This is the final post in a series on how God tested Abraham by calling him to sacrifice his son Isaac (see Genesis 22). To read from the beginning, click here.
God’s fierce, covenant love is what draws us even though he tests us. His love is worth everything. His love is better than life. And his love can be trusted. In fact, one of the most encouraging things about Abraham’s test is God’s jealousy. It shows how much he cares about you. Your love matters to the Lord of all.
The worst thing that can happen to you is not to be tested as Abraham was; the worst would be if the Lord of the universe did not care about your love. I do not want the one who holds my life in his hand to be indifferent. I am glad my affection matters infinitely to him. What could be more flattering or give greater significance? Not success or fame. Not family. And not wealth. Not anything we withhold from him. God tests deeply because he loves deeply. He will prove true to those who prove true to him.
Such love is why we need not fear this trial. Fallen hearts avoid surrender. In some ways we want to be close to God and his blessings, yet at the same time we want to keep our distance lest he require us to surrender what we love most. We fear what he will ask from us. This is one reason people avoid God, the Bible, and church. They know they have something he wants, and they do not intend to release it. It has become their god, their supreme desire, the one thing they feel they cannot live without. If the choice is between God and Isaac, they choose Isaac.
Surprisingly it is this unsettling quality of God’s heart—his jealously of Isaac—that assures you can wholeheartedly draw near. For he requires surrender because he loves you greatly. He requires surrender because that love will satisfy infinitely more than your Isaac. He requires surrender because he knows his generous intentions to reward your sacrifice extravagantly. And he requires surrender because he is God; therefore he alone deserves your ultimate devotion. It glorifies him, and that glory will delight you forever.
In the end, we lose what we withhold from God and keep what we give. Abraham’s ultimate test ends with these words about him and his son: “They arose and went together to Beersheba” (Genesis 22:19).
How the cross of Jesus compares with Abraham’s test
In the previous posts we have seen in Genesis 22 that God tested Abraham by commanding him to journey to a distant mountain and there sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham obeyed God, to the point that he was moments away from slaying his son. At that moment God intervened and directed Abraham to a ram to sacrifice in Isaac’s place.
How is this test of Abraham thousands of years ago relevant for us today?
First, Abraham’s test resembles the Cross of Christ in too many ways to be a coincidence. Both involve the substitutionary sacrifice of a lamb who is a ram. Both involve a father giving his beloved son. And both involve a son submitting quietly to their father’s action, going like a sheep to the slaughter.
Both involve God’s provision for what man lacks. Both involve the ultimate test of a man’s life, in particular the test for obedience and surrender. And both involve a son to be sacrificed on wood.
Both involve death and resurrection (see Hebrews 11:19). Both happened on a mount in a region named Moriah, perhaps the same mountain (see 2 Chron. 3:1 and 1 Chron. 21). Like the Cross on Golgotha, the altar on Mount Moriah showed the ocean depths of God’s heart.
The Cross of Jesus is the greatest revelation of God. Given its similarity, the testing of Abraham must also be one of his greatest revelations. It was not an anomaly.
Further relevance
As he did with Abraham, God calls everyone to the same obedience and the complete surrender of what we love most. Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple…. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26–27, 33).
Jesus said the most important commandment is “to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30).
Romans 12:1 says, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”
Jesus calls us to surrender in spirit every relationship and priority dear to us, to sacrifice our very selves. God calls us to sacrifice Isaac.
Differences
How does Abraham’s test differ from our similar tests? First, again, God has commanded in Scripture that no one may offer a child in sacrifice. He never intended for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and he forbids anyone today to slay a person in ritual sacrifice.
The second difference is how God communicates. When he tests you about surrendering something, he ordinarily does not speak with an audible voice as he spoke to Abraham, but rather through his written Word, your conscience, and other people and circumstances. But such a call is no less a test. Jesus summons everyone to full surrender, and you know whether you have complied. You know if you love something or someone more than God. You know when the central issue in a trial is whether you will surrender what you most value. You also will know whether God is returning what you surrender, just as he restored Isaac to Abraham.
Abraham’s test reveals God’s heart, for he does not change. This trial shows how important it is to God that you fear him in a way that results in obedience. This trial also shows his jealous love. He will not have rivals. His jealousy is not the insecure, sinful jealousy we experience but rather a divine jealousy based in covenant love. God does not need your love, for he is perfectly self-sufficient, yet he has freely chosen to set his steadfast love on you and enter covenant with you. Divine love is covenant love, which we must requite in faithfulness.
