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Location:
6425 Jefferson Rd. For
directions, click here.
Jerry
Varnado,
pastor September
29, 2002 Today's
text is a long one, but I think
we need to read all of it to
capture the full impact of the
story, and so that we can begin
to understand how this story
applies to us today. Look
with me at Genesis 22:1-19 -- the
story of God testing Abraham by
asking him to give up his
precious son, Isaac. "Here
I am," he replied. 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." On
the third day Abraham looked
up and saw the place in the
distance. 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." 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, 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?" Abraham
answered, "God himself will
provide the lamb for the burnt
offering, my son." And the two
of them went on
together. 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.
Then he reached out his hand
and took the knife to slay his
son. But the angel of the LORD
called out to him from heaven,
"Abraham! Abraham!"
"Here
I am," he replied." 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." 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. 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."
The
angel of the LORD called to
Abraham from heaven a second
time and said, "I swear by
myself, declares the LORD,
that because you have done
this and have not withheld
your son, your only son, I
will surely bless you and make
your descendants as numerous
as the stars in the sky and as
the sand on the seashore. Your
descendants will take
possession of the cities of
their enemies, and through
your offspring all nations on
earth will be blessed, because
you have obeyed me."
Then
Abraham returned to his
servants, and they set off
together for Beersheba. And
Abraham stayed in
Beersheba. Some
of you are students. How many of
you enjoy taking tests or exams?
What about you employees? How
many of you delight in undergoing
your employee evaluation? Not
many takers on either of
those. One
more for all of us: How many of
us regularly ask God to put us to
the test? Hmm. I don't see any
hands going up! No
surprise here. As a rule, we
don't like to be tested,
evaluated, or judged. But being
tested is an important part of
our relationship with
God. God
tested Abraham, and while this is
the first time that the
Scriptures tell us plainly that
God tested someone, it certainly
isn't the last. In fact, we find
that God puts his people to the
test with regularity -- for
reasons that I think will become
plain as we go along. When
Abraham was 75 years old, God
promised him that He would make
him into a great nation. That was
quite a promise since he and his
wife Sarah were already beyond
childbearing age. Even
so, Abraham believed God's
promise -- and that is why he is
known to us as the "father of
faith." But
as the years went by, a
not-so-subtle shift of faith and
trust occurred in Abraham and
Sarah. They decided that God
wasn't going to come through, so
they gave Him some help in
fulfilling His promise. Sarah
offered Abraham her slave girl as
a concubine, and Ishmael was born
from their union. That
proved to be a huge mistake. The
descendants of Ishmael, the
Arabs, have been at war with
descendants of Abraham, the Jews,
ever since. Twenty-five
years after God made His promise
to Abraham, Sarah finally
conceived and Isaac was born.
Isaac brought delight to his
parents -- and great hope. This
was the child of promise -- the
child who would become a great
nation. But
then comes what we just read
about in Genesis 22. "What was
that you said God? Sacrifice
Isaac?" Why
would God demand that Abraham do
such a thing? To
understand Genesis 22, we must
first understand that the people
of this time preserved truth
through the conveyance of story.
By setting up this event, God
created a story which would
preserve the truths that He
wanted Abraham -- and future
generations -- to
learn. Let's
talk about three of these truths.
The first is this: Yahweh, the
LORD, does not require child
sacrifice. This
truth was important to the people
living in this time and place.
Several Canaanite religions
practiced child sacrifice. Human
children were killed to appease
their false gods. But
this wasn't the LORD's way.
Indeed, child sacrifice, we learn
later, is an abomination to Him.
But at this point in the
unfolding of Scripture, we don't
know that. Through this this
story of Abraham and Isaac, God
begins to shape our understanding
regarding this. Why
couldn't God just
tell Abraham that
He didn't require child
sacrifice? He certainly could
have, but then there would no
gripping, riveting story to hold
and convey this truth down
through the
generations. Now,
the idea of child sacrifice isn't
something we even think about
today. It is foreign to our
understanding, in the sense of
burning children on a
altar. But
let's consider about this in a
modern context. There are other
ways to sacrifice children, even
while trying to please
God Let
me give you an
example.
