Text:  Genesis 22:1-18                                                                              Invocavit (1 Lent)

Journey of Faith

            Dear friends in Christ,

            The Bible uses a number of images to help us understand what the Christian life is all about.  For example, sometimes it’s described as plant of some kind, like wheat growing in a field or a grapevine or a fig tree.  In those sorts of pictures, we see God as the farmer, who plants and takes care of whatever it is he’s growing, which in turn represents us. The Christian life is then described as growth process with the goal of bearing the fruit that God desires. Another image of the Christian life is that of a battle – that was the one used in the first hymn for today.  It portrays us as soldiers who must confront a number of terrible foes; and though we are weak, God has equipped us well with invincible spiritual weapons and defenses.  He is our commanding general who leads the way, gives the orders, and ultimately wins the victory for us.

There are many more such illustrations of the Christian life used throughout the Bible, but the one I’d like us to consider this morning is the image of taking a journey.  The basic theme is that we are travelers, going from an unhappy place of hopeless trouble and frustration, passing through dry and difficult territory, with the goal of arriving at a particularly blessed land.  It’s the whole theme of Exodus:  from cruel bondage and slavery, through the desolate wilderness, to the land flowing with milk and honey.  This image highlights the fact that we are pilgrims here, just passing through this world and life, on the way to something much better.  The trip is often a struggle; there are hardships to face – but there are also times and places for rest and refreshment on the way.  What matters is that we keep moving toward the goal, and not allow ourselves to lose heart or to become distracted or even to lose our way (that could be fatal).

I think this traveling imagery is especially appropriate today as we enter the season of Lent once again.  It often happens on our journey that many of the hardships we face are beyond our control: we get sick, have accidents, and suffer losses of various kinds.  And there’s nothing we can do to prevent from going into those “spiritual deserts”. Surely none of us wants our path to lie through such tough terrain.  But during Lent we deliberately enter a comparatively desolate wilderness for the soul.  We make a point of retracing our Savior’s steady march from Galilee, where he had been conducting a hugely successful ministry of teaching and healing, to Jerusalem, where he would be rejected, condemned, and crucified. As much as possible, we try to walk with him through these extremely painful experiences; not to afflict ourselves for affliction’s sake, nor to merit some reward by our efforts; but rather because we know that it’s when the path is the most difficult that our faith is tested and we learn to rely more and more on our Lord who called us out of this world to make the journey in the first place.  As tough as the deserts can be, there is much to be gained spiritually by crossing them.

That’s what’s going on in this morning’s Gospel lesson.  Jesus is voluntarily led by the Spirit on a journey into a barren wasteland to endure hunger, thirst, and the temptations of Satan.  He does it to learn our affliction, and be subject to the same kinds of adversity that we face that cause us to doubt and despair.  It’s not that he enjoys going out there; but by suffering these deprivations and attacks he shows us that the key to overcoming them is not to cave in like we usually do, but to place all of our trust in our heavenly Father like he did.  He demonstrated for us the kind of faith that we are supposed to learn by such experiences, and he completes this journey after forty days ready to face the challenges that lie ahead.

Today’s Old Testament lesson is also about a journey – a journey through what was probably the deepest, darkest “valley of death’s shadow” that any mere human has ever been asked to take.  We find Abraham, now something a little past his one hundred tenth year, painfully walking in the blazing sun across the burning sand of the Negev desert.  But it isn’t the heat that’s bothering him.  No, it’s his very soul that’s burning in agony, because each staggering step takes him a little bit closer to the place that God has asked him to go.  Beside him, in blissful ignorance of the true purpose of this journey, walks the greatest joy of Abraham’s life:  his beloved son, Isaac. 

This boy is the bright light of Abraham’s old age.  He is the long promised child through whom God said that he make of Abraham a great nation, and through whom all the families of the earth would be blessed.  His mother, Sarah, had been childless throughout her fertile years.  And though the couple was happy and deeply in love, in their deepest hearts there was profound grief caused by their constant aching to fulfill their lives with a child of their own.  It seemed it was not to be.  But by God’s miraculous intervention, Sarah conceived in her old age, when she was at least thirty years past the age of child bearing, and she gave birth to a healthy son whom she named Isaac – which means “laughter” because he had brought them both such joy.  They also understood that his birth was proof positive that no barrier could stand in the way of God fulfilling his promises.  And so to Abraham, Isaac was more than a son (as deep and intense as that relationship is), he was also the keystone component of Abraham’s trust in God.  So it’s small wonder that into Isaac, Abraham has invested his very being.  Every fiber of his existence is totally wrapped up in this teenage boy.  There isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for him; and I’m absolutely sure that Abraham would have given his life gladly a thousand times over to protect this, his beloved son.

But that isn’t what God has asked him to do.  We’re told instead that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”  Try to imagine what that did to Abraham.  In all of life, there is nothing quite so devastating as the loss of a child – but remember, Abraham here is not just going to lose his son, which by itself is too terrible to think about; but more than that, he is the one who’s being asked to draw the blade across the boy’s throat so that he bleeds to death.  Then he is to light the fire that will consume his young son’s body to ashes. Abraham is to offer his son as a sacrifice for sin – his own sin.  The boy is to die for Abraham by Abraham’s own hand.  Try to put yourself in Abraham’s sandals upon hearing these instructions from God.  You feel like you’ve been punched in the stomach with a battering ram – but it’s even harder and worse than that because this pain is in your very soul, and it doesn’t go away.  It just keeps hitting again and again without let up.

