A FAITH DUET - I

Genesis 22:1-19
Bob Bonner
June 12, 2005

This past week, Becky and I watched the second part to a two-part reality TV show. Typically we don’t have the time nor do we watch such programs, but somehow, we got hooked. The title of the program, I found out later, is “Swapping Spouses.” If you have not seen the program, I’m not endorsing it, but just using it as an illustration. The program is about two wives/mothers who have been chosen to leave their homes for one week to become the mothers of each other’s household.

In this episode, one mother came from the hills of Tennessee, while the other came from a wealthy Southern California beach community. The Tennessee home was built around a hunter’s theme. It’s homey atmosphere was surrounded by wooden walls decorated with various dead animal or “hunting trophies.” The dress of the day was typically blue jeans, overalls and hunting camos.

The Tennessee family was a close-knit down home family. The glitz and glamour of the West or East coast didn’t interest them in the slightest. The teenage daughter felt more comfortable wearing hunting camos and wandering through the woods than she did putting on makeup and a dress and strolling across a dance floor. To this family of four, the most important valued item in the world was their family. The husband and wife were deeply in love. Surprisingly, for a family from the South, this family was not a church-going family.

In stark contrast to them was this wealthy-appearing Southern California family of six, who declared themselves at the beginning of the show to be a born again Christian family. They lived in a multimillion dollar home, decorated with Christian symbols and other items that revealed that this family was not lacking for anything...except for a deep sense of family. Believe me, if you didn’t see this program, their modeling of the Christian life did nothing to promote what many of us understand the Bible to teach about the role and importance of family.

During the show, we learned that the husband’s business had lost more than one million dollars in business this year alone and was going under if a financier didn’t show up quickly. Everything they owned was mortgaged to the hilt just to maintain their lavish lifestyle. He was about to lose it all. As a result, even though Dad’s office was in the home, he was never “there” for the kids. He mentioned several times that the reason that he couldn’t spend time with his kids is that he had to keep their financial boat, their lifestyle, afloat, and it was sinking fast.

In comparison to the two Tennessee children, the four Southern California children were not very responsible. The youngest of the four was spoiled rotten and hadn’t experienced any discipline probably in the entire first six years of his life.

In short, you couldn’t have picked two more opposite families. The mama from Tennessee was shocked by what she first saw, but quickly jumped in and within a week made incredible headway at restoring a sense of order, discipline, responsibility and “family” in that house. By the time she left, everyone in the house loved her and realized that they had been missing the most important priority in life...a loving family. When she left, she was deeply missed and appreciated. I’ll skip her counter-part’s story.

But one scene in the program has stuck with me. It was when the Tennessee mama confronted the busy California father of his need to discipline his youngest son. She gently, but very clearly told this dad that he had better back off on the work or he was going to miss the most important, treasured years of his life, with his kids. Furthermore, she instructed him that he needed to put his foot down and discipline his youngest son.

However, when confronted by his need to discipline his son, I was stunned by the honesty of his response as to why he had not corrected his child’s selfish and unruly behavior. He said, “I’m afraid to correct him, because if I do, he may stop liking me!” I thought out loud, “Good night brother, being a parent is not about winning an award for being the most liked person in the room.” Being a dad is about raising up sons and daughters that will become responsible men and women of the future. That not only requires your invested attention to their lives, but it also, at times, requires that you not be liked by them. They may even tell you, “I hate you!” because you take away certain privileges that you warned them ahead of time you would do for not doing what they were supposed to.

I have taken the time to tell you about the contrast of these two families and their obvious differences in parenting, because this week and next we are going to study a very unique father-son relationship. In this relationship, there are obvious parenting principles being displayed. Although our intent for these next two weeks will not be to look at God’s instructions for parenting, I want you to consider, “What made their relationship work such that the drama recorded about their lives in Genesis 22 is able to move the reader to the depths of his soul?”

Instead of doing a study on parenting from this passage, this morning and next week, we will look closely at a father-son duet and their walk of faith. For the key to their lives, the key to their success as father and son was based in their shared faith in God. We will see the father’s commitment to following the Lord, no matter what, even if it didn’t feel good, or he risked the loss of his son’s approval if he obeyed God.

