Genesis 22.
“Abraham. Sacrifice your son Isaac.”
It’s pretty brutal isn’t it.
Here’s Abraham, enjoying the fruits of a life lived under God’s blessing. His son Isaac, growing before his eyes. His son Isaac, strong, a boy becoming a man. His son Isaac, the one who will inherit the very promises of God given to Abraham. His son Isaac, the son of the Promise.
You can imagine him and Sarah, sitting outside their tent, satisified, content. Enjoying the fruits of God’s blessing. Life is good.
And then God says 2 “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”
Oof. Like a blow to the body. The world goes dark. Panic rises in the throat. “Did God just ask me to give up that which I love most in this world? Did he ask me to give up that which is most precious to me? Did God ask me to sacrifice my son? To watch him suffer and die?
I cannot do this! Why would God ask me to do this? It must be wrong. He cannot require this of me.”
Abraham, take your son, your only son, and go.
God. No! No! I cannot do this.
He looks into Sarah’s eyes and her eyes tell the same story “No, Abraham, no. You cannot.”
And then he looks around at all that he has: his flocks and his herds, his servants and workers, his many tents, his vast wealth – all this he has received from the hand of God. It is a gift.
He looks at the land promised to him. It is a gift. He looks at his son. The greatest gift of all. He is a gift. All gifts from the hand of the Lord.
“Shall I refuse to give back to God what he has so generously given me? Shall I stand in judgement over the commands of God? Shall I determine what is right and wrong, placing myself over God – just like Adam did in Eden? What do I really love? What do I value the most? The gifts, or the Giver of the Gifts?”
The Bible has a word for that: it’s called idolatry. Putting something before God.
But idols are little wooden or stone statues aren’t they? I don’t worship those! Ah, but idolatry in the Bible is a heart matter, not just an external matter. Idolatry is best defined as loving something other than God in the place of God. Letting something else take first place, central place, in your life. And that will never work. For the guys at the Man in the Mirror, you remember the wheel illustration, with Christ at the centre. He is our hub – take him out, and the whole wheel collapses.
We are designed to have God at the centre – without him, everything goes wrong. Just look at our world. Look at our churches that have drifted from the gospel and have tried to replace the Living God with tame religion. They are full of angry, arrogant people, self-righteous - or defeated, sad people, worn-out from the burden of guilt they carry.
Idolatry is valuing the gifts more than the Giver of the gifts. Loving God for what we can get from him rather than He himself. And if we do that, we’re a Dudley Dursley.
Dudley Dursley is a character in the Harry Potter books and films – he’s Harry’s selfish cousin. And in the first film we are introduced to Dudley on his eleventh birthday. Dudley has been given 36 presents. 36! His reaction? “36? But last year I had 38….” – tells us everything we need to know about him. Ungrateful. Selfish. No thankfulness, no joy, just greed.
And that’s what we are like when we value what God has given us more than we love God himself. Psalm 73:25 says this Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth. 26 My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever.
God is enough.
When tragedy strikes and that which I value so much is taken from me. God is enough.
When illness robs me of my ability to do what I want when I want. God is enough.
When God keeps saying no to my prayers which seem so right to me. God is enough.
When pain racks my body. God is enough.
When God calls me to leave my country and go to a spiritual wasteland. God is enough.
When my baby boy dies in the womb. God is enough.
When he strips away all I hold dear and all that remains is him. God is enough.
God is enough.
Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth. 26 My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of my heart; he is mine forever.
And so 3 The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his donkey and took two of his servants with him, along with his son, Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had told him about. God is enough.
That’s faith. That’s trust. “I don’t understand this, God. Everything in me says that this is wrong. But I know that I am warped by sin – I cannot see things clearly. I know that I am bound by time and circumstances – I don’t see the full picture. I know my selfish and comfort-seeking heart is always pulling me in the wrong direction. So I will quiet the noise in my head and say “I trust you.””
21 Then I realized that my heart was bitter, and I was all torn up inside. 22 I was so foolish and ignorant— I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you. 23 Yet I still belong to you; you hold my right hand. 24 You guide me with your counsel, leading me to a glorious destiny. (Ps 73 again)
This story here in Genesis blows apart the nonsense of the prosperity gospel: God wants you to be healthy and wealthy. No! He wants you to be utterly consumed with him. He wants you to depend on him in everything.
This story destroys that stupid saying “God will never test you beyond what you can bear”. Of course he will! Who can bear this?
HE will ALWAYS test us beyond what we can bear because we are designed to rest on him, not on ourselves. We cannot bear the weight of living in this world. We cannot bear the sorrows of a fallen world – just watch the news. It is heartbreaking. Who can bear it? Only God. We cannot bear the thought of our own sinful, self-justifying, self-absorbed hearts. My heart is bitter, I am like a senseless animal before you God. I cannot bear it.
No. God will always test us beyond what we can bear so that we stop trusting in ourselves and so trust in him. Faith in God, living faith, active faith, is the antidote to idolatry.
That’s why Abraham is one of the heroes of faith in Hebrews 11. James explains it like this in James 2:21–24 Don’t you remember that our ancestor Abraham was shown to be right with God by his actions when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see, his faith and his actions worked together. His actions made his faith complete. 23 And so it happened just as the Scriptures say: “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” He was even called the friend of God.
