Shepherd of the Springs
Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod

          And 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.” (vs. 14)

           This morning our Lenten preparation for Holy Week directs our attention to the passion that our Lord will suffer on Calvary’s cross. We are invited to ponder and grow in our appreciation of what our Lord would endure for us and our salvation, and to do so through the lens of the incredible ordeal that God put Abraham and Isaac through 2000 years before in the very same mountains of Moriah.

           Although the events of the story are probably quite familiar to most of us, let recount the basics of what happened.  After Abraham had become a centenarian, God finally got around to giving him a son and heir by his wife, Sarah. And after Abraham is given ample time to become terribly attached to his beloved Isaac, God interrupts his late-in-life loving fatherhood to make an outrageous request. Abraham is ordered to offer Isaac as a burnt offering, that is a sin offering, at a place in the mountains of Moriah that God would specify.  Just as Abraham has mustered enough to do as God had instructed - indeed, within a millisecond of running his son through with his knife - God calls things to a halt. The ram in the thicket will do fine. Sacrifice the ram. Let no harm come to the boy. . . as if God were saying in the end; “Just kidding!”

           But God was not . . . just kidding. He never is just kidding. In all of this high drama and gut wrenching events, God revealed in this episode with Abraham - and he reveals to us also this morning - three things that are of critical importance to understand the passion of our Lord aright.  We are to learn something about the kind of love that God has for us as fallen sinners in need of redemption. Secondly, we are offered a glimpse of what will be needed from God’s own Son, our Lord, for Him to become our Savior. And lastly, we are challenged to both see and accept what it really is that God wants from us to be His people.

           First, we learn something about the God of Abraham and Isaac; yes, the One we also acknowledge as our God.  He is not a nice grand-fatherly sort of God who simply is hoping that each of our days is filled with lost of cheer and pleasant experiences. This God plays hardball and He will jerk the emotions and passions of His people around to enable us to see and understand Him aright. Moreover, He is not a God who is wringing His heavenly hands hoping that we will cooperate so that He can accomplish His saving purposes. This is a God who is directing the course of human history; a God Who is enmeshed in the lives of His people orchestrating all things that His purposes and priorities might be accomplished. And He lets us know that it will be on His terms and by His doing. Here we learn that, when it comes to providing a fitting sacrifice to remedy the alienation caused by our sinfulness, it will not be of our own devising or plans. God will make His own provisions and we learn, as does Abraham, that it will require the sacrifice of Abrahams’s son. The offerings of our obedience and our possessions will not do. God would take what must be seen as only the best. He would have the beloved son. Only the son will make a fitting sacrifice for the quilt of our sins. Yet in a most dramatic way, we learn with Abraham, it looks like it will be Isaac. It looks like it Isaac is to be the chosen son, but no! It is not Isaac. The last minute stay of execution and the instructions concerning the ram caught in the thicket signal to Abraham and to us that God will provide the fitting sacrifice. But God has revealed clearly his requirements and intent. He will not simply be passing over our sins by the burnt offerings of animals. Regardless of how unblemished they might be. When it comes to our redemption, God will come for his chosen Son. And how does He make this plain to Abraham?  Does he send him a letter of intent?  No, He takes Abraham up into the mountains and He puts on a frightening display. Will this son be the one that Abraham relinquishes? No. Abraham gets the message and so must we . . . . God will provide.

           And as we move forward in time, God has us revisit these same mountains of Moriah where Abraham first built that altar. Two-thousand years later, there now stands not an altar, but Zion, the City of God.  Jerusalem, which means the Peace of God. Here now on a hill in these mountains, called Calvary, God selects his chosen Son of Abraham. And we know that this Son of Abraham is also David’s son and also the son of Mary. And we also see the incredible love of God as we understand that the chosen Son of Abraham is also His only-begotten Son. All of the requirements for our redemption are given to Jesus. The Father demands a perfect obedience in all things from His Son, even an obedience unto death.  Jesus must walk the rouad of the cross out of obedience to the Father. Unlike Isaac, Jesus would know who the sacrifice would be as He climbed the mountain, and He know that God would not be calling a halt to the whole drama to spare Him at the last minute. No, the time for passing over sins by animal sacrifices would be over. Here we see God the Father of us all walking the mountain with His own Son, who would, knowingly and obediently, offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sin.  No Abraham, it will not be Isaac. And to us, He says, No! It will not be any of your children either. I have chosen my own Son!

           And, lastly we see both in the passion of Abraham and Isaac, and in the passion of our Lord, what it finally comes down to what it is that God wants from us. What was it that He wanted from Abraham?  What is He after from us?  When we see the end of the account in Genesis 22, we see Abraham convinced and trusting in just one thing . . . God will provide. The things that we need . . . God will provide. The problem to be taken care of concerning our sins, the need of redemption . . . God will provide. When it appears that God has abandoned us or that He has stacked the deck against us and we are out of resources to deal with our hopeless situations in life . . . God will provide. And about these promises that God makes to us, we see the one thing that He wants from us: He wants us to put our faith and trust in Him. When things look bleak; when things look hopeless; when it appears that we must sacrifice all our reason about what is best for what and who we love so dearly . . . God will provide. God is not looking for us to clean up our acts and become the paragons of obedience to the Law, He rather is looking for an obedience of faith that trusts that He will provide.

           But, in our sinful poverty, even here we falter - fretting and grasping to be in control over everything and everyone in our lives that we hold near and dear. We have limits, big limits to what we will trust God with so often, do we not? We shake our heads: How could Abraham do what he did?! How could he intend to go through with killing his son? How could we think of doing something similar with any of our children? It is more that we can bear. It that is the kind of faith that God is demanding - to believe in spite of it all - then must we not say we are not up to it at all? It these things are the God’s test of true faith, which of us gets a pass?  While Abraham is rightfully understood as the Father of Faith, we wonder: can we be counted as his children?  When faith seemingly demands from God that we sacrifice all we hold near and dear to His good pleasure, do we not come up wanting?

           Yet, even here . . . God will provide. Where we were faithless, Christ suffers and dies for us - yes, even for our disbelief and weakness of trust. God takes us up the mountain where we find a cross and the Son whose faithfulness alone enables us to live with God.  He is our perfect obedience. He is the perfect sacrifice for our sin, even the sin of faithlessness. In Him we find peace with God and the power of God to cling to Him and His promises.

           And then it is He Who gives to us, by the power of His Spirit, in His Word and Sacraments the hope beyond hope, that we see in Abraham . . . that in life and in death, for us and for our children . . . when things look secure, or when it appears that we must sacrifice all . . . when it appears that God has demanded from us all that we hold near and dear . . . He will provide . . . today, tomorrow, forever.

           In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. A-men