At this point in time, 15 to 20 years have passed since the last period of the last verse in chapter 21. Isaac has grown up and replaced Ishmael in Abraham’s heart. Abraham is absolutely nuts about his son Isaac. Then, suddenly, shockingly,...quite unexpectedly, comes this word from God.

Verse 1, “Now it came about after these things, that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you.”

How often our worship shifts from God, to worshiping the positions God has enabled us to attain, or to worship the possessions we hold so tightly, or those special persons He has placed in our lives. But God wants us to recognize that our security, our true joy in life never rests in a position we hold, or possession we can grasp or in the other wonderful people in our lives. Our security, our true joy, our life itself rests in knowing, obeying and worshiping Him alone.

Abraham would be the first to tell you that no test of faith is more difficult to endure than a test which, from our perspective has no rhyme nor reason to it, threatens the loss of those positions, possessions and special persons in our lives.

After waiting 25 years for his promised son, the one through whom a nation was to be born, and then after enjoying another 15 to 20 years of a relationship with that child, God tells Abraham to execute this son. Talk about a request that makes no sense!!! It’s one thing if God chooses to take something we value away from us. But it is quite another when He orders us to destroy it.

Please note the words in verse 2, “Your son, your only son, whom you love.” Although God has recognized Ishmael in the past, He no longer recognizes Ishmael as Abraham’s son. As far as God is concerned, Isaac is the only son Abraham has ever had. Furthermore, God emphasizes that Abraham “loves” this boy like none other. This, by the way, is the first occurrence of the word “love” in the Bible, focusing on the love of a father for his son. Because it is the first usage of the term in the Bible, Abraham’s relationship with Isaac sets the standard for love between a father and his child.

Interestingly, the first usage of this term for love in the New Testament, is found in Matthew 3:17, in which we read these words, coming from the lips of God the Father, at Christ’s baptism “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.” Bottom line, what God is asking Abraham to do, God will personally experience in the future when Jesus is put to death. God realizes the terrible cost of doing what’s right in raising a son.

From a human perspective, what God instructs Abraham to do is illogical, absurd, possibly immoral and, at minimum, emotionally irresponsible. Yet, sometimes, such is the true nature of biblical faith. Biblical faith often requires radical obedience whether or not you understand it or feel like it. When God sets the direction, you follow it.

Though his heart was torn, Abraham obeyed God. In verses 3-10, we will see three things about Abraham’s obedience. The first comes in verses 3 and 4. We read, “So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance.”

Notice, there is no arguing on Abraham’s part. There is no whining, no wailing, no vacillating, no trying to bargain with God, no pleading and no refusal. Instead, without hesitancy or questioning, Abraham sets off to do God’s will. His obedience was immediate.

Abraham wakes up and early next morning, and he is off to fulfill God’s will in Moriah. Moriah is that area that would later, in New Testament times, be named Judah. And the exact spot upon which the sacrifice would take place would be that hill upon which the temple would be built and the same place our Savior would be crucified. Since Abraham was probably living in Beersheba, it was a two to three day journey to this spot. I wonder what was the content of the conversation between those men on that trip. Did they speak at all? Were Abraham’s thoughts preoccupied?

He may have told Isaac and the others that they were going to make a sacrifice to God, but nothing more. This probably wasn’t the only time in Isaac’s 15 to 20 years of life that they had gone together to make a sacrifice to God. Hence, Isaac had no reason to question, “Where are we going, and why?” He just went because Dad asked him to join him. For both Abraham and Isaac, their obedience to their heavenly and earthly fathers was immediate.

In verses 5-8, we see something else about Abraham’s obedience. The text says, “And Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go yonder; and we will worship and return to you.’” Did you catch the “we will worship and return”? How could Abraham be so confident that he and Isaac would both worship and both return, if Isaac was to be sacrificed?

