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A Study in Hebrews Covenant Text: Genesis 22:1-18 ● This story has always disturbed me on so many levels, not the least of which being the story-tellers refusal to ‘explain God’s actions’, and the lack of detail concerning Abraham’s demeanor during this episode. It’s ‘outrageous’ and ‘inspiring’, all at the same time. Part of me would like to believe that Abraham never ‘flinched’ (giving me hope that maybe my faith could eventually resemble that), but there’s a bigger part of me that hopes Abraham ‘struggled’. ● Whatever God does, he must do it through these vessels of ‘clay’ filled with this strange mix of hope and doubt. It’s his plan to restore us by shaping within us a heart which ‘rightly worships’. ● This story is the story of a human being attempting to make sense of life according to this God; to interact with a God he has become convinced is both available to him and distinct from him. He is the one who Paul says ‘exemplifies faith’. ● In the process, I discover that my faith is much more ‘tame’; my version has been ‘domesticated’… adapted to fit (dictionary.com- ‘to adapt so as to be beneficial for human beings’: ‘to take something foreign and use it for your own purposes’: ‘to make more ordinary’). ● Most often faith does not come to us as a definition, or formula, but as a story; a story full of personal interaction and action (‘go-went-departed-passed through-moved on-journeyed, etc.) Faith cannot be reduced to an explanation; it’s a passion. Faith is a way of living which perceives God as both present and personal; a God who speaks, who is to be listened to and calls us to obey. ● Faith is shaped within a confusing mix of the seen and unseen, the temporary and the eternal, light and darkness, knowledge and mystery, silence and communication, now and later. ►Sometimes life makes it hard to trust God. Sometimes the promises of the new life God offers get lost in the maze of impossibility and human failure. ● There appears to be a great deal of ‘paradox’ surrounding the dream of God and the likelihood of its realization. For example, Abe is told that God will make him into a great nation, but he’s really old and Sarai is ‘barren’. Abe passed through the land that God promised, but at the time, it was ‘occupied’ (Gen.12:6-7). Now he actually has the promised son and God says ‘sacrifice him’ ● We come to the story knowing that Isaac is in no immanent danger; but Abraham doesn’t know that. It’s our greatest challenge: we already have it figured out! So, Abraham hears this voice- one he’s heard before. He knows that every time he hears that voice, life is about to get ‘interesting’! [I’ve heard that voice before] His response has been consistent… “Here I am”. At first, our response is somewhat naïve, but eventually, it becomes more intentional, knowing what such a response demands. Faith is not just about our ‘inner world’ or our ‘private beliefs’; it’s this daring act of the will prompted by outrageous trust. ►Whenever God asks something of us, it will inspire both ‘faith’ and ‘fear’: tension. It’s where God’s space and ours intersect; it’s where we realize that he’s closer than we thought, and that realization sometimes lends itself to comfort and sometime to fear [often as reverence, but often because God is mysterious and disorienting]. Listen, God knows for you to believe/trust involves ‘risk’; and risk naturally creates ‘fear’. That’s why the Bible keeps reminding us that “God is for us” and that “nothing can separate us from his love” (Romans 8:31, 39): THERE’S NO NEED TO BE AFRAID! ● The conviction that I am loved is the only thing that will allow me to risk trust. 1 John 4:16 “And so we know and rely upon the love God has for us.” Psalm 13:5 “But I trust in your unfailing love;…” ● Your response in the midst of this tension will most accurately display who/what you love. We don’t often speak about faith in this context. In fact, most of what we’ve been offered as ‘faith’ has been romanticized; a fanciful, but temporary escape from the harsh realities. Trust is… … forfeiting your right to understand and foregoing your demands for proof, It wasn’t understanding that allowed Abraham to trust; it was the sense that no matter what, he was safe with God. …proceeding on insufficient evidence; acting as if you really believe (sometimes, that’s the best we can do!) … our loving response when God appears ‘confused’; when God appears to be contradicting himself. … faith at the breaking point; it’s what you have left when your faith has failed (faith in God or faith in our faith in God?) ● Altars became an integral part of Abraham’s life; his journey was ‘riddled with them’. Each became a place of prayer; an intersection (between he and God); a decisive moment. Although it may at times appear ‘unexpected’, sacrifice is intentional and requires a great deal of attention to detail (i.e. 3 days walk, the servants, packing the donkey with supplies, chopping the wood, securing the fire, etc. ● This call to a life of sacrifice demonstrates how radically different this life with God into which we’ve been called. That ‘hollow professions’ will not survive and cannot experience the ‘kingdom’; that declarations of faith, absent of decisive action render your faith useless. ►Sometimes, the best thing that can happen to you is for you to lose your faith. We often attach the label ‘faith’ to our expectations and then when God doesn’t accommodate us, we conclude that he cannot be trusted and that faith doesn’t work. ● It’s about living with ‘hope’, but not with ‘expectations’. Hope rests in the fact that God is faithful and will keep his promises, but expectation requires he do it in a certain way. ● The ‘testing of faith’ allows for a continual re-orienting and re-ordering of life around the ‘true God’ and not the fanciful image presented. It’s the difference between ‘trusting God’ and trusting ‘our ideas about God’. ►I have found that sometimes God really means it. “No, really, leave!” “Yeah, your son Isaac”. ● I’m not sure, but I would like to think he left early because he had been up ‘all night’; sitting by Isaac’s bedside, watching him breathe, remembering the promise of his birth and the day of delivery. Abraham sets out with a pocket full of Mylanta, a head full of questions and a heart convinced that God could be trusted. ►The faith that Abram had to ‘leave Ur’ when God said ‘go’ would not be sufficient for Moriah. The ‘binding’ is introduced to us as a ‘test’ and it comes to Abraham, “Some time later…” [seems almost ‘random’, doesn’t it? When we thought we should be beyond that; when we feel we’ve done enough to prove our love: ‘what more does he want?’] When he had enough experience of God to know that he is anything but ‘predictable’; but he is ‘faithful’. ● We cannot be trusted to perform ‘self-tests’: we cheat, we’re self-accommodating ; we ensure that the weight can be lifted, the goal can be attained. We make life ‘attainable’ without God. ● Testing strips away all the illusions; I’m confronted with who I really am and who I thought I was. ● Faith tests are like the little red pills from elementary school: we are left with areas which are a testimony to our attentiveness, and other areas which expose our inattentiveness. Although the test appeared to be about ‘humiliation’, it was really about helping me address reality.
Sacrifice always broadens our vision of God; it makes life bigger than ourselves, and when it’s finished, we never feel depleted/diminished, but more complete; more whole. Sacrifice is the place of clarification; where we discern the ‘true God’; where we really discover if we believe in sovereignty or if we’ll opt for control. ● For centuries, people have seen in this story a parallel of God offering refusing to withhold even his only son. Roman 8 says, "…he who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all." He was offered up for our sins. He was the Son sacrificed and the ram caught in the thicket whom God provided to take away the sins of the world. “God will provide…”
‘Jireh’- the God
who sees in advance. |
