“DECIDE TO OBEY GOD.” GENESIS 22: 1-14.
GENESIS 22: 1-2, 3, 4-6, 7-8, 9-10, 11-13, 14.
PLEASE OPEN YOUR BIBLE TO GENESIS 22.
God does not accept second place in the lives of these whom He has saved. He demands total surrender and complete commitment.
Isaac represented all the covenant blessings that God had bestowed on Abraham. More than all Abraham’s wealth, flocks, herds, servants, and even the land of Canaan. Isaac represented everything God had given His chosen servant. Now God wanted Isaac back.
We have perhaps mastered the art of receiving blessings from God’s gracious hand, but how do we respond when He asks for us to return what He has given us? If we find it difficult even to tithe, can we really say we have given Him our all? If we hardly share our blessings with those less fortunate than ourselves, can we say that God owns it all? We all need to learn the lesson, that God’s amazing love both demands and deserves our all.
Faith and Obedience belong together. If our faith is in the Lord of our lives, we obey without questioning Him. Abraham had this kind of faith and obedience. The theme of testing, which is prominent throughout the life of Abraham, comes to a climax in Genesis 22. This is the account of Abraham’s obedience to God’s command to sacrifice his son Isaac. This has been called the greatest chapter in Genesis. Judged simply by its literary qualities. It must be acclaimed a masterpiece. Judged by its spiritual qualities, it is sublimely inspiring. If ever an interpreter stood on holy ground, it is here.
PLEASE READ GENESIS 22: 1-2.
Genesis 22 is one of the most difficult passages in the Bible to comprehend, but not because the words are too big or the concepts too hard to understand. Genesis 22 is particularly challenging because the implications reach into the most private corners of our lives.
In this chapter no one acts quite like we would expect. God demanded a human sacrifice. A loving father prepared to kill his son. A son, who was about to be killed, quietly acquiesces and goes along with the ritual.
Perhaps the reason that no one acts quite like we expect, is that we don’t act quite as we should as believers. We have grown so comfortable with partial obedience that a demonstration of unreserved and total surrender to God seems foreign and nearly impossible.
Although God will not likely ask us for the same kind of sacrifice that He asked of Abraham, He still demands that we present Him with everything we hold dearest in life.
In all the years Abraham had walked with the Lord, he had come to trust Him. Although Abraham had stumbled along the path a few times during the years, he had always followed God back to the right way. His steps had faltered at times, but the general direction of his life had proven that he was serious about following God.
God had kept every promise that He had made to Abraham. He had blessed him with incredible, unimaginable wealth. Abraham had numerous servants at that time. He had enjoyed life with a beautiful wife, and then he had fathered a miracle child through her. Everything that God had promised, had indeed come to pass. He owed the Lord everything he owned, every breath he drew, every step he took. All God needed to do was call and Abraham would answer.
So one day God tested Abraham. God called Abraham by name, and he responded Here I am. Abraham had already passed many tests in his life. The first trial of his faith was the test of a major change, to see if he would be willing to follow God even without knowing where God would take him.
Then came the test of the delayed promise: Could Abraham trust God’s timing, even though he did not know when God would give him the land of Canaan as He had promised? Could he and Sarah expect the miracle child God had assured them would come, even though they could not possibly understand how God would bring it about? In each case Abraham had passed the test—even though there were a few occasions that he had to take it a second time.
Abraham had done well in his previous studies in faith, but the Lord was ready to give him an advanced test. This test was the ultimate assessment of the reality and the quality of Abraham’s faith in his God.
This was not to be a temptation; rather God would examine Abraham’s heart. James in James 1: 2-3 says, “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.” Trials can be considered pure joy only when there is knowledge, that they are designed by God, for a purpose.
God often tested or proved His people in the O.T., but they were forbidden to test God. God tested them to determine the sincerity of their devotion to Him. However, it was regarded as presumptuous for them to doubt His faithfulness and reliability toward them.
The Scriptures also make it clear that while God tested men, He never tempted them to do evil. God’s purpose in testing is to strengthen faith; Satan seeks to tempt people to sin.
Abraham had done well in his previous studies in faith, but the Lord was ready to give him an advanced test. This test was the ultimate assessment of the reality and the quality of Abraham’s faith in God
Abraham’s heart must have jumped when he heard God’s command: “Take your son…your only son Isaac, whom you love, go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”
The Lord’s words indicate His complete comprehension of the depth of love Abraham focused on young Isaac. First of all, God noted that Isaac was not just anyone to Abraham, but his son. Since Ishmael was not the child of promise but the child of Abraham’s self-will and disobedience, he was not even recognized as a son of Abraham in the same sense that Isaac was.
