Genesis 22:1-18 Finding the Faith to Beginnish

You are listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan.

Faith for the Beginning and the End

Well good morning everyone, it's good to see you. I am Dan DeVries, my family and I usually sit right up here in the front. We've been coming to Recast I guess the last, I don't know, three and a half, three years maybe?

Two and a half, three years, something like that, and I have the privilege of being able just to share from God's Word today. But I want to ask you a question to start, and to start I want to ask you if you've ever read a book and before you got too far into it you turned to the last page to see how it might turn out, right?

Now maybe you're not happy how the book is going, and you wondered if it's worth your time to read it, but I think we do that, you know, you may have done that, I don't tend to do that, I want to just kind of be up for the adventure and see what happens.

Now there's a famous movie that actually depicts this happening in real time, in fact Pastor Don referred to it last week. So what happens is there's a little boy who is home sick from, he's sick and he's home from school, and his grandfather's reading him a book, right?

And as the story progresses and there's a lot of high drama and there's lots of things that you might recognize, R-O-U-S-es, starting to ring a bell, great characters, intellectual philosophers and so on.

And about halfway through the book the main character Wesley, right, the man in, what movie am I talking about? Princess Bride. Princess Bride. How many of you have seen it?

Okay.

Or you may have heard about it. But halfway through the movie the main character Wesley dies in the pit of despair, and it snaps back from the movie to the story that's being read from the grandfather to the boy.

And he says the boy can't take it, obviously, he can't take the drama, he can't take what's going on, and he says, why are you reading this to me? Who kills Prince Humperdinck in the end, right? Who kills him?

Because he needs to see the end of the story to make it through the pressure of the moment,.

Right?

And the grandfather goes, look, you're taking this very seriously, you're taking this very seriously, I think we need to stop. And the boy goes, I'm okay, grandpa, I'm okay, right? And that's the question I want to start with.

All of us have a story that we're living, right? And they're not always so intense, and it may be that way for you today, and it might.

Not be.

But the question I want you to think through this morning with me if you would do that is, am I okay? What's really, really going on, right? Am I okay? Are you tempted to want to know how something you're facing right now is going to turn out?

How is this all going to work, right? And the whole point of this morning, and what I believe the whole point of church is, is for us to come and do some work, right? It's not, I don't know when or how a lot of church, and I love that we don't do this here, but for lots of places, it feels like church can just be a, like a movie experience.

You sit back in your pew, and you just sort of take it in, and we really don't engage. I think church is a workshop, right? We come to do some work. And so I want to start by having you consider how you're doing, really, right?

It's that question that people sit down with you over a cup of coffee and go, are you okay? Because of the troubles and the difficulties, sometimes we're not okay. We're going to read a story this morning, we're going to read it after worship time, about a man in scripture, and we're going to look at just one story in his life, and I want to suggest this to you.

The day before this event happened, he was probably doing okay. But then this happens, and I just wonder how he was doing, and I bet you're going to be able to identify with it. So that's where we're headed today.

I hope you'll do the work and use this story of scripture, hopefully, to encourage you and challenge you. Let's pray now as we have Dave and the band come up to lead us in worship. Father, we just want to thank you for the opportunity this morning to look at your word.

We want to thank you for the opportunity for us to worship, and Lord, that you would draw us into your presence, that we might be willing to do some hard work today and ask ourselves, how are we really doing in our faith journey?

Lord, we need faith for the beginning. We need faith to finish well. And Lord, I just suspect all of us are facing some things in our lives today that we need faith right now for. So we're asking you to help and believing that you will because you love your people.

We pray this in Jesus' name. And everybody said?

Amen.

Well, if you are visiting with us today, I'm just really glad you're here. You've stumbled into or wandered into or sovereignly were brought to a really wonderful church. And I hope that you feel comfortable.

One of the things that we usually say at this time is there's more donuts in the back. Restrooms are out here. But I get distracted real easily, unlike Pastor Don, so please don't use the restrooms. And I was kind of eyeing those donuts for lunch for my kids.

So stay away from those.

Okay?

But other than that, you are so welcome here this morning. So no, but I'm really glad you're here. If you've got a Bible, and I'm kidding, you will not distract me. I got four kids.

All right.

So whatever you need to do to be comfortable, you do that. Grab the Bible in front of you or your device or whatever you brought with you this morning. The Bible in front of you, Genesis chapter 22 is on page 10.

