One
of the greatest days ever in the history of all mankind and all eternity.
January 15, 2012.
The 49ers became THE blessed team in the NFL playoffs. They forced 5 turnovers against the Saints and even though they gave up 14 points in the FINAL 3 minutes to fall behind, they had a chance to come back and win the game in the final 40 seconds. Check it out!
Alex
Smith to Vernon Davis. The Niners move on to the NFC Title game! Forget Tim
Tebow.. Drew Brees just got Alex Smithed!
And
then what happens?!
The
Giants go on and shred the Packers in Green Bay allowing the 49ers to play a
home game for the rights to a Super Bowl bid!
Double
Yahtzee! Just kidding… Triple Yahtzee!
Then
The worst. Thing. Happened. One week later.
My San Francisco 49ers. They Lost.
They were SO close
Kyle
Williams. Come on! TWO fumbles on punt returns!
And
the Refs! Why the heck do you blow a whistle to stop the play if the Giants
player isn’t down! He fumbled that ball! And I have proof!
This
was our year. The 13-3 49ers were at
home against a 9-7 team to go to the Superbowl. The Giants were a team the
49ers already beat this year!
You
want to know what I did after the 49er’s crushing 17-20 loss in overtime?
Aside
from sleeping in defeat for 14 hours…I floated around silently for 24 hours. Like
one of those awkward ghosts in those Harry Potter movies. Yes, Harry Potter-
movies.
I
could not speak of these events. Life had lost its swag. The 49ers were
supposed to go the Super Bowl.
Call
it what you want.
A
failure. Getting Pwned. Being cursed because of all those silly bandwagon fans
The
49ers went from blessed to cursed in less than an hour. And I have to ask…
Why doesn’t God love my favorite sports team? It seemed like ‘fate’ that the 49ers would make the Superbowl, and then it all fell apart. Shouldn’t God want my favorite team to win the Superbowl?
Now
you may be wondering why the 49ers are so important to me. Why do I love the
49ers so much?
It’s
simple. Watching 49er football was one of the main things I remember doing with
my family while growing up. We didn’t talk much or have extravagant meals
together or really much else.
We watched football. As a family.
To
this day, I’m not exactly sure why we watched football. One of my theories is
that it was because my mom was a single mother with 3 energetic boys.
I’m
the youngest of three and when I was only 4 months old my father decided to
leave our family and eventually start a new family of his own.
It’s a strange thing to never have had a
conversation with a father. To never have seen him in person.
One
of my favorite authors, Donald Miller, compares having a father to owning a
dragon. “For me a father is nothing more
than a character in a fairytale. I know fathers are not like dragons in that
fathers actually exist, but I don’t remember feeling that a father existed for
me…I don’t say this out of self-pity, because in a way I don’t miss having a
father any more than I miss having a dragon. But in another way, I find myself
wondering if I missed out on something important.”
It’s
a completely unfamiliar category – dads.
Now,
even though I have never known what it is a father does, I still have vivid
mental pictures of what I think I’ve been missing out on. The loss I struggle
with most from being fatherless is that I’ve never gotten to hear my dad say
“you can do this, you have what it takes.”
These
experiences haven’t exactly caused me to doubt God’s existence, but I have
wondered if God is really a God of love.
Have
you ever wondering this same thing?
You
know, our painful experiences often contradict God being a God of love. And
Abraham’s experience in Genesis 22 is no different. In this passage, Yahweh,
the God of the universe, is commanding His “chosen one” Abraham to sacrifice
his one and only son, Isaac.
The
problem is that Isaac is the son of the covenant! Through Isaac God will
multiply Abraham’s family line and create a nation of his name. They had a
deal!
This
seems slightly problematic, doesn’t it? Can you imagine… All Abraham and Sarah
wanted was a son together. They wanted a family. For decades, Abraham and Sarah
waited for their son. In fact, they waited multiple years beyond being too old to have a child… and yet this miracle was not
beyond the power of God, and so- Isaac was born, as a gift from God to two
parents who are old enough to be great-grandparents by now.
When
it comes to sacrificing his son, Abraham has got to be thinking…Wait, God!
