When Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the promises made to David about a son, and made to Israel about a king, had not been forgotten. There had been no real kingdom for hundreds of years. There had been great heroes, but no true kings. David’s line had not been raised up. But some people still held to the promise. How could God deny himself? He would keep his word. A king would come. And when they looked at Jesus, they recognized that king.
Do you remember how people called Jesus the “son of David”? Poor Bartimaeus, sitting on the side of the road leading out of Jericho, shouting again and again, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” A few days later, on the way into Jerusalem for Passover, throngs of Galileans hailed him again as “the Son of David,” the “king of Israel.” Again, I ask, why Jesus?
Remember the promise made to his mother, even before his birth: “The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.” Remember that he was born in, of all places, Bethlehem, the town of David. The prophet had hundreds of years earlier said, “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel.”
For centuries Israel had waited for a king, the king, the son of David. Then one day in Galilee a charismatic young man – about David’s age when he assumed the throne – a man born in David’s hometown, whose leadership ability was off the charts, whose spiritual life was inspirational, began traveling through the countryside. And the first words he spoke were: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Now we begin to see why, on the day when Jesus entered Jerusalem, the people were shouting to the Son of David, the one coming in the name of the Lord! Jesus borrowed a young donkey to ride into the city, and so reminded everyone of the treasured words of the prophet Zechariah: “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” On that day it seemed as if all the promises of God were going to be fulfilled: after all these years, David’s greater son had finally arrived.
And five days later he was dead. God’s promises, once again, seemed like empty words. Here, in viewing what for Jesus’ followers was the greatest of disappointments, is a wide-angle theme to remember: God’s ways are not our ways, and his time is not our time. We’ve seen it again and again. God promised Abraham a child, but Abraham and his wife could not and did not conceive for twenty-four years. He promised his people a land of their own, but it took them forty years to enter it. He promised David a kingdom in perpetuity, but the kingdom cracked within two generations, and was broken to bits within a couple of hundred years. He promised Israel the return of the king, but just when they thought he had arrived, he was executed.
God hardly ever does things the way we think he should. Why send the long-awaited king to a cross? Why inaugurate the kingdom by having the King crucified? Here is where we need a wide-angle lens in looking at the Bible. Yes, he is King, but he is also the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. He is the Manna of our souls. He is the Captain of salvation. He is the Son of David, but he is also the Son of God. There are depths to him that even a wide-angle lens cannot take in because God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him.
If some of God’s people stopped trusting his promises when they saw their king executed, they stopped trusting three days too soon. The resurrection vindicated their trust in God. And if you and I stop trusting when we see our hopes withering and our prayers falling to the ground, we stop trusting too soon. God will keep his word. As Solomon son of David once put it, “Not one word has failed of all the good promises [God] gave.”
There was never anyone like King David. For a few years, God’s kingdom thrived through God’s king, in keeping with God’s word. David did what no one before him had ever managed to do: he united all the tribes of Israel. Under him, the house of Israel became the kingdom of Israel. His leadership ability was off the charts. His military prowess was legendary. His spiritual life was inspirational.
He was God’s man, and part of the line through which God’s Son would come. After David had assumed the throne, God sent a message to him through the prophet Nathan. It is one of the key passages in the entire Old Testament: 2 Samuel 7. “The LORD declares to you that the LORD himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. . .Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.”
That promise was recorded and published, and it left an indelible impression on the minds of the house of Israel. And I say “the house of Israel” again because it was only a few hundred years after David that the “kingdom of Israel” was a kingdom no more. The kingdom was shattered from within, and then crushed from without. David’s descendants were sent into exile. The royal line vanished in a faraway land.
It was a horrible time in the history of Israel. The promise that David’s throne would be established forever had not been forgotten, but the throne had been destroyed, and the kingdom was dust in the wind. They had lost the promised land and the promised king in one blow. And where was God while all this was happening? That’s what the psalmist wanted to know.
In Psalm 89, Ethan the Ezraite recalls the story of how God found David and anointed him king. He then repeats God’s covenant promise to David: “I will also appoint him my firstborn, the most exalted of the kings of the earth. I will maintain my love to him forever, and my covenant with him will never fail. I will establish his line forever, his throne as long as the heavens endure.” For emphasis, God’s promise of faithfulness is then restated: “I will not violate my covenant or alter what my lips have uttered. Once for all, I have sworn by my holiness – and I will not lie to David – that his line will continue forever and his throne endure before me like the sun; it will be established forever like the moon, the faithful witness in the sky.”
