It's About God

The Sunday morning message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on June 16, 2024.  The Bible verses used are Genesis 22:1-19.

On this Father’s Day, I thought we’d talk about one of the most famous fathers in the Bible:  Abraham.  He’s actually referred to, sometimes, as Father Abraham.  Some of you probably remember the old Sunday school song, “Father Abraham, had many sons, many sons had Father Abraham…”

But as you may remember, it took a long time for Abraham to become a father.  Abraham and his wife, Sarah, had been married quite a while, but they had no children. They were now getting up there in years, past the age of having children. Yet, God promised them that they would, in fact, have children. And they did. Against all odds, except for the odds of God, they had a son, Isaac.

Imagine as either a mother or a father, how you would feel about that. You've been wanting a child all your life. You've never had one. It looks like you never will. Then, unbelievably, you do have a child. You'd be overjoyed, right? That child would become the most important thing in your life. I mean, children are often the most important things in our lives, but it would be even more so in this situation. And to know that child was a direct result of God fulfilling a promise to you, well, you'd be incredibly thankful to God. You'd do anything in your power to protect that child and love that child that God have given you.

Then, at some point, along comes God again. God tells Abraham to take his son, Isaac, the only son he has, the only son he thinks he's likely to ever have, and go out and kill him. God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac to God.

Now, there are times in the Bible when people dedicate their lives to God.  There are even times when people dedicate their children’s lives to God.  But this takes that to an entirely different level. God did not just tell Abraham to dedicate Isaac's life to God. God told Abraham to kill Isaac, and dedicate his death to God.

What strikes me, every time I read this story, is the incredibly matter-of-fact way the author of Genesis tells it. No emotions are told to us. We are not told Abraham's reaction when God told him to sacrifice his son. We're not told what he said, how he felt, any of it.

It does not take too much imagination to figure it out, though. How would you feel? We'd probably go through all five stages of grief. We'd be in denial: did God really say that? I must've heard wrong. God does not really want me to kill my son. Then there'd be anger. What's the matter with you, God? Why would you tell me to do this? What's wrong with you? Then there'd be bargaining: God, I'll do anything you want if you'll just let my son live. Then would come depression, when reality set it and we realized that this really was what God wanted us to do and we were going to have to do it.

The Bible does not give us any of that, though. It goes right to acceptance. As soon as God stops talking, it tells us about Abraham's preparations for the trip.

We don't know if he told Sarah. He clearly did not tell his servants. He tells them to stay put while he and Isaac go off to worship and then they'll come back. He did not even tell Isaac what was going on. In fact, when Isaac asks about it, he evades the question.

Abraham's heart had to be breaking. But he was willing to go through with it. He built an altar. He arranged the wood for the fire. He tied up Isaac and put him on the altar. Again, this is all told to us very matter-of-factly. We don't know if Abraham ever told Isaac why he was doing this. We don't know if Isaac fought, if he thought his dad had gone nuts, or what. Abraham pulls out his knife and raises it. He's just about to kill Isaac when an angel of the Lord stops him. The angel tells him that it was all just a test, and that Abraham passed, because he did not withhold even his son from God.

That's one heck of a test. I guess that's why the Bible tells us to pray that we not be led to a time of testing. That's about the hardest test anyone could ever have.

Do you think you could pass it? For most of us, it's probably pretty hard to say. It's hard to imagine being in a situation where God told us to kill anyone, really. Maybe in a war, but even there, I don’t know that God would tell us to kill someone. But this is entirely different.

Could you do this?   Could you do what Abraham was willing to do?  Could you kill your own child, if God told you to? 

If you don't have children, imagine being told by God to kill your spouse, or your parents, or someone else who's really important in your life. And leave aside the fact that we'd probably say someone who said they were told by God to kill someone was mentally ill. Imagine having no doubt about it actually being God who wanted you to do this. Could you?

See, we talk all the time in church about how God should be the number one thing in our lives. But this is where the rubber meets the road. This is where stuff gets real. Because if we say no, then we're saying that God is not, in fact, the number one thing in our lives. God may still be important, but other things are more important.

I'm not saying that in a judgmental way. I'm also not saying that I could do it. I don't even like to hit a bird on the highway. But still, it's just a fact that, if we say we could not do what Abraham did, if we could not do this even if we were completely and totally convinced it was what God had told us to do, then we're saying that there are things in our lives more important than God and obeying God's will.

I doubt that any of us will ever be tested the way Abraham was. But we get other tests. We get them all the time. We get them every day. Every day, in a hundred different ways, we make choices between doing what we know God wants us to do and doing what we want to do. And every day, in a hundred different ways, we have to decide whether God is the number one thing in our lives or not.

And every day, in a hundred different ways, we fail. At least I do. I know I do. Every time I put my own desires ahead of doing something for someone else, I fail. Every time I see a chance to do something for someone, and I don't do it, I fail. Every time I close my eyes to the needs of someone else, I fail. Because those are things I know God is telling me to do. When I don't do them, I'm saying that God is not the number one thing in my life. God may still be important, but other things are more important.

I could go on about other ways I fail these tests. What about you? What are the ways you get tested? What are the ways you fail? What are the things you do, or don't do, that show that God is not the number one thing in your life?

Don't misunderstand me here. I'm not saying you're all terrible, horrible people. I'm not saying I'm a terrible, horrible person, either. We're people, that's all. We don't always fail the tests. There are times when we do exactly what God wants us to do. There are times when we do make God the number one thing in our lives. But there are a lot of times we don't. And we need to do something about that.

But what? What do we do? How do we get ourselves to where we pass those tests? How do we get to where we really do make God the number one thing in our lives?

You know, I wonder if maybe that's why Genesis tells us this story so matter-of-factly. Maybe that's why we're not told how Abraham felt about any of this. It's not that Abraham did not have any feelings about this. Of course he had feelings. It's because Abraham's feelings did not matter, and Abraham knew his feelings did not matter. Abraham knew it was irrelevant whether he wanted to do this or not. This was not about Abraham. It was not about Isaac, either. It was about God.

That's what we need to remember. When we get these tests, when we make these choices, that's what we need to keep in mind. Our lives are not about ourselves. They're really not even about others, although others are obviously involved. Our lives are about God. If we want to make God the number one thing in our lives, we need to remember that our lives are about God, and not about ourselves.

Abraham was able to remember that. He knew this whole thing was not about him, and it was not about Isaac. It was about God. Because Abraham remembered it was about God, he was able to pass the test. And he got his reward from God.

If we remember that it's about God, we'll pass our tests, too. And we'll get our reward. We may or may not get a reward in this world, but we will definitely get a reward in the next one.