You can count on it even when you cannot understand it that God always does what is right.
In the previous posts we have seen in Genesis 22 that God tested Abraham by commanding him to journey to a distant mountain and there sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham obeyed God, to the point that he was moments away from slaying his son. At that moment God intervened and directed Abraham to a ram to sacrifice in Isaac’s place.
Most people are confused by God’s command to Abraham that he sacrifice his son Isaac (see Genesis 22), and that tells us something important. God will not command anyone now to do what he commanded Abraham then.
Although God was righteous in this command, he himself has irrevocably changed the human situation since Abraham’s time by giving written laws through Moses and other writers of the Bible. Abraham lived before the Bible. Today God will not command anyone to do what his Word prohibits. God commanded Israel, “There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering” (Deu. 18:10). So Abraham’s experience will never be repeated. God will never again command someone to sacrifice a child. In fact, he has forbidden it.
God’s heart
This prohibition perfectly reflects God’s heart. In the end, God did not let Abraham slay Isaac. What looks like a turnaround was not a change of heart. God never intended for Abraham to slay Isaac. His intention was only to test Abraham. By stopping the sacrifice God shows how he actually felt about it, and therefore when God later in Deuteronomy 18 prohibits parents from sacrificing their children he is entirely consistent. It was his command to slay Isaac that conflicted with the highest purposes of his heart. Although God’s command to Abraham reflected his divine prerogatives—the potter can do what he wants with the clay—it did not reflect his heart.
This is God’s glory. He has the Creator’s right to command as he did, and he has the Father’s heart to rescind the command. Jesus said, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13. Jesus refers here to the Old Testament, Hosea 6:6. This reminds us that God does not change from Old Testament to New Testament. God was merciful and compassionate in the Old Testament, and he was the same in Jesus). In the Old Covenant God required sacrifices, yet he also said he desired mercy more than sacrifice. Therefore sacrifice is good, but mercy better.
You can be sure of this: God is infinitely more merciful, compassionate, and concerned about human life and justice than you.
God always does what is right
But we should honor him no less for his divine prerogatives. To do that we need a clear understanding of God’s righteousness in testing Abraham with this command. Proud people focus on their supposed rights and ignore God’s legitimate rights as Creator and Sustainer, Sovereign and Judge. Although God did not have the desire to let Abraham slay Isaac, he did have the right.
His command was righteous, and consequently Abraham would have been righteous in obeying it. James 1:13 says, “God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.” If God’s command had been unrighteous, and if Abraham’s obedience to it had been unrighteous, then God would have been tempting Abraham to do evil. According to James 1:13, God does not do that. Moreover, if God’s command had been evil, he would not have conceived it, because according to James 1:13 he cannot be tempted with evil.
Completely right
Therefore, what is it about being God that makes it right, even glorious, for him to give such a command? The answer is, everything.
His love makes it right because perfect love jealously desires wholehearted love in return. His goodness makes it right because Abraham’s highest good comes only by loving God above all, not Isaac.
What’s more, his justice makes it right because it is appointed to each fallen descendent of Adam eventually to die. His mercy makes it right because Isaac at death would depart this evil world and go to heavenly paradise.
Furthermore his wisdom makes it right because he alone knows everything from beginning to end and balancing innumerable factors knows how to work all things for Abraham’s and Isaac’s highest good and his highest glory. And his sovereignty makes it right because he cannot stop being sovereign any more than he can stop existing, and therefore he alone determines when and how a person’s death serves the best purposes (John 21:19; Psalm 139:16; Job 14:5).
His role as Creator makes it right because he owns and uses what he creates as a potter does clay. His infinite worth makes it right because anything devoted to him serves a great, eternal purpose.
Therefore God’s command to sacrifice Isaac does not hint at some sinister side to God; rather, it was gloriously right in every way.
More right
But he was more right to revoke the command. He was more true to everything that makes him God to cry out, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him.” This more fully expressed God’s compassion, purposes, promises, love, goodness, joy, blessedness, and more. The pitch-perfect revelation of God was to spare Isaac, just as it was to raise Jesus from the grave. From the beginning God intended for Isaac to live.
We are puzzled that God would command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac because our conscience has been trained by God.
How is it moral for God to command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?
Notice we are not asking, “Is it moral for God to command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?” It is a given that God only does what is right. “His works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he” (Deut. 32:4, NIV).
In fact it is evil to suggest otherwise: “Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (Job 1:22). God himself is the standard of what is right.
