Clergy/Leaders' Mail-list No. 2-046 (Expository Sermon)

THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE (Genesis 22:1-13)

As a noun or a verb, "sacrifice" is a word used almost every day. We make budgetary sacrifices; salary sacrifices; we sacrifice luxuries for our children's education; those of us more inclined to altruism may sacrifice our time and energy to help others by volunteering to deliver 'meals on wheels' or some other service.

We gain pleasure in making a sacrifice that delivers personal benefits, and there is honour in making a significant sacrifice on behalf of others. But we have a profound sense of awe when someone makes the ultimate sacrifice, forfeiting their life for the well- being of others, as often happens tragically in war.

Many of us are also familiar with the story of Private John Simpson and his faithful donkey that carried wounded Australian soldiers across Gallipoli during the First World War. Simpson himself made the ultimate sacrifice in May 1915, but I mention his story today to point out a characteristic of donkeys.

As beasts of burden, donkeys and mules are superior to horses in durability, memory and dietary control, but they refuse to carry more than 75 pounds on each side. Overload them, and they buck the load off, refuse to move, or head for the nearest tree to scrape the load off.

There's a mule in each of us: the spirit of mere duty that produces only what's expected and nothing more. God encourages us to transcend the mule within, and to love him in the same unqualified manner in which he loves us, and that will involve sacrifice - perhaps the ultimate sacrifice.

For Abraham, it involved even more. God placed Abraham's faith on the line, testing his obedience by commanding him to perform the abhorrent and horrific act of sacrificing his own son. No other story in the Old Testament can match the sacrifice of Isaac for its haunting beauty or its theological depth. It's a story that has inspired reflection and worship through the centuries, and continues to do so today.

What is perhaps more amazing than God's unexpected and outrageous command is Abraham's response! He resolutely obeys God to the letter, despite his obvious personal dread, and the social repercussions when his family and friends discover what he's done; and despite what the loss of Isaac will mean to the family's destiny. Abraham had two sons, both of whom he loved, but God had made a series of covenant promises to Abraham, and he knew the promises would be delivered through Isaac. He was fully aware of the supreme price God was asking him to pay.

So off they go: Abraham and Isaac, a donkey with its two packs under the 75 pound limit, two servants, enough wood for the burnt offering, and the means to carry fire. Their goal was Mt Moriah, which from 2 Chronicles 3:1 was the site where Solomon's temple was built in Jerusalem, occupied today by the Islamic Dome of the Rock, built in AD 691, the term 'Rock' referring to the place where Isaac is reputed to have been laid on the sacrificial altar.

I imagine the small party walking along, gaining the crest of a hill, and there before them, still in the distance, is Mt Moriah. Abraham calls a halt, saying 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" (verse 5).

Was this wishful thinking on Abraham's part? Perhaps he was engaging in some economy with the truth to hide his true intentions from Isaac and the two servants? Or did Abraham believe that God would somehow miraculously save Isaac's life? We don't know, but in the next recorded dialogue between father and son we discover further evidence of Abraham's remarkable faith in God.

As they near the place of destiny, Isaac scans the supplies and notices something missing. He says to Abraham, "Father . . . the fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?" (verse 7). Not knowing, but confidently believing, Abraham humbly answers, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son," and they continue the journey (verse 8).

Isaac may have hoped they would come across a stray or wild lamb in the mountains, but somewhere between that conversation and their arrival at the summit of Mt Moriah, the awful truth dawned on him.

Abraham probably explained to him what God had asked him to do, and Isaac respected his father and his life of faith, because although the situation was bizarre and barbaric, he was a willing participant, obedient and submissive, serene in the awful silence of the moment. There was work to do - stones to collect and wood to arrange - plenty of opportunity for Isaac to run away. But Isaac remains, even allowing his father to bind him and lay him gently on the altar, tears of anguish streaming down his cheeks.

