Central Lutheran Church - Elk River

The Sacrifice of Isaac with Pastor Ryan Braley

• Central Lutheran Church

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A knife raised, a breath held, and then a voice that changes everything. We take on Genesis 22 with clear eyes, a bit of humor, and a lot of courage, asking what kind of God would command a sacrifice—and what kind of God would stop it. Moving beyond Sunday school gloss, we map the Bronze Age world where sacrifice was normal, then trace how this story flips that script and invites a deeper trust. Along the way, we lean on Jewish interpretive tradition: Genesis 12 and 22 as mirror calls to “go,” Rashi’s reading of olah as “bring up,” and the provocative question of whether the tester is God or the Satan. Each lens adds texture without forcing tidy answers.

We also look at Isaac. If he carries the wood, is he complicit, consenting, courageous? Or does the silence that follows—no more dialogue with Abraham, a vanishing act after the mountain, Sarah’s sudden death—hint at trauma the text refuses to hide? That lack of polish matters. The Bible doesn’t sanitize; it bears witness. And that honesty becomes part of the message: faithful people ask hard questions and keep reading in the dark together.

The heart of our conversation settles on the ending. In a religious economy built on appeasing the gods, this story presents a God who provides. The blade halts. A ram appears. The name of the place becomes the theology: the Lord will provide. For Christians, the pattern echoes forward to the cross—God brings what we cannot. We bring open hands. If you’ve ever wondered whether faith means blind obedience or honest trust, whether ancient horror can lead to modern hope, this conversation is for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves serious questions, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway so we can keep learning together.

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SPEAKER_00:

I'll give you thanks this morning for your presence here. We think of Christmas not too long ago and the the birth of your son, the the Word of God, the Lagos, the God incarnate coming into the human world to move and dwell amongst us and to live with us. And so we reminded this morning that you are here with us, God, and that your spirit that was with Jesus is also here with us today. And the spirit that empowered Jesus that allowed him to do all the things he's done, that that same spirit lives in us. And so may we recognize that this morning, and may we notice it this morning. And uh praying bless us this morning in Jesus' name. Amen. How many be seated? Uh where'd Todd go? Thank you, Todd. Yeah, thank you, man. Um you notice that Todd choked up a little bit there. I don't mean to put Todd on the under the spotlight here, but uh you know, I think of Todd, Todd's son Ian, who died not how long ago was it, Todd? Yeah, about a year ago. Yeah, this is a troubling story. This story about a father who's asked to sacrifice his own son that he loves, the text tells us. And so I appreciate you reading it, Todd. Uh before we jump in, I just want to say a couple things. And um one, I'd love for you to come, just looking out at the at the congregation, I would love for you to come on Friday to our game night. It's a great night, not just because it's fun and because I'll dominate you at sorry. I will. But just it's a great time to get to know people. And there's a lot of us that are here that don't know many other people. We're a larger than average church. We're one of the, you know, we're a pretty big-sized church, and it's harder to know people. And so it's a great night to come and get to know some people. And so if you're here, you're like, I don't know, our family has always kind of just kind of come and sat down and then get up and leave. That's okay. But I'd love to have you stick around for a game night and get to know some people. And um yeah, and uh yeah, get get a little bit further deep into the community here at Central. And then secondly, uh I I'll I love sticking around after the sermon and especially during this series, these are gonna be some tough sermons we're gonna give in the next couple of weeks. So I'll always be hanging around up front if you want to come and chat with me. It's just easier if I hang out in one spot. If you want to come and hang out and talk with me, I'd love I love doing it. I don't mind it at all. I really enjoy it. But if I go out there, it's harder to find me. And so I just usually hang out up here. Come and grab me. I'd love to argue, wrestle, or just talk. I don't care. We don't have to argue, but I mean, like if you want to disagree, I don't mind that at all either. I really don't mind. Um so yeah, come and hang out and chat, or we can get coffee, just let me know. But um, it's enough. And if there's a block, sometimes there's a line, just wait. If you don't mind, I don't mind. I'll stay here as long as I need to. I love doing it. So um hang around. That being said, we are in our new sermon series, and we're calling it Reading in the Dark. And it's about troubling texts that are in the Bible. And this is one of them. There's a lot. If you read the Bible and read it closely enough, there are many texts, stories, ideas in the Bible that are really kind of disturbing if you read it closely enough. Now, many of us might have grown up in the Christian faith, and maybe you read these stories as a kid in Sunday school and had the little flannel graph or a video, and you're like, oh, these are great stories, you know, but um and you don't really realize how troubling they are and how disturbing they really are, because you kind of grew up with them, and it's like the water in which you swim, and sometimes the things that are most closely to us or most obvious are the hardest for us to recognize because we're too close. And so many atheists or people who reject the faith pull on these verses, like, this is why I don't believe in God, because this is crazy. So I want to re-envision these stories and reimagine them, approach them and do it in a way because there are lots of stories and ideas and texts just hard to understand. Anyone with me on this? Okay, some are just difficult to understand, some are just like really hard to understand, like the book of Revelation, like what there's all this coded language and numbers and symbolic creatures and dragons and angels, like what is happening? It's just a bizarre book. Uh, the Bible itself acknowledges how confusing it can be. Don't believe me? Just ask Peter, one of the apostles. Peter writes in his book, uh, 2 Peter, he's talking about the Apostle Paul. I love this. Paul wrote most of the New Testament, and here's what Peter had to say about Paul's writings. He's a it says, Paul also, so Peter's talking to this uh these people, says, hey, Paul also wrote to you according to this wisdom that God had given to him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. But there are some things in there that are hard to understand. Many of you are like, oh, phew, I thought I was the only one. Like, that's a confusing book. I was telling Allison, I think, earlier in that like it it's an ancient, archaic book. And many folks like, oh, the Bible is this antiquated old book. Yeah, it is. It really is. It's an old and it sounds old. The beauty, or the the question really is like, why do people still read it though? There's something about it, like it's I know it's old and it reads, it's confusing, but like we can unpack it together because there's a reason why folks still read it. Maybe it still speaks to us today. Here's another, here's sometimes there's just some funny verses in the Bible, like kind of quirky, odd, or like funny. This is one of my favorite Bible verses. I love this one. So when folks ask me, hey Ryan, Pastor Ryan, what's your favorite Bible verse? I point into this one. Uh it's about Ehud. Ehud approaches the king. Uh Ehud was a man of God. And while he was sitting alone in the room, this king in the upper palace, uh, Ehud walks in and he's like, Hey, I have a message for you from God. As the king stands from his seat, Ehud reaches with his left hand, draws out the sword from his right leg, and plunges into the king's belly. Like you do. Here's the best part, though. Even the handle sank in after the blade, and his bowels discharged everywhere. Ehud didn't pull the sword out, and the fat closed over the sword handle. Come on, that's funny. That's so funny. This king was so big, the sword was literally swallowed by his belly. It closes over it. Oh, it's so good. So, Sonia, our very own Sonia, her son Philip got married years ago, and she had this great family Bible laid out at the reception. Like, hey, would you please come by and write in this Bible, your favorite verse, and just an encouraging note to Philip? So I wrote this one in there. You're welcome, Sonia. Uh so good. Then he runs out of the room and he shuts the doors and he locks them. I love it. Ehud is my man, he's my hero. There's also some troubling, just some straight up troubling, disturbing text. In the Psalms, there's this one, writing about the uh the is the Hebrew enemy, the Babylonians. And the Babylonians were evil people, you could say. I think it's pretty fair. But even still, this is what he writes about them. He says, uh, the author of this psalm, happy is the one who seizes their infants and dashes them against the rocks. Oh, the crowd just went, mmm, yeah, that's what what in the world, you guys? This is a this is a man of a person of God. I don't know if it's I don't know if it's David or not, but writing like, hey, blessed is the one who takes our enemies' babies and smashes them against the rocks. I don't know where you're from, but we don't do that where I'm from, even to your enemy. And also, Jesus had some other things to say about your enemies later on that don't align with us. Like, what do we make with these texts? What do we do with them? We're gonna spend about two months or so unpacking and wrestling with a lot of these texts. Here's how I want to do it: I'm gonna ask questions of the text together. We're gonna do interpretation, they call it hermeneutics, is the fancy word, together. I want you to be theologians along with me. Yes, I went to school for this a little bit, but also you guys can be your own theologians and you guys can read the Bible on your own and interpret on your own, and that's good. And we'll wrestle together. So here's some, if you want to get your phone out, you can take a photo of this. Here are some great questions to ask of the Bible when you're reading it. Okay? So number one, why did people find this important enough to tell this story? In other words, like why did they write it down? Why include this story in the text, in the Bible, in the canon, they call it? Number two, why has this passage endured? A lot of things happened in Israel's history, even in the stories of Jesus. A lot of them did not get written down, did not get included, did not get told around campfires, along journeys, along roads. They just got left behind and forgotten. Why these ones? Why have these endured? Why have folks read them for thousands of years? Why are folks still reading them today? And why are they so, you know, uh so prevalent in our culture? Number three, what does this passage tell us about how people understood who they were and who God was at that time? So, in these texts, you have a snapshot of a very specific people in a very specific time worshiping what they thought of was Yahweh. And and so they say things about, and it sort of illuminates what they think about who they were and who God was. And there's a lot of things that illuminate that. Lastly, this is the beautiful one. What is true then that is also true today? Does that make sense? Start here. That'll help you. Okay, so