Reverence
Therefore, as we seek to understand how God could command Abraham to offer Isaac, we must do so with reverence, remembering that God does not answer to us; rather, we answer to him. God does not have to explain himself, and in this story he does not. He is perfectly righteous, while we have been corrupted in our thinking and cannot reason rightly unless God renews our minds. Therefore, we must beware of asking and answering questions accusingly as though we might be morally superior to God.
That is laughable arrogance and total delusion. On our own morally, we do not know our left hand from our right (Jonah 4:11). Morally, God is perfect and has always been perfect; he never had to learn morality, either on his own or from someone else. On the contrary, everything we know about morality came from God.
The conscience
Anything our secular culture correctly understands about morality also came from God. Over many centuries God has deposited moral truths in secular cultures through Scripture, through the conscience he gives everyone, and through wisdom he has given his church, which is the preserving salt of the earth. In his mercy God can even refine moral understanding in a culture through wise people who do not acknowledge him. But even they have had their consciences trained directly and indirectly by these godly influences.
Standing on the shoulders of all this good moral influence from God, limited still by our brief lifespans and miniscule knowledge of reality, and morally crippled by a sinful nature, no one should presume to evaluate God’s actions with the attitude that he knows better than God what is right, or what God should or should not do.
We find answers to questions raised by this test elsewhere in Scripture. God does not change or evolve; but, like raising the curtain on a stage, what he reveals about himself and his will in Scripture does increase over time until it reaches highest clarity in Jesus and the New Testament. When all is said and done, this test does not contradict anything God reveals about himself in Scripture. On the contrary, this test foreshadows the glory of God revealed in the New Testament.
The lover of life
Even so, this story shocks us—and it should. It is disturbing because the Lord has trained our moral sensibilities after his own. He does not enjoy death and does not want people to die.
Ezekiel prophesied, “As I live, declares the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways, for why will you die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel 33:11)
Life is God’s idea. It was he who “breathed into [Adam’s] nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Genesis 2:7)
It was God who warned Adam, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:17)
God created life and loves life. His Ten Commandments say, “You shall not murder” (Exodus 20:13), and elsewhere in the Old Covenant he commanded the Israelites to protect and nurture others. (For example, Deuteronomy 22:8 and Leviticus 23:22)
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
God created mankind to live forever, not to die.
The lover of peace
In keeping with his love for human life, God also loves peace and abhors violence. “His soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.” (Psalm 11:5)
In Noah’s time it was in particular the violence of mankind that grieved God’s heart and provoked him to do what he later told Noah he would never repeat: to destroy nearly all mankind with a flood. “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight, and the earth was filled with violence…. And God said to Noah, ‘I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence through them.’” (Genesis 6:11–13)
At the end of King David’s life, when he wanted to build a temple for God, God refused him because, “You have shed much blood and have waged great wars. You shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood before me on the earth.” (1 Chronicles 22:8)
The Lord hates violence because he is “the God of peace.” (Philippians 4:9)
Although the evil in our world sometimes demands the violence of divine judgment, God does not enjoy such violence but judges people reluctantly.
Therefore, knowing that the Lord loves life and abhors violence, we are rightly confused when he commands Abraham to slay Isaac.
During the 2016 spring training of one Chicago baseball team, the big news was the sudden retirement of a veteran player. He said he was retiring because the team’s executive vice president had reneged on a promise given him when he signed with the club the previous year. He must have been popular in the clubhouse because his teammates did not just say goodbye and return to baseball. They met to discuss the situation, and the team’s star pitcher speaking with reporters afterward accused the team’s executive of lying. Finally the owner stepped in and prohibited everyone on the team from speaking further on the matter with the press, and the story eventually left the public eye. Most likely it did not quickly leave the players’ memories.
For, in any organization, members watch how management treats other members. Based on that, members trust management more or less. People do likewise with God. What happens to other people affects whether we think we can trust him. In particular we notice how God treats people in the Bible.
For that reason we will not yet leave behind the story of God’s command that Abraham sacrifice Isaac (read the story in Genesis 22. Read previous posts in this series starting here). Our aim is to know God better, and Abraham’s story raises three troubling questions. First, since the Lord only does what is righteous, how can it be morally right for him to command Abraham to kill Isaac? Next, how is this trial similar to and different from the way God tests us today? Finally, knowing that God tested his friend this way, how can we trust him enough to walk with him as Abraham did: in total surrender?
