For the Love of. Rev. Ryan Beattie July 29, 2018

Transcription

1 For the Love of July 29, Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, Abraham! Here I am, he replied. 2 Then God said, Take your son, your only son, whom you love Isaac and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you. 3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you. 6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, Father? Yes, my son? Abraham replied. The fire and wood are here, Isaac said, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? 8 Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And the two of them went on together. 9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, Abraham! Abraham! Here I am, he replied. 12 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. - Genesis 22 NIV If you don't know who I am, my name is Ryan Beattie. I'm the director of Belong and Grow, which is a department here at BelPres that helps people feel more connected to the church and hopefully grow in their faith. We're continuing this week with our summer series, (extra)ordinary. We're looking at some of the characters in the Bible that you may not hear much about, but

2 through whom God did some amazing things. And this week, we covering Isaac. Okay, true confession We're going to talk a lot about Isaac's dad. But by the end hopefully, we'll get to where we'll see how important Isaac is for all of us. Well, when my 11-year-old daughter Meghan, when she was three, we went camping with some friends. And we went off to look for this beach. As we were crossing the last parking lot to get there, my wife Christy and I looked over, and we saw her sort of like angling over towards one of those big parking lot puddles that are kind of long, and we could see clearly what she was thinking. It didn't seem to matter that she was in sandals, shorts, and a t-shirt. So Christy said something to her like, "Hey, please do not jump in that puddle. We don't have a change of clothes for you. You will be miserable." And Meghan stopped, she looked at the puddle, she looked at us and said, "A cat's gotta do what a cat's gotta do, and jumped right into the puddle. It was a great jump, both feet, she nailed the landing and she was soaked and miserable. Which meant that I was eventually soaked and miserable carrying her back on my shoulders to our campsite. And it's funny now eight years later, but it's also a humorous snapshot of the human heart: a cat's gotta do what a cat's gotta do. We're all creatures of desires, and whether we want to admit it or not, our hearts tend to lead us. Over the last 15 to 20 years, science has even begun to validate this. What religions and philosophers, country music, and John Mayer have been telling us for thousands of years---we are led by our hearts. For a long time, science said that only the brain was involved in our emotions, but we know now that the heart sends more signals to the brain than the brain sends back to the heart. The heart plays a critical role in our emotions. When we're stressed or angry or frustrated, our heart rhythms become erratic, which sends negative signals to the brain and we experience those stressful negative emotions. On the other hand, when we experience things like love, care or compassion, the rhythms of our heart are like gentle, rolling hills, and it creates this warm feeling right around the area of our heart. And of course, all of this is involved in more than just the passing emotions of love or anger, frustration, comfort. Our hearts are deeply involved in those things that exert kind of a gravitational pull on the trajectory of our lives. The big passions, romantic relationships, marriages, families, bosses, mentors, enemies, frenemies, jobs, hobbies, sports, athletics. What are those things in your life that if they went away, you might feel like your life is falling apart? Some of you may know the name Rhonda Rousey; she is a mixed martial artist, an MMA fighter whose art was never losing. Of her first 14 fights, only two went past the first round. And of those other twelve, the majority of them lasted less than a minute. The world said that she could not be beaten, but about three years ago, in front of 56,000 fans, the biggest MMA fight ever, she lost. It happened. And her world fell apart. Listen to what she said about those moments right after the loss, "Honestly, my thought in the medical room as I was sitting in the corner, and I was 2

