When God Says Please

Transcript

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[0:00] Well, our reading today, our sermon text today is Genesis 22, verses 1 through 19. It's printed in your bulletin, and you can find it on the Bible in front of you, or you have your own Bible with you. Genesis 22, 1 through 19. Now we're continuing with Genesis and the story of Abraham. And we come now, as you probably already figured out, to one of the most challenging stories of the Bible. It's called the Akedah in Hebrew. And that word Akedah means binding. It's the binding of Isaac by Abraham on the altar, because God has commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son whom he loves. And let's be honest, this is difficult because of what is being asked of Abraham. Child sacrifice, this, and it doesn't make sense. Because Abraham had been promised a son through Sarah, Isaac. So why would God now want that child back? We're given a tiny hint at the beginning. It says that God says he decided to test Abraham. We'll see that as we read. It was in the little book that we read here, too.

[1:05] So, but what I want to say real quickly is that we don't shy, and we shouldn't, we do not shy away from difficult Bible readings. We don't do that. We don't sanitize the Bible and just take the parts that make us feel good, right? We don't just preach on John 3, 16 every week, as fun as that would be, or the 23rd Psalm. We read these difficult texts, and we don't say, why is this difficult? You know, we have to look at them. We ask if there is something in here that God wants us to know and to understand and to engage deeper with in the text. And I think that this is one of those. And there's some strategies for that. One is to take more time with it. One is to read it and then read it again and think and wait and read it again and say, what does God, let the Spirit speak into it. Like the Spirit can illuminate a text for you if you have a difficult text. If you're at home.

[1:58] Sometimes, and that's what we're gonna do today, is examining the text at a deeper level with the tools we have. And we do have some tools. We have the historical context. We have the language insights, the language in which it was written. We're gonna get into that today. And also, what is the larger story that this difficult text is a part of? If it's part of this larger story, how does that larger story influence how we understand this text? And how does this text flavor the larger story? How does this text flavor the larger story that surrounds it? Okay, so we'll be doing that as well. And a good place here to remind us that the larger story around Abraham is that God remains faithful to his promises, right? Even though humanity fails to be faithful to God, God remains faithful to his promises. So he's gonna keep his promise to Abraham. What is the promise? The promise is that Abraham will be a blessing to all the earth. Not just a few people, all the earth. Abraham will be a blessing to all the earth through his descendants. It's sort of a two-part promise. You're gonna have children, and through you and your faithfulness and your children and their children and so on, the world will be blessed. Now, we know this is true because we can trace all of this down to Jesus.

[3:18] And even before Jesus, hopefully, the Jewish people were blessing the world. But in Jesus, absolutely, it opened wide open. You look at Acts chapter 2. The world was being blessed on that day. Okay? So that's the larger story that this is in. How does this difficult text fit into a larger story of God being faithful to his promises and blessing the world through Abraham and his children? Okay. So we're gonna try to hold those together. The character of God and his faithfulness, his desire to bless the world. And we're gonna take a look at some language that is missed by many of our translations. You know I'm a nerd about this stuff. So there's some nerd stuff coming. But it's great. It's great nerd stuff. Okay? So nerd alert. It's coming. Okay. So let's go to our reading. And I'm gonna ask you to kind of hold all that together as we read. Genesis 22 verse 1. I'll start. After these things, God tested Abraham. He said to him, Abraham. And he said, here I am. He said, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains. That I shall show you. So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son, Isaac.

[4:36] He cut the wood for the burnt offering and set out and went to the place in the distance that God had shown him. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place far away. Then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey. The boy and I will go over there. We will worship. And then we will go. And we will come back to you. Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on his son, Isaac. And he himself carried the fire and the knife. So the two of them walked on together. Isaac said to his father, Abraham, Father. And Abraham said, here I am, my son. He said, the fire and the wood are here. But where is the lamb for a burnt offering? Abraham said, God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son. So the two of them walked on together. When they came to the place that God had shown him, Abraham built an altar there and laid the wood in order. He bound his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to kill his son.

[5:44] But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here I am. He said, do not lay your hand on the boy or just lay your hand on the boy. Do not do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son from me. And Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place the Lord will provide. And it is said to this day on the mount of the Lord it shall be provided. The angel of the Lord called to Abraham.

