Written by: Gordon McPhee
Matthew 10: 40-42
SERMON TITLE: “Are You Listening?”
SERMON SCRIPTURE: Genesis 22:1-14 [MSG]
After all this, God tested Abraham. God said, “Abraham!”
“Yes?” answered Abraham. “I’m listening.”
He said, “Take your dear son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I’ll point out to you.”
Abraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey. He took two of his young servants and his son Isaac. He had split wood for the burnt offering. He set out for the place God had directed him. On the third day he looked up and saw the place in the distance. Abraham told his two young servants, “Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I are going over there to worship; then we’ll come back to you.”
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and gave it to Isaac his son to carry. He carried the flint and the knife. The two of them went off together.
Abraham said, “Son, God will see to it that there’s a sheep for the burnt offering.” And they kept on walking together.
They arrived at the place to which God had directed him. Abraham built an altar. He laid out the wood. Then he tied up Isaac and laid him on the wood. Abraham reached out and took the knife to kill his son.
“Don’t lay a hand on that boy! Don’t touch him! Now I know how fearlessly you fear God; you didn’t hesitate to place your son, your dear son, on the altar for me.”
Abraham looked up. He saw a ram caught by its horns in the thicket. Abraham took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son.
Abraham named that place God-Yireh (God-Sees-to-It). That’s where we get the saying, “On the mountain of God, he sees to it.”
Romans 6:17-18; 22
All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!
now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise!
INTRODUCTION:
Intuitively, I think we all know the difference between hearing and listening. My Google AI buddy makes the salient distinction that hearing is passive while listening is an active exercise that requires attention, effort, and skill. In our day-to-day lives, we have little control over what we hear, unless, of course, you’re the lucky user of a hearing aid. But listening, actively receiving, interpreting, and responding to spoken verbal and nonverbal messages, requires a conscious mental effort.
I have this standard interaction with Rolanda in which she rattles off a sentence to which I respond, “Ok, I’m listening now, what did you say?” The suggested cure is to begin by calling my name and getting my attention, then proceed with the desired communication. And I think this is a common enough complaint that it is understood.
In our Old Testament reading from Genesis this morning, it is evident that God understands this quirk about us as well. Or at the very least, the author who inscribed this story about Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son, Isaac, certainly did. There are two significant places in the story where God speaks to Abraham, and on both occasions, He begins by calling him by name. So obviously God knows how to initiate a conversation with his human creatures. The question we’re asking this morning is, “Are You Listening?”
SERMON:
I don’t know how familiar you are with this particular story in Abraham’s life. We’ve probably all heard it before, but it’s not one of those faith-in-God go-to stories we repeat very often to ourselves or others. And that is probably because the subject matter is just a little disturbing.
It suffers from the same problem as those Old Testament stories of God commanding Joshua to conquer the land of Canaan and, in many cases, kill all the men, women, children, and even the animals. We resolve this by relegating these things to the ancient past, long before Jesus. Still, even our New Testament has texts hard to reconcile with a modern gentle Jesus, as in His rebuff of the gentile woman who begged Jesus to heal her son.
In my courses at McGill, this passage has come up quite often. It is important for several reasons, not least of which is the disturbing content. The Hebrew scholars have a somewhat different interpretation of the significance of the events and the roles played by Abraham and Isaac—a departure from our Christian imagination of a foreshadowing of Jesus’ substitutionary sacrifice on the cross. Neither tradition deals well with the idea of a God so cruel and unfeeling as to demand that Abraham kill his only son, who was the promise of his past and the hope of his future.
One of the things that attracts scholars to this story is its simplicity. We might search for misinterpretations and nuances of the Hebrew language to soften the harsh edges, but frankly, they don’t exist. The Hebrew text that comprises this story is so simple and straightforward that this is usually the first text given to new students of the Hebrew language to interpret. Precisely because it is void of nuance and confusion. What you read is what you get.
But what I’d like us to consider today skirts around all the controversy. Or, at least, that’s my hope. The story is simple and clear, a square peg we won’t try to complicate so that we can fit it into somebody’s round hole. What we also must remember is that this is the written composition of a story that was passed down verbally through the generations.
Which doesn’t mean it isn’t true and accurate. However, it was crafted in its present form by an author. And not Billy the bored shepherd as something to do while watching the sheep. At this time, writing was confined to the wealthy and well-educated, so we can anticipate that everything written was deliberately and thoughtfully considered.
After all this,
God tested Abraham.
God said, “Abraham!” ..............................
“Yes?” answered Abraham. “I’m listening.”
So, scene one begins, “After all this.” “This” being essentially the whole many-chaptered story of Abraham leaving Ur, coming to Canaan, becoming very prosperous, and finally seeing the fulfilment of God’s promise to grant him a son. Along with the vignettes of Lot and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Egyptian slave girl Hagar and her son by Abraham, Ishmael. All this to establish that his faith story was grounded in God’s faithfulness, not in Abraham’s.
The author continues, “God tested Abraham.” So this is the clear subject of the story. The writer lets us, the reader, into the background of the story right off the bat. This isn’t an example of who God is or how He works in general. Abraham doesn’t know it, but this is simply a proving of the faith God has worked hard to engender through all His past faithful dealings with Abraham.
As I mentioned, unlike Rolanda, God begins by getting Abraham’s attention, calling his name. We don’t know the specific mechanics of that, in a dream, a vision, an audible voice or just something that got Abraham’s attention, like Moses and the burning bush. What the author does make clear is that God waited until Abraham acknowledged having heard Him and, even more important, until he expressed his readiness to listen. “Yes?” answered Abraham. “I’m listening.”