3 like, what am I anymore if I'm not this? Literally sitting there thinking about killing myself. In that second, I'm like, I'm nothing. What do I do anymore? No one gives a blank about me anymore without this." What am I anymore if I'm not this? Every human being lives for something: Something that captures our imaginations and becomes the fundamental hope and identity of our heart. The Bible gives us a term for those of things that hold this kind of power over our hearts or our sense of identity and purpose: They're called idols. Now, when you hear that term you might think of little religious statues or Kelly Clarkson, but the Bible is clear that the most challenging idols are those things and people that should be close to our heart, but really are good gifts from God. About 400 years after Jesus lived, St. Augustine the Christian wrote that sin and idolatry were really issues of what he called disordered loves. Disordered loves in our hearts. Augustine believed that we were shaped much more by what we love than by what we believed or even did. And he said there was an order, like a prioritization of the loves in our heart, and problems always come when those things get out of whack or get out of order; particularly if we put anything in the center or at the top of the list besides God. Here's what he said, "You have made us for yourself, oh Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." What lives in the center of our heart matters. No one understands this more clearly than God. Proverbs 4:23, "Above all else, guard your heart for everything you do flows from it." We see with Jesus, and his interactions with people, he's always going after what's at the center of their heart. Two disciples have turned and started to follow him, and he looks at them and Jesus very first question in the gospel of John, "What do you want?" Not, what do you believe? Or what do you do know? But what do you want? Another way to say that might have been, What's in your hearts? And then we see poignantly towards the end of his life on Earth, Jesus confronts Peter, who had betrayed him. This disciple that he said he was going to build this church on. He asks Peter three times, "Peter, do you love me?" And I want to argue that it's these kinds of penetrating questions that get to the heart of your relationship with God. What do you want? Do you love me? This morning, we're going to parachute down right into the climax of the story of Abraham and Isaac, where God confronts Abraham about Isaac. And it's an incredibly famous and unsettling story; it's got lots of layers of meaning. But I'm going to ask that as we look at the story, as we follow Abraham and Isaac up the mountain, that you pay attention to what the Holy Spirit may want to kind of tug on in your heart. Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would help us and lead us into truth, so that's my prayer for us in this room, that that would happen now. Genesis 22 says, "Sometime later, God tested Abraham." Okay, a quick review on who Abraham is. He's one of the three patriarchs, the great fathers of our faith. The big three world 3

4 religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, all claim him as the father of their faith. Back in Genesis 12, God calls Abraham. He calls him to a pretty big task that cost him a lot. He asked him to leave his home, his friends, most of his people, and to set off to a land that he's never been to, and that God will show him after he goes. God puts a big call on Abraham's life. He promises to make his name great, and that his descendants will be a great nation that will outnumber the stars, and eventually be a blessing to the whole Earth. So over the years of following God's commands, often in imperfect ways, he does become a very wealthy, powerful patriarch. He's married to Sarah. But there is one super important thing that Abraham and Sarah long for that they can't seem to get, and that is a son. A son in Abraham's day was everything. It meant the family's wealth and power would stay in the family bloodline, and their household would continue. Eventually, God does promise a biological son to them, but they get impatient, they take matters into their own hands. We can't quite unpack all that today, but again God repeats, he comes to Abraham and says that he will be a great nation and it will happen through a son with his wife, Sarah. And it does! Finally, Isaac is born, even though they are really old. Imagine like your grandma and grandpa, add 10, 20 years, and now they're having a baby. That's kind of what happens here. And then several years later, we arrive at this moment. Back to verse one, "He, God, said to him 'Abraham,' 'here I am.' He replied. And God said, 'Take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac. Go to the region of Mariah, sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you." So once again, God is asking Abraham and now Isaac to get up and go to a place he's going to show him. But this time it's with this devastating command, "Take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and go." Can you imagine the horror and confusion for Abraham, wait, we waited all of these years for a son, a son that you said was supposed to be a blessing to the whole Earth, and now you want me to kill him. So the traditional understanding of the story is that following God requires radical faith and tests. Abraham is held up as this preeminent example of trusting God, because of his willingness to sacrifice Isaac. Now, radical faith is great, and clearly, Abraham has this kind of faith. But that explanation is first, a little iffy, because if that's the case, does that mean that God condones killing kids? And if he does, what else could people try and justify as tests of faith in God. And secondly, the traditional explanation ignored the very important historical context that Abraham is living in and that God is working through. To our mostly Western, highly individualistic minds, living on this side of Jesus' death and resurrection, it is tough to understand this command. But what about Abraham? What if for Abraham, the shock wasn't the actual request to kill his son, but rather that God would request that about Isaac, who he had made all these specific promises about this identity that he'd given to. Again, nobody had longed for a son the way that Abraham and Sarah did. In theirs and other ancient civilizations, which were much more 4