uh, and here's some other tips. Be as honest as possible. Again, I know that many of us grew up in the in the faith, not questioning the note or just ravaged, like, what do we and we paint it on kids' nursery bedroom walls. So I get it. But like, be honest about these texts. It's okay to be honest. God knows. And I want to resist the temptation and the obsession in the modern Western world to find the answer. That isn't the point of these stories. It's not a these are not moral lessons, even though we turn them into them as for our kids. That you don't do that, by the way, if you're a parent. Don't make them into moral lessons. And the moral of the story is uh obey God or he'll kill you in a flood. That's not what we're doing here. That's not, you know, that's a bad idea. So there's no, there's often not one answer. That's a that's an a modern obsession. In the ancient world, they never would have thought that was the point of a story. The point of the story was to wrestle with it. They viewed the Bible as a gem. You would hold in the light and you would spin it. And the gem never changes, but like the the refraction and the reflections and the light would bend, you'd see different colors and different angles and different beautiful spots, and you'd think, see things you'd miss, you'd look at it from every angle. And they wrestled with the text, they argued about it. They, you know, my good my friend who's a Jewish rabbi says that, hey, if you have two rabbis in a room, you will often have three opinions. Sometimes four, he says. Yeah, they don't agree on many things. That's the point. They wrestle with it. So that's what we're gonna do. Work the text, let the text work us. Does that sound all right? So put your big boy and big girl pants on today and your thinking caps or whatever, and uh join me as we unpack this message. This story today is a very troubling story. It's a sort of God commanding Abraham to kill his own son. Uh, this follow is a piece of artwork from the Renaissance era. It's from Titian, about 1543. I don't know if it's if you can see it from where you're sitting. Um, I'll let this speak for itself. Uh here's one from Carvaggio, the famous Italian Renaissance painter in 1603. Notice Isaac's face. But this is an angel on the left. Someone was like, who's that other dude? That's an angel, that's the angel, stopping uh um Abraham from sacrificing his own son. You see the ram on the right side? Yeah, it's a troubling story, this story. When I was a kid, I didn't think much of it, I didn't really care about it. When I was a young adult and had my first child, oh, I was immediately offended by this story. Like, how could God ever do that? And I would tell God respectfully, with the respect hanging from a thread. If he asked me to do that, I would tell him no. You're like, my pastor just said he would tell God no. I'm being honest. I would be like, no, I'm I'm sorry. I will give me whatever, whatever. I'm not doing that. Well, it's a troubling story. Now, as a 46-year-old man, I've settled into my life a little bit more, and um I've just decided I'm never gonna preach on this story ever again. So this is the last time I'll. No, I'm kidding. But um I I still am troubled by it, but I think I've come to some, some, some uh what's the word? I've come to uh I'm more comfortable living in the tension of I don't really know a lot about what's going on here, but the things I do know speak profoundly to me still this day. So here's what I want to do. I want to tell you the story, and I'll give you some details you want to pay attention to. There it is. Then I want to give you uh four, maybe four and a half things to consider when reading this story. So I I've spent uh many hours this past week or two reading different rabbinical commentaries, ideas, thoughts, studying the scripture. And there's a lot of things that a lot of folks say about this story, and most of them don't really agree. Again, if you have two rabbis in the room, you have three, four opinions. That's part of the point. So we're gonna do that. I'm gonna show you four, four and a half different angles of ways to think about this text, let you wrestle with it, and then tell you what I do know at the very end. My favorite part is the ending. Does that sound all right? So hang on with me. Okay, here's the story. We'll start with the story. Then we'll give you, I'll give you four and a half, then we'll tell you my favorite part, which is the ending, and let you go have lunch. By the way, where's Tim Stocks at? Tim, notice Tim. Could you stand up for I don't want to embarrass you, but notice his attire this morning? Give Tim some love this morning. Yes, sir! Yes, sir. Thank you, Tim. Go home and watch the Vikings game or the Broncos. Here's the story. Sorry, I digress. Uh here's the story. Oh, by the way, open your Bibles. Can you please follow along? It's uh page 15, right at the beginning. It's uh Genesis 22. I want you to see it. Genesis 22. And remember our questions, the ones I mentioned earlier. Ask those of this text. What's going on here? Why did people write this down? What you know, what can we learn about the people, what era they came from, and what they thought about themselves and God. Ask those questions. Great. Genesis 22. What's the opening line of this story? Someone yell it out. After these things, so this story doesn't just drop out of the sky. There's a whole bunch of things that just happened. You have to go back and read them. But this comes in like towards the end, this is the climactic moment of Abraham's whole life. And everything before this is leading up to this, everything after it, things are different, it changes. So after these things is the open, and then God tells, or the author of this story tells the story. Then comes the command. God tells Abraham, hey Abraham, take your son, your only son, whom you love. By the way, did Abraham only have one son? Who is the other son?

