Read the Transcript
We've got two readings today. The first one is Genesis 21 verses 1 to 7 and the second is Genesis 22 verses 1 to 19. And if you're reading along in the Red Bibles, it starts at page 29.
Now the Lord is gracious to Sarah as he had said and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age at the very time God had promised him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. When their son Isaac was eight years old, Abraham circumcised him as God commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born. Sarah said, God has brought me laughter and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me. And she added, who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children, yet I have borne him a son in his old age.
Sometime later, God tested Abraham. He said to him, Abraham, here I am, he replied. Then God said, take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you. Early the next morning, Abraham got up and loaded 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.
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 to set off together for Beersheba and Abraham stayed in Beersheba. This is the word of the Lord.
Is God Really Good?
Well, we're beginning this year with the conviction that God is good, that Jesus is good and good for you. But the question has been raised time and time again. Is God really good?
You might remember depending on how old you are, Christopher Hitchens once wrote a book called God is Not Great. And in it, he talked about the way in which religion caused humans to do things that were bad for the world. And he particularly notes this passage, that there seems to be in this moment of engagement with God a call to do something which is against our moral intuition as human beings.
How could a good God call his servant, his follower, to do something like this? Take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah, sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.
The Context of the Promise
Well, if you've been following the story of Abraham and you can grab a booklet which has the readings from the Old Testament and a bunch of matching readings from throughout the scriptures to kind of deepen your understanding. If you haven't had a chance, please do that.
If you've been following the story, you'll know that it began with a call to Abraham. Abram, as he was known then, from God. This man who was living in a normal polytheistic, that is a place where they worshipped lots of different gods, and sharing the religion of the surrounding peoples, was met by God Almighty, the one true creator God, and called to leave his country, his people, and his father's household to go into a land that God would show him, and he received blessings in doing this.
So Abram went and Lot, his nephew, went with him. Abram was 75 years old at that time. He went into an uncertain future, but he didn't go empty-handed. Yes, it absolutely took courage and faith, and we know Abraham as the father of faith, but this call well, this call resulted in much blessing.
Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age. 25 years into the call, God's promise to a childless couple came to fruition. Sarah, 90 years old, bears a baby to Abraham. She has a baby, and she is unexpectedly a first-time mum at 90. So he's followed, yeah, we're like, that's, no, that would be, I'm exhausted now.
Um, but we've seen Abram as he's followed the call of God, and he has received the great blessing of family. Now, there's been all kinds of ups and downs. Highly encourage you to read the story. It's very challenging and encouraging and intriguing.
Surrendering the Gift
But here, there is a new call. A call that seems to put all of this in danger. The blessing of the son, and this is probably, I don't know, 10 to 20 years into Isaac's life. He's not a baby. He's carrying wood. He's going on a three-day journey with his dad. He's able to ask and understand what's going on.
So having had these possibly decades of treasuring the son of promise, a new call from God comes. Not to enter into the unknown, but to surrender the gift. It's hard to understand how a good God could ask for the surrender of a good gift.
Well, let me give you a little bit of the context in the surrounding culture as to why Abraham will have heard this as a call to surrender a good gift, not God asking him to do something morally repugnant. Bad. I'm like, I've got the youth here today. You know, you've got big words. That's all good.
Well, in the ancient Near East, we've got to remember this is a Bronze Age man. We've got this written in our easy-to-read English versions, but this is a man who lived thousands and thousands and thousands of years ago, who was a tribal, nomadic, and then sort of foundationally agrarian society. This is very early Bronze Age civilization.
And in that civilization, human life was, well, it could be quite cheap when you felt you needed to appease gods to get success. And so we do know of in the surrounding nations and perhaps the tribes out of which Abraham came that there was such a thing as human sacrifice. We see it actually in the scriptures that there are talk of pagan kings who, when they're losing a battle, take their son and say, I'm going to kill him and God will give me success. The greatest sacrifice for the greatest crisis.
God's View on Sacrifice
In the scriptures, God says at every point, this is wrong. There is never ever a time where God says this sort of offering is acceptable to me, ever. He says it was never in my mind. I did not ask for it. That's in Jeremiah a couple of times. That's his language.
This is not something that the God who made every human being and who loves every human being and who treasures children and family. This is not something that he calls. However, Abrams only had 25 years of getting to know this God and he lived 75 years in a society in which maybe people thought that was something that you did do.
And so he, at every point in this journey of walking with God, is learning about who this God is. And so when God asks him to do this, perhaps he thinks, oh the God that made everything and that promised everything and that can do everything, maybe he is like this. Okay. Maybe.
But maybe he knew about the way in which first born children were so important that they should be somehow dedicated to God. So we see in the rest of the Old Testament that God says every first born as a symbol that I am the giver of life, that everything that happens on this earth belongs to me. The first born of everything belongs to me.