But David’s line went into exile and Israel’s kingdom no longer existed. What had happened to God’s promise? What good was God’s word, if he didn’t stand behind it? And it certainly didn’t seem to the Israelite people that he was standing behind it. So, the Psalmist goes on in accusatory tones: “You have renounced the covenant with your servant and have defiled his crown in the dust. You have broken through all his walls and reduced his strongholds to ruins. You have put an end to his splendor and cast his throne to the ground.”
If God had gone back on his word, if he was unreliable, then there really was no hope. Those were dark days for Israel. The majority of people had given up on God and turned elsewhere for relief. But a few voices kept calling out: “Don’t forget God’s promises. God will keep his word. The king will return.”
One of those voices belonged to the prophet Isaiah. He wrote: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. . . For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the LORD Almighty will accomplish this.”
When we hear those verses, we think of Christmas. When Israel heard those verses, they thought of God’s promise to David. Don’t give up on God. Don’t forget his promise. He will make his word good.
Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Do everything without grumbling or arguing, so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation, in which you shine like stars in the universe as you hold out the word of life… (Philippians 2:12-16a)
Have you been grumbling about the pandemic? First, it was the toilet paper shortage, then the closures, then the mask mandates, then the lifting of mask mandates, then the vaccine – and always the people who thought differently than you. If you have been grumbling about the pandemic, may I suggest that you’ve got infected by a second pandemic, even more viral than the first and just as catastrophic: the pandemic of grumbling.
We are going through a grumbling surge right now. Grumbling is viral. And it is highly contagious, which means you’d better be careful you are hanging with! Grumbling has the potential to ruin everything.
Because this is serious, I am in favor of compulsory mask-wearing—not for COVID but for people who can’t stop grumbling. In fact, quarantine is probably in order – even if the complainer … is me.
Grumbling is talking to yourself or to anyone who happens to be near about the wrongs you have suffered, the wrongs you must endure, and the injustice that is your lot. Your mind rehearses these things, almost as if it was programmed to do so. It’s not that you intend to grumble; it’s just that these things keep irritating your mind until they come out of your mouth, like a mental sneeze.
When we complain about one bad thing in our lives, we are likely to infect the good things in our lives too. But it’s not so much the things that get infected; it is us. We carry the infection with us. Wherever we go, wherever our minds go, the infection goes with us. Eventually, it contaminates everything. Nothing retains its luster.
It doesn’t stop with you, either. It spreads to the people around you. It infects them, contaminates their pleasures and joys. It leaves families, workplaces, and even churches blighted.
I’ve known families in which a grumbling spirit has been passed down from one generation to another. I’d rather my parents passed on baldness and heart disease (which they did). Baldness and heart disease cannot rob me of joy, but grumbling can and does. I can serve Christ well even when I become the latest family member with cancer, but I cannot serve him well when I grumble.
Grumbling and arguing can ruin a marriage that is otherwise strong. It can ruin a house, though you once thought it was a palace. It can ruin your car, though it is still dependable. It can ruin your paycheck. Grumbling and arguing can ruin anything.
And yet everyone – or nearly everyone – does it. There is an attraction to it, an appeal. Grumbling seems to relieve pressure, but it is the same kind of relief we get when we scratch the poison ivy rash on our leg. It feels good for a moment, then makes the itch even worse.
We can take up other people’s grievances, join their side, feel their anger, and hate their enemy (who has become our enemy). We can even feel righteous because of it. Feeling righteous – especially more righteous than someone else – is highly addictive.
Everyone wants to complain, but have you noticed that hardly anyone wants to be around a complainer? We can’t wait for them to stop complaining so we can start.
Everyone is vulnerable to this infection, but there are steps we can tale that will make us less susceptible. To understand those steps, we need some context. Earlier in this chapter, Paul urged the Philippians church members to look to the interests of others and not just their own. Those who do have a high degree of protection from grumbling and arguing. He speaks in verse 4 of – literal translation – “scoping out the interests of others.” If there is a vaccine against grumbling, this is it. Grumblers are always focused – sometimes continually focused – on their own interests.
Secondly, people who begin a regimen of mind transformation develop long-term immunity to grumbling and arguing. Verse 5 says, “Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus,” or literally, “Think this” – an imperative mood verb – “among yourselves which also [was] in Christ Jesus.” If we don’t change our thinking, we’ll never be able to stop complaining – even if we want to. It is in our thinking – our mindset – that the grumbling virus lodges. We need, to quote Ephesians 4:23, to “be renewed in the spirit of [our] minds.”
