IF YOU
REALLY LOVED YOUR CHILD…
How
would you finish this sentence? “If you really loved your child…” What?
Parents who have grown up in less
than ideal situations themselves often want more for their children. That means
giving them what they never had: advantages, opportunities, education,
financial help. The motivation of these parents is love, or some version of it.
Love is being able to give those things to their children that they never had.
As this trend has developed over the
last decades a shift has occurred subtly in the family dynamic. Our children
became the central focus of everything that we do. Social calendars revolve
around what’s happening with the children: school plays, concerts, sporting
events, and even sleepovers. Parents’ activities have taken a second place to
that of what the children are doing. And if you really loved your child you
would attend to their every need.
Just to clarify, these things are
not evil in and of themselves. Good parents will indeed provide opportunities
for growth for their children.
What is at issue is obsession, the
attitude of the individual towards those things that are good. And the end
result of obsession is idolatry.
Parenthood becomes idolatrous when we seek meaning through the
lives of our children. When
our own personal fulfillment in life comes from seeing our children become
successful we have a problem.
When God called Abraham, he called him to leave all
that he knew, to give up the comforts of his homeland and to go where God told
him. Where? He did not know. Abraham was asked to give up all the worldly hopes
and dreams that a human desires in exchange for a great promise. God told
Abraham that he would bless all the nations through him and his descendents.
Abraham and was old and his wife
Sarah was barren. To have a child now would be miraculous. Yet when Abraham was
one hundred years old and Sarah was ninety, they had a boy named Isaac. Through
him all the hopes of these aged parents would be realized. God needed to change
that perception.
The Test: Why do our kids matter so much?
We
read in Genesis 22 that God tested Abraham. God knows the heart of every man,
woman and child, so he does not need to test us to see if we are faithful to
him. He does test us to show us where our hearts are in relation to him. The
testing is for our benefit.
This was the ultimate test. Isaac
meant everything to Abraham. God does not refer to Isaac by name but as “your son, your only son, whom you love,” showing that Abraham’s
affection for Isaac had become adoration. Before Isaac was born, Abraham was
dependent on God’s word. Now a shift had taken place where Abraham’s efforts
were all about Isaac. God was not saying “don’t love your son,” but don’t idolize
him either.
What God asks of Abraham is
horrible. Any parent would be appalled at the command. Take your son and “go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on
a mountain I will show you,” (22:2).
Why would God ask such a thing? How
are we to understand such a test? Does the OT God demand child sacrifice?
If we think of ancient culture like
Abraham’s we need to understand that all the hopes and dreams of a man and his
family rest on the firstborn son. When we read the OT we find that Israel’s sinfulness requires the
life of the firstborn son (Ex 22:29; 34:20). The lives of the firstborn sons
are forfeit because of sin, unless regular sacrifice is made to God. Think of
when God punished Egypt for enslaving the Israelites, what did he do? God took
the lives of Egypt’s firstborn sons during Passover. Why? The firstborn son was
the family. So when God told the Israelites that the life of the firstborn son
belonged to him unless ransomed, he was saying that every family on earth owed
a debt of sin to God.
Why was Abraham so willing to get up and travel
three days to sacrifice his son on an altar? Because Abraham understood that
God was calling in his debt.
Why do our children matter so much
to us? Perhaps we have unrealized dreams that we long to see fulfilled in our
children. Perhaps we were neglected by unloving parents and we want to parent
better than they did. Perhaps we simply live in a culture that is obsessed with
youth or children.
Would you surrender your child to
God like Abraham?
The Glimmer of Hope: Abraham’s Trust in God
Abraham
went as God commanded. He got up early, loaded the donkey, took two servants
and his son Isaac and set out for the place God had directed. Abraham showed no
signs of wavering or doubt. He was going to sacrifice his son on the altar of
fire.
How could Abraham have been so
determined to obey such a hideous command? Two things stand out for us in this
macabre situation. First we read the text, “He said to his
servants, ‘Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will
worship and then we will come back to you,’” (22:5).
Notice what he said: “we will come
back to you.” There is a glimmer of hope in these words. Abraham expects to
return to the servants with Isaac. Why? Because in the previous chapter God
told Abraham that “it is through Isaac that your offspring
will be reckoned,” (21:12). That can’t happen if Isaac dies.
But if Abraham is faithful to God he
has to follow through and kill Isaac in sacrifice. How can Abraham kill Isaac
and expect to return with him? If we read in the “Faith” chapter of Hebrews we find this: “Abraham reasoned that God could raise the
dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death,”
(Heb 11:19).
Now death is the great destroyer of
dreams. Death does what no person can do: tears hearts apart. When death
occurs, we confront the painful truth that even family ties are not absolute.
Augustine, who grieved over his beloved mother,
Monica, wrote about grief in his Confessions. He said we find the death of a
loved one painful for two reasons: First, we love those who are close to us as
if they will never die. They should be loved as human beings – as mortals. In
light of the great commandment, love of one’s spouse and children comes under
the rubric of neighbor love. Second, we look upon a loved one’s death as a
loss, and we grieve losses. This attitude indicates that we hold the other as a
possession – literally. You belong to me, we say. Augustine reminds us that
loved ones are mortal and that they are not ours. One of the essential
characteristics of all idolatry is the notion of possession: we possess our
idols as objects.[i]
Abraham trusted God. He believed
that giving up Isaac would not result in any broken promises from God. Abraham
began to see though, that God demanded absolute obedience.
