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December 6, 2020 Divine Liturgy Series, Number 15 By Fr. Alex Miller   This is the 15th sermon in this series of homilies on the divine liturgy of the holy Orthodox Church.   Thus far we have been going step-by-step through the book of Genesis detailing God‘s revelation to man of who he is,  who we are because of him, and how he desires to be worshiped.   Today we come to one of the most perplexing, challenging, and foundational events in this narrative.   After many promises from God and after many years of waiting Abraham and Sarah are finally given the gift of their son Isaac, the fulfillment of God‘s promise that from Abraham he would make a great nation and out of his loins would come one who would be a blessing to all nations.   Then God asked Abraham to do something totally contrary to every human way of thinking, he asked him to offer up his son Isaac as a burnt offering.   If god is good how could he make such a demand of Abraham.   This raises the important question, “is God good because he is God or is he God because he is good?” Neither question can be answered adequately. The truth is that God is beyond all human constructs or ways of thinking.   And yet he has chosen to reveal himself as Trinity, as father son and holy spirit, three persons sharing one divine nature. God by nature is other oriented because he is three persons not one. God is love which by definition is relational, always oriented towards the other.   And this is the essence of who man is created in the image of God to be in a relationship with God and with other humans.   Abraham in a way which we cannot comprehend seemed to have a perfect understanding of this reality. He trusted God absolutely and therefore when God challenged him to do something totally contrary to nature he obeyed.   Scripture does not fill us in on the psychology, the drama, the emotional aspect of what this must’ve been like for Abraham. We can only speculate on the difficulty that he faced in seeing his beloved son and his dreams and hopes all coming to a violent end at his own hands.   Of course Abraham was well acquainted. Of course Abraham was well acquainted with the concept of sacrifice Every place that he lived he built an altar to God and he offered animal sacrifices upon these alters as part of his expression of his devotion to God.   It is very likely that other tribes and cultures either through their own imagination or through the instigation of the evil one we’re practicing human sacrifice in order to appease a God that they did not know.   But the true God in his revelation to mankind as we have studied this far makes no such demand upon those created in his image. And yet in this story we find God doing exactly that.   This story like the rest of the narrative is all at the same time historical symbolic, typological and prophetic. It actually happened in space and time but was symbolic of a deeper reality and prophetic of something that was going to happen in the future.   “Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham and he said take now your beloved son Isaac whom you love and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a whole burnt offering on one of the mountains I tell you.”   Notice how carefully God emphasizes the beloved does of Isaac “your beloved son whom you love.”   So Abraham went with Isaac with wood for the altar with fire (tinderbox) and with servants to the place God appointed.   When they arrived at the place Abraham instructed his servants to remain there while he and Isaac went up on the mountain. The mountain is Calvary Abraham is the father Isaac is the son. (Mount Moriah is the mountain where God instructed Solomon to build the temple).   So Abraham took the firewood of the whole burnt offering,  and laid it on Isaac his son. The firewood is the cross which Jesus himself carried to Calvary.   When they arrived Isaac said to Abraham “my father,  here is the fire and the firewood,  but where is the sheep for the who