Just then an angel of God called to him out of Heaven
“Abraham! Abraham!”
“Yes, I’m listening.”
“Don’t lay a hand on that boy!
Now we’re going to skip over the next part, as I said, to avoid the scholarly theological wranglings of the controversies about what God has asked Abraham to do. I’m not really sure the author was very concerned about this either, as he presents it in a dry, matter-of-fact fashion. The next dialogue of note between God and Abraham is a carbon copy of the first, except for its urgency. The angel of God calls twice, “Abraham! Abraham!” And again, faithful Abraham acknowledges that he has heard and is listening. And I’m sure he was thankful that he was.
If this were a bit of typical English literature, we’d be looking at these last sentences for the real crux and conclusion of the story. We grasp at the discovery of the ram caught in the thicket as the author’s true point and overlay a theology of Jesus as the substitutionary sacrifice, which, if you think of it, could not possibly have been in the scribe’s mind or intention at all. An illusion by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, perhaps, I won’t argue or deny such a belief, but it’s definitely not this writer’s purpose.
The story concludes almost anticlimactically with Abraham naming the place on the mountain God-Yireh (God-Sees-to-It). It makes reference to an obscure saying we’ve never encountered before, and we don’t again: “On the mountain of God, he sees to it.” However, what this does, at least for the attentive, knowledgeable reader, is point them back to Abraham’s words in the very middle of the story.
Prologue: God said, “Abraham!”;
Yes?”...“I’m listening.”
Crux: Isaac said to Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son.”
Epilogue: angel of God called, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Yes, I’m listening.”
It helps at this point, as mentioned previously, to remember we’re not reading a grand English epic. In ancient literature, even into the medieval times, it was most common to place the all-important crux of your story or argument in the very middle of your work, surrounded by a prologue and an epilogue that pointed to the central statement. And this author doesn’t disappoint.
Isaac said to Abraham his father, “Father?”
“Yes, my son.”
“We have flint and wood, but where’s the sheep for the burnt offering?”
Abraham said, “Son, God will see to it that there’s a sheep for the burnt offering.”
And they kept on walking together.
We have one more dialogue in the story, in the very center of the story, between Abraham and Isaac, that echoes the dialogue between God and Abraham. Isaac begins by, like God, getting Abraham’s attention. “Father?” he asks, and Abraham again assents his readiness to hear and to listen, “Yes, my son.”
Isaac, although from a different perspective, repeats God’s instructions to Abraham. Everything but the sacrifice is ready. And then Abraham says the all-important words at the physical, grammatical, and literary heart of the story. The words pointed to by the entire structure of the story in the echoed dialogues and in the concluding reference to God-Yireh. “Son, God will see to it that there’s a sheep for the burnt offering.”
If this story were about that moment when Abraham hovered over his son with the knife raised, it would have occurred in the middle of the story, and there would have been a verbal cue at the end to draw our attention to the moment of significance. But there isn’t. The author believes, and is trying to tell us, that the moment of testing and Abraham’s passing the test occurred when he confessed his faith that “God will see to it”, even to providing the sheep for His own offering.
After 10 chapters of stories documenting God’s work establishing a foundation of trust in Abraham by showing Himself entirely faithful and dependable, for the first time, Abraham doesn’t respond by asking how, or if, or requesting a sign. He says, “Yes, I’m listening.” And please note, this is the only two times in the whole history of Abraham that these words are used. Abraham, everywhere else God spoke to him, was asking questions or making demands, not listening.
Abraham was listening because he finally understood God-yireh, that God sees to it. God has been seeing to everything in his life all the days of his life, since before he knew who God was back in Ur of the Chaldees. Time and time again, he frustrated God, straying off the path, questioning whether God was able, questioning the wisdom, justice, or efficacy of His actions and decisions. But finally, now, he understands that God has seen to it all, provided for it all and will even provide the sheep for the sacrifice. He’s finally listening because he’s seen and acknowledged that God is faithful, able, and will see to it.
Romans 6:17-18; 22
All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in his freedom!
now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise!
Paul, in Romans 6, says this to us, “All your lives you’ve let sin tell you what to do. But thank God you’ve started listening to a new master, one whose commands set you free to live openly in His freedom!” Listening isn’t easy. It is, first of all, a choice. It took Abraham almost a hundred years of experiencing the faithfulness of God to make up his mind to listen. Don’t be discouraged, God is faithful, He’ll see to it.
When faced with life’s challenges and death’s, we are inclined, like Abraham, to ask questions, seek answers, doubt the path we’ve chosen and sometimes act impetuously as a result. It’s Ok. God is faithful. And, as Abraham finally understood, God is both able and willing to see to it. I think we can take from this story, and the entire life story of Abraham, a refreshed understanding of what modern evangelicalism calls the assurance of salvation.
As encouraging as it is to know that our salvation is ensured by the seal of the Holy Spirit on our hearts (Eph 1:13), it still leaves this feeling of uncertainty about whether we have as yet arrived. Have we, like Abraham, arrived and are listening to God? Are we still in those first 10 chapters of doubt, and truly, will we get there? God-Yireh.
A corollary to our question this morning, that Paul also brings up, is “Who are you listening to?” But this isn’t a question he entertains; in fact, he dismisses it. You have started listening to a new master whose commands set you free. God saw to this, too, which is why Paul calls it “a surprise!” It’s not a reward for your sterling effort and commendable choices. You, like Abraham, are listening, because God saw to it. Thank you, God-Yireh! Are you listening?
Amen