The Son of Abraham

The Oath-Bound Promise (The call of Abraham, Gospel Justification)

We begin our journey with Abraham well into his story, after his call in ch. 12, after his sojourn in Egypt, after he rescues Lot, after his encounter with Melchizedek.

“Blessing is the pronouncing of God’s favor. It includes the gifts that God gives as the evidence of His love and favor, but blessing is more than what God gives. It is the bond of favor that joins God’s people with Him.”

Clowney, Edmund P.. The Unfolding Mystery (2d. ed.): Discovering Christ in the Old Testament (p. 48). P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition.

He believed God and it was counted to him as Righteousness. Romans 4:3 “3 For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness.”

Abraham believed God long before he recieved any earthly inheritance from God, land, children, a kingdom, a nation. He believed the Promise of God by faith.

In the context of Abraham asking for a sign, God makes a covenant with Abraham that vividly pictures the Gospel.

Genesis 15:8 “8 And he said, Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?”

Genesis 15:17–18 “17 And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. 18 In the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates:”

In order for a covenant to be a covenant there must be rewards and sanctions. Blessings for covenant faithfulness and punishment for covenant breaking.

“In Ancient Near Eastern covenants, sanctions were often imposed, symbolically, by cutting animals in pieces and walking through their divided parts. The corpses presented a vivid image of the consequences of infidelity. The idea of such ceremonies was to formalize the commitments into a covenant by protecting the commitments with threats.”

Renihan, Samuel. The Mystery of Christ, His Covenant, and His Kingdom (p. 50). Founders Press. Kindle Edition.

This covenant gets at the heart of the Gospel of Redemption, it is a covenant between the triune God, not man. Man, the elect, are simply the recipient of the blessings of the covenant that God made with Himself and typified here with Abram.

God Heightens His Promise (Gospel Irony)

Genesis 16:3–4 “3 And Sarai Abram’s wife took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife. 4 And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived: and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes.”

In the years of waiting for God to keep his promise to Abraham the craftiness of the serpent snuck in again to deceive the woman. “Did God really say that you, Sarah, would have a child? wouldn’t it be more reasonable for Hagar to raise up a child for you? after all according to custom he would legally be yours.” The bait was set and she took and gave unto her husband and he went in to Hagar, she conceived and bore him a son, Ishmael. Not the child of promise but the child of a slave.

Genesis 18:10 “10 And he said, I will certainly return unto thee according to the time of life; and, lo, Sarah thy wife shall have a son. And Sarah heard it in the tent door, which was behind him.”

God overrides all of this because it was always his will that Sarah have the child of promise because He is faithful to His word. We see with the birth of Isaac the Gospel Irony, it is not of works and it is not because of their own faithfulness to God but God’s faithfulness to his Promise. Two who are as good as dead conceive and bare a son, the son of Promise, Isaac.

Genesis 21:1–2 “1 And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as he had spoken. 2 For Sarah conceived, and bare Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him.”

As we read in Clowney’s book, Isaac means laughter. Because Sarah laughed at the word of God that she would bear a child in her old age, God laughs at her by keeping his Promise.

One of the fruits of the Gospel in this life may be children, but more importantly it is seeing God be faithful to His promise. Jesus tells us that he came to bring division and that the members of our own household will be our enemies. The irony in this promise is that in the midst of being rejected by our own flesh and blood we are promised houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecution and eternal life. Mark 10:29-30

Now that we are in Christ we take part in the rewards that Christ has merited. He has a big family and now so do we.

The Promise Contradicted? (Gospel Typified)

The call to sacrifice.

Being a member of the New Covenant we have the unique opportunity to look back and know for certain that this test was typological of the actual death that the Son of God would endure on behalf of the elect.

Genesis 22:2 “2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”

The first hint that we get is that God calls Isaac his ONLY son. But we know Abraham has two sons, but as we have already noted, only Isaac is the Son of Promise. Isaac is the son of the covenant. He is the one that God would bless his people through.

Isaac is the unique son of Abraham. Hebrews tells us that he is the- Hebrews 11:17 “17 By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,”

The language of “only begotten” is specifically used of Isaac by our NT text because He explains to us that Isaac was always a Type and his sacrifice was typological of Jesus, the only begotten of the Father.

Genesis 22:4 “4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.”

The third day reference should always peak our ears, especially in the context of sacrifice. In this example we see Abraham going to sacrifice his son and unlike the sacrifice to come, namely Jesus, Abraham does not have to wait three days for his son to be raised from the dead. Abraham receives him back from the dead on the third day. Hebrews 11:19 “19 Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.” According to this text Abraham did receive Isaac back from the dead, figuratively, but God received Jesus back from the Dead, Literally.

It is at the final moments of this testing period where the faith of Abraham and the submission of Isaac is on full display. The son looks around and realizes they have come all this way, they have left their travelling companions, they are walking up the mountain and there is no lamb for the sacrifice. Isaac follows his father in, possibly, ignorant obedience, but Jesus follows with full knowledge of what is before him and with Joy. Hebrews 12:2 “2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Genesis 22:7–8 “7 And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? 8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.”

Abraham in typological fashion binds his son then places him upon the wood of the alter. Looking forward, and backwards we see the Lord God himself do this to His Son, on the tree of calvary. God binds his Son to that accursed tree just as Abraham before Him.

Genesis 22:9 “9 And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.”

At the climax of this great sacrificial scene, the knife is raised and the Lord calls out from Heaven to stop Abraham Genesis 22:12 “12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.”

But on the cross of Jesus, the father does not call out from heaven to stop the sacrifice. Instead, He turns his face away and forsakes His son. It was pleasing to the Father to crush His son for the sins of the elect. Isaiah 53:10 “10 Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief.”

Why a ram?

Genesis 22:13 “13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.”

Because God was going to provide for himself a lamb, as Abraham prophesied in verse 8, and He did. John 1:29 “29 The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.”