Advent Midweek 2:
“Jesus, the Root of Jesse’s Tree”[1]
December 9, 2020
Text: Gen. 22:1-18; Heb. 11:17-22
I
couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do what
Abraham did. Now, sometimes we say that
as a way of virtue signaling, as though we could actually be more virtuous than
Abraham was, by, unlike Abraham, not following God’s command. That isn’t what I mean, and that is actually
a lie of the devil, that we can be more virtuous by not doing or
believing what God commands. That is
patently absurd. But it isn’t an uncommon
deception. Think of all the ways we
children of Adam call good what God calls evil, and evil what He calls
good. No, I’m not in any way claiming
that Abraham lacked virtue in obeying God.
Quite the contrary. His virtue
puts me to shame. And that really is the
point I’m making. I couldn’t do
it. The command to sacrifice a son… To
believe in spite of all appearances that God would still deliver on His Promise
to bring about the salvation of all the earth through that son… To believe that God would provide the
sacrifice… To believe that God would raise the dead, and to bet on it by
raising that knife… That is beyond any virtue in me.
Truth
be told, it was beyond Abraham’s virtue as well. Look, you don’t have to read far into the
story of Abraham to see what a weak and unbelieving, dishonest and wretched
sinner he could be. He didn’t believe,
for example, that God would or could keep his wife Sarah (Sarai at the time)
safe from being violated, or Abraham himself (Abram at the time) alive in Egypt. So he told everyone she was his sister, which
was half-true, but really a lie to save his own neck (Gen. 12). And neither of them believed the Promise that
God would give Abraham a son through barren Sarah (Gen. 16-18, 21), even in
their old age, through whom the Promised Seed of Messiah would be passed down
for the salvation of all mankind. Sarah
even laughed when the Angel of the LORD announced the Promise! She scoffed, and then tried to cover up her
unbelief… by lying to God (“I did not laugh” … “No, but you did laugh”
[Gen. 18:15; ESV])! So it is not as
though Abraham, in himself, is the paragon of virtue. I’ll grant he may be more virtuous than
me. I’ll yield to his honor as one of
the great Patriarchs of Israel, in fact, the greatest, as we are commanded to
do in the Fourth Commandment, covering over the sins of our fathers and
honoring them for their example and the good God has done for and through them. But the truth is, in and of himself, he would
have to confess with us that he is a poor, miserable sinner.
So,
if he’s in the same boat we are, and it wasn’t due to some super-righteousness
within himself and his own behavior that gave him the strength and ability to
obey, what was it? It was the Promise
itself. Which is to say, it was
God. What we cannot do, God can
and does. It was the Promise by
which God imparted the faith to obey, even in the face of impossible
circumstances: “your very own son shall be your heir… Look toward heaven and
number the stars, if you are able to number them… So shall your offspring be”
(Gen. 15:4-5) … “I will bless
[Sarah], and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become
nations; kings of peoples shall come from her” (17:16) … And then our text:
“I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the
stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of
his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be
blessed” (22:17-18) … “And [Abraham] believed the LORD, and he counted
it to him as righteousness” (15:6).
Why
would God test Abraham in such away, command him to sacrifice his own son? Well, it is certainly not that God desires
His people to sacrifice their children to Him.
That should come as a great relief to you. God says explicitly in His Word that, unlike
so many of the demonic false gods the nations worship, He does not desire child
sacrifice. “You shall not give any of
your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I
am the LORD” (Lev. 18:21). “There
shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an
offering” (Deut. 18:10). Through the
Prophet Jeremiah, our God rebukes His people for this very kind of demonic idol
worship in the strongest terms: “they have built the high places of Topheth,
which is in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their
daughters in the fire, which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind”
(Jer. 7:31). And He promises great
punishment and devastation as a result of this great sin (vv. 32-34). So God does not want you to kill your
children in ritual sacrifice, and while this is a relief, it is also a warning
and indictment of our nation and the nations of the earth as we sacrifice our
children to the demons in Abortion. The
God who forbids this slaughter is the same God who came in our flesh as a Baby
and indignantly scolded His disciples, “Let the children come to me; do not
hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:14). The children, born and unborn, are image
bearers of the King of Kings! We have
much for which to lament and repent.
But
if God does not want child sacrifice, why did He command Abraham to sacrifice
his son, Isaac, the child of Promise?