[6:30] He heard his end end end end end end end end end the gate of their enemies and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessings for themselves because you have obeyed my voice. So Abraham returned to his young men and they arose and went together to Beersheba and Abraham lived at Beersheba. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Heavenly Father, it's difficult, but we thank you also for hard, challenging, painful texts like this. And today, especially, we ask that you would add your blessing to it and we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. So let's acknowledge already, like we don't read this very often and maybe you don't read it at home. So this is a difficult text because God is asking Abraham to sacrifice his son and even God says, your son whom you love, I know you love this child. Still, I want you to come and sacrifice him to me, which is horrible. And it's hard to make sense of because how then is God going to keep his promise to bless the world through Abraham's descendants if we start off by not having descendants. And we are told that this is a test. And so I want to take a moment on the test aspect. The word here doesn't mean, it means test or trial. It does indeed mean that, test or trial.

[8:07] Something that exposes the worth of something or the resilience of a thing. It is used to describe people, but also objects. So God wants to know something about Abraham. It seems God wants to know, is Abraham willing to withstand this trial? Is Abraham, is whatever stuff Abraham is made of, is it enough? Is it good enough? Is it strong enough? Is it going to hold up? And we see in verse 12, after Abraham is obedient and is about to do what he was asked to do, that he stopped. And this is the great part of it, right? Verse 12, he's about to sacrifice Isaac. And he's told, now I know that you fear God, right? And so we can differ on this point, but we've seen kind of some themes like this with Abraham a lot, that there are two possible ways to understand the nature of this test. The book gave us one. It said the test was so that Abraham would be an example, but this isn't the Bible. I mean, it's a beautiful book, but it's not the Bible. We're not told why God is testing Abraham. We're not told the reason, the bigger reason behind the test, just that he's being tested. And so I think there's two, but possibly more reasons why God is doing this. And it's similar to when God and Abraham were negotiating over the fate of Sodom

[9:27] and Gomorrah, right? And the first possibility is that God knew all along what the outcome was. And he wanted Abraham to discover something about himself. In the case of the, he wanted Abraham to discover that he was actually a merciful person by continuing to ask for a lower number of people that the city would be saved on behalf of, right? In this case, it was Abraham needed to know for himself just how obedient he was. Abraham's own sense of his own obedience was an unknown quantity. And God wanted to use this test for Abraham to realize just how obedient he is, right? And the goal is of the test is to strengthen Abraham and is to help Abraham to understand his own character. So there's growth for Abraham. That's the goal, right? That sends him into the world as a person who has more confidence in his own, either his own mercy or his own obedient nature. Or two, so that's the first choice. The second choice is that this is a journey that God takes with Abraham, right? And God limits himself to not know the outcome. What you might get from verse 12, where it says, now I know. That's exactly what that means. It's a temporal, it's a time-based sort of idea. Before, I didn't know what you were going to do. Now I know that

[10:51] you were willing to complete this thing that I've asked you to do. And I'm stopping you right at the last minute or the last second, millisecond, but I now I know. So that God has limited himself in some ways to not know the outcome. And Abraham may or may not pass the test. God doesn't, know if Abraham's actually going to pass the test. And so God limits himself in what he knows in advance. And God, pardon me, Krista, could I trouble you to go in the refrigerator of the kitchen? And at the bottom drawer, there's these tiny little bottles of water. God limits himself for the sake of relationship with Abraham. And so those two themes, we've kind of been hitting this a lot, and I'm sorry if you're tired of it. I think it's fascinating. And I'm also going to say that you can choose. These are two possible interpretations. There may be more. And I'm not saying that there's one that is the official view of this church. I am not saying that at all. But I think it's interesting, okay, that there's two possible choices and maybe more. Okay. And I'm open, I'm actually open to either because I think both of them work in some way or another. But I think this is another thing that you could let sit with you for a season. Thank you. Thank you. Every, all 17 years are totally worth it.

[12:04] Sometimes I bring her water at home. Thank you. I think it's possible even when we're trying to take this fork in the road over these two interpretations is to sit with it for a season and ask God, what is this test for? What is it about? And God might reveal it to us through the Spirit, right? But we hope that just as God is faithful in difficult times, I want us to think that God is faithful in difficult texts. Do you get that? God is faithful even in difficult texts. He'll hang in there with us. He will show us. But we'll have to put some work in. We'll have to take the solitude, the time, our openness to the Spirit, or we'll have to take the work to study and do this. And you can do this and we have Bible software. We can loan you if you want to do it yourself. I would love to teach that. And maybe someday we'll have like a seminar on how to do some of this stuff. And we'll even invite better Bible scholars than me because I'm an, I'm not an amateur because it's my, my job, but I'm amateurish compared to many. So I'll, I'll just say that. But it's very interesting and it's very, it's very valuable. So we want to put the emphasis on this, the challenging nature of the text. The story, how the story starts is horrifying, but it's how the story