unknown:

Ishmael.

SPEAKER_00:

Troubling. Why would God say he only has one son? He's got two sons. Take your son, your only son. By the way, in the by the way, uh, Muslims, Christians, and Jews all share this story. In the Muslim story, though, it's Ishmael who's bound up, not Isaac. Oh, sorry. Yeah, not Isaac. Um, but all three of the of the monotheistic faiths in our world share this story. It's wild. Um, okay, so the command, uh sacrifice your son, take him to the store, uh, place called Mount Moriah. They think it's Moriah, and sacrifice him. Then there's an immediate obedience. Like Abraham doesn't even doesn't even blink when God tells him. He just goes, he obeys. Then Abraham, they get there after a three days' journey, by three days. Where else do you read about three days in the story of God? Perhaps this is a foreshadowing story. But three days later, they go to the, they get to the place and he tells the servants, hey, stay here. Me and the boy are going up here, me and the lad, and we're gonna come back. Why would he say we're gonna come back? He's gonna sacrifice his son and leave him there. Maybe Abraham knows something that we don't. Maybe all along Abraham was planning to bring his son back one way or another. Now we know that Hebrews, the author of Hebrews, says many years later, that Abraham believed that God would raise Isaac from the dead. That's Hebrews, it's later. You can't really read Hebrews into Genesis. So we're gonna stay with Genesis. But Abraham seems to think, hey, I'm bringing him back one way or the other. I don't know what he's thinking. We're gonna find out, maybe, maybe not. Then he gives him some wood. Isaac is to carry his own wood. Again, where is there another story where there's a young man carrying some wood on the way to being sacrificed? Maybe it's another story to come later too. So he carries his own wood. So by the way, if he carries his own wood, he's not a two-month-old. He's older. He's an older lad. Maybe he's even fifty. Some people think he's 36, Isaac. Because Abraham is super old. So he carries the wood. By the way, if he's 36, it changes almost everything. Uh carries the wood. Then he asks the question, though. Isaac does, the sharp young lad. Hey, where's the the lamb for sacrificing? And then the response is Abraham's, what does Abraham say? God will provide. Maybe Abraham knows something we don't. Oh, we do, because the author opens the story by telling you and I this is a test. So we know almost from the jump, well, probably God won't actually make him sacrifice, so it's a test. He won't make him go through with it. Okay, so there's that. Uh but he Abraham seems to know something's going on because God will provide. We're gonna just go and see what happens. And then you and I are coming back, buddy. The response. Okay, then then binding. So he binds up Isaac and lays him on this altar, builds an altar, and then he pulls out the knife to sacrifice his own son. Then you have the interruption, an angel comes out of nowhere, stops the whole thing, an angel of God, and they find a ram in the thicket, and they bring out the ram, they sacrifice the ram instead. Abraham calls this place the Lord will provide, because he he sees the ram as a provision of God. Even though the text never says God provides the ram, Abraham sees it that way. And so we as the reader can now see it that way as well. Okay, so far so good. So we're gonna we're gonna wrestle together. Here's some troubling questions I have. Maybe you have the same ones, but I don't know if you have permission to ask these. What kind of a God asks this? Again, if you took your son to the roof of Central, like, hey, God told me to do this, we'd have you arrested. Why does God ask him to do this in the story? Does God endorse human sacrifice? Why won't Abraham protest? Earlier in the story, remember it says after these things, earlier in the story, Abraham barters with God. He argues with God. Arguing with God is in the Bible, at least. And he changed, he seemingly changes God's plans by arguing with him. Just a weird idea, uh, about Sodom and Gomorrah. But he doesn't argue here. Why doesn't he argue here? Did God in fact hear, or did Abraham in fact hear God correctly or not? Is faith simply blind obedience? Not questioning, not asking, not wrestling? Is it is that all it is, just do what you're told, and that's it? And how might this have affected Isaac? We always think about Abraham. Like, what about Isaac? That kid who his own father almost killed him. When your father yelled at you for dropping the flashlight, you got really young, you had a whole bunch of trauma when you were younger. Okay, those are the questions. Now, uh I know you're thinking, gosh, Ryan, it would have been nice to start off the year with a nice sermon series on the book of Psalms, maybe, huh? I was thinking the same thing last night and this morning, but here we are. Uh that's the point. You're supposed to recoil reading this story. I appreciated Todd's response. Um, I don't know why he was emotional there, but um it doesn't matter. He was. You're supposed to kind of recoil at this story, and it's supposed to trouble you. And faithful people for thousands of years have wrestled with this exact story. So we joined them this morning doing it. Okay, here are my four, four and a half thoughts that I