And so when you have flocks and herds, sheep and cattle and goats, the first one that is born you give to me, you make it a sacrifice. If you grow grain and fruits and vegetables, then you bring the first ones that have ripened to me and you offer them at the temple. Because this is the way that you show that everything that you have comes from me and you owe me everything.
When it comes to the first born in your family, God says you do something called redeeming them. You give something in their place. It is symbolically offering them, but it's not sacrificing them. No way, never. And so we see that you can do money, that God says the Levites, the whole priestly section of the people of Israel, are like a kind of a redeeming offering to God in place of all the first borns. Is that a word, borns? Anyway, the first born children.
So God does already shape an idea about an offering of a first born. And so even if Abraham was uncertain of whether God would be asking for a real life sacrifice, he will have understood the importance of dedicating the first born.
The Test: What is at the Centre?
But we don't know at this point what God's plans were, only that Abraham was being called to follow God for God's self. The test was not really of was Abraham worthy of God's promises they'd been given. You've seen over the last three weeks that God gives out of his initiative, his goodness, his grace.
Abram was the start of an answer to sin, that God would create a whole nation, a whole people on the earth who would know him and draw every nation to come to know God. This is God's initiative at every point and God's goodness at every point.
But the test is not is Abraham worthy of these, but does Abram know, does Abraham know that God himself, the giver of every good thing, is the one in whom he should delight and trust and place at the center of absolutely everything.
You can imagine, this boy is named, Isaac is named, he laughs. I mean, it is just a picture of delight. It's not laugh at, it's laugh with joy. Maybe he was funny and he had jokes, who knows, but this is the baby of delight. He's called, I laugh with joy at being given this baby and they've had decades of enjoying this one.
But God is testing Abraham to show Abraham to himself. God knows all of us at every point, but he tests and he puts hard things sometimes or allows hard things because he wants us to be able to see whether what we say is at the center is really at the center.
It's very easy when you've received something very special from God to start to shift that into the center. In our beautiful society, in our beautiful nation, with our friends or our families, if you have children or in your job or things that you really, really, really treasure. It's what we do, it's what the human heart does is to slowly take that very delightful thing and just put it into the center. And the giver of that delightful thing, the one that caused us joy, just gets shifted and shifted and shifted.
In Deuteronomy 8, God says to the people of Israel, now when you come into the land and you get all the delightful things and you have the food that you need and you're able to build houses and settle down and you find abundance there, milk and honey, be careful because what happens is you're going to shift me out of the way and you're going to shift that into the middle. And if you do that, then life is not going to be about laughter anymore because I am the center of delight. And so Abraham sort of prefigures that test, this beautiful thing that God has done at the center, or is God at the center?
Jesus and the Test
Now, we know another man who was tested like this in the wilderness. Jesus, when he begins his ministry, is tested to see whether he would keep God at the center or whether he would do, use his power to create comfort and delight and safety for himself.
And so the evil one, the devil, the Satan, the tempter, takes him and says, well, you're hungry, just tell these stones to become bread. You've got God at the center, but boy, everything else is feeling a bit empty. How about you create something and put it there? No, Jesus says.
Then he says, okay, well, why don't I take you up here? And if you throw yourself down, God's going to catch you and everyone is going to think you are amazing. Let's do that. And Jesus says, no, you don't put the Lord your God to the test.
And finally, the devil just kind of stops mucking around and goes, all right, I'll give you everything. Let's put everything in the center. He takes him to a high mountain, shows him all the kingdoms of the world. All this I will give you if you will bow down and worship me. You want everything. You want to laugh. You want to have the delights of every part of the world right at the center. And Jesus says, away from me, Satan. You will worship God and him only. I am God's. God will stay at the center.
So Abraham in this call, which seems a horror, is really facing that question that we all face and that Jesus faced and won. What will be at the center when you have good gifts available to you? And so Abraham hears God and he decides to obey.
Obedience with Hope
And there's a philosopher called Soren Kierkegaard and even though I pretend to be very smart, I've only read a bit of this book that he's written about Abraham and Isaac. It's called Fear and Trembling and he just cannot deal with the fact that Abraham says yes to this. He cannot believe that a human being could have such faith and resignation. But I think that maybe when I get to the end of the book, I'll discover there's more hope.
But I think that the obedience that we see here is read in the New Testament as not being obedience with despair or obedience with resignation, but obedience with hope. So they get up, they load the donkey, they get everything that they need and they set out for the place. And when they get there, he knows that it's going to be the place of sacrifice.
And he says to his servants, stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship, then we will come back to you. Now I think I've read this mostly as Abraham making things sound a little nicer for his servants. Don't you worry about what's about to happen over there. We'll come back to you.
