"God Tests, God Provides"

Dr. George R. Sinclair, Pastor

Gen. 22:1-14; Ps. 13; Rom. 6:12-23; Matt. 10: 40-42

June 29, 2008

             “This is a test.  This station is conducting a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test . . .  If this had been an actual emergency the Attention Signal you just heard would have been followed by official information, news or instructions.”

The Emergency Broadcast System was created during the Cold War.  I remember it very clearly.  In the years immediately following the Cuban Missile Crisis, you never knew whether the “Attention Signal” would be     followed by “actual” civil defense instructions or the announcer’s reassuring voice, “This is only a test."

“This is only a test . . .”

The word “test” implies a degree of artificiality or contrivance.  “Tests” of the EBS are created by engineers, civil defense planners, and government officials.  “Actual” emergencies are created by flying missiles, terrorists, or more routinely, severe weather.

Engineers, planners, and government officials who test the EBS do so to de-bug the system and to keep listeners listening.  Tests should not be confused with real or “actual” emergencies. 

“God tested Abraham . . .”

What does it mean to say God tests? 

Next month I will observe the thirtieth year of my ordination.  I was twenty-five when I moved to Illinois to start my first church.  Previously, seminary had been a test.  Ryan can tell you that.  He’s just finished three years of late nights, papers, finals, and wondering whether you’ll have a job when it’s all over, wondering whether you’ll have a good job when it’s all over, wondering whether you’ll be up to the job you get.

Seminary was a test; my first church was a test.  Bless their hearts; I didn’t know what I was doing.  Everything was a first—first wedding, first baptism, first funeral, first      Session meeting.  My first church also had a Board of Trustees and a Board of Deacons.  We had more chiefs than Indians—that was fun; that was a test.

In some ways, the tests never stopped.  Thinking about Abraham I went back over the first ten years of my ordination.  I tried to think about all of the ways I was tested. 

In those first ten years, between ages of twenty-five and thirty-five, I did thirty-seven funerals, twenty weddings, fifty-three baptisms, and wrote nearly five hundred sermons.  (I’m sure all of those sermons were a test for those who had to listen!)  Meanwhile, Paula and I had both of our children, she had two major back surgeries, I had two knee surgeries, we moved twice, both of my parents died, and I completed my doctorate.  That doesn’t take into account one hundred twenty Session meetings—that’ll do most anybody in! and who knows how many committee meetings, hospital visits, retreats, home visits, arguments, pot- lucks, and hundreds of relationships with all sorts of people in all kinds of situations, some of them friendly, some not so friendly.

Granted, unlike Abraham, God did not ask me to sacrifice my son, but I can identify with Abraham, can’t you?  In some ways, life is a test.  Jesus taught us to pray every day, “Lead us not into temptation.”  That word could just as easily be rendered, “Lead us not into trial. Don’t test us, Lord.”

Here’s the thing, I don’t think God sits up in heaven cooking up tests for us.  “Well, let’s see how I can mess with George today.”  I don’t think it works that way.  I don’t think God tests us in the same way the government tests the EBS.  Life is not an experiment.  We’re not living in God’s lab. 

The things we go through, the things we call “tests” or “trials” have not been   concocted as if God needed to check out our worthiness, but that is not to say life is     uncontested or that God knows everything in advance.  To the contrary, that God tests is a way of saying that life is contested and that God does not know everything in advance, which is the only way for faith, hope, and love to ever be genuine. 

Let me put it another way.  If you could know in advance everything that was going to happen to you in the next ten years, would you want to know?  And if you knew in advance everything that was going to happen to you and everything that you would do, would you want to live your life?  I don’t think we can even imagine such a life.  We’re not wired to live knowing everything that’s going to happen or everything we’re going to do. 

I turn fifty-five in a few days—July tenth, gifts will be appreciated—and I think, “My gosh, my father was only a year older when he died. Am I going to outlive my   father?  Am I destined to die like he did? Do I have the same genetic predisposition to heart disease?   Will I make it to age fifty-seven?  And if I do, will I out live my mother who died at the age of sixty-two?  Will I get cancer like she did?  Cancer and heart disease are  two great killers, which one will get me?” 