discovered while reading some rabbinical texts and ideas and commentaries about this story that will help hopefully shine some light or ask us or encourage us to ask deeper questions. Number one um this is a story about the ancient world. People think that Abraham lived around 2000 BC. This is like 4,000 years ago. That's a long time ago, you guys. This is in the Bronze Age. The Bronze Age was when they invented the wheel. That's how Old the stories. They began to use metal for the first time in weapons or as weapons and as tools. They also began to use written, like they began to write down language for the first time in human history. This is a dramatic time in the ancient world. It was a different time. No Google, no DoorDash, no Amazon Prime. Are you with me? It was different. In the ancient world, sacrifice, human sacrifice, was totally normal. All the gods demanded allegiance, a show of loyalty, and sacrifice to appease the gods. You would offer grains, chickens, and if the circumstances were dire enough, you'd offer your own kid to appease the gods, to purge your own sins, to kind of get back into favor with the gods. This is what you did. Now, animals were more common, but if the again, if the circumstance was extreme enough, if the need was big enough, you'd bring what the gods valued the most, which was your own child, and you would sacrifice your child. It was very common. So Abraham hears the command, doesn't even blink. Like that's crazy. He doesn't ask for confirmation. I mean, gosh, I have to go through a three-step authentication process just to log into my Netflix account. You know what I'm saying? Google asks me twice, are you sure you want to send this email without a subject line? Are you sure? Yes, Google, stop judging me. I don't want to have a subject line. But Abraham doesn't ask God, wait, God, are you sure? Abraham doesn't call his therapist. He doesn't Google anything, doesn't phone a friend, he doesn't do any of that. He can't. It's the bronze age. He just does what God says. Why? Because that's what the gods asked of you in the ancient world. It was totally normal. It was normal. So the question isn't really like, hey, why would God ask this? All the gods asked this. The question you might want to ask instead is this one. What kind of a God wouldn't ask this? By the way, I was telling Allison too, and this is really good. When you're reading the Bible, the Bible says all kinds of troubling things about slavery, about women, about uh a number of things. You know, oh, this book is this archaic, patriarchal, oppressive book, and partially fair enough. But also the Bible is extremely progressive. And by progressive, I don't mean modern, progressive ideology. I mean it's like a forward-thinking, uh, radical book. Because of the times and places, it doesn't do those things. All ancient books talk about women as you know, marginalized, tertiary, you know, uh they all endorse slavery, it was of the way the world worked. I'm just telling you, especially back then. So it's normal. The thing that catches your attention, or it should, are the times and ways the Bible doesn't do that. Like when Jesus endorses women, oh, that's radical. Not for us today, because we've we've progressed a bit further. But for them, wow, Jesus had women disciples? What? That's crazy. There were women church leaders in the in the book of Acts. Uh Persilicula, what what? Uh Paul rejects slavery in the in his writings, uh, and also in the book of Philemon. Also, the Exodus story is a rejection of slavery. So when your friends are like, oh, the Bible has slavery. Well, okay, yes, but yeah, all the ancient books, but there's places where it doesn't do those things, and it's extremely important to notice those ones. What do you make of those ones? Where the Bible doesn't do those things. Does that make sense? So, uh, okay, there you go. So, what kind of a God wouldn't ask you to sacrifice your own kid? Uh, in the ancient world, when that was the norm. It's worth noting, too, by the way, not long after this, when God gives the law to Moses, one of the laws says, don't sacrifice your children, like the pagans did. Don't give your children to be sacrificed. That was normal. So God finally, in the law, when he gives them, again, Abraham comes way before the law is given. He commands. So you know without question that God rejects human sacrifice. That means this story is prescriptive, not descriptive. Here's what I mean by that. Oh, I jumped ahead. Um, so prescription means like it's something that you should do, a prescription. Take these pills, take two in the morning, call them, you know. Um, the Bible, in many ways, is not prescriptive. Don't do what Abraham tries to do here, okay? It's not telling you to do that, it's not prescribing an action. Rather, it's descriptive, it's describing what was happening in this ancient time and place between God and Abraham. Does that make sense? Many places in the Bible are not prescriptive. So it's not telling you to do those things. It's just saying, hey, here's how they were doing it back then. Go back to my earlier questions. So, what does it mean then that it's still in the Bible, that we still read this? What does it tell us today? What's true then that's true now? So you don't just read the Bible and do all the things it says. I mean, there are places