A sermon preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, Arkansas on the first Sunday of Advent, December 14, 2025.
After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together. When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided” (Genesis 22:1–14).[1]
In C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lucy, intrigued yet uncertain about Aslan, asks Mr. and Mrs. Beaver about him,
“Is he—quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.” “That you will, dearie, and no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver. “If there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or just plain silly.” “Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy. “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver; “don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the king, I tell you.”[2]
By “safe” Lucy means tame, even perhaps domesticated like a house cat, not terrifying like a lion. But such a pet is not a savior, as Lucy will learn. And of course, so do we, when we consider not a fictional character but our true and living Savior that Aslan depicts.
But seeking safety is not fictional, as our fallen imaginations desire a God less fearful than he is. But such thinking is void of the Biblical testimony. “[I]t is the essence of impiety not to be afraid of God when there is reason to be afraid,” John Murray explains. “The Scriptures throughout prescribes the necessity of this fear of God under all the circumstances in which our sinful situation makes us liable to God’s righteous judgment.”[3] But in the eyes of fallen mankind, Paul says in the first chapter of Romans, “There is no fear of God” (Rom. 1:18). If man thinks of God at all, he is neither in awe of his holiness nor fearful of his judgment, at best perhaps thinking him “safe.”
But for those who encounter but a glimpse of the awesome power of God, they realize that our fearsome God is anything but safe. I wonder, for example, if Aaron thought God was safe, when he witnessed his two sons, Nadab and Abihu, executed by the power of the Lord for offering unauthorized worship.[4] Or, what about Uzzah, who was struck dead trying to upright the Ark of the Covenant, a traumatic episode that affected King David for years, leaving him fearful to bring the ark to Jerusalem. Did David think God was safe?[5] Or, what about Ananias and Sapphira, who fell dead before Peter for lying to the Holy Spirit?[6] Did the church think God was safe when they buried the two corpses? Rightly does Paul teach us to consider both “the kindness and the severity of God” (Rom. 11:22), for “It is a fearful thing,” Hebrews says, “to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31).
But in our passage today, we do not see fear of judgment but faith, not flippancy but obedience, not death but life, and then we hear the Lord say to Abraham, “now I know that you fear God” (Gen. 22:12). God commends it, God commands it, God rewards it. What then is the fear of God? Some things are better described than defined, so let us consider Abraham’s fear of God in our passage today.
Trusting God
After an altercation between Abraham and Abimelech and a subsequent treaty, our passage begins, “After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am’” (Gen. 22:1). Moses reveals to us what God has not yet revealed to Abraham: God is testing him, a test that begins with God’s command:
“Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him (22:1-3).
Abraham did not hear God’s Word and deny it, doubt it, or debate it. He simply heard and heeded it.
This was not the first time. In fact, Abraham’s story begins with this statement: “Now the LORD said to Abram . . .” (12:1). God spoke to Abraham, and Abraham heard him. And when God said, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (12:1), we read, “Abram went, as the LORD had told him” (12:4). Over and over again throughout his life, God speaks and Abraham listens, most notably in his justification: “he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen. 15:6). This helps us then understand why when God commanded him to do the unthinkable, sacrifice his only son, Abraham proceeded obediently. He trusted God, even though he did not fully understand.
Do you? In all things great and small, do you trust God? Consider that in the complete canon of Scripture (Genesis through Revelation) we have been given, we have received nothing less but certainly more than Abraham received, the Word “breathed out by God” (2 Tim. 3:16), not a dead book of bygone religious stories but the “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” Word of God (Heb. 4:12). The Word of God is heard through the pages of Scripture, confirming itself as the Spirit-given self-revelation of God. God did not stop speaking to his people when the canon of Scripture closed but speaks today to you and me through his written Word. Do you hear him? God has spoken. Will you heed his Word? Or will you deny it, doubt it, debate it? Know this: You will never truly trust God, like Abraham, unless you hear and heed his Word, as the Holy Spirit uses it to reprove, correct, and train you in righteousness, that in Christ you may be “complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16-17).
As we see in our passage, heeding God’s Word Abraham trusts God so completely that he proceeds faithfully. Why? Well, one reason is Abraham knows what God said to and through Noah:
“Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image (Gen. 9:6).
God, Abraham knows, is neither a God of confusion[7] nor will he contradict himself, change his mind, or lie like a man.[8] In other words, God’s Word informed his trust in God.
But he also knows that God had promised him from the beginning, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen. 12:2-3). And God promised to fulfill that promise through Abraham’s son, not his illegitimate son, Ishmael, but through his son, Isaac, whom God promised by name.[9] And knowing that it is impossible for God to lie,[10] Abraham trusted God to provide, even if it meant, Hebrews tells us, by raising Issac from the dead.[11]
Abraham rose early, prepared thoroughly, and departed on his journey, fully prepared to offer a burnt offering. Once he arrived, he left his help behind, so not to inhibit his faithfulness, and said to an inquiring Isaac, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son” (Gen. 22:4-8). And Abraham went all the way to building an altar, preparing the firewood, binding his son, and taking the knife in his hand. He trusted God all the way to (almost) the end, and then the angel of the Lord intervened. That is truly trusting God!
