The God of Sacrifice-Doug Crum

Everybody be seated.

I guess most of you are already sitting down, but uh I want to uh pick on some folks.

Clay, where are you?

Clay, uh will you and Bev, will you stand up for just a second?

Make sure everybody and just kind of turn around.

I want everybody to get a good look at you.

And I know I'm gonna get in trouble for this, uh, but this right here, I want you to see this.

This is a testament of God and his goodness and his faithfulness.

Uh, they have uh just celebrated 60 years of marriage together.

Listen, we come here to worship and glorify God, but I want you to know that you came to this earth.

You were brought here to worship and glorify God, and that happens in all different ways.

And your faithfulness to your spouse, the way that you love other people, the way that you don't try to kill the guy who cut you off driving down the road the other day, that brings glory to God.

And so I want us to continue to open up our eyes and see how God is working through really faithful relationships.

And we're so grateful to the witness for all that you've done, both in your relationship to one another and to God, your work out at the prison.

We see God working in you and through you, and we just want to glorify God for that.

Uh, that's that's some good news, but let me tell you, folks, today is not a lot of good news.

We're we're gonna find ourselves in a story that, oh, it's just a little weird.

It's a little crazy.

But I have to tell you, I do love stories.

I've always loved stories, even since I was a little kid.

They touch our hearts, they enlighten our thinking, they compel us to action, and they shape who we understand that we are and who we are becoming.

Oftentimes they reveal truth and they even evoke emotions that mere facts cannot.

And that's why on Wednesdays we are embarking on a 13-week series this summer over the parables of Jesus.

Now, parable, it's a Greek word, it's just a fancy word for a story.

Or if you remember back when you were a child, it's an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.

And so, starting here, well, I guess we started last Wednesday, we had our introduction, but this coming Wednesday, we're gonna launch into our first full parable.

Chad is going to be uh providing us with that lesson.

It's at 6:30 in here.

There you have it.

That's about the most shameless plug that you're ever going to get.

But if you have nothing to do on Wednesday night, come join us.

If you have something to do, cancel it and come join us because you will not want to miss out on these really powerful stories of Jesus.

And so this morning I want to take just a moment and I want to look at another story, one that you're both equally familiar with and uncomfortable with as well.

It's a story that it will not make you feel warm and fuzzy.

It's confusing, it's challenging, and honestly, it's a little bit scary.

And the fact is that by the time we get through in just a few minutes, well, it'll be more in a few minutes, you know me, but after 30 or 45 minutes, you're likely to leave this place with more questions than answers and more anxiety than peace.

But I have no desire to skirt your uneasiness or to calm your fears.

In fact, I I think I believe that the text that we're going to be looking at today is meant to elicit this anxiety.

And it's forced, it's forcing you to deal with those really tough questions.

Questions about your faith and about this idea of sacrifice, and about the very nature of God.

And so this morning we're going to find ourselves starting off in Genesis chapter 22.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

So, can you imagine what Genesis 22 is about based on the picture behind me?

What's this about?

The sacrifice or possible potential sacrifice of who's who's the kid over here on your right?

Isaac.

And who's the crazy guy wielding the knife slash sword in red and blue in this one?

Abraham, right?

And then who is the kind of cute, chubby little thing flying above him?

Yeah, and we'll talk about that in just a second.

I have a little problem with how we depict angels these days, but what's really going on in this picture?

Okay, I heard that.

Oh, I heard that.

The struggle.

There's a struggle that's going on.

Um I can remember as a child, like I said, I always loved stories, and oftentimes uh before bed, uh we had a big children's Bible.

It was a picture Bible, and we would flip through the pages, and I would pick a story for my dad to read.

And every once in a while, we would come across a picture that looked a little bit like this, and I always said, no, no, no, don't read this story.

I don't like this story.

I didn't know what it was about, but I knew enough to know that that guy right there in red was a really bad guy.

He was a bad guy.

He was mean and he wanted to hurt a little kid, and I didn't know why, but God had sent down an angel to protect the boy from the mean guy who wanted to hurt the kid.

And I told that I don't ever want to read that story.

But here's the deal as I've gotten older and become more familiar with the story of Abraham and Isaac and Genesis chapter 22, I'm even more uncomfortable with this story.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

The more I understand it, the more I read it, the more disturbed I am by Genesis chapter 22.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

So, uh, Zach, if you'll uh jump to the next one, here's another depiction of this.

Okay, once again we have uh this one looks a little more forced.

Now you have Abraham has his hand on the back of Isaac's head, uh, and the angel seems to be coming into the into the rescue.

Right?

Now, here's something else I want you to notice.

We have a few more we're gonna look through on these, but notice the the face of Abraham, and notice in every picture where are his eyes trained?

