“The Lord Will Provide”

A sermon based upon Genesis 22: 1-18

By Rev. Dr. Charles J. Tomlin, BA, MDiv, DMin.

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership, 

Easter Sunday May 3^rd, 2020

(1/10. How Jesus Saves.)

Today we begin the first part of our series on ‘How Jesus Saves!”  In this first part we will preach about ‘how’ God has established salvation by grace through faith in the life and death of Jesus Christ.  In the second part, we will look more closely at the way the New Testament describes our proper response to God’s salvation by growing in the knowledge and grace of God’s saving and healing love.

We begin this story of God’s saving grace with one of the most dramatic and unforgettable stories in the whole Bible.   It is a story that goes all the way back to Abraham, the Father of all people of revealed faith. 

Perhaps you remember this story.  It’s about how God once called Abraham to offer ‘his only son’ Issac as a sacrifice.  This story still ‘shakes up’ all our preconceived notions of a loving, caring, and saving God. 

How could God ever ask a father to sacrifice his child, let alone his ‘one and only’ child?  It’s completely unexpected, but this is exactly what this story declares.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob once commanded Abraham to take out a knife, cut his own child’s throat, and offer the child to God like an animal sacrifice.  It’s still outrageous to most all religious sensitivities.  How do we understand something like this?

GOD TESTED ABRAHAM..

The Bible says this is a ‘test’ to sacrifice ‘your son, your only child’.   Abraham is to take him to the mountain, bind him up, slay him, and offer him to God as a ‘brunt offering’ before God.

Many early Christians who didn’t grow up Jewish, were so shocked that they came to believe that God of the Old Testament is not the same as the God of the New Testament.  How could the God of Jesus Christ make such a command?

For one thing, Abraham was hearing this voice in a world where gods could be very demanding.  Why would the true God be any less demanding than any other god?  Human sacrifice was common in the ancient world, so when his own God made such a demand, ABRAHAM didn’t flinch or hesitate.  He took his only son and set out on their final, fateful journey.

Can you imagine giving your child up as an offering to God? 

Last Halloween, a child walked out in front of a car at a Church Halloween Event and was accidentally killed.  On the TV news the Father said he was responsible.  He should have been looking after his son.  He didn’t blame the driver.  It was an accident.  Then he said, this had to be God’s doing.  This had to be God’s plan.  Perhaps he was trying to deal with his unbearable loss.  Perhaps he didn’t realize he was holding God responsible.  Perhaps he needed to face this tragedy With some reason, rather than merely an accident.  We feel for him.  We try to understand.  But it doesn’t make God look very loving when his plan takes children away from us.

What God commands Abraham to do is even more unthinkable.  Can you imagine the sinking feeling in his stomach when he got up to make his final journey with his only son?  Can you even begin to fathom the idea of God asking you to kill your child?  How could he take this step?  How could you call this faith?  What kind of God ‘tests’ his most faithful people like this?

I wonder what was going through Abraham’s mind as he saddled his donkey.  Was he thinking about all the good times they had?  Did he remember Issac as a baby, remembering his first steps, his first words, and all ways he had grown into a man?  Did he realize that he was going to watch his one and only son die.  It sounds he’s going to become the father of a fanatical religious cult, rather than the father of our faith.

And think of his mother, Sarah.  Did she realize what was happening?  How would she cope?   How could deal with her husband killing her boy? 

Can you also imagine Abraham cutting the wood to make his son a brunt offering?  Each stroke of the axe had to cut into his own heart and soul?  This was his son who was going to die.  How could ever obey a God who commanded such as this? 

Did Abraham ever think of turning back?  Did he think of losing his faith and keeping his son?  But this God who gave him the promise, was now asking for proof that Abraham’s faith was true.  Abraham was both trusting and trapped by the call and command of his God.

As bad as all this was, it gets worse.  On the way to the altar his son asks, ‘Dad, where’s the lamb for the sacrifice.’  They’d made this journey together many times.  Children can be very observant.  ‘Dad, we’ve got everything, the wood, the knife, but where’s the sacrifice?’  I wonder if Isaac suspected anything?  Even if he didn’t, the pain on Abraham’s face or the look on his face had to have given it away.  His words must have stuck in his throat.  ‘God will provide it,’ he said.

Don’t you wonder whether Isaac was looking around for the lamb for the sacrifice?

Don’t you also wonder whether or not Abraham was looking into His son’s face as he tied him to to the altar? 

Was he able to look him in the eyes,

As he was lifting the knife up in the air;

As he paused getting ready to strike?

Stop.

Abraham passed the test.  He did fear God.  He did not withhold his only son.

On the day day God tested Abraham, God also provided the sacrifice.  And because of this all nations have been blessed with the goodness of God.  We, our own faith, is now the result of God saving Abraham’s child.

YOUR ONLY SON..

Then, one day God tested himself.  And what a test it was, to sacrifice your son, your only son.   On that day, God led him to the hill, bound him and sacrificed him, his son, his only son.

Human sacrifice wasn’t uncommon in those days.  The Romans were doing it all the time.  Would God pass the test?  It seemed like a barbaric thing to ask him to do.  But committed to righteousness and justice, God the Father took his only son and set out on the fateful journey.

Can you imagine that last morning when he got up the sinking feeling he felt, right in his gut, in the pit of his stomach?  But he was still intent on going through with this.   He was going to kill his son, his only son..

This is still unthinkable.  Scholars still debate how God could command this.  Why Jesus had to die.  But it is much more than a theory.  To God the grief must have welled up in his mind.  When he watched all as the events unfolding, as his son appeared before Pilate, and before the High Priests, as they passed him from soldier to soldier, as he was mocked, struck and spit upon him. 