A Son’s Trust: Isaac’s confidence in his father
Isaac
is about twenty years old during this incident depending on who you read on the
matter. Regardless, Isaac shows remarkable confidence in Abraham.
“Abraham
took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he
himself carried the fire and the knife,” (22:6). My son gets nervous when I
pull out a knife or play with fire. Isaac obviously had no problem with a 120
year old man wielding a knife and a bucket of fire.
He still asks a good question, and
one that suggests a bit of suspicion.
“The fire and the wood are here…but where
is the lamb for the burnt offering?” (22:7b).
In matters of faith we are supposed
to able to trust our fathers and mothers. Abraham was the spiritual leader of
his home; he was the one who led in worship of God. He showed this worship, not
by singing, but by his obedience and faith in God. So Isaac, having grown up in
this home of faith, knew he could trust Abraham, his father. If he gave an
explanation to this question, that would settle it.
Abraham did. He said, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son,”
(22:8). The example that Abraham sets is that God is first; God is the priority
in this family. Is that what our children see in our homes? Do they see that
obedience matters?
Passing the Test: Loving God more
Abraham
and Isaac journeyed up the mountain. Suddenly the climax is upon the reader.
Abraham takes Isaac – did he struggle or fight? – binds him and places him on
the rocks and wood arranged as an altar. Abraham takes the knife with both hands and prepares
himself to plunge it down into the heart of his son. God commanded it. He’s
going to do it. There’s no turning back now. Steady! Make a clean thrust.
Just as the knife is about to come
crashing down on the beautiful young chest of his only son, God calls,
“Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied.
“Do
not lay a hand on that boy,” he said, “Do not do anything to him. Now I know
that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only
son,” (22:12).
Fearing God. In the Bible, this does
not mean being “afraid” as much as being wholeheartedly committed to God. A
proper fear of God is synonymous with loving God. So God is saying to Abraham,
“Now I know that you love me more than anything else in all the world. Even
more than you love your son.” God knows the heart; he knew this. But if he had
not asked Abraham to do this, Isaac would have become like an idol; he would
have loved Isaac more than anything in the world. That would have been
idolatry.
“The LORD will provide”
Abraham’s
knife was stayed. “Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he
saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it
as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The LORD
Will Provide. And to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the LORD it will
be provided,” (22:13-14).
Indeed, the LORD has provided. You
may know the foreshadowing that is present in this text. Allow me to review the
amazing parallels for you here.
Three times, God called Isaac, “your son, your only
son.” In John’s gospel
we read that phrase over and over as a designation for Jesus (Jo 1:14, 18;
3:16). Jesus is God’s one and only son.
Then God tells Abraham to go to Mount Moriah to
sacrifice Isaac at a place to be named later. King David will buy that piece of
land and Solomon will build a temple there. Later, Jesus will be crucified in those
same hills.
Abraham places the wood on Isaac and has him carry
his own device of execution to the altar. John 19:17 tells us that Jesus “went out bearing
his own cross.”
Isaac asks where the lamb is for the sacrifice. John
the Baptist, when he first sees the adult Jesus, exclaims, “Look,
the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jo 1:29).
The difference here is that Abraham’s
hand is held back, God’s was not. Isaac was spared; God’s Son was not. “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all – how
will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Ro
8:32).
This is the answer to the idolatry
of family, to the Isaacs we hold on to so dearly. Idolatry is destructive. If
we hold on to our children too tightly they will resent us. If we push for
their success, drive them to “A” grades, busy their lives with life-shaping
activities, they will be too busy to care for us later. We will have taught
them that to be busy is the essence of being a person. And they will despise
us.
We need to offer them up to God. We need to keep
from becoming enslaved to how they make us look or what they do to fulfill us.
We have to know, to be assured, that God so loves, cherishes, and delights in
us that we can rest our hearts in him for our significance and security and
handle anything that happens in life.[ii]
How do we know that God loves us?
God saw Abraham’s sacrifice and said, “Now I know that you love me, because you
did not withhold your only son from me.” Now we look at the Cross and say,
“Now, we know that you love us. For you did not withhold your son, your only
son, whom you love, from us.” Then we can rest our hearts in God’s love above
all else.
The Blessing: What if I surrender my
children to God?
Abraham
was willing to give Isaac to God. In return he received the promise that his
descendents would be as numerous as the stars in the sky or as the sand on the
seashore. And here you are. We are descendents of Abraham by faith. Because he
was a great man of faith in God, our faith puts us in his family.
Children are a blessing from God. We
need to love them and care for them. But let’s finish the sentence: If you really loved your
child…you would love God more.
Pastor Jeff Frazier of First Baptist
Church of Geneva asked this question: What would you rather have, to have your child become a
great athlete, a great musician, a great student, a great scholar, a great
businessman or woman…or…a
great man or woman of God?
Are we eager to raise sons and
daughters who count the cost, take up their cross and follow Jesus Christ? Or
are we content to raise children whose identity is found in their success, wealth,
and person achievement? In Ephesians 6:4, Paul exhorts fathers to not
“exasperate their children.” By making idols out of our sons and daughters, we
raise up bitter, resentful, jaded children.
On the other hand, can we let our
children go to the ends of the earth for the cause of Christ even though their
lives may be at risk, knowing that the blessing far outweighs our comfort and
their temporal existence on this earth?
If God did not spare his own Son but
gave him up for us, we can give up our children to him for his glory. And God
will graciously give us all things; blessings that we cannot even fathom.
AMEN
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