those questions can very
quickly grow old, we remind ourselves, don’t we, that
they need to ask them. It is necessary
for progression and learning. Where
would they be without questioning? In
fact, where would we be as a human race if we never questioned anything?
But that begs the question: is questioning always
beneficial? Could questioning lead
people away from the truth? Aren’t there
times we tell our children, sometimes you don’t need to question, sometimes you
just need to do as I say. In a world
that teaches us to question everything, that even indicates that we are foolish
if we don’t, how on earth are we to trust God’s Word as authoritative. Well, it is doable. In fact, we have a marvelous example in our
sermon lesson today. Here we see a man
following without question.
In today’s lesson God puts Abraham to the test. One evening, God came to him and said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom
you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there
as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” Just stop for a second and imagine how shocked
and startled Abraham must have been to hear this command – and how his heart
must have torn in two. Abraham had
literally waited 100 years for this child.
He had offered up so many prayers.
And finally, God had fulfilled his promise. But not only that, Isaac was not just like any
other son; he was the son of the promise.
It was through him and his line that the Savior was supposed to come
into the world. Now God wanted him to
kill his son?!? Conventional wisdom, of
course, says, “What kind of loving God would do this?” Anyone would be led to question such a
command, right? Well, not Abraham. He knew the love and wisdom of the one who
gave the command, and when you know the love and brilliance of your commander,
you will not question the love of his command, regardless of how little sense it
might make to you.
So Abraham’s faith immediately responded. He didn’t have to sit and think about
it. “Early
the next morning,” our text tells us, they set out for the 50 mile trip to
the region of Moriah.
Fifty miles, isn’t that interesting?
God gave Abraham three whole days in which to think about this command,
to question its goodness, to speculate on the fairness of it, and to turn
around and decide he knew better. But he
didn’t. That is because this was not
some brief moment of enthusiastic zeal on Abraham’s part, but rather the result
of making God and his commands the ultimate priority in his life, even ahead of
the life of his long desired son.
As they reach their destination Abraham builds an altar,
ties down his son, and grabs the knife. Never
once does he question. This was the
child of the promise, he knew, the child through whom the Savior would
come. That is what God had
promised. But Abraham felt that if there
was a conflict between God’s command here and his previous promise, then that
was God’s business to figure out. His
job was simply to do what God said. That
is why the writer to the Hebrews could be inspired to write, “By faith Abraham, when God tested him,
offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had
received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though
God had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be
reckoned.’ Abraham reasoned that God
could raise the dead” (Hebrews
At this point God had seen enough. “‘Do
not lay a hand on the boy,’ he said. ‘Do
not do anything to him. Now I know that
you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.’” You see, at no point was God ever interested
in the death of Isaac. He was only
interested in the willingness of Abraham to give to the LORD what was the
LORD’s. He wanted to see if Abraham would
put him first and follow without question.
For after all, it is one thing to say I love you, but a completely
different thing to show it.
But why did God allow the matter to proceed to such a
point? Was he asking Abraham to follow
through on some blind faith? Was Abraham
brainwashed or naïve, as some like to accuse Christians of being today? The answer of course is no. Abraham was not brainwashed or naïve, and his faith was not blind. He had the promises of God. He had seen those promises come true. It was God who had promised to take care of
him when he left
I have always found this to be an awesome section of
Scripture. Yet, I think I can safely say
that all of us here are happy that this was asked of Abraham and not of us. Could you imagine being put in his
situation? Who of us wouldn’t make some
bone of contention with God after his initial visit? “You want me to do what, God?!? Let’s be reasonable. Let’s see if we can’t work something out
first - as if we had bargaining chips with which to strike a deal with
God.” I can almost hear us saying, “But
God, you promised. I waited forever to
have this child and finally received him and now you want to take him away from
me? That’s not fair. That’s not loving. That’s not right.” Do you ever hear people projecting their
concept of fairness on God, saying that God should do this or would never do that,
simply basing their thoughts on how they feel God should act? Or maybe a better question yet, is, do we
ever find ourselves doing that?
But do we really want to play that game? The game that tries to tell God he isn’t
being fair, or isn’t doing what is right.
I don’t think we do, because I can guarantee you that we will lose. If we want God to be fair, according to our
standards, then there is only one thing he can do, send us to hell. That is what our sins have deserved. For time and time again we do things that
aren’t just a “little naughty,” that aren’t just a slight error in our
judgment, that aren’t just impulsive actions that might have been avoided if we
had only counted to 10. Time and time
again we rebel against God and his will.
