So Abraham rose early in the morning…
Summary: The Bible is full of examples of people being “tested” or, as the KJV says, “tempted.” In this meditation, we look at Abraham’s response to one such situation.
In our last meditation, we looked at the difference between testing and tempting. It was a quick look that gives us a peek into the difference, but God’s Word gives us more than a peek. Many stories in the Bible illustrate both definitions of this devious word.
I call it a “devious” word because the word itself both tests us and tempts us. We are tested by our response to the word and at the same time tempted to misapply it each time we use it. Did God make a mistake using this word? Not on your life. Father knows what he is doing.
Genesis, Chapter Twenty-Two, tells a story about God “testing” a man. (The KJV calls this “tempting.” Both usages of the words are correct.) It is one of the more famous passages about testing, but certainly not the only one. In this story, Abraham, the patriarch of Israel, is told to sacrifice his son to God.
Right out of the gate, we know something is wrong. God doesn’t do this kind of thing. Three times in the book of Jeremiah the prophet God talks about people who build alters to satanic idols and then burn their children in the fire as an offering (Jeremiah 7:31, Jeremiah 19:5, Jeremiah 32:35). God then points out that he does not command this kind of thing and adds, “nor did it enter my mind.”
The sacrifice God asks of Abraham is weirdly reminiscent of the false gods that populate Canaan. What makes this situation even worse is that asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is like asking Abraham to sacrifice his own life. Abraham had waited one hundred years to have a son by Sarah, his wife. He had one other son by a slave woman, but his true heir, his legitimate son had to come from his marriage to Sarah. To ask Abraham to kill his only son was no different than asking him to put a knife to his own throat. Abraham would have given up everything else he had to guarantee his son’s life.
Some people speculate that Abraham believed God would not let Isaac die. The thought is that Abraham’s faith was so great that he believed he could “kill” Isaac and yet Isaac would still live. We don’t know how deeply Abraham thought about this. The Bible does not record his thinking. What the Bible does tell us is what Abraham did.
God tells Abraham, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” (Genesis 22:2) The next morning, “early the next morning,” Abraham gets up, takes two servants and Isaac, loads up his donkey and takes off into the wilderness.
Abraham didn’t wait. He didn’t delay, or think about what God had asked of him. He didn’t hesitate.
We don’t know how God communicated with Abraham. Did he hear a voice? Did God speak with him in a dream? Was he in a trance at the time? Was he visited by an angel? The text doesn’t tell us and it doesn’t really matter. What matters is his response; it is immediate.
The test wasn’t only about whether Abraham would obey the Lord, it was also about how he obeyed. If he had thought about it for a few days something else might have come up to distract him. The urgency might have faded. Abraham might have even begun to question what he had heard from the Lord. “Did he really say that?” sounds an awful lot like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, doesn’t it? (Genesis 3:1)
Abraham passed the test. If he felt tempted to ignore God, that feeling was spit out of his mind faster than the blink of an eye. He obeyed God. Not only did he obey, but he also obeyed quickly.
Application: Learning to discern the Voice of God requires that we be willing to respond as Abraham did, quickly and decisively.
Food for Thought: What kind of weird things does God still ask us to do?
Abraham is an excellent example. I think it is important to note that God did not ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac when He first introduced Himself to Abraham. By that time God had built up a track record of faithfulness and Abraham knew the Lord and knew he could trust Him. He had seen God come through with promises that only an all powerful and righteous God could perform.
God had promised a lineage through Isaac, who still had not had any children. So he did reason that if he had to go through with the sacrifice that God could even raise the dead to keep that promise. We see this in Hebrews 11: 17 – 19. Isaac was going to have children.
I point this out simply to say that whatever strange thing (from our point of view) that God asks of us, we know He keeps His promise and that He can be trusted. And the better we know Him. the more we see a track record of being able to trust Him. Faith is like a muscle – it grows with use.
I have always thought it strange, or weird, that God still asks us to believe that He can raise the dead. This is a prerequisite to true faith in Christ. We have to believe He can raise the dead. We have to believe that Jesus rose from the dead and that He is the firstfruits of many to come after Him in resurrection (1 Corinthians 15).
Some might point to circumcision as something strange that God asked his people to do. Some today have told me that they feel baptism is strange. Some have even told me that the church itself is a strange institution. In each situation of what someone sees as weird (maybe because they just don’t understand why God is asking us to do something), we need to respond in trust, obedience and faith to the Lord. Our understanding is less important than our trust and obedience.
I imagine that the Israelites thought some of God’s Levitical laws were strange. But many today marvel at the fact that many of those laws protected the community from disease, etc. They didn’t know that then, but God did. That principle is still true because we don’t know all that He knows and we never will.
So what may seem strange to us is clear to God. That is why our response, as the famous hymn states, is to trust and obey.
Brother Rich,
Thank you for your thoughtful response this morning. I appreciate the references to Hebrews 11 and 1 Corinthians 15. Both are excellent and provide valuable background for this discussion.
To your larger point, faith in God is a challenge! In Genesis 3 we see how Satan awakens the sense of self in our flesh. By eating from the forbidden tree our spirit “dies” to God. In having our eyes of flesh opened to “good and evil” we become blinded spiritually.
God calls us to trust him as he leads us back to him. Slowly, through faith and obedience, our spiritual eyes are opened and we begin to see.
Thank you again for your words this morning!
I like “Faith is like a muscle – it grows with use.” But I might change it and call it my own.
Faith is like a spiritual muscle – it grows bigger and stronger with use.
Tim,
Thank you for the clarification! You make an important point.
Sorry long story.
I was on vacation once and had been enjoying mornings with the Lord where I did a devotion on the beach and then listened to uplifting music afterwards. One morning I couldn’t find my headphones. It distressed me more than it should. I was more upset that I couldn’t have that devotion/music on the beach that day. I prayed about it, and I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to do my devotion. I did, but afterwards the headphones still bothered me. I spent a good portion of the morning looking for those headphones. In my journey that day, I encountered different people, and unknowingly fulfilled a promise that was important to someone else, but I had forgotten about. I got to a point that I felt the Holy Spirit tell me to let the headphones go in my heart, so I did. Then I found the headphones. The promise that I had fulfilled strengthened a relationship that I had been praying about. The people that I encountered still spoke with me at various opportunities the rest of the week and I was able to eventually share my walk with them.
The lesson I learned from that is not to get attached to things and routines, or to think that I could use those to “create” an environment to meet with the Lord. That just because The Lord had given me good devotion time with Him on the beach (which I truly felt blessed by), it didn’t mean it was a “formula” to “success” or that it would always be that way. There were things He wanted me to do in addition to devoting time to Him. He also wanted me to seek His Will, and to be obedient.
I know if I had waited 100 years for a son, there would be a good chance that I would love and delight in him a bit too much. Maybe even enough that it could be a barrier in my walk with the Lord.
We also don’t fully know how Abrahams obedience affected those around him, and how that affected their perspective of God. Obedience to God can be as great as the willingness to sacrifice your own son, or as small as picking up a piece of trash. We do know that “All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)
Chris,
Thank you for sharing your story here. It is exactly the kind of story I have come to expect from people who know the Lord. God comes to us individually in very personal ways. Nothing is too small to pass under his watchful eye. He can use lightning, smoke, and even earphones to achieve his ends. Your story isn’t over! You are still testifying to the power of God in our lives. 🙂
01-13-2023, What kind of weird things does God still ask us to do?
Praising and trusting God in all circumstances are tough ones. He will without warning, take your only son at the prime of his life, or allow a major, potentially deadly physically problem effect your wife for an extended period of time. You care for this person every way you can, watch this previously full of life woman who brighten your every day, become quiet, withdrawn and sullen as you both know she could be dieing very soon.
You keep your faith, daily live in His sovereign will and serve your wife in any way you can. You live knowing Gods will is being done, but dread what you may be being prepared to endure. Quietly asking God to take you instead. You walk together and praise God for His wisdom, discuss how our faith in His will over our own is growing each day.
You loose 20 pounds, trying to hold onto your faith which is knowing God has His purpose in all circumstances and they are only Good for all His people. We praise Him because we are His people, eternal beings spending just a short time on this broken world. We seek to live each day in His power as we reject all temptations to even in some tiny little way accuse God of not knowing what He is doing, and admonish ourselves for even the slightest waver in faith.
Yes to the world this may seem weird, but we must climb mountains as we grow in faith.
Ron,
Thank you for sharing from your heart today. It is far too easy to get wrapped up in my own challenges and lose sight of the difficulties others have to deal with.
You remind me that we cannot take anything for granted. Not today, not tomorrow, not our spouse or family or friends or even our country. Satan is like an acid corroding God’s physical creation but unable to touch God’s spiritual realm. Our job is to lean into God’s spiritual realm which is what we call faith.
Thank you for sharing your journey with us.
What kind of weird things does God still ask us to do?
God asks us to leave what we are familiar with to go do things we’re clueless about.
God asks us to love those who hate us. (And those we want to hate)
God asks us to love Him more than life.
God asks us to do what we aren’t even capable of doing.
Then there’s times when God tells someone to do a handstand in the airport because an Atheist prayed “if you’re real make someone do a handstand” (not my story but from a reliable source)
Or to touch the shoulders of the man in front of you, and he’s then deeply grateful for the ‘massage’.
Or the carefully thought out testimony that you wrote and didn’t use at all because God said that He had a different plan.
Nice list, Tim & Angela!! 🙂