Trust

Here is a picture of a hopeful, innocent child. He’s a good-looking guy, isn’t he? I look at this picture and think of all the potential that was there. What could he have been? How could he have used his time when the years were stretching out before him, inviting him like a new found friend?

I probably will never know what could have been. But instead of regret, I give gratitude for what is. Who can wash away my sin? Who can make me whole again? That boy is gone and all that remains is a man in middle age. What happened to me and I think what happens to all of us to some degree is that we experience love and loss, trust and distrust. We succeed and we fail. We let people down. People let us down.

Growing up on Newberry Street we didn’t have a lot and it seemed like the things we asked for as kids were mostly out of reach. Our requests were most often met with this answer by my mother, “Well, we’ll see.” Can we ask the neighbor to let us swim in their pool? We’ll see. Can we get pizza tonight? We’ll see. It used to exasperate my siblings and me. Sometimes we got what we wanted. Many times we didn’t. The unintended lesson that we were taught about life was Don’t Get Your Hopes Up.

Ray Romano tells the story of how he started out doing stand-up comedy. He was in his late twenties, living in his parent’s basement in Jersey when he went to a comedy club in the city that was having amateur night. Romano tried it and he was a hit. So he went to another club and did it again. But this time he bombed. He said it was one-thirty in the morning and the last two people in his audience got up and walked out on him. He felt humiliated. So he went home and woke his mom and dad and asked them, “How could you guys walk out on me like that?”

Life humbles you. People disappoint. And somewhere in there we start to lose trust.

There is something about Christmas that reveals this broken trust. I just heard somewhere that divorce lawyers experience their busiest time right after Christmas. Maybe Christmas builds our hopes up too much – maybe we shouldn’t get our hopes up. Maybe we shouldn’t trust.

But something bad happens to us when we lose the ability to trust. We find cheap substitutes. When we stop trusting God and hoping in life, we begin to make idols instead. The Bible teaches us that the human heart is an idol factory. We can make idols out of money, people, sex, power, anything. Timothy Keller writes, “Anything can be an idol and everything has been.” What is an idol? It is anything more important to you than God, anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God, anything you seek to give you what only God can give.

Abraham was a man called by God who left home and family to go to another country. According to the Bible, God came to Abraham and made him a huge promise, if you follow me faithfully I will bless all the nations of the earth through you and your descendants. This suited Abraham just fine. Like any patriarch of his day he wanted a son and heir to carry on the family name. But as the years stretched into decades, Abraham and his wife Sarah experienced the pain that any couple struggling with infertility can attest to. God’s spectacular promise became difficult to believe. Finally, after Abraham was over 100 years old and Sarah was over 90, she gave birth to a son, Isaac. It was pretty miraculous. And so, his name meant laughter, referring to their difficulty in believing the promise and their joy in seeing the promise fulfilled. It’s safe to say, both Abraham and Sarah loved Isaac, but especially Abraham. Abraham’s years of waiting had been rewarded. His patience had refined him in crucial ways.

But there was this question – had Abraham been waiting and sacrificing for God or for the boy? Was God just a means to an end? Had he learned to trust God alone, and love God for himself, not just for what he could get out of God? No, not yet.

Many couples think that having a child will bring unremitting happiness, love to a rocky marriage, the answer to all their problems. Abraham must have thought, I will be happy for the rest of my life. But God was about to call on Abraham again, and it could not have been more shocking.

“Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”
Genesis 22.2

God could not have asked for anything more precious to Abraham. Isaac was everything to him. His happiness and meaning in life were bound up in his son. Was God saying to Abraham you can’t love your son? No, not at all. But you must not make an idol of your son. Any parent who does that hurts themselves and smothers their child. Many people have objected to this story over the years, saying it is irrational, it makes no sense. But in a certain sense, it does. In an individualistic culture like ours, a person’s sense of worth is often bound up in skills and achievements. But in ancient times, all the hopes and dreams of a family rested in the firstborn son. The call to give up a firstborn son is like a surgeon giving up the use of his hands or an artist losing their sight. That’s why God’s judgment on Egypt in the time of Israel’s captivity would be so severe. The firstborn’s lives were forfeit because of the sins of the families and nations. Why? The firstborn was the family.

So when Abraham heard God this time, he was shocked, knocked over. But he was not uncomprehending. God was not asking him to go over to Isaac’s tent and murder him. God was saying make a burnt offering of him. God was calling in Abraham’s sin debt. His son was going to die for the sins of the family. Abraham comprehended but that did not make the command less horrible. Abraham must have been thinking, God promised to bless all nations through my descendants. But if I do this thing, how will this be? How can God be both holy and just and still graciously fulfill his promise to me. Abraham didn’t know. But he went. He was like another Old Testament figure, Job, who was tested in countless ways with no explanation. Job says this about the Lord,
“He knows what he is doing with me, and when he has tested me, I will come forth as pure gold.” Job 23.10

Abraham went up that mountain with his son. It wasn’t with willpower. It wasn’t with crazy, blind faith. He didn’t say I can do it. He said rather, God will do it, though I don’t know how. He said to himself, “I know God is both holy and gracious. I don’t know how he is going to be both – but I know he will.”

“When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.” Genesis 22.9-10

And the voice of God called out in that moment - Abraham! Abraham! Stop. Do not touch the boy. Now I know you fear God.

What is this all about? It is a test, not of fear, but of love. That’s really what “fear of God” in the Bible means. To fear God is to be whole-heartedly committed to Him. Abraham proved more to himself maybe than needed to be proved to God, that he truly loved God above all. Walking up that mountain with Isaac was the last agonizing stage in a journey that God had used to turn Abraham from an average man to a great man, a man from whom over half of the human race would claim as their spiritual father.

Is coming to church a pure expression of our love and trust in God? Or is God a means to some other end for us? These are murky waters.

To say you ought to love God too is not the freshest message you ever heard. You know this. The problem is many people cannot find any feeling of love for God in them selves. And they don’t know what to do. As C.S. Lewis writes:

“The answer is the same as before. Act as if you did. Do not sit trying to manufacture feelings. Ask yourself, ‘If I were sure that I loved God, what would I do? When you have found the answer, go and do it. . .He will give us feelings of love if He pleases. We cannot create them for ourselves, and we must demand them as a right. But the great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, His love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.” Lewis, Mere Christianity

But what happened to Abraham’s sin and the sin of the family? A substitute for Isaac was provided in the form of a ram. But did the ram’s blood wash away Abraham’s sin. No. Many years later, in those same mountains, another firstborn son was stretched out on wood to die. But there on Mount Calvary, when the beloved son of God cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” there was no voice from heaven announcing deliverance. God paid the price for everyone’s sin by giving up his own son.

Before that son died, he was born to a young virgin who was not expecting to have a child so soon. And when she was told the manner in which she would conceive, surely, this was even harder to believe for her than the promise made to Abraham and Sarah. But that young virgin believed and treasured those things in her heart. And then she obeyed. She trusted. She said, I don’t know how God is going to do this, but I know he will.

I don’t know how you have been disappointed in life. I don’t know when you lost trust. But I know that we must begin and end by trusting God. Maybe you need to take your own walk up into the mountains. Maybe you need to identify your “Isaacs.” Maybe you need to say to God, “I see that you may be calling me to live my life without something I never thought I could live without. But if I have you, I have the only wealth, health, love, honor, and security I really need and cannot lose.”

You don’t realize Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have. My Christmas wish for all of you is Jesus. Nothing more, nothing less.