Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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The Big Test
This story begins with this line:
Genesis 22:1 “After these things God tested Abraham.”
This is a test.
What’s the worst test you ever took?
I remember barely passing my driver’s test.
I can’t remember all the reasons why I got points docked, but at the end of the test I was one mistake away from having to take the thing all over again.
What I do remember about my mistakes is my response: really?
you docked me for that?
Oh c’mon.
I did enough to barely get by.
I had this habit of not just being calm on tests like that, but too calm.
I remember going into that driver’s test thinking “I’m not going to sweat the details” and when it was over, I probably should have been sweating some of the details.
This test we’re considering today isn’t one of those tests in which you do enough just to get by.
This isn’t a test that, while taking it seriously, you don’t sweat the details.
No, this is a test where heaven and earth hang in the balance.
God sets up a test so big and so bad that, at least at the human level, it looks as though God himself just might be the loser.
This is one of the most dramatic and even shocking stories in all of the Bible.
There are other stories that shock, especially when it comes to how depraved and how terrible humanity can be.
But this shock isn’t about what humans are doing but about what God is doing.
There’s no getting around the difficulties in our story.
Here’s the test: God tells Abraham to kill his son Isaac.
The Big Dilemma
There are two difficulties with this:
Human sacrifice is against everything God is about
Isaac is the son of Promise
The first difficulty really isn’t addressed in the text.
It’s more of a question for theologians and philosophers to ponder.
God tells Abraham to do exactly what he has said is despicable to him: human sacrifice.
Child sacrifice.
And here, God is commanding Abraham to do it.
But that difficulty isn’t really broached here.
There’s another difficulty that is bigger and badder than child sacrifice, if that’s possible.
The second difficulty is that God just very well might be a liar.
And if he is a liar, he’s a monster.
He’s Satan himself.
God spent years giving Abraham and Sarah hope for a son who be the heir to God’s promises to Abraham.
God promised that Abraham would be the father of many nations and it would be through his son that those promises would be fulfilled.
Isaac is born to Abraham and Sarah.
Abraham is 100 and Sarah is 90 when Isaac is born.
That’s the miracle son.
The son who was promised and born as a miracle son.
And now God is saying:
Genesis 22:2 ““Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.””
Again, Abraham has to wonder, as he hears this, but what about the Promise?
What about all those years of waiting and all those promises you made about being as numerous as the stars and as numerous as the sands of the seashore.
What about the Promise.
It really sounds like God is a liar.
I think about what I would be thinking when I hear those words and it’s not pretty.
We’re going to find as we walk through this story that what Abraham is thinking isn’t what I would be thinking.
But make no mistake, that Promise hangs in the balance as Abraham sets out for a mountain to which he has never been.
Mount Moriah.
The Son
God says “take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love”.
Throughout this story, Isaac is called a son multiple times.
A couple of times, this phrase shows up, “your only son”.
We know, if we’ve read to this point, this isn’t Abraham’s only son.
However, God has been very, very pointed with Abraham that Isaac is the only son of Promise.
That all of God’s promises were going to be fulfilled through Isaac.
And it’s that Promised Son, who is now walking with his father up to Mount Moriah.
The Sacrifice
This story just bleeds with intimacy.
Isaac is the son, the son whom Abraham loves.
He is the son of Promise.
And the writer, Moses, goes out of his way to tell us that Abraham and Isaac walk together.
After they leave behind others who are with them on the trip, with Abraham telling the road crew that both of them will be back, Abraham and Isaac walk and journey, just the two of them.
Abraham places the wood on Isaac’s back, which drips with drama.
And the dialogue is heartbreaking on the one hand, but full of faith on the other.
Isaac wants to know where the sacrifice is.
Natural question.
You’ve got the wood, you’ve got the means to being the fire, but… we’re missing the sacrifice.
And Abraham says “God will provide”.
The Provision
God will provide.
This is beyond simply telling the road crew that both of us will be back.
This is Abraham leaning into the promise.
Unbelievable.
The very thing that hangs in the balance.
If this is me, I’m thinking God is a liar.
God’s not making good on his promise to bless the nations of the world through this son, this son that we waited 75-80 years for.
Not Abraham.
The very Promise that sounds like God is breaking, Abraham is leaning into the Promise.
God will provide.
How can Abraham say this?
Abraham says this precisely because of the Promise.
That’s backwards thinking.
The whole thing looks and feels like God is breaking his promise and Abraham, who has been promised the kingdoms of the world through his son, still believes that God is going to make good on his promise.
For Abraham, God’s Promise to provide an offspring who will change the world is bigger than the sacrifice of the moment.
God will Provide.
Isaac believes his dad.
I’m guessing the next few moments are so surreal that Abraham and Isaac will talk about this often in years to come, in ways only the two of them would ever know.
Isaac trusts his dad’s word who is trusting God’s word.
Here’s what Isaac does:
Genesis 22:9 “When they arrived at the place that God had told him about, Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood.
He bound his son Isaac and placed him on the altar on top of the wood.”
Abraham binds his son.
The wood had been on Isaac.
Now Isaac is on the wood.
Bound.
This is the posture of a sacrifice.
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