Two reasons: As an exercise of Abraham’s faith, and as a Prophecy of the
once-for-all sacrifice God would provide in the future Son of Abraham, the
future Son of Isaac, the Son of Mary, Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ.
It
wasn’t a test of Abraham’s faith as though God didn’t know whether or not he
believed. God knew Abraham had faith,
because God gave Abraham the faith. And
God knew that faith would bear fruit in obedience. So it wasn’t a test to inform God about
something He didn’t know. No, it was to
give faith opportunity to grow and bear fruit in light of the Promise which
gave birth to faith and sustains that faith.
Just as a tree of the orchard must be trimmed and pruned, and a hole dug
around it to pour on the fertilizer (and you know what that is!), so faith must
be trimmed and pruned and have a whole pile of fertilizer dumped on it if it is
to bear fruit. God does not demand you
to sacrifice your child, thankfully.
But, of course, all too often parents do have to bury a child, a tragedy
beyond compare. What happens when God
takes away what is precious to you?
What if He lays great pain or suffering upon you? What if you are called to suffer injury or
disease? What if you are called to lose
everything in an economic downturn or a conflagration? Or to have it stripped away in persecution,
to confess Christ in the face of imprisonment, beatings, or even death? What is God doing? Whatever else He might be doing (and He is
undoubtedly doing many things, hidden from our eyes), you can be sure of this:
He is fertilizing you! He is pruning
you! Or as Peter put it, He is refining
your faith as precious gold in a fire (1 Peter 1:7). He is melting you down, skimming and burning
off all that is not faith, all that is not Christ. He is molding and shaping you into the
cruciform image of His Son. He is
leaving you with nothing else to cling to but the Promise… the Promise who took
on flesh and bone, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary.
That
doesn’t mean it is easy to bear. Not in
the least. God works it for the good,
but good does not mean easy. It is
excruciatingly painful. It wasn’t easy
for Abraham. Think about his position: “Take
your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and
offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall
tell you” (Gen. 22:2). Can you
imagine the anguish in Abraham’s heart and soul as they leave the servants
behind and climb the mountain, Isaac bearing the wood on his own back? Can you imagine the torment of Isaac’s
question, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt
offering?” (v. 7)? “God will
provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son” (v. 8). And then the binding of his son, and the
raising of the knife, and in that moment, understand, Isaac is as good as dead. You are not called to do such a thing, but
Abraham was. And the only thing that
could have sustained him in that terrible moment was the immutable Word of the
LORD. God promised. God cannot lie. This son will be the one to give me
descendants as numerous as the stars, as the grains of sand on the
seashore. This son will be the one from
whom Messiah will come, to save me, to save us, to save the world. I don’t know how He will do it, but God will
do it. Though I shed the blood of my
beloved son, God will still make good on His Promise, even if he has to raise
my son from the dead.
And
then, the Angel. Thank God, the
Angel! Not just any angel, but THE
Angel, the Word of the Lord, the pre-incarnate Christ! Do not harm the boy! That is not what I want! Now we see faith’s fruit. Now I know that you fear God. And then, the ram in the thicket. God did provide the sacrifice, in
place of Isaac, Abraham’s son. And
where, but Mount Moriah, for “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided”
(v. 14). And it is that very spot where
Jerusalem and the Temple would be built, the place of all the sacrifices of
bulls and goats and lambs, the place of the sacrifice of the Lamb of God who
takes away the sin of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ. On that mount of the LORD, the once-for-all
sacrifice would be provided, for Abraham, for Isaac, for you, and for me. The knife was raised. We were as good as dead. But Angel staid the slayer’s hand and turned
it toward Himself. Jesus was crowned
with thorns and caught in the thicket of the cross. Our Substitute, God’s only Son, whom He
loved, crucified for our sins. And this
is the One who would provide descendants for Abraham. This is the One through whom all the nations
would be blessed. God promised. God cannot lie. He does it.
He does it precisely in this way: He sheds the blood of His beloved Son,
and He raises Him from the dead. God
saved Abraham’s son by giving His own.
God saved you by giving Jesus.
I
couldn’t do it, and neither could you.
But God did it for you and for me.
The Promise is fulfilled in Christ, the Lord. And hearing the Promise, you believe
God. And that faith is counted to you as
righteousness. In the Name of the
Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy
Spirit. Amen.
[1] The theme and some of the thoughts
for this sermon are taken from Daniel Gard, Jesse Tree (St. Louis:
Concordia, 2020).
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