Abraham says nothing to God in reply.  He’s too stunned to respond.  He spends what was surely a sleepless night, tossing, turning, and haunted by visions of seeing himself standing in front of an altar where the lifeless body of his son lays, and there in his own bloodstained hands is the black obsidian knife.  Unable to take just lying there thinking, he gets up early, and begins to arrange things for the trip.  He personally cuts the wood for the sacrificial fire – there’s no way he can order a servant to do this job.   Picture him there as he cuts and saws:  What’s going on his head?  “Lord, why?  How could you even ask such a thing?  Was it something I did to offend you?  Are you taking away your promise from me?  Lord, ask me for anything else – anything at all.  But please, Lord, please, spare my son.  Don’t make me do this.”  But heaven is coldly silent, and so Abraham works on in anguish.

Imagine how Satan must have seized this opportunity to attack Abraham: “See, Abraham, God doesn’t love you. Now you see the Lord’s true colors. What kind of God do you worship anyway, that would demand such a thing?  Don’t be stupid, Abraham.  Don’t do it. Tell God to forget it.  Tell him you don’t need a cruel God like him.” Amazingly, Abraham is able to get everything prepared in spite of his agony and Satan’s attacks; but as he begins the journey, with every step forward the voice of Satan ringing in his ears gets louder.  Every forced step takes a conscious decision to ignore the devil’s accusations, to not give in to his own trembling flesh, and to trust that God knows what he is doing; and that somehow, some way, this whole ordeal is going to turn out for the best.  God will remain true to his word.  But how?  Abraham has no idea.

Of course, from our vantage point in history, we know how the story ends. And we know something else that Abraham didn’t know.  This journey has a purpose:  it’s a test of faith.  But that raises other questions: “Why is Abraham’s faith tested?  Doesn’t God know whether Abraham will pass the test? God gave Abraham his faith; doesn’t he know how much he gave him?  And if so, why does he need to test it?” 

These are good questions.  It’s true that God knows everything.  He knows exactly how the test is going to turn out.  Therefore it’s clear that the test is not for God’s benefit.  So it must be for someone else – and obviously in this case, it’s for Abraham himself.  It’s Abraham who doesn’t know how much faith he has; and by this test God will prove to him just how much he does.  You see, the truth is that Abraham didn’t have a very good track record of trusting the Lord up to this point.  In one episode he’ll respond faithfully, and in the next he’ll turn right around and cave in.  His history is one of waffling back and forth between faith and faithlessness – and in that way he’s exactly like all of us.  But God has been using all of these episodes to prove to Abraham that whether he has faith or not, God is always faithful to his word.  He’s been showing Abraham over and over again, “It doesn’t depend on you – I want you to rely on me!”  And by God’s grace, Abraham has learned this lesson, so that when God gives him this, the ultimate test, he knows God will also give him the strength to endure it – and that somehow he will still keep his promises.

And that is part of the application for you and me.  The testing of Abraham is a demonstration to us that when the Lord leads us into life’s wildernesses he will sustain and strengthen us in the faith.  We can rely on it because we can rely on him:  his promises never fail.  We can also rely on the fact that none of us will ever be required to do something as difficult as what God asked of Abraham.

How do we know that?  We know it because in the end, he didn’t require it of Abraham.  It’s true, to complete the test of his faith he had to build the altar of stone, arrange the wood on it, bind his son, and lay him on the altar.  And if the journey was three days in Hell, you can well imagine how much faith was required to do those things. But when Abraham raised the blade to take Isaac’s life, God held back his hand.  “Abraham, stop!  That’s enough. You do not need to sacrifice your son for your sin.  What I require of you is faith, and you have shown it.  I’m the One who will be faithful.  I will provide a sacrifice for you.  And by it you, your descendants, and all nations will be blessed”   

Abraham looked up and saw the substitute God had provided:  a ram caught by its horns in a thorn thicket. But the Lord looked and saw something else entirely.  From his eternal vantage point, he looked across over two thousand years at the same place Abraham was standing:  Mount Moriah in Jerusalem, where King Solomon would build the Holy Temple of the Lord – where for a thousand years sacrifices would be offered up for the sin of the Abraham’s descendants – and where the final sacrifice for the sins of the whole world would be made.  It’s the place of destiny to which God and his own Son were walking side by side ever since together they laid the foundation of the world.  The Father and the Son together on a journey to prove not their faith, but their faithfulness to sinners such as you and me.

And so from our vantage point, we can see that Abraham’s difficult journey of faith is also intended to be a picture for us of that divine walk to the cross.  We are to see in Abraham’s anguish a small glimpse of the suffering of God on our behalf: how dearly it cost him to save us. By trying to imagine Abraham’s agony in preparing to offer up his son, we are to see the tip of the iceberg of God’s great love for us shown when he really did give his Son.  And where Isaac walks along oblivious to what lays ahead, the Son of God marches ahead willingly, accepting his role as the sacrifice, fully aware of what he must suffer – and so we see our Savior’s love as well.

And understanding their love for us should make a huge difference in the way we live our lives.  That is exactly what Paul is saying in today’s Epistle:  “What shall we say in response to this?  If God is for us, who can be against us?  He who did not spare his own Son, but freely gave him up for us all – how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? … Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?  Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or sword?  … No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any other powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Friends, learning that lesson is what our journey of faith here in this life is all about.  This season of Lent as we retrace our Lord’s journey to the cross, and throughout all our days, may God give us the grace to keep moving closer to that goal.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria!