Audio recording Sermon manuscript: I’d like to consider our Old Testament reading today about Abraham and Isaac from two perspectives. First, I’d like to consider how an unbeliever might regard what is going on. Then I’d like to consider how a believer understands what is going on. By looking at this event from these two different perspectives, I hope that you can see the radical difference faith makes for how a person understands God and his actions. So let’s begin with the unbeliever’s perspective of Genesis 22. In a way, Genesis 22 is one of the unbeliever’s favorite parts of the Bible. The unbeliever wants to believe that the bible is irrational, unreliable, full of tales and myths, and even those tales and myths are often more disturbing than edifying. Thus it is below the dignity of any sane, rational person to believe what the Bible says. Genesis 22 seems to offer support for such a view. After all, what kind of a God says to anyone, much less to one of his faithful followers, that he should sacrifice his son, his only son, whom he loves? It is a monstrous thought. Any parent can tell you the utter repugnance they have toward such a thing. A parent would much rather sacrifice their own self, and spare the child, rather than put any child whom they love to death. So the idea of God demanding such a hateful thing is the kind of stuff that makes people say, “If God is like that, then I don’t want to have anything to do with him.” Thus we can see that the God of Genesis 22 is hateful to the unbeliever. Abraham, the believer, is also hateful to the unbeliever. What kind of deranged fanatic is willing to go through with something like this? If Abraham is willing to do this, then what is he not willing to do for his God? Abraham seems to be the type of person that makes people say that organized religion is bad, that all kinds of atrocities have been done in the name of religion. So that’s what an unbeliever thinks of this God and Abraham his servant. Wwhat kind of God and what kind of believer would be more acceptable to the unbeliever? That’s actually pretty easy to answer. All you have to do is consider the popular beliefs all around us. Unbelievers are pretty content with how the average person thinks about God and how people should be pious. Let’s get a little more specific. Unbelievers want a God who is very detached and afar off. He’s out there somewhere, but he doesn’t say much and he doesn’t do much. If anything he is just happy to watch people have a good time on this earth. He doesn’t make any specific serious commands. He might have some suggestions, but it’s always up to the person whether or not he or she would like agree with him. He certainly, never ever, says anything weird like: “Abraham, sacrifice your son, your only son, whom you love.” God, to an unbeliever’s mind, always has to present himself in such a way where everybody wantsto believe in him. If God should happen to break that rule, like he does here, then we can just ignore that. Cut it out of the Sunday School curriculum. This kind of thing happens all the time, even with good publishing houses, like our Concordia Publishing House. They mean well. They do not want to scandalize anybody with the gory or seedy details. But this editing only plays into the unbelieving mind we all have. All people, to a greater or lesser extent, believe they have the right to believe in God only to the extent that we want to. If God does something we don’t like, then we can safely ignore that. So what this means is that a person can pledge allegiance to God, but despise whatever nasty things the Bible says that he has done. So what is important for them is that the ideaof God and the idea of faith are embraced. That is considered sufficient. These things should never get too specific. If these things get too specific, then it might cramp our style. And, after all, what is really important about life is that we always have a good time. In order to always have a go