Father, I thank you for Jesus.
I thank you that he loves us.
Thank you that he loved us enough to die on the cross for us.
Thank you, Father, that your son Jesus,
by his death upon the cross and his mighty resurrection,
that he has dealt with our gravest and deepest need.
We thank you, Father, that his death upon the cross
is a power for salvation that comes from you
that we can receive by faith.
Father, we ask that your Holy Spirit would fall upon us this morning,
fall upon us with gentle but deep power,
and draw us to Jesus.
Father, you know the deep fears that we have about you.
And so, Father, we ask that your Holy Spirit would fall upon us,
that your Holy Spirit would quieten our hearts,
that we might know that you are exalted and that you are good.
And this we ask in the name of Jesus, your son and our savior.
Amen.
Please be seated.
Amen.
So, did you know that in the city of Ottawa,
there are more people in the city of Ottawa in the 2011 census
that identify themselves as having no religion
than those who self-identify themselves as Protestants?
That's true.
In fact, more than one in five people in the city of Ottawa in 2011,
in the census, identified themselves as being no religion.
Doesn't mean they're bad people,
doesn't mean that religious people are good people.
I'm not talking about anything like that.
No value statements being made whatsoever.
That's just what the census tells us about the city.
That, in fact, today, if you leave your friends and go and talk to people,
you're more likely to meet somebody who would identify themselves as no religion
than you are to meet somebody who would identify themselves as a Protestant.
And the text that we're going to look at in a couple of minutes,
we're going to look at right now, Genesis 22.
If you have Bibles, you might want to sort of get them
and open it up to Genesis 22.
In some ways, this is a classic horror text for many, many people in our culture.
Many people who identify themselves as Protestants or Catholics, in fact,
find this a profoundly difficult text.
And for many people who identify themselves as no religion,
some of whom I suppose are atheists or agnostics,
and many of whom, probably the majority,
would call themselves spiritual but not religious,
the text that we're about to read would be, in a sense,
everything that terrifies them about God
and terrifies them about religion
and terrifies them about religious people.
It is a story where God tells Abraham to take his son,
his only son, the son he loves,
and embark on a journey, and the end of the journey,
he is to sacrifice his son.
Andrew, if you could put up the first piece of art.
And for this first part of the sermon,
while we look at this text and think about it,
this is a famous painting by Rembrandt
to capture a key moment in this story.
Later on, we'll have a different piece of art
that will come up by a contemporary Jewish painter,
well, contemporary in terms of 20th century,
one of the greatest painters of the 20th century,
who also reflects upon this.
But right now, you can sort of, as we're looking at the text,
if you want to lift your eyes for a second,
and this work of art helps you to enter into the story.
But for many people in our culture,
this idea that God would command murder,
it brings up images of ISIS.
It brings up this image that God is an amoral God at best,
and maybe even an evil being,
that he's willful,
that he just goes ahead and makes whatever command
pops into his head,
that he does things to hurt people,
that he can't really be trusted,
and that only nutcases, to be honest,
would be attracted to such an unpredictable,
violent, irrational, and willful being.
And, you know, a lot of people
just aren't interested in religion,
but if you press the case,
if you press the Christian case,
and especially if they were to hear a story like this,
all of their deeper thoughts,
all of maybe many of our deeper thoughts
of worry about what it's like to get close to God
come to the fore.
So we're going to read this text.
In the Jewish faith,
Genesis 22 is a profoundly important text of Scripture
in terms of understanding Abraham,
and it's a profoundly important text
in the New Testament as well.
So Genesis 22,
this very first book in the Bible,
and what we're going to do is
I'm going to sort of read through the text with you,
making a few comments and observations,
because I don't expect many of you,
all of you,
to necessarily just have the story
at the tip of your mind, so to speak.
And then after we've sort of read the text slowly,
drawing attention to different things,
I'll make a couple of points and observations
about the text.
So Genesis 22,
and it begins like this.
After these things,
God tested Abraham and said to him,
Abraham.
And Abraham said,
here am I.
And just sort of pause here for a second.
One of the things that you're going to notice
about this text is that
Abraham says a couple of things in the story,
but he only speaks to God twice,
here in verse 1 and later on in the story.
And in both cases,
the only thing he says to God is,
here am I.
That's all he says.
It's something for us to puzzle over.
Eventually,
as we get through the whole story,
we'll maybe get a bit of a sense
why for Jewish people,
and especially for Christians as well,
this story ends up being a story about faith
and about a particular posture for God.
But at the very, very first verse,
which sort of sets the stage for the entire story,
that God's going to be testing Abraham,
and he speaks to Abraham directly,
and Abraham's response is,
here am I.
Here am I.
In a sense,
if you go back and read the beginning of Genesis,
because remember,
Genesis is a book, right?
It's a book.
It develops themes.
And after the fall of the human race,
human beings were created good.