No shot from a hypodermic needle will renew your thinking. For that, you need an injection of Scripture – not just a couple of times, with a Sunday sermon booster – but a regular regimen of biblical truth, administered under the oversight of God’s Holy Spirit. If you don’t know how to get that, set up a time to talk to me and I can help you.
One more thing about context: This “scoping out the interests of others,” and the attendant renewal of the mind happen within the life of the church. It happens when people are together in community. Chapter two (especially the first four verses) makes this clear. Renewal of the mind doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens as we live side by side, help each other, pray for each other, get hurt by each other, and forgive each other. As John Wesley put it: “The Bible knows nothing of solitary religion.”
If we try to do everything without grumbling and arguing, we will need each other’s help. I invite your help. This is a command I have broken more times than I can count. But we will have other help – and better – than what our church family can give. We will have God’s help too. Look at verse 13: “…it is God who works in you” – you here is plural and might refer to the church: it is God who works in your church family – “to will and to act according to his good purpose.”
God promises his help. There is nothing quite like this in the sacred texts of the world. Other gods command and even pity, but they do not help humans both to will and to do. But the God and Father of our Lord Jesus does. And not from a distance; he takes up residence in us by his Spirit. He doesn’t set a fire beneath us (the fires of hell) or pull the strings above us (as if we were puppets). He neither causes nor coerces. He enables – enables us to choose the right thing and enables us to do the right thing. But we must learn to trust him.
We are talking about doing everything without grumbling and arguing. This is not a matter of human willpower – mind over matter – but of God’s faithfulness – God over evil. We’ll not succeed at this because we have a strong mind, but because we have a trusting heart.
And we must succeed at this. There is a great deal riding on it. Listen to what St. Paul, who penned this letter, wrote to the Corinthian church: “…do not grumble, as some of them” [he’s talking about Jews in Moses’s time] “did—and were killed by the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come.” (1 Cor. 10:10-11.)
The command to do everything without grumbling and arguing is not just important because of what might happen to us, but also because of what might not happen through us. If we are to fulfill our calling in the world, it is critical for us to understand this. And to understand this, we need to understand a truth about God’s people that sometimes has gotten blurred.
If someone were to ask you to describe God’s people – what they are like, what the church is like or, at least, what it is supposed to be like – how would you answer? You might say, “They are gracious. They are honest. They are loving. They are generous.” Those are good answers, every one. God’s people are – or, at least, are supposed to be – like this. Another way of putting it is to say, “God’s people are holy,” or even “God’s people are different.” According to one famous scholar, that is what it means to say someone is holy: he or she is different.
God’s people are different. Or they are supposed to be. They have different values and, because they have different values, they have different morals. And because they have different morals, they act differently. If they are not acting differently, they are not serving their purpose. In fact, they are subverting it.
Here we have one way – there are many others but this one is vitally important right now – that God’s people are to be different from everyone else: they don’t complain and argue. People have always complained and argued, and Christians have always been instructed to do neither. This is one of the places where we are to be different.
There are others. We don’t have sex outside of marriage – at least, we are not supposed to; we are to be different. We don’t spend our money only on ourselves – at least, we are not supposed to; we are to be different. We don’t pay people back for the wrongs they have done us – at least, we are not supposed to; we forgive; we are supposed to be different. We don’t go around putting people down; we “do not judge,” – or, at least, we are not supposed to. We are supposed to be different.
At this moment in world history – in this era of unparalleled complaining and arguing – one of the primary ways God’s people will stand out is by abstaining from complaints and refusing to argue. Some contemporary Christians teachers think we need to lodge our complaints as loudly as possible and do whatever it takes to win the cultural argument—as if that’s our job. But St. Paul says it is our job not to complain. It is our job not to argue. We are to be different. That’s in our job description. The success of our calling is riding on it.
Just think how different we would be if we neither complained nor argued. Not on Facebook, not on social media, not in person. If you went through a string of Job-like catastrophes without complaining, how would that impact the people around you? We are to be different. If we lose our jobs, lose our homes, and lose our reputations, and yet don’t complain, we will be different – and, in our role as Jesus’s people, different is good.
But there is more to it than that. If you lose your job, your spouse, your health and yet never complain, I will say you are a fine person. You are extraordinary. You are one in a million. But it will never enter my mind that I might be like you.
