The Lord will provide

*So today I’m going to explain to you the Sacrifice of Isaac.  If you have ever waited a long long time for God to answer your prayer – as Abraham had – he’d waited a long time for Isaac to be born – and then you really genuinely felt that God was saying “I want you to tear up that gift, that promise, that answered prayer and throw it away”. Then you will be able to relate just a little to the pain and weirdness that this story is about.

Over this year we are going to have a closer look at about 25 Bible stories from the Old Testament. I’ve chosen this big range of stories because it’s been a long time since we had a good look at the OT and because I realised that I’ve never preached on these Passages before and because a lot of them appear in Children’s First Bibles.

On the one hand this particular story does not appear in my favourite Children’s bible story – the Story Teller Bible – my 2^nd fav children’s bible is The Jesus Storybook Bible – brilliant. Would you believe that it is the First story told in the very first bible story book I was given –Favourite Bible Stories – given to me by my Godfather 1969 at my baptism. That instantly tells you how old I am!

So as we look at these OT stories – I wonder if we might ask ourselves Why do we tell our children these stories? And Now that we’re a little older what do they tell us?

The NIV calls it a Test. Even my jewish translation – the Schoken Bible calls it the Great Test. So the default way of looking at this is that it is a test of faith.

In which case straightaway we should be asking “Why is it called The Sacrifice of Isaac” – when, spoiler alert – he isn’t sacrificed – We should call it the “Test of Abraham’s faith”.

And the question you want to be asking is What does this story tell me about the God I worship? And What does God want of me?

So if we understand this story as a Test then it tells me that God sits quite lightly to life and death. God goes to Abraham and says “I want you take your only son, whom you love – Isaac – and sacrifice him as a burnt offering”.

The story is told in an extraordinary matter of fact sort of way – Abraham saddles donkeys, gets two servants to come with them most of the way, gets some wood. Abraham busies himself.

And maybe there’s something about Busying ourselves as a way of avoiding talking about painful things.

And then you get that moment – we picture the knife held high – and an Angel interrupts the moment and all is well. You have passed the test.

The Result of this passing of the test is a promise that God has already made but here he lays it on good and clear – and the promise is of Family, of Land and Blessing.

God promises to Abraham throughout Genesis, and again to Isaac, and the promise continues through Jacob – I will make you as numerous as the stars – I will give you a family – and we don’t really see that in the first or second generation – that promise is fulfilled with the 3^rd generation with Jacob and his 12 sons.

God promises Family, and He promises Land and that promise isn’t fulfilled until the Hebrews have been in Egypt for 400 years and come back wandering through the desert for 40 years and finally the Most Boring Chapters of the bible Joshua 14-22 that lists the land allocation. That’s the fulfilment of the 2^nd promise.

We have family, we have land, and now the calling is that we are to be a blessing to all nations.

And that’s where you and I come in. We receive the blessing of Abraham by being grafted into the promises of God in Jesus, and we are called to fulfil the promise of God to Abraham, we are to be a blessing to All People.

So the straightforward reading – that this is God Testing Abraham’s faith – this results in this enormous blessing of a family, of land, and the promise that through Abraham God would bless all nations.

BUT God said Come and kill your son! And the writer of Genesis adds tiny details that ratchet up the tension here – Isaac calls Abram – Abba, Father, Daddy – simply ‘heart melting’ dialogue – says the 17C commentary Matthew Henry – and God says ‘Take your son, your only son, whom you love’. Love. This is the first time the word Love is used in the bible.

This here is the first time that God acknowledges that Abraham really loves his son.

But there’s no come back, there’s no argument – back in Genesis 18 – God tells Abraham that he’s going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah and we have this amazing Haggling prayer in which Abram says Look what if you find 50 righteous people – surely God wont destroy good people along with the bad. And God says Okay if I find 50 people, I will leave the whole town alone. Ok says Abram, what about if its just 45 good people, or 30, or 20 or 10? And God says Okay okay! For the sake of 10 I will not destroy it.

So my point is that Abraham clearly doesn’t have a problem with having a go at God and praying hard to change God’s mind –“Don’t do this!”

But God says Come and sacrifice Isaac – and Abraham says Nothing. Why? It makes me wonder if God was disappointed in Abraham’s acquiescence  – I mean come one we usually haggle and talk about these things but you’re just going with it!

