Step by Step through the Old Testament
Mike Stephens, Substitute Teacher
Week 11
Genesis 20-22 - Abraham and his son, Isaac
Good morning! As we are going through the study of the Old Testament, where we are about to have a lesson this morning with looking at Isaac and being sacrificed by his father, Jacob. Would you love to teach the Bible? Would you love to study the Bible? This lesson this morning is extraordinarily rich. This is going to be a tremendous lesson.
There are four fundamental ideas that I want you to take away this morning. The first fundamental idea is that we are about to turn a corner. We have been looking at God's creation and His dealings with Adam and Eve, Noah & the Flood, and the people since the Flood. We've seen some things about Abraham, but this morning, we're going to turn a corner. A very fundamental thing is going to occur this morning in the life of Abraham that relates directly to you and to me. Most of the things that we've seen in the Old Testament are more along the lines of Old Testament history: the beginning of the Nation of Israel, the beginning of the human race. But this is going to be one of the first times in the Bible that we've seen that directly relates to you and I as Christians in the New Testament Church in 2002. What was done that we're going to study in Genesis 22 that directly relates to you and I?
You know the concept of a cornerstone? If you build a building, what's the purpose of a cornerstone? We hear that phrase used a lot in the Bible and we hear it used church, but what is the purpose of a cornerstone? It's an anchor-point, a reference point, or something to build off of. When you lay that stone on the corner, every wall, every square, etc., references back to that point. What Abraham does this morning begins the Christian faith. I want you to see that.
The second and third things go hand in hand. They have to do with faith. The second thing is that faith will be tested. Your faith in God will be tested. The King James Version (KJV) says that Abraham was "tempted." The more accurate translation would read, "testing, trying, or proving."
I'll relate a story to you. Sometimes when we hear sermons, we think all preachers must be using a standard preacher's joke book from somewhere. Seventy-five percent of you may have heard this analogy, I'm sure, but for the twenty-five who haven't, please bear with me. Do you know how a goldsmith refines gold? They take a lump of raw gold mined from the ground and put it in a pot called a smelting pot. They begin to heat it up to liquefy it, but they don't just turn the heat all the way up and quickly bring the gold to a rolling boil. They turn it to a low heat first. A certain set of impurities will boil out of that gold and the goldsmith will skim those off. Then they turn the heat up a little bit more and that higher temperature setting brings out yet another set of impurities the goldsmith skims off. He continues this refining process by turning the heat up higher and higher until it reaches a critical point. But do you know when the goldsmith knows that the gold is pure? It's like a perfect mirror. It is said that he can see his reflection coming from that gold. The analogy is that God turns up the heat on us, boiling out impurities, to the point where He can see His reflection in us. That's the purifying of our lives through faith. That's what this Bible says. That's what we're going to see with Abraham this morning. We're going to see him tested. We're going to see him put to a level of testing that I pray I never have to go through. I wouldn't want to have to decide whether I'd want to sacrifice my first and only son (we're going to talk a little bit about the reality of that).
The third thing with regard to faith is the idea that faith without works is dead. Look at this quote from John Calvin. "Faith, alone, justifies, but faith that justifies is never alone." We will look over into James. We're going to see James referencing this point with Abraham about, "You say you have faith, I say I have works. If you have faith, you will have works." There has been a lot of controversy in church over justification through faith, justification through works, the faith versus works dilemma. There is a lot that goes on here, but we are going to see that faith, without works, is dead.
But the last thing, and probably the most important thing and I don't want to run out of time, I want to get us to this - in 22:14, I've got a comment up there: Genesis 22:14 is really Genesis 1:1. It really all begins here, and here is why I say this. Abraham is going to sacrifice Isaac on Mount Moriah. He named this place Jehovah-Jireh. Which translated means, "on the mountain of the Lord, it will be seen." The KJV says "on the mount of the Lord it will be seen." NIV says "on the mount of the Lord it will be provided." We're going to look into that word "seen" and we are going to see how it means "seen" in several different senses. "It will be provided" is a very good translation but it actually means more than that. But I want us to see when we come away, Jehovah-Jireh, on the mount of the Lord it will be seen. What will be seen? What will be conceived of as a result of this sacrifice this morning? That is the point of the lesson. That's where I want to go. So again, I want to frame up what we are going to talk about.