Maybe he thought about all His son had accomplished. 

Maybe he thought of how he was as a baby or who he’d grown to be as a man. 

Maybe he had thought about his first words. 

Maybe he thought about how he made the lame to walk. 

This Jesus was his beloved Son and he was very pleased. 

Now, his Son who was his very heart, was going to die. 

What was his mother going to think?  How was she going to cope?   What would she think when learning that her son was killed by his own father?   

Imagine how the Father watched each step he took on the way to the hill.  Did he think of sending all the angels to rescue him?   Did he think of calling it all off?  Did he letting all those people go to hell for killing his only Son?

But this Father was constrained, held back and trapped, by his own love.   Even in this terrible moment, he was keeping the promise he made to Abraham long ago, that through him and his people, all the world would be blessed.  

And now was the time to bless all nations.  This Father, our heavenly promise had never broken a promise.   Even in this horrible event he was keeping his promise.

Then, there is that garden, the Son looks the Father in the eyes, saying ‘Dad, where’s the Sacrifice?   We’ve got everything, the cross and the nails, but where’s the sacrifice.  “Father, if it be possible, let this cup be pass from me…” 

Lord, Father, this is your son, your only son.  

We know the son knew what was going to happen,

all the way back to the Garden, not just the garden of Gethsemane,

but all the way back to the Garden of Eden and the before the foundation of the earth.  He suspected.  He knew.  He didn’t hold on to equality with God, but he was being obedient, obedient even to death on a cross.   

With a lump in this throat, the Father said, Son, ‘I will provide the sacrifice.’  

But could he say this looking into his Son’s eyes?

As the hammer blows rained down, one after another,

As the cross was about to be lifted up, up in the air above the earth,

Then it got darker, very dark.

STOP 

BUT THERE WAS NO ONE TO SAY STOP.  

No one was there to stop the cross that was lifted up.  And the Father turned away.  He could not look.  There, in that darkness was the terrible agony of separation between the love of the Father for his Son.   

No one could say stop. 

No one could say stop as the hurled insults and mocked him

No one could say stop as they gave him wine and vinegar

No one could say stop as he cried out

Oh how all those words rang out loud and clear.  “My God why…?  Why have you forsaken me?   Why?  Why?  Why?

What sort of God are you?  What sort of Father are you?  

There was no one, anywhere, on heaven or on earth could say Stop, except this Father, and he didn’t.   So, the Son died, not just any death, but the death of all deaths.

This is how God passed the test.   This is how God the Father kept his promise.  As Paul wrote,  “He who did not spare him own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also along with him, graciously give us all things?  

One day, long after God tested Abraham, God tested himself, and he ‘proved his love to us, that even while we were still sinners, Christ died for us…that is, while we were enemies, and while we still powerless,  CHRIST DIED FOR US. 

On that day God tested himself, and proved himself,  he went through with what he would not let Abraham do.

And for a second time, and the last time,  ‘God provided the sacrifice’.

And because of this all the nations have been blessed.

‘For God so loved the world, that he have his one and only Son, so that everyone who believed in him might not perish, but have eternal life.’

God, this very God,  ‘who did not spare his own Son, gave him up for us all---HOW WILL HE NOT ALSO GRACIOUSLY GIVE US ALL THINGS?

IT SHALL BE PROVIDED

Perhaps the only final commentary to give, about what didn’t happen to Isaac

and what did happen with Jesus is what was said perfectly long ago:

‘On the Mountain of the Lord, it shall be provided’.

Catch how this was originally phrased in the future tense!  Even after the ram was provided and Isaac was spared, this story is still looking forward to shall do next.

And we still must look ahead.  Although we look back to Abraham,

And we look back to what God is through Jesus, our Lord Jesus Christ,

we still must face our own future too, don’t we? 

I think that Jesus pointed to this, when he told his disciples at the Last Supper ‘I will not drink from the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.  

For not only did Jesus say ‘do this to remember me’ but in the same breath he said,  ‘the kingdom comes.’  ‘For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.’   

The point the apostle Paul was making is by remembering Jesus’ saving death we are projected forward to the future God has for ‘those who love him and are called to fulfill his purposes”.   Our faith isn’t finished with what Abraham did, and with the death of Jesus it has only begun to be ‘revealed’ what God has for us.  It has only begun because this God is ‘for us’ and is not ‘against us.’

And how would we know this?    We know it because we trust these words, just like Abraham obeyed and ‘trusted’ that ‘the Lord would provide’ just like Jesus trusted, and just like we must also trust that, ‘it shall be provided’. 

Going back to that man who lost his child in that tragic accident.  

Although I don’t think God wanted his innocent child to die, God has created a world where ‘accidents’ happen, and when accidents happen, he is right that God is ultimately responsible.   In a world of suffering and injustice, which is also a world of sin and struggle, God doesn’t cause it all, but God is the cause behind it all.   If God is all-powerful, God has decided to allow this world where both evil and good dwell.   Since God is love, could it be that God allows life to continue because the good of love is worth the bad and even the worst that could happen?

It’s certainly not easy to live in a world like this.  It wasn’t easy for Abraham.  It wasn’t easy for Jesus, and perhaps its not easy for God too.  But God still allows it.  Jesus endured it.  Abraham dared to obey, and we can too.  Why?  How?

Because the Lord himself has provided the sacrifice. 

Because the Lord God himself is the sacrifice. 

He is the slain lamb who takes away the sin of the world, forever, as far as ‘the east is from the west’.

Thanks be to God his love shall provide for us all, through our faith in him. 

Amen.

*(This narrative idea is from a sermon by Peter Stevenson, in Preaching the Atonement, WJK, 2009, pp. 12-16).