02/19/12
The God Who Provides
Last week, we started a series called, Promise. And we’re looking at the lives of Abraham, Jacob and Joseph and we’re seeing how God begins to unveil and carry out his plan to address the mess of sin and brokenness in the world...and how he’s ultimately going to accomplish this through sinful, messy, broken people.
Last week...we talked about God’s promise and his call to Abraham.
Text: Genesis 12:2-3 (provisional; relational)
This week, we’re going to go to the end of Abraham’s life, to what is one of those very difficult narratives in the Bible. For a moment, I want to talk about how we interpret Scripture...
J.R. Tolkien – Lord of the Rings – If you are familiar with the Lord of the Rings (over 150 million copies...3rd best selling novel ever), and you know Tolkien’s story (writing between 1937-1949) you’re tempted to say, ‘There is something deeper happening here.’ Tolkien is trying to interpret or speak into his times. But at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring, Tolkien writes that there is no hidden meaning here, nothing beyond what meets the eye...it’s an adventure. Often times when we approach the Scriptures, it’s easier to force our own modern explanation onto the text than to dig in and see the narrative in the way that it was written.
For centuries, people have read Genesis 22, and asked the question, ‘how could God ask Abraham to sacrifice his son on an altar?’ ‘This is outrageous and horrific.’
The traditional interpretation in the church attempts to skirt the tension by saying...this narrative is historical, but primarily metaphorical in application. The moral of the story is, no matter how outrageous or crazy or stupid the command is...obey God, completely...absolutely.
So, we could determine that the main point is that there will be times when God calls us to great sacrifice (family, resources, reputation...). In those moments when we are faced with the decision... ‘Do I trust God here, or not,’ that our faith is challenged and we become mountain climbers...
There’s some truth to that...we could go all thru Scripture and talk about bold obedience...and before we are finished today, we’ll get around to obedience...
The problem with reading Genesis 22 in a purely horizontal way, saying that it’s primarily about radical, audacious obedience is that this isn’t the main point of the text. (In fact...Abraham has already demonstrated bold obedience. Why would God need to test him one more time, and at the end of his life?)
There is something much deeper going on here...
One of the first rules in interpreting Scripture is that you must dig into the original context and recognize that this was written in a real time, setting, and culture.
If you’re going to understand the biblical text, you have to get into Abraham’s world. You can’t impose our world onto his.
Genesis 22:1-2
When we read this text, we think that God is telling Abraham to murder his son. And of course...if that were true, it would be horrible and appalling.
But if this is what God was asking from him, why doesn’t Abraham just walk into Isaac’s tent and stab him?
No, God calls him to offer Isaac, his firstborn, as an offering. This was not incomprehensible to Abraham in the way that it is to us.
In the ancient cultures, the position of the firstborn was of great significance.
John Levinson, a professor of Jewish Studies at Harvard, wrote a work on the significance of the firstborn in the ancient cultures, specifically within the Hebrew cultures.
Levinson writes that first we must understand that ancient cultures were not individualistic like we are today. We tend to think of individual success and prosperity. Ancient cultures thought of the family’s success and prosperity.
Levinson describes an ancient law known as The Law of Primogeniture. The Law of Primogeniture was universally practiced by ancient cultures. It essentially said that the firstborn received the entire family inheritance. Jarin – he’s getting the family pad...pet...and pension. If a family had a certain amount of land and wealth, and divided it equally among the children, the family would lose its status and place in the community. So, the firstborn received everything, and then became a benefactor for the entire family...this is how the family kept its place in society.
All ancient cultures looked to the firstborn as the ultimate hope of the family. Throughout the Scriptures, God laid a symbolic structure that was built on the firstborn to say something that all ancient cultures can understand. Over and over to the Hebrews, God says... the life of the firstborn is mine. Your firstborn cattle and the first fruits of the harvest...even the life of the firstborn child.
Passover – As God moved through the camp in judgment over the Egyptians for their oppression and hard-heartedness toward God, what was the effect? The firstborn dies. During the Passover, the Jewish firstborn is also forfeited...God says, ‘they’ll die too unless a lamb is slain.
(Exodus 13:14-16 – This becomes a regular practice for the Hebrew people...the setting apart of the firstborn for God. )
Abraham would have understood what all ancient Hebrews knew. That there is a God of justice, and every one of us fails to live according to that law of justice. We all live self-centered lives, which is why our world is the way it is. And there is a debt that every human being owes because of their sin.
In a family oriented, non-individualistic society, the firstborn being forfeited is God’s way of saying that everyone is guilty...everyone has to pay a debt of sin...no one is righteous.
Abraham would have realized that God was calling in his debt...
Genesis 22:3-5
As Abraham gets up early in the morning, loads the firewood on Isaac’s shoulders, and sets out for the mountains of Moriah, what is going through his mind?
Illustration – Consider for a moment what you feel if you’re a parent when you even think that your child or someone that you love deeply might be threatened physically or emotionally. How do you feel? I know what rises up in me when one of my children is wronged...I hurt for them...I hurt with them...I want to protect...
Abraham’s grief and confusion and pain must have been infinitely greater?
How did he make the walk? (Look at Hebrews...)
“It was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing him. Abraham, who had received God’s promises, was ready to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, even though God had told him, ‘Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted.’”
Hebrews 11:17-18
Did you catch that? Abraham was ready to sacrifice Isaac, even though the command of God contradicted the promise of God.
(There is incredible tension in the text...)
How can it be that God issues a command (Abraham...climb and sacrifice Isaac), but He is also a God of promise (I will bless you and through you I will bless the world)? How can a God of holiness who rightly calls in this debt of sin also be a God of grace?
We talked about this last week. You see...if God is not just, if he’s simply gracious, what about evil? But if God is simply just, and not gracious what hope is there for us?