We finished up last week with the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the beginning of Genesis. Then if you look toward the end of Chapter 19, something that is not really going to go over, but it's about as seedy as it gets. It's an incestuous relationship between Lot and his daughters, the offspring of that union and the peoples that are descended from those children. That's contained in the rest of Chapter 19. Then we see a covenant between Abraham and King Abemelech in Chapter 20. In Chapter 21, we see Isaac being born. We talked on this briefly, that Sarah, when Jesus prophesied that Abraham would have a son being born, laughed. And remember that we talked about that last week. I did some study on that word "laugh" and it's very unique. This is the only place in the Bible that this word "laugh" is actually used. There is no where else in the Bible that this particular Hebrew word is used in the Bible for the word "laugh."
Genesis 21:6
Sarah said, "God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me."
Even though 'laugh' is two different words in this verse, they are variations of the same root word. It says everyone who will hear about it will laugh with me. That word, right there, is the only time in the entire Bible that that one particular word is used. The first word can be used to connote derisive or scornful laughter, but the second one, "everyone who hears it will laugh with me," can only be used to denote joyful laughter. Laughter of being blessed. Laughter of being joyful.
This is Sarah confirming what was happening when Isaac was born. Isaac was born when Abraham was 100 years old. We are going to tie back to this when we get into Chapter 22, but I want you to see the very first prophecy, if you will, about Isaac. Look in verse 11. This is when Abraham has to give an account for, and I have some notes here about verse 21. Remember we studied that Sarah believed that she was never going to have a son, she took it upon herself to get a son through her Egyptian maidservant, Hagar, and that son was named Ishmael. After Isaac was born, Ishmael began to scorn and mock Isaac. Abraham came to understand that Ishmael and Isaac couldn't live in the same household and he had to send away Ishmael. Ishmael is sent away. If you look on down through Chapter 21, it is recorded that Hagar was sent away with Ishmael and God looking out for them and caring for them, but eventually Ishmael's offspring become the enemies of Israel over time. So this is what Chapter 21 is about. Again, I don't want to spend a lot of time on that, because I do want us to get into 22 and spend our time there.
Genesis 22:1-2
Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. Then God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about."
Now, first off, I mentioned to you, that word "test." Let's look over at the book of James real quick. I want to talk just a second about the tempting or testing of God that Abraham is undergoing here. One of the principles, if you will, when studying the Bible, is when an Old Testament event is referenced in the New Testament, it takes on a special validation. It takes on special meaning to the faith. If you begin to look at the Bible and you begin to see how the Old Testament and the New Testament are linked together. You will begin to see why the New Testament writers pulled the Old Testament concepts forward. The Bible takes on a different sort of a meaning. You have all seen these pictures and you look at them and they just look like a bunch of broken tiles and jibberish-looking things, but if you look at them in the right way and at the right distance, a picture emerges. The Bible is like that. You can look at individual pieces of the Bible and understand them on their own right; but if you hold the Bible back and you look at it from the right distance, it tells a whole story. It tells the whole picture.
Have you ever thought that if God were to sum His entire dealings with man, what would His purpose be? What would His point be? That's a grand thought, but, if you were to ask what God's ultimate purpose towards mankind, what do you think that it would be? To have us love one another? Relationships? That's what we have been studying- God having a relationship with us. But what does He want from that relationship? Since God is our Creator, for us to be like Him? For us to mirror some of His many traits? But for us to completely be like God, obviously we will never attain that. What then is it that God wants in us? What trait is it? This is a point that I really want us to walk out with this morning. What is it that God wants from us as people? Faith? What does that faith demand? That's really where we're going.
Think of it as a parent. You think of your own children. What is the ultimate success for you as a parent? How about the respect of your child that culminates in your child coming to you and looking at you and saying, "Thank you. I understand what you did for me" I understand that you brought me into this world; I understand you disciplined me, you fed me, you loved me. I now want to honor you, respect you, and lift you up in a way that no one else can. Because no one else knows what you have done for me. No one else knows all of those things that only you, Mother, and only you, Father, did for me." Coming from that child, is that not the ultimate in what a parent is? Well then, I say that when God looks at us, that is what God wants. He wants us to look at Him and say "Oh, my only God!" All of these things that you created. Everything that you are, all that You have shown me;, You have loved me, You sent your Son to die for me! Some of the things that we are going to look at here, but the whole spectrum of things that God has done for us, for us to have willingly, sincerely, fervently, come before Him and worship Him. That's what God wants!