Bob
Tuttle is a fifth generation
Methodist preacher. He's been
here a couple of times to speak
at the Athens-Area Holy Spirit
Conference. I heard him say once
that he grew up hating the church
-- because he never saw his
father. Church work -- this
meeting and that meeting --
always seemed to keep his dad
away from home. Another
example: my friend, Steve
Seamands, now a professor at
Asbury Seminary, talks about the
emotional pain of being put in a
boarding school as a child while
his parents served as
missionaries in a foreign
land. Now
I know that Bob and Steve's
parents had the best of
intentions, and they truly were
serving the Lord. But here's my
point: If we're not careful, we
can do lasting damage to our
children by neglecting them while
trying to serve God. I'm
glad I serve a church where
people don't demand my presence
at every little thing, and
thereby cause me to neglect my
family. I've seen some lay people
neglect their families to serve
God and churches that encouraged
them to do it. Yahweh does not
require child
sacrifice. In
this story, we see first image of
what theologians call
"substitutionary atonement," the
very thing that will be at the
center of the work of Christ. God
will later literally offer His
own Son as a sacrifice for the
forgiveness of the sins of the
whole world. Remember
the First Commandment? "You shall
have no other gods before me"
(Exodus 20:3). When
Jesus was asked what the greatest
commandment is, He said it is to
love God with all our heart,
soul, strength and mind (Luke
10:27) -- which is simply a
paraphrase of the First
Commandment. Jesus
also put the First Commandment
another way: "Seek first the
Kingdom of God and His
righteousness" (Matthew
6:33). Friends,
whatever we allow to assume a
higher position in our lives than
God is really our God. And
I think this is what was going on
with Abraham. His trust had
shifted again. It wasn't too long
ago that he gave up on God and
had a child with another
woman. Now
that the promised child has come
his trust has shifted again from
God to the gift God has
given. Do you see the
difference? No longer is he
trusting the miracle power of God
to fulfill the promise, he is
looking to the miracle child as
the means of its
fulfillment. This
wasn't a conscious thing -- it
never is -- but Abraham had let
Isaac take a higher position in
his life than God. I
don't think it would have ever
crossed Abraham's mind to ponder
this issue, to think about
whether Isaac had become more
important to him than God's
promise. That's why God had to
test him. God
had to bring Abraham to the point
where he would be forced to think
it through. He would have to ask
himself the question: "What is
the most important thing in my
life, Isaac or God?" -- and then
make a conscious
choice. To
put it mildly, this is a hard
test! And the bottom line is that
while God didn't require the
sacrifice of Isaac's life, he did
require Abraham to give total,
unwavering commitment to God.
Abraham had to embrace the fact
that the top priority wasn't
Isaac. The top priority was God's
plan and purpose. I
think the reason I gravitated to
this message for today is the
analogy to our present situation.
I really didn't see the analogy
until I was almost through with
the sermon and was asking God,
"So what? What does this story
have to do with us at Gateway
Church in the 21st
century?" The
it dawned on me: the new building
that we've be striving toward is
our "Isaac." Isaac
was not the promise. He was only
God's means of fulfilling the
promise to make Abraham a great
nation. God had to test Abraham
to ensure that Abraham was very
clear on this. When
I first began pastoring this
church, the promise I felt God
had given -- not only to me or us
but also to every church -- was
to prosper the church and to "add
to the church daily those who are
being saved" (Acts 2:47). That's
how we should measure successful
ministry. Oh,
I know all about "internal
growth" and "being faithful to
God," but the bottom line is
this: if the church is being the
church it should grow
numerically. That is the pattern
of the Scriptures. Now
friends, we've just completed a
successful financial campaign for
a new building. This building is
something we have asked God for,
believing that it will stimulate
growth and help us accomplish His
purpose for this church. But the
building is not the promise -- it
is only a means, a tool for God
to fulfill the promise. The
building is our
"Isaac." Furthermore,
this building is no longer a
distant hope but a present
reality. We can now see the baby
growing in Sarah's womb; she is
getting big with child.
Groundbreaking is only months
away. So
I put before you this word, which
I believe is from God: Where is
our trust? Are we trusting God to
grow this church up and out, or
have we let our trust shift to
our "Isaac"? This
new building is not our savior;
it is not the answer to church
growth; it is not the end sought.
It is only a tool to assist in
the fulfillment of God's plan and
purpose for us. We
must be willing at any moment to
lay our "Isaac" on the altar. If
we fail to maintain that
attitude, then the building
becomes our god -- and the means
of the fulfillment of God's
promise will become an
abomination to Him. Would
we dare say, "Lord put us to the
test"? If you would, say this
prayer with me from Psalm 139.
I've put it on the video screens,
simply changing the singular
pronouns to plurals: Being
tested is not a pleasant thing,
but with God testing comes with a
great promise found in James
1:12: I
believe this crown of life isn't
just about what we get in heaven
when we die. I believe it relates
to Jesus' stated purpose of
giving us life on this earth that
is abundant, full, and
free. Let's
love God with all our heart,
soul, mind, and strength. Let us
keep Him and his purpose as our
first priority, trusting that as
we do, He will bestow upon us, as
faithful servants, the crown of
life -- and give us every tool we
need to do His will.
Gateway
Church gathers
for worship
Sundays
at 10:30 a.m.
(Hwy. 129) in Athens,
Georgia.
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A
GATEWAY SERMON
Put
to the test
Gateway
Church,
Athens GA
Some
time later God tested Abraham.
He said to him, "Abraham!"
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.
The
place of testing
The story
Three
truths
The
second truth from Genesis 22:
God Himself will provide the
sacrifice.
The
third truth from our text
today: We must be willing to
give to God and to trust Him with
that thing which is most precious
to us.
What
are we trusting
in?
Our 'Isaac'
Search us, O
GodSearch
us, O God, and know our
hearts; test us and know our
anxious thoughts. See if there
is any offensive way in us,
and lead us in the way
everlasting (Psalm
139:23-34).
Blessed
is the man who perseveres
under trial, because when he
has stood the test, he will
receive the crown of life that
God has promised to those who
love him.
An
audio tape of this sermon is
available
free of charge (U.S. requests
only).
Request
a tape by calling
or writing the Gateway Church
office.
Please specify tape number
020929a: Put to the
Test.
©
2002 Gerald R.
Varnado