Second Sunday in Lent
- Genesis 22:1-14
- Psalms 16
- Romans 8:31-39
- Mark 8:31-38
[singing] Jehovah Jireh, my provider, his grace is sufficient for me, for me, for me.
Jehovah Jireh, my provider, his grace is sufficient for me. [/]
Jehovah Jireh. Yahweh Yireh. The LORD will provide. This name of God comes from today’s Genesis reading. At the end of this important but shocking episode, Abraham names the hill top the LORD will provide. Provide what?
Those of you who have been graciously listening to my sermons for a few months may have noticed that I’ve preached more from the Hebrew scriptures than from the New Testament. We Christians are naturally attracted to the Gospels. The person of Jesus is clear there, and we long to see Jesus. As you and I get to know each other better, you will find that one of my passions is for us to better see the gospel in the Hebrew scriptures. It is there. The good news of God’s kingdom and his redeemer has been there all along.
On Mission Sunday, we talked about God’s call of Abraham in Genesis 12. In that passage we read how the missionary God sent out his first missionary for the sake of the nations.
Genesis 22 is the climax of the Abraham narrative. After many years together, God tests Abraham’s trust one more time, and in quite a severe fashion. But it’s only a test.
God asks Abraham to take Isaac to a mountain three days away and kill him as a sacrifice.
What?!
Abraham’s response to this request is foundational in both Judaism and Christianity. Abraham has been obedient to this point, trusting God (most of the time). How he handles this request will affect how God continues in his mission to save the nations from their sins.
Because this text is so foundational, this story so well known, so visually familiar in religious art, we might be desensitized to its power. It may seem a far away fable, a religious story just meant to make a point.
But the shock and horror of God’s request was brought to life by the news early in the week that an Ambridge mother had confessed to killing her two grown children. We won’t go into the details of that case. The point is that this horrific news breathed life into Abraham and Isaac for me. There are a lot of hard questions to ask – about child sacrifice and is this abuse – but we can’t possibly begin to engage with them in 15 minutes.
So for now, we will note that how the story is related in the text communicates that God never intended Abraham to actually kill Isaac. It was a test from the start. In Hebrew, one can see that God made a request rather than gave a command. And God stops Abraham from following through.
The other important detail I want to highlight, before we go through the story, is Isaac’s age. The ESV translation we read calls Isaac a “boy.” However, the original word there in verse 5 is the same used for the two servants, called young men. Because of this, and other clues, I believe Isaac to be at least a teenager. Some have said he’s was as old as 30. There are no time markers in this chapter. In chapter 21, Isaac is about 4 when he’s weaned. In chapter 23, he’s in his late 30s when Sarah dies. If we split the difference, he’s about 20 in chapter 22.
Abraham is quick to obey God’s request. He gets up early, loads the donkey with wood and provisions and sets off with Isaac and two servants. Now, he has three days to think about God’s request. To question God. Question himself. To grieve. To pray.
“God, everything you promised me – father of many nations, as many sons as the stars in the sky – all of that potential is in Isaac. And now you want him back?”
They arrive at Moriah. Second Chronicles tells us Moriah is in what is now Jerusalem, what we call the Temple Mount. When you see pictures of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, there on that mountain Abraham took Isaac.
Abraham leaves the servants and the donkey down in the foothills. WE will be back, he says. When he says “we,” is he lying to protect his mission? Or is Abraham expecting a miracle from God? WE will be back.
Abraham loads Isaac’s back with the wood they brought.[1] Abraham is carrying the firestarter and a knife. And up they climb together.
Dad.
Yes, Isaac.
We have wood and fire, but what about the lamb?
“God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”
God will provide THE lamb. Was this a prayer from Abraham’s lips? A hope? A prophecy? Abraham is trusting God. He’s obeying, without question. But he’s expectant. He knows God is good. God will provide life to Abraham and his son.
They get to the top, and Abraham goes through with it. He builds the altar, adds the wood. Then, he ties Isaac up, like a sacrificial lamb.
Genesis tells us the story from Abraham’s perspective. But let’s consider Isaac for a bit.
If Isaac is 20, he certainly can overpower his 120-year-old father. Or he can at least elude him. He can run. He can escape. Can’t he?
Christ Church Jerusalem in Israel has a Maundy Thursday tradition. They gather in the Old City church for evening communion at 6. Afterward, they silently walk out of the city gates and walk down into the Kidron Valley and then up the Mount of Olives to the Garden of Gethsemene. They take the same walk Jesus and the disciples did after their Passover dinner.