But if neither you nor I complain when we are struggling through difficulties; if you and I and Michael, and Jenny, Mark, Paula, Scott, Chris, Tanya, Emily – our entire group – doesn’t complain or argue, people will believe that such a life is possible, that there is a way to it, and that we know what it is. And if our entire church doesn’t complain or argue, even when things are scary, unfair, and tough, people will believe that Jesus Christ is Lord.
Let’s look more closely at verse 14. The apostle says, “Do everything without grumbling or arguing…” Everything? Dishes, driving, golfing, board meetings, conversations about the government, the pandemic, the weather – everything? If that doesn’t even sound possible to you, you may be addict. It’s alright to admit it. “Hi, my name is Shayne, and I am a complainaholic.”
But it is possible to stop grumbling and arguing for those who have come over to God’s side, trusted his Son, and received his Spirit. Remember, “it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” It is not mind over matter but God over evil.
Verse 15 tells us why this is important – why we as Jesus’s people simply cannot be like everyone else: “so that you may become blameless and pure, children of God without fault in a crooked and depraved generation…” God wants us to stand out. He wants us to be different. His plan for the world depends on us “shining like stars in the universe.” Paul took that last phrase from the 12th chapter, third verse of the prophet Daniel, where Daniel was talking about people who lead many to righteousness. Both Daniel and Paul are thinking about God’s plan to bring people to himself. That is not primarily done by brilliant apologetic arguments or inspiring sermons. It is done by people who are different, like those who don’t complain. They stand out like a sore thumb or, rather, like a bright star against the dark sky.
To make that clear, Paul continues: “as you hold out the word of life.” Not the word of COVID or the word of politics, or even the word of advice. We hold out the word of life. The word of life is the announcement of the good news and the life it makes possible. It is a new life, not the same old life that never satisfies. It is an eternal life, not a fleeting one – indestructible is how the author of Hebrews described it. It is a free life, not one intertwined with addictions. It is a life of purpose. A life of love. A life we love. And it is possible because God is at work in us both to will and to act according to his good purpose.
There is a negative and a positive here. The negative – what we don’t do – is complain and argue. The positive – what we do – is hold out the word of life. That combination – not doing the one while doing the other – produces results in our lives, family, and community. Any other combination – doing neither, doing both, or worse, getting it exactly backwards and doing what we shouldn’t and not doing what we should – makes our lives unhappy and our efforts to bring other people over to Christ’s side ineffective.
You can’t complain and argue with someone one moment and tell them about Jesus the next and expect them to believe you. You might as well tell them that you’ve gone bankrupt five times and then recommend your financial advisor. Our work as God’s people includes recruiting family, friends, co-workers, and acquaintances for Jesus’s side. But for us to be successful at that, we cannot complain and argue. We must be different.
And for that, we need training in the way of Jesus. That training continues throughout life. Jesus’s people are life-long learners. They are always involved in continuing education. But there are also steps we can take now.
I’ve already referred to a couple of them. We can start scoping out the interests of others. One way to do that is to pay attention to the prayer requests we hear on Sunday. We can join the prayer chain during the week. We can be on the lookout for ways to help. Just getting our minds off ourselves and onto the needs of others will help us stop grumbling and arguing.
Another thing we can do is pray for and seek the renewing of our minds so that we start thinking like Jesus. The Bible is a great help in this. The Spirit of God uses the word of God to transform the minds of the people of God. Start reading the Bible regularly. Join a Bible study or just get together with someone each week to talk about the sermon. Spend at least as much time reading or talking about the Bible as you spend on social and news media. Those media also transform minds, not to think the way Jesus does but the way some powerful person – perhaps even an adversary of Jesus – wants you to think.
Finally, don’t underestimate how difficult it will be to do everything without grumbling or arguing. You’ll never succeed unless you make a choice to do so. You can choose to do this or not, but you’re not going to drift into it by chance. To help you make that choice, we have set up a page on our website (www.lockwoodchurch.org) where you can publicly affirm your intention to do all things without grumbling or arguing this week. One week. It is only a start, but you’ll never get there if you don’t start.
I encourage you to tell someone (a spouse, a friend, someone you work with – or all three) that you’ve made a commitment not to complain or argue for the entire week and enlist their help. Ask them to call you out if you should start grumbling or arguing.
This is important. This is our opportunity. Let’s take it to the glory of God.
I went from early elementary school through high school with a boy named David. He was sometimes my friend – we started a club together in late elementary school – and he was sometimes my enemy – the club lasted one day. David enjoyed making fun of me, for he was a master of repartee and I enjoyed proving my physical superiority over him, for I was twice his size.
