“All in the Family” Part IV: Isaac–Child of Promise (12/3/06 Sermon)

We continue our series on the Genesis genealogy of Jesus today with Isaac, who was the son of Abraham and Sarah. Last week we talked about Abraham, the patriarch, who set out on this great journey at God’s invitation—a journey of promise based on land and descendants. Though Abraham and Sarah were both very old and Sarah had been barren all her life, God promised that they would have a child together. What seemed impossible, God made possible. It was almost laughable, really—which is why when Sarah gave birth, the child was named “Isaac” which means “he laughs.”

You’ll recall that God had chosen Abraham as the father of a new family, a new nation—a new kind of Adam. Through his descendants, God’s chosen people, Abraham would be a blessing to all the families of the earth. The story of Isaac, then, is really the story of how that family becomes a reality and how the faithfulness of the family will be tested.

The story of Abraham taking his son Isaac to Mt. Moriah is one of the most treasured and confusing stories in the Bible. We have seen God to this point being both the whimsical creator (Genesis 1 & 2), the divine parent (Genesis 3 – Adam and Eve). We have seen God as being grieved over the evil of humanity and yet still providing a way of salvation in the story of Noah. We have followed Abraham on his journey and waited with him for the son of promise. But then, like a lightning bolt, comes this horrifying tale of God’s order to Abraham: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love,” and offer him “as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you” (22:2). Could a more terrifying test of faith be devised by even the most demanding of deities? Hardly! And yet, Abraham complies. He saddles his donkey, takes two young men and his son Isaac, and hits the road toward the place in the distance that God has shown him.

You’ll recall that up to this point, Abraham has been engaged in a kind of back and forth dialogue with God. Just four chapters earlier, Abraham had bargained with God over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah—total strangers. But now, when God tells Abraham to sacrifice the son he had been promised, the son for whom he had waited, the son through whom this great nation would come into being…Abraham is speechless. God is putting him to the test. Genesis 22:1 tells us, in a sense, that God wants to know if he can trust Abraham.

God’s testing is the real hang-up in the story for those of us with modern sensibilities. We’d rather have a God who simply gives us what we want with little to no conflict. In this season of “peace on earth” it’s hard for us to hear that God can act this way, but the evidence shows that testing and conflict are part of the whole biblical narrative.

Some of you may be fans of Patrick Lencioni’s books The FiveTemptations of a CEO, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, or my personal favorite Death By Meeting. In the book on CEOs, Lencioni offers that one of the key temptations for leaders and companies is to continually choose harmony over productive conflict or, to put it another way, choosing peace over progress. No growth or maturity can occur without conflict, be it in a company or in a family or in any relationship. We are somehow trained to believe that conflict is always bad and something to avoid, while the witness of the Bible is quite the opposite. The struggle over Isaac here is a conflict brought into the relationship between God and Abraham, and Abraham is now faced with a choice: do I choose peace and security by refusing to go up that mountain, or do I move toward the conflict and meet it head on, trusting that somehow God will keep his promises?

Surely Abraham’s head was spinning as he walked with his son up Mt. Moriah. Why can’t my contact with God be pleasant and enjoyable? How can I handle the horror I feel as I think about what is going to happen to my son? Is there any way that I can find a peaceful way out of this? How can I reconcile with my son before I … before I … before I … have to kill him? Abraham desperately wants to choose harmony over conflict.

You don’t have to be a CEO or a biblical patriarch to sympathize with his struggle. And yet, despite his intense inner pain, Abraham remains faithful to God. He takes the wood for the burnt offering and lays it on his son Isaac, and he himself carries the fire and the knife. The two walk on together, and then Isaac innocently asks, “Father! … where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” We can imagine the ache in his chest and the lump in his throat as he answers, “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” Abraham is not conflicted with theological questions we might have in this situation. After all, what kind of a god would make such a request as this? Yet, for Abraham, God is God, and God is a God who will provide a “lamb for a burnt offering.”

If God is God, it is clear that Abraham is Abraham. He is a father, and this is, as far as he knows, his only surviving son. Ishmael was gone, presumed dead, expelled into the desert with nothing but his mother, a bagel and a canteen of water. Now, Abraham has only Isaac left. The anguish is palpable. Abraham has to make a devilishly difficult decision, a conflicted choice that looks like it will lead to certain sorrow and despair in his life. He desperately wants harmony, but does not know how in the world he can achieve it while remaining faithful to God. So he makes the choice – the tough choice – of productive conflict, throwing his life into turmoil and sacrificing his immediate peace in order to gain peace in the long haul.

