Tag: Abraham

Provider

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Genesis 22:1-14

1 After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 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.” 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. 4 On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. 5 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.”6 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. So they went both of them together.7 And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8 Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.

9 When they came to the place of which God had told him, 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. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13 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. 14 So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

Let me start by saying that this is a long passage. That means I won’t be addressing every question that it might raise. What I want to do with a passage like this, as uncomfortable as it is, is to try to understand it within the greater context of the book of Genesis and the Bible as a whole.

First, does Abraham believe that he will actually have to sacrifice his son? If you remember a few days ago, we looked at an earlier passage in Genesis when God promises to give Abraham a son and tells him that his offspring will be as numerous as the stars. Abraham knows this promise and knows that his and Sarah’s only son will need to be alive in order for this promise to come to fruition. We know that Abraham is a man who has faith (Romans 4 & Hebrews 11) and believes what God has promised, but to sacrifice his son would be a direct contradiction.

Here is verse 8, Abraham says, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” He very well could be lying to Isaac in order to get him to go up with him, but what if he actually does believe that God will provide a lamb for them instead? The writer of Hebrews says that Abraham believed that if he went through with it, God would be able to raise Isaac from the dead. Either way, Abraham knew that the promises God made to him regarding Isaac would hold true. He knew that God would be faithful to His word. He knew that God would provide.

Abraham Isaac
Valentin de Boulogne

I mentioned before that this passage was uncomfortable. In some ways, I think that’s the point. When we take a longer view and examine the allusion it provides of Jesus, you’ll see what I mean. For Abraham and Isaac, God provided a way for them to still be obedient without Abraham having to sacrifice his son. Maybe the punch has been taken out of what is actually communicated in John 3:16 because of its popularity, but isn’t it saying the same thing? God sacrificed His son Jesus as a sin offering on our behalf. For some reason, this doesn’t make us as uncomfortable. It’s a powerful display of the love that God actually has for us that He would do that and of the love that Jesus has for us that he would willingly go.

Maybe the passage of Abraham and Isaac is intended to be uncomfortable because it communicates the harsh realities of the cross. In both stories God provides a way for His promises to come to fruition and ultimately a way into relationship with Him. If we want to tie this into our Lenten theme, there is clearly beauty embedded in the discomfort, beauty embedded in the brokenness. We find ourselves broken from any number of things, but God has provided a way for us to be seen as whole, and that is beautiful.

Prayer and Reflection

Pray for God to show you places in your past when he has provided. If you have a hard time coming up with things and feel like God never provides for you, think about how a difficult situation could’ve been worse. Most things could always go worse than they actually do.

The Faith Key

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Romans 4:1-12

4 What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” 4 Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. 5 And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness, 6 just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:

7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
    and whose sins are covered;
8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

9 Is this blessing then only for the circumcised, or also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. 10 How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after, but before he was circumcised. 11 He received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believe without being circumcised, so that righteousness would be counted to them as well, 12 and to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of the faith that our father Abraham had before he was circumcised.

This passage is a long one, but I think it’s an important continuation from the passage we looked at yesterday and paints a beautiful picture of the framework God uses for us to enter into relationship with Him.

Yesterday we looked at the Genesis passage in which Abraham believed the Lord. Here, today, we have the Apostle Paul in the Letter to the Romans explaining a foundational belief for many Christians, justification by faith, or sola fide. It’s important that we get this right, and I’ll try to do it as quickly as I can.

Justification (in Christian theology) is an act of God in which God pardons the sinner and accepts that person as righteous. It is the act in which God looks at you who is broken like you’re whole, and not just looks at but fully treats you, not as broken but as complete The theological question is not about whether God does this or doesn’t do this, but the question is, “what makes Him do this?” Justification by faith, sola fide, says that it was in Christ’s death that a switch was made, and we who have faith in Christ receive His righteousness, while he received our penalty (2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus did this willingly, laying down His life for His people.

That raises another question though, who exactly are “His people?” All of the talk about circumcision in this Romans passage tells us something about that. For the traditional Jewish person at the time, circumcision was the sign that showed that you were a part of God’s people. It was this outward expression that proved your righteousness. Paul is  showing that faith is the indicator of righteousness, not circumcision, and he does this by explaining that Abraham was called righteous before he was circumcised because he “believed the Lord.”

That’s truly all it takes to be seen by God as whole, as righteous. Sometimes we overcomplicate this process and want to provide a laundry list of the things we’ve done that make us a good person, but that isn’t the rubric God uses. He’s looking for faith. Faith is the key that unlocks the door to relationship. That doesn’t mean that once we have faith that we just sit and wait until we die to join Him. It means that we join Him now in the renewal of all things. He, indeed, calls us to work, but the work isn’t what gets us to Him.

Once and for All

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Genesis 15:1-6

1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.

What a wild passage. A man old in his age, childless, becomes resigned to the the fact that his fortune will simply be given to someone else in his household. Being childless was a very real, very clear point of pain for Abram and Sarai (who later become Abraham and Sarah). It’s a reason for doubt, pain, and strife for many people still today. What’s amazing in this passage, and the next couple of chapters, is how clearly God addresses that pain.

Here God tells Abraham that his offspring will be his heir. He then takes him outside and basically says what he says more explicitly in chapter 17, that his offspring will be many, that his descendants will be like the stars in the sky. This man, old in his age and childless, will become the father of many nations. It’s easy to offer empty condolences and hope from a text like this. We often look to passages like this for encouragement and see that God relieved Abraham and Sarah from their strife and healed the biggest sore spot they had by delivering to them a son. I want to be careful in doing that though. Lent keeps us grounded. Sure Abraham is promised a multitude of descendants, but the more important piece is that he believed the Lord. His belief is counted as righteousness and it’s from that righteousness that a promise like this is even made.

I can’t promise you that whatever suffering you might be dealing with will be healed during your lifetime. I truly wish I could. I do, however, feel confident in telling you that the perspective you have towards that thing can change the course of your life. Abraham’s belief in the promises of God alleviated his pain. For us, an eternal perspective is needed to know that a trusting belief in the work of Christ on the cross guarantees us freedom from sin and pain, not here in this lifetime, but in eternity.

This is good news for us that should prompt us into action. We, as the church, are called to continue the work of God with the help of the Spirit here on Earth, which includes tending to the sick, caring for widows and orphans, helping the impoverished. We’re called into action to help give the world a taste of the new Heavens and new Earth. We’re called as a community to help each other endure the hardships of this life with a hope pointed towards a glorious end, when the promises of the cross are realized once and for all.

Prayer and Reflection

Pray that God helps you see your points of pain from an eternal perspective. Ask for empathy in seeing the pain in others and wisdom to know how to serve them best.