Rev. Dr. M. Taylor Bach Genesis 22:1-12 Luke 4:14-21

I've been trying for three weeks to give this sermon and finally I get to do it. You may have heard the Old Testament reading twice. The topic that I want to talk about begins a series of sermons on the stories in the Bible. As you probably know, there are many literary forms in the Bible and if we understand what a literary form is and what a particular literary form is that we are reading, we will understand the Bible to a much higher degree. There is poetry in the Bible. There are hymns in the Bible. There is history in the Bible. There are stories in the Bible. There are Gospels which are historical stories with theological content and there are letters in the Bible to all of us as well. So those are the different literary forms. From now until Lent, I thought I would focus on the stories. The reason for that is, I read an article right before Christmas saying there are many Christian college students who don't know the stories of the Bible. The man who wrote the article said that he teaches in a secular college, like a state college, where he has been given the assignment of teaching the Bible as literature. His classes have been well-attended because he has focused on the stories of the Bible. He says, “Why stories?” Because the stories are memorable. The stories make a point. Jesus taught through stories; we call them parables. So I thought the next five weeks or so I will speak about some of the stories in the Bible. Obviously, I am not picking them all because it is just loaded with them. But I will pick some of them that I think will be relevant to you.

The first one is what we'd call an historical story that has to do with Abraham and Isaac, the scripture that Susan read this morning. It is about the relationship of a father and a son. As you know, one of the fascinating things to me, and one of the relief things to me about the Bible is that it talks a lot about dysfunctional families. It shows us that even in dysfunctional families, people get to heaven and are rewarded and receive the blessings of God. In faith, things can work out well. Think for a moment about Abraham and Isaac. Imagine Isaac's position. He is told by his father that God appeared to him through an angel and said he wanted him to offer a sacrifice. Abraham was getting his young son, Isaac, who we suspect was probably around twelve years old to come with him to help with that sacrifice. In fact, oh, lucky him! He “gets” to carry the lumber. He gets to carry the wood to put on the altar for the burnt offering. So picture Abraham and Isaac after they leave the donkey and the servants at the bottom of the mountain and walk up this mountain carrying the lumber. They get to the top of the mountain and Abraham builds an altar. Then all of a sudden, he grabs his son, ties him up and places him on the altar. He gets out a dagger and is ready to kill his son. What do you think his son was thinking? What is going on with Isaac at this point? Then a voice comes from heaven saying, “Stop. Don't kill your son. There is a ram in the bush. Go get that ram and offer it as a burnt offering.” Isaac probably realized at that time the area in which the Israelites lived in the pagan religions, first-born sons were frequently sacrificed. So Philistines and other pagan groups would often kill their first-born sons and offer them to the pagan god Baal and other pagan gods. Isaac had to know that. He probably felt good that he was an Israelite, a Jew, and this wasn't going to happen to him. Then all of a sudden he finds himself in a situation where it looks like it was going to happen to him.

Think for a moment what might have been their conversation as they came back down the mountain. And what might have been their conversation as he grew up to be a teenager? “Hey dad. Were you really going to kill me? If that angel hadn't spoken, would you have gone through with it? Would you have stabbed me with that dagger? Would you have burned my body? What were you thinking? Are you really sure that God told you to do that in the first place or were you just hallucinating or something?” I would think that Isaac would be furious with his dad. His dad had broken trust. Isaac would not feel all that wonderful about his dad even though his dad didn't go through with it. Did Isaac hear the angel? I hope so because that would have been reassuring to him. But the Bible doesn't say whether Isaac heard the angel or just Abraham heard the angel. So at any rate, there had to be some stress between them after this episode.

What happened next? How did Isaac grow up? The Bible leaves gaps here. What it says is that Isaac marries Rebecca and that Isaac in the line of Abraham becomes the father of many nations and becomes the beginner of the whole nation of Israel. So we look upon Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as the founding fathers of the Jewish religion. I hope that was enough of a reward for Isaac to help him with his psychological scars.

As many of you are parents and grandparents and are involved in raising children, I know many of you realize how difficult it is. You know how easy it might be to break trust with them by doing something wrong. How often have we said, “Do as I say, not as I do.” I think that is sometimes a frequent refrain. There are times when we do things that we are not proud of and our children become aware of it. We wonder how that affects their lives. I remember once, my dad, with me sitting beside him was driving down a narrow street when he side-swiped about six cars. Did he get out and put a note on their cars and say, “Call my insurance company?” No. He kept on going! I felt terrible about my dad when he did that. I thought, “Oh my gosh! That is stealing. That is robbing. All these poor people will come out and they'll see all their cars scraped along the side.” “Dad, what are you doing?” In many ways, my dad was a very good man. He did some things that I am very very proud of like standing up in the American Dental Association and the Kentucky Dental Association for the integration of their organizations and the fair treatment of different races in the associations. He did some really good Christian things. But there was a time when he didn't and I lost some respect. That kind of thing happens. I think about raising my own children and the things that I've done where they might have lost respect. Sure, there are some things and I feel terrible about them. I apologized and I hope that helped. We need to be gentle with ourselves in terms of our parenting. How our children turn out is not just about how we parent. There is a myth that tells all of us that if your kids turn out poorly, it is because you were a bad parent. The myth also says, if your kids turn out great, it was because you were a good parent. Of course, we like to accept that one. That feels good. But the reality is that there are five major influences in child-raising that determines how a child is going to turn out.