But the New Testament writers see in this a hopefulness. God has promised and he has given a great gift. And this gift is not just for me and my wife Sarah. This gift is to create a nation that will bless the whole earth. Now how God can ask me to offer my son and continue that promise, I don't know, but I'm going to trust and have hope that in my obedience, we will come back to you.
In Hebrews chapter 11, God speaks of, the writer speaks of all the people who followed God in faith. And Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who would embrace the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. That's what we've just said. But Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead. And so in a manner of speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. There was a hopefulness in the midst of Abraham's obedience.
Trusting God with What We Give Up
I don't know whether you have ever felt that God was calling you to give up something, leave a certain way of life, maybe leave a job, maybe not spend time so much with some friends who are not helping you to be the person that you think God is calling you to be. And maybe it's a habit that you have in secret. And it actually, you know, these habits that we have, these friends that we have, these jobs that we have, they are a means of us providing something for ourselves, right? Whether it be money or some sort of self-soothing, or dealing with our anxiety or our need for companionship.
And we feel if God is calling us to give up that thing because it's not aligned with his word, that we're asked to obey but just resigned to deep despair in that. Okay God, your call is basically for me to be miserable, but I'll do it. But I think that the promise of the scriptures is that you never miss out in following God.
You never miss out in giving something up. God is so good that you actually find yourself replenished blessed, that as life aligns, even though you have given something up, as life aligns with the word of God and the power of the spirit, you find that there is a hope that God will bring you what you need. And so I believe that Abraham is obeying in hope, not in resignation, not in despair.
He's seen God rescue Lot out of Sodom and Gomorrah, but destroy the cities of the plain. He has seen God give him victory in battles against other tribal leaders. He's seen God give a 90 year old lady a baby. He knows that God can do anything and that God is in the business of fulfilling his promises. And so he reasons, we will go over there and worship and I don't know how it's going to happen, but we will come back to you.
The Ram in the Thicket
And so now the narrative slows right down. We can't gloss over it. We're walking step by step with Abraham and Isaac and they have the conversation, I think, that we've dreaded. Father, the fire and the water here. But where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Now you are a hundred, Dad, or maybe a hundred and ten, fifteen, twenty at this point. Maybe you forgot. Maybe you forgot. Because that does happen as you get older.
No, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son, again. Is he just saying what Isaac needs to hear or is he being obedient with hope? Well, then at this, the darkest moment, God reveals himself as the ultimate provider.
When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there, arranged the wood on it. He'd be like, come on, come on, what's, when's it going to happen? What are we doing? And he binds his son Isaac and lays him on the altar. The Jewish readers of this call this whole story the Akedah, which means the binding.
And it's like this is the moment where it feels like Abraham's turned the corner. The binding of his son and he places him on the altar. Now, if this is a 10, 15, 20-year-old man, he's part of this, but it's not easy. And Abraham reaches out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, Abraham, here I am, he replied. Do not lay a hand on the boy. 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, took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place the Lord will provide. If you've been a Christian for a while, you'll have known the phrase Jehovah-Jireh. That's the name God will provide. And on this day it is said on the mountain of the Lord, it will be provided.
The Substitute and the Blessing
At the very moment, the peak of the horror, God shows himself as the ultimate provider. The substitute is given by God, for God, and then a blessing follows for Abraham. God is the one who calls for trust, yes, calls for obedience, definitely. It is not easy. The call of God on you in 2026 as you are called into the fellowship of Christ Jesus may not be easy, but God is the one. God is the one who will provide all that is needed, all that is needed for you to truly follow the call in his kingdom.
Romans 8 speaks to this exactly. Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. God calls you and you know you will slip up. You know you don't deserve it. You know you are not worthy, and yet he provides everything so that there is no condemnation. For what your obedience was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did. By sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering, God sent the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world.
And Paul goes on, the Apostle Paul goes on in Romans, what then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also along with him graciously give us all things?
At the very foundation, I mean, what did Sarah say? This was page 29 or something of the whole Bible. The start of all things. God shows that he would be the one. He would be the one to do the peak horror. Not us. God would not spare his own son, but he would not ask that of Abraham. He in his goodness. Jesus offered himself as the Lamb of God so that we might receive all things.
So when this substitution has taken place, when God has revealed himself not simply as the one who can judge sin in the cities of the plain, not simply as the one who can rescue a family and bring abundance, much wealth, not simply as the one, simply, who could give a baby to a post-menopausal woman, but he has shown himself as the one who will provide all that is needed to redeem every human life, to give the status before God that we so need, so long for. Well, he then adds to it the promise. There is no, I provide the sacrifice and then what do I do?
I did not spare my own son. And so how will I not also along with him graciously give you all things? I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. Your descendants will take possession of these cities and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed.
