Sermon Series: "Slowly in Type from Age to Age"
"The Father Offers up His Son"
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from
God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
As
we go through some of the people in the Old Testament who are types of Christ,
that is, they foreshadow or point us to Jesus, perhaps one of the plainest
pictures we have of Jesus in the Old Testament is the sacrifice of Isaac.
God
instructs Father Abraham, “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 of which I shall tell
you.” Abraham goes without a word of
protest. He takes his son, his only son
whom he loves to a mountain to be sacrificed.
Not exactly what a loving father wants to hear.
It
must have been an awkward journey for Abraham, with Isaac asking, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where
is the lamb for a burnt offering?” He
knows what He must do, he must carry out God’s command. God wouldn’t lead him wrong, right? But Abraham proceeds with trust, with faith
that God would raise his son again.
Abraham is willing to sacrifice his son, as God had commanded, but he
trusts all the more the God will raise him back up from the dead. He tells the
servants when they arrive to the appointed mountain, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and
worship and come again to you.”
Abraham
does as the Lord had commanded. “Abraham built the altar there and laid the
wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the
wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand
and took the knife to slaughter his son.”
Does this sound familiar? The
father offers up his son, his only son whom he loves as a sacrifice. The son is placed on an altar of wood that
the father would take his son’s own life.
But the sacrifice isn’t Isaac’s to undergo. As Abraham was about to slaughter his son, “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 do anything to him, for now I know that you fear
God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.’ “ And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked,
and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered
it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.”
Father Abraham did
not withhold his son, his only son whom he loves from God and the same is true
of our Heavenly Father. He, too, did not
withhold His Son, His only Son whom He loves from death, but offered up Him on
the wooden altar of the cross. But the
sacrifice of Jesus wasn’t a sacrifice done to satisfy a test, but for the sins
of the world.
Each
and everyone of us should have bloodguilt upon our heads. For our sins, we deserve to die, we deserve both
temporal and eternal punishment. Sin
demands blood and, by all right, it should be our place upon the altar so that
God’s wrath would be poured out on us.
We deserve it. We have it
coming. By all rights the cost of our
own sins should be ours to pay.
But, like Father Abraham, our Heavenly Father
offers up His Son, His only Son, on Mount Calvary. The Father gives His Son into death on the
wooden altar of the cross, that the guilt that we bear because of our sin, the
punishment that we so rightly deserve, is poured out in the sharpened blade of the
Father’s wrath on His own Son. For
you.
The head of the
ram of God, whose head was circled and caught in the crown of thorns and
thickets, was laid the iniquity of us all.
Your sins and mine. For the sins
that seem so small and the ones the haunt your every step. For the sins that you are unaware and for the
sins that the devil has placed in front of your face. For your sins the Son goes willingly to be
strapped to the cross with iron nails.
For you.
But, like Isaac,
He doesn’t stay on the altar, but lives.
Father Abraham offers us his son with full confidence that God would
raise him from the dead, that he and the boy would return to the young men and
the donkeys they had left behind. So it
is for Jesus. He was raised from the
dead, never to die again. As Father
Abraham lifted his son off the altar of his construction, so did the Father
raise Jesus from the grave. For you,
that your grave would not have a hold of you.
So that, like Isaac and Jesus you, too, shall be raised up to new life.
The father offers
up his son. One son was spared from his
father’s knife, the other bore the Father’s wrath in its fullest that you would
never face it. The Father offers over
His Son for you. To bear your sins, for
your forgiveness, for your everlasting life.
Amen.
The peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus
to life everlasting. Amen.
