Me and more than 11.4 million other people, on average, watched the History Channel TV production entitled “The Bible”. And, by the way, that is a lot of viewers – it was #1 in the ratings. It was a series of 10, 1 hour episodes which aired leading up to Easter, and the DVD release was the top selling DVD release of a miniseries ever in its first week, selling 525 000 copies. I’m curious – how many of you have heard about it? How many of you watched? Just in general, what did you think about it?
I would certainly recommend it. And in fact, there is a copy of the DVDs in our library. One of the things I appreciated, and that has got me thinking, is the revisiting of the “pivotal moments” in the Biblical story. Obviously, in 10 hours of programming we can’t see the whole story of the Bible – a lot of choices are going to have to be made about what stories to tell, and what parts of the stories. And I think it is valuable to return to that “big picture” perspective sometimes. Of course, it is good to get into great detail like we did with Psalm 51, but I think there is also value in taking a step back and tracing the major themes.
So I’ve mapped out a sermon series journey for the next several weeks, leading up to and through the celebration of Pentecost, which I’m titling “Pivotal Moments in the Biblical Story”. I’ve chosen seven stories at those pivotal moments – not intending them to be “the top 7” or even “the seven most important”, but rather seven stories from which I think we will learn a lot and be greatly challenged by what God does in those pivotal moments. And I think we will be able to relate – we each have pivotal moments in our own lives, times when a lot is riding on a particular situation or choice or encounter, times when God is palpably present and inviting us into a new experience or relationship or deepening with Him that demands more of us. Maybe God will even use some of these stories as pivotal moments in our lives over the next few weeks.
Abraham and Isaac on the Mountain:
The first story I’ve chosen is one that I find particularly disconcerting. It was included in the mini-series, and is found in Genesis 22, from the life of Abraham. We will go there in just a moment, but first we need some context.
We need to remember that Abraham had no Bible. Was there much oral history handed down for generations testifying to who God is or what He is like? – maybe a little, we don’t really know, but certainly not much to go on. Abraham had basically no context at all, in fact, to understand God. This is tough for us to imagine! All Abraham knew of God was what He experienced, which from the rest of the story includes a number of personal, direct encounters with God. First was the call to leave everything and go “to a land I will show you.” Then there was the promise of a child with his wife Sarah, even though they were both way too old to produce children. Then there was the fulfillment of that promise with the birth of Isaac, and with that a promise that Abraham’s descendants would be a great nation that would be forever blessed by God. It is no wonder that Hebrews lists Abraham as the example of a man of faith!
We have a much greater knowledge of God, a written record that we believe to be a reliable and true description of God, a rich history of God’s interaction with His people, and our own experiences of God. But as we read this story, try to set that aside and experience it instead as Abraham might have, without all that great context that we have.
Gen 22:1-2 (NLT):
Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called.
“Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.”
2 “Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”
Now I’m going to stop here already. We know the end of the story, so it’s easy to read past this quickly. But instead, let’s pause.
What kind of a God asks for human sacrifice? What kind of a God promises something, then asks for it back in a horrendous way? Can you imagine this? God had promised this child, he was the hope and the fulfillment of God’s promise, he was Abraham and Sarah’s deep joy and delight, and God says “go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering”? This is disturbing to me.
Nowadays, if someone were to tell me that God had said that to them, I would tell them they were absolutely wrong, it was not God, God would not say something like that and whatever they heard that they think is God is not. And then I’d probably have to call the police and file a report about the conversation! Now we know that God is not like that, but Abraham did not have that history and background, he only had a choice: to obey God, or to disobey.
Gen 22:3-5 (NLT):
3 The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his donkey and took two of his servants with him, along with his son, Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day of their journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 “Stay here with the donkey,” Abraham told the servants. “The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.”
Abraham chooses to obey. I wonder if we get a glimpse into what is going on in Abraham’s mind when he tells the servants, “we will worship, and then we will come right back.” Was it a lie, just to give the servants no idea what Abraham was planning to do? Or did Abraham really believe that somehow they were both going to return? I don’t know, there isn’t enough evidence in the text to tell us for sure, but it is possible Abraham believed they were going to both return. Maybe he believed God would stop him, or maybe he believed God would heal and restore Isaac after Abraham took the knife, or maybe he believed God would change his mind. But the obedience is clearly the most important.
Gen 22:6-8
6 So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them walked on together, 7 Isaac turned to Abraham and said, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“We have the fire and the wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”
8 “God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham answered. And they both walked on together.
An insightful boy. And an answer that once again reveals Abraham’s complete and utter faith in God. “God will provide”; those are powerful words of faith. I don’t know what Abraham was thinking or feeling, I can’t imagine the anguish he was experiencing, yet still he chose to obey. The actions show the obedience, and the words reveal a faith behind the actions of obedience.