Don’t you know? Aren’t we buddies? No son, no family. No son, no blessing of
your covenant! I did not sign up for this.
Have
you ever felt this way? Do you ever simply ask, how can God be God of love if
this is how life goes?! …Can God be a God of love if he tells you to sacrifice
your son, or what if your father walks out on you, or can he be a God of love if
your favorite team cannot win a stinkin’ home game to go to the Superbowl.
In
Genesis 22, Abraham is being put to the ultimate test. Don’t listen to this
story with Sunday school ears…Today is Tuesday. this is the real deal. If this
story doesn’t unsettle you, then there is something fundamentally wrong with
how you are reading it.
At first
glance, this story should not sound like an uplifting story about a
passionately loving God. Rather, it’s best described by what Kierkegaard says:“We have all heard the story of Abraham, but how many has it rendered sleepless?”
This passage doesn’t deal with the existence of
God. Abraham didn’t question God’s existence. Abraham was wondering if this God
is loving. Is it loving to command someone to sacrifice their son? Is God really a God of love based on this passage? Will the God of love
please stand up!
You
may be surprised, but when we read this text carefully, God’s real and
passionate love become quite clear, and I have two ideas that will help us
leave Genesis 22 knowing God is a God of love.
And
the first thing the passage tells us about God being a God of love is that
1. God’s offensive
request is actually an invitation
Verse
16 “I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and
have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you…and through
your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed because you have obeyed me.”
But
before we unpack what this means, let’s first recap the horrific test.
The
passage begins “Some time later God tested Abraham”
And
Abraham responds…
…Well
perhaps that is a bit different than what Abraham would have said at the time
of God’s command. But, this is because the passage purposefully does not give us very much about Abraham’s reaction to
the command…
And
yet…. “Early in the morning” I guess Abraham did what we’d all do. He got up,
popped a toaster strudel his easy-bake oven, and loaded the donkey with his son
and two servants.
Now,
in my lifetime, there is only one thing I have ever woken up early in the
morning to do. That would be snowboarding. As many of you know…an early morning
snow trip is quite similar to sacrificing your son on a mountain. Although
there are a few differences to note.
Aspect of journey
|
Snowboarding
|
Sacrificing your
son on a mountain
|
Long voyage?
|
Yes
|
Yes (3 days)
|
Uncomfortable
climate?
|
Yes
|
Yes (we’re outside
aren’t we?)
|
Women still in bed?
|
You bet!
|
Yes
|
Bringing your son
and two servants?
|
Sort of… (Do sons
ride shotgun while servants sit in the back?)
|
Yes
|
Sacrificing your
son?
|
No
|
Yes
|
The
point is… Abraham has a lot to be upset about. But the text doesn’t show it
because it’s not about his reaction to the command.
Okay,
so far we’ve established that for whatever reason Abraham is climbing a
mountain to sacrifice his son. And your question right now is something along
the lines of… “How is sacrificing his beloved son on a mountain what’s best for
Abraham? …oh and by the way, how is this best for Isaac?”
But
here is the thing, God’s
offensive request is actually an invitation.
It is an invitation to first) know him and an invitation to and second)
Participate in his Plan of Redemption.
i.
An
Invitation to Know him
God is testing Abraham for the benefit of their
relationship.
This test brings Abraham to the summit of his
lifelong walk with God. And to sacrifice the son, and covenant, means the test
is weighed in balance against all common sense, human affection, and lifelong
ambition. This test is against all earthly nature. And to that we collectively
say… ouch.
So how
does this help the relationship? Why did God test Abraham in THIS most excruciating way? Doesn’t that
seem either pointless- because God knows everything, or heartless- because of
what God is asking Abraham to do?
God
makes this command, because when God asks for our everything, He is
really asking for our love. And God knows that the best thing we can do with
our lives is love Him.
After
the test God says in verse 12, “Now I know that you fear God because you have
not withheld from me your son, your only son”
To
fear the Lord is to revere Him. It’s to adore and respect Him.
