You Want Me to Do What With My Son?!

INTRO: "Kill him!" It's not exactly what God said, Abraham knew, but it was exactly what Abraham was going to do. He was going to kill, or more specifically sacrifice, his long-awaited son, Isaac. Why would God ask Abraham to do this? And, do you think He still asks such things of us?

God didn’t exactly say, “Kill him!” He said something more in tune with what we read in the Old Testament regarding worship of YHWH; Isaac, Abraham’s promised son, was to be offered as a sacrifice, a burnt offering to YHWH. After waiting all those years for God to make good on His promise, God asks Abraham to do this! Let’s read this story from scripture…

Genesis 22:1–19 NIV

1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. 2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” 3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” 6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” 8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together. 9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. 12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” 13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” 15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” 19 Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And Abraham stayed in Beersheba.

Let us pray...

Background:

Why would God do this?

To understand this, we must try to understand a little about Abraham. You see Abram, as he was first called in Genesis 11, was a nomad whom God called to be someone special. He called Abram to leave everything he knew to set out on a great adventure with God. Do you know how old Abram was when God said, “Hey, do you want to start something brand new? How ‘bout you leave all that you know, and go where I tell you?” He was 75! Can you believe that? 75!

Allow me to make a guess at what most of us would say to God if he called us at 75 years old to pick up and move on to a place we don’t even know, on an adventure that is far and away different than anything we have ever imagined in our lives. Abram was probably used to all kinds of gods being worshiped, and all kinds of ideas about spirituality, and how it played into this life and the afterlife. So he meets a new God, and this God, YHWH, tells him, “You wanna’ take a chance on me?” I believe most of us, at 75 years old, would say, “Sounds great God, but you got the wrong person! I’m O-L-D, OLD! Ask one of these young people around here. Let me give you some references.” But Abram didn’t say any of that. He said, “Yes!” Really, we don’t know what Abram said, because in the next paragraph, in Genesis 12, after God said, “GO!” Abram was gone!

In those beginning days God told Abram that he would make a “great nation” out of him (Gen 12:2). There was only one problem: 75 year-old Abram, and his wife, just 10 years younger, had no children. Hmmm… I’m pretty sure that if there were to be decedents enough to make a nation out this blessed union, there would have to be offspring! It is a testament to Abram’s trust of this new God he just met that he didn’t immediately yell, “But, I ain’t got no kids, Lord! How you gonna’ make a nation of me when I ain’t had the first yungun’?” (Notice Abram’s southern West Virginia accent. Who says I can’t be relevant?) Abraham actually later had a bit if a question about this, but I think his curiosity got the best of him, and he just wanted to know, he wasn’t protesting.

It is from this beginning with God that Abraham (his name was changed some time later by God) came to be the father of Isaac some years later. Abraham was 99 when Isaac was born, and the road to this birth was fraught with mistakes by Abraham and Sarah that have ramifications to this day. Nonetheless, Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah just as God had promised nearly 25 years before. How many of us would wait on God for 25 years? We have a hard time waiting on Him for 25 minutes!

The Test: So that brings us to chapter 22 in the book of Genesis. After waiting all this time for a son, and after going through all the mistakes and the consequences of those mistakes, Abraham and Sarah finally have reached a place in their life where, perhaps, things have settled down. Isaac has grown and life is good! And then God asks Abraham to do the unthinkable, “Take Isaac and sacrifice him to me.” And much like when God originally called Abraham, the next verse finds Abraham simply arising in the morning and setting out on the journey.

Illus.: There is an important lesson that we can gain here about acting when God says, “Act!” If my child is playing with a ball in the yard and suddenly their ball goes rolling toward the road they may have a tendency to blindly run after the ball into the road to retrieve it. Now, if I see, from my vantage point, there is a car speeding down the road toward the ball I will shout, “Stop!” It’s very important my child obeys immediately because if my child chooses that moment to question my authority and good intentions for them it may cost them their life. It is important for children to obey parents as they have our best interest at heart. In the same way it is important for us to obey God because He has our best interest at heart; He sees things we do not, and we should trust Him enough to listen to his voice. Abraham trusted God enough to listen to Him when he said, “take your son…”

I can truly admire Abraham because I know that there have been times when God called me to do something, and nothing near as traumatic as this, and I just sat on it. Didn’t answer the call, didn’t argue with God, I just didn’t do it. I ignored the call on my life. So you know what happens when you ignore the call on your life, when you resist the plan that God has laid out for you? It doesn’t affect God’s Kingdom, necessarily. God doesn’t press the pause button on his plan for this universe because you ignore Him. He’s not waiting on you. He is inviting you to participate. His plan will be done. The only one affected by you resisting God’s call is YOU!

