He Did Not Withhold His Son
Notes
Transcript
Can you remember looking back at a point in your life and realizing that you were being tested by God?
Maybe you’re going through a trial or difficulty now...
Let’s be clear… God Tests His Children… He desires to see them grow, and he wants them to see the growth in their lives…
in those tests, He wants us to hold nothing back… not our family, not our loved ones, not even our children...
After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.
On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.
Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.”
And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together.
And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.
When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.
Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
He said, “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.”
And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.
So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”
And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven
and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son,
I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies,
and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”
So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beersheba. And Abraham lived at Beersheba.
1) God tests the FAITHFULNESS of believers.
1) God tests the FAITHFULNESS of believers.
The Greatest test in the life of Abraham...
AFTER he FINALLY received the promise…After God had FINALLY answered Abraham’s prayer…God commands Abraham to give it back.
After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”
Abraham… as a father is utterly distraught… “Your Only Son”
The command to sacrifice was not uncommon in Abraham’s day… Before Genesis 12 Abraham was and unbeliever living a pagan culture…
Child sacrifice was made to god of fertility… under pretense… If god of fertility gave you a children…within right to command something (someone) in return.
However saddened…not dumbfounded…baffling in light of the covenant promises...
Just when every trouble seems resolved and everything is in hand, an obstacle appears that threatens to put Abraham, Sarah, and the covenant back to square one.
This obstacle differs from the previous ones in that it is not built out of circumstances such as childlessness, famine, human strife, and so forth.
It is put there by God.
Consequently, we cannot say that the narrator's purpose is to demonstrate that God can overcome obstacles.
Of course he can overcome this one-the obstacle is Himself!
The obstacle to what? The obstacle to fulfilling His promise in the Covenant he made with Abraham...
It is not the impending death of Isaac that is the obstacle; rather, it is the prospect that Abraham and his descendants may be more attached to the promised blessings and benefits of the covenant than to God Himself.
Are we motivated more by the answer to the prayer, than the One who answers prayer?
A test similar to Abraham's would not be primarily concerned with investigating whether we love our children more than we love God.
Likewise it would not concern whether we will trust God with our children.
The test seeks to discover the motivating factor in our relationship with God, Is it God himself, or is it the benefits he provides and the hope he offers?
For Abraham, his benefits and his hope were tied up in the covenant and therefore tied up in Isaac.
God's tests may force us to step out of the comfort zone of hopes, expectations, and routines.
ls our faith focused upon our expectations, or is it focused on God?
If you knew that serving God was going to require you to lose everything you had and go flat BROKE, would you still serve God?
There are a lot of good church people, but not a lot of God-centered servants.
2) There is a PURPOSE behind God’s Testing...
2) There is a PURPOSE behind God’s Testing...
What was Abraham to do? God had commanded him to Sacrifice the what seemed to be the greatest gift God had given him!
The most difficult thing to understand about this passage is why God does such a thing.
As I already stated, in Abraham's day it was considered a deity's right to ask for such a sacrifice, and Abraham does not question that right.
God previously asked Abraham to do things that might entail significant emotional trauma (Gen. 12:1 ).
So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.
On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar.
Why does God have Abraham travel three days to a specified place to make this sacrifice?
If we want to properly see the purpose for this test, the time serves an important function.
When Abraham acts, it is not a knee-jerk reaction.
He is not able to push himself through it quickly before he feels it (let's get this over with).
For three days he has to live with the haunting idea of what he mist do.
For three days he must live in the confusion about how God's covenant promises will be carried out now.
For three days he can try to rationalize some other course of action and talk himself out of doing what has been asked.
This transforms his response from a reaction to a decision.
The purpose of God’s test will not be achieved unless Abraham arrives at the point of conscious commitment.
If he gives up things that are dear to him, God will provide replacements—
He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
he shows that somehow the situation will be favorably resolved.
Consequently, he tells the servants that "we will come back to you" (22:5)
Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.”
tells Isaac that God will provide the sacrifice (22:7-8).
And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.
It is easy from the human perspective to identify these as dissembling statements or evidences that he is in denial-but faith would sound no different, and God knows the heart.
It is important to understand that he has not arrived at his confidence because God has somehow informed him of the outcome.
These statements echo his faith.
though this does not lessen the emotional toll.
It certainly stretches the normal parameters of a test to require obedience to a command that is in some ways repulsive and contrary to God’s Nature.
None of God's other tests of people share that feature.
Why could God have not simply said, "Human sacrifice is repulsive to me," if that were the point he wanted to drive home?
He eventually did, but that is not the point he is trying to make.
When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.
God’s purpose for Abraham Test was to see what Abraham was prepared to give up.
In the end God's reason and God's purpose are one and the same.
ABRAHAM WAS PREPARED TO DO SO...
Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
At the moment of truth…
Abraham didn’t look around for another animal…
he didn’t look around anxiously to see what God was going to do…
He knew this would be the hardest thing that would ever be asked of him...
but he knew no sacrifice was too hard when God required it… so he took the knife
raised it up into the air…ready to destroy God’s promise if it was what it took to serve God...
