Chapter 5: The Sacrifice
What is that weird story about Abraham sacrificing Isaac really about?
How God Saves: Sacrifice
Last week we read how God chose to develop his rescue plan through a particular family – Abraham’s family. He promised Abraham 3 things: A land to call their own, that he would become a great nation, and that all the nations would be blessed through his family.
You can read all about that here:
This week we will discover how God saves from sin.
Genesis 22:1–19 (CSB)
1 After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he answered. 2 “Take your son,” he said, “your only son Isaac, whom you love, go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” 3 So Abraham got up early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took with him two of his young men and his son Isaac. He split wood for a burnt offering and set out to go to the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey. The boy and I will go over there to worship; then we’ll come back to you.” 6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac. In his hand he took the fire and the knife, and the two of them walked on together.
God tests faith
Imagine if God asked you to sacrifice your son as an offering to him. How would you react? Now remember what God had promised Abraham. He had promised Abraham that he would have a son, that he would become the father of a great nation. Abraham waited years for this promise to be fulfilled. It took years for Isaac to be born after God’s promise, yet Abraham believed, he trusted that God would do what he said he would.
The thing is: God tests faith and Abraham’s faith was tested over and over. When you read the chapters of Genesis before this one, Abraham failed the test a number of times. When Abraham was in danger because he had a beautiful wife, instead of trusting God, he pretended that his wife was his sister. This lead to her ending up in Egypt in Pharoah’s harem. A bit later, the same thing happened when Abraham was travelling through the land of king Abimelech. Again, he failed to trust God. When Abraham got old and realised that his body and the body of his wife was beyond the age of childbearing, his faith was tested again, and this time Abraham took matters into his own hands. He sleeps with Hagar, his servant and becomes father to a boy named Ishmael. Again he failed to trust God.
Abraham had to learn to trust God, he had to go through these trials to learn what it means to trust God properly. These previous tests of faith prepared Abraham for his biggest test of faith. Through his previous failures, God walked with him prepared him and strengthened his faith, so that this test of faith would succeed.
God has promised him a son he finally, after years of waiting he finally had a son. In this passage God asks Abraham – now please, give him back to me. Sacrifice him to me.
To us this might sound very harsh – but in the ancient near east, child sacrifice was a thing. Other nations would offer their children as sacrifices to their gods. You can see this in other parts of scripture – for example we know that the people of Moab offered their children as sacrifices. Later as Israel becomes a nation, offering children as sacrifices was specifically forbidden. God wanted Israel to know that he wasn’t a God wants this evil to be done to his children.
But Abraham didn’t yet know this because he lived in a time before God revealed these things to Israel.
The fact that Abraham doesn't really argue or debate with God, is probably because Abraham was aware of child sacrifice. He was after all the son of a pagan, living in an area where child sacrifice was ‘normal’. But we do have to realise how much was at stake here for Abraham.
God had promised that he would make his name great, that he would make him into a great nation, would give him a land, would bless the whole world through his offspring, and yet now God was asking him to sacrifice his only son.
2 “Take your son,” he said, “your only son Isaac, whom you love, go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”
For Abraham everything was at stake: If the sacrifice went ahead, he would lose not only his son, but his only son. Not just the only son, the only son he loved. Not only the only son he loved, but the only son he loved who was the very basis for God’s whole promise to bless him and give him a land and make him into a nation.
If he sacrificed Isaac, would God give him another child? If he sacrificed Isaac would God remain true to his word? How would the promise come to fulfillment if Isaac was to die?
In this test of faith, everything Abraham hoped for would be stripped away. God had asked him to be the one to plunge the knife into his son. That was the test for Abraham.
But is this not how our tests of faith work in our lives too? God was after all asking Abraham to trust him. Even though this threatened everything he held dear, even though he couldn’t see how this was going to promote and bring to fruition the promises God had made to him. Still, God asked Abraham to trust him.
That is how God tests our faith.
So too with us, he asks, will you trust me? He asks us in the midst of what is going on for you right now will you trust me?
Will you trust me, even when the sickness wracks your body and every movement is pain?
Will you trust me?
Will you trust me, even though your business is suffering with the continued lockdowns and lack of economic activity? Will you trust me?
Will you trust me when your child has walked away from the faith and from your oversight as a parent and you just can’t see how you can even begin to address the situation?
Will you trust me when the doubts come at night - does God even love me? Does he see me?
Does he even care about how i feel or what is happening to me? Will you trust me even then?
God sends these tests ultimately to build us up. They strengthen us, the build our faith, they make us stronger, more resilient and more able to handle the next problem that comes.
We know of at least 3 tests of faith that Abraham failed before he succeeded in this one.
But they all prepared him for this, his greatest test. Tests of faith are hard, but they are important. Because they are opportunities to experience God’s grace and provision.
God provides
Genesis 22:7–14 CSB
7 Then Isaac spoke to his father Abraham and said, “My father.” And he replied, “Here I am, my son.” Isaac said, “The fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” 8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Then the two of them walked on together. 9 When they arrived at the place that God had told him about, Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood. He bound his son Isaac and placed him on the altar on top of the wood. 10 Then Abraham reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” He replied, “Here I am.” 12 Then he said, “Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me.” 13 Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son. 14 And Abraham named that place The Lord Will Provide, so today it is said, “It will be provided on the Lord’s mountain.”
Abraham and Isaac set off, leaving the other two servants behind and Isaac asks “ahhhh dad, where is the sheep? Where is the lamb that we are going to sacrifice?”