[13:26] ends that shows God's faithfulness to his promises. Isaac is not sacrificed. The line of Abraham lives on. And as Abraham predicted, even to Isaac, God himself would provide the sacrifice. Did you see a few hints in the story that we're not, we don't know what Abraham knows. We don't know what he's thinking, but he says a few things that indicates that he has at least some hope that this is going to work out somehow. The first is when he says to the young man that he brings with him, who don't really have much of a role. They're just kind of narrative. They're like, like part of, they're like furniture in a movie set, you know, they're just there, but they serve this one narrative purpose because Abraham, Abraham's son, Abraham's great. So if you look at his end end end end end end end end end end end end end end end end end says. Is he lying? We don't know. I mean, this is the interesting thing about this text. We don't know if Abraham's lying just to kind of keep them off the scent or if Abraham trusts that God is going to do something. We don't know. And then the next part, which we kind of emphasized in the book talked about, Isaac says, Father, I see the fire. I see the wood. We're missing something. Something. And Abraham keeps that from him until the very last minute, which I think is smart,

[14:55] but, you know, but let's remember that Abraham is like over a hundred years old at this point, and Isaac, we think, is like 13, 14, like not quite a full-grown man, but probably a strapping young man. I think it's possible that Isaac could have overpowered his father, possible. So Isaac actually somehow, it's possible, went along with this because he trusted his father, his father, and he trusted his father. And so, you know, I think it's possible that Isaac could have father. Do you get that? Like, we don't know. There's some things we don't know. But so Isaac says to his father, where's the lamb? And what does Abraham say? God himself will provide the lamb. Now you could be cynical and say, and it's you, but I'm not going to say that part. Like, you know, but is Abraham, is that Abraham's nature? I'm not sure, right? But Abraham has this faith that God is going to do something still. And here's the, you know, the core of it is that Abraham keeps driving forward in obedience. And there's this trust still that God will make it work out somehow. That's powerful. If that's the test, that's great. If that's the example, that's amazing, you know? And that's been an example to me. I know I've maybe said it to you

[16:08] before, but if you haven't heard it in a while, there was a point in seminary, where I was, I was glad I was in seminary. I was doing the right thing. I was studying. And I set about to read the Bible and I got right here and I stopped and it just hit me. And I said, this is faith. This is obedience. This is taking everything that God ever gave you, that you love, that God even promised to you and saying, God, I'm willing to give it all back to you if you want it. And I actually got on the floor of my dormitory room, on my knees, and I put my elbows on my bed. And this is, you know, I'm in seminary, I'm an adult. And I say, God, I want to be like Abraham in this case. I want to, here's my whole life. If you want me to do something else with it, I'll do it. But this is, you know, and I've given my life to God more than once in, when I was a youth going to camp, you know the story. But I did it again in the middle of seminary. Isn't that weird? Someone's halfway to being a pastor and they give their life back to Jesus. You know, and it was this text, this one that pulled me down to my knees to say, God, I'm going to give this to you. And what peace came afterwards, I'll tell you, because before that you're trying

[17:25] to manage everything yourself, but the peace comes when you give it over to God. It's a different, that's a whole different sermon. But the point is even a difficult text can create this beautiful outcome, right? And in this difficult narrative, this difficult story creates a beautiful outcome for Isaac and Abraham, as we'll see.

[17:46] So, we're not sure what Abraham's thinking. We're not sure what Abraham knows. We're not even sure Abraham knows this is a test. All we see is that Abraham is both obedient and at the same time, hopeful that in some way he'll be able to return with Isaac to his family.

