A Father's Story

Sometimes I am careless in the way I respond to an invitation. Often I don’t respond at all. Or I say I’ll come if I can…let me check my schedule. But there are those invitations that have the initials R.S.V.P. at the end. Here that the person who is inviting me desires that I respond with one of the following responses: Yes, I will attend or No, with regrets, I am unable to be there. On some occasions, the person who extends an invitation to me may wonder if I actually received the invitation, or did I ignore it if I received it, or if I just forgot because after all, we all are really busy. I don’t think that I am alone in my cavalier manner in the way I interact with an invitation. A lot of people in this culture act the same way. And often the one who is inviting us has the attitude of “Come if you can and if you don’t I’ll understand.” But in other parts of the world, it is considered rude if you do not at least acknowledge the invitation because it shows a lack of respect for the host. And in some cultures today it is considered an insult if we do not come. After all, we are invited. And invitations are special.

Today we look at an old familiar story in the Bible concerning Abraham.
God speaks to Abraham at the high point of his life, giving him an invitation, so to speak, for Abraham to obey His command to sacrifice his son Isaac. God does not communicate with him in the form of a request or gives Abraham any other option. This is the pattern of the God of the Bible. When He speaks to a human being and tells them what He wants them to do, this communication is an invitation. It is no less so today, even in our culture.
God never wonders if we got the invitation. To Him invitations are special and He still speaks to His people. He sends the invitation personally because the invitation is not only special, it is important to Him, to us, and future generations of God’s people.

Let’s read the scripture referred to in the Jewish tradition as The Binding. It is a reference to the binding of Isaac to the sacrificial altar by his father Abraham. It is a father’s story. Abraham’s story can teach us how to respond to God in times where He invites us to go to a place we don’t want to go and do something we don’t want to do. Everything that had taken place in Abraham’s life was leading up to this crucial test. How would he respond to this invitation from God?

Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”
So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance.
Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there; and we will worship and return to you.” Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son, and he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” And he said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”
So the two of them walked on together. Then they came to the place of which God had told him; and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood, and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.”
Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. Abraham called the name of that place The LORD Will Provide, as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the LORD it will be provided.”

God invites you to become involved in His work…our response to God will determine our experience with God today and for the rest of our lives.

God’s invitation to Abraham included three aspects: Examination, Revelation, and Declaration.

I. GOD’S INVITATION INCLUDES AN EXAMINATION:

Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham (Gen 22:1)

Like a Master Craftsman, God continually tests what He is working on. He does not call us to follow Him and leave us to wander aimlessly and without direction. God was actively involved over the period of Abraham’s life since He called him to leave his ancestral home and go to a place he did not know. Abraham’s life was shaped by a series of choices that he made over time as to whether he trusted himself and his own ability more than he trusted in the promises of God. God was building a fruitful father from a faithful follower. This is God’s plan. He calls us to follow Him. And He examines our faithfulness to follow.

God requires us to offer completely that which is most precious. In the manner consistent with the sacrificial system, God has told Abraham to offer his son as a burnt offering. The method of a burnt offering consisted of a total sacrifice of the most prized specimen such as a bull or lamb. God wanted Abraham to be willing to surrender his son, his only son Isaac, the one that he loved to God. This was the ultimate test of his life. God presses in on him and Abraham is out of options. He can obey or not. But in this was a teaching moment, for both father and son.

We cannot teach our children how to follow God unless we follow God. We will not be an example to the next generation if we do not exemplify obedience to God. Our lives as fathers will not bear fruit unless we are faithfully following God. When we respond obediently, God reveals where He is working.

II. GOD’S INVITATION INCLUDES A REVELATION:

There was a revelation to Abraham and for Abraham. He was called to trust God. Trust requires a test. In this extreme test, God is the ultimate test administrator. He desires that the subject of the test receives a greater revelation of the ability of God to provide the resources needed for obedience. In other words, God wanted Abraham to learn that God can be trusted with our test. He is there to help us be obedient.