The answers presented in upcoming posts should not surprise you, for in this story God does not change from what he shows himself to be in Jesus Christ or in the rest of the Bible. The answers should enlarge you, though, for there is more to God than you realize. He is not just an extraordinarily improved version of you. He is not a creature. He is another order of being. He is God.
You might fear, if I surrender completely to him, will God provide for all my needs?
In the previous posts we have seen in Genesis 22 that God tested Abraham by commanding him to journey to a distant mountain and there sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham obeyed God, to the point that he was moments away from slaying his son. At that moment God intervened and directed Abraham to a ram to sacrifice in Isaac’s place. The remainder of the story focuses on God’s nature as our provider.
The divine test to see whether we will surrender everything in our lives to God shows the pivotal role faith plays in that decision, particularly faith to believe in God’s provision.
During this trial, Abraham declared his faith in two ways, and in both cases his faith was answered.
We will return
First, when he and Isaac and the two servants arrived at the mountain for sacrifice and he prepared to depart from the two servants to ascend the mountain with Isaac, he told them, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you” (v. 5). Abraham’s words show that he expected Isaac to return with him after the sacrifice.
The New International Version makes it explicit: “We will worship and then we will come back to you” (italics added). “We” will come back to you. As he believed, so he received.
God will provide
Second, as he and Isaac climbed the mountain and Isaac asked about the lamb for the sacrifice, Abraham declared, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son,” (v. 8). As he believed, so he received. Somehow, sooner or later, in one way or another, faith receives answers.
This event was so important for Abraham and his descendants it inspired two lasting reminders: a name and a proverb.
A name
“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’” (v. 14). What impressed Abraham most in this experience was, “The Lord will provide,” so it became Abraham’s name for that mountain in Moriah. He now knew this truth in every fiber of his soul. As surely as he knew his own name, he knew “The LORD will provide.” The Lord will provide a Lamb. Eventually this truth found ultimate fulfillment in the Lord’s provision of a Savior who supplied our greatest need: the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
We need to believe “The LORD will provide” in every dimension of life, from food and housing to health and salvation. If we doubt that, we will suffer from fear and worry. We will ultimately trust ourselves, our works, other people, money, technology, techniques, government, employers, or knowledge more than we trust what Scripture reaffirms: “My God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 4:19).
A proverb
The proverb based on this event adds something important to the name. The saying “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided” tells where God provides. Would Abraham have found the ram if he had gone to a mountain of his choosing? He likely had other favorites. But when God commanded him to sacrifice Isaac, he said, “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” (v. 2). God chose the mountain for the sacrifice, and only there would Abraham find the ram from God. We have a similar proverb today: Where God guides he provides. We can count on God’s provision when we obey him.
After we pass a test and prove true to the Lord, we know him better. This is the ultimate reward of a test, for knowing God is better than life. We will trust in God’s love, faithfulness, and goodness more. We will love him more. After this severe test, what Abraham knew more profoundly was, The Lord Will Provide.
In the previous posts we have seen in Genesis 22 that God tested Abraham by commanding him to journey to a distant mountain and there sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham obeyed God, to the point that he was moments away from slaying his son—when the Angel of the Lord interrupted him.
And suddenly everything returned to normal. The Angel of the Lord tells Abraham, “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.” Notice what God commends in Abraham: “Now I know that you fear God.” Abraham’s reverence for God’s holiness results in obedience without reservation. This is true love for the Lord. If we fear him, we withhold nothing.
Behold
Abraham looks around “and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns” (v. 13). The narrator used “behold” twice in this story. Behold adds emphasis. The narrator first used behold when Isaac was carrying the wood up the mountain and said to his father, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” (v. 7). Isaac’s question is ultimately answered in verse 13 with the matching “Behold, behind him was a ram.” In this way the narrator highlights these two sentences in yellow and draws a line between them. Abraham takes the ram and offers it in Isaac’s place.
However, an important shift has occurred. Ascending the mountain, Isaac had asked about the lamb for sacrifice, and Abraham had spoken in faith that God would provide the lamb (vv. 7–8). A lamb is a young sheep, but what Abraham found caught in the thicket was a ram, a mature male sheep with horns. This shift is not accidental. The two beholds mentioned above focus attention. From our perspective having both the Old and New Testaments in our hands, we know there is more to this story than the testing of Abraham. This event foreshadows Jesus. It ultimately pictures the Lamb who is a Ram. He is both. He is the sacrificial Lamb killed as a substitute, but he is the powerful Ram with horns of royal authority. Jesus is the Lord. Yet, as Abraham said, this is the Lamb God would provide. Just as Isaac was bound and silently, willingly let himself be placed on the wood, so our Lord and Messiah let himself be arrested, was silent before his shearers, and willingly died on the wood he had carried. Jesus’ death on the cross was a sacrifice.