They decide to be gods themselves,
and so they break off their relationship with God.
And the first thing that happens to them
is that they realize that they're naked.
They're ashamed of their nakedness.
And when God comes and calls for them,
they hide.
And here we have Abraham,
who's been now in the book of Genesis for 12 chapters,
and his response when God calls him is,
here am I.
So sort of,
it's an interesting sort of counterpoint
to God testing him,
is Abraham's just saying,
here am I.
Verse 2.
We're not going to go that slow all the way through.
Actually,
I'm going to say one more thing about this text,
just before we get going,
is that if you read the book of Genesis from the beginning,
and it's in chapter 11 that Abraham is introduced,
and there's a bit of cultural background
that's not automatically in the text,
but Abraham was a pagan
who worshipped the moon god.
That's who Abraham is.
He was from Ur of Chaldea,
what was later on known as Babylon,
and what would now be known as Iran.
And he was there with his family,
and he was a worshipper of the moon god.
So he would have believed that there were many, many gods,
and out of the many, many gods that exist,
he was a devotee to the moon god.
And so part of the story of Abraham
is the fact that God chooses,
I mean, in a sense,
if God can call and choose a pagan who worships the moon,
he can call anybody.
He can call you, he can call me.
That in the story of Genesis,
it's not all about God looking for people
who have their lives completely and utterly together,
who know the Westminster Confession
or the Catholic Catechism off by heart,
that can read the,
have know the Calvin's Institutes
or Aquinas' Summa Theologica off by heart,
and have their lives completely and utterly together.
And when we've accomplished these things,
God looks down and says,
oh, there's the person I sort of have my eye on.
No, no, no, no.
This first person that God calls to himself
worships the moon
in the context of worshiping many gods,
and that's who God chooses and calls to himself.
Verse two,
God says to Abraham,
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.
And we'll pause.
We'll do more pauses at the beginning of the story
to give it a bit of a context for you.
For a lot of Jewish people,
this is a very stark text,
and it would be stark for us
if we realized that burnt offering is Holocaust.
Holocaust.
It's a sacrifice that is offered to God
where the animal is killed,
and then there's absolutely no benefit to the worshippers
because after the animal is killed as a sacrifice,
it's burnt until there's nothing left.
So a great part of human sacrifice
and a great part of human religion
is doing something,
an act of sacrifice,
or a liturgical act
or a religious act
or a spiritual act
in the hope
that we can buy off God,
we can appease him,
or we can get him on our side.
And at the same time
that the sacrifice is done,
hoping to get some type of goodies from God
in terms of his relationship to him,
at the same time,
we want to have some goodies right now.
And in some ways,
then many sacrifices
are both this combination
of trying to manipulate God
and at the same time
get some goodies for ourselves.
But a burnt sacrifice,
there's no goodies that come to us at all.
It's a holocaust.
It's a complete and utter death
and then destruction.
And that's what God calls Abraham to do.
And from the rest of the Old Testament,
Moriah is where Jerusalem now is.
And there's obvious parallels
between where the temple is to go
and where Jesus is to eventually be crucified.
But this is what God calls Abraham to do.
Now, one of the things
that we also have to understand about this,
which is a bit puzzling for us,
is remember I said to you
that Abraham was a pagan
who worshipped the moon god.
The moon god didn't practice human sacrifice.
But archaeologists tell us
that human sacrifice is 5,000 years old.
And I'm not going to get into a discussion
or debate about when Genesis was written
or anything like that.
The traditional understanding
is that Moses was the primary author of the book
and that Moses either lived in the 1200s BC
or the 1400s BC,
depending on how it fits with archaeological evidence.
But this story purports to be told
around the year 2000 BC,
which means that human sacrifice
is already 1,000 years old
in that part of the world.
Not all gods demanded that a human being be killed
to appease him or her,
but many did.
And Abraham would be familiar with this.
And so I guess the question for Abraham
and the question for God is,
how is God revealing himself to Abraham
and who ultimately does Abraham think that God is?
In fact, in the pagan world,
it was only with Socrates
approximately 400 years before the birth of Jesus
that he articulated a question
that we now take for granted.
But for other than the Jewish scriptures,
which predate this notion,
but in the pagan world,
Socrates asked the question,
is God good because he wills it?
You know, is goodness in a sense over God
or does God just declare goodness?
Because the pagans didn't understand
that goodness was at all
necessarily connected to God.
The gods did all sorts of willful,
horrible things.
And their understandings of good and evil
would be separate
from their understandings of God.
And so for the question for Abraham,
on one hand,
this is going to be obviously a huge blow.
Isaac is his only son.
Abraham's over 100 years old.
God has promised Isaac, Abraham,
that he was going to have descendants.
And God has promised Abraham
that Abraham would have many descendants
and that the whole world would be blessed
and that his descendants in particular
were called to be a blessing to the world.