Where is he looking?

Uh Zach, let's go ahead and go to this next one.

How about this one?

This one is particularly scary to me because now his hand is covering the mouth.

He has pulled back the head of Isaac, uh, and he is about to use uh the sword or dagger that was in his hand.

But again, the mean guy is there, and the angel has come in to rescue him, right?

That's what I always perceive this to be.

How about this next one?

Here's another one here.

Um Abraham looks a little bit younger in that picture, uh, but here we have Isaac is um about to be sacrificed.

The angel comes in to save the day.

How about this next one?

Uh, here's another one.

I do like this one a little better, uh, mainly because at least the angel is not this cute little chubby creature that has come in to just kind of gently talk Abraham down from committing murder.

And I'll stop for just a second.

I really appreciated, Tony, what you had to say this morning uh when you said, man, when when it's time to pray, I can have my hands in my pockets because it's just um it's it's so humbling.

And guys, I want you to know, like I I think maybe we've turned Jesus, we've turned God, we've turned angels into this nice, cute, little loving best friend, and we forget about how holy and amazing and how awesome, how awesome, not like pizza awesome, but like how awesome God is.

Moses, after being with God up on Mount Sinai, comes down and he's glowing.

Elijah, when he is confronted with God, even just the whisper of God's breath is chilling to him.

And Isaiah, when he finds himself at the throne room of God, he says, Woe is me, for I am ruined.

About 30 years ago, there were some collectibles that came out.

I think they were called uh precious memories.

Anyone remember those?

They were these cute little figurines, they were the little uh chubby-cheeked little angels that we would collect.

Oh, they were so cute and so sweet.

I'm telling you, at the sight of an angel, people would fall on their knees.

A man possessed with a legion of demons, when confronted with Jesus, falls down and says, What do you want with me, son of the most high God?

I think we've kind of lost the reverence of God and his power and his might and how it strikes fear in everyone who's near him.

Paul says that every knee, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

People will fall down on their knees to their faces because God is awesome and he's mighty.

And in this passage, he seems to do something just a little crazy.

I have one more picture that I want to show you, Zach.

If you'll go to this one, just hold right there for a second.

This is interesting.

This is cute.

I think you you like this.

Um, like most churches, um, there are there are uh Bible uh paintings along the walls.

This one, of course, depicts uh Genesis 22.

Uh you can see there's a ram.

We'll get to that later.

There's a butterfly, that's not a part of the story, but man, that looks cute.

But I absolutely love this, it's one of my favorite um depictions of Genesis 22.

And here's why.

This is why I love this one so much.

I don't know why, I don't know if they were thinking, I don't know if it was a just a coincidence or accident, but it just so happens that go ahead and click the button.

This happened to be right next to the youth minister's door in Hobbes.

And so if you walked up to the youth ministry, if you want to see the youth minister, right, if you had no context, like you don't know anything the Bible, you walk up like, oh, I want my child to be uh in the youth group, and you see an old guy with a knife about to stab a little kid, you're like, you know what?

I think I think we'll just go somewhere else.

But but this story is really disconcerting.

It is really bothersome.

And so I've talked enough about that, and so I I just want you to join me as we read this together.

But here's the bottom line.

In this story, we we don't have to we don't have to guess or surmise.

We know that God told Abraham to kill his son and burn his body.

Like I told you, this isn't gonna make you feel warm and fuzzy.

God tells Abraham to kill his son and burn the body.

That is what we're going to be looking at this morning.

So if you would grab your Bibles or open up your phone and turn to Genesis chapter 22.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

If you did not bring your Bible this morning or you don't have that on your phone, repent and bring it next week.

We're gonna be in this passage for a couple weeks, but don't leave home without your sword.

We want to be uh daily sharpening it and being in the word.

So here we go.

Read verse one is what my notes say.

So let's start right here.

Some time later, God tested Abraham.

He said, Abraham, here I am, he replied.

So I want to start off by asking this question.

How many of you have wanted God to come talk to you, to speak to you?

How many of you have said, God, please reveal yourself?

Do we have one, two people, three?

Come on.

There's surely we are followers of God.

You have wanted to have God come and speak to you, right?

I've lots of, I'm always asking God to speak to me.

God, reveal what do you want from me?

How do I do this correctly?

God, can you make the light turn green?

I'm a little late, right?

I mean, how often do we want to have these conversations with God?

If God could speak to you right now, what would you want Him to say?

Maybe it's something like you're getting a promotion.

Isn't that great?

I want you to move into a bigger house.

Maybe God would say, and the winning lottery numbers are.

He says, Hey, why don't you lead two million grumbling people out of the nation that you fled from after killing one of their soldiers?

Wouldn't that be great?

He told Jonah, you've probably heard of that guy.

