The Substitute Sacrifice

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I would say that consistently the best part of my day is just after 7pm when after bathtime I read the bible with our little boy; Jacob. The wide-eyed stare and the sharp intakes of breath are a pretty good audience to read to but more than that being able to introduce him to the one person who loves him more than me and my wife do is incredible. Sometimes it's hard though, some of the stories in the bible don't end like an episode of Fireman Sam or Peppa Pig.

Our passage this morning is one of those passages. Though for some of us it's a familiar story that we first heard in Sunday school, it's content is in many ways disturbing and uncomfortable. Certainly there are positive things - there is much about Abraham's faithfully obedience to be gleaned from this account for example. But at it's heart this account is about a father being asked to knowingly allow his son to die. It's a shocking story, it's meant to be and I want us to hear it that way again this morning. So as we consider Exodus 22 this morning imagine you were reading it explaining it to a child, to someone who is hearing this unimaginable request made to Abraham for the first time.

It's my prayer that as this story unnerves and shocks us that it would reveal to us God's heart. That it would show is the truly shocking extent of his love for us. We're on p16 in the blue bible and we're going to divide our text in half this morning first looking at the unimaginable request Abraham receives and acts upon in v1-10 and then at the even more incredible intervention that God makes in v11-14.

1. Abraham receives an unimaginable request, v1-10

Verse one begins with God calling Abraham. This is the eighth time God has spoken to Abraham and it will be the last. God first spoke to Abraham in Genesis 12; calling him to leave his country and go to the land he would show him. God's interventions in Abraham's life have always been remarkable but now God asks Abraham to do something unimaginable, v2:

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.

God ask Abraham to give up his son, his only true son, the son whom he loves. God asks Abraham to put him to death as a sacrifice to him. It's an unthinkable thing to ask a parent to do. It would be unthinkable to ask a parent to knowingly put their child in harms way wouldn't it? But to ask them to put to death their own son?

Verse 3 tells us that Abraham set off with Isaac early the next morning. What a night that must have been for Abraham, wrestling with this request from God. God who had been so good, so kind to him. Why would he ask this of him? How could he take Isaac. Isaac his only son, his heir the child he and Sarah had longed for, through years of childlessness. Isaac the answers to their weeping prayers before God. Isaac the miracle baby born to parents so old they had laughed at the thought of him. Isaac whom God had promised to build a great nation through. Isaac the son whom Abraham loved. Isaac the son whom God knew Abraham loved and yet still asks him to let him die.

What is God doing here? How can God ask this? Well we have a clue in v2; God asks Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as a 'burnt offering' a burnt offering is one that would be completely consumed as a sign of sin being blotted out, forgiven. Last week we saw Adam and Eve rejecting God's good and beautiful rule, rejecting him as God as they sought to be God for themselves. This led to the curse: alienation from the perfect world God had placed them in, alienation between man and women as they each grasped for control over the other and finally and most destructively alienation from the life-giver himself - God, resulting in the birth of death in the world.

This event has spawned a pattern which all Adam's descendants are choosing for themselves: to reject God and to try to be God for themselves. There is now a yawning chasm between man and God and a fundamental corruption of the world's true design at work now. Something is required to bridge the gap between man and God caused by his sin, there is a price that must be paid to right this incredible wrong; that the creature would attempt life without his creator. Humanity is in debt, massively to it's creator at this point. In fact it is only through God's unmerited kindness that humanity who has caused God to grieve over it's very creation still exists now.

A sacrifice is required of men to pay for, to atone for their sin. Abraham and Isaac know this, right from the beginning of God's dealings with Abraham he has built altars and made sacrifices which makes Isaac's question in v7 all the more heartbreaking:

7Isaac 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?

Isaac understands what is happening here and so, of course, does Abraham. I can't think of another question in scripture which would be quite so crushing for a parent to hear. Dad I know we're going to worship, going to sacrifice something to God, everything is here the wood, the fire but there's no lamb to kill, no animal to offer in our place. But they go on, v9:

9When 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.10Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.

How are you doing explaining this to someone who has never heard this before? This is monstrous isn't it? When people say that religion poisons everything, that there is nothing great about God isn't this compelling evidence: that God would demand that Abraham would pick up a knife to slay his own son?

This is a sickening moment; a father about to spill the blood of his son. It's heart-stoppingly painful just to read nevermind to place ourselves in the same position. And yet there is nothing unjust happening here. To demand the life of Isaac as payment for the sin of Abraham, for the sins of men is not unreasonable. God has made life and has been rejected by those he has given it to, cast out from 'their' lives which are but gifts.

No, there is only one problem with this sacrifice: it is too small. Though the cost is high to Abraham and Isaac, relatively it is small. That is impossible to understand unless we know how sickeningly evil sin is. Rejecting God, dismissing as of no importance the single most important and most purely distilled goodness in our outside of this universe is the ultimate crime, it is the ultimate injustice. It is so arrogant, so irrational and selfish that the only fit penalty is death, for all of us. That's it's due penalty: 'For the wages of sin is death'.

You might have heard perhaps of the various jubilee campaigns that have been launched asking first world countries to cancel the debt of third world countries. The arguement being that given that these countries cannot pay even the interest on the debt that they owe, it is mathematically impossible that they will ever, in thousand years, be able to pay back their debt.