David Pileggi, the pastor at Christ Church, reminds the group that if they keep going up the Mount of Olives they will reach the backside of the mountain, no longer full of trees but of rocks and sand. The Judean desert begins on the back of that mountain, and it is a wilderness. It is the Dead Sea wilderness, dry, barren, lacking people, but full of wild animals. Nobody would follow you there if you went. So when Jesus is praying in Gethsemene, asking the Father if there’s any way for the cup to pass from him, there is a huge temptation looming. If Jesus just hikes up that mountain, he can escape. Nobody will follow him into the wilderness. Judas won’t find him. Rome will forget about him. The Judean officials will say good riddance.
But Jesus doesn’t run. He tells the Father, “Not my will but your will be done.”
No matter how old Isaac was, Abraham had certainly begun to tell him the stories of how the family came to live in the land of Canaan. Abraham has told Isaac how God speaks to him, what God has promised. So while the text doesn’t say, I believe Abraham, somewhere on the mountain, told Isaac what God had asked for that day. And, if Abraham had taught his son well who God is, how he is good and faithful, even when he asks for things we cannot understand, Isaac said, “OK, Father. I trust him, and I trust you.” And instead of running away, Isaac submitted to the will of his father.[2]
The book of Hebrews (and even some non-Christian rabbis[3]) say that Abraham trusted that God would resurrect Isaac. And so Abraham grabs the knife, and Isaac awaits the death blow.
Abraham! Abraham! “Do not lay your hand on the young man 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.”
Why did God test Abraham in this way? He tested Abraham like he would test the children of Israel for 40 years after the exodus. From Deuteronomy 8, he tests us that he might humble us, testing us to know what is in our hearts, whether we will keep his commandments or not. Or, in other words, whether we love him or not. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” When we obey, we show that we trust.
God tested Abraham to prove that Abraham loved God for God. Not for the promise of a son or a name or the nations. Abraham did love God for God’s sake. This test is not unlike the test Job endures. Satan tells God that Job just “loves” God for the wealth he’s bestowed. But God knows that Job truly loves him. So he allows Satan to take everything from Job. Job has a hard time, but he endures, he submits, he worships from the pit of his poverty and illness. He loves God.
It’s not that God didn’t know that Abraham really loved him. Or that Job really loved him. THEY needed to know they really loved him.
God tests us to show us what’s really in our hearts. He proves to us that we really love him. He also shows us where we’re still holding on to pride, selfishness, greed, unforgiveness.
He doesn’t just show us the sin in our hearts. He does something about it.
As Abraham is untying Isaac, he sees a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. Abraham and Isaac had climbed this mountain to worship, and God provides the sacrifice. “And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering INSTEAD of his son.”
God provided a substitute for Isaac. This ram is not the lamb Abraham told Isaac God would provide. It was a down payment of sorts.
No, that Lamb that Abraham anticipated, God sent him on his mission 2,000 years after Abraham. Jesus, the Lamb that takes away the sins of the nations, like Isaac, told the Father, “I trust you. Let’s do this.” He carried the wood of his sacrifice to a place not far from Moriah, then he laid down on a Roman cross, a substitute for you and me.
In today’s epistle reading, Paul reminds us that NOTHING can separate us from the love of God. Nothing, not even death or famine or persecution.
This isn’t Paul’s invention. No. The Holy Spirit has revealed to Paul the truth that empowered Jesus to pick up our cross, the cross of our execution for our sins. Jesus picked it up because the Father asked him to. And Jesus said yes. Why? Because he KNEW that NOTHING would separate him from the LOVE of the Father. Jesus, like Isaac, said yes to his Father’s shocking request. “Climb up on that altar and be the sacrifice.” Both Isaac and Jesus say, “Yes, Father” and lay down their lives for love’s sake.
Some of our tests will take forms of persecution and poverty, illness and loss. God will ask us if we love him more than our children, our spouse, our family and friends, if we love God more than life itself? Do we really trust that we do not live by bread alone, or the work of our hands, or by the money we “make.” Do we really trust that we live by every word that come out of the mouth of God?
God has proved his love for us. As Origen says, “Behold God contending with people in magnificent generosity: Abraham offered God a mortal son who was not put to death; God delivered to death an immortal Son for humanity.”
So, now let us prove our love for God. How? By trusting him when things get hard. Let us trust him when the fridge is empty, or worse, the bank account. When illness comes and does not go. When death takes a dear one much too soon.
He will be faithful, whether we see it in this life or the next. He will provide.
Jehovah Jireh, our provider. Your grace is sufficient for us. Amen.
[1] “like one who carries his own stake [to be impaled] on his shoulder.” Bereishit Rabbah 56:3
[2] Cf. Bereishit Rabbah 56:8
[3] Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer 31:10. Cf. Edward Bernstein, “Isaac’s Death and Resurrection,“ Serferia.org.