There was a revelation to Isaac and for Isaac. Isaac trusted his father. But he must learn to trust God more. He trusted Abraham. His language suggests this. He calls him “my father”, a personal term of the utmost respect. His attitude of obedience in “the binding” tells me he was submitted to his father’s will. After all, Isaac, at least a teenager by this time, could have probably overpowered this aged man who was well over 100 years old. Because he trusted Abraham and was obedient to his directive, God would indeed reveal more to him. This is the way of God. He reveals more when we obey more. Another revelation for Isaac is the revelation of God’s provision. “Where is the lamb?” was Isaac’s question to Abraham. “God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering,” was Abraham’s answer. Isaac’s substitutionary sacrifice, the ram caught in the thicket, is a type that points to Christ on the cross, offered as the Lamb of God for God and to God as a total sacrifice for our sin in our place. Isaac was bound to the altar just as surely as we were bound to the cross in the sacrificial death of Christ. Isaac was spared by God’s provision. So were we. What a revelation.

There was a revelation in the world around them. Child sacrifice was common to the pagan culture around them. It is common in our world today. Children are sacrificed because people do not live as though they trust and love God. Their innocence and youth are squandered because of parental pursuit of personal pleasure. Even in our culture, people do not often see God’s people loving God more than pagans love their gods. Abraham was to be seen by the pagan culture around him that he loved and obeyed his God at least as much as the idolaters loved their idols. The culture we are surrounded by today needs to see a revelation of God’s people loving God more than the non-Christian loves their functional gods.

There was a revelation of God Himself. Here is what God desired that the Canaanite people see about the God of Abraham. He wanted them to see a God that is unique, a one-of-a- kind God. It is what God desires that people in our culture see today. This God is different. He desires obedience and not sacrifice. The people of God should reflect that our God is different and demands radical obedience rather than unreasonable sacrifice. The offering of Christ on the cross was more than sufficient to atone for our sin and to effect our salvation.
When God reveals Himself in a personal way, it is a message we can declare.

III. GOD’S INVITATION INCLUDES A DECLARATION:

“God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” (8)
Abraham called the name of that place The LORD Will Provide, as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the LORD it will be provided.” (14)

God always provides the means for what He requires. We are able because God enables. We can be obedient because God desire that we obey. And He makes a way for us to obey. This was a story that no doubt this father and son would relate to future generations. The whole point to this story is that we can trust God will provide for Himself what He requires of us.
Abraham would not die until His grandson Jacob was a teenager. Do you think Jacob ever heard the story? Jacob would do his own faith-wrestling with God. Jacob would have to trust God and could not rely on what God had done in the life of Isaac and Abraham. But the story that a father tells his son and grandson about God can surely shape our faith.

Sometimes the next generation needs to hear a faith-building story. My grandfather died a few years ago in his nineties. At his funeral his former pastor told a story about an event I remembered as a young boy. The details about this personal story were hidden from me. I would have loved to have heard the story from my grandfather or even my father. The story unfolded at the funeral told of a time when my father’s younger brother, my grandfather’s youngest son, was serving his second combat tour in Vietnam. My grandparents received a message from the Marine Corps that he was missing in action and feared that he was dead. This pastor related that my grandfather called him and asked him to meet with him and a couple of other men at the church building to pray. When the pastor arrived, there was only my grandfather’s car in the parking lot. When the pastor stepped out of his car he could hear the sound of a man crying out in prayer to his God from inside the building. As he entered the sanctuary, the praying never stopped. When the other men got there, they prayed into the night for hours and hours. Finally, my grandfather stopped praying and stood up. He said that he believed he could trust God with this trial. The next day the Marine Corps notified my grandparents that their son had been found. God can indeed be trusted with our trials. And when you think about it, God entrusts the trial to us as well. His invitation always includes a decision to trust Him.

God includes examination, revelation, and declaration in His invitation. He does this so there will be communication about Him throughout the next generation. It is our privilege to share our story and how it is woven in God’s story. God is still building a people of faith. He is still testing what He is making.

Here is the so what of today’s message: Do you have a story about God’s faithfulness to tell to the next generation? Are you faithfully telling it and living like it makes a difference to you in your life?

God invites you to become involved in His work…our response to God will determine our experience with God today and for the rest of our lives for future generations.