[Text: Genesis 22)

Scripture Intro: The text today tells the story of a father’s obedience in the face of agony and how God provided a sacrifice for Himself that would one day bring the blessing of an obedient man to the whole world.

[Read and pray]

I remember a couple of occasions in college when I walked into class, sat down with a smile on my face, thinking that all was right in the world…until I saw my friends with their noses buried in books, our text book! With my stomach starting to knot I asked, “Why are you looking at that book that way?” They just looked at me wide-eyed and said, “Do you not remember that the unit test is today?” Then the sick feeling grew and filled me up and then, like my friends, I would bury my nose in the book in the hopes that the answers to the test could be burned into my brain in the two minutes before class began. I’m pretty sure that isn’t how good testers go about it.

Maybe you’ve experienced testing like that in school or in life; seemingly out of the blue, overwhelming and with plenty of room for failure. What did it do to you? Was there true excitement or deep anxiety? Did you walk in with confidence or were you sick to your stomach? Was the dread and nervousness leading up to the test as bad as the test itself?

The best designed tests are meant to prove that you haven’t just committed a few facts to your short-term memory, but have internalized the truth so deeply that is now part of you. The test simply proves that what you have learned is reality for you.

Genesis 22 opens and we’re told that “(a)fter these things God tested Abraham….” There are a couple of ways to think about that statement. First, you could take “(a)fter these things” to only refer to the preceding chapter with the birth of Isaac, the removal of Ishmael from the scene and the peace made with Abimelech. That’s possible and partially true, but the fact that this is a test from God leads me to believe that everything from the past 10 chapters (at least) is on the test. And what did we see there?

We saw God choose the last person you’d think would be the recipient of divine grace. He took a pagan idol worshipper from a far off place and blessed him so that he would become a blessing to others. We saw God protecting the often unbelieving man through famine and danger of death. We saw God strengthening a weak man and turning him into a warrior and a leader of warriors to conquer kings in order to rescue his people. We saw God promising to and actually cleansing a sinful man from his sin and giving him the sign of circumcision to remind him and his family of that reality. We saw the slow transformation over long years as sometimes Abraham understood his call to be a blessing to others, only to fall back into old, sinful habits of selfish unbelief and self-protection. But even in those dark moments, not once did God remove His grace from Abraham! Not once did God threaten him or take His love away from him or give up on Abraham. You see, God had set His plan to redeem and rescue the whole world in motion and He’d begun it in Abraham and through his son, Isaac, a child of God’s own promise. God had said, “…through Isaac shall your offspring be named” – a singular offspring first promised in Genesis 3:15 who would conquer sin and evil and restore the world to the beauty and life God intended! And when God spoke, the text tells us that Abraham believed the LORD and God considered him righteous through that faith.

Now God said to Abraham, “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.”

Our minds naturally go straight to the question, “Why would God ask Abraham to kill and burn his beloved son (even if He never intended for Abraham to follow through)?” That’s a fair question, and it might have been on Abraham’s mind. But the text goes out of the way to show that no matter what he was thinking, Abraham didn’t hesitate to obey. V. 3 says that Abraham got up early to begin the journey. Why? Some have said, “It just isn’t rational! A good God wouldn’t ask a man to do such a thing.”

But let me argue that Abraham’s actions are perfectly sane. Think again about everything that has come before this test. Hebrews 11:19 says that Abraham “considered (lit. reasoned) that God was able even to raise (Isaac) from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.”

-Abraham “reasoned” that no matter the confusion in his heart, the agony of his mind, God would fulfill what he had promised. Yahweh had been faithful to Abraham all along and the Everlasting God does not change. Abraham might have thought, “God promised blessing for the world through my family from Isaac’s line. The promise hasn’t come true yet. Therefore, God will raise Isaac up to keep the Story going forward.”

This is a change from the man of unbelief who twice (at least) lied because he didn’t think God could protect him. THAT was Abraham being irrational and acting out of line with what God had revealed and said. THIS obedience is completely rational because he based his actions on the Word of God. Think about it. I’m told that God directly and audibly spoke 1,133 words to Abraham. Of those words, there were:

• 2 questions

• 12 statements of fact

• 19 commands

• but 40 promises!

Add to all that all of the quiet and faithful providence of God Abraham saw through suffering, famine and war, deliverance from his own sins, fears, doubts, through victory and defeat. Add to that the beginnings of the fulfillment of those promises as Isaac was born! Abraham’s faith is anything but irrational. He knew that there was nothing too hard or too wonderful for God. And so he had to obey the LORD no matter how things looked to him in that moment.

