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Last updated on
July 18, 2002
The Final Frontier
Delivered June 30, 2002
by Pastor Werner De Jong
Text: Genesis 22: 1-14
Main Idea: The story of Abraham teaches us that our faith is to be placed in a Sovereign God who is determined to have his way with us, no matter what the cost. He demands nothing less that unqualified allegiance, demonstrated through acts of obedience.
Purpose: To challenge the listeners to truly be open to hear the word of God, even if it flies in the face of middle-of-the-road, reasonable religion. To challenge the listeners to act upon God's command with full obedience–this is faith. To encourage the listeners that God provides for those who risk all to follow him.
Introduction: Have any of you followed the news story this week that is happening south of the border? A Federal Court in the United States ruled that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional, that beloved, historic declaration of national loyalty, which almost all Americans know from heart, and which most students recite every day in school. Needless to say the decision created a swift and tremendous uproar–the great majority of Americans are outraged by it. Every federal politician has gone on record as opposing it. At the centre of the hurricane is a single, short phrase contained in the pledge, "one nation under God," and the entire controversy is centred on one word of that phrase--God. According to the court, it is a violation of the constitutional separation of church and state when schoolchildren have to repeat or simply listen to God's name being invoked every day in a state institution.
I don't want to comment on the decision itself, but on the reaction to it. I find it interesting that so many Americans insist on preserving a role for God in national life. Above all else, I wonder if they know the God they are talking about. Who is this God they want to be under? What do they mean when they say that precious name? What do we mean by it? For as Canadians we might be just as outraged if God were taken out of our national anthem. Do most Americans, or Canadians, genuinely know what it means to be "under God?" Most people don't mind submitting to the God of civil religion. The God of civil religion, whether in the US or Canada, tends to be a bland, benign one-dimensional figure who watches over the nation to bless it and prosper it. To be under such a God is to be under a safe, generous, Almighty Being who is on our side, who asks little of us, but gives much in return.
But is this the God of the Bible? Is God always safe and predictable? Would people be so eager to be under God if they meant by God not some vague, benevolent Spirit, who graciously accepts the roles we give him, and who is satisfied to serve as a figurehead, but the specific God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of holiness and justice, the God who cannot be controlled, the God who will not be subverted to any national ideology, the God who insists on being obeyed as Lord of all? People want a God who gives, but are we also interested in a God who takes away? People want a God who promises, but will we also follow a God who claims an absolute right to command us and test us, on his terms and not ours? People are interested in the God who kept his promise and blessed Abraham with a son in his old age, but are we also interested in the God who tested Abraham and didn't flinch to ask Abraham to offer Isaac up as a sacrifice? Under these terms, how many people would still want to be "under God?"
The Text and its context: The story we read this morning from Genesis 22 is one which probably, if we are honest, both repels and attracts us at the same time. It is hard to read the story without feeling aversion for a God who will command the sacrifice of a son, yet we are intrigued nonetheless by the very outrageousness of the command, and we wonder how Abraham will respond, and at the end of the story we are greatly relieved when, just as the blade is lingering in the air, God graciously provides an alternate sacrifice.
Nonetheless the story may leave us feeling fidgety. Why did God command Abraham to kill Isaac in the first place? We know from v.1 that this was a test. But we only begin to understand the test when we realize that this account is part of a larger story. The overarching context is the earlier promises made by God to Abraham that he would bear a son and become the father of a great nation, and that through his descendants he would become a blessing to all the peoples of the earth. Abraham's heart must have thrilled to hear this promise, especially as God repeated it to him at different times. But gradually Abraham and Sarah grew older, with still no child. Just when it appeared that all hope was lost, they are given a son in their old age. Isaac is the first step in the fulfilment of God's promise, a sign that God's promise is trustworthy, and good, and Abraham and Sarah greatly rejoiced.
