Genesis 22:1-3 - Some time later God tested
Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you
love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt
offering on a mountain I will show you.”
We can’t talk about Abraham without talking about this awful
story. I encourage to go read the rest
of Genesis 22, but the quick summary is that Abraham obeys God by taking Isaac
to the appointed mountain and gets ready to sacrifice him. God stops him at the last moment and promises
him to reward him for his being willing to obey this terrible command.
There are so many troubling aspects to this story – problems
that I cannot and will not explain away.
Why would God ask such a heinous thing?
Why was Abraham willing to do it (full disclosure, I wouldn’t)? Why is God’s “reward” for Abe’s obedience the
same thing that he had already promised multiple times before? These are just some most glaring problems
with digesting this story.
So you may ask, “Eric, if you have no intention of
explaining this story, why the heck did you even bring it up?”
Here’s my reply. The
reason I bring it up is to point out what Karl Barth called the “wholly
otherness” of God. God can not be fully
explained and /or domesticated. There
will always be things about God that causes us to want to walk away because we
cannot fit them into a neat, tidy, nicely-wrapped God package. God is “wholly other” meaning that we will
never get God into a manageable box.
This story is one of those stories (there are many others) that remind
us of that. It creates questions that
cannot be answered in this life. It
reminds us that faith, trust and obedience aren’t produced by having all our
questions answered. God can be wholly
other and wholly trustworthy at the same time.
The witness of this story is that God is both – other and trustworthy.
So trust God even though there are unanswerable questions. That’s what Abraham did. It worked out for Abe and it will work out
for you and me. We may not always
understand God and at times, trusting God may actually be terrifying. But I have found that God’s otherness has
become one of the very reasons that I do trust God. We’ll talk more about that tomorrow as we
finish up our time with Abraham.
For more on Abraham, read Genesis 22 – 25:11
Prayer: God, we don’t
know more than we do know about you, but help us to trust you anyway. Amen.
Prayer Focus: Pray
for people you know who do not believe in God
Song: Crowder –
Praise the Lord – We’ve used this one before, but it goes especially well with
today’s devo.
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