Lent 5
Gen
22:1-14
3/29/20
Timothy was our first born child.
That means our experience with him will always be unique. There is only one
first time through all of the new things that come with a baby. You can only be first time parents once. When
Timothy was born, I didn’t know how to put a diaper on a baby. After Amy showed
me how, the repetition soon made it second nature, and it was for every child after
that.
Timothy was our first born
child. And then there was a time we
thought that perhaps Timothy would be our only
child. Timothy is four years older than
Matthew and Abigail. None of that was
what we expected. There was a baby that
we never got to know – a child that was lost through miscarriage when Amy was in
the second trimester.
We grieved for this child, but had
to accept that God’s ways are not our ways. And so after the appropriate time
had passed, we began trying to have another child. Now trying to have a baby is not exactly what
I would call a hardship. But the dynamic begins to change when month after
month after month there is no baby. When
the term “infertility” begins to arrive on the scene things have changed. And
it was at that point that I began to wonder if Timothy was going to be our only child.
A first child is one thing. An only child is something very
different. Every child is precious, but
if you have only one, then all of the hopes for the future are tied up with
that single child.
No one knew that feeling better than
Abraham and Sarah. Yahweh had called
Abraham when he and Sarah were old and childless. God told Abraham, “And I will make of you
a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will
be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I
will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” He
promised to make Abraham into a great nation, and to give the land of Canaan to
his descendants. Yahweh promised to make
Abraham’s descendants numerous like the dust of the earth and the stars of the
night sky.
They
waited for years, but eventually Yahweh kept his promise. Sarah, who was far
beyond the age when it was possible for her to have a child, did in fact give
birth to Isaac. It was a miracle that brought joy to Abraham and Sarah. In Isaac, their only child, they could see
God working out the fulfillment of all his promises.
And
then we learn in our text that God tested Abraham as he said to him, “Take your
son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and
offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall
tell you.” Our text says that God tested
Abraham. This is a reminder that God actually cares about what we do. It really does matter to him, because our
actions demonstrate what is in our heart. They show the place that God holds in
our life.
God
has made a promise to Abraham. And now
he commands him to do something that contradicts that promise – that destroys
the promise. The language used hammers home this fact. Abraham is told to sacrifice “your son, your
only son Isaac, whom you love.”
In
our text we learn that Abraham obeyed Yahweh.
He cut wood for a burnt offering, and took Isaac and two of his
servants. We learn that on the third day
Abraham looked out and saw the place from afar.
We realize that for three days Abraham travelled knowing what he was
about to do.
For
three days he bore this burden as he journeyed.
It would have been easy to come up with reasons not to go through with
it. But Abraham believed and trusted in
Yahweh. Martin Luther commented on this: “I have stated what Abraham’s trial
was, namely, the contradiction of the promise.
Therefore his faith shines forth with special clarity in this passage,
inasmuch as he obeys God with such a ready heart when He gives him the
command. And although Isaac has to be
sacrificed, he nevertheless has no doubt whatever that the promise will be
fulfilled, even if he does not know the manner of its fulfillment.”
Like
Abraham, we too live on the basis of God’s promise. He has promised that we are his forgiven
children because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He has promised
that we belong to him, and that he loves and cares for us. Luther commented
that, “These events are recorded for our comfort, in order that we may learn to
rely on the promises we have. I was
baptized. Therefore I must maintain that I was translated from the kingdom of
Satan into the kingdom of God.”
Because
this is so, Luther goes on to say, “One must act similarly in all other
trials. Wherever we experience the
opposite of a promise, we should maintain the assurance that when God shows
himself differently from the way the promise speaks this is merely a
temptation. Therefore we should not
allow this staff of the promise to be wrested from our hands.”
Luther’s
words are particularly relevant for our situation, because they were made in
1539 when a plague had struck Wittenberg.
In fact the disease had just killed a law professor at the university,
and Luther took the orphaned children into his own home.
In
our text we learn that Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering
and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the
knife. As Isaac bore the wood he asked an obvious question to Abraham: “Behold,
the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” And in poignant words filled with irony,
Abraham replied: “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering,
my son.”
Finally,
they arrived at the place God had indicated.
Abraham built an altar, placed the wood on it and bound Isaac. He drew
the knife, ready to kill his son, when the angel of the LORD called Abraham by
name from heaven and said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to
him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your
son, your only son, from me.”
Then
Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw that behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket
by his horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt
offering instead of his son. And so he called the name of that place, “The LORD
will provide,” because God had provided a sacrifice in place of Isaac.
Abraham
obeyed God because he had faith in God’s promise. He continued to trust that God would be true
to his word. During this time of a
global pandemic that has disrupted all of our lives and caused concerns about
our health and that of those around us, we are reminded that we live by faith
in God’s promise. But it is a promise
tied to what God has already done.
In
our text Abraham is told to sacrifice “your son, your only son Isaac, whom you
love.” These words call to mind what we
heard God the Father say at Jesus’ baptism during the season of Epiphany: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am
well pleased.” We hear today about how Abraham laid the wood for the sacrifice
on Isaac, as he carried it to the place of sacrifice. In Jesus Christ, God gave
his only Son whom he loved as the sacrifice for our sin. Jesus carried the wood of the cross to the
place of sacrifice – to the place where he was nailed to the cross to die as
the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
Jesus’ dead
body was taken down from the cross and buried.
Yet God’s saving action through his Son was not done. Instead, on the third day God raised Jesus
from the dead. In Christ he provided
atonement for our sin. And in Christ he defeated death itself. The risen Lord
Jesus is the source of forgiveness now, and resurrection life on the Last Day.
Through his
Spirit, God has called you to faith in the risen Lord. In your baptism you were buried with Christ. But to share with Christ in his death is also
to share in his resurrection. St. Paul told the Colossians that we have “been buried
with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith
in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.”
You were once dead in sin. But now,
everything has changed. Paul went on to
say, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your
flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our
trespasses.” Through baptism and faith
your sins are forgiven and you are a child of God.
Because of Jesus Christ, you have the
living hope of the risen Lord. This is God’s promise to you. And it is this
promise that allows us to face every challenge.
In our text we see that Abraham trusted God’s promise, and put that
trust into action. We now do the same
thing, because we know the promise of the forgiveness and eternal life we have
in Jesus Christ.
We face the uncertainty of these
days confident of God’s love and care.
We trust in his promise because we know what he has already done in
Jesus Christ. There is no virus that can overcome the risen Lord. He has conquered sin. He has conquered death. Through his gift of
baptism he has given us forgiveness and our resurrection future. This is the
One who holds our times in his hands, and so we can face the future in faith
and trust in God’s promise.
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