This is what is so amazing about Abraham’s faith. God was proving to all who were observing Abraham’s faith in the promises of God, that he was able to see something of the future, when others could not. In Hebrews 11:17-19 we are told why Abraham could do what he did. We read, “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac; and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; it was he to whom it was said, ‘In Isaac your descendants shall be called.’” He considered that God is able to raise men even from the dead; from which he also received him back as a type. Through simple faith, Abraham figured that if God said that through Isaac many nations would come, then somehow God would allow both Isaac and himself to walk back down that mountain together, even if it meant resurrecting Isaac from the dead. At that time, no one had ever been resurrected from the dead. Hence, Abraham’s faith was not blind faith, but rather faith that was based on God’s promises, a faith that enabled him to put together the facts of God’s promises, the two plus two and know that somehow four had to be the answer.

We continue reading in Genesis 22:6, “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 the two of them walked on together. And Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, "My father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." And he said, "Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"

At this point, Abraham’s heart probably skips a beat. “And Abraham said, ‘God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.’ So the two of them walked on together.”

“Will provide for Himself the lamb” can be translated two different ways in Hebrew. In this case, I believe it is God’s intention for both translations to be understood. First, it means that God provided for Himself the lamb; and secondly, it more literally translated means that “He will provide himself to be the lamb.” This second translation is meant to be a futuristic picture of the Son of God willingly providing Himself to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. This is the point that Hebrews 11:13 speaks of when it says that Abraham saw afar off the significance of God’s provision of the ram that day, Christ’s substitutionary death on the cross. Not just the ram to take the place of Isaac, but the Lamb of God, that would take the place for all of us.

I also believe that it is this scene that Jesus had in mind when He said to the religious leaders of His day, in John 8:56, “your Father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it and was glad.”

In verses 9 and 10, we see the third ingredient to Abraham’s obedience. “Then they came to the place of which God had told him; and Abraham built the altar there, and arranged the wood, and bound his son Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.” Make no mistake in reading that. Abraham was going to follow through and kill his son. This action of Abraham illustrates for us that his obedience was thorough in its resolve. Abraham was going to finish by faith, what he had started, unless God made him stop.

Sometimes those we love die or are killed in spite all that we do to protect them or to keep them safe. That’s also true of our hopes and dreams. Sometimes it may be a business, a partnership that struggles and we work hard to make it succeed, but in the end, it does not. Sometimes it is a marriage; but if both the husband and wife are not willing to work at it, that marriage will crash and burn, despite all that one individual may do to save it.

But in this case, Abraham isn’t even allowed to protect. Instead, he faces the added anguish of having to inflict the final blow upon his only son, himself. It wouldn’t be as simple as pulling the plug or turning off a machine or standing off at a distance and pulling a trigger. For Abraham...well, can you imagine the sounds a knife would make as it penetrated the boy’s body and all of the moaning that would accompany it? I mention these things not to be gory, but to be real. I want you to imagine what Abraham knew was coming. He was preparing himself to watch his son writhe in pain as he died slowly right under his hands. And then, after the boy had died, to light a fire and smell the stench of his son’s burning corpse. Abraham knew what was ahead of him, had not God stepped in to stop him

Can you imagine the thought of this father, that the last sight his son would have, the last thought his son would have this side of eternity, would be that of his own father killing him? For me, it’s painful just to think about.

But it’s at times like these, in the midst of the darkest hours of one’s life, those times when we are at our wits end, overcome by tremendous heartfelt anguish, and we still choose to obey God that God typically does His best work in our lives. It is at times like these when we are fully obedient that God does something marvelous with our circumstances.

In verses 11-19, we see God reward Abraham’s faithful obedience. “But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” In Hebrew, it is not always what you say, but how you say it that is important. Whenever you repeat a person’s name in Hebrew, it is a statement of honor or respect toward that person. Hence, here, God is saying something like “Abraham, my faithful beloved and proven child.” With those affirming words of greeting, Abraham’s attention is immediately drawn away from the task at hand, and Abraham responds, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.” Then Abraham raised his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns; and Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. Abraham called the name of that place The Lord Will Provide, as it is said to this day, “In the mount of the Lord it will be provided.” Then the angel of the Lord (by the way, who is this “Angel of the Lord?” Jesus!) called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. “In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice.”

Note Jesus’ ongoing repetition of “Your son, your only son.” It tells me that Jesus knew exactly what Abraham and Isaac must have been feeling at that point.

The last verse concludes the story, ”So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beersheba; and Abraham lived at Beersheba.”

