Sermon for Lent 5 - Judica - Gen 22:1-14

 

Lent 5

                                                                                      Genesis 22:1-14

                                                                                      3/26/23

 

 

          During this school year we have been going through the process of Matthew and Abigail deciding what college they are going to attend.  As I think about this experience, one word comes to mind: waiting.  More than anything it seems like the process has been dominated by constant waiting.

          We waited to see what colleges they were interested in attending. We scheduled and waited to do visits at schools and to see how they went.  After applications were made, we waited to receive notification of acceptance. 

And then the real waiting started as we waited to see how much financial aid each school was going to provide.  I have learned that schools don’t tell you the total amount in one communication.  Instead, it occurs in several notifications as different sources of financial aid are determined.  You don’t know when this is going to occur, nor how many times it is going to happen. And so one is always waiting to see if another email or letter shows up.

The waiting isn’t done either.  After the financial aid from schools has been determined, there are still local scholarships.  There was a great push to complete and submit the applications for these.  Yet now we must wait until May at a high school ceremony when the recipients of these scholarships will be announced.  More waiting.

In our Old Testament lesson today, we find that Abraham has gone through a period of waiting. His was shorter – three days – but it must have seemed like an eternity because of the event which was to come.  In Abraham’s experience we learn about how we are to view difficult times of waiting, and why we are able to do this.

Abraham’s brief experience of waiting in our text is so difficult, because he had already waited for so very long.  God had called Abraham to believe in him when Abrahm was living in Haran – what is today southern Turkey.  God called Abraham to leave his country and family, and to go to the land he would show him. God promised, “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.”

God promised to make Abraham into a great nation, and he promised that in Abraham all nations would be blessed.  We recognize that in this promise, God was saying that he would send the Savior through the offspring of Abraham. However, Abraham had no children. More importantly, Abraham was seventy five years old and his wife Sarah was sixty five.  They were beyond the age when they could expect children.

Yet Abraham believed God.  He trusted his word.  And God continued to speak his word of promise to Abraham.  He promised to give Abraham’s descendants the land of Canaan.  And he kept promising that Abraham would have many descendants.  Once he said that they would be like the dust of the earth.  On another occasion God challenged Abraham to count the stars and told him, “So shall your offspring be.” Then Genesis adds, “And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” Abraham kept believing.  The apostle Paul tells us, “No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”

          Abraham waited twenty five years.  And then, when it seemed that a child was completely impossible and would never happen, God blessed Abraham and Sarah with Isaac.  One can hardly imagine how much they loved this son – their only child for whom they had waited so long.

          This background helps to reveal how shocking the beginning of our text is.  We learn that God tested Abraham as he told 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.”

          The problem with God’s blessings is that they become idols for sinners.  They become something that we love and trust more than God.  It’s not hard to understand how Isaac could have had this position in Abraham’s life.  If we are honest, we can identify people and things in our lives that compete with God for this position.  We know the things we think about more than God – the things to which we devote more time and money than God.  We break the First Commandment as we fear, love, and trust in them more than God.

          The first thing the next day, Abraham took Isaac, two young men and wood for a burnt offering and headed for the place God had told him.  Our text tells us that “On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.”  Abraham traveled for three days knowing what God had told him to do.  For three days he contemplated the loss that he would experience if he did this. The twenty five years he had waited for Isaac probably seemed like nothing compared to the experience of waiting to arrive at the destination during those three days.

          However, Abraham had faith in God.  He believed in God’s  repeated promise.  He believed that even the sacrifice of Isaac would not deny this promise. And so he trusted God.  He resolved to obey God’s word despite the fact it seemed to be a denial of everything that God had said.

          Abraham told the two servants to wait with the donkey.  Then we learn that he laid the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac as he carried it up the mountain.  Isaac was carrying the very means by which he would be offered up to God. Then Isaac asked a question that was so obvious, and yet so poignant for Abraham.  He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”  Abraham responded, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”  Abraham said this knowing that Isaac was the lamb God had provided.

          The moment that Abraham dreaded finally arrived. After building an altar and placing the wood on it, he bound Isaac and put him on the wood.  He took the knife to cut Isaac’s throat in order to kill him as one would any animal that is sacrificed.  Once dead from loss of blood, he would then burn Isaac as a burnt offering to God.

          Yet just then the angel of the Lord called Abraham’s name 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.”  Abraham had shown that he feared, loved, and trusted in God above all things by his willingness to sacrifice Isaac. Having been faithful, God stopped him, and provided a substitute for Isaac – a ram that was caught in a thicket.

          Immediately after our text, the angel of the Lord said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

          God reaffirmed all of his promises in the most emphatic way he had ever expressed them to Abraham.  Abraham would have numerous descendants.  They would have might and power.  And in Abraham’s offspring, all nations would be blessed.

          In this last statement we find a reference to Jesus Christ.  Abraham’s faithful action with Isaac helps us to see why we can trust in God when we find ourselves in difficult times of waiting.  It does because it points us to what God has done in Savior Jesus Christ.

          Because we are sinners who fear, love, and trust in other people and things more than God, our heavenly Father sent his only begotten Son whom he loves into this world.  Conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, he lived his whole life waiting for the moment when the Father would offer him as a sacrifice for us.

          In our text Abraham laid the wood for the sacrifice on Isaac, just as Jesus carried the wood of the cross on which he would be sacrificed.  At the moment when Isaac was about to die, God stopped Abraham and provided a substitute – a ram caught in the thicket.  This is a reminder of the fact that Jesus died as the substitute for us.  Peter tells us, “you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”

          Jesus Christ the sinless One died as a sinner because he took our place.  He took our sin as if it was his own and received God’s judgment in our place.  He shed his blood in this sacrifice that won us forgiveness.

          Yet death was not the end.  It certainly looked that way. After all, when the disciples went to bed on Friday night, Jesus dead body was buried in a sealed tomb.  But on the third day – on Easter – God raised Jesus from the dead.  He showed that death had been the means by which God defeated sin and death.

          Baptized into Jesus’ death, you now have the promise of sharing in the our Lord’s resurrection on the Last Day. More than that, Jesus’s resurrection becomes the source of hope and strength provided by the Spirit.  What gives us confidence to trust in God when we are waiting in difficult times?  It is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

          We have seen what Good Friday looked like. It looked like failure and defeat in the midst of injustice. It looked like the utter absence of God.  But the resurrection of Jesus has shown us that God was not absent.  In fact, he was carrying out his most powerful action to save us.

          Faith in Jesus’ resurrection carries us through the time of waiting.  It gives us hope because of what happened on the third day.  Peter tells us, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

          The living hope of the resurrection gives us encouragement and strength to wait on God.  Times of hardship and difficulty are not the absence of God.  They are God at work through testing to bring us closer to him. They are God removing our false idols and humbling us before him so that we can look only to the true God.

          Everything about the command God gave to Abraham was a denial of his promises.  At least, that is how it seemed.  Yet Abraham continued in faith.  He continued all the way to the third day.  On that day, he learned that God’s promises remained true.

          It is the same for us when we face hardships.  We continue in faith, knowing that the present is not the absence of God’s love. We have this faith and confidence because of what happened on the third day – the day when Jesus Christ rose from the dead.   In the resurrection of Jesus we find the assurance of God’s love and care that nothing can conquer.  We have the confidence of the final victory that awaits us. Jesus Christ has risen from the dead.  So continue to wait in faith.