It wasn’t Abraham’s faithfulness, but God’s faithfulness that was proven that day on the mountain.
I remember when I first dedicated my life to full time ministry. It was at a campfire service almost 25 years ago. My dad was asking people to come forward and throw their stick in the fire, a symbol of our lives as burnt offerings to God.
Believe it or not, I was shy as a child. Too shy to go forward. Sitting on the side of the hill, I was saying to myself, “I don’t have to throw a stick in the fire to be used by God. I can dedicate my life to Christ right here.” Then my dad said something I will never forget, “When your desire to obey God is greater than your fear, you’ll obey.” I realized that I could never truly honor God unless I was willing to step out in faith.
God called Abraham to step out in faith when He told him to leave his home for a foreign land. He also promised that he would become the father of many nations. The only problem was that Abraham had no children. He was 75 and his wife, Sarah (65), was barren.
Abraham believed God, but he struggled with doubt. Sarah and Abraham made a lot of mistakes along the way. In an effort to take matters into her own hands, Sarah would use one of her servants to provide an heir for Abraham. If you think that was bad, Abraham tried to pass off Sarah as his sister two separate times when powerful men showed interest in her. This could have tarnishing their legacy. If Sarah were to get pregnant, someone could say that it wasn’t Abraham’s child. Then, 25 years after the initial promise, God told them that they would have a son. They laughed, but God kept His promise anyway and Sarah gave birth to Isaac.
A Strange Request
After waiting on God for so long, you would think that Abraham’s testing would have ended, but it hadn’t. After everything that Abraham went through, God asked him to sacrifice his son. Why would He make such a strange request?
There is a bit of a hint in the text. “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love…” I can’t read Genesis 22 without thinking of A.W. Tozer’s book, The Pursuit of God. In his chapter, “The Blessedness of Possessing Nothing”, he describes the relationship between Abraham and Isaac:
“Abraham was old when Isaac was born...and the child became at once the delight and idol of his heart...The baby represented everything sacred to his father’s heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the years and the long messianic dream...The heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon the perilous. It was then that God stepped in to save both father and son from the consequences of an uncleansed love.”
By loving God first, we are not withholding our love from others. In fact, if we do not love God, we cannot truly love anyone else, but loving others first does not leave room for God.
The Testing of Our Faith
While it is clear that Abraham’s love for Isaac was out of place, there is something even more damning happening in this relationship.
Idolatry is putting our trust in creatures rather than the Creator. False gods don’t always elicit our love, but they require our faith. Idols are totems to meet our needs. Abraham was trusting in his son to do what only God could do. Isaac had become the object of Abraham’s faith.
Notice what God says here, “...go to the land of Moriah...on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” This takes us back to the initial call of Abraham “Go...to the land that I will show you.” God is telling Abraham to remember his faith. It is one thing to love God, it is another thing to trust Him.
The letter of James in the New Testament tells us, “For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.” The Apostle Paul says in his letter to the Romans, “...suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” God is not just testing Abraham, He is helping him grow.
God Will Provide
There is an interesting parallel in this story when Isaac asks his father where the lamb is for the sacrifice. He says, “My father!” and Abraham responds, “Here I am, my son.” This is the same call and response that God had with Abraham at the beginning of this test, revealing that there is a similar relationship of love and trust between God and Abraham as there was between Abraham and Isaac. This affinity says, “I may not understand what you are doing, but I know that you love me.”
When Abraham says, “God will provide,” he is saying much more than he knows. A key to understanding this story is found in the first instance where we see Abraham offering a sacrifice. After arriving in the promised land, Abraham built an altar and “Called on the name of the LORD.” Ever since Adam and Eve were given a promise that a child would be born to rescue them from sin, they had been crying out to God to fulfill His promise. When God told Abraham he would be a father, this was his prayer. Abraham was looking for the Garden of Eden and he hoped his son would be the fulfillment of that ancient prophecy.
As Abraham is struggling with what God has asked him to do he is preaching the gospel to himself. He is not just answering his son, he is declaring what he so desperately needed to remember. “God will provide.”
I cannot comprehend the level of faith that gripped Abraham’s heart as he lifted up the knife to slay his son. Fortunately, we don’t have to imagine the horror as God breaks the tension with that familiar call and response and then says, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” God provided a ram in the place of Isaac.
A Covenant with God
God has the final word in this story, but before He reiterates the promise that He has made numerous times before, He makes this profound statement, “By myself I have sworn.”
Years before, when Abraham was in a particularly low point, complaining that he had no heir, God made a covenant with him. Where we would sign our name to a legally binding document, ancient cultures would cut animals in half and walk between them declaring that if they broke their commitment, the same should happen to them. So Abraham took the animals, cut them in half, and prepared them for the ceremony, but he fell asleep. While he was sleeping, God appeared and walked the path through the sacrificed animals on His own, demonstrating that He alone was able to keep the covenant.
Abraham’s story is messy, but it was God who kept intervening to keep His own word. It wasn’t Abraham’s faithfulness, but God’s faithfulness that was proven that day on the mountain.
An Atoning Sacrifice
As vivid and remarkable as this story is, it pales in comparison to the story it prefigures.
God loved us so much, He sacrificed His only Son on our behalf. Jesus would not be spared in the final hour on the cross. He was the Lamb of God who became our substitutionary atonement.
This story is telling us to look to Jesus and to trust in His sacrifice for our sins. It is calling us to step out in faith, to deny ourselves and sacrifice our idols to pursue Christ. It is reminding us to look back on our own lives to see where God has always been faithful.
In order to do that, we need to call on the name of the LORD. We can never stray too far from God’s mercy and grace. We need to preach the gospel to ourselves so that we, like Abraham, can encourage our own hearts that God will provide. We need to demonstrate our faith for those who come behind us so that they will see in our steadfastness that God is faithful.