Genesis 22:1-14
Costly Obedience
Sometimes we go through such heavy trials in this life. And, if we’re honest, we may wonder, “God, why are you allowing this to happen to me? I’m trying to follow you best I can. Why, Lord?” Yet, perhaps the better question would be, “Lord, what do you want me to learn out of this?” How do you keep that perspective that God is still at work, even through trials? Consider some lessons from today’s story. First,
1. God tests our faith. There will be times in your life when God allows you to go through trying experiences. Most of you have lived long enough to look back and identify some of these times. James 1:2-3 tells us, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.” God uses tests and trials to grow us.
Abraham faced the trial of his life. God told him to sacrifice his one and only son. Remember that Ishmael had been sent away. Only Isaac remains, the child of promise, the one that took 25 years to be born, the answer to God’s promise that Abraham and Sarah will parent a nation, more descendants than the sand on the seashore or the stars in the sky. And now God says to kill him! What is Abraham to think?
It’s the major trial: will Abraham trust in the promise? Or will Abraham trust in the God who gave the promise? Will he let anything or anyone come between him and his God? Will his relationship with God remain top priority in his life?
Perhaps Jesus was thinking of this priority when he said, much later, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). As a Jewish rabbi, Jesus taught by exaggeration. Does he literally want us to hate our closest family members? Of course not. But he exaggerates to make the point that nothing and no one should come between us and him. You can only serve one master. Jesus must be the number one priority of our life. That’s what it means to be his disciple.
And that’s what Abraham must come to terms with. Will he obey the God who gave him this son of promise? Of course, Isaac too must come to terms with his own obedience. Most scholars think Isaac is between 17 and 20 years old, so he could easily overpower his elderly dad. My dad used to play wrestle with us boys, pinning us to the ground and tickling us. I remember the first time I came home from college and pinned my dad. Never did he wrestle me again.
Isaac could resist, but he doesn’t. He yields, allowing his father to tie him up. The rabbis call this story, “The Binding,” and portray Isaac as a great hero who allows himself to be bound as a sacrifice to God. Isaac chooses to obey his father, trusting that his father has heard correctly from God.
And Abraham? Hebrews 11:19 tells us, “Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.” The story illustrates this. Abraham tells his servants in verse 5, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Abraham is very clear that both he and the boy will go AND both he and the boy will return. He believes if God chooses for the boy to die, then God will bring him back to life. That is faith. That is costly obedience.
God will test your faith at times. God will call you to costly obedience. And out of that, you will learn something new about God. That is the second big lesson I see, that, out of hardship,
2. God grows our faith. When you endure times of testing, your faith has an opportunity to grow. Your understanding of God will mature.
In our story today, Abraham is obedient to God to the point of taking the life of his one and only son, the son of promise. As he lifts the knife into the air, at the last possible moment, the voice of the Lord intervenes and stop him. Immediately, Abraham notices a ram caught by his horns and sacrifices the ram in place of Isaac. Abraham names that place, “The Lord will provide,” or Yahweh Yireh, because God provided a sacrifice in place of Isaac.
Nothing catches God by surprise. God wasn’t looking down from heaven and saying, “Well, look at that! Where did that ram come from?” No, God knows all along how this test will play out. The test is not to teach God something; it’s to teach Abraham something about himself and his God. Abraham now knows a whole new dimension of God as provider because Abraham obediently put himself in a place of learning. He put himself in a place of desperation for God.
You only learn more about God as you allow yourself to trust him, to believe him, to count on his provision. Henry Bosch writes in “Our Daily Bread” about a widow from Chicago named Ms. Hokanson. Her life motto was, “The Lord will provide.” She was the sole support for her mentally challenged son. Eventually, chronic arthritis confined her to bed. When a church youth group went over to her house to cheer her up, they were amazed to discover she wasn’t depressed. They asked her, “Now what will you and Arthur do?” And she replied, with quiet confidence, “The Lord will provide.”
When Mrs. Hokanson died, folks wondered what would happen to her son. But when friends and neighbors went home with Arthur after the funeral, he proudly showed them his stamp collection. Instead of tearing the stamps off the envelopes, he had intercepted and held onto scores of letters intended for his mother, all left unopened. Many contained substantial gifts—enough to care for the boy for the rest of his life.
An anonymous writer once wrote,
When doubt and dismay would enfold you,
And hope for relief becomes dim,
Remember that Someone has told you
To cast all your care upon Him.
Henry Bosch notes, “Our needs can never exhaust God’s supply” (https://odb.org/1994/07/12/the-lord-will-provide/). Indeed, Philippians 4:19 tells us, “And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.”
God tests our faith, and God grows our faith. And lastly,
3. God leads by example. What a great leader! Like the best of leaders, he will not call you to do what he wouldn’t do himself.
Verse 2 of today’s story has an interesting word order. The New International Version captures it well from the original Hebrew: “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac.” The phrase, “only son,” appears three times in the story (in verses 2, 12, and 16). In the Greek translation of the Old Testament—the Bible that Jesus would have used—this phrase is word for word identical to one in a verse I’m sure you’ve heard: “For God so loved the world that he gave ... his only son” (John 3:16).
As God called Abraham to do, God did himself. He gave his only son. In Abraham’s case, God stopped him. God intervened. Abraham had passed the test. Abraham valued obedience of God above all else. And God reaffirmed his great promise to Abraham.
In God’s case, God did not stop. Jesus prayed, “If possible, let this cup pass from me,” but the cup did not pass. Jesus drank fully from it. And in this case, Jesus passed the test. The ancient church father Augustine wrote, “Isaac carried the wood on which he was to be offered up to the place of sacrifice, just as the Lord himself carried his own cross ... [The ram] was caught by the horns in a thicket; who then did he represent but Jesus, who, before He was offered up had been crowned with thorns?” In fact, the ram in today’s story represents the first clear example in scripture of what theologians call “substitutionary atonement,” the idea that an innocent has to die in place of another. That ram gave his life for Isaac. And Jesus gave his life for us.
On the very same hill where Abraham saw the ram, Jesus later died, a hilltop that became the city of Jerusalem. As homes all over Jerusalem prepared their Passover lambs, Jesus became our Passover lamb. God poured out his righteous anger on the one human being who had never sinned, God’s one and only son. And through that one sacrifice, we are able to receive forgiveness for all our sins, as we throw ourselves at the mercy of a forgiving Heavenly Father.
Will you entrust your future to the one who saw Abraham through the worst trial of his life? Will you trust above all else the God who loves you so much that he sent his one and only son to die for you? Let us pray:
Lord, thank you for this hard-to-hear story in scripture. We don’t understand it all, but we do understand your great love for us, despite whatever trial we find ourselves in. Help us not to ask, “Why,” but to ask, “What?” What do you want us to learn from it? And to never again doubt your love for us, expressed most clearly in the cross of Calvary. In Jesus we pray, amen.