[18:05] But we don't know more than that. It's very interesting. Okay. So, I'm going to read this next part because I kind of glossed over it earlier. Many people, and this is the beautiful thing, and sometimes, sometimes beautiful, not every time, but sometimes beautiful things can be found in the wreckage and the aftermath of difficult things. Not always, but sometimes. And I believe that this substitute offering from God is a hint that he's going to save his people in the future, right? So, he substitutes, this ram for Isaac. And there are some people, you can kind of, there's some people who believe this and some people who don't. They believe that that substitute sacrifice in the ram is Jesus himself. It's a prefiguring of Jesus over a thousand years later that God is kind of leaving a hint for us about the New Testament. And that God himself is willing to give up his own son, just as Abraham is willing to give up his own son. And so, God is not asking Abraham to do something that he himself is not willing to do, which is great because that bad parents are the ones who say, don't do as, do as I say, not as I do. And I do that. It's not great, but a good parent says, do as I do. Say as I say. Whatever I ask you to do, I'm willing to do myself. And God, God shows us this when it comes

[19:40] to Jesus. So, and God's saying, in a way, the final sacrifice is the gift. There's this gift. It's given. You notice that the ram is caught in the thicket. This is important. Its horns are stuck. It can't go anywhere. This is easy hunting, right? They don't have to chase. How hard is it to chase a ram around a tall mountainside? Can you imagine if the angel said, okay, untie Isaac, and now try to catch that thing that's jumping all over the place. Good luck. No, no. It's, it's pre-packaged. You know, it came in an Amazon box. Here it is. It's right there in the thicket. All you have to do is just, you know, put an, I don't know, grab it, grab it by the horns, take it up to the altar, tie it to the altar, and now you have your sacrifice. So, what does that mean? The ram is a gift. They didn't have to earn this ram. They didn't have to work for it. The ram is a gift from God. The sacrifice of Jesus is a gift to us. What he does for us on the cross is a gift. We don't have to earn it. We don't have to work for it. We don't have to work for it. Do you see how it works together? It's amazing, right? And that's why it's so important that we teach about the cross of Jesus so often. When I came to your church

[20:54] almost 11 years ago, the call committee said, what do you want to talk about? What do you want to preach about? And I said, almost every sermon, I have to talk about the cross of Jesus Christ. Do you remember that, Craig? You do. That's great. I'm glad you remember because I meant it. We talk about the cross. We talk about the cross of Jesus. We talk about the sacrifice that God was willing to take of his own son and his own son going to the cross in obedience for the salvation of the world, even though the world doesn't deserve it. And this horrible thing that has a beautiful thing at the end of it. If you want a difficult text, we could read the text about the crucifixion of Jesus. That one we don't skip. We're kind of required to read it on Good Friday and a few other days. Like we don't skip that one. This one actually isn't quite in our lectionary so much. You know, we have to actually choose to preach Genesis 22. Okay. A horrible thing has a beautiful thing at the end of it. And we hold those things in tension, right? And the cross is a sign that God keeps his promises to rescue his people always. And the cross is the culmination of the promise that God made to Abraham to bless all nations through his descendants. It all comes together. I'm so excited.

[22:09] Okay. All right. Nerd alert. Nerd alert time. This is the final part. Who is curious about what the title of the sermon is? Who read the title and was like, what's that? Okay, Pam, nobody else. Oh, good. Oh, okay. Don't act like you were curious because most of you didn't read the title of the sermon. You're just like, oh, I have a bulletin. What is this? What's the title of the sermon? A particle of entreaty. What is that? Is this something about physics? No, it's not. It's what? It's a grammar. Pam is If Ryan was here, he would be all over this. Are you listening, Ryan? I don't know how to get. Is Ryan on the chat? If Ryan's on the chat, tell us. He jumps in and says, hi, I'm here from Mexico and I know exactly what a particle of entreaty is.

[22:55] Not yet. Okay. Oh, we didn't do our greetings on chat. Well, we're not quite doing that in worship. Anyways, so a particle of entreaty, and this is what it sounds like. Nah, that's it. That's the particle of entreaty. Now, what is it? Is it a word? No, it's too short and it's not, doesn't have any meaning on its own. So it's linguists, grammarians call it a particle. It's not a atomic particle. It's a grammatical language particle and it has two Greek letter, pardon me, two Hebrew letters in it, obviously. And what it does is it modifies an imperative verb. An imperative is a command. Go get me some water. That's... So the imperative is go. Go and get, they're kind of related. Go and get. Fetch. Let's just say fetch. Fetch me some water. All together. That's the imperative. The verb fetch is imperative because I'm telling you to do it. It's a command. Okay. Nah, if I put the nah in front of it in Hebrew, it modifies the command and makes it a bit softer, makes it a bit more polite, makes it a bit more of an entreaty. So that's why it's called the particle of entreaty. And so if I were to put the nah in front of the fetch, it would be more like, could you please go get me some water?

