The Lord will Provide

 Read Genesis 22

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

In Genesis 15, Abraham was concerned that his servant would become his heir because Abraham didn’t have any kids and the prospects were not good.

God told him that would not be the case.  In fact, he would have more descendants than there were stars in the sky.

Abraham believed God and God credited Abraham with righteousness because of his belief—his faith.  And Abraham walked in perfect harmony with the Lord, living flawlessly before him. 

That part has to go into the not exactly category.  Abraham was a knucklehead, a screwball, and a bonehead deluxe.  If there ever was a biblical icon that said trust in your own understanding, it had to be Abraham.

But God credited Abraham with righteousness. Was God blind?  Could he not see that Abraham missed the trust in the Lord mark again and again?

What gives?

The faith with which God credited Abraham in chapter 15 is the faith that we finally come to see in chapter 22, and it is some big faith.  It is faith that most, I would venture to say all fathers find beyond comprehension.

Abraham.

Yes, Lord.

Take your son, your only son, the son that you love, and sacrifice him to me.

Who among us would just say, “Okay.  Let’s make a day of it.  Should be fun.”

Of all the occasions where Abraham might have wanted to offer up one of his screwball approaches, this would seem like the perfect opportunity.  I think I know the thinking of most fathers.

You want me to die for my son.  Done deal.

You want my wealth in exchange for my son.  I won’t even negotiate.  It’s all yours.

You want me to send my son into combat with a chance that he might die, ok, I can handle that. He’s a good kid and has some fight in him.  I can live with that.

You want me to take the life of my own son as a sacrifice to you.  God, this is not the time for joking around!!!

Abraham was a knucklehead.  He was a bonehead.  He was a screwball.

Abraham was obedient. 

For all the cockamamie plans and stupid decisions that Abraham and his wife concocted, he had always been obedient.  When God told him to do something, he did it.

This was no exception. Abraham grabbed his son, a couple of servants, prepped some wood, and conscripted some animals for a short trip to the area of Moriah.  They were off to make the sacrifice that God required.

This was about a 3-day trip.  There had to be plenty of time to think this over.  Abraham had negotiated for the lives in wicked Sodom, surely, he could come up with a good counteroffer that would satisfy God and didn’t involve his son’s life.

But there was no counter.  When the mountain was in sight, Abraham loaded the wood on the back of his son. 

Yes, there is foreshadowing here.  The wood on the back of Abraham’s one and only son surely looked forward to a trip to Golgotha with the cross carried by Jesus—God’s one and only Son.  There’s a line or two of discussion there for another time.

Now, let’s look at Abraham being obedient to God.  Abraham carried the fire and Isaac carried the wood.  Isaac must have been wondering if dad was getting forgetful in his old age.

What about the lamb?

Isaac surely wouldn’t want to have to hike uphill and then back down again when dad remembered he forgot the sacrifice.

But dad had not forgotten the sacrifice. Abraham said that God himself would provide the sacrifice.

Was this so Isaac wouldn’t beat feet to Egypt to escape his old and crazy dad?

Was this because Abraham had read ahead in the story and knew what happened?

Is this because God had indeed provided the sacrifice and his name was Isaac?

Again, food for thought at another time. We can speculate and postulate on the reasons and motivations, but the bottom line is that Abraham was obedient.

What transpired was that father and son walked up the hill.  Abraham bound his son on his altar and was fully prepared to offer him as a sacrifice.  He would kill him and present him as a burnt offering.

It was at this point that Isaac was surely thinking that it would be nice if  Ishmael had been around for this part.  Actually, we don’t see any resistance or reluctance or action of any sort that belied the will of God.

Isaac obeyed his father.

Both father and son would do as God required.  Both were obedient, even unto death.  As I father, I cannot comprehend this level of obedience, but Abraham raised the knife to kill his son.

But the angel of the Lord cried out:  Abraham, Abraham! The angel wanted to make sure that he had Abraham’s attention. Hear the message for Abraham.

“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “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.”

Abraham surely breathed a sigh of relief.  He surely had been expecting the worst moment of his life.  Instead, he saw a ram caught in a thicket.  God had provided the sacrifice, and as we know centuries later God once again provided the sacrifice.

What have we witnessed in this account?  Was it faith?  Was it obedience?

Was it obedience manifest in faith?

Was it faith manifest in obedience?

God had promised Abraham that he would be the Father of Many Nations; yet the son through whom this promise would come was a second away from being killed by his own father.

Did Abraham believe that God would bring Isaac back from the dead?  Did he think that somehow God would not let Isaac die?  What did he think?

Whatever he was thinking did not stand in the way of being obedient to what God had required.

So was it the fear of the Lord that caused Abraham to come a moment away from sacrificing his own son?

Was it trust in the Lord that moved him forward in this sacrifice?

Was it obedience, faith, fear of the Lord, or trust in the Lord?  The answer is yes.  YES!

We are a people who like to analyze and sometimes to do that we like to divide.  Was it obedience?  Was it faith?  Was it fear?  Was it trust?

We see all of these things in play in this chapter.  God knew that Abraham would be obedient and faithful.  He saw the trust and fear of the Lord in him long before the trip up the mountain.

All the way back to God crediting Abraham with righteousness because he believed, God knew how great Abraham’s faith would be.  God saw the fear of the Lord in Abraham. 

God knew that this was a man who would trust him and believe him and do the impossible for God.  What man could sacrifice their own son?

Yes, sometime later, we see human sacrifices among the pagans.  Those sacrifices included children, but these were the sacrifices of godless men. These were pagans and their paradigm was that children were commodities to be leveraged with their homemade gods.

We believe that God did this for us—he sacrificed his own son for us, but he is God.  We are human, flawed, and frail.  What Abraham did was on the verge of doing was not possible for us; yet he was ready to do the impossible out of obedience, out of faith, and out of trust, and even out of fear of the Lord.

We are a work in progress but God already sees the finished product.  He who began a good work in you will finish that work. He will bring it to completion.

God sees the completion of that work now just as he saw Abraham’s faith long before the story revealed it to us.

Abraham could have been dubbed the father on all knuckleheads based on what we have studied, but God already knew the person that he made Abraham to be.

He was a man whose faith was manifest in obedience and his obedience in his faith.

He was a man who feared the Lord; yet trusted him fully.

He is the Father of Many Nations.  He should be an inspiration to us that God sees exactly what he made us to be.  God sees the finished work and it is incredible.

Let’s obey more, trust more, believe more, and yes, even fear the Lord more for he has an incredible destination for us as his child.

Let’s be the person that God has already made us to be.

Let us consider 2 words from this fantastic account:  Yahweh Yireh.

The Lord will provide.  This discipleship thing is not so insurmountable a task as we might think.  The Lord provides what we need.

Let’s obey more, trust more, believe more, and yes, even fear the Lord more for he has an incredible destination for us as his child.

Let’s be the person that God has already made us to be.

The Lord will provide.

Let’s be the person that God has already made us to be.

Amen.