You can’t live like that, can you?  I mean, who wants to live that way?  As sure as I’m standing here I know that I will one day die, but I don’t want to know when.        I don’t want to know how or where or why.   I can’t live thinking that way, much less can I live knowing what’s going to happen this afternoon.  I’ve got a general idea—I’m   going to take a nap and my son and daughter-in-law might come for supper following a party for Ryan.  But I don’t know every little thing that’s going to happen.  I can’t predict who might call or drop by. I can’t predict whether or not I’ll have a belly laugh at some silly thing that happens or if I’ll be           entertained by a movie or if I’ll hear the birds singing at nightfall or feel a cool breeze on my porch or have someone hug my neck and tell me they love me.  I can’t know any of those things any more than I can know any of the thousand and one bad things that might happen.  And I don’t want to know.

“Now I know that you fear God.”  That’s where Abraham’s story moves.  “Now I know” which is to say God did not know in advance.  Before Abraham went up the mountain, God didn’t know.  God didn’t know whether or not Abraham would        sacrifice Isaac.  But on the mountain, he found out.  When Abraham laid the wood in order, bound Isaac and took the knife to kill his son, God knew.  And at that last moment, God called it off:  “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God . . .”

“Now I know.”  The fact that God does not know everything means that life is contested and that faith, hope, and love can be genuine.  I can’t imagine love or faith or hope any other way.  “Who hopes for what he sees?”

“Nobody,” Paul says.  “Hope that is seen is not hope.  We hope for what we do not see.” 

Genuine hope is possible only where non-hope is an option.  The same is true of faith and love.  Faith can only exist where the possibility of non-faith exists.  Love can exist only where the possibility of non-love exists.  If it were any other way, faith, hope, and love would be a sham.  And life, life would be utterly and completely grey. No color. No laughter. No tears.  It would all be pretend.

So yes, God tests.  It’s the only way we have life.  God can’t know everything in advance. There can’t be a “me” or a “you” unless God chooses to give us space, which means that God does not interfere. God does not overrule. God does not overpower.  God gives us room.  God lets us exist.  And to let us exist God cannot, or rather, God chooses not to know everything.  If God did, we would be slugs.  We would be nothing.  We would have nothing to do, for everything would be done for us.  There would be no risk and without risk there is no life.  Without risk there is no love. Without risk there is no real future. 

God chooses not to know so that we get to actually live. God’s “not knowing” makes life possible, which means that faith, hope, and love are born and grow in the soil of anguish.  Here’s how Paul put it, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us . . . for the creation was        subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.  We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit . . .”

God tests.  Because God tests, faith, hope, and love exist.  God also provides.  And because God provides, faith, hope, and love abide.  They endure.  They lead to joy.  Faith, hope, and love are born and grow in anguish, but they lead to joy.  They lead to redemption.  They lead to glory.

“The Spirit helps us in our weakness…”

Think about father Abraham—the  terrible deed—“take your son . . . and offer him.”  So Abraham rises early. He saddles his donkey and takes two young men with him, and his son Isaac.  He cuts the wood for the offering and sets out to the place God has shown him. 

On the third day, Abraham looks up and he can see the place in the distance.  We’re all capable of seeing “places in the distance.”   Those places exist wherever we bump up against the unknown, the uncertain.  They also exist wherever we bump up against the inevitable, the advance of sickness or age or the tragic consequences of indifference, violence, greed, hatred.  We all see distance places. We all see the distant places we must go; places where we’ve been sent.  Mt. Moriah comes to every life.

On the third day, Abraham saw Moriah in the distance and he tells the two young men, “Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there; we will worship, and then we will come back to you.”

“We will come back.”  Was Abraham wishfully thinking?  “We will come back.”  How could there be any “we” to come back?  Isaac was to be sacrificed.  But Abraham      believes.  “We will come back.” 

So he takes the wood and lays it on Isaac.  Isaac carries the wood.  The father carries the fire and the knife.  The two walk on         together.  As they approach “the distance” now near, the boy asks, “Father, the fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb?”

Abraham said, “God himself will     provide.”  In “the distance” now near, Abraham believes—God will provide.  Paul called it “hoping against hope.”  Elsewhere Paul says, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile [and] we are of all people, most to be pitied.” 

“Distant places” bring us near the brink.  “Distant places” bring us to the very edge, whether of doubt or dread or despair or guilt or remorse. “The distance” brought near brings us face to face with eternity.  And will we believe?  That’s where faith, hope, and love abide. They live in “the distance” brought near.

Abraham believed.  He walked on and when he came to the place he “reached out his hand and took the knife. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham! Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God.” 

When Abraham looked up he saw the lamb and offered it instead of his son.  He called that distant place, “The LORD will provide.”

God “sees to” us in our weakness.  God “sees to” us in “the distance.”  God not only tests, God provides. In “the distance” brought near he gives us the Lamb.  God provides.  Amen.