6/30/19 Genesis 22:1-14 “I Will Sacrifice My Son, Would You?”

28 Jun 6/30/19 Genesis 22:1-14 “I Will Sacrifice My Son, Would You?”

6/30/19   Genesis 22:1-14     “I Will Sacrifice My Son, Would You?”

Pastor Scott Bradford tells the story of a final examination at a seminary.  The test was to be 105 questions.  The professor had loaded the students down with all kinds of terms, theories and just a lot of nit-picky types of things that only a college professor could care about.  The students were in a panic.  This wasn’t their only class and they were worried.

The day of the test the professor came in and helped them to review for the exam.  It wasn’t long before he was talking about things that the class had never heard of before.  One of the students brought this to the teacher’s attention.  He told the students that all of these things could be found in the various text books that were assigned for their reading.  They had thought that the test was only to be on his lectures and now they knew that they were in trouble.

Finally he handed out the tests with the specific instructions that the test remained face down until they were told to turn them over.  Finally they turned them over and they found that all of the answers had been filled in correctly.  At the bottom of the last page this was written.  “This is the end of the Final Exam.  All the answers on your test are correct.  You will receive an ‘A’ on the final exam.  The reason you passed the test is because the creator of the test took it for you.  All the work you did in preparation for this test did not help you get the ‘A’.  You have just experienced…grace.”

This is the type of grace that we receive from God through the work of Jesus Christ.  I thought that this was a great story to show you how you don’t deserve the tremendous grace that God has given you.  As we look at today’s reading we will see that Abraham was almost a forerunner of Jesus.  When he went to sacrifice Isaac, it was a parallel to the story of Jesus.  Let us take a look at the grace extended here and see how it fits in with the love that God has for us today through Jesus Christ.

As we begin this Scripture we find that God is testing Abraham.  I have heard this passage misrepresented several times.  People will come up to me and say, “What kind of God is it that tells a man to sacrifice his own son?”  I remember the days when people would try to trip me up and this was one of the passages they used.  But look what God actually said.  He told Abraham to offer Isaac as a sacrifice.  God does not tell him to make him the sacrifice but to only offer.

At no time has God ever wanted us to sacrifice our families to please Him.  Our obedience is enough to please God.  So now when someone comes along with talk like this you can answer them.

Then the question comes up, “Why would God test Abraham?”  In order to answer this we have to realign our thinking a little bit.  Like the instructor in the opening story, God already knows the answers.  But God wants to make sure that Abraham knows.  We need to know how strong our faithfulness to God really is.

How many here today would be willing to sacrifice a son or daughter to please God?  You know there have been many false religions over the centuries where this has been very common.  In the days Abraham many of the pagan religions did this so Abraham was used to hearing about it.  As a matter of fact child sacrifices were very common in most religions except Christianity.   Plus they would do things far worse than child sacrifices.  Most of these early civilizations and religions were extremely barbaric which is getting to be what our society is like  today. This is one of the reasons why God told Joshua to totally wipe out the various people groups when they re-entered the Promised Land.  These people were absolutely vile and corrupt.

Anyway, what God wants from Abraham here and us today is our loyalty.  We are to love God first and foremost in our lives.  I have mentioned many times that it is then through Jesus Christ that we can love our families, friends and neighbors.  We read in 1 John 4:16 that God is love.  Therefore the logical thinking would be that we cannot love anyone else unless we first love God.

This is a really tough concept, but one that is very true.  I love to tell couples when they are getting married that they need to love Jesus first so that they can love each other first.  This doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense and it would make no sense to someone that is not a Christian.  But if we allow God to be first, if we love Jesus first in our lives, then God will in turn help us to love each other more.  We cannot love our families unless we love God because God is love.  Think about this concept a little this week as you enter into your prayer times.  This is one of the main themes of this passage.  Most people in our vile and corrupt civilizations today can never know love or peace or kindness because they don’t know Jesus.  What they have is false and what you have is true.

Anyway it is also important to note that God does not ask that we or Abraham love our children any less.  We are to keep loving them as much as possible.  What God is asking here is that we love God even more.  Remember the great commandment that tells us to love the Lord our God with all of our heart and our soul and our mind.  Then love our neighbors as ourselves.  We are commanded to love God first.

Gary Ezzo gives a great illustration of this when he says that the problem in families today is that the mom and dad get married and join hands.  When a baby comes along they put the baby in the middle.  More babies keep coming along and growing and it isn’t long before the mom and dad cannot stretch enough to have the children in the middle as they hold hands.  As a culture we insist on doing this so that everything can revolve around the children in the middle.  No matter what we do, we want to world to revolve around our children.

What Ezzo says to do is to put God in the middle of this circle.  Then when the children come along and grow, they are to join hands with the parents to make the circle even bigger.  This way God is in the center of everything.  This way the world revolves around God as it is supposed to do.  Wouldn’t that be a refreshing development if that happened?  Wouldn’t it be great if instead of having our children or our spouses or our jobs first in our lives, that we would have Jesus Christ?  Keep this in mind also as you go about your life.

