The Beloved Son of the Promise

"The Offering of Abraham" by James Tissot

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“After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’ He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you” (Genesis 22:1-2).

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

The temptation of Abraham lasts three days. It is not the only time he is tempted, but this is brutal. He journeys through the wilderness with Isaac, his only son from his beloved Sarah. This miracle child was born when his mother and father were ninety and one hundred, respectively. Isaac’s name means “he laughs,” he is their laughter in their old age. But even more than that, he’s the child of the promise. The Lord has declared that Abraham will be the father of a great nation through Isaac.

All of that seems in jeopardy now, endangered by God Himself. The Lord commands, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” Kill your beloved son, says God. No explanation or good reason is given—just the command to obey.

So, Abraham journeys with servants and Isaac, with wood and fire. One imagines that the temptations he endures date back to Adam and Eve. Did God really say that? Why would He prevent you from what you want? Is God just? Is He even stable? Since God promised that a great nation would come through Isaac, wouldn’t you be helping God in His long-range plans if you ignored this command and kept your son alive? Can’t this be done some other way?

And amongst the anxious questions and the second-guessing, Isaac has a question too: “My father! Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” One can only imagine how heavy the silence that follows that question before Abraham responds, “God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.”

Take away all the questions, and the temptation is this: Will Abraham make Isaac into an idol? Will he fear the loss more than he fears disobeying God? Will he love his son more than he loves God? Will he trust his instincts and emotions more than God’s Word and promises? God’s promises seem impossible now: as Hebrews 11 notes, the only way that God can keep His promises at this point is if He raises Isaac from the dead. And how likely is a resurrection from the dead?

The days of temptation are over, and Abraham finds himself standing over Isaac, his knife poised to slaughter his beloved son. It is only then that the Lord intervenes. He says, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.” Along with the words to deliver, God provides a ram, its horns caught in a thicket. It becomes the sacrifice. Isaac lives. God has provided a lamb, and all His promises about a great nation through Abraham and Isaac will be kept.

Now, many will look at this story and get the wrong idea. They’ll come up with a sermon that goes along the lines of, “As long as you have faith like Abraham—as long as you’re willing to give up everything in service to God (especially the things most precious to you!), only then can you expect God to reward you and do great things through you.” But that isn’t what this text is about. Abraham’s faith is a gift from God. Abraham doesn’t earn God’s favor by fervently believing in Him. Abraham only has faith because God favors him.

No, this text is not about what you must do to strengthen your faith, but about what God has done so that your faith might be strengthened; for while it is easy for us to focus upon what Abraham endures and does, it is also easy to neglect what God is doing. It’s easy to see God as cruel in this test of Abraham, but faith clings to this: God provides a lamb. Not just the ram in the thicket. God provides the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. The message of this text is not Abraham’s obedience but the Gospel. The Lord declares to Abraham, “I will spare your only beloved son of the promise. But I will not spare My own beloved Son to keep My promise of salvation.”

When Jesus steps on the shore after being baptized by John, the heavens open and the Spirit of God descends on Jesus in the form of a dove. With this, God publicly sets apart His Son for His great task. At the same time, with the Spirit at His side, He is also empowered to carry out that task. Then comes the Father’s voice from heaven. “You are My beloved Son; with You I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). The Father identifies Jesus as His Son. With the word beloved, He does not express a sentimental attachment but His complete approval of what Jesus is undertaking for the descendants of Adam and Eve. The Father also expresses His complete confidence in Jesus by saying, “With You I am well pleased.”

Immediately, the Spirit sends Jesus into the desert for His encounter with Satan, the devil who had caused Adam and Eve to fall into sin and thus brought sin upon the entire human race. Jesus faces Him alone; no fellow believers are present to comfort and strengthen Him. Wild animals are no source of spiritual help. Jesus is fighting this battle as the substitute for all humans. The struggle is arduous and lengthy. It lasts 40 days with no breathing spells, 40 days of continuous testing.

Do not think this battle is simple for Jesus. As a man, He can suffer hunger and thirst and appreciate power and wealth; thus, He feels the pressures of these temptations. Nor is it simple for Him because He is the Son of God. Though Jesus often uses His almighty power to heal and bless, He seldom uses it to defend Himself. He faces temptation in the same way you and I must face it—with God’s Word. This is also not the only time Jesus has to face the devil. Jesus will fight him until the moment on the cross when He says, “It is finished” (John 19:28).

Jesus is on His way to be the sacrifice for sin as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Rather than a three-day journey, there are still three years of journey between our Gospel lesson and the cross. As Isaac once carried the wood for his own sacrifice up the hillside, Jesus will carry His cross to His death—at least as far as He can. But there will be no reprieve for Jesus at the top of the hill. God will not provide a substitute lamb in His place. Jesus is the substitute Lamb whom God provides in your place.

His temptation in the wilderness is an important stop along the way. Matthew and Luke tell you what the devil says, and the temptations are not much different from the ones he spoke to Adam and Eve, or the ones that no doubt played across the mind of Abraham: “Is this really God’s will? Would He do this to You? Why? Why not opt out of this plan for one that seems better? Why not just skip the suffering, crown Yourself king, and rule over the world?” Throughout those forty days, Satan tempts Jesus to break off from the Father’s will and promise—the devil dearly wants a blemished Lamb of God. Jesus doesn’t sin. He resists every temptation, remains holy, and keeps heading for the cross to die on your behalf.