When discussing love, cognitive knowledge of
it is not enough… it must be shown and supported through tangible events that
can be seen or heard. For God, there is great pleasure in knowing that Abraham
had everything to lose and nothing to gain – and yet he was willing to go
through with that because of his love for God.
On top of God wanting our love, God knows
what’s best for Abraham. And what’s best for Abraham is God – not his son, not
his covenant! Loving
God with all that he has is the best thing Abraham can do. Helping Abraham do
this is the most loving thing God can do.
Jonathan
Edwards, an early American theologian, helps make sense of why this is so, he
says “The happiness of the creature consists in rejoicing in God, by
which also God is magnified and exalted.”
“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him”
So, if
Abraham were to choose the blessings over the blesser he would be making a huge
mistake. It would be like wanting an “A” on in a class without caring about
the subject. You cheat yourself if you only try to get the grade – it is a
waste of time…but if you try to grasp what it is about this topic that has
caused your intelligent professor to commit their life to it, you will get
something better, and probably the grade too.
It would be like leaving this place with grades but no education. It’s usually too late when people realize
that college is not about grades; but about discovery. To live for the “A”
would be to live for the wrong thing. All the same, you cannot find value in
God, if all you do is focus on what He gives you.
We often use human analogy to describe
God. But, right here it doesn’t quite
work. If a person wanted our love above all else, it would be reprehensible…but
God wanting our love is not terribly selfish or insensitive, because when we
focus our adoration on God, we are living exactly how we were created to live.
“This
is indeed the very heart of worship: that we should gaze in love and gratitude
at our creator and redeemer, and so be restored as genuine human beings and
thereby be God’s agents for the healing of creation.” –NT Wright
And that is the point of God’s test for
Abraham. To be God’s agent for the healing of creation. Our obedience to
value God above all else, which is inherently best for us, also allows us to
participate in God’s redemptive plan for all humanity
In other words, God’s offensive request is also
an invitation:
ii.
To
participate with God in his plan of redemption
“…because
you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely
bless you…and your offspring on earth will be blessed because you have obeyed me.”
Abraham passed the test because he showed he
loved the blesser more than the beloved blessing. He worships God, the blesser,
more than his own son, the blessing who was the deepest desire of his heart.
And because he has obeyed God, Abraham’s family line will be blessed as the line that Jesus comes from-the line that God uses to bring redemption and hope to all creation. This is HUGE! Because to be blessed is to be in sync with God’s plan. Abraham’s obedience allowed him to be in sync with all that God was going to do.
Because of his obedience, Abraham gets to
delight in God, which is what is best for him, and participate in God’s mighty
work to clean up our sin mess.
That is why there is value in the test.
But
one question remains… why would ANYONE
need to give up their one only son to be in sync with God’s plan? How the heck
does this command of child sacrifice coincide with God being a loving God?
Yeah God is a God of love in Genesis 22 because God’s offensive request is actually an invitation to know Him and participate in His coming Kingdom when we obey. But, how is He a God of love given the nature of the command to sacrifice Abraham’s son?
The
second thing Genesis 22 tells us is that God is really God of love because God
doesn’t need your son, He’ll offer His.
2. God doesn’t need your
son, He’ll offer His
First, you have to recognize that
i.
God
never wanted Abraham’s son
Verse
12 “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 from me your son, your only son.”
People
get hung up on this. How can God ask Abraham to do something wicked? And how can Abraham be thought heroic for
doing it? But this proves to both Abraham
and those after him (including us) that Yahweh is different, that he is
actually loving and good.
The
act of child sacrifice is totally inconsistent with what God would actually
want. But Abraham doesn’t know that yet.
It
would be completely rational for Abraham to assume Yahweh WOULD desire a child
sacrifice because the gods of his culture demanded a sacrificed portion of
anything produced—animals or children. It’s not until later in the Hebrew
Scriptures that God vehemently opposes this practice.
Abraham
is still discovering who Yahweh is and what he is like…and gods who ask
for children are par for the ancient near eastern course.