Notice Abraham’s response. He is being deliberately ambiguous: “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Either this is a statement of faith from Abraham a statement that says “I know God has asked for my son, but he will provide a lamb in his place at the last minute”. Or Abraham evasively replied “God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” I.e. God will provide my son as the burnt offering.
Both of these are valid ways to understand the sentence both in Hebrew and in English.
I think Abraham genuinely believed that his son was about to be the sheep that was to be offered.
Maybe he hoped for a better ending, he probably prayed for a different outcome, he probably longed for a different road to travel on. But in faith he followed where the Lord led.
That is what it means to follow in faith. We go where the Lord leads, even when we can’t see how it will work out. Even when it is ambiguous as to how God will provide. Even when we can’t understand how God will come through. Even when sometimes it feels as if all we can see is the knife poised to strike.
When we trust God this way one of two things happen. Either you get to the end of the road and the terrible thing you have been dreading ultimately happens. Maybe you lose the job, or your business goes bankrupt or you do get the Cancer diagnosis. The worst happens.
When the worst happens, we can think: How can God let this happen to me? I thought he loved me? I thought he was supposed to care about me? In the middle of this God still asks you: will you trust me?
Then as time goes on, you end up finding new work, or you start a new business, or you start getting treatment, you when you reflect on these things you begin to realise the truth of Romans 2:28, that: “All things work together for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose”. Will you trust him?
How often have people said to me: “I would not wish this experience on anyone, but you know what, I am actually strangely kind of glad for it.” “My bad experience has taught me
that I am not my money.” “I have learnt that I am not defined by my relationships.” “This has brought me closer to Jesus than I have ever been, even though my body is being destroyed by my sickness”.
Maybe the worst thing happens - but it ends up being for your good.
Or God does provides a way out. Maybe, last minute, job keeper (a scheme the Australian government initiated to pay for staff that had no work due to covid), comes into play and all the staff you had to lay off suddenly have work again.
Maybe you are sitting in the manager’s office, expecting to be fired,but instead they offer you a promotion. Maybe you end up getting better from the sickness. The medicine works, or a miracle happens. Maybe God provides a way out.
For Abraham, God provided a way out. He stood there, dagger in hand, poised to strike and an angel calls out to stop him. “Look”, he says, “God had miraculously provided a ram as a way out.” Sometimes God does provide us a last minute way out. We can pray for that and hope for that too.
We have seen that God tests faith, and God provides, but we need to remember that this story of is not just a simple moral story about how God rewards blind obedience. The point of this scripture is not that we should “Be like Abraham” and blindly trust when the voice in our head tells us to sacrifice our children!
No, what happens here in Genesis 22 is much more significant because it is part of a bigger story, the story we have been following along in our series. This sacrifice points us to a much better sacrifice.
The sacrifice points us to Jesus
This story of sacrifice points us straight to the cross, where God provided a way out once and for all. There on the cross, Jesus took our punishment, took God’s wrath against sin on his shoulders so that we would not have to bear it.
Because we know that, we can trust God in the trials and testings of our life because we know that whatever happens in this life is not because God is punishing us, judging us or cursing us. If we are believers, we are forever free from God’s wrath because of what Jesus has done. That means that every painful situation we can find ourselves in, is ultimately for our good - because Jesus already took all the bad.
When we read the story of the sacrifice of Isaac, we are supposed to understand it as part of a much bigger story that points us to Jesus. There are so many hints that this points us to Jesus, it would be hard to miss for alert readers!
Firstly, where does this sacrifice happen?
It happens in Moriah. If you know your Israelite history, you will know that Moriah is connected with Jerusalem. Specifically the mountain of God, Mount Moria is where Solomon ends up building the Temple.
So here in temple country a sacrifice is being offered to show true obedience and faith. This sacrifice is an innocent who had done no wrong. A sacrifice that was made to carry the tree on which he was about to be sacrificed, up the mountain by himself, where though innocent is sentenced to die.
Notice that Isaac, the sacrifice does not struggle. In fact, given the age of Abraham and the likely age of Isaac at this stage, Isaac could have easily escape, or at least put up a fight but there is no indication of that.
Again notice what the text actually says: Isaac asks Abraham “Father where is the sheep, where is the lamb”, and Abraham replies “God will provide a lamb”. But God doesn’t provide a lamb, God provides them a ram to sacrifice.
Now most of us won’t realise this, but the way this is written in the Hebrew, where the burnt offering and the ram appear together in Scripture in this particularly combination, only occurs in the book of Leviticus (apart from this passage).
It occurs when priests are ordained, but more importantly, it occurs on the ritual of the Day of Atonement. On the day when the sins of the people are wiped out though a sacrifice like this. And all of this points us to another day of atonement.
Where another son, another innocent, obediently does his father’s will. Where Jesus himself cries Father, not my will but yours be done.
Where in Jerusalem, in the very place where the temple that would be the place where the atonement sacrifice would be prepared, there Jesus is bound, and unjustly sentenced to die. Where on the way to his death, he is forced to carry the tree, on which he was about to be sacrificed, up the mountain. Where ultimately on the altar of the cross he is sacrificed, in faithful obedience.
There was no way out for Jesus that day. God did not provide another ram another sacrifice to stand in Jesus’ place. Jesus was the sacrifice provided to stand in our place. That is how we know God’s great love for us, because on that day he did not withhold from us his son, his only son, whom he loved.