And Abraham had tried to sort of deal with things
in his own power by having,
through a slave woman,
the birth of Ishmael.
And in chapter 21,
chapter 21 of Genesis,
is all about Ishmael leaving.
And so now Isaac,
who's over 100 years,
Abraham was over 100 years old.
His only son is Isaac.
And in fact, in the story,
I'm not going to bring it out every time.
I believe that just about every verse
or every second verse in the story,
it mentions son to drive this home.
And for Christians,
this idea of your only son,
the beloved son,
when the Greek version of the Old Testament
was published,
it's the same language
which is used of Jesus
in the Gospels
when he's baptized
and the transfiguration.
It's the exact same term
which is used of Jesus.
So Abraham gets this command from God.
There are many gods in the ancient world
who would command
the sacrifice of innocent human life.
And Abraham has these promises of God.
He's been called by God.
And he's trying to figure out
or is he trying to figure out
or is the reader trying to figure out
is God a bloodthirsty God
like many of the gods
that have existed for 1,000 years
prior to Abraham
or is this God different?
One of the things about this story
is that we don't learn anything at all
about Abraham's inner life.
Abraham,
we get a few statements
but it's all in this context
of a very, very horrific command from God.
Read verse 2 again.
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.
Verse 3.
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.
Now just sort of pause here
for a second.
Moriah is 45 miles away
from where Abraham is.
That's about 72 kilometers,
give or take.
And that's going to be a long walk.
In fact,
it's going to take
two and a half days
for Abraham to walk there
with Isaac
and the two servants
and the donkey.
And so this actually
is one of the interesting things
about the story.
It shows two aspects
about Abraham's response to God.
On one hand,
his faith in God
leads him to act promptly.
And secondly,
it leads him to act
with persistence.
One of the things
that we're going to see
in this story
is because at the end
of the story,
it's going to be understood
that Abraham was a man
of profound faith
in who God is.
And Abraham's faith in God
is going to require
a time of profound loneliness.
Two and a half days
walking with his son,
his only son,
to the place
where he is to kill
his only son.
Two and a half days
to think about this.
One of the things
we have to always remember
that these books are books.
They have literary features.
And one of the literary features
of the book of Genesis
is that the stories
usually contain blanks.
And by that,
I mean,
it's just the way
the book of Genesis
is often written.
It doesn't do anything
to try to describe
what's going through Isaac's mind.
It doesn't answer
the question about Sarah
and what she thinks.
It doesn't say anything at all
about what Abraham
might have said to Sarah.
that in the book of Genesis,
the way that the writer
writes the book
is he blanks out
certain types of things
that we're interested in
to focus on the one character
that the story is about.
And this story
is about Abraham.
And so all the other
types of questions
that we might have
and speculation
that we might have
are blanked out
as it just focuses
on Abraham's
lonely walk of faith.
Those of us
who are followers of Jesus,
this is a profound reminder to us
that there are some times
in our walk with Jesus
when we are called
to a lonely walk
of faith with Jesus.
Where it seems
as if the way is dark
and we have no external support,
maybe no support
from our culture,
no support from our church,
no support from our family,
no support from our friends,
and we are called
to a lonely walk of faith.
And that's what we see here
in Abraham.
Verse 4.
And by the way,
just with verse 3,
you see, that's why,
as we'll see in a moment,
the only reason
that the two servants
are there apart
from the fact
that they probably
were with him
is that the servants
serve as a way
for us to understand
something about
the inner life of Abraham,
which we'll see
in a couple of verses.
Verse 4.
So, okay,
we have this story now.
God has said to Abraham,
take your son,
your only son,
whom you love, Isaac,
take him to Mount Moriah,
a mountain near Moriah,
where you're going
to kill him.
Abraham wakes up
the next morning
and immediately
starts to do it.
He takes two servants
and a donkey
and his son Isaac,
and they begin
this two-and-a-half-day
journey to Moriah.
Verse 4.
On the third day,
Abraham lifted up his eyes
and saw the place
from afar.
Then Abraham said
to his young men,
the young servants,
stay here with the donkey.
I and the boy
will go over there
and worship
and come again to you.
That's a real puzzling riddle
in the text.
What does Abraham think?
The book of Hebrews comments
as a sort of a Christian reflection
on this wonders,
in fact,
says that Abraham
actually believed
that God was going
to be able to resurrect Isaac.
That on one hand,
that Abraham was going
to go through
with the slaughtering
because he had no idea
at this point in time
that he wasn't called
to do it,
but that he had this belief
that since there was
no other offspring
and since he was
over a hundred years old
and that Isaac
was his only offspring
and God had promised
to him
that he would have
many offspring
and give birth
to many, many people
that would be a blessing
to the whole world
and that would bless
the whole world.
And so Abraham
has this amazing statement.