When a blacksmith forged a sword, he began with steel, which was more resilient than iron and stronger than bronze. As the steel would be set in the fire to begin shaping it, the smith would wait until the heat made it glow red before taking it to the anvil to pound with a hammer, shaping the rough form into a blade. But as it heated in the fire, the carbon from the burning coal would rest on the glowing metal so that as the smith’s hammer pounded the steel into shape, the carbon became imbedded into the steel and made it stronger, actually twice as strong as steel alone.

Abraham had a three day walk to think about what God told him to do. The heat of this test must have been almost withering. But the hammer of God had been pounding on Abraham’s life for as much as 40 years at this point, shaping him into a new man. But more than that, the pounding of God’s grace into his soul hardened his faith into its truest expression – obedience.

What we see in Abraham is exactly what James speaks of when he says in the second chapter,

“So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone…. For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.” (James 2:17-26 ESV)

James’ point is that simply saying that you believe in God is not the same thing as a living faith with a visible expression! The grace God has hammered into our hearts in Jesus is meant to lead us forward in open obedience to Jesus.

- So when you are called by God into seasons of trial, do not take them as God’s abandonment of you. Look for the grace of God to be at work in you. Look to God’s faithfulness in the past to strengthen you and help you think sanely in the present like Abraham did. Remember that although it took time for him to reason and an angel from God to explain the situation (something you or I probably won’t get), Abraham’s first instinct was to get up early and start walking. His obedience was quick and sustained. Ours needs to be the same.

[transition to second point]

But perhaps you are like me and the pattern of your obedience looks closer to Abraham’s unbelief and disobedience in Egypt than his raised hand on top of the mountain. What grace is there for us who need it?

Well, it’s the same grace that found Abraham on top of that mountain. When God first commanded Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, He told him that the penalty of disobedience was death. Your and my open rebellion against God always demands death – the perfect justice of God demands it. But look back to the passage. Abraham said in v. 8, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering (a guilt sacrifice), my son.” What Abraham spoke by faith in v. 8, comes to pass in v. 13 as God stops the sacrifice of Isaac and provides for Isaac’s life a substitute. A lamb would die so that he didn’t have to. So Abraham calls the place “The LORD will provide” – Jehovah Jireh.

That name of God has often been used as a catch phrase by those who are in physical or financial need, but let me connect a couple of dots for us. Note that Abraham didn’t just say, “The LORD will provide.” He actually gave that name to the mountain itself, a mountain near Mount Moriah. Moses, in v. 14 says that to that day there was a saying in Israel, that “on the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”

In 2 Chronicles we are told that Mount Moriah became the very place of God’s presence with His people as the Temple was set there within Jerusalem. It was the place of sacrifice for the sins of the people as lambs un-numbered were slain so that the people of God could live and their sins could be forgiven.

But many years later, on a mountain near that Temple on Moriah, another Son would ascend, carrying the wood upon which he would be sacrificed. Like Isaac, he would not resist his Father’s will, even though he could have ordered legions of angels to rescue him. And when the Father’s hand was raised to slay His only son, Jesus, the Son whom he loved, there would be no voice stopping the slaughter. It would only be the voice of Jesus crying out that he was forsaken by God as the sins of you and me were set on His shoulders and the full justice and wrath of God tore his soul apart. But he would also cry out something more. He said, “It has been accomplished!” and in that cry we hope and weep and rejoice that on the mount of the LORD forgiveness and grace and restoration and life have been provided for us because the Lamb of God died so that we don’t have to.

[transition to the table]

In this meal is provided for you the grace of God that He will continue to hammer into your life; assuring you of His love and forgiveness of you in Jesus and strengthening you through his body and his blood for the trials that you will endure in this life. Here the Lamb of God says to you, “I died and I have risen again. My death was your death. My life is your life. Follow me.” This grace is given to you and me and we receive it, like Abraham, through faith alone.

[come back to the pulpit after communion to transition to Abel’s baptism]

There’s more to this passage, though. V. 15 says that a messenger from the LORD came a second time to Abraham. He said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.”

There wasn’t anything new in this promise, actually. God had already promised these things to Abraham and his descendants. But there is a confirmation here that what was originally promised will certainly come to pass because Abraham’s faith took legs, so to speak, and showed itself to be mature and complete. God is saying that through this one man’s obedience (itself a work of God’s grace), blessing will come to his family, too (which is what the final verses about the growth of Abraham’s family are hinting toward, especially the mention of Isaac’s future wife, Rebekah). But the truest blessing God intended, the redemption of the whole world broken by sin and the restoration of sinners through faith could never be completed by a sinful man, no matter how mature he might be.

