WHAT WILL WE NOT WITHHOLD?
Isaac Butterworth
October 10, 2010
Genesis 22:1-19 (NIV)
1 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, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."
3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled 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."
13 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. 14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."
It’s stewardship season. I don’t know how you feel about that, but I’ll tell you how it makes me feel. Uncomfortable. I just don’t like asking people for things. And I especially don’t like asking them for money.
I remember years ago, when I was the pastor in another city, we had a man in our church that worked in a local processing plant. His name was Doug. One day, a new guy – a fellow by the name of Mike – showed up to work there, and Doug got acquainted with him and invited him to come to our church.
‘I don’t know,’ Mike said. ‘I don’t much like going to church. All there ever do is ask for money.’
‘Not our preacher!’ Doug said. ‘He never talks about money!’
What Doug didn’t know was that I was scheduled to preach my annual stewardship sermon that very next Sunday! So, what happened? Mike and Shannon, his wife, show up at the First Presbyterian Church, and the preacher is talking about money!
And, here I am again. October has rolled around, and we’ve scheduled our Stewardship Consecration Sunday for October 24. And I’m beginning to feel that anxiety that I get every year about this time. And I’m thinking to myself: ‘I’ve got to somehow convince these people to give their money to the church.’ And this year, it’s even more critical, because, if we don’t see a significant increase in pledges, we’re going to have to make some painful changes.’
But lately, God has been doing a work in my heart. It’s as though he’s been saying to me, ‘Ike, I don’t need the people’s money, and I don’t need your money.’ And, you know what? I began to realize that God doesn’t need our money. God’s kingdom project will go on with or without me, and, quite frankly, it will go on with our without our church. I guess God has been teaching me a lesson in divine sovereignty. And what he’s been showing me is: Nothing will thwart his plan. Nothing will defeat his purpose. And the Kingdom will not fail, least of all due to a lack of funding.
Now, I don’t know about you, but this gives me a huge sense of relief. What I am beginning to see is that there is nothing God has called us as a church to do, there is nothing that God has commissioned me as a pastor to do, there is nothing that he expects you and me to do as disciples of Jesus, there is nothing that we cannot do with the resources he provides. We will always have enough time, we will always have enough money, we will always have whatever we need to do God’s will. Isn’t that liberating?
‘I don’t need the people’s money,’ God told me. ‘But there is something I want. I want their hearts. I want them to trust me, and I want them to trust me enough to obey me. In short, I want them to withhold nothing from me.’ And what I am beginning to see is that, if we will withhold nothing from God, this church will never lack for anything it needs truly to do God’s work.
Isn’t that what Abraham found out. Abraham is presented to us as a man of exemplary faith. When God told him to leave his home and go to a land which God would show him, Abraham did it. And that, in itself, is a remarkable thing. Abraham was seventy-five years old. He had a working ranch. He ran cattle on his ranch. He had a lot of employees, and he did a good business. In other words, he had a comfortable life. And God spoke to him and told him to leave all that behind. He didn’t even tell Abraham where he wanted him to go. He just said it was ‘a land I will show you.’
And Abraham went. He and his wife, Sarah, did what God said. Cattle and servants, a few household items, no doubt, and a seventy-five year old man and his wife: they all set out for an unknown land. And, I’ve got to admit – don’t you? That took a lot of faith. At that point in his life, Abraham withheld nothing from God.
But that would change. They got to Canaan, the land God had in mind, and there was practically nothing there. There were hordes of hostile, unneighborly Canaanites, yes, but there was little else. So, Abraham kept going. He took Sarah down into Egypt with him, and before they entered the city, he made a deal with her. Apparently, even at Sarah’s advanced age, she was very attractive, and Abraham was afraid someone would kill him to have her. So, he made her promise to say she was his sister. He asked her to lie – just to save his own neck, you see. There was no faith in that, was there? Abraham began to withhold his faith, and with it his life, from God.
And then there was another time. God had promised Abraham and Sarah a son. They had never been able to have children. And so, this was a source of real hope. But Sarah never got pregnant. Years went by, and Abraham and Sarah got even older. And so, they decided to take matters into their own hands. It was an accepted custom back then that a servant could carry a child for a couple, and, then, when it was time to deliver, the servant would give birth on the lap of the wife. Sort of a surrogate arrangement with a twist. And so, that’s what they did. Hagar, the servant woman, gave birth to Ishmael, and Sarah claimed the baby as her own. But that wasn’t God’s plan, and he told Abraham it wasn’t. Sarah would bear the child God had promised.
As you can see, Abraham wasn’t turning out to be quite the exemplar of faith and trust in God that he gets all the credit for. And Abraham’s lack of trust led to pain for Hagar, the servant woman, and for her child, Ishmael – and for their descendants, I might add.
Still in all, God favored Abraham and Sarah with a son, Isaac, and you can imagine how much they treasured this little boy. He was the child of their old age. He was the child of promise. And he would become Abraham’s heir.
Or would he? Some years later, God spoke to Abraham, and he said to him, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and…sacrifice him as a burnt offering….’
Sacrifice him? Abraham had waffled in his faith before. He had shown time and again that he didn’t actually trust God – especially when it came to things and people dear to him. He had withheld from God what was valuable to him. What would he do now?
What he did was: he took Isaac, as God had told him to do, to the mountain of sacrifice. And his intent was to do what God said to do. He wouldn’t withhold Isaac.
Now, Isaac was no dummy. When they started up the mountain, Abraham had Isaac carry the wood for the offering, and he himself carried the knife and the fire. And Isaac, being very observant, said to his father, ‘Father, the fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’
And here’s where we see that Abraham was finally ready to withhold nothing from God, not even the most precious thing in the world to him. ‘God will provide the lamb,’ he said. And he trusted God enough to give him everything and to withhold nothing.
What does that mean for you and me? I have the same kind of struggles Abraham did, and I suspect you do, too. There are precious things at stake for us, things we fear we might lose. These days, money is scarce, the economy’s not great, there are bills to pay, obligations to meet. Am I supposed to let the church become one more place where I get dunned for money?
And the answer, of course, is no. The issue here is not: Will I contribute to the maintenance of an organization called the church? The issue is: What will I not withhold from God? The truth is: anything I withhold from God becomes a barrier between God and me. I may not lose the thing I treasure – in Abraham’s case, his son; in my case, my money, say – but if I’m withholding it from God, it will be no source of pleasure for me. It will bring me no satisfaction. I will get no real happiness from it. It will only fester and chafe and decay.
But if I offer it to God for his use – and, with it, my heart, my desires, my faith, and my hope – God will use it to fulfill his ends. If we will withhold nothing from him, he will withhold nothing from us! I am not saying, ‘Give your money to God, and God will make you rich.’ I am saying, ‘Give yourself to God, and God will give you himself.’
The bottom line here is: not how much or how little of your money will you give to the church in 2010. It is: how much or little of yourself will you give to God.
I believe that, if God has the hearts of the people of this church, this church will have everything it needs to do God’s work. But if God doesn’t have the hearts of the people of this church, this church has far more serious problems than a shortage of funds. Money, you see, is never the problem. The problem is always a divided heart.
Consider the people who make up the church. If their hearts are set on God and withhold nothing from him, what can stop a church like that?
