GOD’S WILL AND GOD’S PROMISE
Everyone here I suppose is familiar with the story of how God told Abraham that he had to sacrifice his son Isaac. The story in the Bible is told mainly from the perspective of Abraham. But have you ever stopped and thought about it from Isaac’s view-point? Well this evening I’d like to do just that, let you listen and ponder this, well known, story from the point of view of its potential victim.
Good evening—let me introduce myself, my name is Isaac, but good ole dad calls me “The Son of Promise.” According to my father, you know him as Abraham, if all of God’s promises are going to come true, they’ll have to come true through me. No pressure, right? But I guess when you become a father at 100 years old, you’re allowed to be a little … eccentric. But you may know me by another name, Laughter.
That’s what Mom calls me: “Laughter!” Well, I guess everyone calls me that: my name, Isaac, means laughter. But for Mom, it was more than just a name. The way she tells the story, Mom named me laughter because of her joy at “finally having a baby at such an advanced age.” Mom, or Sarah, was 90 years old when I was born and my birth was a big event. I mean, I get it; around here, not having kids is grounds for divorce. And thank goodness for that, because Dad always was a bit different from our neighbors. He loved Mom all those years, even though they couldn’t have children. So, when I finally came along, it’s no wonder Mom laughed! But, dad likes to add a bit more information to the story when he tells it.
I guess because I’m the Son of Promise to him, he tells it just a little differently. “O, your mom laughed when you were born all right,” he says, “but I remember how she laughed the year before, laughed at an angel of God, can you believe it?” “Sarah laughed and laughed at the promise that she would give me a son from her own body. Never laugh at the promises of God, my boy; your God can do the impossible!” Yes, dad loves to remind me of that, “your God can do the impossible. Well I guess that’s Dad for you. But I also guess you could say I’m proof of that fact.
So, you can call me Isaac, or Laughter, or even Son of Promise—they’re all related … though I remember a time when they didn’t seem related at all. Dad clung to that Son of Promise bit, but Mom sure didn’t laugh when she found out, later, after it was all over. You might not know, but my dad is kind of a big deal in these parts. Although we don’t come from around here, Dad’s pretty well off, and he gets a lot of respect. So, it wasn’t all that crazy for the old eccentric to decide we were going on a field trip, especially if it meant a chance to worship his God, a God our neighbors honestly didn’t quite understand.
I’m not sure Dad quite understood God all the time either, but even when he didn’t understand completely, Dad trusted. So, the Almighty God said, “Field trip!” And Dad packed up the donkey. Mom made a sack lunch to go, and had us each take a servant along, you know, just in case. Mom’s like that. I remember being pretty excited about going on an adventure with Dad. I knew the trip was something special, because we had to cut wood for the sacrifice before we left. Dad didn’t think we would find enough kindling at higher elevations. So, we packed firewood and our tinderbox and headed up into the mountains.
On the third day, Dad said this is where we stop. Then he said to the servants: “Wait here with the donkey while I and the boy go a bit further, to that peak in the distance. That’s where the boy and I will go to worship, and then we’ll come back to you.” Dad took the tinderbox and I offered to carry the wood, so he put it on my shoulders. It was heavier than I expected, and I got a few blisters on my way up the hill. It wasn’t until we were almost there that I got to thinking: “Hey, Dad?” I asked when we stopped for a breather, “I see fire, and I see wood, and the place for the sacrifice, but where’s the lamb for the burnt offering? Haven’t you forgot the most important part?” Dad, without saying too much, simply said “God himself will provide for the sacrifice, my son.”
At the time, it almost sounded like a promise, but a promise he was working hard to believe. I’m not sure how Dad knew exactly where to stop, but it was a pretty nice spot. You could hear a spring nearby, and the hill we were on looked down on a lush valley, and up to a limestone peak on the other. Chunks of limestone littered the hill, and it only took a dozen or so to put a suitable altar together. We laid out the wood carefully, in a kind of bowl, so it would cradle the offering while it burned. Dad placed the firebox right next to the limestone, then turned to face me.
He didn’t threaten. He didn’t beg. He didn’t try to explain. But I think he was praying under his breath as he tenderly but firmly tied me hand and foot. If he had panicked, I think I would have panicked, too. But Dad just methodically prepared me for sacrifice. It was all he could do to manage to get me up on the wood. He anointed me with the oil of sacrifice; it felt warm and sticky as it ran down my forehead. The sharp smell of myrrh in the olive oil was almost stifling. I found it suddenly hard to breathe, and a deep terror began to rise in me. I didn’t want to die. I couldn’t imagine my own father ending me like this.
