Well friends,
hey, welcome back to the Pastor Talk podcast.
We’re going to pick up the last part
of the story that we were discussing last time we
were together and we’re going to look to really in many ways how this story of Abraham and
Isaac and the sacrifice that God’s called for,
how this doesn’t get any simpler.
It does resolve in an interesting way,
but it doesn’t resolve all the pieces.
It doesn’t tie it all together nice and clean and that complexity that we’ve tried to hold
as we’ve gone through this story together only,
I think, only increases and so here we are.
Yeah, as we finish this story up,
there’s some interesting language.
I think it is fitting that this isn’t the kind of story that wraps up with a bow on
it and you think, “Oh,
I get it now.”
This story has some questions that linger about really all of the characters I spoke,
well, particularly about God and Abraham.
So let’s read the conclusion here and then we can talk it through.
So I’m in verse 15,
chapter 22,
“The angel of the Lord called Abraham a second time
from heaven and said,
‘By myself I have sworn,’ says the Lord,
‘because you have done this.
Have not withheld your son, your only son.
I will indeed bless you,
and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven
and as the sand that is on the seashore.
And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies,
and by your offspring shall
all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves,
because you have obeyed my voice.’
So Abraham returned to his young men and they arose and they went together to Beersheba
and Abraham lived at Beersheba.”
So, very interesting.
Here we have this idea that this promise that God had given Abraham had a conditional nature
that has at no point in the story been spoken.
But in evaluating Abraham’s actions,
he says, “Because you have done this,
because you were willing to be obedient,
even to such a difficult and strange command,
because you were willing
and ready to follow through with what I told you,
what I asked of you,
what I called you to do,
I will then bless you.”
Now, we have taken for granted this far in the story that God was going to bless him.
God has already said that.
And here we have it put in language of sort of passing the test,
which is in keeping with
the way this story is started.
He wanted to test Abraham,
but it is an interesting twist to have that knowledge dropped on us
this late in the story.
Yeah, and it’s also an interesting twist to expect that God would make this decision
based on the fulcrum of Abraham’s choice here.
The idea God has already made a covenant,
which we’ve emphasized over and over again,
this idea that God is faithful to the covenant,
even in the face of human failure.
And here,
the idea that it’s directly connected in this angel speech, this idea,
because you have done this
and you have not withheld your son,
I will indeed bless you.
So it leads the reader who’s pressing the text to ask,
so had Abraham not been willing
to do this and to, therefore, once again,
in his own way,
try to preserve the promise
that God had made,
which we’ve seen, right?
Let’s not beat around the bush.
Abraham and Sarah have already made several choices in the course of this story in which
they have tried to essentially make their own path in the face of what seems to be unsurmountable
odds.
Here,
we see that God says,
because you were willing to do this thing,
then I, therefore,
will bless you.
So is that blessing in addition to the covenant that God has already made,
which is a form
of blessing?
Is this in addition to?
Was this all contingent upon the idea that this was a test that could be passed,
or is this something like the Star Trek kind of test that has no answer that could be really
played out?
I’m forgetting the name of that.
But regardless,
I think here as we look at a text like this,
it causes substantial questions
because of the nature of the test.
If this had been like Cain and Abel,
and it was sacrificing your cattle as opposed to sacrificing your vegetation,
your vegetables,
that might be one thing.
Here, God had asked for Abraham’s son,
which the very act of doing would be cut against what God has
essentially made clear in the scriptural text is inbound.
So how you read this is I think it’s going to require some nuance.
I don’t want to minimize the difficulty here,
and I don’t want to minimize the extent to
which we have to kind of wrestle with the text.
But I do think
we see here the
struggle that happens when we have these two versions of
a story that get put together.
This story then is telling us things that we thought we already knew.
And this story gets there in a different pathway than the first telling of the story in which
God already promised Abram these things.
Abram showed his willingness in his
ability to get up and move,
in his cutting the covenant,
in his offering the sacrifice.
We’re essentially covering ground again that we thought we’d already covered.
And when we do that,
it makes it difficult to kind of come to terms with what we do with
the front part of the story.
In some ways, it might be an easier arrangement if this story came before the other ones,
because now it feels like, “Wait,
there’s something that isn’t decided that we thought was already decided.”
I don’t think that’s what this story ultimately is trying to say,
because this story probably
comes to us independently of the other story.
But when we put them side by side,
it creates a little difficulty in resolving them.
And it’s not that they can’t fit together,
it’s that they do come from each a slightly different place,
and it leaves us with a little bit of lingering confusion.
So you may push back on this,
Clint, and that would be great.
I wonder if there’s not a sense in which we should understand this story that it is
very much told with a backward-looking perspective,
so that when we see that at the beginning
God sets out to test Abraham,
and then we get to the end,
and we see how the test has
been successfully passed, really.
When we get to the text today,
we see this affirmation,
“Because you have done this,
because you’ve been willing to take this action,
you’ve passed the test.” On that side,
it does have a kind of resolution,
because you can see in just that moment that
when you look from the vantage that God was willing to provide the sacrifice,
that Abraham didn’t ultimately need to give of his own son,
and that together it was Abraham’s trusting
in God, and God’s willingness to provide for the need,
that when worked together was ultimately
the full completion of the test.
In other words,
the tester was willing to bring the answer to the test itself.
God, the one who set up this whole endeavor,
was willing to have the answer even when Abraham
reached to the very end of what seemed to him the only road he could take.
So when you look at the story from that vantage,
it’s not that it gets rid of all of these
other messier, complex threads, but it really puts it in context to why it might be here,
because it shows us that both Abraham and God are on the same page,
they’re working to the same goal,
that God who sets out this thing is faithful even to the end of it,
and Abraham has learned some lessons,
that Abraham knows that God will be faithful,
even when it seems that now God is asking of a thing that would take away the promise.
