Down the Aisle to the Thicket

It must have been a fearsome and dreadful journey when Abraham took his boy up the mountain, believing his promised son would die by his own hand. No doubt, he hoped God would somehow spare him at the last, yet he knew what the Lord had asked him to do. I believe that Abraham, as much as any soul who has ever lived, feared, loved, and trusted in God, as Luther instructs we must do in The Small Catechism in his teaching on the First Commandment. Abraham would have made a good Lutheran.

Abraham feared the Lord, so he did as he was commanded. And while he feared God, he loved him and knew God loved him too, and loved Isaac. So, Abraham could also trust God with his boy. But that didn’t take away the dread, the fear, the worry—and the wonder. For Abraham was taking the child up the mountain to die.

This is what we do too, as we take our own children “up the mountain” to God. When we carry them up the aisle to the font, we usher them to their death. In the waters of baptism, our children are united in the death of Jesus. Yet, for those who fear, love, and trust in God, there is also eternal life in this watery death—for in baptism, one not only joins Christ in his death but also shares in his resurrection.

Let us pray. God of Abraham, make us to know your ways, for you are the God of our salvation. Instruct us sinners in the way and help us to fear you enough to give you all, trusting in your great love for us, a love so strong that you gave your own Son instead of demanding our children as sacrifices. For only your Son, the Lamb of God, takes away the sin of the world. Amen

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

Luther was always saying that one cannot reason his way to God. God is mystery beyond the capability of a human to grasp unless first, God reveal himself. Beyond that, there are many things about God that we still cannot comprehend. We say that God is inscrutable. There are things about him that we just don’t “get.” So, imagine poor Abraham being told to take his only son, Isaac, up into Mt. Moriah, and there, sacrifice him as a burnt offering.

Abraham had to have thought, Wait a minute; I thought this was the child of promise through whom you would multiply me greatly and, Besides, I thought human sacrifice was a Canaanite thing that you didn’t want us to do. I mean, it stands to reason.

Abraham had to bring his reason into subjection, fearing, loving, and trusting God so that he could simply do as God commanded. There are all sorts of examples of this in our own lives. But I have to work on the Lord’s Day. Yeah, whatever; you don’t know my parents like I do. But I don’t love her anymore; isn’t marriage supposed to be about love? It’s just a little lie. If God really loved me, he’d give me a house like my neighbor’s. So, we see that we must bring our reason, if not our feelings, into captivity. So did Abraham; otherwise he would never have gone up in Mt. Moriah, about a three-day journey from Beersheba[1]—just to the base of the mountainous region that surrounds Jerusalem.

Moriah, the joining of the Hebrew raah, meaning “to see,” and the shortened name of God, Yah, means “the shown of Jehovah,” or Yahweh, and is “equivalent to ‘the manifestation of Jehovah.’”[2] Abraham, and presumably Isaac as well, by bringing “reason into captivity to the obedience of faith,”[3] were about to be shown God as well as anyone might. Later, in verse 14, we find in our English versions “the Lord will provide,” or as we used to say, Jehovah-jireh. Yahweh-yireh is more up-to-date and less German sounding, I suppose. This can also mean “Yahweh sees” or even “Yahweh appears.” I don’t want to split hairs over this, especially since we can see that all three translations work well.

It is when Abraham and Isaac are about to climb up into the specific mountain of Har Moriah that they leave behind the servants. As they go with wood, fire, and the knife, fearing, loving, and trusting Abraham comforts the servants, who also must have looked a bit anxious at the spectacle. He says simply and without explanation, “The boy and I...will return.”[4] It is at this point, when the father lays the load of wood on his son’s back, that Isaac asks, “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” This is a question of faith, if there ever was one. It is a question we should ask every time we sin. “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” This is a question that directs us to both moriah and Yahweh-yireh: The Lord appears, the Lord sees, and the Lord will provide. When we sin, we should direct our faith to God. When we are befuddled by his will, we should direct our faith to God. Abraham does not try to answer his son’s question with reason. He does not say, You’re it boy! He directs Isaac’s faith to the Lord. In doing so, he directs his own faith to God. “The Lord will provide.”

When they arrive at the appointed location, Abraham readies the sacrifice. How his heart must have wondered what was happening, not to mention what Isaac must have been thinking. Yet, he follows through, even binding his son upon the ordered firewood. As he takes the knife in hand, ready to sacrifice his only son, a messenger of the Lord calls out from heaven, telling him not to do anything to the boy.

