The Ultimate Test

Thank you for joining us for Resurrection Sunday! If you are with us for the first time this morning, we have been going through the first book of the Bible together every Sunday, and we’ve been following the story of a guy named Abraham, and even if you didn’t grow up in church you’ve maybe heard of him.

Today we are going to read one of the most incredible stories in the entire Bible. Because in just this one story, you have intense love and affection as well as horror and drama. You will think Yahweh is crazy, and then you will find him to be actually quite merciful and gracious. You will see desperation and tragedy, as well as rescue and relief – it’s a roller coaster, especially if it’s your first time reading this.

But this message is crucial for every one of us to hear this morning, because in this story we’re about to read is a life or death situation. This isn’t one of those cute stories like the tortoise and the hare, where you can pick up a life lesson and then go about your day. This is life or death, and we are faced with a choice, whether you’re just exploring the things of God, or you’ve been a Christian for a long time.

So before we dive into this, let’s go to the Lord again and invite him to be present with us as we study his word.

PRAYER

Before I was a pastor, my wife and I worked in professional photography, and we were at a convention one year in Cedar Rapids at the Doubletree downtown, and if you’ve ever been there, you know that convention center and hotel are connected to the Alliant Energy Powerhouse, where they have concerts and shows and stuff like that.

So we’re at the convention, and one evening we knew that a pretty famous rock band was going to be in the arena, and you could hear the music rumbling through the whole place. So myself and a couple of my photographer buddies wandered over to that part of the building and found a back door to the arena – music blasting through the cracks around the door, and one security guard standing there. And we’re like we can take him. So I went for his legs, another guy went high… I’m joking. we didn’t do that.

But we walked up and said, hey, can we just step in the back door here and watch for like 5 minutes. We don’t want to stay, just 5 minutes to see what’s going on. And the guard looked at us with a smile and said, boys, I’d love to let you in, but I’d lose my job. So I’m sorry. You can only get in through the front door with a ticket.

What were we trying to do? We want the benefits of being a ticket holder without the cost of being a ticket holder. That’s where so many people find themselves today, especially in our section of the world. They want the benefit of being a Christian – they want joy in their lives, they want a deep internal peace that the Bible talks about, they want to go to heaven when they die, they want to have community around them that love them, they want to have purpose and meaning in life – they want the benefits of being a wholehearted follower of Jesus without the cost of actually being a follower of Jesus. The cost of acknowledging sin and repenting of it. The cost of obedience to someone else’s will instead of our own. The cost of surrender. The cost of whatever he might call us to.

In Genesis, in chapter 12, Yahweh, the God of the Bible, appears to this man named Abraham and gives him one of those invitations. And in Genesis 12:1–3 “The Lord said to Abram: Go from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Leave everything that’s familiar to you – that’s the cost of following God. That last line was especially powerful – all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you. It was a powerful line, but a confusing one, because Abraham was pushing 75 years old, and his wife Sarah was 10 years younger, and they were not able to have any children. And it’s pretty tough for your family to become a great nation when you can’t even get the family started. So Abraham and Sarah hear God make them this promise, but 5 years go by, no kid. 10 years, nothing. So they try some alternative methods for having this child, like having Abe hook up with one of the slave girls, and God said nope. We’re doing this on my terms, not yours.

15 years. 20 years. And God keeps promising Abraham that the human who would bring blessing to the world, where Adam and Eve had brought a curse – this offspring would come from him and Sarah and no one else.

Finally, after 25 years of waiting and trying, with Abraham at 100, and Sarah at 90, God performed a miracle and Sarah gave birth to her first child – the child of promise. The one who would be a blessing to the world. The one that God would establish his promise through. The one who could have only been straight from Yahweh himself.

Any of you who are mothers know the natural protective feelings that God has put in you as you look after your children, right? How many times do you hear a mom talk about, “man, that snotty neighbor kid pushed my little Trevor, and the momma bear came out in me.” Right? You hear that a lot. And dads, you know what it’s like when you hear someone making fun of your kid, or in sports if a kid from the other team is cocky and kind of shows off in front of your kid, something rises up in you, and you’re like, yeah, give me a jersey, and I’ll show you what’s up you little punk.

