Testing
When I headed home for the winter my last year in seminary, I brought my sermons with me. I brought them with me because I was anticipating an interview at a church in either Anchorage or Fairbanks. When I brought my sermons home with me, I allowed my mother to read them. The was very kind and supportive, as mothers are supposed to be. One of the sermons was on this passage. Mom said, you have done a great job bringing together this sermon, but I have always hated this passage in the Bible. You have said some good things here, but I still don't like this passage. I just do not understand it. And I don't like it. Then, she put that sermon aside and went on to read the next manuscript.
I suppose that is why Sarah is left out of this story, and as soon as this story is over, the next thing we hear is that Sarah is dead. This is not a story that is easy to stomach for a lot of parents, especially mothers.
It is also a story that can be misunderstood in a lot of ways.
Can you imagine? Things are finally settling in. Your wife has the baby she has longed for. You have been raising this son. And each time you look at this child of yours, you see the promise of God. So beautiful. Does he act up? Sure he does. But each day, each moment with your child fills you with wonder. You The promise fulfilled that God was going to give you a child in your old age. The promise yet to come that God was going to give your decendants this land that you are living in, and that God was going to bless you with decendants that were going to change the world.
Then, sometime between Isaac being 7 and 37, you hear God's voice again. This time, God leads you to take your son to what is the site of the future Jewish temple and the current dome of the Rock and wailing wall. Then, as you are there, the voice of God says, you need to sacrifice Issac. You need to bind him on the altar, kill him, and offer him as a burnt offering to me in worship. This is what Abraham heard.
So, he packs up in the early morning, sets out with a few servants and his son, and heads to do this thing that he believed God asked him to do. The Bible said that they were young servants, servants probably about the same age or younger than Issac.
If someone did this today…we would believe they had lost it. How do I know this? I know that this is true because some people did do it in this day and age.
Andrea Yates, a homeschooling mother of 5 children, decided one evening that God was asking her to kill all her children while they might still be innocent so that they would not all go to hell. She prepared bathwater. One by one she called them into the bathroom, and held them underwater until they drowned. She believed God wanted her to do this. She is spending the rest of her life in prison. We might have looked at Abraham the same way.
One way people try and get around the difficulty of this text of Scripture is to try and say that Abraham simply heard God wrong. That Abraham thought he was hearing God telling him to do this, but he really was not. Instead, like Andrea Yates, Abraham was simply mishearing God.
This would be a nice thought if the Scripture did not make it clear that this was not the case. The first sentence of verse 1 says that God decided to test Abraham. This story begins with God's action. We can't say that God heard Abraham wrong.
Anyway…so Abraham obeys this strange and ominous command of God, apparently without telling his wife about it. They get to the bottom of the hill, and Abraham tells the servants that he and his son will make the rest of the journey together. Isaac gathers the wood and carries it on his back. Abraham brings the flint and the knife. At some point Isaac becomes a little concerned about what is going on. He asks his father where the sacrifice is. Abraham says that "God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering."
Now we have discussed one common misinterpretation of this story…and that is that Abraham heard God wrong. If we look at verse 8, we can be subject to another common misinterpretation of this story. That is the idea that Abraham knew that God would not really ask him to sacrifice his son. If you pull this passage out of context one can say that Abraham somehow already knew that God was going to provide a lamb in the thicket. That he was speaking with some sort of inside knowledge, instead of either expecting Isaac to be the sacrifice or hoping against hope that God would find a way out of no way.
This idea of Abraham having inside knowledge does not make sense for several reasons. First of all, why would you follow through with putting Isaac through the ordeal of being tied up on top of wood and raising a knife above your head if you knew what was going to happen. You would just sit and wait for another sacrifice.
The truth is that faith is not faith if we know all the answers. Faith requires trust. Here we realize that despite the way everything looked, Abraham trusted in God's promise. He trusted when he did NOT see the answer, when he did NOT see how things were going to turn out right, when he did NOT completely understand what God was doing and why God was doing it. He trusted God when it seemed unreasonable to do so. That is what faith does. It trusts when we can't see and don't understand.
So Abraham and Isaac made it to the top of that hill, and Abraham bound him up and raised his knife to kill his son. Suddenly he heard a voice. ABRAHAM! ABRAHAM! And the angel told him, at the last possible moment, not to kill his child. Then the angel reiterated God's promise to bless Abraham and his decendants so that they could then bless the entire world.
Abraham has more faith than I do. I am not sure I could have gone through with what Abraham did. Abraham demonstrated his courage. He demonstrated his trust in God. He demonstrated his love for God. He showed God that he loved God more than even his child.
Some very reputable pastors have preached sermons where they share that they believe this is the story. On my desk is a book about preaching Old Testament Narrative. In his book he talks about this story of the binding of Issac. And he says his key point is that "You do the best for your kids when you worship God, and not your children".
I agree with his point. But I don't think the point of this passage is looking at Abraham as our role model. Abraham certainly had great faith, as Hebrews 11 points out. But the key to this passage is about who God is, and what God does in our lives.
If you look at this passage, there is a significant word play throughout the passage. A word play that is not as easy to see in our language, but it is still there. It is a word play on the word "to see".
God is waiting to see how Abraham will respond to the test.
The word provide literally means "to see to it" or "to see ahead for". The part of the word "vide" is from the same root as video or visual. Abrahams says that he believes God will "see ahead for" him, even though he cannot see or understand what God is up to in verse 8. God does provide. He names the place "the Lord will provide".
The Lord will provide.
At the beginning it is the Lord who tests. In the end it is the Lord that delivers and provides.
Many of us have points in our life when we struggle to "see" what God is doing. We do not understand. I have a friend who recently discovered that her daughter had been abused by an aquaintence when she was younger. She struggles to understand why God allowed this to happen. Is it a lesson? Is it a test? She does not know. She just knows that she hurts for her child, and she hurts for herself. Her child, at times, is struggling. But she still believes that the Lord provides. The still believes that the Lord can make something good out of this evil. She still hopes and prays and trusts God for hope and strength and healing. She knows that the Lord provides. The Lord sees ahead for us, when we can see nothing ourselves.
Many of you have known the loss of a loved one. A spouse has died. A child has died. And you wondered how you were going to get through the pain, and how you were going to be able to go on living without that one that you love so much. You take things step by step. You may be angry. You may not understand. But you keep trusting. You keep hoping. Not because you have Abraham as a role model, as good of a role model as he is, but because you know God will provide. He sees what you cannot. He knows what you don't. His job is to see ahead. Your job is to trust.
You may have a loved one who is sick or hurting, and you would do anything you could to take that hurt away. God's job is to provide. Your job is to trust.
You may have been mistreated by others and wonder how you are going to get through your sense of betrayal and heartache. Have the courage to trust. God will provide.
The final thing that I would like you to notice is the similarity between the sacrifice of Issac and the sacrifice of Jesus. Abraham is told to take his son, his one son, the son who he loves, and offer him as a sacrifice. The gospel of John says that God so loved the world that he sent his one and only son. Isaac has to carry the sticks for the sacrifice. Jesus has to carry the cross. God offers his one and only Son for us on the cross. When we hopeless, he made a way of hope for us. And when Jesus rose again, he showed that no prayer, no trial, no time of testing is outside of the power and the grace of God.
He offered himself for you.
Will you have the courage to trust him?
To trust him enough to surrender your life to him?
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