He doesn't tell the young man
I'm going up the mountain
to kill my son.
He says,
he knows that that's
what he's called to do,
but he knows
what God has promised
and he says to the young men,
Isaac and I will return.
You wait here.
Verse six,
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 in the original language
it's a knife,
it's a butcher's knife,
a knife for killing.
So they went,
both of them together.
Abraham,
after two and a half days
of walking,
now walks up the hill
having put the wood
that will burn his son
upon his son's back
and he carries in his hands
the knife and the fire,
the knife to kill
and the fire to burn.
The lonely walk of faith.
Verse seven,
and Isaac,
as he's going up the hill,
says to his father Abraham,
my father.
Can you just imagine
how that would break
a father's heart?
My father.
And Abraham said,
here am I, my son.
And Isaac says,
behold the fire and the wood,
but where is the lamb
for a burnt offering?
We'll return to this
in a few minutes
after we finish the story.
This is a poignant question
and one that Christians
and others have reflected upon
for millennia.
In verse eight,
Abraham said,
God will provide for himself
the lamb for a burnt offering,
my son.
So they both went on their way.
They went,
both of them together.
When they came to the place
of which God had told him,
Abraham built the altar there
and then he laid the wood
in order
and then he bound Isaac,
his son,
and then he laid his son
upon the wood
and the altar
on top of the wood.
Verse 10,
then Abraham reached out his hand
and took the knife
to slaughter his son.
Now we have that
in the picture here,
which is happening
in verse 10 and 11.
But the angel of the Lord
called to Abraham from heaven
and said,
Abraham, Abraham.
And here's the second time
that God speaks to Abraham
and the second time
that Abraham responds.
The angel of the Lord
in the book of Genesis
is a bit of a mysterious creature,
but basically in the ancient world
to have the messenger
of the emperor,
the messenger of the king
was as if you had
the king himself present.
And there's been Christians
who have speculated
that this is the pre-incarnate Jesus
who is speaking.
The New Testament
doesn't speak anything of that.
It's pious imagination,
but it's very, very clear
that this is a messenger
who speaks,
and when he speaks
because he's come from God,
to hear him speak
is to hear God speak.
And so God calls
and Abraham again says,
here am I.
And the angel of the Lord,
God says,
do not lay your hand on the boy
or do anything to him.
For now I know
that you fear God,
seeing that you have not
withheld your son,
your only son from me.
And pause here.
As many of you
have heard me talk about before,
the fear of God here
doesn't mean that
we're terrified about God,
but that we have
a profound sense
that God is God
and that I am not.
We have a growing sense
of the difference
between God and us,
that we don't confuse
my will,
my success,
my happiness,
my emotions with God,
that there's a clear sense
of me is me
and God is God,
that this is a good thing,
but it's also,
in a sense,
a profoundly unsettling thing
to actually know
that we are so completely
and utterly distinct
from God
and God is distinctly himself.
And on one hand,
it's in the Psalms,
talk about how
as we experience
the fear of God,
on one hand,
we long for him,
but on the other hand,
we also have a sense
of reverence for him
and in a sense
of something
almost like fear
to understand
how profoundly different
God is
and to start to have
this sense
of complete and utter
stripping of our consciousness
and our emotions
of any sense
that I am God.
And that's the word
which is used here.
Abraham has had
stripped from him
any sense
that he is God
and has this sense
of God is different
and that that is good.
And that Abraham
has trusted
who God is
and his promises.
Verse 13,
And Abraham lifted up
his eyes
and looked and behold
and behind him
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.
And in the Hebrew,
the language
for caught in a thicket,
it's actually
the same word.
You know that gospel text
that we just read
a few minutes ago
and we all struggled over?
Eli, Eli,
lama sabachthani?
My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me?
I have the King James Version
stuck in my head.
And that word,
sabachthani,
is translating,
it's from Psalm 22
and it's translating
the word forsaken
and that's the exact same word
which is here.
There is a ram
forsaken in the thicket.
And Abraham took up,
verse 13 and a half again,
and Abraham went
and took up the ram,
the forsaken 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 said on this day,
on the mount of the Lord
it shall be provided.
And as we'll see later on
when we're going to comment
more about the verse,
in modern,
the last hundred years or now,
we now,
when we refer to
one of the Hebrew words
for God,
the Jewish people,
because they thought
the name of God
was so holy,
they stopped pronouncing it.
And so now,
there's only four consonants
and we don't actually know
what the vowels are.
It literally,
the vowels literally
got forgotten.
And for many years,
people translating
these four words
used the word Jehovah
now that the normal word
is Yahweh.
But it's become
an important sort of idea
in Christian spirituality
and even Jewish spirituality
to refer to Jehovah Jireh.
And that's what's here.
That's what is here.
God called the name
of that place Jehovah Jireh.
As it is said,
on the mount of the Lord
it shall be provided.