An Anchor for the Soul
We've heard this promise before, but what we haven't heard is the oath that God swears on his own name. That's new in this part, and if you have read Hebrews, going back there again, you'll see that this moment captures the writer, because he says, well, when God made his promise to Abraham since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself saying, I will surely bless you and give you many descendants.
And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised. Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very clear, to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath, I'll swear by myself. God did this so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, that is, he'd given these promises before, but now there's an oath with it as well.
We who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. This moment, this moment after God tests Abraham, but provides the ultimate substitute, becomes this incredible foundation of trust for all who would follow. Because it doesn't rely on Abraham sacrificing his son, it relies on Abraham's obedience in hope, but God's gift and then God's oath and promise.
And so those of us who have come to know Jesus as the fulfillment of this, have no doubt, have a trust and a hope that is like an anchor, firm and secure. This God who seems to ask something bad actually shows himself to be more good than Abraham could ever have imagined.
Seven Considerations for 2026
And so as we conclude this series, and there's so much richness in Abraham's story, I encourage you to dig into it if you've got time. I wanted to give us seven things for us to consider in 2026.
- Enjoy God's gifts, but seek the giver above all things. We are in a world where we don't know whether even the security and abundance that we have come to enjoy and take for granted will be there forever. We don't know. There has never been a more important time to enjoy the gifts, but seek the giver above all things. We cannot enter into this global season by focusing on what we have. We must, we must establish right at the center our pursuit of God.
- Hold even God's gifts with open hands. And secondly, and I think particularly in this season as well, we need to hold even God's gifts with open hands. When God gives, he may have a plan for those gifts to be used for something other than your own comfort, my own comfort. He may call us to surrender something in alignment with all that he has shown that he values. He values people. He values people coming to know him, but we're to hold everything that he's given us with open hands.
- Obey and maybe wait. Thirdly, we're to obey and maybe wait. Maybe you feel like you're in a season of waiting. And that was something that I really enjoyed in thinking about Abraham, just that how good Abraham, how good God is even in Abraham's waiting. We can obey and wait with hope and confidence, not despair or resignation. You will never miss out on what you need when you obey God. And if something looks like it's dying, God is the God who can bring life, even if that life is being reunited with that one when the new heavens and the new earth come.
- Trust God's character when you don't understand his ways. Fourthly, trust God's character when you don't understand his ways. Abraham knew God's power. He knew his righteousness. He'd called what was happening in the cities of the plain very evil and Abraham could see that too. And God had given him what seemed impossible. We have an even greater proof of God's promise being fulfilled in the Lord Jesus. Trust God's character when you don't understand his ways.
- Pause to look for God's provision before finding your own solutions. Fifth, pause to look for God's provision before finding your own solutions. There's a ram in the thicket. God has provided. I think one of the blessings that I've experienced in my leadership here at Deep Creek is that I might think, oh, we really need to do this thing or there's a lack here. And in a tiny pause, I'm not that great, I'm a quite a solutions-oriented person. God shows what he has already provided. A person, a new way, something is already there. God provides. So pause to look for God's provision and I think Vanessa's teaching that we are a real resource for each other as well as the word of God as we walk together is perfect. Better be careful. You'll do too many more of them if you're too good.
- Anchor our confidence in God's promises, not our performance. We're to anchor our confidence in God's promises, not our performance. That's really the story of Abraham. Although he shows his faith and trust, he does not earn God's promise. God always takes the initiative and gives out of his own goodness. Abraham obeys and receives and trusts, but he does not earn.
- Let the cross and resurrection shape your walk into God's goodness. And finally, let the cross and resurrection shape your walk into God's goodness. There is no condemnation because he has given his only son. Jesus said these strange words in John 8, Abraham longed to see my day and he did see it and rejoice. And we think, what? But he was in Bronze Age Europe then and how did that work? Well, number one, Abram saw God provide the substitute sacrifice. But number two, he saw that God could effectively give him his son back from death. He saw a little prefiguring of resurrection. And then as he, outside of time, rested with God before the final day, he will have seen exactly what God did. And he could say, now I know that you are good because you did not withhold your son, your only son, from me. Abraham saw Jesus' day that God would not spare his son. And so we, seeing the cross and resurrection, can walk with confidence into God's goodness.
Closing Prayer
We're going to conclude, as I pray, with our final song.
Almighty God, we're so aware that the things that we have and that we place in the centre are not you and that they will not hold us fast in either our testing or in the uncertainty of our future. Lord, we want to have you at the centre and not simply you that we wonder about, but you that we are confident has given us all things in your son, Jesus Christ. Provide for us this year. Show us how to walk with you at the centre and help us to trust in your great goodness with much thankfulness. Amen.