5 communal and focused on family, the oldest son would inherit almost all of the family's wealth and prominence. And this is how a family would maintain their power in society. In our time, families typically split up, and siblings go to different places. But in Abraham's time, family stuck together under the provision, and protection of a patriarch, and eventually that patriarch's heir. This is how they kept their place in society. This is what was called the cultural law of primogeniture. 10 points if you can get primogeniture into work conversation this week. However, Abraham also knew that every family owed a debt because of sin and that the payment required was the first-born son. This could be avoided by making sacrifices, by working in the tabernacle. Abraham and every family knew that there was a debt of sin, and the payment was the first-born son. The greatest thing you could ask of a family in this cultural time and place. Now, if you think that primogeniture sounds unfair, particularly towards women, don't worry God agrees with you. He works to undermine primogeniture over and over again in the Old Testament, opting to work with often the younger siblings. But he does work through culture sometimes, and I think he's doing it here. And again, if the point of the story was simply to test Abraham's faith, Abraham could've just taken a knife, gone into Isaac's tent and killed him. But most commentators don't think Abraham would've done that, because that would've been murder, and would have gone against everything that he believed about God. So as challenging and horrific as it still was, Abraham understands that God was calling in the debt that he and every other family owed because of sin. As pastor Tim Keller points out, God had laid out this symbolic system of sacrifice that made sense within this man-made law of primogeniture. He did it in order to say something significant to these ancient cultures in a way they'd understand. So if God's command to offer up his first-born son doesn't make any sense to us, we must understand that Abraham knew what God was asking. Abraham knew that all human beings fail to live according to God's law of justice. That we live self-centered lives, that's why there are so many messes in the world. And a god of justice cannot overlook that, and Abraham understood this. But Abraham also knew God as a god of mercy, and so as conflicted and as in shock as he must've been, we can continue reading in verse three, "Early the next morning, Abraham got up, loaded his donkey, he took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. And when he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set off for the place God had told him about. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance and said to his servants 'Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.' Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he carried the fire and the knife as the two of them went on together." "Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, 'Father.' 'Yes my son.' 'The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the offering?' Abraham answered, 'God himself will provide 5

6 the lamb for the burnt offering my son' and the two of them went on together." What is it that allows Abraham to go up that mountain? He's facing the justice of God but believing in the mercy and grace of God. In the New Testament Book of Hebrews, we get a glimpse of what's in Abraham's mind. It says this in Hebrews 11:17, "By faith, Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promise was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him 'It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.' Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking, he did receive his son Isaac back from death." Abraham trusted in God's grace and mercy even as he faced his justice. He believed that if God allowed Isaac to be given up as a sacrifice, that he would raise him from the dead. We see this in the way he talks to his servants when he says, "We will come back to you." And then when Isaac asked about the offering, he says, "God himself will provide." Verse nine, "When they reached the place that God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on top of the wood, and he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son, but the angel of the Lord called out to him from Heaven, 'Abraham, Abraham, here I am. Do not lay a hand on the boy. Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld your son from me, your only son.' Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son." So Abraham called the place the Lord will provide. So if we can say that the request to sacrifice his son made sense to Abraham, even if it seems insane to us, and even if we can say that Abraham had put faith in a God of justice to show mercy, we're still left asking, why put him through all of this? And that takes us back to Isaac and the heart. Abraham had shown incredible faith in God for many years. But with his beloved son Isaac here now, he was at risk of making Isaac an idol. The angel when he stops Abraham he says, "Now, I know that you fear God because you've not withheld your son." This word fear here doesn't really mean afraid the way that we would use it. A better, more biblical understanding here would be, wholehearted commitment to God. As one commentator put it, fear here describes loving and joyful awe, and wonder before the greatness of God. What God is saying here is, "Now, I know that you love me more than anything in the world." This is what fear of God means. Again God has put a huge call on Abraham's life to do amazing things. And he knows that if he doesn't intervene, Abraham is at risk of coming to love Isaac more than anything else in the world. This is idolatry, and idolatry always leads to some destruction, both for Abraham and for Isaac. And the same is true for us. God put Abraham in a situation where Abraham had to confront his disordered love and put God back at the center of his heart. And here's the thing for Isaac, Isaac was never going to be able to 6