where it does do that, but much of it is like, no, is this actually a descriptive text? The Bible's not telling you, take your only son and sacrifice him. No, it's not doing that. Okay, fair enough. Because God rejects it later on. Okay, so point one, it's an ancient world story, comes out of the Bronze Age. They just invented the wheel, they're testing it out, prototype A and B. Uh they're using bronze, they're using metal, you know, tools. And God comes and does what all the gods do, it asks for a human sacrifice. Totally normal. Abraham doesn't even blank. Okay, number two, the thing I found. This is a story, it's a bookend. It's the last bookend of two bookends. Here's my favorite picture of a bookend. I had to have some levity in this. It's kind of a heavy sermon. So the story is the is this is the the climax of the Abraham story. And it's the end, the second end of two bookends. The first bookend is the call at Haran, when God calls Abraham at the very first time and says, Hey, Abram, Abram was his name back then, leave your land and come to a new place, which was a radical idea. Nobody left their homeland back in the ancient world and went on a journey, a journey? Are you a hippie? What are you talking about? No one does it. That was radically new. But he does it. That's the that's the first bookend, the call of Haran, when God tells him, leave and I'll call you to this new place and I'll bless you, and you'll be a great nation. So these two stories actually are a literary device, and they provide a framework for how to read and interpret the story because they mirror each other. So I'll show you, I'll prove you, I'll prove it to you. So all the English and book nerds, you'll love this part. Genesis 12, the call at Haran, opens, go forth, Abram, to the land I will show you. So uh Genesis 22, he says to Abraham again, hey, go forth from here to a place, and I'll show you where you're going, to Mount Moriah to sacrifice your son. So opening lines are identical in the Hebrew. Secondly, in Genesis 12, the call at Haran, you can read it. He says, Hey, leave your father and your mother and all your land, and so that's what he says, and then uh go to this place. And also, you won't know the destination. Just go and trust me. It's a story about trust and faith. So over here, too, take your son. Uh and here's another thing, but I'm not gonna tell you what's gonna happen. We'll wait and see. It's just maybe it's a story about trust and faith here as well. They're they're they're mirror stories. By the way, notice he doesn't destroy his father over here. And notice over here, the son is also not destroyed. They're very similar. And they both end in a blessing from God. So rabbis said, hey, look, you've got to read these as bookends. Like they help you understand that this is not just some random, wanton, capricious demand of God for blood, you know, some vindictive, malicious God. No, it's a story about trust, a calling into the future that we don't really know. And the the vehicle, because the ancient world is is in this case, it's God leaving or Abraham leaving his homeland. This is about uh maybe, maybe uh sacrificing his own son. These are ancient media vehicles through which the story of trust and faith is being told. Does that make sense? Okay, good for half of you. Great. Um uh that's all I want to say about that. Yeah, okay. Again, the opening line is I'm gonna, God's gonna test Abraham. So we know from the jump that God isn't gonna actually probably make him do this. We know as readers, so it should put your mind at ease a little bit. Okay, so that's number two. Number one, ancient story. Number two, uh, a lot of rabbis, there's these bookends, so like it's actually not a sort of a demand for blood, but rather it's like a it's this a literary device about uh trust and faith. Number three is this one then. Um the word for sacrifice that we use for sacrifice in the Hebrew is actually the word Ola. Everyone say Olah. Ola, como stas? About the reaction I got at the 830. I'm not surprised. Uh some rabbis, especially one called Rashi. Rashi lived about 11,000. Rashi suggests that people who read the Hebrew got the Hebrew wrong. Now he's got some he's got some legs to stand on here. I'm not gonna unpack it all, you can Google it. He said the word that we read as sacrifice, in the Hebrew is the word Olah. Olah could also be rendered, not just sacrifice, but it could also be rendered as to bring up. So when the sacrifices were made, this is what they thought, you know, was happening, the smoke would go up. So the word can kind of be rendered either way, to bring up, to let elevate, um, or to sacrifice. They don't have to, it doesn't have to mean sacrifice. It can mean, hey, bring this up to God. So Rashi suggests, no, the word Olah here is God is actually, you guys are reading it wrong. God's commanding Abraham, bring up your son to this mountain and dedicate him to me, and then bring him back down. Wildly different. Changes the whole story if Rashi is correct. But who knows if Rashi is correct? Some rabbis, believe it or not, don't agree with Rashi. Maybe you don't agree with Rashi. That's fine. But he suggests that Olah means to bring up, not sacrifice. We assume sacrifice in the word rather than just let the word speak for uh speak as what it is. Okay, that's number three. I told