Now the question might come up as to how in the world are we supposed to do this?  Well we do it by following the things that are said in the Bible.  We have talked many times about the importance of prayer and studying the Word.  Today’s passage has more to do with obedience.  If you have been reading the story of Abraham up to this point you will see that Abraham knew about the power of God.  After all he had seen God help him to win a war that was not winnable and rescue Lot.  He had seen the birth of his son, Isaac, in his and Sarah’s old age.  He had seen Sodom and Gomorrah destroyed.  Abraham knew the power of the Lord.

And now he is being tested for obedience.  And he passes with flying colors.  It starts as they go to the mountain and Abraham says that we will be back.  He had every intention of bringing Isaac back from the sacrifice because he said we will be back.  He had put his total faith in God.

So he takes his son up to be the sacrifice.  If you can imagine what was going through Isaac’s mind, then you may think that the test might have been for him also, just as it is for us today.  Dr. James Dobson says that there could be four mistakes that Abraham didn’t make here.  First of all, he was not overprotective.  He didn’t put the boy behind him and say to God that you can’t do this!  He didn’t have to because he had the faith that all would be well.  Secondly, he did not appear to be over indulgent.  Isaac marched right with him and did his share of the work.  How many times have you seen parents make these first two mistakes?  I have made them myself and I am not proud of it.  When we are overprotective, the poor child doesn’t have a chance when he comes up against the real world where few people care.  When we are over indulgent, the child doesn’t know how to get things because everything has been handed to him on a platter.

Nor does Abraham appear to be over permissive.  Abraham was in charge here.  One of our problems in our society today is that children can do whatever they want to do.  It is pretty hard to know right from wrong if you can do anything and there are no consequences.  You can ask any school teacher what the major problem is in our schools and they will tell you a lack of discipline.  The kids are always in the right.  How in the world can we function when we have the inmates running the asylum?

And the last thing that Dobson talks about is over activity.  We can’t really see this in our reading but we sure can see it all around us.  It seems to be the norm that we have to keep our youngsters as busy as possible regardless of what it does to our family life.  I don’t know how many times I have heard of families that miss church because of some activity of one of children of the family.

The whole point is that God has to come first.  One of the cruelest hoaxes ever put upon America was when Satan unleashed Dr. Spock upon us.  The Bible says to discipline and instruct our children.  And that is the way to raise another generation of Christians.

So we are to be following the things in the Bible that God tells us to do.  If we are trying sincerely, then the good things will follow.  Abraham put Isaac on the altar and was ready to make him a sacrifice.  He had the knife ready to do it when an angel of the Lord stopped him.  And it was after this that God reaffirmed his promise to make a great nation that would come through the line of Abraham and Isaac.

As I stated earlier this story really is a fore runner to the story of Jesus to come.  Jesus had a miraculous birth.  Jesus too came to be a sacrifice.  Only in the case of Jesus, the sacrifice was carried out.  Abraham found a ram that God had placed in a thicket nearby.  Then the ram was taken and sacrificed in the place of Isaac.  In the story of Jesus, He is sacrificed in our place.  He took on our sins.  And He did this without protest, like a sheep to the slaughter.

And this is where we are today.  We live in a world that tells us that we can do it alone.  We live in a world where we have no use for God, let alone make Him first in our lives.  And when things to go wrong, we are quick to point our finger in every direction except back at ourselves and our unbelief.  We will talk more of this next week.  If you are a little tired of always being on the short end of things, if you are tired of trying to do everything the right way but you still come up short, or if you are tired of never feeling genuine happiness or joy, then maybe it is time that you asked Jesus Christ into your heart.  Confess and ask Him in today.  When you do, then life will begin to make a little more sense.  God made us so that we could follow Him.

So now I have a question for you.  Can you follow Jesus?  If Jesus wanted to test you, would you pass?  God would already know the answer.  He already knows if you would pass.  And I think that deep down you all know how you would do.  At this point you should all be hanging your heads in shame and that includes me.  Each and every one of us falls short of the glory of God.  Each and every one of us is a sinner.  This is the beauty of God’s plan.  You can take this shame you have to Him and He will understand and accept you.  He will not get angry with you.

God loves you so much that He has given you ways to make things right.  And these ways do not include works that you can do.  But they do involve your faith in Him just like the faith that Abraham had in God.  You need to keep coming to church on Sundays.  You need to keep telling others about Jesus, whether verbally or by what you do.  You need to keep praying to Him on a daily basis.  God gave you this wonderful book, not because you are such sinners and unworthy, but because He wants you to a have way to be right with Him.  God only wants what is the very best for you and this book is about the best that it can get.

Today we have looked at our faith along with the faith of Abraham.  I know that many of you watching today have a lot of faith.  You have the faith to move mountains.  Just don’t stop praying, believing and obeying.  These are the elements to success, Godly success.  And that, my brothers and sisters in Christ, is what Jesus has in mind for each of you.  Thank you, Jesus, for your love and patience.  And thank you for first loving us.  Let’s pray.