The Sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19)

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1 The Sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19) In our Family Bible Hour I ve been looking with you at the life of, the patriarch, the man of faith, the father of all those who believe, we re told in the NT. We ve looked at s faith, as well as his failures, in a variety of circumstances in the book of Genesis. Today we come to Genesis 22. Today we come to the incident in the life of which, it seems to me, has to be regarded as the climax of his life. It has to be regarded, in fact, as one of the most pivotal and important passages in all of scripture. F.B. Meyer wrote: So long as men live in the world, they will turn to this story with unwaning interest. There is only one scene in history by which it is surpassed: that where the Great Father gave His Isaac to a death from which there was no deliverance. (q. in Boice, p. 218) So let s look at it. Ge 22:1 Some time later God tested. He said to him,! Here I am, he replied. Ge 22:2 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. Ge 22:3 Early the next morning 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. 4 On the third day looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 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. Ge 22:6 took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father, Father? Yes, my son? replied. The fire and wood are here, Isaac said, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Ge 22:8 answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And the two of them went on together. Ge 22:9 When they reached the place God had told him about, 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. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven,!! Here I am, he replied. Ge 22:12 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. Ge 22:13 looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram 1 caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided. Ge 22:15 The angel of the LORD called to from heaven a second time 16 and said, I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 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, 18 and through your offspring 2 all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me. Ge 22:19 Then returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And stayed in Beersheba. OK, v.1 says that Some time later God tested. Apparently, Isaac had grown to be a young man. We -1-

2 don t know for sure how old he was. Perhaps in his teens, perhaps even as old as in his 30s, but at any rate it appears he s no longer a child. Let s begin by thinking about the significance of what s said here in v. 1. The event is cast as God s testing of. A natural question that arises then is Why does God need to test? Didn t God know s heart, and whether he had faith or not? Well, of course, God knew s heart and his faith, as he knows the hearts and minds of each one of us. So God s purpose here certainly involved more than simply the acquisition of knowledge about. But the additional truth is that we don t know for sure God s reasons for testing. We do know that God s test of had the effect of confirming in an open and unmistakable way the extent of s faith. And although this test of has to be regarded, I think, in any objective sense as the most extreme test of any of the tests of God s people that are recorded in the Bible, it s nevertheless true that God does test his people, and it may be that he tests us to confirm our faith to ourselves and those around us. But this particular test of is, by any measure, in a class by itself, and we need to look at it in more detail. Notice that what God asks here seems directly contrary to what knew about God s plan and his character. After all, God had made it clear to that Isaac s descendants were to be as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Furthermore, it was clear that God had prohibited the murdering of other human beings. So why this particular test? The more we look at it, the more puzzling it becomes. It s important to remember the later way in which God expressed how abominable child sacrifice is to him. For example, he says in Deut. 18:9: Dt 18:9 When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you, do not learn to imitate the detestable ways of the nations there. 10 Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in 1 the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, Jer. 7:31: 31 They have built the high places of Topheth in the Valley of Ben Hinnom to burn their sons and daughters in the fire something I did not command, nor did it enter my mind. Lev 18:21 Do not give any of your children to be sacrificed 1 to Molech, for you must not profane the name of your God. I am the LORD. So right off the bat, at a fundamental level, this command of God seems completely incomprehensible. And it s not only incomprehensible, it s appalling. It goes against every moral law, every moral instinct, every decent component of the abiding love of a parent for his child. It s, in fact, horrifying. One modern novelist (Noah Gordon, The Jerusalem Diamond, c. in Boice, p. 218) has a character in his novel say: If the story of and Isaac is true, was insane, not religious. The great Danish philosopher and theologian, Soren Kierkegaard, who was a passionate Christian, was tormented by the story of s offering of Isaac. He wrote his famous book, Fear and Trembling, in an attempt to wrestle with what happens here. Kierkegaard insisted that if we see in this account only a lesson extolling the virtue of complete faith in God vs. lack of faith, we ve almost trivialized what s going on here. The problem of how to think about s action actually forces us to the heart of the relation between human moral and ethical responsibilities and God s commands. Is really an example that we ought to follow? It s easy to draw lessons from that seem good superficially, but that lead us astray. -2-