One of the first things that we have to do to enter into that place is to sacrifice. We have to sacrifice - look at this other quote, "A faith that costs nothing, a faith that demands nothing, is worth nothing." We are going to go through so many things in the Old Testament. I don't want to be overly graphic and overly crude about this, but whenever you see "sacrifice" in the Old Testament, why do you think God had these Old Testament Jews take animals and slay them and burn them on an alter? What do you think His purpose was? Again, this is where I don't want to be overly graphic, but I mean at some point someone took a knife and took a lambs throat and cut it in front of their children and put it on a fire and burned it up. That is a pretty arresting scene, especially for a child. Why did God do that? What was the purpose in that? Couldn't He have found a little more civilized way of getting the point across? It was because of our sin. Our sin cost that animal its life. That's what that father taught those children. "Children, because we have sinned we have to pay atonement to God. It has taken this innocent lamb's life to do that." That was a serious thing.
So when we see all of these Old Testament ceremonies and pictures and types, these are all things that we are going to see lived out before us. This isn't just Old Testament Jewish history and some 'weird' Israeli people- these are all pictures of God saying specific things to us. "Your sin is a grievance to me. It has to be atoned for, it has to be paid for and it took the life blood of an innocent animal to cover that sin." God also demanded the very best one and the fattest one. You have heard many teachers talk about this. This is how God has, on any given Sunday, a correlation to everything that He wants to be heard in His place on that day. Brother Bob was talking about John 3:16, the sacrifice given and now we are talking about Abraham sacrificing his own son. It is the same message; I didn't know what he was going to preach about and he didn't know what we were studying about in Sunday School. The message is the same, it is a cohesive, solid message. That happens almost every Sunday that you are tuned in.
<From the class: Pastor Bob mentioned in the sermon this morning that sacrifice is something that you give of yourself. And, the lamb or whatever animal is offered for a sacrifice is also a value to these people. They measured their worth by the size of their herd. This was giving something of their value.>
Being 'tuned in' leads to another point that I want us to see- God said "Abraham" and Abraham said "here am I." He was listening. We are going to get over into Isaiah and we're going to see a verse saying "there is a small, still voice saying 'this is the way, walk in it.'" Hearing that small still voice means that you have to have a certain amount of sanctity, a certain amount of peacefulness in your mind, a certain amount of inner peace. Abraham had that. That's why he was able to hear God. But even in having that degree of peace, that degree of focus on hearing God, God needed to test him further. He needed to refine him further. Now look over in James. The whole beginning of James is talking about the value of trials to us. I have been fortunate enough to teach the book of James. James is a very powerful book and on this point about the value of trials James says "Count it all of the blessings my brothers when you face all kinds of trials and temptations." Count it all a blessing." That doesn't come naturally, we can't go naturally to that point. He references Abraham because at the end of this, Abraham would count it a blessing. Look at what James says:
James 2:20-21
You foolish man, do you want evidence that faith without deeds is useless? Was not our ancestor Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?
You see that his faith and his actions were working together and his faith was made complete by what he did. This is the point that I want to get across with regard to Abraham. He knew that child sacrifice was wrong. The neighboring pagan peoples would literally sacrifice their children to the false god, Molech. They would literally take their children and burn them in fires to a false god. That was the practice of the neighboring peoples during Abraham's time. He knew that sacrificing a human being was wrong and yet God demanded it of him. Secondly, he knew the promises that God had made to him through Isaac. "Through your son, through your offspring. Your descendants will be like the stars in heaven and the sands in the seas." Abraham knew all of that. Yet, here is God saying, "Go and sacrifice your son." He didn't say, "Teach him right and make him a good man;" he said to sacrifice him on an altar. Abraham knew full well what God was saying. This was contrary to everything that God had taught him. Abraham didn't have a Bible to read. These were the early days of God dealing with mankind. Abraham had nothing to go on except what he sensed that God was telling him. What a confusing message! What if he got that one wrong? Sacrificing a son and then "I realized a few years later: Oh! That's not what He meant, that's not how to interpret that verse." That would be a pretty bad blunder, wouldn't it? This is where Abraham was. Look at what it says after this:
Genesis 22:3-5
Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, "Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you."