There is something there for us, I think. Returning to the theme of “pivotal moments”, those are moments of actions of obedience, but those actions of obedience rest on a foundation of faith which we build on a daily basis. Both are pretty important, don’t you think? Without the foundation of faith, which we build on a regular basis through nurturing our relationship with God, we are far less likely to perceive the pivotal moments and then act out of obedience. And I think it is instructive to us, for all the “in-between” moments, that those are seasons to continue to build that foundation of faith and trust, of walking day by day, so that when we are in situations where choices need to be made, the very normal and natural choice is the choice of obedience.
Gen 22:9-19
9 When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. 10 And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice.
11 At that moment the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!”
12 “Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.”
13 Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son. 14 Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the Lord will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
15 Then the angel of the Lord called again to Abraham from heaven. 16 “This is what the Lord says: Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by my own name that 17 I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies. 18 And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you have obeyed me.”
19 Then they returned to the servants and traveled back to Beersheba, where Abraham continued to live.
God intervenes, and prevents Abraham from hurting his son. It is stopped, the test is passed, and God sees that Abraham is completely obedient in all things. God also provides the alternative – the ram caught in the thicket – which becomes the burnt offering. And then it is followed up with the promise of blessing.
Pivotal Moment: Full Obedience
This is a pivotal moment in the story of Scripture, where the man God had called out and determined to turn into a nation, the “people of God”, is called to obey. And called to obey in something pretty hard, pretty permanent, and pretty risky. God gave Abraham and Sarah a promise – to make them into a mighty nation. Then God gave them a miraculous beginning of the answer to that promise in the birth of a son, Isaac. And then God asked for Isaac back.
This is a pivotal moment, when Abraham could have taken matters into his own hands and figured he had to be in control. “Common sense” would have told Abraham that he couldn’t obey this command of God to sacrifice Isaac, or it would negate the previous promise and make it “impossible” for God to fulfill that initial promise. Everything was riding on this decision, to obey or to take matters into his own hands and decide he had a better way than God.
Abraham obeyed.
So now to you and me, and the idea of full obedience to God. The idea of holding nothing back from God. The idea of trusting God to provide all we need. The idea of taking even something that God had given in the first place, and not holding on or holding tightly or finding our hope and security in the gift rather than the giver.
Now God has not and will not ask us to do what He asked Abraham to do, but God still asks for the same obedience. Does He have it from you? God asks for total, complete, absolute obedience. Does He have it from you?
Our society has taught us that we are in control, that we get to choose our way, that we can even decide what is true and what is not true. It has drummed into our head and our heart that the point of life is to be our own boss, to make our own decisions, to rule our own life. To “look out for number 1”, unless we choose to look out for someone else first, but we still get to choose that and we remain in control. It is so deeply engrained in us that this idea of total, complete, unreserved obedience to God is, I think, rather foreign to us.
Well my friends, let me tell you this. Obedience to God is not an option for anyone who claims to follow Jesus. Some of us have this idea that we can follow Jesus generally, that it is fine if we do our own thing as long as we are generally following Jesus, mostly heading in the same direction, and if there are a few areas of our lives where we aren’t following Jesus well that is ok, everybody has a few, no big deal. And that entire line of thinking reveals one critical reality: we are still the lord of our own lives. If that is how we are living, then Jesus is not our Lord – or He is Lord in name only.
When we accept Jesus as Saviour and Lord, the “Lord” part means nothing less than 100%, complete, total, absolute obedience. You can’t be a part-Christian any more than you can be a little bit pregnant. Now of course we might occasionally fall, we may from time to time commit a sin, but that is different from living life with certain areas under our control where we have decided that it is ok to live like that even though we know it is disobedient. It is one thing to be on the straight and narrow path, and occasionally step off the path into some mud, and a very different thing to say “I’m going to walk the straight and narrow path in this area and that area of my life, but over here in this area I’m going my own way because I’m not so sure about Jesus’ way.”
What we learn from Abraham is this: God asks for it all. And God expects complete obedience.
Conclusion:
And God provides. That is the glorious ending. The sacrifice and the obedience look really hard, and sometimes they lead down a really hard path. Sometimes that path of obedience is painful for us. But then, after we obey (and that is a crucial part of the story – “after we obey”), we look up and see the ram caught in the thicket; we look up and we see. God provided.
So I’m going to ask you once again, in closing, this key critical question: Does God have your full obedience? 100%? All areas of your life, under the Lordship of Jesus Christ?? If your answer is “yes”, then I praise God and delight in that with Jesus! But if your answer is “no”, then I’m going to plead. Plead, and give you an opportunity right now to make that change. Maybe this is a pivotal moment for you, maybe as you’ve considered the story of Abraham and Isaac the Holy Spirit has been tugging on your heart, showing some area of your life that you are holding back, keeping for yourself, being “lord” over yourself. Is Jesus your Lord? In all areas? Let go, give them to Jesus, let Jesus be Lord, 100%, over all of your life.
And let Him provide.
