On this Father’s Day, we are diving into a couple of stories in the Bible that are pillars of the Scriptures and have influenced our culture at large.
The Parable of the Prodigal Son, which has inspired some amazing artwork through the centuries, teaches us about God’s unrelenting Fatherly love. The image of the Father, day after day, waiting and longing for his train-wreck of a son to come home gives great hope to a total train-wreck like me! The Hebrew has a word for this kind of love, it’s called Chesed (sounds like the King James Bless-ed but with a really rough “CH” sound on the front – imagine trying to mimic the static on a radio)
The account of Abraham and Isaac is the other story we examine this morning, and it is a ROUGH one. God gives Abraham and Sarah exactly what they’ve longed for their entire married life (a long marriage!), and then tells Abraham he has to sacrifice their young, long-awaited son of promise. It’s confusing, and heartbreaking, and torturous to read. The ending is wonderful, because the angel says, “Abraham, Abraham, don’t lat a hand on the boy or do anything to him!” A happy ending indeed, but only because an alternate sacrifice was provided.
I was reading a great book called, The Forgotten Jesus, by Robby Gallatry. While he has PLENTY of quote-worthy things, one of the best things in the book is a quote from Donald Barnhouse who wrote – “God was instilling a reflex in the minds of his people that every time they thought of sin they would think of death. For Sin means death. It means the death of the sinner or the death of a Savior.”
In this week’s sermon, we explore WHY God would have the story of Abraham’s call to sacrifice Isaac in the Bible. When we see GOD as our Father, and understand what HE sacrificed for us, we can then see what it means that he is also the Father in the story of the Prodigal Son. This GRACE is the hardest thing for us to ever understand. But it is also the biggest blessing we will ever have in our lives.
Happy Father’s Day!