It took a long time for Sarah to forgive Abraham. She knew something was wrong the minute Abraham and Isaac came back from their trip. Sarah hadn’t suspected anything before then; Isaac was almost 13 and spent most of his time with his father and the other men anyway. Every Hebrew mother learned to say goodbye to her sons - if she were lucky enough to have more than one - by the time they were old enough to follow along behind the herds with a switch. She was luckier than most, at that, because Abraham and Isaac often came in to take the evening meal with her, sharing the day’s events and talking over decisions that had to be made. And Isaac would be full of all the things he had learned, lowering his voice to sound older and swaggering just a bit when he had acquired a new skill that put him another step on the road to manhood.
But this time they had been gone a week, and when they came in they were quiet. There hadn’t been any joking or horseplay around the water trough outside the tent when they washed off the day’s dust before coming in to dinner, and Abraham wouldn’t look her in the eye. Isaac just stared at his plate and pushed the food around. “How was your trip?” asked Sarah, finally. “Did something bad happen?” Silence. “Is there anything I ought to know about? Are we going to have another war? Have the wells south of Beersheba been filled in again?” More silence. Isaac glanced at his father and said, “Abba, don’t you think - “ and Abraham silenced him with a gesture. “Go to bed, boy, get some rest. I’ll tell your mother.” Frightened, now, she looked sharply at her husband. “What have you done? Is Isaac in kind of trouble? Something’s wrong, I know it.”
And then Abraham told her. He told her what God had said that day, that now seemed like a lifetime ago. He described how he and Isaac had set out for Mt. Moriah with a donkey and two of the herdsmen. He told her of the three days they had traveled north of Horeb, and how he had listened to his son’s chatter and oversaw each night’s camp and tried to pretend everything was normal. He even told her of Isaac’s innocent question, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" His voice broke at that point.
Abraham’s voice broke, but Sarah found hers, at last.
“What were you thinking of? How could you do such a thing? –Yes, yes, I know, YHWH told you to do it, yes, I heard you the first time - But you’ve argued with Him before. I’ve heard you. And how many times have you told me about arguing Him out of destroying Sodom if he could find even ten righteous men in it? If you can argue with YHWH over the fate of perfect strangers, couldn’t you spare some breath for your own son? Our own son! My son! What kind of a father are you? What kind of a god is he? Haven’t we given up enough for him already?“ Sarah gasped for breath, burst into tears, and picked up the jug of wine as if to throw it. Abraham held her by both arms and said, “Stop it, Sarah. We’re here. It’s all over. We’re back. Isaac is alive. And you know that YHWH has given us far more than we ever gave up for Him. You know better than that, Sarah.”
“So what if I do?” she demanded. “This is our son we’re talking about, and besides - you didn’t tell me! You didn’t even let me say goodbye, you just went off and did it. How can I ever trust the pair of you out of my sight again? And what is it going to do to Isaac?”
Of course we don’t even know if Abraham ever told Sarah what he and Isaac had been doing, up there on Mt. Moriah. But I think we can be pretty sure he didn’t tell her beforehand what was going on. After all, he didn’t even tell Isaac, and he was with him for the whole 3-day trip. And - who can blame him, after all? Sarah didn’t have the direct, personal relationship with God Abraham had, and would probably have flown into a real screaming rage; remember what happened when she felt threatened by Hagar and Ishmael? I think it’s possible that she never even found out afterward how close Isaac had come to death on that lonely mountain. But at the very least she must have wondered what had happened to Isaac on that fateful trip, because he must have changed, after that. He wasn’t the same carefree boy he had been before, dogging his father’s footsteps, enthusiastically diving into every aspect of managing a large and prosperous clan. How could he have been?
Well, of course we don’t know what it did to Isaac.
But sometimes I wonder. Look at Abraham, picking up everything he had and following God’s leading into an unknown future. He talks with God, even arguing with him, traipses the entire length and breadth of Canaan, from Iraq to Egypt and back again. Abram does blow it, every now and again, like lending Sarah to Pharaoh, and siring Ishmael on Hagar, and then refusing to defend Hagar against Sarah, but by and large he does pretty well. He believes God and obeys him, and as Paul says later on in his letter to the Romans, God “credits it to him as righteousness.” Abraham goes adventuring with God and gets a son, and a promise of descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand in the sea.