7 live up to all of the expectations, hold up under all of the pressure of being Abraham and Sarah's everything. When God set Isaac free from that carefully constructed pile of wood, he set him free in another critical way. He set him free from being their ultimate everything. As beloved as Isaacs of the world are in our lives, as much joy, security, and a sense of purpose that they can bring. They will eventually let you down, and we will ultimately fail them. On this side of Heaven, the world will finally take them away. So whatever your Isaac is, he needs you to put him in second place. He's better off when God is first. You're a better father, mother, wife, husband, sister, brother, friend, co-worker, boss, neighbor, student, teammate, moneymaker, identity, and titleholder when Jesus is first. If we make work, for example, and the pursuit of titles and financial success our idol, then we risk viewing people as expendable. We'll be prone to dehumanize them and use them as stepping-stones on the ladder of our success, rather than as bearers of God's image, whom he deeply loves. Or we risk functionally sacrificing our kids on the altar of long hours as we spend less and less time with them, and make the excuse that we're doing for them. When instead, it may be about our egos, identities, sense of accomplishment and security. If we make our kids our idol, we risk putting too much pressure on them and unintentionally smothering them as our identities get wrapped up in their identities and their well being at school, sports, activities, whatever it is. This is a big one for me by the way, this week that God challenged me on. What is it for you? Because here's what I believe to be true God has an incredible call on your life. And only you and he can make that happen, but he needs your heart first. He needs it for the sake of you and for the sake of your Isaacs. And if you feel like, I don't know how to start tackling this, we have staff and have trained volunteers who would love to meet with you, pray with you, talk about that. But honestly, though, the best thing to do is to start where Abraham did. To hear the call from God, to follow Abraham and Isaac up that mountain. Tradition holds that if the same hills, the hills of Mariah around Jerusalem, where Jesus later, a beloved son would carry wood up that mountain as well. And it's on that hill that Jesus willingly gave his life so that we could experience freedom and wholeness, and healing. So my encouragement to you is to go to the cross with those idols. Go with those things that you have made ultimate, which cannot hold up under that weight, and reflect on both the justice and the mercy of God. And my prayer for you is that as you do that, as you reflect on that, you'll be able to say back to God something like what God said to Abraham God now I know that you love me for you did not withhold your son, your only son Jesus, who you love for me. PRAYER: Let us pray. God, you are relentless after our hearts, and that is good news. Lord, you give us the courage, the tools, the resources and the people to get in alignment with you. Lord, you bring 7

8 healing and hope where it's needed. God, we want to follow you, serve you, and to live in the freedom that you brought through your son, Jesus. We pray all this in your name. Amen. Discussion Questions Please Read Genesis 22:1-19, Hebrews 11:1-19, Romans 8:31-32 NIV 1. What are the similarities between God s interactions with Abraham in Genesis 12, 15 and 22? 2. How does an understanding of primogeniture and the social, familial role of the firstborn son help us understand God s seemingly cruel command to kill Isaac? 3. According to Hebrews 17, what was in Abraham s heart and mind when he went to sacrifice Isaac? 4. What are ways this story points to Jesus and his eventual death on our behalf? How can that understanding help us overcome the idols in our own hearts? 5. What may be some Isaacs in your life that God wants you to set free/be set free to love in an appropriate way? 8