That momma bear comes out, that defensive dad shows up when we see our kids in trouble. Can you imagine the hovering that Abraham and Sarah would have done to little Isaac? I mean we don’t get a second chance at this, right? Like you don’t let anyone else change him or touch him, you never let him leave your sight, he’s not in one car seat, you’ve got car seats strapped over him and beside him when you go somewhere, you take his temperature every 10 minutes to make sure he’s not sick, he never plays with other kids cause you want to make sure he’s not doing something dangerous. You don’t let him run, or climb trees, or ride bike – you know what I’m saying? Can you imagine how Abraham’s heart just wanted to teach Isaac everything, train him up, get him ready for what God wanted to do through him – I mean, Abraham and Sarah must have just doted over this miracle kid all day every day.

A lot of the future rides on this kid. Keep him safe. Healthy. And never let him out of your sight.

I won’t ask for a show of hands, and this isn’t meant to be a sermon about parenting, but how many of you have ever noticed that sometimes people’s kids run the home? Whatever they want, they get it. They can do no wrong. They have their parents wrapped around their finger, and they know how to manipulate mom and dad to get what they want. They know when to throw a fit. They know how much volume gets mom to move. They know what to do or say to get dad off his phone.

You know what I’m talking about, right? You’ve seen this. I’m wondering if that wasn’t part of the reason Genesis 22 starts off with this line in verse 1: “After these things God tested Abraham

Now, that’s a very important clue for how we read the rest of the story. The story we’re about to read is about Yahweh, this personal God who has made such great promises to Abraham, this is about Yahweh testing Abraham. Although we are told it was a test, for Abraham God’s command was totally real (Wenhem, 76).

By now, Isaac is probably 20-30 years old. He’s not the little baby anymore. He’s a young man. And here’s the test: “After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he answered. “Take your son,” he said, “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.”

Take the miracle kid, your only son – yeah, you know, the one you love more than life itself, and offer him back to me as an act of worship. Abraham – show me that you worship me more than you worship your son Isaac.

The pagans in Canaan during the OT period regularly practiced child sacrifice, where they built a huge metal statue that had a sort of furnace inside. They believed the way to appease their god, to fuel their prayers, was to sacrifice their own children by placing them on the arms of the statue so that baby would slide down the arms into the fire. They would have loud drummers nearby to drown out the sound of the baby. That’s commitment to worship. They were so committed, they would engage in temple prostitution so they could have more babies to feed into the fire.

Never once in scripture does Yahweh support this practice. It angers him. It provokes him. And it’s one of the reasons he wiped out some of those nations. So why in the world would he now ask Abraham to sacrifice his son? To do the very thing he hates!?

This is the part where many people walk away from God. They say, if that’s the kind of God he is, I’m out. He sounds narcissistic and arrogant. “You must love me more than you love your children.” What kind of God is that. And that momma bear or protective dad starts to flare up – what kind of God would dare ask me to do such a thing? And we hug our kids a little tighter and say, this is why God can’t be trusted. Trust yourself, believe in yourself, love yourself, stick with your family, and follow your heart.

But why do we never stop to question is what kind of person would give all of their attention and affection to something lesser than the God of the universe? We never stop to question what kind of person would place a mere human on the throne of his life instead of the Creator of heaven and earth, who gives us life and breath and all things!?!

It’s possible that with this command God was asking Abraham to prove that he was as committed to the Lord God as pagans were to their gods” (Bergen, 41-42). I want to know if that Abraham back in Genesis 12 that left his home, his family, his inheritance and started walking, trusting me to provide for him – I want to know if that Abraham is still here, or if you’ve become so engrossed with this miracle son that you’ve abandoned me.

Now of course, God already knew the answer to those questions. This wasn’t about God learning information he didn’t know. This was about Abraham learning information he didn’t know. In its most basic terms, this test was a choice between God’s blessing and God himself (Evans, 76).