Jehovah Jireh.
Very important idea
to George Mueller,
to Hudson Taylor,
to many, many Christian mystics
and workers
and ordinary Christians
throughout the centuries
and the decades.
Jehovah Jireh,
my provider.
Verse 15,
And the angel of the Lord
called Abraham
a second time from heaven
and said,
By myself I have sworn,
declares the Lord,
because you have done this
and have not withheld your son,
your only son,
I will surely bless you
and I will surely multiply
your offspring
as the stars of heaven
and as the sand
that is on the seashore.
And your offspring
shall possess the gate
of his enemies
and in your offspring
shall all the nations
of the earth be blessed
because you have obeyed my voice.
So Abraham returned
to his young men
and they arose
and went together
to Beersheba
and Abraham lived
at Beersheba.
It's a very,
very powerful story.
You know,
I'm not going to say
their names.
This congregation
has a lot of,
you know,
we live in a very transient
part of the city
and so there's a lot
of transients
but about eight,
seven,
eight years ago
there was a very,
very keen couple
who were part
of the congregation,
very,
very active,
real leaders.
They were a young couple.
They came here,
they were sort of in love
and then they got engaged
and they got married.
I performed their marriage
and about three months
after I performed the marriage
I got an anguish call
from the bride.
because the man in prayer
had come to the conclusion
that God had called them
to be divorced.
God had called them
to be divorced
and she called me up
and asked me to speak with them.
And this began
a year,
two year
back and forward thing
that involved many,
many people
in the congregation
because they were
very well connected,
very well thought of,
very well liked
and I had many conversations
with this young man
who believed
and I kept trying to look
to see,
you know,
is there mental illness,
is there an affair going on,
is there some other type
of thing going on
and it was just unshaken
that he came to the conclusion
in prayer
that God had called him
to divorce his wife.
And I kept telling him,
no,
God cannot call you
to divorce your wife
just,
just like that.
God can't call you
to do that.
Was I going against
Genesis 22?
Abraham seems
to go against,
God seems to,
to order the breaking
of the sixth commandment
although the commandments
aren't given
until the next book
later on,
many hundreds of years
after Abraham.
I think this story
tells us different,
several important things
about God
and about Abraham
and so now it's time
to sort of go back
and reflect upon them.
So if you look
at the verse one again,
here's the first thing
to notice about this
with a now second reading
of the text.
Notice how verse one goes.
How's my time going?
Okay.
After these things,
God tested Abraham
and said to him,
Abraham,
and Abraham said,
here am I.
Here's the first thing.
In my blog this week,
I talk about how
one of the problems
I have with Bible readings
is I'm a quick reader
and I'm having to learn
to be a slow reader.
Actually,
at a literary level,
there's two very,
very interesting things
about this first verse
at a literary level
if you just read it carefully.
The first thing is
that these opening words
are the narrator
speaking to the audience
and Abraham doesn't know them.
And the narrator
speaks to the audience
and says,
these things,
after these things,
God tested Abraham.
And so we now know
that God is going
to test Abraham.
and here's where
the text starts
to talk about
all of our fears.
In the book of Genesis
in the Old Testament
and the New Testament
as well,
the word here
is tested,
not tempt.
And Andrew,
if you could now
take the picture down
and put the first point up,
here's the very first thing
to understand.
In a sense,
a careful reading
of the text
would have us know
that right from the beginning
that Isaac's not going to die
because evil tests
to corrupt and bind me.
The living God tests me
to grow health and freedom.
Evil tests to corrupt
and bind me.
The living God tests me
to grow health and freedom.
The serpent,
in Genesis 3,
19 chapters before this,
the serpent tests,
and it's really a temptation,
and evil tests Adam and Eve
and the purpose of it
is to corrupt and to bind.
And all the way through the Bible,
God never tempts.
He does things
to reveal to us
and help us to experience
his confidence in us
and his call on our lives.
And every time
we are, in a sense,
tested by God,
we go through maybe
a dark night of the soul
or a lonely walk of faith.
In every case,
the purpose of it is
is for us to draw closer to God.
That's what is in God's heart.
And that as we draw closer to God,
as we see that these things
that may be a year in advance,
a year earlier,
or two years earlier,
or ten years earlier,
or twenty years earlier,
would be unimaginable things,
that as we go through these things,
even though the darkness is real
and the suffering is real
and the loneliness is real,
but as we go through these things
and emerge on the other side,
we realize that God has done this
because he loves us.
He loves me.
And we emerge
wholer,
healthier,
and freer.
And a careful reading of the text
when we see that the language here
is of testing,
we can say,
oh,
Isaac's not going to die.
This is not a story
about the danger.
This is a very profoundly
unsettling thought to us
because we don't hear the text
the way the Bible means
is to hear the text.
This isn't a text,
a story about danger
to Isaac.
