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Then Sings My Soul

Sermon by Mr. Dan Oedy — September 23, 2007
 

Genesis 22:1-12
Our scripture reading this morning comes from the Old Testament book of Genesis.
Wait till you hear this!

      Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”
      “Here I am,” he replied.
      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.”
      Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled 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. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 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.”
      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, 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?”
      Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
      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. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
      “Here I am,” he replied.
      “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.”

You know, I am convinced this is why nobody reads the Old Testament. I mean — seriously — it is because of stories like this! Who wants to read about and believe in and follow a God like we see in this Old Testament story?

An Introduction to Abraham
If you don’t know the story of Abraham, let me just review it with you briefly. Abraham and his wife Sarah are old; they have been trying for children their whole life, have gone through a whole series of events, and done some silly things along the way. Their story is really very fascinating — you should check it out sometime if you haven’t yet done so. At one point God promises Sarah that she will have a baby, and she is so old and has been through so much that she laughs at God. Eventually, after all they had been through, they do have a son, Isaac — the son they have waited a lifetime for. The story is told in Genesis 21:1-7.

      Now the LORD was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God commanded him. Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
      Sarah said “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

I am sensing that Sarah is pretty excited and Abraham is overwhelmed. Here is the child they have waited and waited for, and then comes the story we have as our scripture reading today, with this big, mean Old Testament God. And “Big Mean Old Testament God” plays a game with Abraham’s mind. Listen again to Genesis 22:2.

      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.”

“Big Mean Old Testament God” says, “Hey, Abraham, you know that boy you have been waiting 100 years for, the one that Sarah says brings her laughter … why don’t you go kill him, just to prove how much you love me?” What a mean joke this is; what a mean God we see. “Hey, Abraham, will you kill your son? I just want to see if you really love me.” What a cruel question! And I am telling you today: This is why nobody reads the Old Testament!

Just so I can be sure I am not alone here, by a show of hands, how many of you are absolutely bothered with this story, and the cruelty of “Big Mean Old Testament God”? Seriously — raise your hand if “Big Mean Old Testament God” is really turning you off right now. Good. For all of you with your hand in the air, you are at the exact place where “Loving and Gracious New Testament God” wants you to be…

Understanding Big Mean OT God
Ken Bailey is a renowned Biblical scholar, and we were blessed to have him here with us earlier this year. I think Ken can help us figure out the motives of “Big Mean Old Testament God.” You see, Ken talks about the ancient traditions, and how every night the people would gather around campfires, around their homes, and they would share the stories of the great leaders of their faith tradition. And for any of you who have done any serious Bible study, you know Abraham is essential to our faith tradition; in fact, even little kids today learn catchy little songs about “Father Abraham.”

Everyone is going to know about Abraham; everyone is going to hear the stories of his life; everyone is going to find out about what “Big Mean Old Testament God” did to Abraham; everyone is going to find out that God asked Abraham to kill Isaac just to prove that he really loved God. So as we read this story today, we come to a fork in the road, where we have two choices:

OPTION 1
We can read this story, and think about how widespread it will become, and think, Wow, this is really bad press for the creator of the universe! And if we choose this option, then we can put down the Old Testament, and go buy one of those New Testament-only Bibles. After all, they are lighter and easier to carry AND they contain only the stories of “Loving and Gracious New Testament God” who, we all know, is a God we can really get on board with!

OPTION 2
We realize God is amazing, God really is omniscient, and He really does have a plan! This is Father Abraham he is talking to. Everyone is going to know his story. Everyone is going to hear about his life. Everyone is going to know that God asked Abraham if he would give up his son as proof of his love and commitment. And, like you and me, everyone is going to think: Whoa, God, that’s over the line! That is too much to ask!

You see, “Big Mean Old Testament God” wants you to feel this way. Because when you feel appalled at God’s request of Abraham, when you feel this is way too much to ask, then it is easier for your life to be completely transformed when you realize this is exactly what “Loving Gracious New Testament God” does for you! He gives His only Son to prove His love and commitment to you. I don’t know if Abraham is prophetic in this moment or if he is just trying to sidestep a difficult question from his son, but did you catch his response to Isaac in verse 8? “God himself will provide the lamb for the offering, my son.” Indeed, He will, Abraham. Indeed, He did. Generations later, God provided the Lamb. After the whole world had the opportunity to understand the magnitude of what was happening on the cross, Jesus — precious Lamb of God — took Isaac’s place.

You see, you have to keep your eye on “Big Mean Old Testament God.” He’s kind of tricky. He’ll throw you a curve ball now and then — it’s almost like He has a plan or something.

The Two Questions
Aside from all of that, I am really excited about today. Today is Confirmation Sunday, an awesome day to celebrate the work and the commitment of our confirmation class. In a few minutes, our confirmation class is going to be asked two questions of commitment before they join the church.

Question 1: Is Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior?
Question 2: Will you serve Him and His church?