Abraham’s Test and the Command to Offer Isaac

So we're going to read this great story and try to draw some lessons from it that I hope will be challenging and encouraging. So let's get to work. This is Genesis chapter 22. I'm going to read verses 1 through 16.

After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham. And he said, here I am. He said, 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.

So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son, Isaac, and he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.

On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.

And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. And so they went, both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, my father, and he said, here I am, my son.

He said, behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So they went, both of them together.

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac, his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the.

Wood.

Then Abraham reached out his knife or his hand, took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here I am. He said, 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. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him there was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns.

And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide, as it is to this day. And the mount of the Lord, it shall be provided.

All right, let's pray. Father, we just thank you for this incredible story of faith. And I pray that you would give us the ability now to enter into it. Ask ourselves some hard questions about our journey, about our faith in you.

Whether that's going well or whether we're struggling or whether we're just not sure.

Where we're at.

And God, what we see, of course, in this story and through all the stories of scripture, as Dave talked about in worship, is that you are faithful even when we're not. Abraham got it right here, but we know that in other parts of his story, as is true for most characters, he struggled too.

And so God, no matter where each of us are this morning, I do pray that you'd meet us there, talk to us about the next step in our journey with you. Help us do the work, help us to trust your spirit to take us right where we need to go.

And we trust you for that in Jesus' name, I pray. Amen. Well, hey, what I'd like to do, if it's okay, is just kind of go through these verses a little bit at a time. We'll wrap up with just a couple of overall summary thoughts for us to take out of here before we head into communion at the end of our time, okay?

So let's just start with this very first verse because it's a bit unsettling to me. It says, after these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, and he said, here.

I am.

It's the fifth word I'm struggling with, and maybe you would too. After these things, God tested Abraham. I don't like that. Do you?

No.

What we do know from the study of this word is we do know from scripture, God does not tempt us, right? You know that from the book of James. God does not tempt, he cannot tempt. This is not a temptation to sin, but God does test his people.

And he says it over and over through scripture, and maybe you're going through one right now. God does test to prove something, and that's the idea of this word. The idea isn't about temptation, it's a test to prove something.

Often God takes us to these places where he wants to test our faith, that's what this story is about, to see what it's really made of. Those are hard days. Those are tough places to be, and you may be there this morning.

God may be testing you right now in different parts of your life.

Why?

Because he wants you to take a hard look at your journey with him to see if this faith is real. What is it really made of? Right now we do these tests all the time ourselves, don't we, in different things.

You ever had a little cute baby walking by, and you pick the thing up, and maybe it's your own kid, let's just assume that. And all of a sudden you test something because you suspect something, and you go, and you smell that, and you know something's real, right, and you go and give it to your wife and say, please, this is, I think, some testing, yeah.

Maybe the better test would be what you sometimes see on TV. Somebody discovers a piece of gold, right, and they want to test if it's real. What do they do?

Right?

Oh, sorry, I hit my They nod down on that, applying pressure to see if the gold is really the real thing, and that's kind of the idea here, right. God is applying some pressure. He's bringing Abraham into a test.

He's going to see if this faith is real or not, and of course, we've already read the end of the story, and you know that it is. And this is the beauty of the story, right, that there's a whole bunch going on here.

This happens to happen here at the latter part of Abraham's life, and we're going to talk about that here in just a second. But God does test. I love that Abraham responds as soon as God calls his name.

We're going to talk about that here in just a moment, too. So, verse two says this. He said, 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.

I want to pause here again. To really get this story, right, you're going to have to understand a little bit, and a lot of you do, but maybe not. You're going to have to really understand this relationship between Abraham and Isaac, okay?

The earlier chapters in Genesis, starting at about Genesis chapter 12, lays out the entirety of what we have revealed in Scripture about Abraham's story. There's a bunch of stuff in the New Testament that talks about Abraham, too.

We can learn some more, but the actual narrative is here just in Genesis 12 through a little bit after this chapter. And if you know a little bit about Abraham's story, right, you know that he has some ups and downs.

He has some ups and downs in chapter 12. God calls him and says, I'm going to make a great nation out of you, and you're going to be a blessing, and all this stuff, okay? Later, a couple chapters later, it hasn't happened, and God takes Abraham on a walk, and he reiterates the promise.

He says, hey, look up at the skies, and look at the stars, and see if you can count them. You remember that? And the idea is, you can't count that. You ever been out on a dark, starry night where there's just very little other light around you?

It's beautiful, and it's innumerable, and God says, that's what your descendants are going to be like. And Abraham's going, what, no kids. Kind of hard to get that, no kids. Years later, it happens again.