David was a smart, funny, often irritating kid. By the time we got to high school, he was also an ambitious one. In our senior year, he went around soliciting students to vote him “most likely to succeed.”
I believe he did succeed. The last time I saw him, I was working my way through college at the Ford Motor Company, earning a hitherto unimaginable paycheck of nearly $250 a week. One day, I met David at the tennis courts and asked him what he was doing. He was pursuing a career in dentistry, while working weekends as a server at the downtown Hyatt. I was shocked to learn that he made as much in tips over a weekend as I made at Ford working six days a week. Later, I heard that he had opened a chain of offices in Florida.
I always knew that David was Catholic, though he never mentioned going to mass, and I don’t think he did very often. In our earlier years, I didn’t go to church at all, but by high school that had changed. I had been converted and was trying, in a stumbling manner, to live consistently with what I had come to believe.
One day in high school, David showed me a “nickle bag” of weed he had just purchased. I said something like, “Man, you’ve got to quit doing this stuff.” David, who knew about my faith, countered: “Look, when I get old – like 70 – I’ll get religion. Until then, I am going to have some fun.”
To him it made perfect sense. Religion was all about getting into heaven when you die, but religion also imposed constraints on you while you lived. So, why not wait until you were about to die to get religion? For David, that meant waiting until one was ancient, say 70, and already had one foot in the grave. That was the time to get religion.
I didn’t have a comeback. To tell the truth, his reasoning seemed sound. The only problem I could see with it was the risk it entailed. A person might die before he was ancient, before he was 70, and then it would be too late.
I wish I had known then what I know now. I had accepted the premise that religion was all about getting into heaven—how could I not? Even the religious people I knew talked as if that were true. At the time, my familiarity with the Bible was slight and I knew nothing of the great theological traditions within Christianity.
Had I been better informed, I would have strongly disagreed with the idea that religion was only or even mostly about the afterlife. The Bible, which contains approximately three-quarters of a million words, uses very few of them in discussing the afterlife—a fact that would, no doubt, have surprised David.
It’s true that the Bible speaks of “the life of the age to come” and “the life that is life indeed,” but it does not use these terms to refer exclusively to existence in heaven. From the Bible’s perspective, the inception of the “life of the age to come” begins now and transforms a person here. The reception of this life brings purpose, peace, and joy.
My friend David wanted to wait to “get religion” because he feared missing out on the fun. Over the years, I have met many people like David, and it doesn’t seem to me that any of them ever caught up with the fun they were pursuing. They ignored religion because it seemed to have nothing to do with life on earth, but it turns out to have been the place where the things they were seeking – purpose, peace, and joy – are found.
In Genesis 22:6 we find one of the great lessons of the story of Abraham and Isaac. It is a lesson St. Paul and St. James both recall. It lies at the foundation of the Protestant Reformation and, more importantly, at the heart of the Scriptures: “Abram believed the LORD, and the LORD credited it to him as righteousness.” God will not count a person righteous because they are religious or engaged in doing good works. God considers righteous those who believe in him, who put their trust in him through Christ. This was St. Pauls’ great theme.
But there is another side to that coin (which is St. James great theme), and it is found in verse 16-17: “Because you have done this. . . I will surely bless you.” Righteousness comes through faith; blessing comes through obedience. Abraham’s life was characterized by both. The fact is, the two are inseparable. Abraham’s faith produced obedience, and obedience strengthened his faith, and both were rooted in the promises of God. It would be good to pause and read Hebrews 11:17-19. You will see that faith and reason are not opposed; in fact, Abraham learned how to do faith reasoning, based on God’s promises. It is a discipline he invented. And if we are going to pass our tests, we will have to become proficient at faith-reasoning ourselves.
Now we need to zoom out, set our lens to wide angle. Abraham was told to sacrifice his only son. They went, on God’s specific instructions, to the land of Moriah. They looked up, verse 4, and saw the place (the place, where it was all destined to happen) in the distance. Isaac (verse 6) carried the wood on which he would be sacrificed.
Do you know where Mount Moriah was? It is mentioned only one other time in the Bible, in 2 Chronicles chapter 3. Many scholars believe that mount Moriah was where Solomon built the great temple. It was the place where – for hundreds of years – sacrifices were made for the forgiveness of sins; where the Passover lamb was slain; where the high priest entered the holiest place each year to make atonement for the people of God. But the temple that Solomon built was utterly destroyed during the Babylonian invasion. And when Zerubbabel built the second temple, in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, it is quite possible that it was built a little distance away from Moriah. We know that Herod’s temple – construction started in 19 B.C. – was built in the heart of Jerusalem.
