Passing the Test

Genesis 22:1-19

Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. 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. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

19 Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And Abraham stayed in Beersheba.

My brother ordered a fishing pole for my son’s birthday, and it arrived this past week. So what do you do when you receive a fishing pole in February, and have a snow day? You go outside and practice your casting. I took a video and sent to my brother, who responded, “Did he catch anything?”

I said, “Yep, a cold.”

We all had our immune systems tested this week as the flu bug made its way through my family. Not just a cold, but the actual, testing-positive-for-influenza flu virus. Some of us came through it without getting sick, while others weren’t as lucky. But in the end, I think we are all stronger because of it. Or at least our immune systems are stronger now.

Today we are going to be talking about testing. I’ve been working through some responses to my sermons over the last few weeks, and about a month ago I mentioned that God knows us perfectly, and loves us anyway. Afterwards someone asked me, “If God knows us perfectly, then why does God test us?”

My first response was to reply that not all tests are from God. But the Bible does clearly describe times when God does test humans. Today’s passage from Genesis 22 is one such instance.

When I started working with the passage, I remembered how important it is to approach the Bible with some humility. I have more questions than answers after studying this passage, and if you spend much time digging into this one, you will too. So I want to start this morning by reciting the three most-important words in theological discourse: I don’t know. There are times when the best response we have to people when they ask difficult questions is to say, “I don’t know,” and this passage presents us with a great opportunity to do that. But I also don’t like to stop with “I don’t know.” The next three most-important words are, “Let’s look together.”

Let’s start this morning trying to better understand what a test is. The Oxford Dictionary defines a test as: “a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something, especially before it is taken into widespread use.”

We have many teachers in our church. You test your students to see how well they have learned a subject. When my son went into the Urgent Care on Monday, he took a test to see if he had Strep. At my parents’ home they have an older, wooden cat walk suspended within one of the barns. Before I walk out into the middle of the barn 20+ feet above the cattle, I test it a bit to see if it will hold my weight. We want to see how well our students can perform, we want to see if something really is what we think it is, we want to check something’s reliability.

This is where my original question comes into play: if God knows us perfectly, then why does God test us?

The most common response I hear is that God doesn’t test us to prove to him what we are capable of doing. God does it to prove to us how much we are capable of.

Think of it like this. I am pushing 40-years-old. I’ve never been a great athlete, but I’ve always enjoyed competing. In my grown-up years, one of the things that I’ve been able to do more and more of is running. It is a sport that you can play by yourself, and with my schedule, I can often find enough time here and enough time there to get in a run between meetings and school buses.

Last year I ran my first ½ marathon. My goal was to run it in under two hours, and I beat my goal by twelve minutes. I didn’t know how fast (or slow) I could run a ½ marathon because I’d never done it before.

I decided to do the race again this year, because I’m a little crazy like that. No, now I want to see if I can improve on my time. What if I get my weight under 200 lbs? What if I train more and pay attention to my nutrition and get a real pair of running shoes? (After Zion’s accident, I will avoid the Nikes this year.) I don’t know the answer until I actually try. I’m not sure what I am capable of until I am pushed to find out.

The most-common response to why God tests us is so we can find out what we are capable of. There are surely things that we wouldn’t try unless forced to do so. I think that is a reasonable explanation…some of the time. I’d also want to warn you against seeing every hardship as a test. What really makes me uneasy is when people think that everything, including traumatic events, are a test from God. If you ever hear someone tell a person who is mourning the death of a child that God is testing them, please speak up!

I believe that the main point of the book of Job is to teach us that we should never jump to the conclusion that the bad things that happen to us are the result of God punishing or testing us. Job is doing well, he has money, he has a family, and he has a nice farm. But all of that is taken from him. Yes, if you look at the book of Job, it is set up as a test of Job and his commitment to God. But it isn’t God who is testing Job, it is Satan.

Matthew and Luke tell the story of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. We read this in Luke 4:1-2a, “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted[a] by the devil.”

The footnote after the word “tempted” tells us that the Greek word peiradzo can also be translated as “tested.” There are other forces in the world that test us.

One more. In Luke 13 there is a story where some people come to Jesus and they seem to be pointing out to him how bad some people are and how they deserve punishment. Jesus’s response is to remind them of a recent accident where a tower fell and killed 18 people. From verses 2-5 we read, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! … Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no!”

Sometimes bad things just happen. God doesn’t make them happen, and don’t assume that bad things happen because God is testing us or because we have sinned. Sometimes bad things just happen.