By this time, Abraham has lost faith. There's one story there where he loses faith and gets Hagar pregnant. I'm thinking that, well, maybe I'm supposed to have kids this way, and the idea that you kind of get out of this story is Abraham took things into his own hands, and it didn't go so well for him, okay?

But God comes back and reiterates the promise, and he says, no, it's not going to be through Ishmael. It's going to be through, and check this out, I love this. God appears to him again and says, it's going to be through your son.

You and Sarah are going to have a son. You're going to name him Isaac. There's a lot of places in scripture where God actually does the naming, right? There are some, right? Jesus is going to be named.

John the Baptist was given his name.

There are others.

But here, I mean, how cool would that be, right? That God appears to you and says, you're going to have a son, here's what you're going to name him, and even though by now 25 years have passed from the calling, and no son has shown up other than Ishmael, right?

You're going to have this kid, and it's going to happen, and it does happen. You see it a couple of chapters prior to this one. It happens. Can you imagine what the relationship between Abraham and Isaac must have been like after 25 years of waiting and seeing how this promise is going to play itself out?

But it does. The kid finally comes. You're going to name him Laughter, right? And I can just imagine the closeness between this dad at 100 years old, right, as good as dead, the New Testament says. Sarah is 90, who has a baby at that age, even in that time, right?

And so to get this story, you have to understand how close the relationship is between Abraham and his only son through which the promise is going to come, Isaac. You with me? Imagine this old guy trying to keep up with little Isaac as he grows, and loving him, and going, I can't believe it.

Here it is. He's finally here. All these years of waiting for God's promise, and there it is right in front of me. And I just believe that nearly every day, he just, I mean, there's that boy. There's that walk in promise.

I can't believe God came through like this. Man, we had to wait a long time, didn't we, Sarah? I mean, can you just imagine the conver... And there he is. There's that boy. It must have been unbelievable.

And then this verse, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love. God is leaving absolutely no room for misunderstanding here. Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and you go offer him as a burnt offering in the place that I'm going to show you.

There's three verses here, or three commands in this verse two, take, go, offer. That whole verse is built on those three verbs, and he's supposed to do it. You take him, you go, and you offer him. And I can only imagine what that must have felt like.

And the author wants you to do the same. Enter into this story and imagine the pain, the frustration, the sadness, the confusion, the whatever is going on here that doesn't make sense for Abraham, and you put yourself.

There.

What must that have been like? Verse three, so Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac, and he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.

And on the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. So Abraham was told to do something. This is ultimately, this passage is testing his obedience. Now sometimes there's another way God tests our faith, right?

Hard circumstances come your way, maybe you're in them, right? And the question is, is how do you endure it? How do you interpret it? How do I get through it, right? A lot of this might also be, how are things, I've got big decisions to make in front of me, how are they going to turn out?

What college do I go to? Should I marry this person or not? Am I in the wrong career, right? Why are things going like this in my life? In the test of faith, in those cases, it's not spelled out what to do, it's how do I hang in there when those times are coming?

That's one type of a test of faith. This type is a little bit, by the way, Job's story, if you're familiar with that, was kind of like that. Major things come crashing down in his life and we just kind of sit back and see what.

Happens.

This is different. This story that Abraham is, that we've just read about, is he's specifically given something.

To do, right?

Sometimes it's, okay, I'll try not to do the wrong thing. But in this case, it's, here's what I want you to do. You take him, you offer him as a burnt offering. And the test is going to be, will he really do that?

There's so much in scripture, right, of things that we're supposed to do. And so one of the questions for you to consider with me this morning is, are we doing them? Not just am I hanging in there through the tough times, but are we doing the stuff that's clearly commanded, like take, go, and offer?

Be a tough one to follow through, right? But what are the kinds of things that God asks us to clearly do in our story? Don't be anxious about anything. That's a tough one. We're doing that, right? Let there not be a hint, sexual immorality.

It's a hard one. Maybe I've done this, this, and this, but what about this part right here that God might want to draw your attention to as it pertains to our obedience walk with him? There's lots of things like this in scripture that are super clear that we're called to.

Do, right?

And this is the test of obedience. Verse three says, Abraham rose early in the morning. I bet it was a rough night, don't you? Can you imagine? One of the thoughts I had was, maybe he rose early in the morning because he didn't sleep.

I might as well get this going. I don't know. I'm guessing, but I can only imagine that he didn't go, oh yeah, kill Isaac, no big.