But God didn't send a congratulations card. No, the first words we hear from God following the birth are these: "Abraham, take your son, your only son–yes, Isaac, whom you love so much–and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will point out to you." Again, verse 1 of our chapter clearly tells us that this was a test. But what was God testing? The broad answer must be that he was testing Abraham's faith and obedience. But more specifically, God wants to know if Abraham serves him only because of the gifts God gives. He was saying something like this: "Abraham, do you love me or my gifts? Did you trust me because I am God, or because you wanted a child? I want you to love me and worship me and obey me for myself, because of who I am."
Are we not the same way? Don't we want people to love us for who we are, and not because of what they can get from us? Any of us, if we had enough money, and were generous with it, could soon have many friends proclaiming their loyalty to us. But we want to be loved as persons, and so does God. The Bible tells us that God loves us for who we are–do we love God for who he is? In Abraham's case God wanted to make sure, and so he put him through a terrible test.
The God we worship: But why did God test Abraham in this way? This question still leaves us uneasy. The text provides no satisfying answers, but perhaps its most significant message is in its silence: God is God, God is sovereign, God doesn't have to answer to us, it is we who have to answer to God. God is completely free to do and act as God pleases. For the rest of our time I want to look at what this text says about the God we worship, and what it means to place faith in such a God. This is a pivotal story in the Scriptures, twice it is directly referred to in the NT, and it challenges us to trust and obey not the God of our culture, not the God whom we are comfortable with because we have moulded him into our own image, but the God who is free, because he is infinite and Almighty, the God who was there before us and who made us, the God who claims the absolute right to speak into our lives.
I think sometimes we're afraid to teach about the holy, Almighty God of Scripture. We don't want to make people uncomfortable with talk about a God who is sovereign over us, and who is determined to have his way with us, who insists on the right to command us, and who demands our unqualified allegiance. Politicians certainly prefer to talk about the God of civil religion, who blesses but asks little in return, for that is a safe thing to do, but I wonder if we do the same in our churches, if we make our God too small, out of fear that we may turn people off such a God. Perhaps we even do it in our own minds, because we want a God whom we are comfortable with. But when we do that, are we not misleading people and developing people of weak faith? And does it not cause our own faith to remain weak and anaemic? If our God is small, then our faith will be small.
William Willimon is a widely respected preacher and author. He tells the story of one occasion when he showed a video clip of Abraham and Isaac trudging up dusty, windswept Mount Moriah, and of the ceremony that took place at the summit, and then asked the question, "What meaning does this story have for us today?" One man spoke up, "I'll tell you the meaning this story has for me. I've decided that I and my family are looking for another church." "What," asked Willimon in astonishment. "Why?" You may be surprised at his answer, I know it's the exact opposite of what I was expecting: "Because," he said, "when I look at that God, the God of Abraham, I feel I'm near a real God, not the sort of dignified, businesslike, Rotary Club god we chatter about here on Sunday mornings. Abraham's God could blow a man to bits, give and take a child, ask for everything from a person and then want more. I want to know that God." This man hungered for reality, he had grown tired of the stale god of middle-of-the-road, reasonable religion. Such a God seemed puny to him before the hard facts of life. He yearned for a greater God. He was weary of a faith that makes no claims on us. He sensed intuitively that God cannot be served without cost, and he hungered to know the true God, not the God of middle-class North American imagination, who rarely if ever makes us uncomfortable.
That is what this text is all about, it is a challenge for us to place our faith in the great God who is, not the small God of our own imaginings. We have a tendency to reduce God to our own level, but God says to us through the prophet Isaiah: "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways....As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Is. 55:8-9). Is this the God we worship and place our faith in, the holy, awesome, Almighty Creator?
Abraham to his great credit immediately responded to the summons of God. For him God was clearly no creation of his imagination. He accepted God as the one great reality, the God who is there, the one he had learned to trust through many a smaller test. He didn't question whether or not God had the right to command a sacrifice at such great price. Of course he did, he is God, and I am his creature. So he arose early the next morning, chopped the necessary wood for the sacrifice, and then set out with Isaac and two servants for the place God had told him about. For three days they hiked through the wilderness, until Abraham saw the dreaded mountain in the distance. Then he loaded the firewood on Isaac's shoulders, and himself carried the fire and the knife. When they reached the summit Abraham continued to obey–he built an altar and placed the wood on it. Then he tied up Isaac and laid him on top of the wood. His obedience didn't stop there, he was willing to go all the way, for he took the knife to slay his son–until, of course, the angel of God intervened, saying, "Now I know that you fear God." In this way Abraham passed the test.