Now, to you Confirmands, I’m going to be honest. We kind of expect you to answer “yes” to both of these questions and, in fact, if you don’t… well, I don’t really know what we will do. So with that in mind, before we ask you to answer them, I want to explain to you why answering yes to these questions makes sense to me. Before I start, I have to admit something to you. I am a “Doubting Thomas” by nature. Before I can release my heart to endorse something, I have to wrap my brain around it first.

Saying Yes with the Mind
I thought I would start by telling you why my mind would say yes; and then I’ll get into why my heart would say yes. To explain why my head would answer yes to these two questions, I have to tell you that when I was growing up I always heard the Christian language about Jesus being my Savior, and I had heard about how He died on the cross, and now I was forgiven.

But that never made sense to me. How does some 33-year-old Jewish guy, getting nailed to a tree 2000 years ago forgive me of my self-centered lifestyle? Well, I started studying the attributes of God, and I pieced some of them together in a way where all of this made sense to me, and I will explain it in case you share my “Doubting Thomas” disposition. And maybe you have struggled with this, and so maybe it will make sense in your head, too.

Now, the first attribute of God that comes into play is that God is a God of Order. This makes sense to us in several ways. For example, if I were to take this penny out of my pocket and drop it on the ground, what would happen? It would fall. This is an example of the natural order God put in place for us when He created the world. And isn’t this a blessing for us, to know that there is gravity, and we aren’t going to one day fall off the face of the earth? To know that there is a north and a south, an east and a west; to know that there is a time of year when it is good to plant food, a time when it will be cold, a time when it will be warm, and a time when it will rain every afternoon at 4:00.

Order is a blessing to our world. Just think about how crazy life would be if God were not a God of order. But being a God of order doesn’t stop with Natural Law; why do you think there is such a public outcry when Michael Vick raises dogs to fight each other and then murders the dogs that are inferior? Why do you think there is a public outcry when Scott Peterson has an affair and then murders his wife and unborn son? It is because God’s order doesn’t deal only with the physical, tangible world.

We have morality, and ethics, a conscious that tells us right and wrong. God’s order goes beyond us knowing that fire heats things up, and ice cools them down. God’s order also teaches us that we need to love and nurture our children, that people are precious, and that there is a right and a wrong.

The second attribute that we need to consider is that God is a God of Justice. And this makes sense, because when you think about it, you can’t be a God of order without being a just God. Stick with me here. You can ask any one of these preschool teachers who are here with us today what happens if you have rules in your classroom but no consequences. We all know this: you would essentially have no rules.

Consequences are what make the rules, rules. If I were to tell you that to get to Fort Myers you have to go north and you then left here and went south, but instead of getting lost you pulled right into Fort Myers, then directions would cease to exist! If I sat here and explained to you the theory of gravity but you climbed to the roof, took a step off and then flew around Bonita for a while, then gravity ceases to exist. If we tell our kids to turn off the TV and they keep it on, and we tell them again and they still keep it on, and we tell them again… if there are no consequences, there are no rules, no order…

But we know that if you go south looking for Fort Myers, you will experience the consequence of getting lost; and if you take a step off the roof you will experience the consequence of getting seriously hurt; and if you don’t turn off the TV when Mom and Dad say so, you will experience the consequence of getting punished. Consequences allow the rules to create order. So, even having consequences for our actions is a gift from God, and we know that God’s order goes beyond the tangible world.

As Christians, we call it sin when we break the moral code, the ethical order that God has established. The Bible tells us there is a consequence for sin, and that consequence is our death. So here is our situation: God gives us the gift of order, He gives is the gift of consequences to maintain the order, but because we are what we are (human) we have broken the code and, therefore, our consequence is death.

Which leads us to the last attribute of God I want to discuss: God is a God of Love. God knew our human condition when he visited Abraham and established this measuring stick for love and commitment. God knew we were sinners. He knew we would become indebted to the consequences we owed for the penalty of our sin and, being a just God, an orderly God, and a loving God, God said:

1. We must have order – as a gift to you…
2. We must have consequences to maintain order – as a gift to you…
3. I will pay the consequence of your sin – as a gift to you.

Friends, that is what happened on the Cross! This is why it makes sense to me, and what works in my head. This is why my mind can answer the first question (emphatically): Yes, Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior!

Saying Yes with the Heart
And when you think about it, the second question is a no-brainer. Because when you are given the gift of eternity in heaven, and the relief from your consequences that Christ has given you, then how can you not offer the measly 80, 90 or 100 years you will spend on this earth to His service? How can you not say, “Here I am, Lord, use me”? Well, Confirmands, this is why my mind can answer these two questions with a resounding Yes! — but I think you should also know why my heart would answer Yes!

There is a story about a family who was vacationing at Disney World. One night, after spending the day in the park, they decided to go have dinner at the Boardwalk resort. The mom was sitting at the table with the kids, while the dad went to go get some food. The dad brought back the food, but realized he had forgotten extra napkins and ketchup and so forth, so he headed back to the restaurant. While they were waiting it started to rain. Dad was still on a mission for additional supplies, so Mom had the task of moving the kids from the riverside table to one about 50 feet away that was under an awning. The mom was going back and forth, first moving the kids and then moving the food. When the dad came back, he noticed the mom in the midst of all this hurried movement, and then he noticed that he didn’t see his oldest son.