Is it a story
that's going to reveal
Abraham's heart
and his potential danger
in terms of whether he knows
who God really is?
It's not a story about Isaac
and the danger to Isaac.
It's a story about Abraham.
And God does this
in the hope
that at the end of it,
that Abraham is more whole,
more healthy,
and more free.
which is what happens
in the story.
An even deeper promise,
an even deeper blessing
from God upon Abraham.
And in the Old Testament,
this language of blessing
is a language of,
it's always,
our intern Daniel says
that it's all about God
wanting us to thrive.
That's a very, very good way
to understand it.
It's all about
a greater potency,
in a sense,
a greater potency,
meaning power for life.
It's all about prosperity.
It's all about,
in a sense,
a greater thriving,
a greater success
in spiritual,
and just potency.
It's all about God
bringing into our lives
greater potency,
greater life,
greater health,
greater wholeness,
greater freedom.
Potency is about freedom.
And so the narrator
says to the reader,
this is going to be a story
about God doing something
with Abraham,
that at the end of it,
he'll be more whole
and more free.
See, one of the things
about this story
is in a sense,
the reading of this story
is our version
of God saying to Abraham,
go and kill your son.
Because the fact of the matter
is this story
reveals something
about my heart
and your heart.
You see,
the Bible constantly
goes after our heart,
the heart being,
what the Bible understands
is the center
of who we are
and in the context
of the living God.
And the fact of the matter
is that even those of us
who follow Jesus
at the center of who we are,
there are parts of us
who are terrified
about getting too close to God
because if we get
too close to God,
he will make us a nutcase.
He will ask us of things
that will make us
unpopular in the eyes
of the world,
ridiculous in the eyes
of the world,
ridiculous in the eyes
of our loved ones,
that will hurt us,
that will belittle us,
that will damage us.
And in fact,
we have that thing
with inside of us
and so in a very small
and mild way
compared to what Abraham
had to go through
with Isaac,
this text is like that.
When we hear
this passage of scripture,
will we trust
that God is good?
Will we trust
that even when God
makes commands
that seem to us
unreasonable
in the eyes
of our culture,
in the eyes
of our culture,
it's only reasonable
to live together
before you marry?
That's not what
the Bible teaches.
That seems unreasonable
to us.
In the eyes of the Bible,
it's because God,
everything is owned
by God
and God puts things
under our care
and so part of the way
that we develop
freedom from money
and don't have money
as an idol in our lives
and because we can live
a more authentically
human life
and because at the heart
of what it means
to be authentically human
is to give,
that he asked us
to give away
10% of our money,
10% of our financial resources
and that's completely
and utterly insane
in a culture
that has pages
and pages
in the newspaper
written on a weekly basis
about how to make
more money,
not how to give money away,
but how to make
more money
and whether it's
in terms of,
you can go on
and on
that we have
this fear
that getting close
to God
will hurt us
and God wants
to reveal to us
that he is good.
In fact,
that's the whole point
of the story.
If you could put
the second point up,
Andrew,
here it is right here.
The living God
is only good
and he gives
all of himself
to all of me
and all of we.
the living God
is only good
and he gives
all of himself
to all of me
and all of we.
I know it's not
very good grammar
but it's sort of catchy
and it's because
it's not just
a private thing.
This text has
a communal aspect
to it
and he gives
all of himself
and it's interesting
it's something
I didn't know this
until I did the research
at the Hebrew
this is communicated
in a very interesting way.
You see,
for the first,
there's two different names
for God
used in this text.
So we're going to read
the first ten verses
very quickly
and the first word
for God
is Elohim
which basically means
the distant creator,
the all-powerful
distant creator
and the second word
that's going to be used
for God
in this text
is Yahweh
and Yahweh
is the intimate word.
It's the intimate God.
It is both the creator,
great creator God
but it is the God
who gives himself
to human beings
because he desires
to be in a covenant
with human beings.
He desires to be their God
and have human beings
like you and me
who might have worshipped
the moon
and might have accepted
that human sacrifice
is just the way
that the world works
and yet he wants
to call us to himself
and be in a relationship
with us
where he gives
all of himself
to us
in the hope
that as we grow
in the covenant
that we will give
all of ourselves to him
and that's what's symbolized
in the word Yahweh.
And now listen
to this story
where I will say
Elohim,
distant creator God
and Yahweh,
the intimate God
who desires to be
in a relationship
with us
and this is how
the story goes.
Verse 1,
after these things
Elohim tested Abraham
and said to him,
Abraham,
and Abraham said,
here am I.
And Elohim says,
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 Elohim
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.
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
and Isaac said
to his father,
to Abraham,
Father Abraham,
my father,
and he said,
here I am,
my son.
And Isaac says,
behold the fire
and the wood,
but where is the lamb
for burnt offering?