That's what our sin is like, it's a debt which we can never hope to pay and which we are daily racking up the interest on. But it's not unjust for God to demand payment, far from it. It's just that any cost that we could pay would be a drop in an ever-swelling ocean of debt. Sacrificing Isaac is like asking a debt-ravaged country for a million pounds, the cost is incredible to them but it's small compared to the debt of countless billions which they really owe.

So this is the unimaginable request made of Abraham; to sacrifice Isaac the son who he loves deeply, the son who is the very thing he has most yearned for in all his life, the miraculous answer to the deepest longings of his heart. And yet more remarkable is that even as Abraham agrees to pay this incredible price, he is far short from what is required.

2. God provides an unimaginable sacrifice, v11-14

Look at v11:

11But 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.13Abraham 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.14So 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.

God breaks into this scene with a miraculous answer to Isaac's heartbreaking question in v7: 'but where is the lamb for the offering' and now here it is a ram caught by it's horn in the thicket which is quickly and how gladly sacrificed by Abraham instead of his son. It's a joyful scene, as Abraham's faith in God is rewarded with effectively receiving his son back from the dead! What a turning point: grief and sadness and mourning are replaced with life and joy.

But what about that price that could not be paid? Surely that gasp of relief is followed by confusion. Why did God ask for Isaac's life if all that was required was the life of a lamb? They had sacrificed animals before that much is clear from Isaac's answer. Well we have our answer in v12:

"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."

This is a test of Abraham's respect and love for God, a test which he has passed by not withholding his only son from God. Abraham is commended for this very thing in Hebrews 11 that great gallery of faith, where it says of him:

17By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son,18even though God had said to him, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." 19Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.

There is much that we can learn from Abraham's trust in God's goodness and in his promises even when faced with the most seemingly insurmountable problem. However, that is not why we are in Genesis 22 this morning and I think that proving Abraham's faith is not the full answer to why God made this incredible request and then intervened so dramatically.

This is an historical event recorded for our benefit, written as it were by God into the pages of salvation history to show us something unimaginable. You see there is a son sacrificed in this story, but it's not Isaac, it's Jesus. Remember our reading from Luke 3:

21When all the people were being baptised, Jesus was baptised too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened22and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.

It is no accident that these words echo so precisely the request made of Abraham in Genesis 22.2:

Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love...Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering

Isaac is a picture of Jesus. His almost-sacrifice is a shadow of Jesus' ultimate sacrifice that was to come. Isaac's sacrifice was an unbearable cost to Abraham and an insufficient payment for sin. Jesus was an unbearable cost to God but an all sufficient payment for sin. This passage takes us to the broken heart of Abraham as he ponders the reality of sacrificing his only son, the son whom he loved. But more incredibly it takes us to the heart of the Christian God. The heart of the Lord Almighty who would give up his Son, the Son whom he loved to death on a cross at the hands of those he had formed from nothing.

The thought that I want to impress upon you this morning is that Abraham's fatherly love was as nothing compared to the fatherly love that God expresses through Jesus. I think it's impossible to read the first half of this passage without almost grieving with Abraham at what he was asked to do - to give up the son that he loved but I want you to know that what God has done in Jesus reveals what Abraham's act was: a shadow, a beautiful, faith-filled, joy-earning shadow, a precursor of something unimaginably wonderful. I want to give you three reasons why:

1. God's love for Jesus is unfathomably deep

Jesus is God's son, he is the Son whom God loves and with whom he is well pleased. That sounds rather tame doesn't it: well pleased. But under those words lies an incredible truth: the trinity Father, Son and Spirit were and continue to be completely satisfied with each other, independent of the rest of the universe. Jesus talks in John 17 of the glory he shared with the father before the world began. That is the substantive joy which God had simply from being God. Like when a man and a women are so consumed with love for one another that they seem to exist independent from the rest of the world, not needing anything from it. Except infinitely more so and with no limit on how long that would last, with no naivety or hidden secrets.

But on the cross Jesus cries out 'My God, my God why have you forsaken me'. Jesus sacrifice breaks, for a time, the most intimate and perfectly loving relationship that has ever and will ever exist. Jesus willingly abandoned that status of infinite pleasure and glory to go to his death.

2. Jesus was totally undeserving of death

Second, Jesus was totally undeserving of death. Jesus was innocent, not just without obvious fault but totally pure, completely free from anything that wasn't absolutely consistent with perfect goodness. Not even his enemies could point the microscope at any of his transgressions, there were none to be found.

We know don't we that innocence makes suffering more injust. There is something in us when we see something like the incomprehensible shooting of primary-school children at Sandy Hook that just wants to reject it - like a sick body wants to reject food. There is something heart-wrenchingly sub-humanely evil about such things done to children. Why because they're innocent, not perfect we know but innocent. Though no-one could deserve what happened to them somehow we feel that they deserved it even less.

Jesus was innocent, Jesus was perfect. Jesus was full to the brim and right through with grace and mercy. He was murdered, betrayed, ridiculed and disgraced by those he had made.

3. Jesus sacrifice was made on your behalf

Thirdly, Jesus sacrifice was on your behalf. Jesus died, like that lamb, in the place of, instead of who? You. You and I, You and I who are not innocent but filthy who have rejected the God who has made us and has loved us. But God has been merciful. Jesus has willingly given up everything to die on a cross to pay a debt which we could never afford and do not even understand the depth of.

That is the Father's love for his children. God has paid the unbearable cost for us by doing the very thing that he could not allow Abraham to do. This is the love of God for those who would trust in the sacrifice made by the Son, the whom he loved but which his love for us has allowed to die.

Let's pray...

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