3 Kierkegaard imagines a man who after hearing in church the praise of who gave the best he had to the Lord, might go home and wish to do the same by sacrificing his own son to God. In such a circumstance, the same preacher who had extolled the virtues of would be forced to lend the whole force of his being to prevent this man from murdering his child in an insane religious fervor (Hollander). Here s a more recent analysis written by a thoughtful man considering the relation between morality and God s commands or God s so-called commands: I would like to focus on the predicament in which found himself. A supernatural being appeared to him in a vision and commanded him to perform an action which nearly everyone will agree is immoral under normal circumstances. Does the fact that God commanded him to do it make it right? Is there some principle that states that supernatural beings ought to always be obeyed? Perhaps this vision had come from an evil spirit, pretending to be God. Or perhaps God was testing for the opposite purpose: to see whether he would blindly obey regardless of how heinous an act God commanded him to commit, or whether he would show some backbone and disobey as a matter of conscience. I can think of quite a few reasons not to blindly obey whatever your dreams, visions or voices in your head tell you to do. To put it another way, if was right to kill his son Isaac, then the 9/11 hijackers were also right to carry out their mission. After all, they believed that they were carrying out God s orders. Well, what can we say in response to these examples? It would be easy to say something along the lines of The insane man who decided to murder his son and the 9/11 hijackers both only thought (mistakenly) they were following God s commands, whereas actually was following God s command. But that only pushes the problem back a step. How does a person know whether God is commanding him or something else? In the case of believers today, we have the advantage of having in the scriptures the record of God s revelation of himself and his character throughout history and in the person of his son, Jesus Christ. And we make our decisions based on what he s revealed to us in the Bible. On the other hand, I think it s obvious that has to be considered a special case. God had spoken repeatedly to in a special way. You recall the call to leave Ur and go to the promised land, the promise to make his name great and make him a blessing to all nations, the promise to give him innumerable offspring, etc. You remember the Lord s visit to s tent with two angels and the promise that Sarah would bear a son in her old age. was very familiar with the Lord and the Lord s speaking to him in a special way. So we have to come to this account of s offering of Isaac with the understanding that there was no doubt in s mind about what the word of the Lord to him was. But what a terrible word it was! Can we even imagine what was thinking as he went through these preparations for sacrificing Isaac? It s hard to conceive of it not having caused him almost unbearable anguish. If you re a parent, this story is staggering to contemplate. The careful, deliberate preparations, the 3 days journey ample time to reflect on the horror of what he was about to do. He said nothing to Sarah or to his servant Eliezer about what God had told him to do. How could he? What would Sarah s reaction as Isaac s mother have been? But he must have also been going over and over in his mind the question of how to resolve God s promise about Isaac and God s command to sacrifice him. How was God going to fulfill his promise that in Isaac s offspring was to be reckoned, while at the same requiring Isaac s life as a sacrificial offering? The writer to the Hebrews tells us that he solved this problem and how he solved it. Look at Hebrews 11:

4 Heb 11:17 By faith, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, It is through Isaac that your offspring 2 will be reckoned reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death. The writer to the Hebrews says that reasoned that God could raise Isaac from the dead. That s all the more remarkable because there s no mention of resurrection in the Bible prior to this time, no instances of resurrection, yet apparently came to the conclusion that resurrection was very likely what God had in mind. If we go back to Genesis 22, there s a detail in v. 5 that tells us that must have come to that conclusion by the time he got to Mount Moriah. Look at 22:4-5: 4 On the third day looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 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. Notice in v. 5 that expected to return with Isaac. And yet even if we fully apprehend, and take into account, s expectation, we still haven t come close to comprehending or accounting for God s command to him to at once rupture and violate every God-given moral law and natural human instinct for what? A test? A test to prove something that God already knew the answer to anyway? No, there s something much bigger going on here. I think this account is one of the most staggering miracles in all the Bible. And I m not talking about the miraculous provision at the last moment of the ram caught in the thicket. I m talking about the fact that this event actually took place in history, and was recorded, and wondered at, for some 2000 years before God the Father sacrificed his beloved only Son on the same mountain. It s a miracle that was actually willing to go through with it. Kierkegaard argues that if had doubted God even for a moment he would have taken the course that we, as human beings, would have admired as being the ethical and noble course the course that the self-sacrificial love of a father for his son would have pressed upon him. He would have plunged the knife into his own breast and sacrificed himself in place of Isaac, the son of promise, and trusted to God s mercy for his disobedience. So it s actually a miracle that God granted the grace, the faith, and the strength to fulfill his purpose to act out in history this prophetic picture of the unfathomable act when God the Father gave his beloved only begotten Son over to his cruel death on a Roman cross at Calvary. I think we re meant to be appalled and horrified at s action at the brutal violation of the relation between father and son implicit in the sacrifice. It s not simply an accidental choice of words that we read in v. 2 when God tells what he wants him to do. He tells him, Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love... James Boice points out the unusual nature of the wording of God s request: Why did God have to put it that way? It was perfectly evident whom He meant. The single word Isaac was enough. Yet God emphasizes that this is s son, indeed, his only son. (Although had also engendered Ishmael of Hagar, Sarah s slave Hagar and Ishmael had since been sent away.) It is Isaac, whom you love. These words seem cruel, but they should have reassured that God was fully aware of what He was asking him to do. But not only that, these words point us to the fundamental meaning of s sacrifice. God s words here point us to the intensity of the love of that heavenly Father, who yet spared not his son, as we re told in Romans -4-