In Genesis 22 Abraham discovers that God is
not one who needs child sacrifices, but instead Yahweh is the “See-to-it-God”. It’s basically a Mario “One
Up”
of Genesis 16 where Hagar realized that Yahweh is the “One who looks for
her”. For Abraham, Yahweh is the God who sees what Abraham needs and provides
those needs. That is why Abraham renamed this place “The LORD Will Provide”.
It’s not just the name of one of the worst
fantasy football teams. Its Abraham’s surprised realization of God’s presence. In
this moment, Abraham realizes that Yahweh is a God who says “I see you and
offer what you need.”
God wanted to show Abraham two things…that
the blesser was more important than the blessing…and that Abraham’s God was, in
fact, good, in a way that the other tribal deities were not. God did not require his son. And there is a really important reason why.
When Abraham calls God the ‘see to it God’,
the God who will provide, he doesn’t knows what that truly means. You see,
Abraham is not just a patriarch, he is a prophet. This moment on the mountain is not just about
Abraham coming to know that God is worth it and that God is good. It’s not just about how God proved Abraham
was his man for His cosmic redemptive plan…it also foreshadows how this was
going to go down
In Verse 8 Abraham says to Isaac, “God
himself will provide the lamb”
And later, after realizing God doesn’t need his
son…“Abraham looked up and there in the thicket he saw…. a ….. … a ram
A Ram? Now, I’m no biologist. In fact I’m
more of a math guy. And even I know, Ram != Lamb
This must have been slightly confusing for Abraham…Although he probably doesn’t care because his son is still alive!
This must have been slightly confusing for Abraham…Although he probably doesn’t care because his son is still alive!
Fortunately, it’s not as confusing for us.
Verse 16 “…that because you have done this
and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will bless you…”
Which leads me to the second half of this
idea:
ii.
God
doesn’t want our son…but He offers His
Now, why did God ask for Abraham’s son as a
sacrifice, but never really want it? It’s because God was foreshadowing where
this story was going…because the story of Abraham and Isaac on the mountain is
not just about Abraham and Isaac…its our story. Where Abraham stopped, God kept
going. Abraham took his son to the mountain to slay him. God sent His Son to
the mountain to cover for the sins of all of us. Genesis 22 ends with a ram
because Jesus is the Lamb. God knew that we needed Jesus. On the day of Genesis
22, God provided a ram, because it was not the right time for the Lamb.
It’s
like all of us are on the Gerber baby insurance plan…
As you may know, the Gerber plan is this
strange 18 year insurance plan that covers babies when they are born… you may
have seen one of these commercials long ago while watching Doug and Recess on
Saturday mornings… Here is one of their newer commercials…
Now, why on earth would I show you that clip? Basically
Abraham is that baby…
“He gets a lot right now and even more in the
future…”
Before being “the right time” Abraham gets a
ram!
But wait til later. At the right time. Remember,
“He gets a lot right now and even more in the future”
In the future… He gets the Lamb, Jesus.
Abraham’s obedience let him participate in God’s
future plan for Creation. God is really a God of love because He followed
through on His own command to Abraham. Yahweh is a God that will only ask you
to do something, if He is willing to do it Himself. With the suffering, death,
and resurrection of Jesus –God gave His
Son, His only Son instead of Abraham giving up Isaac, his only son.
In this passage, God is letting Abraham know
that he’s looking ahead.
Creation needed a Lamb to fix its brokenness
and bring it back into a flourishing relationship with God. By knowing that
we’d need a Lamb, and providing One, God is taking care of all of us Gerber
babies in the best way possible.
This story of a poor man being commanded to
sacrifice his son is not quite what it seems. It’s about the unique character
of Yahweh and how Yahweh is better than any of the tribal gods. It was never
about child sacrifice! It was about a God who would not let anything get in the
way of what was best for Abraham—And God is what’s best for Abraham.
Sure God can ask us to do anything He wants, and often those things are quite difficult because it can involve the thing you love, but when it comes to giving YOUR “one and only son”, he will cover that tab. He will pursue and redeem us until we are transformed into our most genuinely human self when we believe in Him and are baptized into His family.
