“And Isaac said to his father Abraham, ’My father!’ And he said ‘Here am I, my son.’ He said, ‘Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for burnt offering?’ Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.’ So they went both of them together.”
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”
Last week we explored our origins. We saw how the scripture pilots the prologue of our very life into eternity, existing before creation. The Lamb’s Book of Life already existed and in it names of people like you and I, people who accept by faith God’s provisions for salvation.
God provided through visual creation, the written record of men like Abraham, and His own Son a revelation of who He is and how we participate in what He is doing. He has also given us a will to choose our own paths. Lets take one thin slice of Abraham lemon meringue pie and savor the truth the Holy Spirit may provide about His love so that we can make righteous choices.
Abraham’s name was written in the Lamb’s Book of Life along side of yours and mine. God used His story to illustrate truth about our lives. Abraham is prominent in the Biblical account of man’s journey on earth. The story of Abraham and his son Isaac demonstrates how our eternal God reveals eternal plans in lives who have faith in Him.
Lets review the context of Abraham’s story. Abraham was Abram when he was born in the region of Ur of the Chaldeans. Ur is located in the valley of the Euphrates River toward the Persian Gulf. Abram’s father Terah took Abram and his cousin Lot toward Canaan by way of Haran. Haran was a northern city in the Euphrates River Valley. They stayed in Haran for an extended time and Terah died there.
After Terah’s death God appears to Abram in Haran promising to make him a great nation but he had to leave his father’s land and people and head for Canaan. Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran and took his nephew Lot with him.
Abram already had a relationship with God but now God was teaching Him to love Him and depend on His love. God changed his name from Abram to Abraham.
An athlete works out to build up his mussel mass. Not unlike how God trains us spiritually. God uses circumstances to build our spiritual structure and then provides personal environments to build us up. God tests us so we can see and affirm our own spiritual growth. Remember we are dealing with eternal values, bringing them into temporal experience. Several teaching moments in Abraham’s life lead up to the supreme test of sacrificing Rachel’s only son as described in the above text.
The first test was having Abraham take his family and move from his home and property to a land he did no know. Then, faced by a drought, he was forced into Egypt where he feared for His life because of Sarah’s beauty and lied to the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh angered by his deception sent him back to Canaan. Conflict between Abraham and Lot about their servants and flocks forced him to separate from his nephew whom he later rescued.
Abraham’s biggest test was concerning Ishmael and Isaac. God promised Abraham a son but the years were passing and Sarah was getting older. So Sarah offered her handmaiden Hagar as a substitute in order for Abraham to have his promised heir. Abraham loved and cherished his son Ishmael. He was 13 years old when God appeared to Abraham again and affirmed his promise by the covenant of circumcision, as a sign of everlasting possession of the land God would provide and promised the unborn Isaac would come the following year.
Abraham reluctantly submitted to Sarah’s demand that Hagar and Ishmael be turned out from the family and sent into the desert. God affirmed Sarah’s demand to Abraham promising to protect Hagar and make Ishmael into a great nation.
Ishmael has been gone as much as 30 plus years before Abraham is called to sacrifice Isaac. Isaac was born when Sarah was 90 years old and we read in the following chapter that Sarah dies at 127 sometime after Isaac is “sacrificed”. Isaac could easily have been 33 when he accompanied his father up the mountain and certainly old enough not to submit to Abraham’s intentions. But what we see here is both father and son in complete agreement on faith and depending completely on the reality and faithfulness of a living God.
God uses events and circumstances in life to train us in His righteousness. Like Abraham, we are sanctified, that is, we have been set apart for His own purposes. We are tested according to personal situations. The tests continue through life because each test is able to shape us a little more into the righteousness of Christ. This is the goal, to be Like Christ. Our journey is to know Jesus both in mind, heart and experience, to know God intimately through our resurrected Lord.
Our testing is not to reshape our human morality but to transition from human power to spiritual power. We are habitually rooted in temporal things. We aim to excel naturally in the amazing gifts we are given but Paul reminds us we are to be both “rooted” and structured in Christ.
When we are born again, we are created with a new life. Our mind and heart is rooted in the habits of our temporal traditions and natural patterns. Abraham had to be taught that trusting in God was a reality that God Himself expected and desired. The examples in Abraham’s life demonstrate the reality of living in God’s presence and accepting His love and grace … and committing ourselves to Him.
The new persona within us, the “inner man”, Ephesians 3:16b, is not the feelings of the flesh but the joining of God’s Spirit with our spirit. This is our core; this is where the living waters flow into our heart and mind. We are born again at this subconscious level. Our essence becomes one with the Son and the Father so that we become in our heart and mind, who we have been created in Christ because of our spiritual union in Him.
We are born again, thereby, created righteous in Christ Jesus, but the life we live in the flesh is dominated by fleshly appetites and values. When we become righteous in Christ Jesus, we also have been given the capacity to change the flesh-house in which we live to be a spiritual house for the Holy Spirit, that is, the mind of Christ becomes available in our experience. Who we are in Christ is who we become in our flesh when we “put on Jesus Christ”, Romans 13:14. This is why Galatians 2:20 is such a fundamentally important verse. We all need to write on the memory of our heart and mind this verse:
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Abraham has been walking for three days before he sees where they are going. When he sees the place “from afar” he has his men make camp and commands them stay there until they return. Abraham’s intention is to sacrifice his son yet, he tells the servants to stay until they return, “I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you,” Gen. 22:5. This is a remarkable reveal into Abraham’s faith. He fully intends to kill his son Isaac, yet, he confess to his servants they both will return.
Isaac asks his father, as they trek together to place of sacrifice on the mount, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Isaac is carrying the wood for the offering and Abraham is carrying the knife and fire. Isaac is not a child, as is often depicted, he may be in his early 30’s.
“Abraham said, ‘God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.’ So they went both of them together.”
John the Baptist was baptizing people in the Jordan when he observes Jesus coming toward him and says, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!”
Abraham learned well the lessons God was teaching. Abraham didn’t know about the tabernacle in the wilderness or the Temple that David and Solomon were to build. Abraham was not even a Jew; he was from the Ur of the Chaldeans, not too far from Babylon. It was Jacob, his grandson, that God named Israel, Genesis 35:10.
Our God of eternity had equipped Abram and Abraham with the faith necessary to fulfill God’s intended purpose for both Abraham and Isaac. This event in time was before the Mosaic Law was given. But we see the same coherent plan and purpose being put in place for our instruction 2000 years after the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus. God is still in control and still has human events on his calendar. The rapture of the church looms before us. God has given us the will to choose what we do with our temporal time before this event takes place. God’s word is the standard for our truth.
God desires us to love Him. He desires us to open our souls, our minds and hearts, to the grace He is ready to pour upon us and bathe us in.
The God of Abraham is our God as well, He has not changed. David had not yet written the 23rd Psalm but here is God being the great shepherd of His sheep leading Abraham in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.
The God of eternity, before created time, had us in mind. It is part of God’s larger continuum placed before us, proved to us, and He has given us the option to cash it in…. or not!
“Surely Goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever”