God Will Provide
The Story of the Old Testament: Genesis • Sermon • Submitted
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Prayer
When Its Hard to Make Sense of What God Is Doing
What do we do when God acts in ways that seem to make no sense - or isn’t acting when it seems so obvious he should? And these are the things that often cause people to struggle with faith.
The most common thing is suffering - whether that be personal suffering, or simply observing suffering in the world, especially the suffering of innocents, of children, of good people.
Another thing that doesn’t seem to make sense for us when it comes to God is really the flip side of this: when those who are evil succeed in life. It goes well for them - we actually see this reflected in Psalms, prayers of God’s people wondering why the evil attain wealth and life seems to go well for them. What the heck, God?
For some, it might be why God doesn’t make himself more obvious, that he seems to be hidden. These are the kind of things over which we often ask of God, why? What’s going on here?
Today’s story is exactly that, a head-scratcher. The type of story that makes us ask, what is God doing here?
Before we get to that, there’s a few very important things we need to catch up, want to make sure we’re keeping track of the bigger story, the story of the people of Israel.
Remember, the story of the people of Israel begins with Abraham and Sarah (formerly Abram and Sarai), God’s promises to Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation (descendants, land and blessing to all other nations). Since last week, when we looked at the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, here are some important things to know.
We left off where God had sent three visitors to tell Abraham and Sarah that by this same time next year, Sarah will give birth to a son and they are to name him Isaac. God, in his faithfulness, does exactly that - Sarah becomes pregnant and gives birth to a baby boy and names him, Isaac, “he laughs.”
Finally, at the age of 90 (and Abraham 100), 25 years after God’s initial promise to Abraham and Sarah (25 years!), Isaac is born to them. No wonder they are excited, filled with joy. Which makes our story this morning all the more confusing and difficult to understand.
You Want Me to Do What?!?
Genesis 22:1-19, the story of Abraham & Isaac
So God tests Abraham - and it is one heck of a test. An unbelievable test. Really, a head scratcher - what is God doing here?!?
God commands Abraham to take his son, his only son (Hagar and Ishmael have been sent away) and travel to the region of Moriah, to one of the mountains there, and there offer him as a sacrifice to the Lord, a burnt offering.
Isaac’s age is unclear here, probably in his teens. But it doesn’t matter the age - God is asking Isaac to offer him up, to kill him as a sacrifice to God. Child sacrifice, that’s what God is asking Abraham to do. Now we know how the story plays out - but Abraham has no idea. As far as he knows God wants him to willingly kill his son as a sacrifice to him.
This seems wildly out of character for God, something that only the Canaanite gods would want (gods like Molech), but not Yahweh, the one true God. I had a friend in seminary who just out and out rejected this story, assumed it wasn’t true - didn’t happen because in her mind there was no conceivable way that God would ever do this.
But we’re here to take the Bible seriously, as God’s word to us. And because it’s God’s word to us, it has authority over us - the whole of the Bible. It’s not ours to pick and choose (which gives us the authority). No, we are to take it as it’s given to us. I believe that as we do so, this story not only makes sense, but offers us a powerful and beautiful picture of who God is.
So let’s continue to make our way through the story. Abraham responds in quick and ready obedience.
He gets up early the next morning (no delay), loads up his donkey with cut wood (he’s not taking any chances there won’t be wood where they are going), takes along two servants and, of course, his son, Isaac.
Long trip - three days to Moriah. They arrive at the mountain, Abraham leaves the servants with donkey while he and Isaac make their way up the mountain, Isaac carrying the wood (think about that for a moment, Isaac is carrying the wood he is about to be burnt on), and Abraham the fire and knife.
We never get an insight into what’s going on with Abraham here - now he’s managing this - all we see is his ready and full obedience.
But it has to be killing him, emotionally. As God himself says to him - this is your son, your only son, whom you love. One you longed and longed for - the one you waited 25 years years for. Now, to offer him back to God - not just as a symbolic gesture, but fully and absolutely. What kind of test is this?
Abraham’s got a lot of time to think about what God is asking him to do - three long days traveling, Isaac right there the whole time. Now, as they make their way up the mountain, Isaac bears the weight of wood and he bears the weight of deep sadness, knowing what he is being asked to do. And yet he continues in faithful obedience.
As they go on, Isaac asks the obvious question - we’ve got the wood and fire - but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham tells him that God himself will provide the lamb for the offering (hang on to that comment, we’ll come back to it).
Finally, they reach the ordained place, Abraham builds altar, stacks up the wood, and then binds his son and lays him on the altar.
He then takes the knife in order to kill his son - it’s an incredibly tense moment (if this was a movie, this is the moment the camera would lock on to the knife being held up in the air, and there’d be a dramatic pause, then cut to Isaac, a terrified look on his face, then perhaps to Abraham, tears streaming down his eyes - by the way, there actually is a movie coming out at the end of this month on this story, His Only Son, through Angel Studios, the same group that produces The Chosen).
At the last possible moment - God stays Abraham’s hand, his angel commanding him not to harm his child. Abraham has passed the test - he did not withhold even his very son to God.
Story ends with discovery of a ram with horns caught in nearby thicket (what a convenient coincidence) and Abraham takes and sacrifices it instead.
Abraham then names the place - and this is significant - The Lord Will Provide. On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided - the Bible tells us that becomes a saying that is passed down.
God makes an oath, swearing by himself, that he will do for Abraham what he promised - bless him with descendants too numerous too count, the land he’s been living on, and that he will bless all nations through this nation.
Then they pack up and go home. You have to wonder how the conversations went on the way home.
Let me offer some thoughts about this story - that I hope will show that not only does it make sense, but that it is amazingly beautiful story about God.
First point is this - this is a test, a test of faith. But this is essential - it is a unique test, for Abraham, and Abraham only.
It’s clear - we see this throughout Scripture, that God detests child sacrifice. It is absolutely abhorrent to him. God would never command others to offer their children as sacrifices
Leviticus 20:1-2 - The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Say to the Israelites: ‘Any Israelite or any foreigner residing in Israel who sacrifices any of his children to Molek is to be put to death. The members of the community are to stone him.” God says to do so profanes his holy name.
Deuteronomy 12:31 - You must not worship the Lord your God in their way, because in worshiping their gods, they do all kinds of detestable things the Lord hates. They even burn their sons and daughters in the fire as sacrifices to their gods.
It’s clear that God opposes child sacrifice. This test is based on God’s promise to Abraham that this great nation would come through this child, Isaac, the child that Sarah bore.
At one point - before Isaac is born - Abraham pleads with God that the blessing might come through Ishmael.
Hear how God responds, Genesis 17:19, 21...Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him. ...But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year.”
And it was this that Abraham was trusting - that the promise would still come through Isaac. Hebrews 11:17-19...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, 18 even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.
Second point follows on this - story, what God is asking Abraham to do, is meant to shock us. It’s meant to stop us in our tracks - how could God ask this of Abraham? Who could ever do such a thing, offer their child up as a sacrifice?
And God says…I will. For you, I will. I will offer my Son, and he will willingly offer himself for you and for your sins. Everything about this story is meant to point us to Jesus.
There are clues throughout the passage:
When God gives the command to Abraham, it almost seems as if he’s making it harder by reminder him that it’s Isaac, “your son, your only son, whom you love.”
But God is simply reminding us that he himself willingly makes this sacrifice for us. Remember the words God spoke aloud at Jesus’ baptism, Matthew 3:17 - God is going to express the same thing about his son: And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”
Then we read in Romans 8:32, speaking on God’s grace towards us…He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all - how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?
We can barely imagine the thought, what it would mean to give up our child for the sake of another. Yet this is what our heavenly Father does for us.
And this is such a fun little clue, one that’s so easy to miss because it’s only referenced one time in the Bible. Remember that God was very specific about where Abraham was to go and make the offering of his son - to the region of Moriah, to the mountain that he would show him. Why there? Why that specific mountain? It was a three day trip to that place.
2 Chronicles 3:1 offers us a clue: Then Solomon began to build the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem on Mount Moriah, where the Lord had appeared to his father David.
Did you catch that? The city of Jerusalem was built on Mount Moriah. The very location that Abraham was to take his son and offer him up, only to have God stay his hand, is the very place upon which God would offer his son up for our sake 2,000 years later.
In fact, if you go to Jerusalem today, go on top of the Temple Mount (the temple hasn’t been there for a long time, it was destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D.) But there are two Muslim holy sites on top - one is a mosque, but the other is the Dome of the Rock (in pictures, that’s the big gold dome you see). It’s a dome built on top of the rock upon which Abraham make the altar to sacrifice Isaac (sadly, non-Muslims can’t go in, though back in 1999 you could - so I got to see it then…).
Then, finally, this clue, this thread that runs through the whole story - the idea that it will be God who provides the sacrifice, not Abraham.
Isaac asks Abraham as they make their way up the mountain alone, “we’ve got the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham’s response at first seems like a dodge, a way to avoid having to tell Isaac, sorry to break it to you, son, but it’s you.
But listen carefully to Abraham’s response - “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” God himself will provide the lamb. So God does. His son, the lamb of God. The lamb who was slain. John 1:29…The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
It’s emphasized further in how Abraham names the place - he doesn’t name it the Lord provided, or even the Lord provides, as you might think. He calls it, The Lord Will Provide. And that becomes the saying, to this day it is said, on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided. Sure enough, on the mountain of the Lord it was provided, God provided for our sins, he offered the payment by offering his son, his one and only son, whom he loves, as the willing sacrifice for our sins.
This is what I meant when I said that this story shows us the beauty and wonder of God. This is an amazing story. We’re left scratching our heads - not wondering how God could ever ask this of Abraham - but wondering how in the world could God ever do this for us? What would spur God to offer his son as a sacrifice for us? What would motivate the Son to willingly lay down his life for us?
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
At some point the best thing we can do is quit scratching our heads and simply say, “Thank you.” Thank you, Lord for your great, great love. Thank you that you would not even withhold your very own son, but rather would offer him as a sacrifice for our sins. We had a great, great need for our sin - and at great, great cost to you, you provided. Thank you.
Spiritual Disciplines - So, what do we do with this?! This story of Abraham and Isaac is, at its heart, a story of the Gospel, the good news of Jesus, that bleeds through every word. Question is really, how do we respond to the Gospel, to the reality of this love? Two disciplines I would commend to you this week:
Practice of Thanksgiving, in particular, to thank God for the gift of salvation. To thank Jesus for offering himself as a willing sacrifice, dying on the cross, for the sins of the world - for your sins, for my sins. Thank you, Jesus, for the life I have in you, through you. Thank you for your love, demonstrated on the cross. I humbly rejoice in you. Every day this week (through the entire season of Lent), offer this prayer.
Second soul-training exercise I would commend to you comes out of Romans 12:1, where Paul tells us specifically how we ought to respond to the good news of Jesus: Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God - this is your true and proper worship.
Paul is using this sacrifice imagery, but instead of laying something or someone else, we lay ourselves down on the altar. In a sense, we climb up on the woodpile - I give myself to you, Lord.
Make this your daily prayer - you might pray with your arms outstretched as a posture of self-offering…Lord, here I am. I offer myself to you in love and obedience. Whatever you ask of me, I am willing. Whoever you call me to serve in your name. Whatever sacrifice you’d like me to make - of time, energy, of gifts I have. This is genuine worship.
And this really is the heart of what it means to follow Jesus. That we don’t do this because we’re trying to be good, to try to earn God’s approval, to get a passing grade.
No, heart of the gospel is simply recognizing the power and beauty of God, his love demonstrated for us through Jesus, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And out of deep gratitude, to offer ourselves in return.