Matthew 16:24-28; Hebrews 11:8-19; Genesis 22:1-18
Genesis 22:1-18 (abridged) God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here am I.” 2 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 on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him….7 ... Isaac said to his father ..., “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8 Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” .... 9 When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here am I.” 12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy 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.” 13 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. 14 So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.” 15 And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven 16 and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, 18 and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”
Abram and Sarai had journeyed with Abram’s father Terah and their extended families from their home in Ur in what is now Iraq. They had planned to settle in Canaan. It was not wise to go the short way directly across the desert to their west, so the prescribed path was far northwest along the Euphrates River and then far southwest into Canaan, but the family stopped after the northwest segment of the trip in Haran in what is now Turkey. Both Ur from which they came and Haran where they settled were dominated by an idolatrous, polytheistic moon cult. The names of Abram’s father Terah, his brother Haran, his wife Sarai, his niece Milcah, and his great-nephew Laban, all derive from the moon cult. Apparently, the family was deeply into it. Abram was 75 and Sarai, 65 and childless, when the Lord God called them out of idolatry into faith in the one true God and specifically called them to journey on, without most of their extended family, toward their original destination in Canaan, not yet fully specified. Without knowing where they were going, how would they know when they arrived? “Are we there yet?” They wandered through Canaan and Egypt for the next twenty-five years, still childless, but with God’s oft repeated promises that they would produce numerous offspring of the promise. It made no sense, but they kept going. Abram and Sarai tried to force the matter with a surrogate mother plan that, to say the least, has not worked out well. Ishmael’s and Isaac’s descendants have tended not to get along.
At ages 100 and 90 respectively, Abraham and Sarah, had recently been renamed by God in assurance of their coming parenthood. Abraham means “father of multitudes.” It was then that at last Isaac, so far the one and only son of the promise, was born. If you consider this belated pregnancy impossible, please remember that they did also. They were not ignorant of the effects of menopause. They named Isaac whose name means “Laughter” to commemorate the absurdity of the outcome. The conception and birth of Isaac was unmistakably the miraculous work of the Sovereign Lord. At last God had fulfilled one slender and fragile thread forward toward the enormous promise he had made to this aged couple years twenty-five years before.
Fast forward to a time when Isaac was somewhere between boyhood and young manhood, say between 12 and 18. If so, Abraham was between 112 and 118. At that point, the Lord asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. I cannot in one sermon give attention to all the troublesome issues raised by this difficult story. But let me be unmistakably clear on one point: God would never want any parent to actually go through with child sacrifice. It is completely contrary to the revealed character and will of God. But Abraham, coming out of paganism, and without benefit of the law of Moses which came six centuries later, or the ethic of Jesus which came 20 centuries later, did not have detailed revelation about the character of God and his moral expectations. Remember, he was brought up in a moon cult.
God needed to know and, more to the point, needed Abraham to know that Abraham had reached absolute faith and trust in the Lord, and so, as a test of Abraham’s willingness to trust and obey, God could ask him to proceed toward child sacrifice even though God knew that he was going to interrupt the process before it played out. This was as strong a test as could have been devised. But it is important for us to understand that this test could never be repeated for a person who knows either the law of Moses or the ethic of Jesus. Bottom line: This text in no way opens the way for child sacrifice. Rather, its focus is on Abraham’s faith.
To be sure, Abraham’s faith had vacillated a bit here and there, taking some very foolish actions that wrongly seemed expedient at the time. But, by the time of this painful test, his faith had moved to a new level. He no longer doubted that God was able to keep his promises. He no longer doubted that God could overcome any obstacle. As old as he was, he was still ready to believe that God would keep his promises of providing abundant offspring even if his one much belated and much beloved son Isaac ceased to live.
So, when he perceived God asking him to sacrifice Isaac, he prepared to obey. Abraham was told to go to one of the mountains in Moriah, the one that the Lord would show him. Moriah was apparently a region or range of mountains, with one of the mountains bearing that specific name. According to 2 Chronicles 3:1, Solomon’s temple was built on Mount Moriah.
When, on the way, young Isaac asked old Father Abraham, “Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham replied, “God will provide a lamb, my son.” Was Abraham lying to Isaac or holding out a slim hope that what he said might prove true? We don’t know. When God indeed provided a ram for the offering, Abraham renamed the mountain Yahweh Yireh or differently pronounced, Jehovah Jireh meaning “The Lord Will Provide” or, more literally, “The Lord Will See to It.” The text then says, “As it is said to this day, ‘On the Mount of the Lord, it shall be provided.’”