And Abraham said,
Elohim will provide
for himself the lamb
for burnt offering,
my son.
So they both of them
went their way together.
When they came
to the place
of which Elohim
had told them,
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.
And then Abraham
reached out his hand
and took the knife
to slaughter his son.
But the angel of Yahweh
called to him from heaven.
The angel of Yahweh
calls to him.
No longer just the God
that Abraham,
he believes that God is good,
but he is the distant creator God.
And now it is Yahweh
who desires to be
in a covenant with Abraham
and with Isaac
and to bless the generations
in the world.
It is Yahweh
who desires to give
of all of himself
to moon God
worshiping people
and call them for himself
and give all of himself,
hoping that they will give
all of themselves to him.
Verse 12,
he said,
do not lay your hand
on the boy
or do anything to him
for now I know
that you fear Yahweh,
seeing you have not
withheld your son,
your only son from me.
And Abraham lifted up
his eyes and looked
and behold,
behind him 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
Yahweh will provide.
As it is said to this day,
on the mount of Yahweh
it shall be provided.
And the angel of Yahweh
called to Abraham
a second time from heaven
and said,
by myself I have sworn,
declares Yahweh,
because you have done this
and have not withheld
your son,
your only son,
I will surely bless you
and I will surely
multiply your offsprings,
the stars of heaven
and the sand
that is on the seashore
and your offspring
shall possess
the gate of his enemies
and in your offspring
shall all the nations
of the earth be blessed
because you have
obeyed my voice.
The living God
is only good
and gives all of himself
to all of me
and all of me.
So God gives
all of himself to us.
You know,
we have a lot of fear
in our world today
about relationships
and relationships
break down,
marriages break down,
friendships break down,
families break apart,
institutions fail us
and we have this deep fear.
But God is unchanging.
He's always good.
He's only good.
He gives all of himself
and so the response
that God desires from us
is what we see
in Abraham
that goes from this
very, very first call
in chapter 11
to leave his land
and leave the worship
of the God of the moon
and to come and follow God
and to know God
and to be God's people
and to be blessed.
And here,
if you could put it up,
Andrew,
faith in the living God
begins with a sliver of me
and grows towards encompassing
all of me.
Right?
We don't have to have it all together.
We can't always have it.
We'll never have it all together.
We'll never,
ever,
ever have it all together.
And you know,
this is just how relationships work.
You know,
my relationship with my wife,
Louise,
began when I first noticed her
in the library stacks
as a philosophy section
of the Carleton University Library.
And there's a sliver of me
that goes out to her.
And then there's sitting
at the library table
and the glances across the table
a sliver of me.
And then there's finally
when I meet her
and I talk to her
and there's a sliver of me.
And the whole part
about a marriage
and a relationship
is it begins with a sliver
but it moves towards
all of me.
That's what a good marriage
is to be,
is to move towards
all of me.
Starts with a sliver
and moves towards all.
And that's how it works.
Abraham doesn't know
everything
when it begins
in chapter 11.
But the direction
of a real and living faith,
it grows
and it moves towards
all of me.
Because God
has given
and offered
all of himself
to us.
Andrew,
could you put up
the second painting?
It's actually not a painting.
It's by Mark Chagall.
I don't know
if I pronounced
that correctly.
It's a sketch
with pastels.
And it's a very,
very interesting,
this is a painter
who is in a sense
haunted by the Christian faith.
He never became
a Christian
to our knowledge.
and we see here
this picture
of the Abrahams
and Isaac.
And in the background,
up in the corner
at the top,
you can see
the crucifixion.
You know,
in a very,
very real way,
Jesus
authenticates
this text.
The text
doesn't authenticate
Jesus.
in a very real way,
it's because,
you know,
in this story,
Abraham says
that God,
Elohim himself,
will provide a lamb.
He provides a ram.
And the very,
very first recorded time
that Jesus is seen
by anybody,
he's introduced
as the Lamb of God
who takes away
the sin of the world.
It's in John's Gospel,
the first recorded time
that Jesus comes about
and is introduced
to his disciples
and is,
behold the Lamb of God.
The people who will become
as a behold
the Lamb of God
who takes away
the sin of the world.
And Christians,
after the death
and resurrection
of Jesus,
and they understand,
they start to understand
Luke 24 talks about it,
all these things
in the Old Testament
that point to Jesus.
And in one sense,
it's because Jesus
rose from the dead
that he authenticates
passages like this.
Yet on the other hand,
it's because of passages
like this
that we understand
the significance
of Jesus.
You see,
this is maybe
before some of your time,
there used to be
a lot of joking
about Elvis was still alive,
that he hadn't died,
that he was still alive.
But if Elvis came back
from the dead,
well, what on earth
would that mean?
Like if Elvis
was in the building,
like what on earth
would that mean?
That would just be weird.
That doesn't fit in
with science,
with philosophy,
with narrative,
with emotions,
with imagery.