But what happens to Isaac? That whole-hearted longing for God, that willingness to risk everything to follow God, seems to have skipped a generation. Jacob lies and cheats to make sure Abraham’s blessing comes to him instead of his brother, wrestles with an angel all night to get a blessing, and winds up with twelve sons, a name change, and a country named after him that is still around over 4,000 years later. Well, with a short gap of couple of millennia.
But Isaac - poor Isaac - gets a wife picked out for him by his father when he’s 40, one son who doesn’t care two hoots about the family tradition and another who deceives his blind father to cheat his brother out of his inheritance. And whenever God confirms the promise to him it’s on Abraham’s account, not his own. “I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven ... because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws.” [Gen 26:4-5] And later on, “... I am with you and will bless you and make your offspring numerous for my servant Abraham's sake.” [Gen 26:24]
And so sometimes I wonder what effect it had on Isaac, that long ago day on the lonely slopes of Mt. Moriah, when he watched his beloved father lift the knife. What did Isaac really think of YHWH God? Did he hold it against him, that awful moment of seeming betrayal? Isaac obeyed God, certainly. He did what he was told, certainly. But did he follow God with joy, with a sense of trust and adventure, desiring to be with God for his own sake, or did he do it grimly, dutifully, resentfully, because he knew he had no choice?
I think it was the latter. And the reason I think this is because of his preference for Esau, the wild one, the one who was ruled by his appetites, who kicked over the traces and didn’t obey the rules and married outside the tribe. I think Isaac had a secret longing to be like Esau himself. What a pity, that the man named laughter got so short-changed on joy.
Now, I may be wrong about Isaac. But there are people like that, aren’t there, people who follow God’s rules out of either resigned acceptance or grim duty, perhaps even secretly resenting the limitations placed upon them by their awareness of God’s authority. Most of us know people who have become embittered by the burdens life has placed on them, people who continue to obey the rules but do so joylessly, half-heartedly.
What makes the difference between the way one person and another responds to God’s testing? I think there are four key principles to remember. Two of them are for parents, and two of them are for everyone. And all of them can be found in the story of Abraham and Sarah and Isaac.
The lessons for parents are, first: Children get their ideas about God from you. If you can’t be trusted, how can God?
The second lesson for parents is this: Explain things to your children. Not every detail, certainly, but what they can understand. My godson Ted had surgery 4 times by the time he was 10. The first surgery was when he was just shy of 2 years old, and the second two were when he was 3. And he knew it would hurt. His mom explained that it would, but that she would be with him, and it would be ok in the end. He lived with discomfort - sometimes pain - and doctors’ visits for all of that time, and had to wrestle with the question of the goodness of God. But with help from the faithful adults in his life, and respect for his questions and doubts, Ted still trusted God, and his parents, and expected good from life.
The first universal principle to remember is that - as Abraham knew - Isaac didn’t belong to him. Isaac belonged to God. God alone had the right to determine Isaac’s future - whether he would have a long life or a short one, live in poverty or prosperity, in obscurity or fame. God has the right. When trouble comes, our response shouldn’t be, “How dare you?” or “How could you?” but “YHWH giveth, and YHWH taketh away. Blessed be the name of YHWH.”
And the second principle is that although God has the right to take everything from us, including our lives, he has instead chosen to give everything to us - including our lives. God could - like the bloodthirsty gods of Canaan and Moab and Assyria - demand the life of every firstborn in every generation as the price of his continued favor. He has the right. He could take the second- and third-born, too, without exhausting his rights. But instead God gave us his own firstborn.
I think Isaac lived his life fearfully, always expecting another test, wondering what God was going to require next, envying the freedom he thought he saw in his eldest. He forgot how the test ended, with God’s gracious and miraculous provision as a response to Abraham’s whole-hearted, trustful obedience. Many Christians also live their lives in the wrong kind of fearful obedience, concentrating on God’s authority and forgetting his mercy.
Following God does often mean being scared, as we head off for the unknown. Sometimes following God means being asked to do something we don’t think we can handle, or simply wish we didn’t have to handle. But following God also means being provided for, always, miraculously and abundantly.
Let us always remember that. Whatever comes, the offering up of ourselves to God results in receiving more than ourselves, better than our selves, back again. God has provided the lamb.