So he asked the mother, and the mother’s face went white, and immediately the dad knew the boy was lost. They quickly shot in opposite directions looking for him. The mom went to the river and, to her horror, she saw something in the water. She screamed for the boy’s father, who quickly came running and jumped from the boardwalk into the river. The father began frantically searching for the boy, diving time and again, reaching and grasping and trying the find the boy’s body.

Seconds became minutes and other people gathered; some began to look around and another man jumped into the water. Eventually it became clear that the boy had been in the water too long to survive. The water was deep and cold, the father was becoming short of breath, and he couldn’t touch the bottom. The dad was slapped in the face with a decision: Do I give up? Can I get out of the water without my son? Or do I keep trying, knowing it might be more than I can do?

Just as the father resolved that he would not get out of the water, regardless of the consequences, a strange calm came over him. His breathing slowed, his mind snapped out of this weird dimension where everything was happening at warp speed and in slow motion all at once, and he began to think. The son couldn’t be in the water … he couldn’t have gotten over the railing … he couldn’t have gotten through it … they didn’t hear a splash … and what they initially saw in the water turned out to be a rock. Turns out this calm feeling was right. And as the people on the boardwalk began to search for the boy, he was soon found, about 150 yards down, looking for his parents.

The boy’s parents ran to him and they held him tight and they cried tears of joy and relief. Eventually they made it back to their hotel room. And once the family was safely inside, the father told the mother he needed a few minutes to himself. He went into the bathroom and he cried so hard he got sick to his stomach. He took a shower and in the midst of the shower he fell on his face and he prayed like he had never prayed before. Even though he had been a Christian his whole life, something was happening inside of him, something was changing his heart.

I’ll be honest with you; I was a little hesitant to tell you this story this morning. I wasn’t sure I could keep my composure while I told it, because this is not some story off the internet, or an email that was forwarded to me, or some overplayed parable pastors pass around. This is my story…

I was the father in the water … Sarah was the mother on the boardwalk … and Graham was the little boy who was lost … It was me in the shower, on my face, praying…

We cut our vacation short and drove home at 1:30 in the morning, licking our wounds and confused. I struggled all week with the memories and lasting images of being in the water. The next Sunday I was here, in worship with you, and the choir sang their anthem… I don’t know what was more different, how they were singing it, or how I was hearing it. It was a rendition of “How Great Thou Art” and during the third verse, the choir sang these words…

And when I think, that God, his Son not sparing,
Sent him to die, I scarce can take it in,
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing,
He bled and died to take away my sin.
Then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee;
How great thou art, how great thou art…

As they were singing, I began to realize what was happening in that shower. Maybe for the first time ever, my soul was singing, because for the first time in my life I had a glimpse of the pain of losing a child. And I thought about God’s question to Abraham: Will you give your son for me? And then I questioned myself: What if God asked the same of me? And then, like a runaway train, I was hit by the realization, that that is exactly what God did for me! God gave His Son for me… God gave His Son for you… Do you realize what that means? Do you really comprehend that?

How do You Answer the Questions?
If God were to ask the question of us, we would shudder and think, What a horrible God, what a cruel question! But I think God asks this question of Abraham, just to put it on our radar, so that maybe, just maybe, when He gives His Son for us we will have a glimpse of the magnitude of what He is doing.

Jesus Christ died for you.
He died to account for the consequences of your sin.
Do you believe that? Do you? Do you soak in the magnitude of that statement?
And, if you do, how can He not be your Lord and Savior?
How can you not serve His Church?

Honestly I tried to avoid telling this story today. But then I thought, you know what, Confirmation Sunday is too important, and this story is too big a part of me now, and who I am, and it has too great of an impact on how I now see these confirmation questions, and how my heart answers Yes! My soul was singing in that shower, and it was singing, How great thou art, how great thou art! Because when I think that God, His Son not sparing, sent Him to die to take away my sins, I scarce can take it in. That is why my heart can agree with my mind, and why they both sing with my soul: YES, Jesus Christ is MY Lord and Savior, and YES, I will serve Him!

Like I said, in a few minutes, we have some questions for the members of the confirmation class to answer. Who is your Lord and Savior? I am still having moments where I realize the magnitude of this question in renewed and refreshed ways. I hope you can say yes, and I hope when you do you realize what you are saying. I hope when you say yes your soul is singing, How great thou art! How great thou art! I hope you know your yes is celebrated in heaven, I hope your yes continues to resound; and I hope your yes is a YES! that changes the world!

Oh, and by the way … for all of you who thought you were just “watching” a message to the confirmation class, I just want to mention that these are the same two questions we ask everyone who joins the church.

Is Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior?
Will you serve Him and His church?

How is your “YES” sounding these days? How loudly is your soul singing?