This was five days after God first spoke to him. God spoke to him one day, he loaded up the next day, and then traveled for three more days after that. So he's had some "soak time" with this. He's had some time to grieve over this. He's had some time to think through what all of this means. "How am I going to deal with this?" This isn't some kind of analogy. This isn't some allegory in the Bible. This happened. This is where the tenets of our faith began. There was a living, breathing guy named Abraham. He had a living, breathing son named Isaac. He thought in his spirit that God was telling him to go to some mountain somewhere and sacrifice Isaac on a burnt offering. This happened. He had three or four days to deal with this and comes to grips with what this means.
He sees the mountain off in the distance and tells these two servants, "Stay here. We will go and we will come back." Notice it's "We" will come back, not "I" will come back. If he'd used the literal interpretation that Isaac was going to die, he would have said, "I will come back." Why do you think he said, "We?" Do you think he knew in his own heart that he wasn't going to follow through with it? Maybe he said it to placate the servants. What else might have been going on in his mind? What are the options? Either he wasn't going to follow through with it, or, what? God was going to intervene. How? What would the intervention look like? Put yourself in his shoes. What were the options? What could he logically believe? We don't really know what to think here. But again, this is why Abraham is so important. Remember. We've seen him leave his country and wander around. Everything Abraham has done, he's done on faith. Remember, it was said, "Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness." It's his belief in God. He's not sure where this thing's going. He's not sure how he's going to get there. I want you to feel the intensity of what he's having to go through here. "We" will go and "we" will come back.
Genesis 22:6a
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife.
I want to make a point about that wood. In a minute, we're going to see something about Isaac. Some people have said that Isaac was a baby. What we're going to see in a second is Abraham binding Isaac, building an altar, putting wood, setting it on fire, taking his son, and preparing to put him on the altar. Isaac has seen this drill before. He knew what was about to happen. If he's a 4-5 year old kid, binding him up, and saying, "Son, this is for your own good. It hurts me worse than it hurts you," how much is he going to fight back? That's what some commentators have taught. You study the timelines on this and when this probably occurred, and most commentators will put Isaac as a late-teenager, at the youngest, and possibly into his early thirties. To further make that point, in order to build these altars for sacrifices, you don't do it with one of these little bundles of wood that you can buy at the grocery store. You've got to have a pretty good-sized fire going on. If Isaac was big enough to carry that bundle of wood, he wasn't a four or five year old kid.
The point I'm trying to get you to here is to think about it now from Isaac's standpoint. "I've got this crazy Daddy. We've been living in tents my whole life and he gets this word from God and here we go off somewhere again." He's never known anything and now it's coming to this. Think about Isaac. Think about, when Abraham dies, who Isaac becomes. And then Isaac's son, Jacob. Remember, we have Abraham, Isaac, and then Jacob. This is one of those life-defining moments for Isaac. Let's look at it from his shoes, too, as we go through this.
Genesis 22:7-14
Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?" Abraham replied. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together. When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham! Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. "Do not lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son." Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided."
Abraham is paying attention. I would imagine he's in a very thoughtful and prayerful mood right about now, wouldn't you?
The KJV says, "Abraham called that place Jehovah-Jireh, which translated means, 'On the mount of the Lord it will be seen.'"
Genesis 22:15-18
The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me."
<From the class: Doesn't it sound like God was proud? I mean it sounds like he's beaming with pride. You can just tell.>
That's why I say this is a cornerstone event. This is the first time in human history (young though it may be) that a man has put God first, over his own son that he'd waited a lifetime to have. God had made promises to him involving this son that Abraham loved (and Abraham didn't love his son any less than we love our children today). Look at the very last part of that: "all because you have obeyed me." This is the point. This is why I say that Abraham is the beginning of this whole, complex picture of what we're beginning to see that the New Testament, the Bible, and God are trying to teach us. He's teaching us, "I want you to worship me. I want you to fear me. I want you to revere me. And I will ask you to sacrifice for me; not something that doesn't matter to you, but something that matters intensely to you."