Returning to Beersheba, I wonder what the topic of conversation was this time? How different it must have been from the conversation that took place on the way to Moriah.

So significant was this event to Abraham, that he takes the time to teach a very important lesson not only to his son, but in the end, to us, the readers of this event, thousands of years later. Did you catch his lesson? It’s right there, in verse 14.

He makes sure that Isaac and all those who come later learn something new about who God is. He names the site of Isaac’s interrupted sacrifice, the very place where Jesus would one day be crucified as “Yahweh Jireh.” This is the only time this name for God is used in the Bible, yet it is one of the most beloved and popular names for God.

This name for God is made up of two words. First, “Yahweh” or as some choose to pronounce it, “Jehovah,” is God’s personal name in Hebrew. It is the name which emphasizes God’s personal nature, His commitment to relating to us in an intimate way, should we desire to know Him. Contrary to the opinion of many, God does not want to remain distant from you, but is more than willing to meet with you, if only you would make the effort to meet with Him.

“Yahweh” is usually translated in our English Old Testaments as “Lord.” In addition to being His personal name, it is also God’s covenant-keeping name. This name stresses the point that the very nature of God is His commitment to keeping His promises. When you put that all together, “Yahweh” is the personal God who keeps His promises. Yahweh proved Himself to be faithful to His promise to Abraham to make him a father of many nations through his son Isaac, by sparing Isaac’s life.

Combine this name “Yahweh” with the second word in this name, “Jireh” and you gain an even greater understanding of our God who wants so much for us to know Him. This second word, “Jireh,” has two different meanings in Hebrew. It’s primary meaning is “to see;” God sees beforehand, and a long distance away what we can’t see. Then the secondary meaning of “jireh,” one which is metaphorical is “to provide.” Hence, “what God sees beforehand to be the need, He also provides for.”

In English, we have an idiom that somewhat catches the same dual meaning of the word “jireh.” If someone asks us to get a job done, our response might be, “I’ll see to it.” What we mean when we say that is that we will oversee the project and make sure that whatever it takes to get the job done, we will do it. Hence, through His prevision God makes provision. Now, let’s put both the words “Yahweh” and “jireh” together and see what we get: “the personal God who keeps His promises to provide and will provide.”

One other important note about this name. It is not rendered, “God has provided” nor is it “God now provides.” Rather, this name means, “God will provide.” This is God who will provide in the future. Hence, Abraham’s point is that God never asks us to do anything that He will not have made provision for ahead of time.

By giving us this prophetic name for God, the futuristic name for God, Abraham was telling us that, upon this same mountain, God would in the future fulfill another promise and meet another need of ours as well.

Remember, this is the same mountain that “Yahweh Jireh,” promised Lamb of God would take away the sin of the world. In Romans 8:32, we read of the same God, “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us (or provide for us) all things?” Again, in Philippians 4:19, we read about Yahweh Jireh, our God who will always provide. Paul tells us, “But my God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus.”

As we close this morning, I’m impressed with one major thought. Only when I obey God, and put my confidence in Jesus Christ, only when I submit my life to Him as my Savior and Lord and commit to obeying Him as Abraham did, will I see God do a miracle in my life. All of life begins when I first obey God and take Christ to be my Savior and Lord.

That father in “Swapping Spouses” was finding it too difficult to do what he had to do to discipline his son for fear of his son’s rejection. But until that father, that parent, was willing to risk his son’s rejection by disciplining him as he ought, unless he was willing to obey God, trusting that God knows what is best for our children and will provide for them, he would not see the joy of God’s blessing in his or his son’s life. If Abraham had been unwilling to obey God and said, “No, I am not going to sacrifice Isaac, that’s too harsh!” he would not have seen God’s blessing, and Isaac also would not have learned that he could count on the Lord in his life; neither of them would have seen God do a miracle in their life. If we provide for or protect our children when they are capable to do it themselves, we are guilty of assisting them in dodging God’s intended discipline in their lives, and we are doing them great harm.

“Yahweh Jireh” is the personal God who will provide for you, your kids and all who seek Him. Don’t rob yourself or your children or others from learning to trust in God, by your refusal to do what you know deep down is right.

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