Carole Ricketts became our pastor in early June 2008. She attended Goshen College and earned a Bachelor’s degree with a concentration in Youth Ministry and has since graduated from Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary with a Masters of Divinity.

Sermon Series: Genesis
Week 3, June 29, 2008
Text: Genesis 22:1-14

In various parts of our lives, we try (or we are taught) to display our ownership of and over objects. For example, many parents write with a sharpie pen their child’s name on the back of shirts, pants and other clothing. For a child, in grade school they learn to write their own name and then they plaster it over everything they bring to school: pencils, lunchbox, backpack, everything they can get their hands on.

Adults have other ways to go about this. To drive, one must be 16 or older and have a piece of paper that has their name on it stating that this car is their own. A title is a legal piece of documented ownership. When my mom and I adopted our 2nd dog from a rescue, they had put a chip in his ear with information attached to it so that if he were to run away or be stolen, any veterarian could pull up his information just through his very high-tech ear. Babies in the hospital are handprinted and footprinted in order, partly, that the right baby goes home to the right parents. There is a national registry of valuable jewelrey. You can apply and send in all the information and if your prized necklace or heirloom ring shows up in a pawn shop or a jewelrey store trying to be sold, it will be safe. Insurance companies suggest that couples periodically videotape themselves walking through their house, making sure to get on the tape every piece of furniture, antique, collectable or other items important to the couple so that in case of buglary, fire or flood, there is a document, a testimony even of what was owned.

The point is: we desire to show our ownership of things. What’s mine is mine. We keep our things safe which for the most part can be a healthy thing. It can become unhealthy; we can horde. We can obsess over how much we have and become concerned with only getting more.
The truth is, we can’t own it all. We don’t even own what we think we do, if we want to be honest. All that is in our care and in our lives is in fact, a gift from God. God is the Greatest Giver who bestows upon us gifts and blessing because God is a generous God. God has given us our families, our friends and many more blessings that our lives would be very different having not had them in our lives. When we consider all that we have been given, we have very full, loving and humble hearts.

But what about Abraham? God called out for Abraham and he answered, “Here I am.” Abraham was told, commanded to sacrifice Isaac as a burnt offering. There were several types of offerings but the burnt offering was the highest, most honorable offering. In this type, all of the offering was consumed by fire. And Abraham knew this. He knew the totality of what God was asking him to do. Here was God telling Abraham that he had to sacrifice his son, his only son, Isaac. The way the author has written this passage places emphasis on those phrases and how they built off of one another. “Your son, your only son, Isaac.” It starts out generic, then adds another dimension by identifying him as Abraham’s only son, then lastly by name in order to build up how great this sacrifice was.

Abraham saddles up his donkey, takes his servants and “his son, his only son, Isaac” to the land of Moriah. He brought wood for the burnt offering and at one point told his servants to stay where they were and that they (meaning Abraham and Isaac) would come back to meet them in a while. “Stay, here with the donkey; the boy (Isaac) and I will go over there; we will worship and then we will come back to you.” I’ve always wondered if this was parental evasiveness or truly Abraham’s faith. He knows full well that if he is going to do what God asked him to do, there will be only one coming back from that mountain. I would argue that Abraham is being evasive; who knowing that their parent is about to sacrifice them because God “told them to do so” would be a willing companion up that hill? But whatever the reason, it does foreshadow God’s provision.

Once on the hill Isaac yells out to Abraham, and Abraham responds yet again, “Here I am.” Isaac wants to know where the lamb is for the sacrifice; Abraham remarks that “God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” Abraham built an altar, bound Isaac, placed wood on top and on bottom of him and took out the knife to kill his son, his only son, Isaac.

Gratefully, God intervenes. God calls out, “Abraham! Abraham!” and he replies, “Here I am.” God responds that God now knows that Abraham is a God-fearing man and will not withhold anything from God. God instructs Abraham not to kill him, or to do any harm to him, “since you have not withheld your son, your only son, Isaac.”

Our point this morning is not to get into a discussion about child sacrifice and its usage during that time in the Ancient Near Eastern cultures and religions. For it is a world far from us that we do not understand. Rather, I would ask that we would consider generosity and gratefulness. God was testing Abraham, and what a test it was. Isaac was most beloved in the eyes of Abraham and Sarah. God wanted to know if Abraham loved the gift more than the Giver. (Pause) Abraham passed that test because he did not withhold his most precious son to the Giver-of-all-Good-Things.
Isaac was given to Abraham and Sarah as a gift. We cannot give God anything that is not already God’s. Everything that we have, everything that we are originates with God, is given by God and is blessed by God. God is generous with provisions. When we hand back to God, what God asks of us, we’re really taking what is in God’s right hand and placing it in God’s left hand. Everything in this world is God’s. We are blessed to be only a part of it and to partake in it. It is with this understanding and mindset that God wants us to have when we give to God. Being very grateful for what we have been blessed with (as Abraham was for Isaac) and to give with open hands, no matter how much it costs us personally, for really what we are giving – is not ours but God’s.

God demands all of us when we chose to be faithful Christians in God’s service. God will test us in our own ways. There are sacrifices that we make that don’t hurt us. They are easy for us to make because they don’t cut to the core of who we are. But there will be a time when we are forced to make sacrifices that require very much of all of who we are. Discipleship is not an easy task but it is done so, out of obedience to God even in the very hardest of circumstances. God wants to ask each one of us if all that we have been given, is more loved and valuable to us mortals, than God the Giver. I pray that when those very hardest testings come to each one of us, that we too might answer as Abraham did, “Here I am.”