Fifth Sunday in Lent, 2009
Text: Genesis 22:1-2, 9-18;
John 8:46-59
The Rev. Jerry Kistler
St. Stephen’s Reformed
Episcopal Church
Montrose. Colorado
“Life in the Truth”
The wood is on Isaac’s back. The fire and the knife are in Abraham’s hand. But where is the lamb? If there is no lamb, how can there be a sacrifice, Isaac wonders. Little does he know that God has told his father that he is to be the sacrifice – he the miracle child, the son born of an old barren woman and a man as good as dead; he the promised seed through whom, as God has sworn, the world would be blessed. Messiah would come through Isaac. If Isaac dies then the whole world will be lost in sin. How could God ask Abraham to do it? It seems like such a contradiction. But God does not contradict himself. God is a God of perfect justice, and what God asks of Abraham is in keeping with His justice. If God himself does not provide a substitute, Isaac must die. Because even this miracle child, even this child of promise, is a sinner deserving of death. Physical descent from Abraham is not enough to spare him from the knife-blade of God’s judgment. For the wages of sin is death, and the wages must be paid. If there is no Lamb, Isaac must die, and all of us must die with him.
But Abraham trusts God to keep His promises to his descendants. So when Isaac asks his father about the missing lamb, Abraham answers, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” And God does. At the last instant the knife is stayed. The ram is caught in the thicket. Isaac is loosed, and the ram is bound to the altar in his place, and its blood is poured out instead of his.
People of God, this story of Abraham and Isaac is not ultimately about a ram caught in a thicket 4000 years ago. It’s the story of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, The Seed of Abraham, The Child of promise, coming to die in the place of all of Abraham’s children.
This is one of the most poignant foreshadowings of the sacrifice of Christ in the Old Testament. And through that substitutionary sacrifice of the ram, Abraham was able to catch a glimpse of the Day of the Lord Jesus. By faith Abraham was able to see Good Friday. He saw God substitute His only Son for his son Isaac. He saw his greater Son offer himself on that very mountain for the sins of the world, the just for the unjust. And in receiving Isaac figuratively back from the dead, he saw Easter morning, on which death was conquered for him, for Isaac, for all of us.
Two-thousand years later, Jesus was speaking to the descendants of Abraham, to those physical offspring of Abraham who were themselves spared from death in Isaac, to those who now believed that, just by being the children of Abraham, they were free from sin, free from spiritual bondage - to those descendants of Abraham who now rejected Him as the One who could loose them and give them life. He said to them, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” The implication is: if you are truly Abraham’s descendants, why don’t you rejoice to see My day? Instead you seek to kill Me.”
Jesus is an offense to those who do not acknowledge that they are born into the bondage of sin, to those who believe that, simply because they’re members of a so-called “Christian” nation, or because they were born into a good, Christian family, or even because they were baptized into the Church, they are some-how automatically “in good” with God, that there is therefore no need for them personally to repent of their sins and plead with God like the publican, “Have mercy upon me, a sinner.”
This is why the Jews wanted to kill Jesus. He had the audacity to suggest to them that they weren’t going to be automatically saved just by being Jews. Jesus’ message was just as politically incorrect then as it is today. He said that having Abraham as their father did not guarantee that they would inherit the blessing of their father, and that in fact their rejection of Him – the One whose day Abraham rejoiced to see – proved who their true father was. Jesus said, “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning.” Preach that message in a synagogue today and see if you do not provoke the same response. Preach that message among many so-called Christians, and see if you do not provoke that same response!
Jesus said the Devil is the father of lies, and when he lies, he speaks in accordance with his nature. And that means that if any of us accept the lie about ourselves, if we say things like, “Well, sure, I guess I’m a sinner, but nobody’s perfect. I mean, I’ve never killed anybody, or stolen anything really big, or done anything all that bad. I’ve never hurt anyone. God wouldn’t send a person like me to hell” – if we believe that lie, we show who our true father is.