But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.”
He said, “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.”
This is a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus, himself.
God is omniscient - 5-Minute THEOLOGY
this wasn’t a case of God learning anything…We know he knows everything…
We must differentiate between our understanding that is cognitive and understanding that is experiential.
Cognitive Knowledge means We can agree that God knew ahead of time what Abraham was going to do.
But there is ample evidence throughout Scripture that God desires us to act out our faith and worship regardless of the fact that he knows our hearts—This is Experiential knowledge
COGNITIVE he knows what we are going to say and may already have the answer in motion.
EXPERIENTIAL God wants us to pray anyway
COGNITIVE he knows how we feel.
EXPERIENTIAL He wants us to praise him ANYWAY
COGNITIVE he knows our attitude toward him
EXPERIENTIAL God asks us to express our faith and love ANYWAY
It is honoring to him for us to demonstrate those things that he knows exist because it pleases him.
We all know that as much as our parents, spouses, and children know that we love them, it is important that it be said and demonstrated.
Cognitive knowledge is not enough and is often less than satisfying. EXPERIENTIAL
There is more.
And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.
So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”
In English there is a cliche that says, "The devil is in the details."
It is used when, for instance, the president gives his state of the union address and lays out grand schemes of reform.
It all sounds so good, even utopian, but "the devil is in the details"-how will such a plan be accomplished?
How will it be paid for?
What repercussions will it have?
We all know that at some point we have to stop looking at the forest and pay attention to the trees.
The expression indicates that the details of any given program can be a real problem and potentially pose insurmountable difficulties to the achievement of the overall goal.
When Abraham names this place, he designates God as the One who is in the details.
Yahweh-Yireh - “The Lord will provide” Literally “The Lord will see to it”
God is the One who will "see to it" that everything is appropriately cared for.
Illus. One of the masterful qualities of Shakespeare's plays is the way he weaves intricate details of plot in sometimes surprising ways as the story line moves toward its consummation.
It is with this same type of skill that God weaves the drama of the cosmos.
In his last play, The Tempest, Shakespeare embodies this same attribute in his quasi-divine main character, the magician Prospero, and through him we can come to appreciate the interrelationship and the interaction between the means and the ends.
Though Prospero is the rightful Duke of Milan, his office has been undermined by his conniving brother, Antonio.
Prospero's long-term plans are to regain his position, bring his brother to justice (or at least reform), and marry his daughter, Miranda, to Ferdinand, son of the King of Naples (Alonso).
To those larger ends, Prospero contrives an intricate scheme using various strategies and mechanisms to bring all of the main characters to his island by means of a shipwreck.
While Miranda and Ferdinand are falling in love, Antonio and his allies are engaging in diabolical intrigue against Alonso and his advisor.
In the end all the parties are brought to one location, where Prospero reveals himself to them. Antonio, chastened in spirit, pleads for forgiveness and mercy. Ferdinand and Miranda receive permission from Prospero to marry, and Alonso finally discovers that his son has survived the shipwreck and gladly consents to the marriage.
In Prospero's speech to Ferdinand we can almost imagine God speaking to Abraham, "All thy vexations were but my trials of thy love, and thou hast strangely stood the test."12
Unlike Prospero, who resorts to deception and manipulation in order to achieve his noble goals, God is in perfect control of the many-faceted complexities that represent each of our lives.
Prospero only has a handful of characters to juggle, whereas God works in the life of each and every individual.
Yet he orchestrates his long-term plans as a composer who utilizes each instrument's score and each note on each page to produce the symphony that represents the culmination of his artistry.
God's sovereignty can be appreciated only as we come to recognize its impact at all levels. He is the God of the ends and the means, but he does not justify the means by the ends.
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
If we wanted to devise a test that would be comparable to Abraham's, we would not ask, "Would you be willing to give up your child?"
Instead we would have to ask, "Would you give up eternity in heaven for God?''
In the 1970s a popular spiritual by Andrae Crouch explored this question.
The song asked what motivates us to serve God, "ls it just for heaven's gain?" The chorus says it all:
But if heaven never were promised to me;
neither God's promise to live eternally;
it's been worth just having the Lord in my life-
living in a world of darkness he came and brought me the light.
Would we give God a chance if there were nothing in it for us?
Would we give God our lives if he gave nothing back but himself?
Would our lives have a place for God if we were "living for today"?
It should be our aspiration to respond to those questions with a resounding "yes!"
That is what Abraham did when he built his altar on Mount Moriah and bound his son.
God asks no less of us than to be our all in all.
He Gave His ALL. HE DID NOT WITTHOLD HIS SON
Job also was called upon to demonstrate that kind of faith as well.
When all is stripped away and no hope remains, in the dark, in the loneliness, in the emptiness, there is God.
That is when faith stands up and is counted. Many times l have heard those whom l consider spiritual express a longing to hear the coveted accolade, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." ls our faith impetuous enough that we long to hear the words God said to Abraham, "Now l know that you fear God"?