Hope Lutheran Church
Manhattan, Kansas February 18, 2024 Genesis 22:1–18 What do I do when the promises of God don’t seem like they’re lining up with how my life is going? What do I do when I know God’s promises, but then I look at my current reality and it doesn’t seem like those two things are matching up? Because the truth is, that can happen a lot. Because we know what God promises. We know God says he loves us, he cares for us, he's always with us, he's always watching over everything for us and our good. But then there are times when I don’t see those blessings and promises clearly. There are times when I don’t feel like I’m loved and cared for. There are times when I feel like I’ve been left all alone to fend for myself. There are times when I have no clue what God is doing in my life. It’s like we’re living in this tension. This tension between the promises of God on one side and the trials, tests, and temptations on the other side. What do we do as we live life in that tension? The tendency for me during times like that is to start making assumptions about God and how he works in the world. I make assumptions like thinking that the trials, tests, and temptations can only ever be bad and no good can ever come out of them. Like thinking that they are some sort of punishment for a sin or sins of my past. Like thinking that maybe God doesn’t really love me or care about me. We have these assumptions. We have all these ideas that get into our heads when we think about God's promises, but then we look at our life. When we're living in the tension between those two things – the promises of God and the trials, tests, and temptations that we’re so familiar with. It can be frustrating. It can be hard. This account from the life of Abraham can tell us a lot about living in that tension. By the end of this account, we’ll see that… 1) When God makes a promise, he always keeps that promise 2) Trials, tests, and temptations serve a purpose in the life of Christians 3) The promises and the trials, tests, and temptations come together in Jesus It’s helpful for us to remember what led to this point in Abraham’s life. Because this account of God telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is really the culmination of decades and decades of different promises that God made to Abraham and the struggles he faced throughout his life. Back in Genesis 12, when he was 75 years old, God had called Abraham to leave his former way of life, to leave his father, to leave his homeland and go and settle down in a new place God was going to show to him. And so Abraham packed up his whole life with nothing more than a promise from God. And you would think that as Abraham left with God’s promise in his head and heart, everything from the beginning to the end for Abraham would be good and easy. But what you see is the total opposite throughout Abraham’s life. You see highs and lows all along the way. High and lows in the way Abraham himself acts and the things he does, and high and lows in the circumstances he meets along the way. He leaves his homeland and travels to the land God told him – Canaan. And God makes a promise to Abraham. “To your offspring I will give this land.” But then what does Abraham see as he travels through that land? “At that time the Canaanites were in the land.” And there was something else. God said “To your offspring…” But when he said that, Abraham, a 75-year-old man, and his wife, Sarah, a 65-year-old woman, hadn’t been able to have children. They didn’t even have one child and certainly not countless descendants who could fill up an entire country. So there Abraham was with a promise from God, but from everything he could tell, it must have looked like that promise didn’t match up with his current reality. He was living in that tension. And before we start to think that Abraham always listened to and believed those promises perfectly, it’s good for us to recognize that so many times Abraham struggled. Then there were times when Abraham didn’t listen to and trust in God and his promises. There were times when Abraham tried to take matters into his own hands. Just read the rest of Abraham’s story in Genesis 12–21 and you’ll see it. But even when Abraham was faithless, God remained faithful. Finally, after decades and decades of waiting, the unthinkable and impossible happend: God gave them the son he promised. Finally, when Abraham was 100, and Sarah was 90, God blessed them with Isaac, their only son. Because when God makes a promise, he always keeps that promise. And so I have to wonder what kind of emotions Abraham was feeling when God came to him in the verses we heard today. Here he was with Isaac, a child of promise, and God said to Abraham, “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.” But what happens next is amazing to me. It says, “Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey.” Just think about that for a minute. Abraham got up early the very next day to do this thing that God had asked of him. I mean, if it were me, I’d try to find whatever I possibly could to push it off. But Abraham gets up early for it. And what else does Abraham do? “When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.” Abraham