It seems that we are intended to see some sort of connection among the sites of Isaac’s near-sacrifice, the Jerusalem Temple, and Christ’s crucifixion. “On the Mount of the Lord, it will be provided.” It certainly was in this general location that the greatest provision in human history was made. God had provided a ram to substitute for Abraham’s beloved son of the promise, but 2000 years later, God provided his own one true and much beloved Son to pay for the sins of the whole world. Truly, the region of Moriah is a place of provision.
Abraham believed that the Lord would make provision, but how did he envision that provision? The Letter to the Hebrews suggests that his last resort faith was based on resurrection. The ESV puts it this way: By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, 18of whom it was said, "Through Isaac shall your offspring be named." 19 He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
Against all circumstances, Abraham had faith that God was able to provide, even if it had to be by resurrection. The binding of Isaac on the altar was a prefiguring of the crucifixion of Jesus, and Isaac’s divine rescue from death was a prefiguring of the resurrection of Jesus. Figuratively, Abraham through his faith received Isaac back from the dead.
Further, Abraham’s faithful obedience prefigured the resurrection faith of the church of Jesus Christ through the ages. The Letter to the Hebrews was trying to prepare its first readers in Rome to stand faithfully and firmly under the persecution that was coming, and it is trying to prepare us to stand up for Jesus in our daily lives. We will do that only if we have understood our baptisms, that we have already been baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus. Symbolically, we have already made our decision to live with the faith of Abraham.
So what did Abraham’s faith include besides the fact that God was a promise-keeper with resurrecting power?
Our Hebrews text describes Abraham’s faith in this way: 8By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. 10For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God….14For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. 15If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. 16But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one (JJT: or one that comes from heaven). Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
Hebrews views Abraham as living in his world without becoming of his world, looking for a future that comes from the hands of God, leaning toward that future with all his energy and resources. This is not just talking about looking forward to dying and going to heaven. Rather, it is talking about a constant pursuit of God’s purposes and promises, God’s mission and calling. Abraham wants no future but the one that can come only from God’s provision. The Lord will provide. The Lord will see to it. Ultimately, that is the only future worth having. That is not to say that Abraham and we do not have a role to play, even a hard and painful role. But it is not our sacrifice that brings the future. We sacrifice out of our faith. The Lord provides in answer to our faith. But it is purely the Lord’s gracious provision that brings a good future.
We need to be ready at all times to move toward whatever piece of the future God places in front of us. Abraham was a wealthy man, with many servants and a small army of his own, but he was willing to live as a nomadic herdsman and to own no real estate in this world beyond a burial plot near Hebron if that was what he needed to do to stay flexibly ready to follow God’s immediate leading. He would not settle for temporal security when he knew that his true security came only from the hand of God. So, he played his part in the unfolding of God’s plan of salvation, looking not for something he built for himself, but looking toward the coming perfect plan in which he had a part. He was a man with a mission, and the mission determined the shape of his life.
The Letter to the Hebrews is using Abraham as a model for our lives of faith. We are called to be real life pursuers of the mission, calling, and promises of God. What does that mean in practical terms?
It means that we have to understand our lives in terms of a faith journey for which God has purposes and promises. We are not placed here just to do what we want to do. We are placed here to serve God. If we are to demonstrate Abraham-like faith, we will do it by laying our whole lives and resources and projects and even our deepest blessings before God and letting God reorder everything according to his plans and purposes. We will have to do that whatever it costs us, however long it takes to see the fruition, even if we do not see the fruition at all within our lifetimes. Basically, the letter to the Hebrews tells us that God is not ashamed to be called the God of those who, with Abraham-like faith, keep their lives continually open to what only God can do. If we want to turn around and go back to a nostalgic past, if we want to stay in a comfortable world where all is familiar and we know exactly what is required of us, just so much and nothing more, if we want everything to match the ideas and ideals we already have, God will sadly allow us to go back or to stay put, but such decisions are not blessed by God. God is not ashamed to be called the God of those who are journeying toward a future that he alone can provide. For such as those, God will once more provide the seemingly impossible. Abraham considered that God was able. Do you?
Make no mistake. Such faith has its price. It has its tests. It has its pains. But it is worth them all. Its blessings are incomparable.
Jesus challenged his disciples to take up their crosses and to follow him. Will you?
In this basket placed at the foot of the cross are some nails. If you wish to make concrete today your commitment to move toward a future that only God can provide, I invite you to come forward and pick up one of those nails as a reminder that you are ready to pay the cost.
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