Why is That in There?

[This was prepared to be shared with the people and friends of Living Water Lutheran Church in Springboro, Ohio, this morning.]

Genesis 22:1-18

Few Bible passages will ever be more difficult to understand than today’s first lesson, Genesis 22:1-18. 

Twenty-five years after promising a son to Abraham and Sarah, Isaac is born, the apple of their eyes. Isaac is to be the first in a long line of descendants to the couple. God has promised Abraham that he will be the father of many nations and that Israel would be a light to the nations. Today, we know that Israel was the means by which God would take on human flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, dying to pay for our sins, rising from the dead, and giving forgiveness of sin and everlasting life with God to all who repent and believe in Him. 

So, what on earth is God doing, in today’s first lesson, telling Abraham to take his one and only son, the son that he loves, and offer him as a sacrifice?

Some atheists look at this passage and claim it shows that the God of the Bible is a barbaric fiction, the product of a vicious imagined God. But God isn’t barbarous. We know that God had told His people never to engage in the child sacrifice prevalent in surrounding the cultures surrounding His chosen ones, the Israelites. In Leviticus 18:21, for example, God tells His people: “Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed…” God regarded child sacrifice as an abomination. 

Some Christians look at this incident and, embarrassed and confused, say it’s not important. That would be an easy way out. But just because we don’t fully understand something in the Bible is no reason to try to erase it from its pages. 

One of my professors at seminary told us about doing devotions with his wife. They were reading a lengthy and boring passage from Leviticus. “Ron,” she asked, “is this really that important?” “It must be,” he said. “It’s in there.” 

Genesis 22:1-18 is “in there.” So, let’s consider this incident, knowing that we will never understand God completely and certain through Jesus Christ that God is no monster. 

And let’s ask why is this passage “in there.”

Verse 1: “Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, ‘Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. 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.’” 

Up to this point in Genesis, we know that Abraham has been less than reliable, less than faithful, to God. 

To save his own skin, he lied to two different kings about Sarah, saying she was his sister and not his wife. 

When God didn’t seem to be working quickly enough to deliver on His promise of a son, he quickly accepted his wife Sarah’s plan of taking her servant to give them a son. 

Abraham’s faith in God was a bit deficient. Imperfect. (A bit like yours and mine.) 

Yet God had a mission for Abraham. But Abraham had many temptations ahead of him, including the temptation of turning his son into an idol to take the place of God as the most important consideration in his life. 

God needed to test Abraham, to forge his faith. So, he devised a plan to do so. 

God often forges the faith and characters of those who believe in Him through testing and discipline. It’s how we grow. It’s how we learn to depend on Him as our only God, our only source of meaningful help, our only source of hope. 

Hebrews 12:6 tells us that, “...the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.” So, maybe the first reason this account of Abraham and Isaac is in the Bible is to warn all of us who follow the God of Israel ultimately revealed in Christ that there will be times when God will test our faith, when we will be called out of our comfort zones, when we will have to grow up in our faith.

You know what happens next. Abraham takes Isaac to the region called Moriah, to a place that God was going to show him, carrying all that he would need to sacrifice his son. 

Moriah is mentioned only twice in the Bible, here and in 2 Chronicles 3:1, which recounts something that happened centuries after the events of today’s lesson. Take a look at that passage now, if you would (page 300 in the sanctuary Bibles): “Then Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David. It was on the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite, the place provided by David.” 

When the temple in Jerusalem was built by its third king, it was at the very place where Abraham took Isaac in our first lesson. God directed Abraham to the spot where, for centuries, believers in God would go to connect with God, offering sacrifices for their sins, their thankfulness, their joy. 

I think that that’s the second reason that this account of Abraham and Isaac is in there. God had set aside that very spot to be the place where sacrifices of faith would be made to Him. Centuries later, of course, the need for those sacrifices would be eliminated when God sacrificed His Son on a cross. But for many centuries, Moriah was to be a site of sacrifice for God’s people.

I believe that there’s another important reason for the inclusion of this difficult text in Scripture. Please look at verse 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?’ Abraham answered, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.’...” 

Please look at Hebrews 11:17-19 (page 844). This passage is part of a New Testament chapter called, “the faith hall of fame.” The preacher says: “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, even though God had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.” 

When Abraham took Isaac to Moriah, he did so knowing that even if Isaac’s life was taken, God is the God of new life, the God of resurrection. 

The impossible thing that God had commanded of Abraham was designed to deepen Abraham’s faith. 

It’s like when Jesus commands that you and I be perfect, as our Father in heaven is perfect. We know that we can’t be perfect; but when confronted by that command, in our helplessness, we learn to trust that God can impart His perfection and power to those who surrender to Him. 

By faith, Abraham understood that not even death is an impediment to the God you and I are privileged to know through Jesus Christ. Abraham knew that God can give back life to the dead. 

In Christ, we know that too. And that, in turn, can give us the freedom to live each day without fear. 

