God Provides
Genesis 22:1-14
“After these things.” So begins today’s reading from Genesis 22. For those who haven’t been with us for the past three weeks, during which we’ve followed the story of Abraham and Sarah, let’s take a moment to get caught up with “these things.” God called Abraham at 75 years of age to leave his homeland and settle in Canaan, the land that would one day become Israel. God promised to make of Abraham a great nation, with descendants more numerous than the stars. And Abraham went.
But God was too slow in fulfilling that promise for Abraham’s and Sarah’s liking, and so Abraham, at Sarah’s urging, sought to secure his legacy by having a child with his enslaved servant Hagar. Thus was born Abraham’s son Ishmael.
When three mysterious guests visited Abraham and prophesied that Sarah, despite being well past childbearing age, would indeed give birth to a son, she laughed in disbelief. But soon she was laughing with joy at the birth of Isaac, her miracle child.
Sarah’s happiness, however, was short-lived. Viewing the older Ishmael as a rival heir to her son Isaac, she demanded that Abraham cast out mother and child into the wilderness, which he did. Left to fend for herself, and with her water having run out, Hagar laid the boy under a bush and waited for death. Yet God heard the cries of Hagar and Ishmael and provided a way out of the wilderness.
That’s where things stand as we continue the story in chapter 22. Hagar and Ishmael are safe and sound but now out of the picture. Abraham’s legacy is secure through his heir Isaac. Everyone can live happily ever after. The End.
Oh, wait! There’s just one small thing. “After these things…God tested Abraham.” Now that’s an understatement! For what follows is more than a test, it’s a crucible. God demands from Abraham the unthinkable.
The passage begins simply enough with God calling Abraham by name. You may remember that earlier, when God called Abraham to leave his homeland, Abraham went by the name “Abram.” Names are incredibly meaningful in Jewish culture. The name “Abram” means something like “exalted ancestor.” But as part of God’s promise to make of Abram a great nation, God gave him the name “Abraham,” meaning “father of multitudes.”
Father of multitudes. Given what God is about to demand from Abraham, that name can be seen only as ironic, for if Abraham follows through on what God demands, there will be no multitudes. There will be no generations born through Isaac. Abraham’s line will end. God’s promise to Abraham that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars will be a nonstarter.
And so God beckons Abraham by name.
“Here I am,” the father of multitudes responds.
“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 that I will show you.” You can hear in the rhythm of those words the rising intensity, as if God is trying to draw out the drama of the demand. “Take your son…your only son Isaac…whom you love….”
I’ve mentioned before that the Bible rarely gives us a glimpse inside the minds of people. What does Abraham make of this utterly horrific demand from God? Is he thinking, “How can you ask this of me? What about your promise to make of me a great nation? You’re asking me to sacrifice the child for whom I waited my entire life, the child that you gave to me after I had given up all hope. This doesn’t make any sense! Why would you ask this of me?”
If I were Abraham, those are the thoughts and questions that would be racing through my mind. But as for what Abraham is actually thinking, we’re left in the dark. We’re simply told that he rose early the next morning, saddled his donkey, cut the wood that would be burned for the offering, and then departed with two servants and his beloved son Isaac.
After they have traveled for three days, Abraham can see the mountain in the distance. Seeing the spot where the deed is to be performed, it now seems more real. This wasn’t all just a bad dream. Each step he takes now brings him closer to that which he most dreads. There is no walking back.
Abraham commands his two servants to wait where they are with the donkeys while he and Isaac continue on. He lays the wood for the sacrifice upon Isaac’s back, and father and son resume their march up the mountain. The conversation is sparse, the tension thick, when Isaac addresses Abraham, saying, “Father.”
“Here I am, my son” is the reply.
It’s almost an exact parallel to the way that God addressed Abraham earlier. “Abraham.”
“Here I am” was the reply.
Here I am. Abraham is present and attentive to the Lord and to Isaac. But soon he must make a terrible decision. He must choose between them. He must decide whether to continue to trust the God who has been faithful to him but who now asks the unthinkable, or to say “No” to God and hold fast to his only son, the miracle child who was the fulfillment of God’s promise.
“Here I am, my son.”
“The fire and the wood are here,” Isaac observes, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Abraham must be wondering, “Does he know? Does he ask with genuine innocence or is he merely feigning ignorance?”
Again, we’re not privy to what anyone in this passage is thinking—not Abraham, not Isaac, and not God.