Abraham could have waited when God called him to be a great nation. He could have ignored God’s request to take Isaac to Moriah. But he answered God right away with action. He moved toward God’s goal! Maybe it was because he was 75 and didn’t feel like he had the time to resist (although, people lived longer in those days), or maybe he just realized that when God calls the best course of action is to answer and move on that call!

Why This Test?

Of all the ways that god could test the faith of Abraham, why test him in this way? Could there have been any more, some might say, cruel test to put before Abraham than to ask him to take Isaac’s life? And that might be a fair question, and the moniker of cruel being placed upon it may seem reasonable except for one thing: this is God! This is the one who calls us to a life of greater purpose, and within that life there may be things that seem one way to the world, but to those who know God, they are quite another. I think Abraham knew God by this time. He had followed God without waiver, and he had made many mistakes in his attempt to follow God, so by this time he knew that God had it all worked out.

Abraham marched toward Moriah like a soldier marching toward a battle he knows will be won, he just isn’t sure about who the casualties will be, and how God is going to make it all okay. We don’t always know how God is going to works things out; we just know He will. It seems Abraham already knew what Paul taught the Roman church, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose,” (Romans 8:28).[1] No matter what circumstances we find ourselves in, if we are God’s there will be a resolution that will turn out for the good. How Abraham could look at the request God made of him and see it as turning out for the good is explained best in the New Testament, in the book of Hebrews. In chapter 11 of that book, known as the Hall of Faith, Abraham is mentioned:

Hebrews 11:17–19 NIV

17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.

Abraham’s faith in God caused him to remember the promise of God, that Isaac would be the first of many decedents. Abraham knew God well enough to know that God does not go back on a promise. So if God said there would be decedents then there would be! Abraham KNEW this! Abraham’s faith told him that even if he had to do the unthinkable, plunge a knife into the chest of his only son, God could resurrect the dead. Abraham just KNEW that this was gong to turn out all right! His faith in God told him that God would not fail him!

How well do you know God? Enough to trust Him?

Do you know Him well enough to trust him? Would you trust Him even if it seemed like what was coming at you couldn’t be good? Do you trust Him to make good in your life from chaos? Abraham did! I’m not so sure the tests we go through with God are for His benefit; I think they’re for ours. How would we ever know how much faith we have in God without the trials of life? These trials help us to recognize the faith that is in us. So that when the next one comes, we will stand firm on God’s promises! We will KNOW beyond the shadow of a doubt that He will NEVER fail us!

But, again, why this test? Abraham had built up quite a life for himself as result of following God. He had been through much, but was perhaps thinking that all had settled down, and now he could enjoy some of the finer things in life. In the previous chapter (21) we read that Isaac was born, Hagar and Ishmael were sent away, and Abraham made a treaty with Abimalech, a leader that could provide some political advantage and protection to Abraham in the region. For Abraham, life was good!

It’s a funny thing when our lives run smooth, and all seems right with the world. We run the risk of placing our allegiance in the “things” that make our lives easy, the relationships, the acquired stuff, and the status that we have attained. Abraham may have been in danger of losing focus. It was God that blessed him with all he had, and God was meaning to show Abraham that his priorities were in danger of getting out of whack by testing him in this way. In Abraham’s life, as in ours, it is not the “things” that make us who we are; it is God. It is not the relationships that we have cultivated that bring favor into our lives; it is the ONE relationship that we have cultivated with God that has given us life’s blessings.

CLOSE:

Why does this story matter?

Because if Abraham had such faith in the face of an unthinkable request from God, how much more should we trust God to lead us in the right direction in this age of unlimited resources to learn about God, and who He is. We have the benefit of scripture, the Cross, and the Holy Spirit to lead us in the ways of God.

Old Spice launched, several years ago, an ad campaign called “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.” It was very much aimed at the ladies, and in it a very attractive man is seen in all sorts of heroic situations, and the implication is that if “your man” wore Old Spice cologne he would be as brave and attractive as this man. It’s a very humorous ad campaign, but a very effective one that gets the point across: Old Spice is manly! Be a man! Use Old Spice!

When I think of the faith Abraham had to have to set out at God’s command to kill his own son, I can picture an ad campaign featuring Abraham saying, “The Faith Your Man Could Have [If He Obeyed God Like Abraham!]” What a picture of solid faith! Hebrews says Abraham had enough faith to know God would work it out, even if he killed Isaac God could raise him from the dead. Abraham was going to follow God’s instructions.

Picture yourself as a person of great faith.

Understand that there is no situation in which God will let you down. Know that his promises are real; they are trustworthy! Don’t let the comfort of this world replace your dependence on God for all that you need. But, sometimes we become so enamored with the gifts of this world that we become distant from the One who provided them. And our faith wanes. I don’t want the comfort of this world to cause me to loose focus on God.

There once was a man named Abraham, and he had faith. Oh, that one day it would be said of me, “There once was a man named Scott Hodge, and he had faith! Oh, did he have faith!”

Let us pray…