From the beginning of Abraham’s (Abram’s) life back in Genesis 12, he has been waiting on a promise. God promised to make a great nation out of him—that means people…which means he needed to have a child. Eventually, in spite of Abraham and Sarah’s laughter, God gives them Isaac. Isaac is the face of the promise. He is, in human form, the proof and hope of everything God has been saying for years now. Isaac is about 12 years old, really becoming a young man. And just when Abraham and Sarah are really starting to see the promise being fulfilled, God shows up.
1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
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.”
3 Early the next morning Abraham 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 Abraham 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.”
This is hard enough to imagine without the context of God’s promise. He actually asks Abraham to kill his son. Wow. Let alone his only son. The only possible way God’s promise will be fulfilled.
But Abraham packs up and heads off for the mountain.
Not only is God testing Abraham’s commitment to God over Abraham’s commitment to himself, but God is testing Abraham’s trust in whether or not God will keep up His end of the original, Genesis 12 bargain. God promised a nation, Isaac is the nation, God tells Abraham to kill Isaac. Not only does this seem, for lack of a better word, cruel, it seems to render null the lengths to which God went to make this promise a reality in the first place.
But Abraham packs up and heads off for the mountain….
6 Abraham 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 Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham 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, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
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.”
13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”
15 The angel of the LORD called to Abraham 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 all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”
19 Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba. And Abraham stayed in Beersheba.
God rewards Abraham’s obedience by sparing Isaac. But not only that, in verses17-18 God reaffirms the same promise He’s been making this whole time: you will become a great nation, I will bless you, and you will bless others.
What God challenged Abraham to do was to lay that promise on the line. What God did in return was reaffirm the promise. It’s interesting to me that God, in a way, challenges Himself in this story. He’s testing Abraham (v. 1) by essentially saying to Abraham, “Go ahead, test me. See if I can still keep my promise.”
Abraham trusts that, even though Isaac is God’s promise fulfilled, God could still do it without Isaac. So I guess my question for you is this: Has God ever asked you to get rid of something He gave you?
Maybe He gave you a passion for cross-cultural missions. You were just sure that’s how He was going to use you, how He was going to keep His promise to the world that His people would be a blessing. But you got out of college, you waited, and no one called. And now He’s asking you to be faithful where you are instead of being faithful across the globe.
Maybe He gave you the gift of hospitality, but no house. You don’t even have the space to use your gift! You just knew that He was going to use you to be His presence in your neighborhood, but you really have no neighborhood. And now He’s asking you to be a humble guest rather than a gifted host.
Maybe you’re just sure that you’re called to be a wife/husband. You want to experience the marriage relationship, to love someone that deeply, to mirror the cross, to serve a spouse. You would be such a perfect fit for marriage, you just know it. But right now, you’re single. And it seems like you might be for a while.
Here’s my point: You might be gifted for missions, you might be a prototype host/hostess, and you really might make a great spouse. But for one reason or another, God is asking you to put those things on an altar and trust that He can still do His work without doing it the way you always thought He would.
God asked Abraham to let go of God’s blessing in his life. Abraham did. God blessed him for it.
He’s the hard part: God doesn’t always respond that way. Maybe He will send you overseas, maybe He will put you in a context to use your hospitality, maybe He will bless you with the gift (and responsibility!) of marriage…but maybe not. Maybe He will let you be a Bible study leader one day, maybe He will give you the child you and your husband so desperately want, maybe He will finally let you have that job you just know you were made for, maybe He will do immeasurably more than all we can ask or imagine…but maybe not.
I don’t pretend to know the mind of God. I don’t know why He spared Isaac but doesn’t always do it that way with us. I don’t know why He gives us dreams that we don’t get to fulfill. I don’t know why. But I know that if we’ll trust Him enough to pack up and head for the mountain, He will reaffirm His promise. He will keep His promise. And He will do it better than we cold have hoped for in the first place.
Ben Cross
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