His hopes and dreams for the future were tied up with me and my future. I knew what the Promise meant to him. Everything I thought I knew suddenly didn’t make any sense. Silently, the ceremonial knife appeared in his hand. I felt paralyzed; all I could do was watch. I wouldn’t tell everyone this, but I’ll admit it to you: lying there on the wood, oil running down my head, feeling like I was going to drown, I was no longer sure there was a God of promise. I was no longer sure there was a God at all. Finally, Dad spoke: “Isaac, my son!” he cried. Then he said, Isaac, “Your God can do the impossible!” And he raised the knife.
What I saw in his eyes at that moment took away my doubts. What I saw wasn’t fear on his face, or at least, it wasn’t only fear. I also saw love. I saw pride. But above all, I saw trust. Dad always put trust in the promise of God at the center of our family life. You know why he moved from the land of Ur to this strange place, right? Because God told him to. My father didn’t have a plan or a destination in mind. God promised. God said, “Field trip!” So Dad and I went.
That dependence on God’s promise is what I saw in his eyes, even as the blade of the knife caught the sunlight and flashed. He told me later that the way he figured it, God could raise the dead if He wanted to. I mean, there I was, the Son of Promise, living proof that the Almighty could bring life out of dead bodies. If I died—and stayed dead—then all of God’s promise couldn’t come true. But Dad wasn’t willing to accept that. I was born a miracle and a promise, he said, and a God who could bring life from death was a God to be trusted, even when it didn’t make sense.
Maybe his trust was contagious. Or, maybe it’s just the way I was raised. But once I saw the trust in dad’s eyes, I didn’t even try to escape. I didn’t roll off that altar and run back to mom. I mean, the cords on my hands were pretty tight—Dad had to cut them off afterward—but the cords on my ankles? I think Dad intentionally left them loose, and if his teenage Son of Promise escaped from a man who was over a hundred years old, who could blame him? But I didn’t try to get away. Dad trusted God’s promise; I trusted my dad. And the sacrificial knife flashed in the sunlight.
Dad put his hand over my eyes and I couldn’t see what was going to happen next. Only at that moment—at the last possible moment—God showed up. “Abraham! Abraham!” It was the voice of the Angel of the Lord, a voice that echoes in my dreams to this day. “Here I am,” Dad says, just like always. God speaks, Abraham listens. That’s just the way it is. But this time, I could hear the voice, too: “Don’t lay a hand on the boy! I have seen, and now I know, that you trust me above all else, since you were willing to give me your son, your Son of Promise.”
With a huge sigh, Dad throws down the knife and grabs me off of the firewood, like a younger father would have picked up his baby from a crib. He holds me tight and tells me he loves me as tears run down into that great beard of his. That embrace, he later said, was like he had actually gotten me back from the grave. He fully intended to kill me that day, thinking—hoping—trusting that God could raise the dead in order to keep His promises. But for the entire trip, three long days, I seemed dead to him, and now he had me, back to life!
To say the least, Dad was a mess. And OK, I admit, I was pretty shaken up, too. But as we stood there in an awkward hug—have you ever tried hugging someone with both arms tied behind your back?—Dad looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thorn bush. “I told you!” He laughed. “The Lord will provide!” And that’s been the name of the mountain ever since: The Lord will provide. We have a family saying I know I’ll be passing on to my kids and grandkids: “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
So, Dad cut me loose. We put the sacrifice on the altar, on my altar—I remember, the ram fit nicely into the dent my own body made in the kindling—and as I watched the smoke rise to heaven, I couldn’t help thinking that I have a God of promise. That my God provided a substitute in my place. That my God can do the impossible. “Your God can do the impossible!”
I wonder if this is how Jesus felt as He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knew He would be betrayed by one off His own. He knew that He would face and unjust trial. He knew that He would be mocked, beaten and abused. He knew that He would have to carry His own cross to Golgotha. He knew that He was going to die. But, He also knew that God the Father could raise Him from the dead, that His God and our God, can do the impossible. Jesus was the unblemished sacrifice that atoned for our sins and because He was obedient even to death, He was the only one who could win for us both salvation and everlasting life.
Jesus, the Lamb of God, knew what Abraham knew: “We can be confident of this: God’s promise will prevail.” When God’s will seems confusing, when God’s promises seem remote, anytime we’re carrying the burden of sin: God Himself has already provided the Lamb. When we’re facing brokenness because of sin, brokenness because of sickness, brokenness in the face of death: on the mountain of the Lord it will be provided. Abraham knew the promise. Jesus both trusted and fulfilled the promise. That assurance is also for us today: “We can be confident of this: God’s promise will prevail.”
Amen
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