“God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering,” Abraham answers.
God will provide. Again, that’s ironic because God has already provided. Despite the impossibility of the elderly Abraham and Sarah having a child together, God provided for them a son and heir. But what God provided to Abraham God now demands from him.
This is hard for us to wrap our minds around, especially considering that last week we heard how God rescued Hagar’s child Ishmael from certain death in the wilderness. How can God then turn around and demand the death of Abraham’s child Isaac? What does this say about God?
There are many ways to approach these questions. First, if we take the passage at face value, we are told in verse 12 that God demands that Abraham sacrifice Isaac in order to test him. “Now I know that you fear God,” the Lord says to Abraham, “for you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” The implication is that God wants to know whether Abraham’s faith is genuine, based solely on who God is, or whether it’s transactional, in the sense that Abraham is faithful to God only because God has rewarded his faith with the birth of Isaac. But if God knows all things—past, present, and future—why would God need to test Abraham? Hold that thought.
Now let’s go in the opposite direction. Rather than taking the passage at face value, let’s shine the light of biblical scholarship on it. Old Testament scholars tell us that this passage isn’t really about God testing Abraham. That’s just the narrative. But beneath the narrative is some hidden history. Ancient Israel was surrounded by nations who practiced ritual child sacrifice. These nations offered up their sons and daughters to appease their gods.
But such a practice was an abomination to the God of Israel. In the book of Deuteronomy, before the Israelites occupy the land of Canaan, they are specifically warned not to imitate the horrific practices of the nations they are displacing. “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you must not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations. No one shall be found among you who makes son or daughter pass through fire….” (Deut. 18:9-10a).
Perhaps between these two extremes of taking the passage at face value and viewing it solely in the light of history, there is a middle way, a Goldilocks alternative that’s neither too hot nor too cold. What if the testing of Abraham is not for God’s benefit but for Abraham’s? Perhaps Abraham needs to learn that God is not transactional, that Isaac is not Abraham’s reward for his faithfulness to God but simply the gift of a God who is faithful.
It would be convenient if God were transactional, wouldn’t it? If God could be appeased through sacrifice…not of a child, of course, but of our time, our effort, our treasure, that would put God, in a sense, in our control. If I read the Bible, if I pray, if I go to church, if I give to the church, if I lay my sacrifice upon the altar, then maybe the pain will go away, the operation will be a success, I will overcome my addiction, my children will be happy, or my family will forgive me.
But one thing Scripture teaches us for certain is that God is not transactional. God does not condition the birth of Isaac upon Abraham’s faithfulness. We know this because Abraham is not faithful! When he and Sarah get tired of waiting for God to give them a child, they seek to have a child by other means, through their enslaved woman Hagar. And still God remains faithful to Abraham!
The God we encounter in the Bible is at times mysterious and inscrutable but never transactional. God doesn’t stand at a distance watching to see what we will decide, God simply provides. God spares Abraham from doing the unthinkable, providing for him a ram for the sacrifice…a ram caught by the horns in a dense thicket of thorns. That is wonderful, miraculous, and gracious. But, ultimately, where this passage is pointing is not to the ram from God that is caught in a thicket of thorns but to the Lamb of God, upon whose head is placed a crown of thorns.
From its earliest days the Church has heard hints of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in this story of the sacrifice of Isaac, from the thorn imagery to the wood that’s laid upon Isaac’s back, which suggests the cross that Jesus will carry. But this passage is more than a marvelous bit of foreshadowing, it’s a window into the way that God works. What does God do? God provides.
Abraham names the place where he was prepared to sacrifice his only son, “The Lord will provide.” The place where he most feared to tread, the place where his faith in God was about to cost him everything, became the place where God provided.
And on the hill called Calvary—the place where none of Jesus’ disciples would dare follow him—God has provided for us deliverance of a different kind. Amid the agony and horror of the cross, amid blood and bone, amid the taunts from the religious leaders, the mockery of the Roman soldiers, and the jeers from the crowds, in the very place where where violence, sin, and death seemed triumphant, God has provided for us. God has provided not a ram for the offering but the offering of God’s own Son.
That is not an abstract statement. God knows, God understands, God feels the cost of that sacrifice like any parent who has lost a child. And therefore God knows the ordeals that you have endured and the trials that have tested your faith. They are places of pain, of hurt, of suffering, no doubt. But when seen through the eyes of faith, they are also the very places where God provides.