God Will Provide!

Cape Elizabeth Church of the Nazarene

Texts: Genesis 22:1-14; Romans 6:12-23
Date: Sunday, June 30, 2002
Author: Rev. Jeffrey T. Barker

Think of it. . . the entire future of the people of God hung in the balance. God called Abraham out again. And the stakes are higher -- much higher on this second journey. Our text tells us that God tested Abraham telling him "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 that I shall show you" (22:2).

Reading those words sounds the alarms in my head. I want to stop and ask a few questions! "Would God really ask for a human sacrifice? Is that really consistent with the kind of God that we want to confess as God? Is this the same God who would hear the cries of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt?"

Hitting the rewind button I need to review the story to make sure I didn’t miss a crucial element in it -- because, frankly, I can’t comprehend what’s going on!

Remember . . . Abraham’s initial response was to go as God had told him. He packed his bags, loaded his family, and set out on this journey with God. Indeed it was not all roses all the time. For in the journey that unfolded over the next 25 years, Abraham constantly struggled with the promise under which he had been called to live. Soon after he received the promise he allowed his fear and cowardice to overcome his faith and trust in God, and so he gave Sarah away to Pharaoh to save his own skin. And in that failure Abraham unleashed a curse -- not a blessing -- upon others . But God reaffirmed the promise and continued to call Abraham to be faithful.

In other incidents throughout that 25 years, Abraham demonstrated the very human mixture of incredible faith in God and at the same time the tendency to want to have the promise on his own terms with what he could see and control. His journey was a roller coaster of obedience and failure, all held together by God’s faithfulness and commitment to him and his wife and the steady journey toward promise fulfillment. Finally, after that long struggle, the barren Sarah gave birth to the miracle child of promise. Isaac was born. Finally, after all his failed attempts to make the promise work, Abraham had the very real physical proof of the promise that he could hold in his hands solely as a gift from God.

After his difficult journey, and God’s faithfulness in guiding Abraham through it to the point of accepting God’s work in the promise, we would expect Abraham to be able to relax in the fact that he now had the promise. The conclusion of chapter 21 seems to lead us in this direction as the story turns from Abraham’s own struggle to his dealing with surrounding people as he settled in the land that was not yet his but was the land of promise. Abraham’s planting of a tree at Beersheba and naming God El ‘Olam, the everlasting God, indicated his settledness in the land and seemed to bring a closure to Abraham’s journey. Just when old father Abraham is ready to kick his sandals off and relax God intrudes again and calls Abraham to another journey. A journey more threatening and more problematic than his trip from Haran. A journey with the stakes higher -- much higher than ever before!

Chapter 21 ends: "And Abraham resided as an alien many days in the land of the Philistines" (21:34).

Chapter 22 begins: "After these things God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am." He said "Take you son, your only son, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you" (22:2).

Someone help me! What is God doing here? Why would God, after all this time in patiently dealing with Abraham in getting him to accept the promise in the first place, now take it away? After Abraham finally had some peace in the world and had finally settled into life with God’s promise, provided solely by God as a commitment to the future, why would God turn that settled world upside down again? Why does God not just leave Abraham alone?

I have to side with Abraham on this one! If anyone doesn’t need to take a test it’s old father Abraham. Let’s just consider him "grandfathered" in to the club of the absolutely faithful and unswervingly obedient. There’s no doubt that he encroached from time to time onto God’s turf but he never turned back from the journey.

As much as I don’t like it the message is clear: "God tested Abraham." And as much as I’m uncomfortable with the concept, it remains. "God tested Abraham." The word "test" (nisah) simply means to examine, in the sense of proving something to be true or reliable. This same term is used consistently throughout the book of Deuteronomy. The testing of Israel recorded in those pages was to determine if the people of God would trust only the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob or if they would look at the same time to other gods.

The real test here is not whether Abraham had the faith to believe God would spare the child. That was never at issue in the story. The test was whether Abraham could trust God enough to give up the promise and start again from the same place he had started 35 or more years earlier. The test was whether Abraham had really made this journey of faith to a point where he could trust God and not just what he could see and hold in his hands.

And if this is truly a test as the text says, then there is much depending on Abraham. God called him to make this journey, but finally it is he who must make it. God had placed him under promise. Abraham did nothing to get the promise. But he can reject it. There is no sense here that God has compelled Abraham to accept the promise. In fact, the whole story depends on the possibility of Abraham failing and rejecting the promise.

Clearly here, God did not know how Abraham would respond. This portrays a genuine relationship, with Abraham free to accept or reject what God had called him to do and be. This is truly a covenant, a relationship in which God chose Abraham and then called Abraham to choose God.

Yes. Indeed the entire future of the people of God hung in the balance! Would Abraham trust the Giver of the gift more than the security of the gift itself? Would Abraham be willing to exchange the concreteness of the promised son for the trustworthiness of God’s word? Would Abraham in killing the promise child trust God again to bring new life out of barrenness? Indeed the stakes are higher -- much higher than they had ever been before! At stake is whether Abraham believes that God could bring new life out of the dead.

The call to sacrifice the promised child was to see whether Abraham believed that God could make the dead live. Oh, there is no indication in the text that Isaac would have been brought back to life. . . but the reality was that raising Isaac from the dead would probably be more believable than Sarah -- older than ever -- conceiving again!

In our Romans text Paul reminds us that the stakes are high -- higher than they’ve ever been before! Paul writes: "Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life" (6:12-13b). And then building on the idea that sin is being dead, Paul writes "for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." (6:23).

Although it may not be clear, resurrection is central to both the Abraham narrative and Paul’s letter. It is resurrection -- the dead live -- which leads us to the God who surprises us with life. The God of Abraham is the One who brings new life out of barrenness. The God of Abraham is faithful to the promise -- the promise of new life. The promise of being a people -- a holy people of God. The promise of being a blessing. Indeed for Abraham the stakes are high, but the risk is low because God sees what he can not see. That’s really the meaning behind the phrase that Abraham articulates twice (once in response to Isaac’s question about the sacrifice and again in response to seeing the ram caught in the thicket).

Read Genesis 22:3-14

In affirming that "God will provide" Abraham proved to be true and reliable. He came to the point in his life where he realized that his life -- and the life of Isaac -- was better off in the hands of God than his own life was in his own hands. Maybe that’s the point of the test -- to see if we have come to the point in our lives where we trust God more with an unseen future than we trust ourselves with what we can see.

Saying "God will provide" is more than a simple Christian platitude to share with our family and friends during dark and difficult days. For in believing that "God will provide" we find ourselves enveloped in something far grander and more glorious than we could ever imagine. We find ourselves caught up in the Grand Story of God and living as people of the Promise!

I stand before you this day and affirm that there is nothing greater than being part of the Grand Story of God and living as people of the Promise together with you. These have been intensely formative years for me. As we end this chapter together there are no more fitting words of promise than those uttered by old father Abraham. GOD WILL PROVIDE!

When the future is uncertain, rest assured. GOD WILL PROVIDE!

When chaos seems to overwhelm, rest assured. GOD WILL PROVIDE!

When nothing makes sense, rest assured. GOD WILL PROVIDE!

When darkness attempts to diminish all light, rest assured. GOD WILL PROVIDE!

Because as people of the Promise we know that promise fulfillment doesn’t depend on us! As people of the Promise we know that our God -- the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob -- brings new life out of old barren women and, in the person and work of Jesus the Christ, brings new life out of the grave. So, rest assured, whatever you’re going through this day. . . GOD WILL PROVIDE!

Benediction: Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good for doing his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

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