you I'd give you four, maybe four and a half. Here's a half of one. This one's fun though. Uh I think it is. Many rabbis believe it wasn't God who tested Abraham. Because if you're here, you're like, hey, why would God test anybody? Isn't the Satan the tester in the scripture? Uh you wouldn't be alone. Many rabbis are like, hey, God doesn't test anybody. It's the Satan, the tempter. He's called the tempter, the tester. He tests many people, including our good friend Job. If you read Job, Job makes this barter with God, and he said, Hey, God, your servant Job isn't really righteous. If he lost all that you gave him, he would reject you and die. And God's like, okay, so they have like this, this, which is also a troubling text. Many rabbis said, Hey, that's the same thing that's happening here. God has been approached by the Satan and told, Hey, uh, God, your servant Abraham is not full of faith. If you ask him to give you his own son, he won't do it. So then God's like, okay. So it's the Satan who comes and accuses and uh and is testing Job. I'm sorry, Abraham. The story opens. You read it, after these things. In the Hebrew, the word for things is the word words. So it could be rendered after these words. What words? Well, the rabbi suggests that, oh, uh, there was this conversation between God and the Satan. They had this argument, this dialogue. Satan says, Hey, if you, if you, you know, if you test him in this way, if you let me test him, he'll reject you. Um but God's like, okay, fine. So then it's it's the Satan that comes and tests him to see if Abraham truly has faith. The story ends by uh by Abraham, he's gonna go through with it, it's stopped, and then God says, Now I know you have faith. Now in the Hebrew, it could say, Now I know you have faith. It could also be rendered, now you have made it known that you have faith. Made it known to who? These rabbis would say, Oh, made it known to the Satan. Now you made it known to the Satan, to the angels, to the whole world, and to yourself that you have faith, that you don't even withhold your own son from you. So maybe it was the Satan that was testing Abraham and asking this atrocious thing and not God at all. Anybody like this one? You're too embarrassed to say? Okay, yeah, yeah. Yeah, okay, yeah. It's interesting. Google it. It's up, it's out there. A lot of rabbis think that. Okay, number four. What in the world happens to Isaac? What if your own father tried to kill you? What would you, what would that do to you? I call this the trauma. Um, here's the deal. Many people think that Isaac was actually, many rabbis, that maybe, I mean, again, this is this is a troubling scene here. Look at his face. But some rabbis alleviate the tension by saying, no, Abraham wasn't, I'm sorry, Isaac wasn't a child. He was an adult. Therefore, he willingly goes along with Abraham. Because Isaac also trusts in God. This is a story about Abraham and Isaac's faith in God. Isaac, who's, you know, probably an adult, many people think, who carries his own wood. After all, how could Abraham, an old feeble man, have ever tied up Isaac? He doesn't. Isaac ties himself up. Because Isaac is also revealing his own faith. So they think, oh, well, uh, he was willing, which alleviates some of the trauma. Uh, because it says in the text twice, and the two of them walk together. So it's he's willingly going, he's consenting. It's like, I'm in, let's go. It's still a weird story, like, but he's he's not quite being like this abusive sort of thing. Others, though, don't agree with this. And they point to the end of the story and how the story ends and what happens after Genesis 22, which does look like some kind of family drama or trauma run amok. For example, did you know that Abraham and Isaac never speak again after this? They don't talk. Ever again. And we don't know why. But it's obvious that the authors and the compilers of Genesis meant to have that in there. There seems to be like a family fracture in this story. Also, Abraham comes back down the mountain, and guess who's not with him? Isaac's not with him. We know he didn't die. Like, where's Isaac? I don't know. He takes off. He only reappears later, much later, as this withdrawn, sort of introverted, um, passive, inward man. He's different, he's changed. He goes blind in his old age. Um, he's deceived easily by his own son, by Jacob, the story of Jacob and Esau. He's a different man. Also, right after this story, Sarah, Isaac's mom, she dies. Many rabbis think that it's because she hears what Abraham, her husband, almost did to their son. If you're a mom and they're, yeah, I get that. Yeah. What would it do to you as a mom if your husband tried to sacrifice your son because God told him to? You'd be like, what? So some scholars would be that, oh, yeah, Sarah dies because she hears what happens. And so there's a fracture, there's trauma, it's a breaking of relationship, it's a horrible story. And the the scriptures don't try to sanitize it. They don't whitewash it, they don't say, and everyone lived happily ever after. In fact, the fact that they don't try to sanitize it or whitewash it actually is a moral stance. They're saying this story should trouble you. We're not endorsing this as a good story. It's a weird, crazy story. It should bother you. This is a moral stance in and of itself. So, those are my