Would your knees have buckled at that point? Or would you have even gotten that far? I have had experiences with the Lord that may not seem reasonable to you, and they certainly were not reasonable to my father-in-law, but I had to follow through in faith anyway. Even leaving Sola and taking this call, some have found unreasonable. But here I am. Nevertheless, none of my unreasonable experiences involved sacrificing my children, unless you call being a preacher’s kid a sacrifice.

“The sacrifice was already accomplished in [Abraham’s] heart, [so] he had fully satisfied the requirements of God.”[5] In other words, Abraham didn’t have to actually do anything; what was necessary was faith in God. He needed to fear him so that he would obey him. He needed to love him no matter the extent of the sacrifice that seemed to loom before him. He needed to love God with his whole being, seemingly not even reserving any love for the boy when it came to obeying God’s command.

Before we talk about the ram that the Lord provided, let’s consider baptism. Every time I hear this story, I think of baptism. Recently, a baby boy was baptized here at St. Paul’s. His parents brought him here on a Thursday night during a pandemic so that they could obey the Lord’s directive, though they might have thought, We don’t have to have him baptized during a pandemic. After all, what’s a little water going to accomplish anyway? We can raise him in the faith all by ourselves and he can make up his own mind one day. But they “brought [their] reason into captivity to the obedience of faith,”[6] not forbidding their child to be brought to Jesus.

I look forward to a lot of baptisms here at St. Paul’s and expect the Lord to provide them faith, just as he has provided the Lamb for the sacrifice.

Yet, we can be tempted to do the easier thing, and often are, even when we do bring our children down the aisle. Instead of raising our children in the faith, may of us have stopped coming to church, have never made sure our kids even got a copy of the Bible, let alone read it with them, rarely if ever brought them to worship, Sunday School, or Confirmation. Too high a percentage of us walk down the aisle to the font—we journey from Beersheba to Jerusalem—but never make it up the mountain for the appearance of the Lord. We don’t do the harder thing, instead opting for soccer and other activities, even on the Lord’s Day. We are unwilling to be obedient to the Lord, to keep the first table, specifically the Third Commandment. We aren’t willing to sacrifice our children, to risk them not liking us if we don’t let them do those other things. Ironically, but hardly surprisingly, we end up sacrificing them anyway—just not in the way we expected. Now, I know I’m preaching to the choir here but it needs saying nonetheless.

We must overcome these temptations. They tantalize us and tempt us to give in, to not honor the Lord’s Day, to not put God first, to find any juicy rationalization available in order to not obey. We must stop deceiving ourselves. “Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers,” James warns.[7] The good gifts of life come down from the Father of Lights, not from the school system, coaches, music and drama directors, nor from the creators of video games and television. We are sacrificing our children, and it isn’t the Lord who is asking us to do so. Convenience, recreation, fear of our own children’s displeasure, and shear lack of faith are the lures and hooks that catch us in this sin. For sin it surely is, when we do not bring our children to Jesus.

There is great inspiration for us to bring our little sinners to Jesus. In his own baptism, Jesus put himself at the sides of these little ones. It is important for us to remember this, for this is what places Jesus in the thicket, if you will. The Lamb that God provided to Abraham and Isaac is the same One given to us and to all of our little sinners. The ram who was caught in the undergrowth on Mt. Moriah was a temporary sacrifice. The everlasting Lamb of God would be provided when the fullness of time had come.[8] This perfect Lamb and Son of God would then give himself in the sacrifice asked of Abraham and Isaac, so that, baptized into Christ’s death as we are, we are laid in the tomb with Jesus.[9] As Christ Jesus was raised from the dead, we baptized sinners are raised to live a new life in Christ, and more: we will be raised on that Day just as he was raised by the Father. The Geneva Bible puts it this way: “For if we be planted with him to the similitude of his death, even so shall we be to the similitude of his resurrection.”[10]

In baptism, we are buried, planted side-by-side with Jesus. I think of this when I see Cemetery Jesus, standing out there in our burial ground among all those rows of graves. The Lamb of God that the Lord has provided stands for us so that not even that wily devil can stand against the baptized and buried believer. As at the font, so in life and in death, we must be ever walking down the aisle to the thicket, to the cross, to Jesus, the Lamb whom the Lord has provided.

[1] Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 1 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 159.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Genesis 22:5

[5] Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 1 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 160.

[6] Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament, vol. 1 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 159.

[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Jas 1:16.

[8] Galatians 6:4

[9] Romans 6:4, God’s Word translation

[10] Galatians 6:5, Geneva Bible