Title: Jehovah Jireh (Genesis 22:5-14)
Contents Early on, the prophet Micah had these concerns.
“What shall I bring before the LORD to worship the Most High? Shall I go before him with a calf a year old? Shall the LORD take pleasure in oil like a thousand rams or ten thousand rivers of water? Shall I give you the fruit of my body for this?"
Like the prophet Micah, we also worry about the sacrifices to bring when we come to worship before God. And like Micah, when people come to worship God, they often think of offerings when they think of offerings. Indeed, offerings have been recognized as an important sacrifice.
I still vividly remember it as a child, but on Sunday, after eating breakfast, my mother puts on new clothes, and on Saturday, she gave me fresh money that I had exchanged at the bank, and told me to give this offering to God. Sometimes, on the way to church, there was delicious candy, so I used to buy candy with the gift my mother gave me, but the offering was recognized as a sacrifice to God. This tradition has become quite established, and the godly saints who come to worship God today prepare their offerings with all their heart, come to the service, and offer them as sacrifices to God.
However, in the strict sense an offering is not an offering. Giving is a sign of our gratitude to God and our response to God's grace. We need to distinguish between the gift of thanksgiving and the sacrifice here. A gift of thanks is offered as a way of giving thanks for God's grace like an offering, and a sacrifice refers to a sacrifice that will bear the judgment that I should bear before God as a sinner. That is why animals such as sheep and doves were sacrificed in the Old Testament. I have a sin that deserves to be put to death before God, and that animal was offered as a sacrifice in the sense that it would bear my sins by death instead.
In the word of God we have heard today, the incident of Abraham's sacrificing of Isaac teaches a very important lesson about this sacrifice, and at the same time, it declares that God is the master of history.
Today's story is, in a way, a cruel story and a breathtaking story. God called Abraham from Ur of Chaldea when he was middle-aged, and made him suffer until he was about 100 years old, and finally gave him the promised son Isaac when he was 100 years old. What kind of son Isaac was to Abraham does not need to be discussed again. He was literally the son of Geum Ok-yeop. But in vain, God called Abraham today and told him to offer his son Isaac as a living sacrifice to God. What kind of clear command is this?
Abraham could keep all the commands of God, but it would have been difficult for him to keep only these commands sanely. Rather, it would be easier to command Abraham to return to Ur of the Chaldeans. When I heard this story in Sunday school when I was young, I understood that Abraham obeyed God to the end, but I thought that it was terrifying to have to burn his son for a sacrifice, no matter what God said, and I thought that his father was heartless. also heard Nevertheless, Abraham, the man of God, got up early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took his two servants and his son Isaac, cut the wood for the burnt offering, and went to the place God was showing him. On the third day, Abraham said to his servants, "Remain here, and I will go over there with this child to worship." And he went up to the top of Mount Moriah. It is said that this Mount Moriah is the very point where the Islamic Golden Temple is now located in Jerusalem.
Isaac fell for the wood for the burnt offering, and Abraham went up to the mountain with fire and a sword. I don't know how he felt at that time, his father's speed, and his son kept telling his immature stories. “Father, there is fire and wood here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” My father probably covered his tears and said, “God himself provides the lamb for the burnt offering.” This wrap around actually turned out to be true later on.
Eventually, we arrived at the top of the mountain that God directed us to. Abraham first built the altar and then the wood. Then, when he was 100 years old, he tied his only begotten son Isaac with a rope and put it on the tree. There is no record of Isaac rebelling or struggling in the Bible. As Abraham was about to raise his sword and strike Isaac, the angel of God cried out.
"Abraham! Abraham!" Abraham answered. "Here I am." The voice was heard again.
“Do not touch the child, do nothing to him, because you have not withheld me, your son, your only son, and now I know that you fear God.”
Herein lies the meaning of sacrifice. Here we read three important attitudes that man will take before God.
The first, as we always say, is obedience. Abraham did not judge his own will and obeyed despite the incomprehensible command to sacrifice his 100-year-old son.
The second is that they gave generously. A generous contribution by even the reader means complete trust.
The third is 'awe', which is the core of today's sermon. This is what I wanted to confirm when God commanded Abraham to slaughter Isaac and offer it as a burnt offering. The question is whether Abraham feared God. This reverence, the fear of God, is the most important sacrifice of those who come to worship. Those who worship must come out because they fear God. Obedience and unsparing offerings come from the fear of God.
