First Sunday in Lent
Notes
Transcript
The story of Abraham and Isaac is one of the most difficult stories in the scriptures. It highlights the challenges of our particular faith: the idea of giving everything up, including ones own son, is horrifying, gross, and seemingly unjust.
Gen 22:1 - The test
Gen 22:1 - The test
Distinction between tempting and trying. God does not TEMPT us but He does TEST US.
Look at Jn 6:5-6
Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.
The challenge: as readers we know more than Abraham, God will always prove faithful, we know this but will this creature fashioned in His own image?
Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.
God will never tempt you to sin
We even pray that God would lead us away from temptation and deliver us from evil.
Notice in the Gospel, Jesus is tempted not by His father but by - Satan
And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.
Testing is important:
Professor Voelz- wrote his tests in such a way that you ended up learning in the middle of the test. Less of an assessment and more of a learning activity. This is how we should view God’s testing of us
Learn about Gods faithfulness
Gen 22:2 The ask
Gen 22:2 The ask
While this reads like a command, and it is whenever God asks you to do something, He does ASK. He asks even though Abraham, and we are obligated to obey.
Asking is missing from most every english translation.. I dunno. “Please”
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.”
This is the first time that Moriah is mentioned in the bible. Moriah ends up being pretty important because if you follow the bible you know this:
Then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to David his father, at the place that David had appointed, on the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite.
This is the future home of Jerusalem!
Remember, Abraham has just been told to brutally slay and burn his solitary son. Compare that to what Abraham would have heard some time before:
And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
Surely that promise was rattling around in Abrahams head.
How do the promises of God square with the challenges and obligations He also presents?
The answer is that one must look to God to answer the question Himself.
How do we defend God in this situation? We don’t. We let Him answer for Himself. This is what we will do here.
Abraham takes Isaac, two aids, a donkey and heads out.
Genesis 22:5 The tell
Genesis 22:5 The tell
In poker there is this language of a ‘tell’, when a player fidgets or pretends defeat it may mean they have good cards.
Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.”
In Hebrew, the word’s ‘come again’ are first person plural. Abraham shows that he knows God will be faithful.
Some commentators think that Abraham is looking to the resurrection - I don’t think a father get’s that far ahead in this situation.
Further, Abraham uses a sort of pet name for Isaac, Naar- unlike the term beneh for Son.
Genesis 22:6-7 The tension
Genesis 22:6-7 The tension
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. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
The term here is - Avi ‘daddy’ - How many of you have been around when your kid or your friends child is lost or overwhelmed? What do they cry out? Mommy or daddy. This is exactly what is going on and I hate it.
In reality we all hate this idea. We hate the idea of sacrifice. We would prefer a system, a world, where we could just say ‘it’s ok’, a world where everything truly was ‘ok’. That is just not how the fallen world operates is it?
We have a sacrificial system in every part of our lives:
To be with your spouse means that you forgo intimacy with every other person.
Did you know that men who cheat on their spouse or divorce are almost 2.5x more likely to commit suicide? We pay for our actions one way or another.
In the midst of this pandemic there have been conversations about multi trillion dollar stimulus packages - none of that money is free. Our kids, our economy, our neighbor will sacrificially bear that cost.
Genesis 22:9-10 The climax
Genesis 22:9-10 The climax
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. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
This word for bound is used only this one time in the bible. Never again is man bound to wood in the bible until Jesus is nailed to the cross.
It is there on Mt. Moriah, outside of Jerusalem that God himself was crucified. His Son, His only beloved Son died as an offering to fulfill the test of faith.
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.
In Genesis 22 we have a deep foreshadowing of God’s own work- the work substitution. We’ve already established that we still live in a sacrificial system, but now we must trust that God Has provided the substitute.
The ram has been offered “instead of His son”
The Abraham and the Isaac- receive life. This then is the role of the Christian church: to offer freedom instead of death.
In the stead and by the command of my Lord Jesus Christ I forgive you all your sins...
Can you imagine how quickly Abraham rushed to take his beloved son off of that altar? Yes - God set Him free but His people still get to enact His will.
Church here is the application for today’s lesson. For any of you that doubt or question your faithfulness to God you must know this. God is faithful to you. James, the brother of Jesus attests to this:
Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
You are the firstfruits of life. The story of Abraham and Isaac is the costly story of God substituting His own Son for us.
Yes it is horrific- but let’s face it we don’t really have a stomach for justice.
This message is a calling for us to be sensitive to all the places in life where someone else has paid our debt or fulfilled our obligations.
Genesis 22:17 - The Reward
Genesis 22:17 - The Reward
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,
This is the continued promise of God- that our enemy, sin death and the devil will not win. In fact- Christ will declare His triumph over all things - even His enemies. Even Hell. Why do you think we proclaim that He descended? Not for a tan- for VICTORY - to prove that the tempter is powerless.
O my God, in you I trust; let me not be put to shame; let not my enemies exult over me.
To you who have felt or been under the oppression of sin, or wounded by your past- Jesus has come to set you free from the altar of death.
In Christ, the sacrifice has been fulfilled. We are no longer sacrifices to death- we are living sacrifices. Amen.