four, four and a half ways of looking at it. Here's what we have to acknowledge. We don't know a ton about what's happening here. We just don't know. I can't read Abraham's mind or Isaac's. I don't know if the Satan was there or not. I know it troubles me. Did it trouble them? Was there a cultural, contextual thing happening that we don't know about today, that we can't know about? Maybe. There's a ton we don't know about. And it's tough to swallow. But that's okay. We wrestle with it anyway, and we let it keep us up at night, maybe sometimes. Or we talk about over coffee with friends, and we wrestle and we take it seriously in that way. That's part of the point, is to wrestle. That's how we honor God. But also, then I want to end with what I do know. Because there's a lot I don't know, but here's what I do know. Are you ready? And here's what I think the takeaway should be, if anything. Um this the ending. I love the ending. It's my favorite part. Imagine Abraham is right there getting ready to sacrifice his own son. And in the ancient world, this is totally a normal thing to do. But when the moment comes to sacrifice his own son, he doesn't do it. He doesn't. The story doesn't end the way you might think it would if you were an ancient reader. So the question is asked like, what kind of a god would demand such a thing? Well, the answer in the text anyway is implicitly, I don't know, not this one. All the gods in the ancient world demanded sacrifice. Any ancient reader, like, oh, I know the story, they'd read, like, oh, I know the story. They know how it's gonna end. Because the gods demand obedience, the gods demand proof of devotion and loyalty. Um, and we have to offer things to appease the gods to get back from their right standing and to earn favor with the gods. That's how it works, of course. So, of course, he'll sacrifice his own son to God. But this ending is different, it's wildly different. If you're an ancient reader, that will be what stood out to you. Again, what's different about the Bible that's that's not different about other ancient books? This is one. He doesn't he doesn't kill his son, he doesn't do it. It's like a twist at the end of the story. God stops the sacrifice. Now, I don't know why God did it in the first place. I don't know, but I know that the ending is different. God provides another way. Maybe this is a story about a faith in which God provides for us another way. See, this story, which by the way, is a foreshadowing of the cross for us Christians. We oh, it's a very similar story. This is a story about a God who provides. You would give, and you would appease them, and you would offer up whatever you could to get them to be, you know, uh happy with you again. You are the giver. But this story, it's God who gives, God is the provider. Whatever the relationship is, it's God who gives and makes the way. It's God who provides whatever is needed for this relationship to happen. It's on God's end. Paganism is all about you earning your way to God. What can you do? What can you give? What can you bring? What can you offer? What gift can you bring? What sacrifice can you make? This God is different. He's like, no, no, no, no, no. You can't bring anything. I'll bring it. In fact, you don't really bring anything to the table. You knucklehead. You don't have anything to bring. Bring your diplomas if you want, your trophies, your good works. I don't need that. I'm not playing that game. I don't need any of that. That's nothing anyway. You have nothing to bring. I'll handle it. Let me take care of it. This is about a God who does all the providing, all the work. All he asks of Abraham is just come with me. Have faith. Give it a shot. Show up. Try it. Jesus later says, even the faith of a mustard seed, tiny, inconspicuous, you drop it, wouldn't even know it. Just a little crinkle of a faith. Luther says, when you come to the table, and we already did communion, I'm kind of bummed, but when you come to the table, you don't bring anything. In fact, look at your hands. What'd you bring in this morning in your hands? Most of you, nothing. Good. That's all you're required to bring. Nothing. Luther says, when you come to the table, don't bring anything. You don't need anything. Don't bring your accolades, your hot car, your beautiful spouse, your magna cum latte. I don't care. I mean, it's cool, but I don't care about that. It doesn't do anything for me. I've already made a way. I provided. In fact, if you're gonna bring anything, Luther says, bring all your junk, your baggage, your tears, your sin, and leave them there. I'll take them and I'll provide. So central, there's a lot about the story I don't know. And it troubles me to this day, still for sure, but I know this. This is a story about a God who's different from all the other gods in the pagan world. Who stops the sacrifice and forbids it vehemently, explicitly, not too long after this. This is the story of God that provides, who He brings the things that make this relationship possible. Not you. It's cute of you to offer, but you don't really have anything to offer anyway. He just loves you because he loves you. Today, may you know that this is the God who provides all that we need. Amen.

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Ryan Braley

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