That is really the heart of sin – rebellion. Sin is the creature (us) telling the creator
(God): “Listen up here. I’m
talking. This is what I want for myself. I don’t care what you decided. This is what I decided.” That, my dear friends is sin. That, my dear friends is worthy of hell. That, my dear friends is what we deserve.
No, our job is not to try and force our concept of fairness
on God, our job is to simply do what God says.
God wants us to make him and his commands the ultimate priority in our
lives. He wants us to follow without
question. And we can, because we know
the wisdom and the love of our Commander.
As Christian’s we know that God is involved in our every day lives. We may not always understand exactly to what
degree, but the Bible says things like “even
the very hairs on your head are all numbered” (Matthew
Yet, isn’t it interesting, that “why” is not a word we hear
come out of Abraham’s mouth in today’s lesson.
It would have been a natural question that I think just about anyone
would have been tempted to ask God.
Abraham didn’t though. He wasn’t
interested in questioning God. He knew
God loved him. He knew God wanted what
was best for him. He knew that as he put
God first and was obedient to his commands, God would take care of him. We know that too, because we know that God
cannot go back on his Word. He cannot
break his promises. And here is his
promise, “If God is for us, who can be
against us. He who did not spare his own
Son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also along with him,
graciously give us all things” (Romans 8:31,32).
This, right here, is the reason we can follow without
question. This, right here, is the proof
that love and wisdom are the marks of our Commander. We have been guilty of challenging God’s
operation and involvement in our lives.
Maybe we haven’t used the exact words, but we’ve all asked the “Why,
God?” question to the point we feel he should have operated differently. But in God’s Word he answers the why’s again
and again – “Because I love you; because I love you; because I love you.” And we know just how much our Lord loves us
when we see the price he was willing to pay to have us – the blood of his Son
Jesus – a price that forgives our doubt.
Isn’t this the very thing foreshadowed in our lesson this
morning? Isaac walks silently up that
mountain, obedient to his father’s will, even carrying the wood on which he is
to be sacrificed. Jesus walked up
another mountain, carrying the beam of his cross for his own sacrifice,
perfectly obedient to his Father’s will.
But unlike Isaac, Jesus knew exactly what lay ahead of him, and yet even
that didn’t deter him from being our humble, willing Savior, fulfilling the words
of Isaiah, “He was oppressed and
afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the
slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his
mouth” (Isaiah 53:7).
Isn’t this the very thing foreshadowed in our lesson
this morning? Abraham is willing to
sacrifice his own son, but God prevented it.
Yet unlike Abraham, God the Father did not spare his Son, but gave him
up for us all. Oh the height, and depth,
and width of the love of God. We didn’t
deserve it. He didn’t have to do it. He could have left us to wallow in our sin
and pay the penalty that is really fair.
But God wanted to be unfair! God
wanted us to be in heaven with him. So
he punished his Son instead of us.
Isn’t this the very thing foreshadowed in our lesson this
morning? The ram caught in the thicket,
to be the substitute provided by God.
Jesus is the Lamb of God, provided to be our substitute, fulfilling
another prophecy, “He was pierced for
our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that
brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). The innocent one, in place
of us, the guilty. The holy one, instead of us, the rebel.
The
guiltless one, becoming sin, so we can be blameless. Our sins are
forgiven! Our salvation complete! Our place in God’s family secure! When we see that God was willing to do anything,
to give completely of himself, his own Son in fact, for our good, we realize
that it is silly for us to ever question the way he operates. He works all things for our good, and then he
simply invites us and gives us the power to believe that.
There is a quote, that is fast becoming one of my
favorites, by a man named Werner Franzmann that I
shared with our Sunday morning Bible Class not to many weeks ago. I think it is applicable to our lesson. It goes something like this, “If we are
inclined to ask questions on the way that God acts, we must tell ourselves
HUSH! The way and actions of our great
and gracious God are always right. They
are not subject to review by our little two-by-four of a brain.” (Paraphrased) Our lesson, in fact all of the lessons this
morning focus our attention on the importance of Christ’s victorious suffering and death
as our substitute—all to win us back to himself. Can there be any doubt he is worthy of our
unquestioning trust, even if at times it might not make sense to our 2X4 of a
brain? There is no doubt, just look at
the cross and the salvation that was won for you there. Amen.