Abraham binds his son Isaac, lays him on the altar, on top of the wood, and clutching the knife in his hand, reaches out to kill his son. But an angel appears with a last-minute stay of execution, and announces that Abraham has passed God’s test of faithfulness. Abraham looks up to see a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns, and he sacrifices this beast in place of his son, discovering in a new and dramatic way that God will, in fact, provide.

That’s the real principle in the story: When we trust God, God provides. God’s command to sacrifice Isaac could have led to an easy peace, with Abraham abandoning the Lord and living a safe and unremarkable life with his little family. But he chose instead the productive conflict that goes along with faithfulness to God, and he became the father of a great nation.

When peace paralyzes, a struggle can save. Often, as in this case, when conflict is chosen, God supplies a ram in the thicket, and the long-range results turn out well. Short-term harmony is attractive, but it is rarely a better choice than long-term productive conflict. If we behave in a way that is faithful to God and to each other, we can opt for constructive conflict, and trust that we will grow in productivity, relationships and spiritual well-being. The Lord will provide for us, as he helps us to grow into the people he wants us to be.

We have to remember, too, that this story of Isaac and Abraham is played out in the experience of God, too. Jesus, God in the flesh, was tempted in the wilderness to do things the easy way, to avoid conflict and instead engage popularity. He was tempted by people who wanted to elevate him to political power. He was tempted to take the easy way out of his conflict with religious leaders.

When we find him there in the Garden of Gethesemane the night before his death, we see him struggling with the conflict. Is this the way? Are you sure, Father? Jesus could have easily slipped into the desert that night and avoided arrest. But like Abraham, and like so many other faithful people in the Bible, Jesus trusts and God provides.

The writer of Hebrews makes the link between these stories of Isaac and Jesus. The process of trusting and provision for Abraham is the paradigm for the death and resurrection of Jesus. Abraham believed that “God is able to raise someone from the dead—and figuratively speaking he did receive [Isaac] back.” Jesus trusted the promise of God that through his death the world might be saved—a promised sealed and delivered through the empty tomb.

It’s not easy to endure conflict when the easy path is so close at hand. But the story of Abraham and Isaac teaches us that God always provides when we trust him.

What decisions are you facing in your life? Are you being tempted to choose harmony over productive conflict? To pick peace instead of painful growth? Is your conflict being found

• in an abusive relationship, in providing tough-love with a child, in speaking out against some injustice at work, in confronting a friend who needs help, in dealing with conflict in your marriage

Remember the promise that God gave to Abraham: “I will be with you.” Abraham chose to trust that promise and chose the hard mountain path even if it would cost him everything. The same applies to us– if you choose the tougher path, we have to believe that God will supply you with a ram in a thicket. If God is calling you to service, to obedience, or to greater faithfulness, God will challenge you – as he challenged Abraham – to trust him with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. You will discover that divinely sanctioned conflict does not lead to death and destruction, but rather to life and growth and new opportunity.

We have to remember, though, that trust costs us something. It forces us to give up the idea that we can solve every problem, and that we can provide for ourselves. Trusting God in the face of difficult circumstances is a constant struggle, but it is a struggle that leads to growth.

Isaac himself would grow up, but he would never speak to his father Abraham again. Things had changed. There was an implicit conflict in the family. Sarah would die soon after, and Genesis 24:67 tells us that Isaac mourned for her. But when Abraham died, we don’t read of Isaac’s emotions (though Abraham was buried by Isaac and Ishmael together). It could be that Isaac struggled with that incident on Mt. Moriah his whole life. It’s a foreshadowing, really, of the fact that this conflict, this testing, this reliance on God would be a struggle for the rest of the family from generation to generation.

The text tells us that Isaac would be the one to carry on the covenant promise, but he would do so without much fanfare. Isaac would marry Rebekah—his second cousin. Like Abraham and Sarah, they would struggle to have children because of barrenness, but again God provided and the twins Esau and Jacob would be born. The conflict between those two brothers would further test the covenant promises of God as we will see next week.

The challenges of life can cause us to look for an easy peace, taking the path of denial and avoidance and minimal resistance. But for those who choose the productive conflict that goes along with doing God’s will in love and justice, there can be life and growth and new opportunity.

The bottom line is this: When peace paralyzes, a struggle can save. When we trust God, there will always be a ram in the thicket. Sometimes you have to look hard for it, but God promises us that it will be there.

What conflict is God calling you to face? How will you trust God?

Source: “When Peace Paralyzes,” Homiletics, June 27, 1999.

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