Sunday message · The Bible Together series
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Message Summary
Pastor Phillip Santillan turns to Genesis 22, which only makes sense in light of what came before. God promised an ordinary man that all peoples would be blessed through him, but Abraham and Sarah were old, and the whole promise hung on a son they did not have. After decades of waiting, Abraham finally held Isaac in his arms. Then God said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love,” and offer him as a burnt offering.
Music was Phil’s identity from childhood, and when he came to faith at 15 and sensed a call to ministry, he assumed it would be through music. Slowly his confidence and calling came to depend on being a good enough musician, even to dreaming of rock stardom. Through circumstances, God asked him whether he trusted the gift more than the giver. When he let go, a calling he never planned opened up, eventually leading to Clarity. The same question lies under Abraham’s story: does he trust the God who made the promise more than the promise itself?
God is not naive about the cost; he names Isaac as the son Abraham loves. He is not after Isaac but after whatever has taken the place in Abraham’s heart where God alone belongs. God does not test us to learn something he does not know. “He tests us because we need to find out something about ourselves.” Abraham rises early, walks three days in silence and tells his servants that he and the boy will come back. The text does not say whether that was certainty, but real trust sometimes just keeps walking, and Hebrews 11:19 says Abraham reasoned that God could raise Isaac from the dead.
When Isaac asks where the lamb is, Abraham answers that God himself will provide it, which Phil says carries the sense of God seeing to it himself. Abraham does not know what God will do, but he knows who God is. We can say God will provide while still clinging to what we built our security around. The fear of God Abraham shows is not terror but a settled orientation of the heart that places God above everything we love. The ram was already in the thicket, and it points beyond the mountain: Isaac was spared, but Jesus was not. As Paul tells the Romans, God did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all.
For anyone unsure about Jesus, the gospel is not God rewarding effort but God providing the substitute himself. For followers of Christ, our Isaac has a name: a relationship, a career that has become our identity, or our plans for how life should go. We release it not by willpower but because God has already proved, at the highest cost, that he can be trusted. “What if God ruins your plans so your plans don’t ruin you?” Phil invites everyone to name their Isaac, write it down and pray, Lord, I want to trust you with this more than I trust myself.