5 8:32. But there s even more than that. In this story of and Isaac we have a truly astonishing picture of God s plan of redemption through our Lord Jesus Christ. In connection with that thought, it s interesting to consider what Jesus himself said when he was in conversation with the Jewish leaders in John 8: We looked at it recently in our Friday night Bible study. Jesus tells these Jewish leaders: 56 Your father rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad. Jn 8:57 You are not yet fifty years old, the Jews said to him, and you have seen! Jn 8:58 I tell you the truth, Jesus answered, before was born, I am! 59 At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds. You remember the incident. Jesus, in using the words I AM in v. 58, identified himself with the holy name of God, given to Moses, when he said, Tell them I AM has sent you. The Jewish leaders recognized what he was claiming and picked up stones to stone him for blasphemy. Well, in this passage, Jesus makes a remarkable statement in v. 56. He says: Your father rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad. What did Jesus mean by that? When did see Jesus day? And when did he rejoice in it? I believe Jesus may well have been referring to the incident we ve been looking at today: the offering up of Isaac. It s hard to imagine a clearer picture of the work of our Lord Jesus Christ than the one we have given to us right here in s life. It s also hard to imagine a clearer statement of the Gospel the Good News than what we find in what says to Isaac in response to his question. His words are in v. 8 of Genesis 22. This, by the way, is the only recorded conversation between and Isaac in the Bible. But what words they are! When Isaac is told by his father that they re going to carry out a sacrifice and he sees all the preparations for a sacrifice that they re taking with them, he asks the obvious and natural question. We have it recorded in v. 7: 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father, Father? Yes, my son? replied. The fire and wood are here, Isaac said, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And the two of them went on together. There it is in a nutshell: God s plan of salvation for mankind. God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering. A sacrifice for sin is required. Atonement for sin must be made to a holy God. But the good news is that God himself provides the sacrifice he requires. Did understand the plan of salvation as it s laid out in the NT? I think we have to say probably not in all details, but in all essential aspects, yes. And it s by faith that is able to say, God will provide for Himself the lamb. (NASB) And in saying that, is actually prophesying looking forward to the One who is called the Lamb of God in the NT. When I read these words of Isaac s question and the words of s answer, the suggestion always comes to my mind that Isaac s question is a fit summary of OT history in which God painstakingly instructs his people through the OT sacrificial system about the need for a sacrifice for sin, but never provides anything but a temporary substitute. We may imagine OT believers throughout those 2000 years echoing Isaac s question: -5-

6 The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? And then when I read s answer I always think of John the Baptist s tremendous announcement when he says of Jesus Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! There are actually many more points of contact we could enumerate between the account of and Isaac here and the NT account of the One of whom Isaac is only a type. For example, notice the perfect obedience of Isaac as his father binds him and lays him on the altar. What a picture of the perfect obedience of our Lord to the will of his Father, as he lay down his life for us. Well, what s the bottom line here? What are we to see in this OT historical picture of the heavenly Father s sacrifice of his beloved only Son? What is it that the incomprehensible horror of God s command to is intended to help us grasp? I believe it s simply this: it helps us to start to grasp something of the love of God for the world for you and me. A love that is costly. We re helped to grasp something of the costliness of that love because as human beings we re able to empathize with s agony. The apostle John spoke of the love of God with these words: 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son 2 into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for 3 our sins. The apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesians with these words: I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. God help us to somehow grasp the significance of that love that surpasses knowledge. -6-