In Genesis 22, God’s command was offensive and seemingly unloving. But, after looking
closely we saw First) God is inviting us to know Him and participate in His
redemptive work and Second) By not needing our son, and offering His, God is
helping us understand that Yahweh is better than any other god because of what
He would do to help us have a flourishing relationship with Him.
For Abraham, the mountain in Genesis 22 was a
place where the loving Yahweh stood up, took care of the details, and promised
to provide a solution to our sin mess. And God does the same thing in our loves
when we cooperate with Him.
This
past Christmas, after doing something I love to do – Sleeping in! I did
something I hate to do… I went for a
walk… with my Mom and step-dad. And I never go for walks… they take too long.
While
walking, my stepdad pulled ahead in his normal soloist-explorative way, and I
was left with my mom. We talked about all sorts of things for the first time in
months! 49ers football (UGH), the weather, her work, my work…and a little
condition I have called anxiety disorder.
Anxiety
is essentially always having the
feeling that you are going to be doing public speaking in the next 5 minutes.
And sometimes it turns into panic, the feeling that you are about to have a
heart attack because you cannot breath and everything in your chest feels like
it’s turning inside out.
During
this walk, my mom asked me how I have been doing with anxiety… I’m not used to
that kind of question from a family member! I was ready to talk about Frank
Gore or Alex Smith…but this was something real.
So,
I told her, “you know, mom, having anxiety sucks, but if I didn’t have a
relationship with God, it would be 100,000 times worse.”
Basically,
I had the opportunity to just say a little bit about God even though I’m pretty
much a quiet loser around my family.
And
then this happened.
My
mom reminded me of back in September when I was ambulanced to the hospital
because I thought panic attacks meant you were rising into the heavenly realm
out of your fleshly existence.
It was a Friday afternoon. I was laying on my
back trying to breathe in a Fairfield Wendy’s with Jessica…And I was on the
phone with my mom asking her why this was happening, why I felt like I was dying.
When
the panic got worse, somebody called the ambulance and my mom asked if I wanted
her to drive over from work in Fremont. Without me responding, she said she was
on her way- and the phone conversation was over.
And
then, as we continued walking, my mom starting telling me what happened after
we got off the phone. She said she was scared and that she was praying for me during
her whole traffic-filled-3-hour-drive to the Vacaville hospital. She said she
started to feel burdened by what I was going through. She told me I didn’t
deserve it, not just the panic attacks, but being fatherless and being
abandoned, too.
She
told me that at that moment of her greatest sorrow, the sun shined through her
windshield right at her heart. “Right at my heart” she said. And she heard a
voice from God.
He
said, “He is my son.” God told her that
I am His son.
After
hearing that, the traffic cleared, and my mom made her way to the hospital to
visit me.
Before
Christmas, I prayed for one conversation with my mother. One chance to talk to
her about Jesus and to share my hope in Him with her. A hope that I’d also want
her to have.
On
Christmas day, God let me participate in His redemptive plan all because I
honored my mother by saying ‘yes’ for the first time ever to go for a walk with
her. This, of course, was a plan that was already in place aside from me
because my mom had this Godly experience months before this walk without me doing anything.
But,
because of a little obedience to go on a walk, I got to hear the encouragement
of my mom saying, “I trust that God has plans for you and that He is taking care
of you.”
You
know, Abraham didn’t walk away from God because God asked for his only beloved
son. He didn’t hide. Abraham climbed up the mountain to God in obedience so
that he could participate in God’s redemptive work.
And
maybe some of you are still reeling from the relationship talk of a few weeks
ago. Maybe you’ve dug a huge hole in your relationship that you cannot get out of,
and you want to move away from hiding and come participate in God’s redemptive
plan.
Here is my advice to you. Climb the mountain. Find
out what it is that you love more…is it the blessing or the blesser? If you
decide on the blesser…be willing to give up whatever it is that is
holding you back, and trust… trust that God is good enough and loving enough to
deliver you and make this right. Trust that God’s offensive requests are not
just what’s best for you, but that they are what’s best for those around you,
too.
And
in all of this, consider Jesus, the Son given for you who says again and again
“I have grace for you, my friend, come back to me, and I will show you all the
good I’d like you to join in me in accomplishing”