Ishmael and his mother Hagar, had already left Abraham’s home.
In God’s eyes, Isaac was Abraham’s only son because he was the one whom God had promised him from the beginning. Isaac’s birth was miraculous because Abraham was about 100 years old when he was born and Sarah was about 90. They could not count on an opportunity for conceiving another son from whom the promised nation would arise.
Finally, God called Isaac the son whom you love. It is interesting that this is the first time the word love occurs in the Bible, describing the love of a father for his son. The difficulty in offering Isaac lay not just in the fact that he was the promised heir and progenitor for the descendants of Abraham but also in the depth of Abraham’s love for him.
He had reared Isaac with dreams that were rooted in the promises of God. When Abraham looked into the future, he saw Isaac. He reminisced about God’s promises and found them fulfilled in his precious son. He could not even imagine the future or life itself without “Laughter,” his son.
It is difficult for us to grasp the seriousness of the dilemma that Abraham faced. On the one hand, he loved his son dearly. But he also loved God. His dilemma, therefore, was that he must choose between his love for God and his love for his son. Or to state it negatively, he had to decide whether to kill his son or to disobey his God. Surely no man ever faced a more difficult situation.
The dilemma was sharpened by the fact that Isaac was God’s gift to Abraham. Now Abraham must decide which he loved more, the gift, or the Giver. All of us have the benefit of knowing what Abraham had to go through was just a test, but Abraham had no way of knowing this. To him it was painfully real. He was as ignorant of the divine purpose as Job was in Job 1-2.
The text gives no hint that Abraham misunderstood God in any way. God’s instructions to him were so specific that they were unmistakable. The final test for Abraham was the test of senseless tragedy. God was requiring Abraham to go through a tragic event that made no sense. Could he trust God even when he did not understand why God acted as He did?
Sometimes believers experience great tragedies that cause great pain but eventually bring great glory to God. It was tragic when missionary Jim Elliot and his companions were martyred in Ecuador, but ultimately one can see how God used it to call many men and women into missionary service. This doesn’t lessen the grief at the time it happened, but at least one can see that God used it in some way for His glory.
But what God asked Abraham to do made no sense at all. No one would be there to witness it, and even if someone did, they would not understand. No good could possibly come out of offering Isaac at Moriah---no good except obedience to God. Was that enough?
The reason this test was so difficult was that it seemed to destroy all that God had done to give Abraham and Sarah this child of promise. Why would God now order Isaac’s death? The command to kill Isaac seemed to contradict all that God had revealed of who He was and what He was doing. The hardest tests believers face, seem to deny that God knows best and cares for us.
The reason Abraham did not stagger on receiving this astounding demand from God may be accounted for by remembering that the practice of offering human sacrifices prevailed among the early Chaldeans and Canaanites, and that as yet no formal prohibition, like that of Moses code, had been issued against them.
Christians who face difficulties in life sometimes agonize over whether the problem they face is a test from God or a temptation from the devil. It may actually be both. God tests His children to make them stronger; Satan tempts God’s children to make them stumble. The very same event can be a loving test by God and an evil temptation by Satan.
While Satan likely attempted to make Abraham angry at God, the Lord was using the identical event to draw Abraham into a level of intimacy with Him that he could never have known otherwise. No matter if an event is a test or a temptation, the response must be the same: complete surrender and obedience to the Lord, no matter what the cost.
The test for Abraham in the face of God’s demand was whether he would do the natural thing—which would be to refrain from killing his son—or the God thing---which meant to obey God despite the pain it would bring him. Could Abraham take the leap of faith away form his own sense of righteousness and trust God completely?
Perhaps one of the greatest impediments to obeying God occurs when a Christian thinks God’s demands are unreasonable. Is tithing unreasonable? Is giving one’s children to the mission field unreasonable? Is leaving a secure income and job to enter the ministry unreasonable? The only unreasonable action is to refuse to follow the will of God, what ever it may be.
TEACHER READ GEN. 22: 3. “SO EARLY IN THE MORNING ABRAHAM GOT UP, SADDLED HIS DONKEY, AND TOOK WITH HIM TWO OF HIS YOUNG MEN AND HIS SON ISAAC. HE SPILT WOOD FOR A BURNT OFFERING AND SET OUT TO GO TO THE PLACE GOD HAD TOLD HIM ABOUT.”