Christians are like people who watch a really frightening movie, but have been told before going to the theater how it’s all going to turn out. The scary parts are still scary. Our hearts will still pound at some scenes. Our palms will sweat. We’ll wonder how we’re going to make it through. But we know that in the end, everything is going to be all right. This is a reality for all who believe in Jesus Christ.

That’s a third important reason our first lesson is in the Bible. But there is fourth and, I think, most important reason. Verse 11: “...the angel of the Lord [in the Old Testament, this phrase can mean the very voice or visage of God] called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied. ‘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.’” Then, in verse 16, we read: “‘I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 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, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.’”

Listen: Because Abraham had not withheld what was most important to Him, God was able to give what was most important to Him. 

What good and perfect gifts from God are we missing out on because we’re withholding our lives from Him? 

When, by faith, we yield control over our lives to God, we’re ready to receive the new life, the constant help, and the eternal hope that God gives to all with faith in Christ. 

God didn’t ultimately require Abraham to sacrifice His son. 

The sacrifice of Isaac would have done nothing but bring grief and loss to Abraham and the human race. 

But Abraham passed God’s test by his willingness to give his son to God. 

What might God be asking us to be willing to surrender to Him in order to know God and His blessings, to be God’s blessings to others? Lent may be a good time for us to ask that question of ourselves and of God in prayer.

Abraham’s test is one that God Himself would later pass...painfully, but ultimately triumphantly. Paul writes of God giving His Son in Romans 8:32: “He who did not spare [some translations say, did not withhold] his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” 

The Lord who provided a ram for sacrifice to Abraham and Isaac on that day long ago provides the lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world for all who dare surrender their all to Christ alone. 

It’s to point us to this fact that, I believe, among other reasons, this passage is in the Bible.

This is a difficult passage. I can’t explain everything about it. 

It would make my life as a Christian and as a pastor a lot easier if I didn’t have to wrestle with it, if God would just eliminate it from His Word, the Bible. 

But God never promised us easy lives. 

Or lives in which we were always in control. 

Instead, in Jesus Christ, God promised us new lives, lives filled with His blessings even in the midst of things we can’t understand or control here and now and then, beyond death, lives filled with perfect fellowship with Him and others in eternity for all who, like Abraham and Isaac, dare to surrender to Him. 

Genesis 22:1-18 remains in our Bibles. May we glorify and thank God for the truths we can understand in these verses even as we wrestle with the mysteries in them that we will never understand this side of heaven. Amen

Relax and Let God's Hand Guide You

[This sermon was prepared for delivery during worship this morning with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio. While I ended up preaching on the same text and making many of the same points made here, I delivered a different sermon in the pulpit. There's no written version of it, though.]

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
If you made a list of Bible words that Lutherans like, “justified” would be one of them. It’s a great word!

Paul uses it in Romans when he writes that “we hold that a person is justified by faith [he means faith in Christ] apart from works prescribed by the law.”

Someone has said that when I come to Christ in repentance and faith, God now looks at me “just if I’d” never sinned.

The person who is justified is declared by God to be just or right with God. This is the most precious gift God can give because it cost Him the life of Jesus on a cross.

No wonder that Martin Luther called justification the central teaching “by which the church stands or falls.”

All other religious systems teach that people can, in some way, save themselves or propel themselves to higher places in the cosmos by adhering to certain rules, regulations, or practices.

But the God of the Bible, while using rules to show us our need of Him and the hopelessness of proving ourselves worthy through our own works and to give us a guideline for responding to His love, this God, justifies us as a gift of grace to all with faith in Christ!

But there’s a problem with our justification obsession, too.

Have you ever noticed that most love stories end at the beginning? I mean, they tell the stories of how two people meet, fall in love, get married, and start their families. But, really, after the storytellers narrate all those things, they’ve only told us the beginnings of their stories. We’re left wondering: How did they live happily ever after? What did they do in life? An elderly man once told a friend of mine, “These newlyweds talk about how much they love each other. But don’t even talk to me about loving your husband or wife until you’ve been married a few decades. You don’t know what love is before then.”

Justification is like falling in love. God is a desperate suitor Who, in Christ, incites us to fall in love with Him. By His self-sacrificing love, He makes us worthy to be live eternally—and happily—ever after with God.

Then what?

Some people cynically say that, after the wedding day, marriage is a hard slog to retirement and death, filled with tragedies, mortgage payments, pinching pennies, squabbles, hard times. But thirty-seven years into my marriage to Ann, I can tell you that while we have had our tough times, I love her more today than I did when we were first married, more than I did yesterday. I find that I am just beginning to learn how to respond to the gift of her love and her presence in my life. And all this learning and growing is the product of one simple fact: The certainty that when I wake up tomorrow, no matter what stupid or selfish things I may have said or done the day before, Ann will still love me.

And it’s this process of being loved and growing in love that makes our marriage stronger and better today than I could ever have imagined when, with my heart pounding out of my chest, my face beaming, I walked down the aisle with Ann as my new bride.