It would just be bizarre.
But the resurrection,
the death and resurrection
of Jesus,
it isn't just
something bizarre.
It takes place
within the context
of centuries
of prophecy
and of centuries
of imagery
and an entire narrative
and an entire way
of sort of understanding
the world.
And it takes place
within this larger narrative
and of insight
about the human heart
and about right and wrong
and the nature of God.
So the resurrection
of Jesus comes
as the culmination
of imagery,
of narrative,
of story,
of overarching
meta-narrative
and of ethics
and philosophy
and understanding
of creation.
And it's on this
whole big,
this whole world
that in that context,
the death
and resurrection
of Jesus,
you go,
it fits.
it's not just weird
like Elvis being
in the building,
it fits.
And at the same time,
the death and resurrection
of Jesus becomes a light
and then you look back
on this story
and you look back
on the things
of Abraham
and his only son
and of the promise
of a future lamb
and you understand
on Isaac carrying
the wood
upon which he's going
to be sacrificed
and Jesus carrying
his cross
upon which he's going
to be sacrificed
and you understand
that on one hand,
there's going to be
a true and greater Isaac
who will carry the wood,
that there will be
a true and greater lamb
that will one day
die upon the cross,
that in fact,
all of the imagery
of the story
of the only son,
that it's imagery
and it's linked
and it's all pointing
to Jesus
and at the same time,
the true death
and resurrection
of Jesus,
the empty tomb,
the resurrection appearances,
it vindicates this story.
The fourth point,
Andrew,
God kept his promise
to do what only
he could do,
provide a lamb
as a substitute
for everyone,
Jesus,
the crucified Messiah.
God kept his promise
to do what only
he could do,
provide a lamb
as a substitute
for everyone,
Jesus,
the crucified Messiah.
How do we live?
Two things very briefly
in closing
and I was trying
to figure out
how to word it
and then I figured out
that Romans 8.31
verse 8.32
that Romans
actually does,
8.32 does a great job
to summarize
what this means
for us to live.
Once we receive Jesus
as our Messiah,
the crucified one,
the lamb of God
who takes away
the sin of the world,
once we understand
that God is good,
that he desires
to give himself to us,
that the way
that we understand
this is thinking
and meditating
upon the fact
that God did not
spare his own son
to deal with
our gravest need
so that we can receive
a power of God
for salvation
whereby God himself
gives all of himself
to us
so that we
moon God worshippers
who will willingly
do crazy,
chaotic,
morally insane things
that God calls us
who are at times
morally insane
and he calls us
to himself
to desire to give himself
to us
that we might start
to learn to give
all of ourselves
to him
in the context
of his grip
and what Jesus
does for us
on the cross.
We could have
this fifth point up.
If God did not
spare his own son
but gave him up
for us all,
how will he not
also along with him
graciously give us
all things?
If God did not
spare his own son
but gave him up
for us all,
how will he not
also along with him
graciously give us
all things?
That I can live
every day
praying to Jehovah Jireh,
my provider,
whose grace
is sufficient for me.
An image for the sermon,
Jehovah Jireh,
you're my provider.
My need to have
a difficult conversation,
Father,
you are Jehovah Jireh,
you have not spared
your own son.
I come to you
and ask that you
would help me
with this particular thing.
Our need for direction,
our need for encouragement,
our need for strength
in times when we go
through a dark night
of the soul
or a lonely walk
of faith,
that we,
as we reflect upon Jesus
who died upon the cross
for us,
we have a ground
to always come
to God in prayer
as our Jehovah Jireh.
Please stand.
Andrew,
if you could put
the final point up.
The final point
is a prayer.
It said,
Jehovah Jireh,
please grip me
with the gospel
and grow in me
a humble,
trusting,
persistent knowing
that as I follow Jesus,
you will provide
for me today
and every day
for all eternity.
We don't have
to do life
by ourself.
If God did not
spare his own son,
will he not
graciously give us
all things?
Will he not be
our Jehovah Jireh?
If God has touched
your heart
in any way about this,
I invite you
to pray with me
this prayer,
which is on the screen.
Let's pray it in closing.
Jehovah Jireh,
please grip me
with the gospel
and grow in me
a humble,
trusting,
persistent knowing
that as I follow Jesus,
you will provide
for me today
and every day
for all eternity.
Father,
pour out your Holy Spirit
upon us.
Make us disciples
of Jesus
gripped by the gospel
who live for your glory.
Help us to live,
Father,
not with presumption,
not with arrogance,
not with superiority,
but humbly trusting
that you meet
our deepest needs
and will meet
our other needs as well.
Help us, Father,
to always be drawn closer
day by day
towards you.
Move us from
a sliver of faith
to a faith
that encompasses
all of me
and all of us.
And this we ask
in Jesus' name.
Amen.
ab cuD