It didn’t take Abraham long to obey God. The party of four (Abraham, Isaac, and two servants) made preparation for the journey, left the next morning and traveled the 50 miles to Mount Moriah. This is where Solomon later built the Temple in Jerusalem. It is now called the Dome of the Rock, the third most holy place in Islam: A beautiful shrine to Mohammad.
Abraham could not have know why God wanted him to go to a specific mountain, but God was orchestrating the events of Abraham’s offering to point to the sacrifice that another Father would make one day.
On that mountain was a very large rock on which the priests would sacrifice the lambs used for sacrifice. Not far from there---on the ridge---was the place where God the Father would offer His Son, Jesus Christ as a sacrifice for human sin.
Abraham could not possibly have know what the future would hold and how sacred that place would become. All he knew was that God did not say any location would do. The Lord sent Abraham to Moriah.
PLEASE READ GENESIS 22; 4-6.
After traveling three days, Abraham saw the place in the distance. His young servants had helped them come this far, but it was time to leave them behind. This would be an act of close communion with God, a time of intimate fellowship that he could not share with the slaves. So Abraham told them, “Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I will go over there to worship, at the Dome of the Rock on Mt. Moriah.”
Abraham’s greatest statement, however, was not that they would go worship but in vs. 5 that they would come back. The text of Genesis does not give the full explanation that the Holy Spirit has recorded in the Epistle of Hebrews, which says in Heb. 11: 19, that Abraham “considered God to be able even to raise someone from the dead, from which he also got him back as an illustration.” Abraham acted on God’s instructions and simply believed God’s promise.
It could not have made any sense to him that God wanted him to offer Isaac, because he was certain that Isaac was the one through whom a nation would be born. The only way he could fit the pieces of information together was to conclude that after he offered Isaac, God was going to raise him from the dead.
Even knowing that God would raise Isaac from the dead could not have erased the pain and grief that Abraham felt.
As they traveled up that long hill to the top of Moriah, Abraham must have rehearsed his actions over and over in his mind. He took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, knowing that soon he would lay Isaac on that same wood and ignite it before the Lord.
In his hand he took the fire, probably hot coals carried in a hollow horn, and the sacrificial knife. Isaac had to be strong enough to carry enough wood to consume the sacrifice. So this incident must have been when Isaac was a young man, possibly 20 years of age. He was 40 when he married (Gen. 25: 20).
Abraham could not help but think about the look on his son’s face as he raised the knife in the air. No doubt Isaac had seen his father and his servants perform that very ritual on lambs many times. As the two of them walked on together, both of them began to muse on what was about to take place; Isaac with a sense of bewilderment, and Abraham with a sense of dread.
PLEASE READ GENESIS 22: 7-8.
The trek to the top of the mountain apparently was undertaken in silence except for one brief snatch of conversation. As the lad trudged along behind his father, his curiosity got the best of him. Apparently the ritual of sacrifice was familiar to him. He knew what the necessary elements included. Now it suddenly dawned on him that his father evidently had forgotten the most important element of all—the lamb. Isaacs’s curiosity prompted him to ask where the lamb was.
No further words of Isaac are recorded in the chapter. Did he speak or cry out when his father bound him, laid him upon the altar, and raised the knife above him? The writer does not satisfy our curiosity at this point. One must not forget, however, that this experience was an ordeal for the lad as well as for his father.
Abraham’s reply to Isaac, “My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering,” was deliberately evasive. Abraham’s words must not be interpreted to mean that he knew in advance that Isaac would be spared and that there would be a ram caught in a thicket at the top of the mountain.
On the other hand, Abraham’s evasive reply contained a more far-reaching meaning than he realized. The reader is aware that when the two reached the place of sacrifice God did indeed provide a lamb for the father to offer up instead of his son. In this we are reminded also of a most distant sacrifice, when the Lamb of God was offered up for the sins of the world.
In a sense, Isaac asked the O.T’s. basic question, Where is the lamb for a burnt offering? The N.T. answers in John 1:29, “Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”
The emphasis is on Abraham’s faith and obedience, not Isaac’s. However, the text suggests that Isaac too had faith and obedience. He asked one obvious question, but trusting in God and in his father, he seems to have been willing to die.
The Bible tells us little about Isaac. He lived in the shadows of his famous father and his famous son. He is remembered as Abraham’s son and Jacob’s father. This event from his young adult years was probably his finest hour. Outstanding was the love and mutual respect of Abraham and Isaac. This is seen in the words my father and my son. It is also seen in the words “they went both of them together”.