Before Christ dies on your behalf, He also resists temptation on your behalf. You don’t resist temptation perfectly: you’re terrible at it. Each time you fail to resist temptation, that sin is enough to condemn you forever. So, Jesus resists the temptation for you so He might give you credit for His work. The Gospel includes the joyous truth that Jesus gives you His righteousness even as He takes away your sin. So, when God looks at you, He sees you as sinless, righteous, and thus His beloved, holy child. So, Jesus resisted temptation for you, even as He went to the cross to die in your place. God, who spared Abraham’s beloved son, did not spare His own beloved Son to save you.

That Jesus resisted temptation for you is wonderful news, since you often fail to resist temptation. Some temptations are worse than others and far more painful. There is a temptation you share with Abraham, one that destroys the faith of many. It is the temptation to make idols out of those you most love.

This is a strong and terrible temptation, and it’s a time when God doesn’t seem loving or fair. An idol or a false god is something that you fear, love, or trust in more than God. It makes sense, then, that the things you hold most precious are the things you are most likely to love more than God. And if that is true of things, it is certainly true of people. You can see, touch, and interact with them: they seem far more real to you than God, whom you only know by faith. It’s much easier to serve and to love someone you can see. So, loved ones become idols.

It happens when you’re willing to sin to please friends, fiancée, spouse, kids. This means that you fear offending them more than offending God.

It happens when you say, “My friend doesn’t believe in Jesus, so I’m going to ignore what the Bible says and believe he can be saved apart from Christ.” You’ve made your friend a false god whose beliefs have moved your faith away from Christianity because you’ve decided that your friend speaks and lives truth more than God does.

It happens when parents say, “I’ve always said that this activity is sin, but now that my kids are doing it, I have to say that it doesn’t seem so wrong.” Thus, you make your kids your idol because you’ve decided that their doctrine and practice is true, and therefore God is not true anymore.

It happens when someone says, “I am so attracted to this person that I want to be with them intimately, even if God’s Word expressly forbids it.” That is to say, “I love this person and my relationship with them more than I love God and my relationship with Him.” That’s a seductive idol, indeed.

It happens in courtship: when friends and fiancées tempt Christians away from the faith, they become idols who say, “Who do you love more? Me or God?”

And it happens, very painfully, in a solid marriage and family when a loved one is stricken with disease, seriously injured, or even taken in death. That puts you in Abraham’s shoes on the way to Mt. Moriah: “What sort of a God would let this happen? Why is this His will? Why should I follow Him if this sort of thing happens?” Those are awful times, and the devil will use them as tempting idols for you, to make you fear the loneliness more than you trust in God’s promises, to make you hate God in your grief for those whom you no longer see.

We’ve left out a critical character in these temptations: you are not short on love for yourself. It’s easy to explain your sins away, to offend God rather than deprive yourself, to accuse God of cruelty when you are given to suffer affliction. You make yourself an idol every day. We all do.

These temptations are especially fearful because they are so severe, so easy to fall prey to, and because they will undoubtedly happen along the way. It is why you do well to live as a repentant child of God throughout your life, long before such times come. You want a strong faith that clings to Christ long before such temptations seek to tear you away. It’s why you continually discipline yourself to prioritize the Word and the Supper. It’s why you teach the Word to your children, speak the Law in love, and shower them with the Gospel. It’s why you share it with your spouse and friends: so that when it is given to you to grieve a loss, you might still rejoice in the promise of God’s resurrection.

Because as the Lord made promises to Abraham, He has made promises to you. As the Lord kept His promises to Abraham, so He keeps His promises to you. Long before our Old Testament lesson, God called Abraham and made him His own: He promised Abraham a land and that he would be the father of a great nation. What did Abraham do to deserve this? Nothing: it was all God’s doing.

Long before today, the Lord redeemed you from sin. Well before you were born, Christ went to the cross as the sacrificial Lamb for your sin. In your Baptism, God said, “I choose you to be My beloved child.” And what did you do to deserve that? Nothing: it was all God’s doing. That’s Good News: you never have to wonder if you did enough to earn your Baptism. Jesus earned it for you by His perfect, obedient life, His innocent suffering and death, and glorious resurrection.

The Lord has made you His at the cost of His own blood and promised His faithfulness to you. Between that price and that promise, you are assured that the Lord works all things for your good and the good of His people, even when He does not. You know this by faith, not by sight. This is a world of trouble—to pretend otherwise is to deny the Word of God. But within this world and its trouble, you have the Lord’s promise that you are redeemed. You have the promise of forgiveness, no matter what sins you have fallen prey to. You have His assurance of the resurrection.

Sometimes, you must walk as Abraham did for those three days, trusting and obedient to God’s Word even when it makes no sense at all. But you know that the Lord is with you. You know that He will deliver you. You know this because you know that God did not spare His own beloved Son but gave Him up at the cross for your redemption. He is the Lamb God provides to save, who took your place on the cross that was for you, and for His sake, you are forgiven for all your sins.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen 

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.