Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!  Amen.  What if God were to ask you to offer up one of your children as a sacrifice?  Not a metaphorical sacrifice of dedication or devotion to the Lord’s service, but a bloody sacrifice on an altar with fire.  Could you do it?  Would you do it?  Would you obey the voice of the Lord, or would you wonder if you had gone mad?  How could you know if it was the voice of God, the voice of the devil, or your own imagination?

In the case of Abraham, the patriarch of Israel, this question was not hypothetical.  God really did command Abraham, “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” (Gen. 22:2, ESV).[1]  And seemingly without hesitation, Abraham rose early the next morning to do the very deed God commanded.  He did not delay.  He saddled his donkey  and found some firewood and journeyed into the mountains of Moriah with his son Isaac.

Along the way, Isaac asked the terrible question, “Father, I see the fire and wood, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” (cf. 22:6-7).  Was Abraham even able to look his son in the eye as he replied cryptically, “My boy, God will provide the lamb.”

What was Abraham thinking?  What could compel this “knight of faith” (as Søren Kierkegaard called Abraham)?  What could compel him to pick up a knife and put it to his son’s throat?  How could he slaughter Isaac, the son of promise, the miracle child born to him in his old age, when Abraham was “as good as dead” (Rom. 4:19)?

It is true, as the author of the Letter to the Hebrews writes, that Abraham believed God “was able even to raise him from the dead” (Heb. 11:19), but that makes the act no less horrible.  How could Abraham do such a thing?  By faith.  Only by faith.  Faith believes and obeys the Word of God.  There is no other way.  And even if God’s Word seems incomprehensible and intolerable, it is nevertheless the Word of God.  And so Abraham obeyed.

We know how the story ends.  At the last possible moment, the angel of the Lord intervened and stayed Abraham’s hand.  God did not really want Abraham to sacrifice Isaac.  “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” (Gen. 22:12).  It was a test of faith to see if Abraham loved God enough to give him what he loved most in all the world.  Abraham passed the test, so God blessed him:

“…Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will 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” (Gen. 22:16-18).

 

God blessed Abraham because of the obedience of his faith.  God blesses us through Abraham’s faith, if we believe God’s promises, as Abraham did.

How was Abraham’s relationship with Isaac changed by this event?  Did the boy ever come to understand how God could demand such a thing?  Did he ever wonder what sacrifice God might require of him?  The Scriptures do not say, so we’ll never know.

Sometimes I still wonder how God could ask such a thing of Abraham, and how Abraham could carry it out.  Perhaps my faith is not as great as the knight of faith.  I am more of a squire—or a stableboy.

The sacrifice of Isaac points forward to another dark day, the darkest day of all when Jesus died on the cross for our sins.  For our sake, God demanded everything of Jesus.  He put all the punishment and blame for our sin upon the sinless Son of God.  God took his only-begotten son, his beloved son, Jesus, and tied the wood of the cross to his back, and on top of Mt. Calvary he offered him up as a sacrifice for the sin of the entire world.  Nails and spear pierced him.  Blood ran in rivers from his brow, his hands, his feet, his back, and his side.  All this he did for you and me.

How could God do such a thing?  Sometimes people deny the doctrine of the atonement because they think it makes God the Father look like an unjust, abusive father—a malevolent Lord.  Is Jesus anything more than our whipping boy?

Yes, he is much more than a whipping boy.  Jesus is our Savior and Lord.  He is God’s sacrifice for us.  He is our salvation.  God required everything of Jesus, and yet when Jesus learned in the Garden that there was no other way, he submitted to the will of the Father and prayed, “Not my will, but thy will be done” (Luke 22:42).

“Where is the lamb?” Isaac asked Abraham.  Abraham told the boy that God would provide the lamb, and so he did: a ram caught in the thorns by its horns.  But there was no ram caught in the thicket to take the place of Christ, because Jesus himself was the Lamb—“the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).  There could be no substitute for Christ, because he was the substitute for us.

Where is the Lamb?  [Point to the cross.]  There is the Lamb!  He is climbing the hill to Golgotha to die on the cross for you and for me.  God requires no great sacrifice of us—only that we believe in his only-begotten Son, his beloved Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.  And here is the great test of our faith: will we believe in Jesus and worship the Lamb, or will we hide our faces from his?  In the name of the Father and of T the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

[1] All Scripture references, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.