Deal.

Let's just go. Me and God, we're tight. I can handle this. I don't think it was that. I mean, even Jesus, for crying out loud, right? The night before he was crucified is in the garden of Gethsemane pleading, God, if there's any other way.

He intended to obey, but he wrestled. And I just can imagine Abraham wrestled, not just this night, but did you notice the couple verses after? On the third day, he seized the place. He had the next night and the next night as well.

And I just picture him rolling around in whatever they sleep on back in those days on the ground or in a tent going, you've got to be kidding me. This can't possibly be happening.

Is it?

God, did I hear you right?

Yeah.

Your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love. No room for doubt. God made it clear. The question, the test is, is Abraham going to obey? Well, it says on the third day, he lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.

This is the first of some pretty significant third days in the scripture, right? Talk about this maybe a bit more later, but I think it's just not by chance that that's.

Here.

When we come to communion, we're going to see the gospel all over the place in this passage. Verse five, Abraham said to his young man, stay here with the donkey. I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.

And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went, both of them together. Now this is the first time other than here I am that Abraham has spoken in this passage.

Did you notice that?

Right?

So we as readers are going, I can't believe this is going on. How is he going to respond? And we have his first clue. We have the first clue of how Abraham responds to this trial, right? To this test right here.

He says, stay with the donkey, I and the boy will go over there and worship and then what.

Does it say?

Did you notice? And come again to you. What does that imply? Think about it. What is this implying? Abraham has said, we're going to go do this thing and we are going to come back to you. Well, I thought the story was to be that Abraham is going to go and sacrifice Isaac.

This is the first clue that Abraham in his sleepless nights has come to some kind of a resolution, right? If you look into the book of Hebrews where this story is talked about, the author in the book of Hebrews says Abraham reasoned, what?

That Isaac was indeed going to die and that God was going to perform the first resurrection. Can you imagine? That's what he came to in those nights of wrestling on this whole story. He says to his boys, here's the play, or these boys that were with him, not his son, but these others that were with him.

And he goes, we're going to go do the worship thing and we're coming back to you. To me, that communicates that Abraham had every intention, and he did, to go and slay his own son, taking God's word and his command above anything else, obeying, but somehow coming to a place in his thoughts where he believed that God would raise him from the.

Dead.

This has never happened before in scripture, by the way. And this is why Abraham's faith is lifted up as an example, right? As the father of faith, you may have heard him called. But we have an idea here that in the wrestling, this is what he thinks is going to happen.

He has every intention of following through. He believes that if he kills him, he's coming back to life somehow. God is going to do that. That is incredible faith. Verse 7, Isaac said to his father Abraham, my father, and he said, here I am, behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?

And Abraham said, this is kind of neat. God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. And so they went, both of them, together. Once again, you hear Abraham responding right away to a question.

It happened in verse 1. Here again in verse 7, we're going to see that at the end of the passage, Abraham responds right away. And prophesized here, maybe unintentionally, but what he says is exactly what happens.

And it's also what God chooses to do in the future through Christ. God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, is what he said. Now he didn't know that in that moment, but that's exactly how it turned out.

And I think it's amazing that he's got this kind of faith in this story. Our verse 9, when he came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there. He's probably going, where's the offering?

I don't know, it's supposed to be Isaac, but come on. And laid the wood in order and bound his son, laid him on the altar on top of the wood. And then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.

Stop.

All right.

This is all comes down to this, doesn't it? Put yourself there. You picture yourself. And for whatever reason, God comes to you and says, come, offer, right? Go and offer, whatever that thing might be.

And for me, I couldn't help, but okay, so it's my son, right, that I tie up and put on that altar. And I'm believing God and taking him at his word that his command, I got to follow, and I raised the knife.

Could you?

Seriously?

But the reader of this story and the Israelites of old, as they heard it told over and over and it went on into the New Testament, and they read, they just, you can't help, could I do that? Is there a limit to how far my faith goes?

What is it that gets in the way of my going all the way with my relationship with Christ? Abraham is right here. He's got the knife, right? He's ready to slay his own son, butcher him. And I can imagine in those sleepless nights before this happened, Abraham's thinking, how am I going to do that?

I mean, can I do that? Do I have it in me? Is this what obedience means, that I have to go this far? And then, as we've already discussed, he probably reasons, yeah, I'm going to, but I don't, even though he believed Isaac is going to be raised from the dead, I don't imagine he was looking forward to this moment, do you?