could have had one of his servants do that work. But he cuts the wood himself. And it says he “cut enough wood for the burnt offering.” That means with every swing of the ax, he was thinking about and looking at his son Isaac to make sure there was enough wood. And with each swing of the ax knowing that it’s taking him closer to offering his son. Once everything was ready, Abraham, Isaac, and two servants started their journey. “On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, ‘Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.’” So Abraham and Isaac continue on their journey, just the two of them. And then Isaac cuts through what I imagine had to be an intense silence. He says, “‘Father, the fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’ Abraham answered, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.’ They continue on and get to the top of the mountain. Abraham builds an altar, ties his son with rope, lays him on the altar, lifts the knife, and prepares to plunge the point into Isaac’s neck. And just before he can bring his arm down “the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham! Do not lay a hand on the boy. 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.’” And Abraham looked up from Isaac to see a ram caught in a bush. And he sacrificed the ram instead of his son. “So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide.” Every time I read this account, I always wonder how in the world Abraham was able to do all this. The letter to the Hebrews actually gives us an insight into what was going through Abraham’s head during all of this. “By FAITH Abraham 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.” Abraham trusted that somehow, someway God would make good on his promises in Isaac, even if that meant raising Isaac from the dead. Abraham – through so many trials, tests, and temptations – had come to believe that when God makes a promise, he always keeps that promise. And what does this all have to do with us? With you and me? Well, by faith, we can believe what Abraham came to believe. We know that when God makes a promise, he’ll always keep that promise. It might not happen in the way we would expect, it might not happen in the time we think it should happen. But in his own time, in his own way, God will always make good on the promises he makes to us in his Word. And it’s not like God calls us to blindly believe and trust that. We can believe that because really all of Scripture is God doing that exact thing. It’s God, over and over, making promise after promise. It’s God, over and over, fulfilling and bringing to completion every one of those promises. And that means we can rethink our assumptions about the trials, tests, and temptations we face during this life. You know, it’s interesting to me how this whole account of Abraham starts. It says “Some time later God tested Abraham.” We the readers know that. But it doesn’t say Abraham knew that. At least not right at that moment anyway. But I also don’t think this was the first time Abraham had faced a trial, test, or temptation. He had faced those kinds of things all throughout his life, sometimes rising to the challenge and other times failing in devastating ways. But all of them were refining him. Forming him into the person God really wanted him to be. Someone who relied more and more on God and less and less on himself. The one we heard about today just happened to be the last and most extreme one of his life, at least that we know about. And I don’t think he would have been able to pass this test if God hadn’t put him through those other trials, tests, and temptations. They all served a purpose and Abraham’s ultimate good. And that’s true for us too. God might allow trials, tests, and temptations to come into our lives. Sometimes we might realize it when we’re in the middle of them. Other times we might not realize it until much later when we look back on our lives. But we can know that in all of them, God is strengthening our faith in and reliance on him. He’s helping us focus more on him and less on ourselves. And, somehow, someway, even when it’s hard for us to see, he’ll use them for our eternal good. That’s his promise. And when God makes a promise. He always keeps that promise. And those promises and the trials, tests, and temptations come together in Jesus. It’s how we can know that God keeps his promises. It’s how we can know that God uses trials, tests, and temptations for his and our ultimate good. Because the worst possible thing happened to Jesus. He faced trials, tests, and temptations. And he carried them all and faced them all perfectly. And what did it all lead to? A cross. His death. And our salvation. The best blessings God could ever give you came from the worst thing that could ever happen to his Son. As long as we live, we’re always going to wrestle with this tension between the promises of God and the trials, tests, and temptations we face. But through it all, we can confess and believe along with Abraham “The Lord Will Provide.” Because that’s exactly what he did. He provided the lamb, his Son, to give us life and salvation. Amen. Comments are closed.
|
Archives
February 2024
Categories
All
|