The author of Genesis does not let us into what Abraham was thinking as God was speaking. I think we can safely assume that Abraham, being a fairly intelligent man was immediately saying to himself, I don’t think I should tell Sarah about this. You know, the whole momma bear thing.

As shocking as God’s command might be, what is maybe equally shocking is 3 So Abraham got up early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took with him two of his young men and his son Isaac. He split wood for a burnt offering and set out to go to the place God had told him about.

Abraham doesn’t wait around or waste time. He doesn’t delay obedience. If God said to do it, then best get after it. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey. Now watch the language here – The boy and I will go over there to worship; then we will come back to you.” Does Abraham have some sort of incredible faith here? Or is he trying to cover his tracks with the servants. “you wait here, don’t worry about what’s happening over there.” Either way, Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac. In his hand he took the fire and the knife, and the two of them walked on together.

I doubt there’s much being said as they walk. Abraham is maybe thinking through how he’s going to do this so that Isaac can’t figure out what’s happening. Make it a surprise, make it quick. How do I do this so he doesn’t see the knife coming. And that’s when Isaac spoke up. He’d seen enough sacrifices by this point in his life to know that something was missing.

7 Then Isaac spoke to his father Abraham and said, “My father.” And he replied, “Here I am, my son.” Probably going, please don’t ask about this, please don’t ask about this, please don’t ask about this.

Isaac said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Then the two of them walked on together.

The author of the book of Hebrews, nearly all the way on the other side of the Bible, tells us that Abraham must have believed that if God waited 25 years to bless us with this son through such a miraculous birth, and all of God’s promises will be fulfilled through the family tree of this one specific young man, then he knew God has to be up to something with this test. Hebrews 11:19 says Abraham had full confidence that God was able to raise Isaac from the dead.

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. And in a story that is already a jolt to our sensibilities today, add one more to the list. There’s no record that Isaac put up a fight. No pleading for his life. I mean, Isaac’s dad is at least 120 years old. Even if Isaac was tired from carrying the firewood, he easily could have overpowered his father and tied HIM up instead. But instead, Isaac would have almost had to climb on the altar and allow himself to be tied up.

Then Abraham reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son. And as soon as he grabbed the knife, the angel of the Lord …called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” He replied, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me.” Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son. And Abraham named that place The Lord Will Provide, so today it is said, “It will be provided on the Lord’s mountain.”

And in verses 15-18, the angel called out again and doubled down on the covenant that God had made back in Genesis 12. “Because you have done this thing and have not withheld your only son…all the nations of the earth will be blessed by your offspring because you have obeyed my command.”

The test is over. Abraham, you passed. You proved that you are willing to worship Yahweh – even if it costs you the very thing that is the most dear to you. And because you have not withheld your only son, I will bless you…and all the nations of the earth will be blessed by your offspring.

Abraham believed that God could raise Isaac from the dead, and Hebrews 11 says “figuratively speaking”, he sort of did. Isaac was as good as dead as he walked up that hill, and yet God “returned” him to Abraham, fully alive.

You want to know what’s wild? God told Abraham to go to the land of Moriah, and that he would show him the exact mountain where this sacrifice should happen. 2 Chronicles 3 says that King Solomon built the temple on Mt Moriah. In other words, what God was asking Abraham to do pointed down the road of human history to the temple where sacrifice after sacrifice would be offered as an atonement for sin. Lamb after lamb after lamb after lamb, slaughtered, blood poured out, to show how deadly sin was and how costly redemption is. But as the author of Hebrews says, the blood of bulls and goats and lambs could never take away sin.

A better sacrifice was needed. One that would actually do something about the problem of sin. One that could actually erase the sin once and for all.

Roughly 2000 years later, another Son would walk up another hill carrying the wood for the sacrifice – this time, though, it was the Son of God carrying the beam for the cross he would be nailed to as the once and for all sacrifice for sin. The words Abraham said to his son Isaac, ‘God himself will provide a lamb,’ were prophetic, and John the Baptist led the way for Jesus’ ministry by pointing at Jesus and saying, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!’ (cf, Baldwin, 92).