So what are we going to do with this text and the underlying question of why God tests us. My first response is to say that though God knows us perfectly, that doesn’t mean that God always knows how we will react. We see this in places like Exodus 16:4, “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.’” And Deuteronomy 8:2, “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these forty years, to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.”

Whatever it means for God to know us perfectly it doesn’t mean that God know how every decision we make will play out. When we talk about God being “all knowing,” or “omniscient,” I think that means that God knows all things that are knowable. And somethings just aren’t knowable in advance. They need to be tested.

But that is far from the most disturbing thing about this passage. The most disturbing thing is that God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son as a burnt offering, and Abraham was going to do it. This is the child that God had promised to Abraham and Sarah in their twilight years, the child through whom God had promised to bless the entire world. Now God has told Abraham to kill him, and Abraham was going along with it.

There are a couple of things that we need to remember here. First is that Abraham lived in a time when child sacrifice was a common event. The gods often required people to sacrifice their first born, so as terrifying as it sounds to us, it was commonplace back then. Surely, it was still horrible, but still commonplace.

Second, a number of people have commented that while Abraham seems to pass the test, this does not mean that he earned a perfect score. Not all tests are on a pass/fail basis. Is it possible for Abraham to have scored higher?

Consider the story from just a few chapters earlier, when Abraham met three visitors. These visitors, whom we are told represent God, tell Abraham that they will be destroying the city of Sodom. Abraham doesn’t just sit idly by, but instead bargains with God. What if there are 50 righteous men living there? Will you wipe out the entire city if there are 50 righteous? What about 45? 40? Eventually, they get down to 10. Abraham really puts it on the line for the city of Sodom!

So why doesn’t he seem to argue for his own innocent son?

This is especially interesting when you consider the history of the Hebrew people arguing with God. Isaac’s son, Jacob, will famously wrestle a being, earning him the name “Israel,” which means, “He who wrestles with God.”

My son is nine. I have to think that if I heard God or an angel telling me to sacrifice him on the top of some mountain that I would assume that I misheard, or that the voice wasn’t actually God speaking to me. I would question that voice, not just because I feel pretty strongly against child sacrifice, but also because that doesn’t sound like something the God revealed to us through Jesus Christ would ask for me to do. It may sound like one of the ancient gods of Abraham’s day, but it doesn’t sound like my God.

Maybe Abraham gets an “A” for not withholding his son, but an “F” for not engaging God in conversation. That averages out to a passing grade. Yes, Abraham passed this test, but he didn’t get a perfect score. He could have done better.

There is still one more understanding of this text that I like better, though I still have my concerns. This interpretation suggests that the test was never about Abraham sacrificing his son, but whether or not Abraham could adequately discern the character of God. Ready to get a little nerdy?

Abraham has had a relationship with God ever since God called him to leave his home for a place that God would show him. Abraham and God had made covenants and promises to one another. God had given Abraham a child (or two) in his old age. God and Abraham were not strangers.

This final understanding of the binding of Isaac suggests that Abraham was being tested to see how well he knew God. And from the beginning of this story we can see that Abraham did indeed know that his God was not like the other gods. His God wasn’t going to ask him to sacrifice his son. In verse 5, just before going off to make his sacrifice, Abraham says to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”

It sounds like Abraham was planning to bring Isaac back with him, like God would somehow intervene and stop him from killing his son.

They climb the mountain, and Isaac, who is probably a young adult at this stage, notices that they have wood, they have fire, and they have a knife. What they don’t have is a lamb for the sacrifice. When he asks his father about this, Abraham says in verse 8, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”

It is possible that Abraham lied to Isaac to placate him. But keep in mind that Abraham was over 100 years old at this point, and Isaac likely between 12 and 32. Yet somehow, Abraham was able to tie up Isaac in order to sacrifice him. I don’t think that happens unless both Abraham and Isaac both knew that God would intervene and stop this senseless act of violence.

The test, in my opinion, was to see if Abraham recognized God’s character, if Abraham recognized that his God, the true God, was not like the other gods.

My friends, not every bad thing that happens is a test from God. Sometimes bad things just happen. And when God does test us, sometimes it is for us to see how strong we are. But God also tests us to see how well we know him. Though the story of the binding of Isaac leaves me with a lot of questions, I feel confident is saying that God is not like the others gods of this world. No, if you want to know what God is like, look at our enemy loving, nonviolent, self-sacrificial lord, Jesus Christ.