Thankfully, the angel also said, “And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” Notice how the blessing of the offspring (plural) in first part of v. 17 transitions to talk about a particular offspring (singular) who will be victorious over his enemies and be the source of blessing to all the nations of the earth. Again, because of the obedience of one man, the victorious offspring would extend his blessedness to all the nations of the earth. What that means for us is that the victory of Jesus, the offspring of Abraham, in his death and resurrection IS the blessing that is given to us. As we are “in him,” that is, as we look to him to be our representative before God, we are given all the benefits of the victory of Jesus.

The New Testament witnesses that in baptism we are united to Christ by faith through the washing with water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Baptism is the sign that points us back to the Gospel and to the work of Jesus on our behalf as the Lamb of God. But more than that it is a seal that the promise is more than a faint hope, it is a powerful reality that forgiveness and cleansing is ours, that we are adopted into the family of God, that we are united to Jesus in his death and resurrection so that both belong to us. It is the sign of our entrance into the visible church and our engagement to be the Lord’s on that day when he come again in glory to bring the new heaven to the new earth. In baptism, his complete victory becomes our complete victory and our sure hope.

And like circumcision in Abraham’s day, baptism is for our children. The helpless infants of Israel had the sign of God’s covenant and blessing set upon them to show that salvation does not depend on man who wills or who runs, but on God who has mercy. As we baptize Abel today, we do not believe that it saves him. There will come a day when the grace promised today must be embraced by him and he will have to look in faith to Christ for himself. But until that day, the grace of God will be hammered into his life through God’s Word, through prayer, and his baptism as a testimony of God’s faithfulness to him. God’s grace will work on him through his parents and through us, his church family.

We believe that “the efficacy of Baptism is not tied to that moment of time when it is administered; but at the same time, by the right use of this sacrament ordained by Christ, the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited, and given, by the Holy Spirit, to such (whether of age or infants) as God is, by His will and His timing, please to give His grace to.” (WCF 28.6 paraphrased)

In other words, baptism is a big, bright sign pointing us to the Gospel; to Christ’s death and resurrection that secures forgiveness and life for us. Adam and Laura, this all means that you should never take Abel’s baptism for granted, but nevertheless it should encourage you that God loves you and He loves your children, too. I want to encourage you to help Abel improve upon his baptism by living by faith in Christ. You must teach him to read the Scriptures. You must instruct him in the truth of our faith while praying for his salvation and growth in Christ and praying with him as well. Set an example of faith and devotion to Christ for Abel, even a life of repentance and faith in Jesus… (move out of pulpit)

[Invite Adam, Laura and Dick to join me up front – Dick should be on my left with the Whites on my right]

Our God says,

“For to you is the promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him. And I [says the LORD] will establish my covenant between me and you and your seed after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto you and to your seed after you. Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you shall be saved, you and your house. (Acts 2:39; Gen. 17:7; Acts 16:31)

Adam and Laura, I have some questions for you. If you are able, respond to them by saying, “We do.”

Do you acknowledge your child's need of the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, & the renewing grace of the Holy Spirit?Do you claim God's covenant promises in his behalf, & do you look in faith to the Lord Jesus Christ for his salvation, as you do your own?Do you now unreservedly dedicate your child to God, & promise, in humble reliance upon divine grace, that you will endeavor to set before him a godly example, that you will pray with & for him, that you will teach him the doctrines of our holy religion, & that you will strive, by all the means of God's appointment, to bring him up in the nurture & admonition of the Lord?

And to you, the congregation, I have a question:

4. Do you as I congregation undertake the responsibility of assisting the parents in the Christian nurture of this child?

- If so, would you indicate with a loud and joyful, “We do.”

[Take Abel into my arms and pray a brief blessing over him.]

- Father, would you provide the covering of the blood of Your precious Lamb, Jesus, for this boy. Would you grant him the gift of faith so that he never knows a day apart from your love for him in Christ. May he grow in stature and in your grace and in obedience to Jesus and may he become a blessing to others in your Kingdom through the work of Your Spirit. Amen.

“Abel William White, child of the covenant, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”

[Return Abel and conclude the baptism with Prayer]

- Father, we praise your goodness and love for us that you have proved to us in Jesus. Would you continue to hammer your grace into our lives, especially Abel’s, by Your Spirit so that we might walk in love and obedience to Christ, always repenting of even our best efforts, and always believing that his death is our death and his life is our life. Make it so, we pray, so that we might be a blessing to others; to our families and to our town. Use us as you will and hasten the day that the whole earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the seas.

[Return to the pulpit and pronounce the benediction]