Do you think it was possible that Abraham could have idolized Isaac? Can your children become an idol to you? Have you seen people who allow their children to come between them and God? That occurs. I've seen that too. God had to know. He'd already said that Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Why wasn't that enough? Why couldn't He know what Abraham would've done? I mean, He's God, right? He's omniscient and knows the future. Why did He make Abraham go through that? Why did He make him play it out? Why did He bring him to that point of raising the knife to slay his own son? Why did He bring it to that point? Based on Abraham's free will, did God really know what was going to happen? The Bible teaches election and pre-destination, but it also teaches free will. Jesus said, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man opens that door..." not "if any man happens to be one of the elect." He said, "If any man opens that door." He is taking Abraham to the point where he has to demonstrate his own will, his own choice. You have to demonstrate your own will, your own choice. The fact that God knows what you will or will not do is really immaterial. That's in the domain of God. Justice can only be justice if the person willingly had a choice to do or not to do. What I want to focus on here is that Abraham's faith was tested up to the absolute, very hilt.
You change once you've been tested, once you know what you're made of. Have you ever failed a test or temptation: stared it right in the face and caved in? You know what that feels like. It doesn't make you feel like much of a person. But we've also had these mountain-top experiences where we've stared the devil right in the eye and, not through our own power, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are able to triumph. You also know what that feels like. It is those "cornerstones" that build us into who we are. It's that very point. Revelation teaches about the city of God, its size measured in cubits. If I could draw a picture of that city, you'd see that the cornerstone is laid right here with this man Abraham obeying God. Then the angel appears and says that because Abraham obeyed, "your descendants will be numerous, your people will take the cities (the KJV says, "the gates of your enemies"), and all the inhabitants of earth will be blessed because of you." It didn't even say "through your descendants the earth will be blessed" there, did it? How did that work?
Here's what many commentators think. It's a deeper point that I want to share with you. If this is the beginning of what God is doing with regard to mankind, what's the end? What's the culmination? The Church; the rapture. When He raptures out His Church, that's the beginning of the end, right? That's when it's over. What is the Church? The bride of Christ. Isaac is a form of Jesus. Look at John 8 and we'll close with this. The Pharisees are questioning Jesus.
John 8:54-56
Jesus replied, "If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad."
Do you know where Jesus was standing? In the Temple. Do you know where the Temple was built? Mount Moriah, the very place where Abraham was to sacrifice his son. Abraham saw. On the mountain of the Lord, it will be seen. Seen, as in conceived. Remember your notes. The mind of man has not conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him. "Seen" in that sense. "Seen to" as in "provided." "Seen after" as in "cared for." On the mountain of the Lord, it will be seen. Two thousand years prior, Abraham, standing on Mount Moriah, had in his heart sacrificed his son. Abraham had already counted Isaac dead. He'd already sacrificed him in his mind. He just hadn't followed through. Any act begins first with a thought. He'd already done it. God knew he had. He had the knife up. He was stopped. The mechanics of the blood being spilt was all that was left. At that point, Abraham saw what God was beginning to do. On the mount of the Lord it will be seen. Two thousand years, fast forward. We're going to read when we get into Chronicles how Solomon builds the Temple on Mount Moriah. And then Jesus, standing in that Temple, said, "Abraham saw this day and was glad." Jesus is the Church. Jesus founds the Church. The Church is the bride of Christ. This is an Old Testament picture or prophecy of what God's doing. Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son and Isaac's willingness to be sacrificed. Jesus said, "If any man loves me, he should take up his cross and follow me." Jesus said, "Any man who puts his hands to the plow but turns back is not fit for the kingdom of God." Paul said, "It's your own spiritual service that you commit your bodies as a sacrifice to the Lord." We have to sacrifice to the Lord through our salvation and through our worship to make ourselves into a holy bride that will be raptured and presented to God's Son. That's the big picture. That's what God is doing. It all begins right here. This is really Genesis 1:1. It all begins here.
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Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®.
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