Faith in God: It may be that in this story we not only struggle with God's command, we also struggle with Abraham's complete obedience to it. What kind of a father could possibly do that to his child? It may leave us more comfortable if the scriptures condemned Abraham for what he did. But they don't, they commend him. They say he was a great man of faith. Not just in the OT, which we may be tempted to dismiss as being barbaric anyway, but also twice in the new. For example, in Hebrews 11, that great chapter on faith, which lists a role call of heroes who demonstrated faith, Abraham is front and centre, and this incident is recalled: "By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received 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'" (11:17-18).
Abraham is credited with faith not just because he obeyed God, but because he still believed in God's promise, even though he was asked to kill the one through whom the promise would come. Even though God's promise and God's command were apparently in direct contradiction to one another, Abraham still chose to trust God. He trusted God without qualification. That is remarkable. He let God be God, even though the command made no sense to him. God had promised him a child, God had given a child, but because God was God, and he was not, he chose to obey, while still expecting the promise to be fulfilled. There are two verses in particular in our story which highlight this faith. First of all, in v.5, Abraham told the two servants who were with him: "Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back." We will come back, he said. Even though God had given him no indication that Isaac would be spared, even though he was still marching obediently toward the altar of sacrifice, Abraham believed that God would either intervene with a miraculous deliverance, or if need be, raise Isaac from the dead. He believed because of God's promise, that through Isaac the promise would come. Some might suggest that this is off the mark, that Abraham was simply trying to deceive his servants by speaking of their return, but that is not how the author of Hebrews understood it. We've already read vv. 17-18 of chapter 11, here now is v.19: "Abraham assumed that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again. And in a sense, Abraham did receive his son back from the dead."
In v.8 of our story Abraham again makes a comment which reflects his faith. Isaac asked him: "We have the wood and the fire, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?" And Abraham answered, "God will provide a lamb, my son." This is a statement of utter trust and confidence. Abraham doesn't know at this time if Isaac is the chosen lamb, or if God will provide an alternate. It could be either way, Isaac or an alternative. Abraham doesn't know, but he trusts unreservedly. He chose to commit his way to his God even when his trust was weighed in the balance against common sense and fatherly love and lifelong ambition.
Application: It is almost time to conclude, before we do so, I want to try to pull all that we've talked about together and consider what it means to have faith in the God of the Bible: (overhead)
- First of all, the object of our faith is the Sovereign God. Not the small God of our imagination, or the benign God reflected by our culture, but faith in the free, great, holy, Almighty, loving, providing God who is the only source of life. Faith in the God who both tests and provides, who commands and promises.
- Faith begins with a word from God.
- Faith requires unqualified allegiance to God, even when we can't make sense of what God is up to. Faith demands that we trust God unreservedly. (illustration: Trusting Dad)
- Faith demands that when God speaks we obey. Faith is not simply a mental exercise, it only exists when accompanied by acts of obedience. Faith withers and dies when it is not exercised.
- Faith is an adventure, one which begins when we dare to listen to God's word. This is why I've titled my sermon, "Faith: the Final Frontier." Faith needs challenges–the God of civil religion does not challenge us, but the God of the Bible, the Creator of all, does. God provides for those who embrace the adventure and who risk all to follow him.
- Faith reaches its ultimate fulfilment when it is placed in God's only Son, Jesus Christ, who was sacrificed for us. ( Parallels between Isaac and Jesus; Points 2-5 above are all true with respect to Jesus).
Conclusion: In conclusion, may we be those who place our faith in our Almighty Creator, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. May we dare to believe in a great God, may we dare to listen to his voice, may we dare to risk all to follow Christ, may we dare to put feet to our beliefs and act in obedience, may we dare to embrace the adventure of faith, may we dare to accepts the challenges of the final frontier.