We talked about him for about six weeks a few months ago.

He commanded Jonah to prophesy to the sworn enemy of his only country.

He called Hosea to marry an unfaithful woman.

He instructed Gideon to whittle down his army of 32,000 down to just 300.

And he said, now take that army of 300, and you're gonna fight a hundred and thirty-five thousand, and you're gonna do it with jars and lanterns and horns.

How about hearing that from God?

And then, of course, there's Abraham.

It seems like any time that God spoke to Abraham, he was asking him, commanding him, instructing him to do something that was hard or unbelievable.

Up to this point in Abraham's life, God has told him to leave your home.

And by the way, he didn't say where they were going.

He just says, get up and leave your home.

He said, I want you to have a child at a hundred years old.

He told him, I want you to be circumcised and to circumcise all your men.

What possibly could God now ask Abraham to do after he's done all these things?

Well, let's pick up in verse 2.

It says, Then God said, 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.

You've heard this story too many times.

You're already jumping ahead.

Maybe in your mind you're going to what Hebrews is going to say, but I want you to go back here for just a second.

I want you to imagine that you're here for the first time.

You've never opened a Bible before.

You've heard about this new faith, this new religion, and this God.

And there's talk about this God being loving and just, and then you open it up just randomly, say, hey, I'm just going to open up here.

And the first story you hear is this loving God, this just God says, Hey, here's what you're going to do.

You're going to take your son and you're going to kill him and you're going to burn him.

You're going to sacrifice him to me.

How many of you are like, this is my kind of religion?

How many of you in here are wildly uncomfortable with the call, the command that God just gave Abraham?

Okay, we have a lot of people who aren't listening or are dishonest.

Think about this just for a moment.

You don't know this story, and all of a sudden you hear, I want you to sacrifice your son.

Your only son, the son that you have been begging for, the son that you have been praying for.

Abraham is now old, old, old.

We don't know how old Isaac is.

We know he's old enough to carry wood.

But man, can you imagine this?

Don't think about Isaac.

Don't think about a name.

Don't think about a guy thousands of years ago.

I want you to think of your child.

I've got three of them.

The loss.

The brokenness.

What if something had happened a little differently?

What if we could have caught it earlier?

What if what if we had told them not to drive on that road?

Things could have been differently, and you live with that guilt.

But what if God says, I want you to be responsible for the death of your child?

I want your own hands to clutch that knife and to take the life of your child.

Oh my god, God, I don't know about this.

I want you to be uncomfortable with it.

I want you to see, because that's what I think the text is calling us to, is to be really, really uncomfortable with what God is asking Abraham to do.

It is wild, it's crazy, and God, oh, should he ever ask you to give up your child, to take the life of your child.

But here we have it.

God is asking him to do just that.

It begs the question: what kind of God would ask a father to kill his only son?

And so early the next morning, Abraham got up, saddled his donkey, and he took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac.

When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about.

On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.

And this is where we're going to stop right here this morning.

But I wanted to leave you at this point because I want you to remember this is not like he said, Hey, Abraham, I want you to sacrifice your son.

Go do it now.

Oh no, it was so, so much worse.

He said, I want you to go to a certain area.

Not only was he asking Abraham to take his son, he says, you're going to be with your son over the next three days.

We're not going to discuss this until another seven days, but I want you to imagine what you would do if you knew you had three days left with your child before God called you to sacrifice them.

Imagine the conversations.

Imagine the meals sitting around that campfire.

I can't imagine that Abraham ate one bite over those next three days.

I'm not really sure.

I wonder if he slept hardly at all.

I'm guessing there was some tossing and turning.

Abraham was a faithful man, but I can't imagine that there was any part of his life in which he prayed more than over those 72 hours as he traveled along with his son, with a donkey and some servants, and some wood and a knife, and the rope that he would use to tie up his son.

What kind of God would ask such a request?

I don't want to clean it up.

If you want to go ahead and look and read beyond, I'm never going to ask you to stop reading your Bible.

But I want you to land in this tension for a few days and think, what kind of God asks this?

I think God wants us to ask that question.

Because He's going to provide us with an answer, but for this morning it's not yet.

As we do almost every week, we're going to offer an invitation.

And that invitation includes many different responses.

Perhaps you're struggling in your life with where you are and you need prayers.

Maybe you're struggling in your faith and you've landed in an apathetic place and you're just lost.

Maybe you've been here in Brownwood for a little while and you're trying to find a place to worship and you want to come and identify with this congregation, we would love to have you.

Or maybe you say, I just don't want to live another day without Jesus.

I want to be immersed in his life.

We can offer that to you this morning.

If there's any way that we can help you, if we can pray for you, we're going to ask you to come now as we stand and sing.