John 8:42-59; Hebrews 9:11-15; Genesis 22:1-14
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
We bring our sons and our daughters to Holy Baptism to kill them, just as Abraham brought his son of promise Isaac to Mt. Moriah to kill him. Now, I know that sounds shocking, and it might even offend some of you, but that is precisely what we heard and confessed moments ago in the liturgy of the baptismal rite: “We pray that You would behold Callahan […], that through this saving flood all sin in him which has been inherited from Adam and which he himself has committed since would be drowned and die.” Yes, we bring our sons and our daughters to Holy Baptism to kill them, so that they might be born again in Jesus and live in His new life that can never die.
The LORD commanded Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. It was a test. God didn’t need to know the results of that test, but Abraham did. Abraham, whose faith in the LORD’s Word was once credited to him as righteousness, had since then failed miserably to trust that Word when the circumstances or the timeline didn’t meet his expectations. Abraham, the father of our faith, commanded his wife Sarah to lie to the Egyptians and say that she was his sister and not his wife, not to protect her, but to protect himself. Then, when the LORD did not fulfill His promise of a son within a period of time that seemed reasonable to them, Abraham and Sarah together conspired to produce a son, apart from their union, through Sarah’s Egyptian slave Hagar. In the first case, Abraham did not trust in the LORD to protect him and to provide for him in Egypt, and in the second, he simply didn’t believe that the LORD would keep His Word. The LORD’s command to sacrifice his son was a test of Abraham’s faith. God didn’t need to know the results of that test, but Abraham did.
Suffice it to say, Abraham passed the test. This time, Abraham did not waver. Now he knew that God was faithful and unchanging and that He keeps His Word and promise no matter what. If God demanded that Abraham sacrifice the son promised to him, the son of his own flesh through whom all the nations of the world were to be blessed, then Abraham believed that, somehow, in some way, God would keep His promise. Perhaps God would spare Isaac and provide a substitute. Perhaps God would raise Isaac from the dead. Whatever it would be, Abraham now trusted God without wavering. Abraham believed God, and God counted his belief, his faith, and his trust to him as righteousness. Abraham passed the test. And so did Isaac.
We seldom consider Isaac, what Isaac must have been thinking and feeling, what Isaac believed. We don’t know how old Abraham and Isaac were when this occurred, but it seems clear that Abraham was an old man well over one hundred years and that Isaac was likely a teenager or young adult, perhaps between eighteen to twenty-five years old. Suffice it to say, Isaac could have easily over-powered his elderly father and run. But he didn’t. In fact, we hear no protest from Isaac at all and he seemingly permits himself to be bound by his father and submits to his own sacrifice. This is of utmost significance. Abraham and Isaac were united in their faith and trust in God and His Word of promise. God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, and he was prepared to do it. God commanded Isaac to be the sacrificial victim, and he was willing to do it. Both men believed that the LORD would provide a lamb for a sacrifice somehow, sometime.
Abraham and Isaac both saw the Day of the Lord that day on Mt. Moriah. They saw the day of Jesus’ sacrificial death in the ram caught in the thicket by its horns. Abraham took that ram and sacrificed it in place of his son Isaac. Though Abraham was prepared to sacrifice his son, and Isaac was prepared to be the sacrifice, Abraham was spared the loss of his son whom he loved, and Isaac was spared the loss of his life. The ram was a type, a foreshadowing, of the sacrifice the LORD would finally offer Himself. All the lambs, bulls, goats, and turtledoves that were sacrificed on Jewish altars were a type, a foreshadowing, of the sacrifice the LORD would finally offer Himself. None of them ever took away a single sin, but the sacrificial blood only covered over sin for a time and then it had to be repeated. The sacrifice that God would provide would not merely cover over sin for a time, but Jesus, the Lamb of God’s offering, has taken away the sin of the entire world: Abraham’s and Sarah’s sin, Isaac’s sin, Adam’s and Eve’s sin, your sin, my sin, Callahan’s sin, the sin of the entire world – gone, finished, no more.
“Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day,” said Jesus, “He saw it and was glad.” The day that Abraham saw was the day his son Isaac was spared as the LORD provided a ram as a substitute. But that day was fulfilled when Jesus, the Lamb of God’s providing laid down His innocent life unto death on the cross for the sin of the world. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” asks St. Paul, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” And so, we bring our sons and our daughters to Holy Baptism to kill them, so that they might be baptized into Jesus’ death and raised to new life in Jesus’ resurrection. We bring them, not in fear of the Law, but in faith and trust in the LORD and His promise that they will live, just as Jesus is risen from the dead and lives, never to die again.
Jesus’ opponents didn’t understand His meaning. “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” “So, they picked up stones to throw at Him.” They couldn’t understand Jesus’ meaning because they had made themselves deaf, dumb, and blind to the Word and promises of God. They were like Abraham in Egypt, when he feared men more than he trusted in the LORD and loved his own life more than Sarah’s, and when he failed to trust that the LORD would provide him a son. The LORD tested their faith and they failed. They went back to offering up their lambs, bulls, and goats which could never take away their sin and they rejected the Lamb the LORD provided, Jesus, whose sacrifice alone has taken away their sin and the sin of the world. The LORD promised Abraham a son through whom all the nations of the world would be blessed. Jesus is that Son of promise. God did not spare His only Son but gave Him over unto death on the cross for the life of the world. The Son, Jesus, submitted Himself in love to His Father’s will and went willingly to the cross as the sacrificial Lamb of God’s providing. This is how God has loved the world. This is how God has loved you.
In the + Name of Jesus. Amen.
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