In the Qur’an – surah 37 from verse 100 – we have this story – here we find Ibrahim has had a dream – he’s not sure if this is from Allah, so he talks it over with his first born son, Ishmael, and together they decide to go through with it.

I like this idea that Abraham’s son is involved in the whole thing – it makes it more of a willing sacrifice.

But I note that Jews call this story The Binding of Isaac – Aqedah – and here’s where they understand this story better than we Christians have. God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Abraham doesn’t argue back – because – because in the context of these ancient days it was quite common for Canaanite deities and all sorts of ancient gods to want human sacrifice as part of their worship. It’s a sort of “I’ve given you this son, if you want to be fruitful you need to give him back” and Abraham, I suspect, sighs a heavy sigh, a disappointed sigh, Oh so you’re no different to the other gods. I had hoped you might be a different sort of god.

And now we get to the sacrifice moment and it is stopped and this is God’s way of saying No. I’m not that sort of a god, I don’t need sacrifice, especially not human. We don’t do that. And so one of the things that makes the ancient Hebrews stand out from the other religions is that they did not do human sacrifice.

So the moral of this story is- Safeguarding – we value our people, especially our children, we do not harm them, this is then laid down in Leviticus and Deuteronomy as reminders – which suggests that the practice of child sacrifice was common and continued for some time – but we, Jews, do not do that.

If the traditional Christian understanding of this is that it’s a Test. Then the Jewish understanding is that this is about valuing people, safeguarding our children.

 The first has quite a stern and scary view of God, the second shows that God is loving, is trying to break the mould of our presumptions and practices and change the way we think and act towards our children.

Its legitimate to say “Why didn’t God just say so. Why all these theatrics?” I don’t know, but I guess if as you came into Church today I gave you each a live chicken and explained how you are each to kill your chicken and then at some point later in the service say Actually no, don’t do that, it will make a huge amount of mess. Whatever your views on chickens, you would certainly remember that sermon!

I rather like the way that Islam puts it into a Dream – Abraham dreams that God asks him to sacrifice his son. Because what this story really challenges us on is our view of God.

Is our view of God so scary that He would demand of us to kill the very thing we love?

We don’t need this story to get to that point – we see Joseph waking up one morning and say Darling Mary, I’ve had a dream and I think we should take the Baby Jesus for a lengthy holiday to Egypt and we should leave today! That’s a sacrifice. But that one shows the love of God.

Islam putting it into a Dream from the beginning, keeps God’s purity clean, God would surely not even contemplate child sacrifice.

And the Jewish attitude brings that out well, at the conclusion of the story, God is telling us not to sacrifice our children but to care for them.

But I note there’s two perhaps three key signs that shows the remarkable relaxed sort of faith that Abraham has.

Do you trust God? When Abraham comes to haggle with God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, he says “Surely the God the judge of all the earth will do what is just and right”. Abraham trusts God completely.

So a few chapters later, Abraham explains to his servants – you stay here with the donkey while – At the end of my curacy, just as I was leaving Mildenhall in Suffolk, my Team Rector was also leaving – and he made the very old joke in his leaving sermon – ‘You stay here with the Ass while I and the boy go yonder’!!

Abraham explains “We will worship and then we will come back to you”. Its clear that Abraham thinks he’s about to do something good, not something ghastly. And he is confident that both father and son will return.

And the key verse 8 “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering” – and Abraham says “God will provide the lamb”.

Now either Abraham is lying both times, to his servants, to his son, and to himself. OR actually Abraham does have faith, that this God is different. That’s why the story ends with Abraham calling the place “The Lord will Provide”.

At the beginning of this sermon I said look out for what this story is telling us about God and for what it asks of us.

You might have started with the understanding that God is just darn scary and demands from us perhaps even human sacrifice!

But I hope you’ve come to a different place where we understand God to be the God who says No to human sacrifice, we value and care for our children.

And this is the God who provides. This is a Giving God not a Taking God. This is a God who blesses us.

What’s the catch? What are we supposed to give, to sacrifice? We are called to be part of that original ancient promise to be a blessing to all nations.

We worship a God who provides, who gives, who loves, who protects. And who calls us to be a blessing to our families our friends, a blessing to all nations. Amen.