When Isaac was spared, Abraham offered the ram in his place. The law of substitution is woven deep into the fabric of creation. Abraham had promised his son, “God himself will provide a lamb,” but God had not provided a lamb – not this time. He provided a ram. The promise of a lamb would go unfulfilled for the better part of two thousand years, then one day John the Baptist pointed to Jesus and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world!”
Abraham’s promise waited until a greater Isaac – one who will one day set all Creation joyfully laughing – carried the wood on which he would be sacrificed through the streets of Jerusalem. Perhaps he, like Isaac, looked up and saw the place rising in the distance. That place was called Golgotha by the Jews, Calvary by the Romans and, I think, Moriah by Abraham’s contemporaries. Abraham’s prophecy was at last fulfilled. God has provided the Lamb.
As Abraham came in sight of Mount Moriah, the place where Abraham was to sacrifice his son, Isaac spoke up: “Father?”
“Yes, my son?”
“The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
What was Abraham to say? What would you have said, if you were him? Notice how he answered – these next words are prophetic. “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.”
You know the story. Abraham binds his son – something that he could not have done had Isaac not been willing. Isaac was too strong and Abraham too old to have done it had Isaac resisted. Then Abraham laid him on the pyre and raised the terrible blade and was about to bring it down when…
Very rarely in the Bible does God repeat a person’s name. But when Abraham was about to sacrifice his own son Isaac, God called out to him, “Abraham! Abraham! Do not lay a hand on the boy … now I know that you fear God…”
Abraham untied his boy and, as he was doing so, he heard a noise in a nearby thicket. There was a ram there, caught by its horns, a ready sacrifice provided by the Lord. So, verse 14, “Abraham called the place, ‘The Lord will provide’” or in Hebrew, Yahweh Jireh. “And to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.’”
It is on the mountain of the Lord, the place where we come to God in obedience, that our needs are provided. It is not in the valley of self-indulgence. It is not in the place of personal ambition. It is where we sacrifice whatever keeps us from loving God most – the mountain of the Lord – that we will find him to be Jehovah Jireh, the LORD our Provider. In fact, many people who complain that God didn’t come through for them have never even begun the journey to the mountain of the Lord, which is begun, as we saw earlier, by faith-reasoning, by trusting the LORD to provide.
In Genesis 22, we see God doing something in Abraham’s life that Abraham needs, and that even angels, rulers and authorities may be watching. He said to him, verse 1, “Abraham!”, and Abraham answered as a slave answers his master: “Here I am.”
I like that. Abraham lived where I want to live—in the nexus between “Here I am” and “There you are!” Many people want to see God at work. Some are attracted to the excitement, some want to lay doubts to rest, but they very much want to say to God, “There you are!” However, those who can honestly and consistently say to God in delight, “There you are” are those who honestly and consistently say to God in submission, “Here I am!”
Verse 2: “Take your son…” “Uh, Lord, I have two sons. You remember Ishmael? He is living with his mom down in Paran right now. And Isaac.”
“Your only son…”
“My only son?”
“Isaac…”
“Oh, Isaac! My Laughter.”
“…whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah.”
“Hey, that’s not a bad idea. A trip with Isaac – a sort of father and son thing. Do a little hunting – I’ve heard the wild goat hunting up there is really good. We’ve never really done that kind of thing together. It will be great!”
“Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”
How could Abraham believe what he heard? Surely, he must have known that God would not require human sacrifice. If I awoke to a vision in the middle of the night, and in the vision God said to me, “Take your son, whom you love, and sacrifice him to me,” I would figure that I shouldn’t have put the banana peppers on my pizza that evening. I wouldn’t think for a moment that God was really asking me to kill my own son. Shouldn’t Abraham have known that as well?
The answer is, “no”. Abraham did not have a Bible. He did not have the prophets. He did not have 2,000 years of church teaching on Scripture. Moses had not yet given the law that forbade human sacrifice. Abraham came from a land where child sacrifice was not unknown. He had come to a land where child sacrifice was sometimes practiced. To Abraham, the call to sacrifice what was dearest in order to prove one’s allegiance to his god made sense. Abraham would not have had moral qualms about sacrificing his son.