Genesis 22:6-8 (God will provide)
Commentators say that this is the emotional peak of the narrative. In verse six, the text slows down and you have a conversation between Abraham and Isaac (the only time in the narrative that they speak to one another).
They are seen walking together... (Intimate term...father/son). My oldest son is ten...but occasionally, he’ll still grab my hand while we’re out...this is the image...Isaac trusts Abraham.
Isaac says to Abraham, “Father...we have the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”
And what is Abraham’s response? God will provide...
The word, Provide, actually means ‘to see; to see to.’ Abraham is saying, ‘You can’t see how God will provide...I can’t see it either...but God will see to it.’
What drove Abraham up the terrible mountain? Is this Abraham going, ‘I’ve got this...I must do this...I can do this.’
No. Abraham goes up the mountain because he’s convinced that ‘God will do this...God will see to it...He will provide the lamb.’
This is what Abraham is saying to Isaac. “Isaac, I don’t know how God will be both holy and gracious...how God will have the debt of sin paid and still be the God of promise.”
But “God will provide,” not, “I will provide.” “God will do it,” not, “I will do it.”
Tension builds in the narrative...and just as Abraham is ready to lay the deathblow to his son, God speaks... ‘Abraham...Abraham...don’t lay a hand on the boy...”
Abraham doesn’t know it at the time, but God will have to find a way to both pay the price of sin and be the God of promise and grace...not only for his own family...but for the entire world. And this is a theme that will carry throughout the entire narrative...
Hebrews 10 (summarize)
“The old system under the law of Moses was only a shadow, a dim preview of the good things to come, not the good things themselves...For it is not possible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. That is why, when Christ came into the world, he said to God, ‘You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings. But you have given me a body to offer. You were not pleased with burnt offerings or other offerings for sin. Then I said, ‘Look, I have come to do your will, O God – as is written about me in the Scriptures.’ For God’s will was for us to be made holy by the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all time.” (Hebrews 10:1, 4-7, 10)
Do you see what the writer is saying here? He’s looking back at the sacrificial system that we’ll come to shortly in the narrative, and he’s saying that these were merely shadows of good things to come. Echoes of God’s eternal plan...not the plan itself. You see, Abraham’s son, Isaac, could never pay the price for his sin and the family’s sin. The ram in the bushes can’t pay for their sin either. God, through Abraham, is giving us a glimpse of how he’ll fulfill his commitment to personally deal with the world’s sin and rebellion while remaining loving and faithful to his creation...
This narrative in Genesis 22 is really pointing to something else...
Why didn’t Abraham have to bring his hand down on his son?
Why does God intervene? How can he be both a God of justice and command, and of grace and promise?
Centuries later, the Father led his beloved son up onto a mountain. Jesus, the one and only Son was laid on the wood again.
The late author Edmund Clowney wrote this...
“When the ultimate child cried, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ The Father paid the price in his silence.”
Romans 8:32
“Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?” (8:32)
Abraham could not have walked up that mountain if he believed he was only a God of justice, and not a God of grace too. He couldn’t have walked without hope, unless he was convinced that God would provide.
You see...whatever you believe about God will ultimately determine whether or not you’ll trust and love and follow him.
Only in the cross can God be both just and gracious. If you don’t believe in the cross...what Jesus Christ did in the ultimate sacrifice...you won’t see God as he truly is, and you won’t go up the mountains.
Here’s what I mean...
Without the cross, if God asks you to follow him in some deeply personal way...to be radically obedient, you won’t have the confidence to climb the mountain. Instead of trusting that it is His love that sustains you on the climb, you’ll be convinced that it is your ability to climb that earns his love.
Without the cross, you won’t be able to walk through trials without being crushed. Why? Because many of us, when bad things happen in our lives, when difficulty comes, in the back of our mind, we’re concerned that we’ve done something wrong and God is out to get us... It’s only through the cross that we find that Jesus was willingly crushed so that we could be brought into the eternally loving embrace of the Father.
Without the cross, you won’t have the assurance that in Christ your sins can be forgiven past, present and future. Without this assurance and hope, you’ll never draw near to God and taste the freedom of his grace. Rather, you’ll live your life hoping that by your own goodness and holiness, that you might earn a right standing with God.
Only when you see that the Son of God, Jesus Christ, bled and suffered and died for your sin, and then raised from the dead to defeat sin and death can you live with confidence and boldness.
The Gospel is that Jesus had to die (because you and I are so sinful), but Jesus was glad to die (because we are so loved).
1 John 4:9-10
When you come to see the love of God for you through the tragedy and the beauty of the cross...you’ll be able to respond to his voice when he asks you to climb...
This is how you become a person of great faith?
You see...we could close out this day and say... ‘Go out and live a life of radical obedience. Trust God, get up the mountain, go do it...save your marriage...live a life of radical generosity...love your enemies...reconcile your broken relationships...do something great for God.
That’s not how it works...
Romans 12:1
Paul says...first you must see the beauty of what God has already done for you in and through Jesus Christ.
Our lives then become a response His goodness.
Had Abraham been at Calvary when Jesus died, he would have understood his own story in a new light. He would have turned this verse around and seen it in a whole new way.
“Now I know that you love me because you did not withhold your only son, whom you love, from me.”
You’ll never be like Abraham simply by trying unless you see the ultimate offering up for you. You must see the truth of Calvary...and believe in the one to whom Abraham points.
A relationship with Jesus begins with the reality of Christ and the cross moves you and begins to change from the inside...and you wrap your arms around Jesus in faith...
When you’re able to say, ‘now I know.’
Now I know that you are worthy of all that I am...
Because you’ve embraced me as I am...
Therefore I will give you all of me...
(Pray)