[24:20] Or something like that. A little softer, like you got to do it. There's still a command. You got to do it. But I'm asking nicer because maybe there's a relationship here or something like that because I realize this is a hardship for you. So I'm asking you to do, I know I'm asking you to do a difficult thing. Those are two possibilities, right? One is I'm asking you to do a difficult thing. So I'm kind of sweetening it a bit. The other could be that we have a relationship and I'm asking you nicely because I love you, you know, and I ask things nicely. I do what my mom told me, which is to say please when I ask her things, you know?

[24:55] So that's the difference. Now, when this nah, this particle of entreaty is translated into English, there's a choice. What English word to put in front of the imperative verb? Here are the choices. Here is what our Bible's doing. Our modern English translations. So some of them put the word please. Great. Some of them say, I pray you. I pray you fetch me some water. I beseech you fetch me some water. I beg you. That's kind of the lowest. That's almost like I really need it. But beg in the sense of I'm really imploring you. Right.

[25:30] And so all of those are ways that this has been translated. And also here's some another way that has been translated is with the word now, which actually we could hear this as now do this. Now fetch me some water, which is kind of like even strengthening the imperative. Like you better do it now and right quick. But if you saw if you that's not how that sort of older English in older English, you would say now like now, would you fetch me some water? Am I right, Pam? Yeah. The now can be a softening in older English. And so, as we'll see, like now softly, here's what I need you to do.

[26:07] And so this is almost always. This particle of entreaty is used when one human being is speaking to another human being, which makes sense. Right. We've got people asking each other for things in the Bible, and sometimes they're asking nicely. It's very rare for God to use this particle. Very rare. Why? Because he's God. He doesn't have to say, please. He commands and it's done right. But in this case, would you know where I'm going with this? Right. When God says, take your son, are you going to believe me when I tell you there's a particle of imperative, a particle of imperative right before the word take in Hebrew? Will you believe me? It's there. It's in the text. So what does that mean? God is asking nicely.

[26:53] For Abraham to do this difficult thing because he loves him, because they're in a relationship or God is saying, look, I know this is a difficult thing to tell you to do, but I'm telling you to do it. And I'm adding this particle of entreaty to my imperative for you. So is Ryan on? I'm just totally curious.

[27:17] Sorry for not writing in before. Yes. Yay. OK, so now it's so rare for God to use this particle. And now I'm going to have to put on a glass of that. But here's the thing that I find a bit troubling and very interesting, that our modern English translations don't even even register the use of this particle in their text. So I'll have I'll give you an example. Genesis 22 to what we're looking at in the NRSV. Take your son. That's it. No. Now or please or I beg you. NIV. Take your son. Holman Christian Standard Bible, the one that Duane loves. Take your son. Now, here we go. The New Living Translation. This is Victoria's favorite. It's often great. Take your son. Just do it. OK. Now, here's the exceptions. The King James Version.

[28:15] Take now thy son, thine only son, Isaac. The softening is there. And it's the correct for the older English. That now is kind of an older way of doing it. The New King James Version doesn't really clean up much. They just work on pronouns. Take now your son, your only son, Isaac. That's it. Most other modern and I have because of my Bible software will give me the same verse in like 20 versions and I can compare them side by side. And I've even highlighted them here. So why are translators not giving us this particle? I'm suspicious.

[28:50] Do they think God doesn't say please? Do they think that God's incapable of entreaty when he gives a command? I don't know. I'm not in their minds. But I would have liked to have seen it in a modern translation. The the person that wrote the the the the commentary that I use. Most often on the book of Genesis, who's actually a very conservative Christian scholar, and these books are published in Dallas, Texas, if that tells you anything. Right.

[29:21] He he translates himself every text before himself, and he provides the translation of the text himself before he sort of expands on it in the book. And his is his translation. Um. . ! So if if if if if if if if if if if for relationship, that he limits himself, that he shows his loving and kind nature even as he asks the impossible. And God putting a particle of entreaty in front of a command is also a limiting act on God, isn't it? He's softening his own command that he has every right to make to anyone in this universe. And then in the end, God does provide the substitute and the sacrifice that costs them nothing to give or to receive. Let's pray. Father, thank you that you love us, that you want relationship with us, that you're faithful to your promises, that you send us Jesus. We don't earn it, we don't deserve it, and that the world will be blessed through him and through what we're doing here. And Father, we ask for your blessing on the rest of this day.