To have to slay your own son that you'd waited all these years for? I love this, right after verse 10, right? Then Abraham reached out his hand, took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham.

And he said, here I am. He said, do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know, I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me. I love this, because what I'm getting out of this little part right here, and maybe you are too, we haven't talked about this much yet, but so often, right, when we're going through stuff that either because of circumstances is hard, or because of a very direct thing that God asks us to do, we're trying to be obedient to him, I mean, how many times in your life have you thought, where is God in all of this, right?

When it's not going so well financially, right, when it's not going so well with your career, when it's not going so well with your marriage, or with those kids you're raising, or whatever the issue is that I asked the question earlier, are you okay?

Right, these are the things that make us not so okay when they're not going our way. And how many times have you thought or talked to people who thought, where is God in all.

Of this?

Where is he?

I thought, and then you fill in the blank, I thought that if I just stayed faithful that it would turn out like this, this, and this, right? And the picture that I'm getting from this little story right here is God is just right there, because just at the right instant, right, he intervenes.

He sees everything, right? And so when you're doubting if God really knows what's going on with you, let this story bring some encouragement to you, because just at this moment, right, it says God, this angel from heaven, by the way, most commentators think this is Jesus himself, right, it's a pre, one of those incarnate, pre-incarnate pictures of Christ.

We see this a couple chapters earlier with the Sodom and Gomorrah story and so forth. Probably Jesus himself is going, Abraham, Abraham, right? He knows that it's a split second timing and it is as if heaven's a little nervous, like what if Abraham goes, don't bother me right now, I'm in the middle of something,.

Right?

And he's going to go through with the slaying because he was really sure that it was supposed to happen and he was going to be raised from the dead. And so heaven, like in urgency, is calling out, Abraham, Abraham, doubling up to make sure that he hears that the plans change.

Don't do it, don't do it, Abraham, Abraham, right? But God sees it and at just the right time says what he needs to say to communicate to him to get through a new direction. Sometimes our convictions about something can be so strong that we might miss that God might have a new direction for us, right?

But what I want you to understand and see here is that God is not far. He is right there, right? He knows what he's asking of Abraham and he knows what he's asking of you, doesn't he? He knows and he sees it and he's not far no matter what you think or feel.

And so he says, Abraham, Abraham, and of course Abraham, one of the things we're seeing here is ready and he answers again right away, here I am, it's the third time, verse one. Then Isaac says, hey daddy, and he goes, here I am, and then here I am and there's going to be a point here we're going to make about this in just a second.

Don't lay your hand on the boy. God is watching so closely. He intervenes at just the right time. Are we listening? Are we learning to hear his voice, right? Through scripture, through godly friends that you meet with, through your own time of prayer, are you learning?

Am I learning to hear God's voice in everything? It's verse 13 kind of begins to wrap this story up where we'll stop reading. There's more to it in the chapter, but this says here, and Abraham lifted up his eyes,.

Right?

And he looked and behold, behind him was a ram caught by a thicket by his horns. Yeah, that happens every day, yeah?

Sure.

But I love earlier when God meets with Abraham and with Sarah, right, and says, you're going to have a baby. You know one of the verses is right there? Sarah laughs. You remember this story? And God says, is anything too hard for the Lord?

Isn't that a great verse? What is it that's going on with you that makes you maybe not okay today or the day before or you're concerned about next week? This is one of those verses, those quotable verses that you ought to hang on to.

Is anything too hard for the Lord? Isn't that great? I love that. And so here, Abraham looks up, sees this ram caught in a thicket by his horns, and Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

And so Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide. As it is to this day on the Mount of the Lord, it shall be provided. By the way, this happened on Mount Moriah, and if I got my study correctly, this is where ultimately the temple was going to be built, which means not far from it is where Jesus would be sacrificed.

And again, I think all of this fits because God knows what he's doing. And this is the beauty of scripture, that it's one story spanning thousands of years by lots of different authors, and it all fits together.

Don’t Let Go of God’s Hand

All right, let me just close up with just a couple different lessons that I think in general are worth our consideration this morning. And here's the first one. The first one I'm getting from this idea that it seems in this chapter at least that whenever God speaks, or in the middle of it when Isaac speaks, Abraham answers, here I am.

And you get the sense there's no delay. I got that sense. Did you get that sense when you were reading this? There's no delay. God says, Abraham, he goes, here I am. I'm not so sure it was always that way in his life, and there are stories earlier in Genesis where you could argue that there was some distance between Abraham and God.