My parents have a saying which I have found immensely helpful for many years: hold loosely to things. Even good things. Not let go. But don’t hang on so tight that that thing, that person, that relationship, whatever it may be – don’t hang on so tight that that becomes your God, your idol, your central thing. For what will you do when God in his grace takes that away from you (or threatens to)? There is only One that matters most in this life, and that is Christ Alone. Hold on to him (or more properly he will hold on to us), and cherish and be thankful for all the good things he has given, but hold loosely, hold loosely and never forget Whom have I in heaven but you? I desire you more than anything on earth.
I discovered this week that my parents weren’t the first to say “hold loosely to things”. The great preacher George Whitefield preaching on this passage says this “Learn, O saints! From what has been said, to sit loose to all your worldly comforts; and stand ready prepared to part with everything, when God shall require it at your hand….let [Abraham’s] example encourage and comfort you. O think of the happiness he now enjoys, and how he is incessantly thanking God for testing him when here below. Look up often by the eye of faith, and see him sitting with his dearly beloved Isaac…. Remember, it will be but a little while, and you shall sit with them also, and tell one another what God has done for your souls.”
God is enough.
But that may have raised a question in your mind. Especially if you are being called to give something up, to move out of your comfort zone – this will be your defence: it’s not fair. God doesn’t understand. What kind of God can do this? Cruel, unfeeling God.
How often have we heard the statement “I can’t believe in a God who allows x”. Or “I went through <this terrible thing> and my faith was destroyed”
We can answer rather brutally with “who are you to stand in judgement above God – are you more God than God, seeing all things, knowing all things?” and “maybe your faith was in the wrong God, the God of your imagination rather than the real God of the Bible” – now those are true answers but they are head answers, and the pain is felt here, deep within. “I have lost my grandchild, my heart is broken. How can God allow this?”
And the answer to their pain is shown in this story.
For we find that the One who tested Abraham to sacrifice his son, only to rescue him at the last instance is the One who sacrificed his own Son, with no thought of rescue.
See, the God who makes these demands of us, we find out is the God who has travelled this road and beyond. He has gone before us so that at the moment when death will overwhelm us, when evil will destroy us, when sin and suffering will have its victory – at the moment when we lie on the altar ready to pay for our sins – at that moment God cries out “stay the knife!” and we are lifted tenderly from our place of suffering, and Jesus takes our place, the substitute ram, the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. He takes our place, and the knife plunges in, and in agony he dies. The Father gives up his son. The son gives up his life. Oh what infinite glory!
The answer to all the riddles is here, in this foreshadowing of the Cross.
6 So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them walked on together, 7 Isaac turned to Abraham and said, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “We have the fire and the wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” 8 “God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham answered. And they both walked on together. 9 When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. 10 And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. 11 At that moment the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!” 12 “Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.” 13 Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son. 14 Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the LORD will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”
On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided. And it was. 2000 years later, probably on this very same mountain, the Son of God provided a way out for all who trust in him. The Father sacrificed his Son in order to bring many sons to glory.
See the willingness of Isaac to be the sacrifice, as Jesus says “No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again.” Jn 10:18
Isaac carried the wood up the mountain as Christ carried his Cross. He did not struggle or fight, but was silent, as was Christ as he was led like a lamb to the slaughter. And as a sheep is silent before the shearers, he did not open his mouth. Isa 53:7
The willing sacrifice.
But here the comparison ends. Because Abraham raised the knife – but God calls out “stop” – and Isaac is rescued. But for Jesus there is no rescue because HE is the rescuer. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. This is why he set his face like flint towards Jerusalem. This is why he sweated blood in the garden in prayer and cried out “not my will Father, but yours”. It is this moment for which he came, this is the hour in which he will bring glory to the Father by completing the work he came to do, and the Father will glorify him with the glory he had before the world began. (Jn 17:1–5). This is the moment when Heaven is silent. As Jesus hangs on the cross there is no shout of “STOP”. There is just love, incredible love keeping Him there on the cross, keeping the Father from crying out “enough” – and instead we hear those words “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me”. Words of absolute pain as suffering as he who knew no sin became sin for us. Our sins pressed down upon his shoulders.
But it is also a mighty declaration of who he is, those words quoted from Psalm 22, the Psalm of the KING. Here, O Israel is your King, victorious in death, rescuing in weakness, triumphing over Satan and sin in agony and humiliation. Here is our God.
What have you experienced that can compare with that? Have you ever heard of such a thing? Such love – going to such terrible lengths to rescue your enemies from a fate we deserve? It is unthinkable.
So remember the Cross next time you have devilish thoughts of “it’s unfair. God is unfeeling. God is cruel.” He is not pushing you on to the road of suffering – but he is standing ahead of you, calling out to you – do not be afraid, I have gone on ahead. I have cleared the way. All will be alright in the end. And his strong, scarred hand will reach out in the dark and grasp yours.
God is enough. In the darkness and pain, God is enough.
Whitefield again: “Remember, it will be but a little while, and you shall sit with [Abraham and Isaac] also, and tell one another what God has done for your souls. There I hope to sit with you, and hear this story of his offering up his Son from his own mouth, and to praise the Lamb that sits upon the throne, for what he has done for all our souls, for ever and ever.”
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