What is the reverence of God The word reverence (敬畏) literally means "to respect and to have difficulty with" in Chinese characters. However, reverence in the Bible is not simply being respectful and difficult, but entrusting the authority of history to God.
When you hear the word awe in the Old Testament, there are names that immediately come to mind. These are the Hebrew midwives Zipphrah and Puah in Exodus 1:17. They disobeyed the command of Pharaoh king of Egypt to kill Hebrew women when they gave birth to male children, and they spared them all because they feared God. In other words, to fear God is to publicly declare that Pharaoh is not the king, but that God is the king, and that God is the master of history. The idea of the fear of God is a core idea in wisdom literature such as Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, and the fear of God in Ecclesiastes has a special meaning.
Ecclesiastes begins with the words, “Vanity and vanity, all things are vanity” and ends with the words, “Vanity and vanity, all things are vanity.” But the vanity in Ecclesiastes is rather a confession of human limitations. No matter how hard people try to make history, it doesn't go the way they want. In the end, unless God allows it, no matter how hard we try, we cannot achieve all that God wants us to achieve. Therefore, the idea of reverence for God in Ecclesiastes is to recognize human limitations and confess that the sovereignty of all history lies with God.
So, to fear God is to acknowledge God's sovereignty in all things and to completely trust God as the Lord of history. This is what God wanted to see in Abraham. Abraham's offering of his son to show his faith is a heartbreaking event from a humanitarian point of view. Nevertheless, his spirit of being able to dedicate even a son obtained at the age of 100 means that he is thoroughly confessing the sovereignty of God.
As the Micah Prophet pondered, “What should I bring before God?” The answer he got is that the Lord does not want thousands of rams or tens of thousands of oil. All that God wants is to do justice, love kindness, and humbly walk with your God. said to do it. This understanding of Micah can also be understood as the most necessary sacrifice when we come to God is not a material sacrifice, but complete trust in God and an attitude to live according to God's principles.
Then we can take our question one step further here. It is about what countermeasures God took and what he required to offer Abraham the most precious thing. No matter how much we humans live centered on God, there are still things we need. How to reconcile what we humans desperately need with God's demands to give it to us. God presents us with a mysterious alternative to God in the second half of the story of Abraham.
When Abraham tied up his son Isaac and offered it to the altar, Abraham must have thought that this was the end. But the moment he struck Isaac, God stopped Abraham's hand. Because he confirmed the faith of Abraham. Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram hanging in the bushes. Abraham knew that God had provided the ram in place of his son, so he offered it as a burnt offering. Seeing God's providence, Abraham referred to this land as 'Jehovah-reh'. That is, God prepared it.
Here we see something very important: the sacrifice is prepared by God. God is not forcing us to sacrifice. God wants to see our faith, and He wants to see if we really fear God. All sacrifices are provided by God.
God did not force only human sacrifice for the salvation of mankind. The sacrifices offered for the salvation of mankind were prepared by God. That is, he prepared his only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, as a sacrifice and wanted to see our awe.
In a sense, I think so. God asked Abraham for a son. Abraham was willing to sacrifice his 100-year-old son because God had asked him to. But God saw Abraham's faith and returned his son Isaac. Instead, God sacrificed His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ.
This is God. This is God's providence. This is the mystery of Jehovah Jireh. It is a mystery that God prepares everything.
Abraham stands for all of us humans. God asks us to give what is most precious to us. But the other side of that demand is that he wants to see our faith. When we confess that even our son is in God's providence and offer it to us, God returns our son as it is, without hurting even a single hair of his head. Then he sacrificed his Son Jesus to give us salvation.
I find a law here. What we try to have and lose ends up losing, but what we are willing to give to God and are determined to lose is that God will surely find and return it. May this faith give us a new color. Amen.
prayer of repentance
God is merciful! I sincerely thank God for the grace of God who called us even though he knew our weakness, and who endured to this day even though he knew that we were ugly and dirty sinners.
We made a decision before the Lord and went out into the world, but we betrayed our faith, disobeyed the Word, fought with sinners, and came to the Lord again with scattered hearts.
He decided to exalt the name of the Lord, but instead he dishonored him. Even though he lived in the love of the Lord, he betrayed the Lord as if he were abandoned alone.
Lord! Please have mercy on us who came out with broken hearts.
Deliver us from all these sins.
Redeem us by the blood of the cross and renew us with your great power
I pray in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.