There is a similar deepening in love, relationship, reliability, and mutual affection that develops in the Christian life after we’ve been justified. It’s called sanctification or being sanctified.

And it really is the theme of the whole section of the New Testament book of 1 Thessalonians from which today’s second Bible lesson comes.

Scholars teach us that in the Bible, a theme or idea is highlighted when it appears at the start of a section of Scripture and then again at the end of the section. These bookends form what they call “inclusions.”

Pull out a pew Bible, please, and turn to page 684 and then look at 1 Thessalonians 4:3. We’re not going to look at the whole verse right now, just the pertinent start of it. It says, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification…” Now, go over to the next column, almost to the end of the book and of our second lesson for this morning, to chapter 5, verses 23. It says, “Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely…”

The root of the word sanctification is sanctus, which means holy or set apart.

After Ann and I were married, I was set apart for her alone and she was set apart for me alone. Similarly, after we have been justified, God is set apart to be our only God, the highest allegiance in our lives.

The Church is set apart to be God’s people, justified and empowered to bring His love to others.

But sanctification, this business of having one’s whole life set aside for God alone, is a process and it’s sometimes difficult. And just as the only way to learn to be married is to be married, the only way to learn what it means to be God’s holy people is to live as God’s holy people every day.

So, what does that mean?

Well, pull out the Celebrate inserts and go to the second lesson. Scan it. Paul tells us to always rejoice, pray without ceasing, give thanks to God in all circumstances, don’t try to hide yourself from what God’s Word and the Holy Spirit may be prompting you to do, but don’t be a chump who falls for every supposed holy man or woman who comes down the pike, hold tightly to what is good, refuse to do what is bad.

Most of us would agree that Paul’s list well describes the to do list of holy people. But who has time for such a list? How could we possibly be good enough to make that a to do list for my life? If God expects all these things of us, we may think, we’re going to have to wait to get serious about this Christian business until after we’re retired and just take our chances with God until then.

If that list raises your anxiety level, I have a word from God for you this morning: Chill!

Do you think that the God Who did everything necessary for you to be justified, including sending God the Son to die and rise for you, would leave you standing at the altar trying to figure out how to live as a Christian after that?

To be sure, God will discipline His children when we go in the wrong direction in our lives. The New Testament book of Hebrews says, “The Lord disciplines those whom he loves, and chastises every child whom he accepts.”

But the Bible also tells us that when we do go wrong, our Father is quick to help us. As the apostle John puts it, “My little children, I am writing these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous…He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins…”

Maybe you can think of sanctification like this. When I was a boy, I became fascinated by the fact that people wrote things. I wanted to be able to write. But I wasn’t left to figure out how to write on my own. I remember my parents sitting with me at the dining room table. First, they would take one of those fat black pencils and write a letter, maybe an A. Then, they would put the pencil in my hand, put a hand on top of mine, and move my hand in the right ways until, gradually, they could let go and watch me as I imperfectly formed the letter A on my own. We moved onto B and C and the rest of the alphabet in the same way.

This is what sanctification is like. Not another grim to-do list, but God working in us, through us, and on us to help us become all that we were meant to be.

Place yourself each day in the hands of God. If you let Him, His hand will move over your hand to write the story of your life—in good and bad times, in happiness and sorrow, even in the wake of sin for which you have repented and sin He forces you to see because He loves you and doesn’t want to lose you.

If you will be open to God, God’s hand will keep moving in your life until that day when you see Him face to face and all the mysteries will be solved, all the tears will be dried, and all believers in Christ become truly, eternally holy.

Even after he gives what seems like a to-do list to the Christians at first century Thessalonica, Paul also says to be at peace in the arms of the Savior Jesus. Pull out the Celebrate insert and look again at the final two verses of our lesson. Read verses 23 and 24 silently with me now. Paul says: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely [you see, it’s God and not you by your works who will make you holy or set apart as God’s beloved]; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.”

Each day, the faithful God made known in Jesus is willing to take those who entrust themselves to Him and by the power of His presence working in our lives, transform us from harried, frightened people who look at lists like the one we see in our lesson today, into people so infused by Christ’s love, forgiveness, power, and indestructible hope that, from grateful hearts, barely aware of it, that we “rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks at all times, pay heed to God’s Word, hold fast to what is good, and abstain from evil.”

We will never be entirely holy this side of our own resurrections. Nor will we ever begin to understand mysteries like why bad things happen to faithful people while the faithless seem to skate through life without a care.

But from Jesus, we have an eternal “I do,” a promise to never leave us nor forsake us, a promise to make us new for all eternity.

Count on that promise.

Give yourself to Jesus today and every day.

Then, relax, breathe, live, certain that His grace that justified you will, as you submit to Him, sanctify you—make you holy, fit you for heaven—too.

God has an eternity of patience and love for each of us. Give Him your days and He will make you, over time and eternity, into everything He meant for you to be when He formed you in your mother’s womb. Amen.