What would have been utterly incomprehensible to him was the call to sacrifice the Child of Promise, the child of the covenant! God had made to him irrevocable promises, promises about heirs and about land, and for those promises to be kept, Isaac must reach adulthood and must have children himself. If he were to sacrifice Isaac, the line would be cut and the covenental promises broken. “The single plan-of-God-through-Israel-for-the-world” depended on Isaac, his Laughter. It looked as if Abraham’s laughter would be silenced.
If ever there was a time to hesitate, it was now. And yet, early the next morning Abraham set about obeying God’s command. Abraham understood the necessity of prompt obedience in the life of faith. Delay would have been devastating. So early next morning (v. 3) he saddled his donkey, took Isaac and two servants, cut the wood and set out. Now Moriah was located near what would later be called Jerusalem, about 45 miles north, northeast as the crow flies.
Now comes the question: Why Moriah? Why a three-day walk? Why not send him to Hebron, which was much closer?” Abraham, as far as we can tell, did not ask. He just obeyed.
Notice verse 5. When they were within sight of the mountain where the sacrifice was to take place, Abraham 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.” We will come back. Was Abraham delusional? He was on his way to sacrifice his son, and yet he says, “we will come back.” But this was no delusion. As the author of Hebrews tells us, Abraham reasoned that God would being Isaac back to life, if that’s what it took. The “single plan-of-God-through-Israel-for-the-world” could not be terminated; God would fulfill his promises, Abraham was certain of it! Abraham was only able to obey in such circumstances because he knew something, something we also must learn: how to reason by faith!
(Excerpt) Without real, joyful, from-the-heart worship, we will not live the beautiful life God intends. A Christian who doesn’t worship is like a computer that doesn’t compute, a boat that doesn’t float, a phone that doesn’t make calls. Of course, it is possible to repurpose the computer as a doorstop, the boat as a flowerpot, and the phone as a coaster, but they were made for something more—and so were we.
We cannot thrive when we do not worship God, but when we do, other things start falling into place. Decisions we once agonized over almost make themselves. Trials become easier to endure with faith. Relationships are set in order. We are nearer, or more continually near, to joy than ever before. But when we are not worshiping God, decisions paralyze us, trials defeat us, relationships get crazy, and discouragement dogs our every step.
It is okay to disagree with what someone says. It is not okay to disregard what they say because we attribute to them motives that we cannot possibly know. Yet this happens constantly. It has become an American pastime.
I recently wrote a column about how America’s understanding of Evangelicals is changing. Many Americans now take for granted that the term “Evangelical” is synonymous with “political conservative.” I am deeply concerned about this misunderstanding, especially when it occurs among Evangelicals themselves.
In response to that column, I received a highly critical letter. It stated: “It is telling that you complain that there are too many Muslims, Catholics (read: Hispanics), and Hindus who claim to be Evangelical. This is easy to translate. These nasty brown people are contaminating your lily-white movement.”
The letter continued: “It is also telling that, in an article about the ills of Evangelicalism, you make no mention of Donald Trump. You can no more criticize your leader than a Nazi could criticize his Führer …You are White Supremacists. You were participants in, or supporters of, the January 6 Insurrection. You have MAGA gear and white hooded sheets in your closet, or you support those who do.”
I conjecture that the anonymous author of this letter is an educated male who has reached middle-age or beyond. I base this both on internal components like vocabulary and grammar and upon years of experience in receiving signed correspondence from people who did share information about themselves.
However, I know I might be mistaken; the author could be a 20-year-old woman. The possibility of being wrong is not, however, something that seems to have occurred to the letter writer, who thinks he knows me because he presumes to know Evangelicals.
How does he know Evangelicals? Does he have coffee with them? Do they share meals? Do they do life together? Or is his knowledge derived entirely from media stereotypes? Would he be surprised to know that my friends include those “nasty brown people” he wrote about or that one of my closest life-long friends is espresso-colored?
When he calls Evangelicalism a “lily-white movement,” he is clearly being provincial. Far from being lily-white, nine of the ten countries with the largest Evangelical populations are in the Global South. The Evangelical Church is growing most rapidly in Africa. Within 30 years, if trends continue, half of the world’s Evangelicals will be Africans.
Of course, the anonymous writer could not know that I once pastored a white church in a racially mixed area of the city where we lived. After my initial interview with the board, I interviewed them. One of the questions I asked was: “If I am successful in racially integrating this church, will you be pleased?” I spent seven years, as I have described elsewhere, trying to accomplish that goal.
