Faith

Midweek 3 – 2025                                                                                         LSB #’s 584, 587, 702
Text – Genesis 22:10
 
Then Abraham reached out his hand & took the knife to slaughter his son.
 
FAITH
 
 
God tells Abraham to kill his only son, & he is willing to go through with it.  The Bible highlights this as a picture of faith.    If that   is what faith is,   do you really want it? 
We may try to console ourselves with the thought that everything turned out all right in the end.  God did not make Abraham go through with it.  He provided a ram for the sacrifice instead.  That leads us forward in time to the sacrifice of Christ, where God really did offer up His only Son.  But how could God ask this of Abraham in the first place?  
The question becomes more pointed when you realize that this is not just any example of faith in the Bible, it is The example of faith in the Bible.  When Paul provides the definitive example of justification in Romans 4, he turns to God’s interaction with Abraham. 
God promises Abraham that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky, & “Abraham believed God, & it was counted to him as righteousness.”  (4:3 ESV, citing Genesis 15:6)  Abraham believed God’s promise, & God considered Abraham’s faith to be righteousness.  
Following St. Paul, Lutherans call this “justification,” & we hold that we are justified by faith alone.  The fact that Abraham actually did offer his son is then cited as proof of his faith by James & Hebrews.  We cannot get around this text.  This incident is at the very heart of the Lutheran understanding of salvation. 
Making matters worse, God is not just asking Abraham to kill his son, but to kill the one through whom all nations would be blessed & through whom his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.  The order to sacrifice Isaac is not only a catastrophic event in Abraham’s family.  It has the potential to be a catastrophic event for the whole world.  God’s test does not only contradict Abraham’s natural affection for his son.  It contradicts God’s own promise!  Jesus was going to be born from Isaac’s line, so God is telling Abraham to wipe out all hope for humanity.  It’s as if God had commanded Mary to smother Jesus in his crib.  #379:1 
In the face of all this, how does Abraham react?  What does he feel?  The astonishing thing about the text is that it doesn’t tell us.  Abraham is silent.  He does not tell Sarah what he’s planning.  He does not tell Isaac what he is about to do.  He doesn’t tell the two servants.  He says nothing at all to anyone about what God has commanded.  
How does he feel about destroying his family, destroying his marriage, destroying the one hope for the human race?  He doesn’t say.   Perhaps Abraham hates God for putting him through this.  Why would God mock him by giving him a promise & then taking it away in this manner?  Perhaps what he wanted to do was tell God, No!  You can’t have my son.  Take me instead!  
Whatever bitterness may have been roiling in Abraham’s heart did not win the day.  God’s promise turned out to be stronger than any bitterness. 
Perhaps Abraham was filled with resignation. Perhaps he thought he’d go through with it & then return to Sarah a broken man.  At the age of 100, he had still wanted to be a father, but no more.  Once he’s done this, he’ll resign himself to the fact that life has passed him by.  He will give up hope.   But the promise turned out to be stronger than any despair. 
Perhaps he was filled with anxiety.  What will happen to him afterward?  Will he be branded a murderer & expelled from human community?  How could his wife Sarah live with him after he does something like this?  How could he live with himself?  But the promise turned out to be stronger than the guilt & the fear.[1] 
No matter what painful emotions he experienced, whether these, or others we can’t
Imagine, the book of Hebrews tells us that Abraham was willing to go through with it because “he considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead.”  (Hebrews 11:19 ESV)   God promised numerous descendants through Isaac, & Abraham believed that promise, even though God Himself seemed to be taking it away.  #379:1 
God’s promise was stronger than any bitterness.  God’s promise was stronger than any resignation.  God’s promise was stronger than any anxiety.  And God makes that promise to us in various forms.  The promise in baptism is, “You are my child.  I am well pleased   with you.”  
Another promise is found in the Lord’s Supper, “This is my blood, shed for you, for the forgiveness of your sins.”  More generally, God’s message to us in the gospel is, “I am your God, & you are my people.  Your sins will not break that relationship or interfere with it in the future.” 
But sometimes tragic events collide head on with these promises.  One father, whose little daughter was hospitalized with a serious illness, said to the pastor, “I don’t understand why God would let this happen to a child.”  The pastor replied, “I don’t know either.”   How are we to respond when we feel that God has done us wrong? 
One approach is be to put God in timeout.  You won’t trust Him until He shows Himself worthy of your trust.  If the little girl gets better, maybe the father will trust God again.  If she dies, he’ll never be able to walk through the door of the church again.  The psalms are filled with complaints against God for seeming to fail in keeping His promises.  
Psalm 13: “How long, O LORD?   Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?  How long must I take counsel in my soul & have sorrow in my heart all the day?”  (13:1–2 ESV)    Psalm 88 ends with the words, “Darkness is my closest friend.”  (88:18 NIV) 
These Psalms model for us a way to voice our complaint.  What is dangerous is waiting until you figure it all out before you move forward in faith.  Taking that approach will paralyze you.  Abraham did not wait until he could reconcile God’s test with God’s promise.  Hebrews says Abraham considered that God could raise him from the dead.  (Hebrews 11:19)    Abraham didn’t know how God’s promise could still be true, but he ascribed to God the power to keep His promise anyway.   Better than putting God in timeout is to live your faith & see how it goes. 
A Lutheran school teacher went through a divorce & was struggling with the question of whether she still believed in God or not.  She felt God had let her down & could not figure out where she was with her faith.  But when she taught the faith to her students,  she noticed that it still came out of her mouth with conviction,  even though she might have doubts later at home. 
Luther’s advice in a case like this is to go ahead & experience the doubt (you can’t help it anyway), but do not jump to conclusions.  He said that doubts are like birds.  You can’t stop the birds from landing on your head, but you can stop them from nesting in your hair.[2]  
It wasn’t so much a question of the teacher intellectually figuring out whether she still had faith in Jesus.  She just had to watch herself over time & perceive who she really was.  She was still a child of God.  We act out faith, even when we cannot articulate it.  
In the end, the promises of God are what we have.  Either they are enough for you or they aren’t.  But if they are enough, then not even God Himself can shake them.  God could not shake the faith of Abraham, & for that we are thankful, because you & I are among his countless descendants.  Amen. 
 
 
I know my faith is founded on Jesus Christ, my God & Lord; & this my faith confessing, unmoved I stand on His sure Word.   Our reason cannot fathom the truth of God profound; who trusts in human wisdom relies on shifting ground.   God’s Word is all sufficient, it makes divinely sure; & trusting in its wisdom, my faith shall rest secure.  Amen.  LSB 587:1.


[1] These speculations about Abraham’s reactions are inspired by Kierkegaard, Fear & Trembling (Princeton University Press, 1954), 26–37.

[2] Luther, Lectures on Genesis, LW 6 (St Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1969), 133.