Like Isaac, Jesus didn’t plead for his life, or try to run, or fight back – he quietly, willingly, allowed himself to be fastened to the cross with full confidence that his Father knew what he was doing. And this time, there was no ram caught in the thicket. This time there was no voice from heaven saying “STOP!” This time there was no merciful rescue. This time, the innocent Son faced the agony of 6 hours of the full wrath of God. In those 6 hours, Jesus suffered the separation from God that our rebellion deserved.

2 Corinthians 5:21 says “He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” A theologian named John Stott puts it like this: The bottom line of sin is humans putting themselves in the place of God. The bottom line of salvation is God putting himself in the place of humans.

Remember the beginning of the sermon – Sin doesn’t make us bad, it makes us dead. More important than the war in Iran, more important than gas prices, more important than terrorism or corruption in the world – more important than the sinfulness of the person sitting to your right and to your left is the sin in your own heart, because that is what separates you from God and sentences us to spiritual death as an enemy of God.

THAT’s what Jesus came to undo! Jesus didn’t come to earth so that we could be GOOD – he came to earth so that we could be made ALIVE! That we could be made right with God. That we could be joined to him, not as an enemies anymore, but as family! He came to pay for the sin that separated us, and to take on himself the spiritual death that should have been ours. Jesus is the innocent son who climbed the hill for us. Jesus is the substitute that dies in our place. And Jesus’ resurrection proves that the cross worked. The check for our sins cleared the bank, God welcomed him back, and now all glory and honor and power and praise and all wisdom and strength belong to Jesus. He’s earned it.

And the question for all of us today is this: Will we treasure God’s blessings more than we treasure him? Will we enjoy his gifts more than we enjoy him? Jesus said in Matthew 16:25 “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of me will find it.”

That means there is a kind of self-preservation, a kind of self-protection, a kind of looking out for yourself that will actually cause you to lose your soul. And there is also a kind of losing your life, a kind of dying, a kind of death that actually brings life where it matters the most.

Part of Abraham died on the mountain that day. The part of Abraham that that worshiped his only son as the treasure of his life needed to die, so that Abraham could truly live fully, completely, surrendered to the purposes of God. I’m guessing part of Isaac died that day too. The entitled, me-first, life is all about me, only child, give me what I want attitude died on the altar that day as he realized Yahweh is not someone who messes around. Isaac was alive only by the mercy of God.

God loved Abraham too much to let him stay where he was. God’s purpose for Abraham needed him to be completely surrendered, full of faith, and Abraham passed the test.

So as the band comes up to lead us out, I’m going to just leave this question on the screen and give you a few minutes to just pray right where you are.

Do I want the benefits of following Jesus without the cost of actually following him?

Do I want the blessings of God without being completely surrendered?

If your answer is yes, you don’t have a climb a mountain to get to God – Jesus already did that. You don’t have to walk three days and be ready to sacrifice your own son – God already did that for you. You don’t have to try to be good to make up for all the bad stuff you’ve done – Only God is good, and he already knows everything you’ve done.

Simply pray right where you are at your seat – Lord, I’m a sinner. I’ve been avoiding you, I’ve been pushing you away, I’ve been living for myself in rebellion against you. But I believe that Jesus died to pay the penalty for my rebellion. And his resurrection means the cross worked. I am forgiven. I don’t need to live in shame or guilt anymore. Lord fill me with your Spirit so that I can fully surrender to you, and follow you the rest of my life. I want to love you with my whole heart, and enjoy you both now and forever. Amen.

SOURCES

Gordon J. Wenham, New Bible commentary: 21st century edition, 1994

Robert D. Bergen, CSB Study Bible: Notes, 2017

Joyce G. Baldwin, The Message of Genesis 12–50: From Abraham to Joseph, eds. J. A. Motyer and Derek Tidball, The Bible Speaks Today, (England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1986)

Tony Evans, The Tony Evans Bible Commentary, (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2019)