Abraham has stayed the course,
and God has indeed once again been faithful to that promise
that Abraham will have many,
many generations to follow in.
Yeah, and there is,
you know, in spite of some of the difficulties of this text,
there are some really interesting things about it too,
and some comforting things.
For instance, when the angel says that God’s words have been,
“By myself I have sworn,”
right?
God can choose no higher promise
than to give his word by himself.
I have sworn by myself,
I have sworn on myself,
that God stakes himself as the basis on which
Abraham can believe these promises.
Now, if that is because he’s passed the test,
or that is because God has delivered him to
this moment where it’s now clear that their future is ready to be pursued,
it’s hard to say, and it would be hard to parse that out.
But we do have here the sense clearly for this author,
this is a moment in which we
receive from God a binding, eternal word,
and this is going to inform really the rest
of the story from this place.
The idea that Abraham is without question and without exception,
the inheritor of this
covenant sworn by God upon his own name is taken as fact
and becomes the foundation for
the rest of the book.
You know, let’s just quick take a look here at the end of verse 18.
Once again, “By your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessings for themselves,
because you have obeyed my voice.”
Two things here I want to point out.
First of all,
what nations will be blessed?
The Jewish nation, just Abraham’s heirs?
No,
all nations.
This is a reprisal of that covenantal promise in the beginning.
We talked about how God is making grand promises and he’s making it to one person for the sake
of all.
We sometimes miss that,
but that is certainly what’s at play here.
Second thing I want to point out is this idea that it comes because of the willingness to obey God’s voice.
We have come back time and time again to this theme of breath and speaking and promise.
All of this continues to be threaded throughout the story.
These sorts of phrases are not by accident in the Old Testament.
So once again, the idea that when God says something,
Abraham is willing to follow.
When God speaks, the earth is made.
When God gives order,
it says, “Don’t eat of the tree that’s in the middle of the garden.”
When God says, “I will make a promise to you,” that is the eternal creator God making with
the words.
So when Abraham is willing to follow the voice of God,
that becomes for him the road towards
the fulfillment of God’s very promise.
So in some ways,
maybe that is just a textual sort of thread.
On another hand, I think we can all on some level,
Clint, relate to this idea of God will
have words in our life that will come to us through scripture or through song or through sermon.
And there will be moments where we seek to be faithful to the voice of God,
to that leading and discerning kind of voice that lives within us,
and we see in Abraham that to whatever
extent we are able to be faithful to that voice,
God will be faithful to us and even
bring us to resolution in those tests that we can’t unto ourselves pass.
We’ve said numerous times,
Michael, this is a tough story.
I think this is one of those that anybody who tries seriously to understand or study
scripture finds themselves living under the mystery of what this passage does and doesn’t mean.
And it leaves us with some very lingering questions at a personal level.
What from this moment on is the relationship between Abraham and Isaac?
What is the relationship between Abraham and Sarah?
There may be some clues to that as we move into the text tomorrow.
Or it may not be.
It may be us reading something into it.
But people have been fascinated by the questions of exactly what happens here and what does
a moment like this,
this watershed testing moment that really takes Abraham to the very
core of what he gives allegiance to,
of what he is or isn’t willing to offer,
of what God would or wouldn’t ask.
These are some of the deepest questions of the book of Genesis and we’ve been interested
in what might have been the repercussions of a story like this.
And the Bible is unfortunately not particularly interested in those questions.
Though they are fascinating, they’re very human.
And I think though they probably don’t do much for us in terms of study,
they do make us pause and again reflect on the difficulty and in some ways just the sheer size and scope
of this text.
I don’t know anyone who approaches this text confidently and courageously unless they’re naive.
If you give this text a serious reading,
it will rattle you.
It’s just that it has that kind of depth and that kind of open-endedness and it is
one of those texts that I think the only thing ultimately you do is be humbled by it and
be very cautious and careful about what you say that you think it means.
And make no mistake about it,
this isn’t the last test if you allow me to use that language
that God brings the ultimate answer to,
where ultimately God is willing to take upon God’s
self the full ramifications of what’s required.
That said,
I do think a lot of our personal assumptions,
maybe even some of our personal
values do come into play when we come to a text like this.
Clint, I think you’re exactly right that if your move is to resolve all of the mystery
and difficulty from a text like this,
if you want it to be all wrapped up and to make
sense then you’re going to be leaving a lot of the substance of this text on the cutting floor.
It will not make sense to you unless you’re willing to with eyes of faith and humility
stand under the text and admit there’s a lot here that isn’t resolvable and yet God is
present in and through and beyond it.
And that’s I think ultimately maybe the healthiest sort of thing that we can ever come to in
the study of scripture.
It is not the history book kind of task where what are the dates,
who was there and what
actually happened, but rather to be formed by the text to understand that the God who
tested and was faithful is the very same God who now today will be faithful.
And to whatever extent we can learn under that will be benefited by it.
We rarely appreciate it,
but the Bible does us a service when it presents us with texts
like this that remind us that we do not have all the answers and that we ultimately do
not understand the ways of God as the scripture itself says whose ways are not our ways and
whose thoughts are higher than our thoughts.
And it is a humbling moment when you come to the end of the text scratching your head
with no real clear idea that,
oh yeah, I know I get this one.
I have this one figured out.
But there is a humility in it that we should bring to the scriptures that I think texts
like this help us help us learn.
That’s a good last word,
Clint.
Thanks for being with us,
everybody.
We are overjoyed to get this week kicked off with you and look forward to seeing you tomorrow.
Thanks, everybody.