The test of one’s spiritual paternity is not a blood test, nor is it a test that is graded on the curve of our relative righteousness – how good we compare to others. That’s what the Jews failed to see. They believed the Lie about themselves and so the couldn’t stand the Truth when He came from God to free them from their sins. So He tells them that they are of the devil, because only those who hear the Truth and hold to His Word are the children of Abraham. That means, if you and I look to the day of Jesus as Abraham did, if we see Him as the lamb God has provided to take our place under the knife-blade of His wrath, if we look to Him as the one whose head was caught in the thicket of a crown of thorns, who was bound to the altar of the cross, and whose blood was shed instead of ours, then we are the true children of Abraham. The children of Abraham are those who have the faith of their father. That’s what the Jews could not understand: that the greatest thing about Abraham was not his bloodline, but his faith.
You can imagine the Jews’ response. They respond by claiming that Jesus has a demon and that He is a Samaritan. You might say they were half right. Jesus is the Good Samaritan who comes to save us when we are lying half-dead in the ditch. But Jesus does not have a demon. He is the Son of God incarnate. He is the Great I AM. “Before Abraham was, I AM.” He said. This was a claim to deity. This was Jesus claim to be Yahweh God, the God who revealed Himself in the burning bush to Moses by that name “I AM”. He is the God who spoke to the patriarchs. The God who preached the Gospel to Abraham when he said that in his seed all the nations would be blessed. The God who sealed His promise with an oath by passing between the divided animal carcasses, and foreshadowed how He would keep His promise. So the greatest lie of all is that Jesus has a demon.
I think it’s hard for us to imagine that the Lie is Satan’s greatest weapon. Think about our Lord’s Passion and death. Lies, it was all lies. They lied at His trials. The Chief priests lied about what laws he had broken. The people lied about what they’d heard him say.
Jesus made the connection between lying and murder. He said to the Jews, What you wish to do is to carry out your father’s desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” The Jews were desperate to hold onto the lie about themselves: that they were not in any kind of spiritual bondage, that they were in good with God simply because of Abraham’s blood in their veins. So they had to kill the Truth to keep their lie.
Do you lie? Do you lie at work or at home? How easy it is just to sort of gloss over things with your wife or husband, your mom or dad. I mean, a lie – it’s so much easier than facing up to the truth sometimes.
Do you lie about Jesus to hold onto the lie about yourself? – that He was just a good man; that He was just a wise moral teacher, not the Son of God Incarnate come to save you from your sins. The Lie is that you’re not so bad a person as to truly, desperately need His forgiveness, or that your particular pet sin, compared to others’ sins, is really nothing you need to go to God in repentance over. St. John put it best: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”
You see, it is ultimately by holding onto to the lie about themselves and making God a liar that men and women are sealed in their bondage to sin and share in the fate of their father the devil. The book of Revelation tells us of the things that will be forever banned from heaven: “anything that defiles, or causes an abomination, or a lie.”
It is only as we hold fast to Jesus’ Word that we are kept from the lie, and ultimately from death. This is why Jesus says, “Most assuredly, I say to you, if anyone keeps My word he shall never see death.” Jesus’ word tells us the awful truth about ourselves, but it is that truth that can set us free. Jesus’ word cuts us deeply and lays our corrupt souls wide open so that He can pour in His southing balm of grace and forgiveness. Someone has said that the greatest need of Man is to know his greatest need. The word of Christ shows us what our greatest need is, but it also gives us what it shows; it gives us Christ. It’s not a word that gives us twelve-steps to heal our own souls; it’s the word that gives us the Healer himself. Jesus’ word gives us the Truth and the Life because it gives us Jesus. Jesus gives himself to you even now in His word read and preached, and in is word signed and sealed in the holy supper.
John writes that the Word came to His own, but His own did not receive him. But to as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become the children of God. So come now as dear children ready to receive what your Father has provided: the Lamb who was slain from the foundation of the world, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. +
This sermon is based on a sermon
by The Rev. Todd A. Peperkorn, pastor of