In the providence of God, we too will meet trials of various kinds, which test our faith, like Abraham. But if you too have believed God and been counted righteous in Christ, you face such a test not as a victim but God’s child, allowing you to fully trust in your heavenly Father’s care, who has ordained whatsoever comes to pass.[12] There are no “mistakes, no “accidents” outside of God’s sovereignty. Therefore, by faith, we must not wallow in self-pity but, as James prescribes, count it all joy, because no matter the circumstance we can be sure that God is at work in your life and mine, producing faithfulness in us,[13] for our good and God’s glory. Surely Abraham counted it all joy that he had been tested by the Lord and been found rightly fearing God.
Fearing God
You will recall that after the children of Israel were led out of Egypt, God led them to the base of Mount Sinai, where the glory of the Lord descended upon the mountain in a thick cloud with thunder and lightning and the ever-increasing blast of a trumpet. Moses records that the people trembled, and understandably so, leading them to irrationally plead with Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die” (Ex. 20:19). Sometimes that Word of God can seem more than we can handle, even perhaps terrifying. But in wisdom Moses counseled them, saying, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin” (Ex. 20:20). Note the distinction, in Moses’ counsel: “Do not fear . . . that the fear of [God] may be before you.”
It is our fallen tendency to fear what we should not fear and not fear what (or whom) we should. Paul tells Timothy, “God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Tim. 1:7). So, there is a fear, a fleshly fear, that the Christian should not have. But Jesus teaches us there is a right kind of fear, saying, “fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. Yes, I tell you, fear him!” (Luke 12:5). The fear we are to have is not hell or the devil or his sons of disobedience but him who has authority over heaven and hell, the Lord God almighty. Fear him!
For the unbeliever, fear tells of imminent judgment, the unquenching fire and eternal torment of God’s holy justice. It is indeed “a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Heb. 10:31), for God is “a consuming fire” (Heb. 12:29), as his holiness burns up, as it were, anything unholy, a terrifying thought apart for the gospel. Michael Reeves says, “It is divine forgiveness and our justification by faith alone that turns our natural dread of God as sinners into the fearful, trembling adoration of beloved children.”[14] Just as Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness” (Rom. 4:3), so all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ are justified as righteous before God, reconciled to him, and adopted as his child. In Christ, then we enjoy a filial fear of God.
So, when God said to Abraham, “now I know that you fear God” (Gen. 22:12), Abraham was not found shrieking in terror but found living out his faith. Hebrews says, “By faith Abraham obeyed . . .” (Heb. 11:8), and so he did, all the way down to the sacrificial knife in hand. But God’s intervention also led to his provision that Abraham’s fear of God might rightly lead to worship.
Worshiping God
The answer to the first question of the Westminster Shorter Catechism states, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.”[15] The two clauses are one answer, one aim, as there can only be one “chief end,” not ends. Jerry Bridges tells of a time when he thought of the answer as describing two objectives:
I was expected, so I thought, to glorify God in this life, and then in eternity I would get to enjoy Him.
Perhaps I unconsciously thought of these two parts of our aim in the same way some people think about work and retirement. You work for forty or so years, then you get to enjoy being retired, but “ne’er the twain shall meet.” Don’t expect to enjoy your work and avoid all work in your retirement.
The truth is, though, we cannot glorify God—either by our lives or by worship—unless we are enjoying Him. How could you praise someone whom you don’t enjoy? How could you genuinely seek to honor someone by your conduct merely out of a sense of obligation?[16]
We cannot, at least not authentically.
In the example of Abraham, we do not see a man motivated by obligation but faith in and a right fear of God. In fact, he glorified and enjoyed God in his life to the extent that James says that Abraham “was called a friend of God” (Jas. 2:23). We witness this in his faithfulness but also in his worship, which in our passage today begins with Abraham hearing God’s Word and ends with God’s sacrificial provision.
Moses tells us that once the angel of the Lord saved Isaac’s life,
Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided” (Gen. 22:13-14).
Trusting in God’s provision all the way to the end, Abraham worshiped God. But that ram offered up was not an end in itself but pointed to the Lamb of God to come, not Abraham’s only son, Isaac, but God’s only Son, Jesus, “the founder and perfecter of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). By faith, Abraham worshiped through God’s provision of a sacrifice, looking forward to God’s perfect provision Christ. Likewise, by faith we look back not to a ram caught in a thicket but to the atoning sacrifice and of our Lord Jesus Christ. And this we do, not flippantly but with a right fear of God, worshiping him with reverence and awe.
And just as Jesus “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2), we look to the cross of Christ with joy, for through his death and resurrection, he has secured our redemption, reconciled us to God, and given us eternal life. This he did not by condoning sin but in perfect righteousness, not by compromising of his deity but by divine justice, and not by making himself “safe” but victorious. “’Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the king, I tell you.”
[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).
[2] C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Hammondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1950), 75.
[3] John Murray, Principles of Conduct, quoted in Jerry Bridges, The Joy of Fearing God (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press, 1998), 20.
[4] Lev. 10:1-2
[5] 2 Sam. 6:6-7
[6] Acts 5:1-11
[7] 1 Cor. 14:33
[8] Num. 23:19
[9] Gen. 17:19-21
[10] Heb. 6:18
[11] Heb. 11:18
[12] “The Confession of Faith” 3.1, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 12.
[13] Jas. 1:2-3
[14] https://learn.ligonier.org/articles/what-is-the-fear-of-god
[15] “The Shorter Catechism” Q. 1, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 355.
[16] Jerry Bridges, The Joy of Fearing God (Colorado Springs: WaterBrook Press, 1998), 253-254.
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