Genesis 22:1-18
Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”
3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
9 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. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
15 The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”
As I have previously mentioned, when I first started out as a music minister, I was all about using music to create a “great worship experience.” I lamented anything that took time away from real worship: the singing. Confession is good for the soul, so here I go.
I was often frustrated with the awkwardness of passing plates around. People were fiddling in their pockets or purses instead of singing the praise songs or listening to the instrumental music that was immediately relegated to the background. It just ruined the flow of my perfectly planned “worship experience.” I even convinced my very loving pastor to collect offering at the door so people could give on their way out. I think there are merits to having offering collected at the end of the service, but interrupting my flow of worship probably should not have been one of them.
The offering is a powerful time of literally putting your money where your mouth is! We may spend much of the service singing songs and lifting our hands to our Mighty creator, but during the offering, our hands can easily get stuck in our pockets. If we truly believe what we are singing, the offering becomes a powerful act of joining in God’s Story and His kingdom work here on earth. Giving our offering is the physical part of praying “God’s Kingdom come, God’s will be done on earth!” We are saying, “this is a physical world with physical needs, and we are going to put our physical trust in God by giving to him out of the abundance which he has already given to us.”
I am reminded that the first time the word worship was mentioned in the Bible was when Abraham was going to literally sacrifice his son. The act of worship and sacrifice are one in the same. When Jesus died on the cross, it was ultimately for worship of the Father. For believers, the sacrifice of praise and of giving should be central to our worship as we Do God’s Story!
“Doing God’s Story” is a concept that comes from Robert Webber’s Ancient Future Worship: Proclaiming and Enacting God’s Narrative. For Pastor Ray, this book has been formative in his understanding of Biblical and Ancient Christian worship. Webber constantly reminds his readers that historically, worship is not about us as individuals, it is about proclaiming God’s story through acts of remembrance and anticipation.