Father Abraham Had Just One Son

Fifth Sunday in Lent

March 13, 2016

John 8:46-59

Father Abraham Had Just One Son

In the name of the Father and of the ☩ Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Abraham had just one son with his wife Sarah. His name was Isaac. Isaac was the son that the Lord had promised to this old couple. And he was a good kid, a real blessing to his grandparent-aged parents (they were around 100 years old!).

As he got older, Isaac would come to sin against his own family. This is the opposite of the way things are supposed to be. In every culture, except for ours perhaps, the young do not possess wisdom, but the old do. Yet Isaac was the Boy Who Lived—the child who offered his life on an altar and was spared by Christ Jesus—but as a father himself he played favorites with his sons.

This is one of our great sins today. Assuming wisdom based on age, the lack of age or the possession of it. True wisdom comes from receiving the Word of God. The very first psalm says:

His delight is in the law of the Lord,

And in His law he meditates day and night.

He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water (Psalm 1:2)

But just like Isaac, we often become foolish with age. Many of us older folks think that lifelong study of God's promises is for the young. We think that we know it all and have seen it all.

But Abraham kept seeing new things. Nearing 100 he probably thought that he'd seen it all, then the Lord gave him a promised son with his wife Sarah. Later God told him to sacrifice Isaac on a pile of rocks up in a mountain. Finally Isaac is spared and they all return home, having seen that the Lord provided for them.

You too will keep seeing new things. Your walk to the mountain of trail may be much longer than three days. Perhaps your operation went well, but you got an infection. Maybe you suffer from chronic pain and the many approaches the doctors have tried, have all failed. Maybe you suffer from children who lose their temper, who learned how to lose their temper from you.

We find new ways to be disappointed. The people in our life find new ways to make us angry or sad. So do what Abraham no doubt did. As he walked to the mountain of death, he by faith focused on the promises of Christ given to Adam and to his sons. Promises of salvation in the God-Man savior; promises of resurrection out of death through His forgiveness.

And this God-Man savior would be Abraham's one son that would save all the others. When Abraham doubted this promise, Christ came to him,

And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness. (Genesis 15:5-6)

This is what Jesus meant when He told the Jews, who were physical sons of Abraham, that

“Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.” (John 8:56)

Abraham looked ahead to the fulfillment of the promise of the Savior and was filled with joy. By faith Abraham knew salvation was as done, because His most important Son, Jesus Christ, was coming into the world. The Son of God who always IS was going to become the Son of Abraham and grow up with the sons of Abraham and select twelve of them to be His disciples and feed thousands of them and be verbally attacked by many of their leaders and even some would try and throw rocks at Abraham's only Son who would save them.

Abraham died at 175 years old, because he was miserable old sinner. His body lies in the ground as does the body of fellow sinners: Isaac and their wives and children. However many of their souls are alive in the heaven of Jesus. They all sinned, but they live for His sake, the Son of Abraham who is greater than all others.

He is eternally honored by His Father because He laid down His life as the perfect Son. We honor Abraham's only Son, too, because by His death we will never die, even though our bodies might. And by His rising from death, so will the many children of Abraham.

By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son… He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead (Hebrews 11:17, 19a)

God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us,

so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God!

2 Corinthians 5:21