5. PLEASE READ GENESIS 22: 9-10.
When they arrived at the place that God had described, Abraham quickly built the altar there and arranged the wood, just as he had hundreds of times before. Abraham had built other altars---at Shechem, at Bethel, and at Hebron---but never one so significant as this.
Rather than binding a lamb, however, this time he bound Isaac and placed him on the altar, right on top of the wood. The normal way this was done was to slit the throat of the animal and to drain the blood before lighting the wood. Following that procedure, Abraham reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son. No matter how conflicted his mind may have felt, his actions demonstrated that he valued obedience above his own emotions and God above his own son.
Moses, the writer of Genesis, described every movement made by Abraham. The narrative is again slowed down by the preparations on the mountain. The details are noted with frightful accuracy: Abraham builds the altar, stacks the wood on it, binds Isaac, places Isaac on top of the altar, stretches forth his hand, and take the large slaughter knife. It is as if we are watching this is slow motion, not because Abraham was dragging his feet but because we need to see each deliberate act leading to the plunging of the knife. All the words show the horror of what was about to be done.
6. PLEASE READ GENESIS 22: 11-13.
Abraham had done everything God had required of him. He had left immediately when God told him to leave; he had traveled three days’ journey to the very spot that God had described. He had prepared the altar for burnt offerings. Abraham lacked only one thing to complete the test. He only had to kill Isaac.
Showing no hesitation, Abraham would have done it. But the Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and stopped him. The Holmon Bible correctly capitalizes the word Angel because this refers to God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity. He alone is worthy to be the Lamb, and He alone was able to stop Abraham’s hand because Jesus would one day give himself as the Lamb that God would provide for an eternal sacrifice.
Can you imagine the flood of relief and joy that Abraham and Isaac felt? Abraham had fully expected to slay Isaac, and the son had fully expected to die on that mountain. Abraham had passed the test. Now God knew that Abraham’s professed faith was genuine. God said, “Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from Me.
After Abraham said, “Here I am,” God told him not to lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him. The reason God stopped him was “now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from Me.” The lord was not suggesting that He had doubts before, because God knows everything. He was speaking in a way Abraham could understand, to indicate that he had passed the test. He had demonstrated that his love and devotion to the Lord was truly first in his life.
As Abraham looked up, he saw a ram caught in a thicket. Abraham was able to offer the ram as a burnt offering in place of his son. The typology and symbolism is wonderfully obvious. Just as Abraham had told Isaac, God provided a sacrifice---one that took Isaac’s place. Similarly, God provided a sacrifice that took the place of everyone who will repent of their sins and place their trust in Him as Lord and Savior.
The Bible teaches that Jesus was a substitutionary sacrifice, that He died as a substitute for sinners just as the ram died as a substitute for Isaac.
Abraham’s obedience led him to experience the blessing of God in a way that nothing else could. He settled the issue of what in life was most important to him. By releasing Isaac to the Lord, he received him back in a greater way than ever before. He did not need to fear for him or for their relationship because he had already given him to God. Not only did God know how much Abraham love Him but Isaac saw his father’s love for God as well.
In retrospect Abraham could see how all this test had been the good work of a living God. Thus Gen. 22 has a message similar to Rom. 8:28. In spite of events that seem to cast doubt on God’s goodness, He works all things together, for good to those who love him.
7. TEACHER READ GENESIS 22: 14. “AND ABRAHAM NAMED THAT PLACE “THE LORD WLL PROVIDE,” SO TODAY IT IS SAID: “IT WILL BE PROVIDED ON THE LORD’S MOUNTAIN.”
Abraham must have been overjoyed. Though fully prepared to offer Isaac and wait for God to raise him from the dead. Abraham experienced a resurrection because he had offered Isaac in his heart though he never had to do it with his hand.
In gratitude to
God Abraham memorialized what God had done there and named that place
Jehovah-jireh or “The Lord will provide.” A name that became
proverbial in Israel as people would declare, “It will be provided
on the Lord’s mountain.
That is precisely what Calvary is all
about. There on the cross Jesus provided salvation on the Lord’s
mountain. People who have experienced the forgiveness of sins and the
substitutionary death of Christ because of Calvary should always
remember that mountain and tell others about God’s
provision for them in salvation.
NEXT SUNDAY FROM GENESIS 24 “WHAT CAN I DO TO LEAVE A GODLY LEGACY FOR MY FAMILY? altav@swbell.net A.V. DAUGHERTY