The letter author writes, “You can no more criticize your leader than a Nazi could criticize his Führer.” He obviously did not read the columns I wrote in 2016 and again in 2020, explaining why I would not vote for Donald Trump. Neither did he read the columns in which I called for a compassionate immigration policy or warned against the dangers of idolatrous nationalism. After such articles, I received letters similar in tone to his, but they came from the opposite end of the political spectrum.
Still, this author claims to know what is in my closet. He assumes he knows all about Evangelicals. Yet, he seems uninformed about the many Evangelicals who have stood against the very views he believes they espouse.
This is not meant to be a self-defense nor an attack on the letter writer. It is a plea to listen to what other people are saying. It is a warning not to attribute evil motives to our opponents. It is an appeal to believe that other people desire what is right and good, even when we think they are going about it in exactly the wrong way.
I also am not defending Evangelicalism, which needs a good housecleaning. Those inside the house already know that and they are the only ones in a place to do the cleaning.
God had a plan to undo the consequences of the Fall, to heal and restore humanity, and that plan began with Abraham. His line would lead to the Point-of-it-All. And God would get from Abraham to that Point by what one biblical scholar1 calls “the single plan-of-God-through-Israel-for-the-world.” There was never a Plan-B.
But (and this is a huge “but”) when the covenant was established, Abraham and Sarah had no child. God’s plan and promise of a family line required Sarah, who had been infertile, to conceive. And she did. I don’t think we can imagine the joy Abraham felt. He and Sarah had a child. They named him Isaac, which means laughter. That tells us something, doesn’t it? In his later years, Abraham took great pleasure in watching his son grow up. I wonder how often he found himself chuckling at the antics of his boy. But sometimes when he looked at him, he could see a line stretching into the future, embracing the promise, blessing the earth.
And then we come to chapter 22. Plan-A, Plan-Only, “the single plan-of-God-through-Israel-for-the-world,” which depended on only one person, on Isaac, on the boy called Laughter, was put at risk. And it was God himself who was to blame.
Our passage opens with a problematic statement: “Some time later, God tested Abraham.” The KJV has, “God tempted Abraham,” and the word is often translated that way in the Old Testament. Why would God tempt his own child? Or did he test him? Is there even any difference? I think there is. The difference between a test and a temptation is found in its origin and motive. If it originates in the Satan, we consider it a temptation. If in God, then it is a test. St. James says, “When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.”2
Another difference between a temptation and a test has to do with the motive behind it. A temptation is an enticement to do evil. God never entices us to do evil—Satan does. But God will sometimes give us trials for the ultimate purpose of bringing about good. Deuteronomy 8:16 captures the idea when it says “God…tested you so that in the end it might go well with you.” God cares so much about the end that he is willing to employ hardship in the present.
But even we understand the difference – God tests, and the devil tempts – the difficulty is not cleared up. Why should God need to test us? Doesn’t he already know everything about us? Doesn’t he who sees the end from the beginning know how we will fare in the test? And if he knows already, why put us through it? Here are three possible reasons.
One: though God knows how we will behave during a test, we do not. Though God knew what Abraham would do, Abraham did not. It was important for Abraham that his loyalty to God be confirmed. Whether we succeed or fail, a test helps us to know where we stand. The truth about where we are is always our friend, even when it is hard to take.
Two: the Bible hints that others are watching how we go through tests. Unbelievers are watching. St. Peter tells us that, during trials, we are “to live such lives among the pagans that…they may see your good deeds and glorify God.”3Believers are watching. Paul says that Christians watching him go through a painful trial were encouraged to speak the word of God courageously and fearlessly.4 How you go through a difficulty may be a source of strength and assurance to struggling fellow-Christians in your family, among your friends, and in your church. And then there is the suggestion that other, more august beings may be watching. Paul speaks of rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms who see in us the manifold wisdom of God being demonstrated.5 Remember that Job’s great test was played out before a heavenly audience. St. Peter speaks of angels who long to look into things dealing with our salvation.6
Three: tests do more than just reveal what is in us. They are designed to change what is in us, to make us grow, and to develop us in the image of Christ. St. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4 that God is working in us an eternal weight of glory – not in spite of such tests, but through them: “Our…troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.”7 St. Peter says that “Now, if need be, you suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith, of greater worth than gold…may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”8
1 Wright, N.T. Justification: God’s Plan and Paul’s Vision, IVP: Downers Grove, IL, 2009.
The Way Home 