Until now, Abraham could have turned around and walked home, the taste of bitter defeat in his mouth, but comforted in the knowledge that Isaac was alive and well. But now, as he reaches out his hand and takes the knife, he realises that God has not provided a substitute for this son in whom all his promises rest, and every beat of his racing heart brings the awful moment closer when he will perform the irreversible act and end Isaac's life. "Why must I do such a thing?" we hear a broken Abraham say.

At the last possible moment comes the miracle Abraham has been hoping for. With knife raised, he hears the angel of the Lord urgently calling his name, with a message from heaven. "Do not lay a hand on the boy," the angel says. "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. 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" (verses 12-13).

Abraham has passed the test. He wins; he's on the victory side of the trial. He has proved his faithfulness to God. And Isaac wins: his life is spared, he has demonstrated exceptional respect and loyalty to his father, and he has learned a vital lesson about faith and obedience to God.

And God wins: his people demonstrate their allegiance to him, they love him in the same unqualified manner in which he loves them, and he receives their worship. And he paints for us, on the broad canvas of salvation history, the awesome vista of God the Father giving his one and only Son to save a lost world, and a powerful image of the substitutionary death of Christ for each of us.

You and I were in Isaac's terrible predicament, with no hope of release or victory, until God sent Jesus to take our place, to suffer for our sins, and to die on our behalf. As John Stott eloquently puts it, Jesus "sacrificed himself (not animals), once and for all (not repeatedly), and this secured for us not only ceremonial cleansing and restoration to favour in God's covenant community but the purification of our conscience and restoration to fellowship with the living God" (page 135).

John the Baptist, on seeing Jesus, proclaimed the message of substitutionary atonement through Christ: "Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (John 1:29). Paul says the same: "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21); and "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13-14).

Commenting on this passage, Martin Luther says, "Our most merciful Father . . . sent his only Son into the world and laid upon him all the sins of all men, saying: 'Be thou Peter that denier; Paul that persecutor, blasphemer and cruel oppressor; David that adulterer; that sinner which did eat the apple in Paradise; that thief which hanged upon the cross; and briefly, be thou the person which hath committed the sins of all men; see therefore that thou pay and satisfy for them.' "

And the Apostle Peter, borrowing language from Isaiah 53, is in no doubt that the death of Christ had a substitutionary function: "He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness" (1 Peter 1:24a).

It's worth noting the relationship between the story of Genesis 22 and the Suffering Servant, typifying Jesus, in Isaiah 53. In Isaiah 53:10, like Abraham, the Lord makes his Servant's life an offering, and sees his offspring. In verse 7, like Isaac, the Servant of the Lord is "led like a lamb to the slaughter," and silently consents to being sacrificed. But there the similarity ends, because unlike Genesis 22, the Servant actually dies.

On 21 May 1946 in Los Alamos a young scientist named Louis Slotin was conducting a routine experiment in preparation for an atomic test at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific: determining the amount of U-235 necessary for the explosion by pushing two hemispheres of uranium together until they just achieved critical mass, and then separating them with a screwdriver to stop the chain reaction.

But that day, just as the uranium became critical, the screwdriver slipped and the room filled with a blue haze. Instead of ducking for safety, Slotin tore the hemispheres apart with his hands and interrupted the chain reaction. By that courageous act he saved the lives of seven other people in the room, but Slotin himself died in agony nine days later.

At the cross Jesus Christ walked directly into sin's most concentrated radiation, allowed himself to be touched by its curse, and died. But in doing so he broke the chain reaction; he broke the power of sin. Today I urge you to respond to God's love and compassion, and accept what Jesus has done to bring you into a positive and meaningful relationship with God. Say "Yes" to God right now.

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E043 Copyright (c) 2002 Rod Benson. Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: New International Version (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1980).

You can contact Rev Rod Benson by e-mail at <>. To subscribe direct to his weekly sermons, e-mail him with "subscribe" in the subject.