The first one is genetics. Our body types, our musculature and bone structure, will frequently determine a lot about our personality, whether we are Sanguine, or Melancholy, whether we are frequently angry, or whether we're a helper of others. This can be predetermined to a degree by our genetics and our body shapes.

There is a second thing that is now just being discovered and that is that our DNA can carry psychological messages from our predecessors, from previous family members. This is called imprinting. The most obvious example of this is if a person was raised by an alcoholic parent or grandparent, then they will have a predisposition in their DNA towards alcoholism. It doesn't mean that they will become an alcoholic but it means that they are in grave danger of the possibility of becoming an alcoholic and they really have to watch themselves and monitor their drinking. This also holds true for a lot of other things. I have a hunch that DNA in my background may have some influence on why I am a minister. I never met my grandfather. He died when my father was thirteen years old. He was a Methodist minister and I really never heard any stories about him except he was a sharp-shooter in the World War I. That is about it. Well, I also heard that besides being a Methodist minister, he also owned a dry goods store and he owned the first car dealership in Winchester, Kentucky. That is all I know about him. But I am wondering if that DNA message of being a minister may have influenced me considerably in my choice of becoming a minister because I knew that I wanted to be a minister just almost as soon as I could walk. I knew at least by the age of five I wanted to be a minister. That was contrary to what my dad wanted. My dad wanted me to be a dentist like him and wanted to turn over his dental practice to me but I didn't want to have anything to do with that. I wanted to serve God in this capacity. Where did that come from? How did that calling come? Maybe that calling came through my DNA.

The third influence on children is something you all know about and that is peers. That is especially true in the teenage years. Parents lose their authority in the teenage years. In fact, about the only weapon parents have are the car keys. It is like, “If you don't behave, you don't get the family car.” But now, kids are going out and buying their own cars by working at McDonald's or some fast food place so they have the money to buy their own cars. But we have some power over their driving abilities. What the research shows is that peer pressure during the teenage years can be far more highly influential with people than parents' influence. Parental influence is still very important. Parents need not bail out during the teenage years. They've got to be there for their children during the teenage years but they may not necessarily have the most influence.

Then the fourth thing is culture. Everybody lives in a culture. There was an interesting study that I came across years ago where a list of traits were given to people and then next to the traits were the first twenty year that a person was raised in. Does that make sense? I was raised in the forties and fifties, so my generation had certain traits. Then there was the generation, the sixties and seventies. That generation had certain traits. Eighties and nineties. Two thousand and so on up to today, and each of these twenty year groups are highly influenced by culture and therefore have predictable traits that can be expected from almost anyone of that particular age group. It is fascinating. You think that we have such control over our own lives and then we discover that our lives have all these forces and influences on them that make us what we are today and make our children turn out the way they do.

Then of course the last great influence and perhaps the most influence are the parents. The job of parents is to teach well, especially teach from this book (the Bible) because this book contains everything that is needed for a good life and a good after-life. So teaching well is the first obligation. The second obligation is to love intensely our children. That means we love them through their difficulties. We love them through their conflicts. We love them through their confrontations of us. We love them when they see us fall off the pedestal which happens usually in the teenage years or the early twenties. It is important after your children are grown to apologize to them for all the mistakes you might have made in raising them because we all make mistakes. Once you have apologized, don't bring it up again. Be done with it. Leave the past in the past.

Then lastly and most importantly, leave the rest up to God. Let God guide your parenting. Let God guide your children. Pray for your children frequently. Pray they do what it necessary in this life to get to heaven because that is the goal of this life. So often, we forget that. We want our children to be a financial success or we want them to be important or we want them to have prestige or to have fine things. But ultimately, the only thing that really matters is that they get to heaven, that they love God and have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, invite the Holy Spirit into their lives, worship and become good people, good grownups and therefore, make it ultimately to heaven.

When it comes down to all the things I've learned in my counseling training, my college, my seminary training and my life of sixty eight years, it is not formulas that bring about good children. It is faith.