Surely
After Abraham sacrifices the ram on the altar in Isaac’s place, the Angel of the Lord calls to him a second time from heaven: “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.” (vv. 16–18)
Once again a test functions as a bridge to a glorious future, as a stairway to a higher calling. Notice the repetition of “surely”: “I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring.” The repetition reinforces the certainty intended by the opening words, “By myself I have sworn.” By passing this test, Abraham made something certain that apparently would have been uncertain had he withheld Isaac. God would not bless what Abraham withheld to the degree he would bless what he surrendered. The Lord reaffirmed three previous promises—(1) blessing [Gen. 12:2], (2) numerous offspring [Genesis 15:5. This is the first time that God says Abraham will have offspring as numerous as the sand on the seashore], (3) and being a blessing to the nations [Gen. 12:3]—and added a new promise: Abraham’s offspring will possess the gate of his enemies.
Jesus
This added promise is significant. The offspring to whom it refers is Jesus Christ, and his enemies are the demons of this world and their ruler, the archenemy of God, Satan himself. God is promising Abraham that Jesus will completely defeat Satan and his kingdom of darkness. As Jesus promised Peter, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Mat. 16:18). In other words, through Abraham’s offspring Jesus Christ, God will remedy the problem of evil. It is evil that has brought pain and sorrow to humanity throughout history, and it is Jesus who will conquer it.
God links that reversal in the world’s fallen condition to Abraham’s obedience. Abraham could not save the world, for he too is marked by sin, but because of Abraham’s obedience God made the sinless Savior his offspring. Because Abraham passed the test, Jesus the Redeemer would be his descendant.
Passing a divine test brings increase
In this narrative God commends Abraham for three things. “You fear God” (v. 12). “You have not withheld your son” (v. 12). “You have obeyed my voice” (v. 18). God tested Abraham for these qualities and likewise tests us. Do we fear God, revering him as holy and trembling at his words? Will we withhold anything from him, in particular what we love most? Will we obey his voice, taking all his words seriously? If we pass the test, God’s heart is to reward us extravagantly.
In some way God always increases what we surrender to him. Sooner or later he rewards sacrifice in larger, lasting ways, in this age or the age to come, in physical or spiritual blessings. One Isaac surrendered to God became offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand by the seashore. One difficult act of obedience led to the descendent whose perfect obedience leads all God’s people to obedience and salvation. Jesus said, “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life” (Mat. 19:29). And, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). By surrendering Isaac, Abraham kept him for the rest of his life and forevermore. God is infinitely good to those who pass the trial of surrender.
In Genesis 22 Abraham’s action shows the reality of his faith.
In the previous posts we have seen in Genesis 22 that God tested Abraham by commanding him to journey to a distant mountain and there sacrifice his son Isaac. We considered Abraham’s thoughts as he took that journey with attention to what Abraham knew about God that enabled him to obey. Below we see Abraham in the moment of truth.
What Abraham does
By the time they reach the mountain in Moriah, Abraham has concluded that God will indeed provide a lamb that will substitute for the sacrifice of his son Isaac. He stops short of the site for sacrifice and there leaves his two servants and donkey. He puts the wood on Isaac’s back and takes the fire and knife. As they walk to the site, Isaac recognizes the obvious and says, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”
From the overflow of his heart, Abraham’s mouth speaks. “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” The Lord had not told Abraham that explicitly, but Abraham knew God, and based on everything he knew about him and what God had told him he concluded this was what God would do. He set his faith on it. All his life, including decades as a sojourner in the Promised Land, he had seen God provide everything he needed, and what he needed now more than anything was a lamb as a substitute for his son Isaac. Whatever he truly needed, he believed God would provide.
Building an altar
Meanwhile what he needed was to obey the Lord’s command, and that he does. Father and son arrive at the site for sacrifice. With solemn confidence Abraham builds an altar. On it he carefully arranges the wood. He turns to his son, his only son Isaac, and without delay proceeds to bind his hands and feet. His heart is settled; he will not withhold his beloved son from the Lord. He has already given him to God in his heart, and now he will give him as a sacrifice. He wraps his arms around his beloved son, trusting this will not be the last time he holds him close, lifts him, and lays him on the wood of the altar. God gives the old man physical strength to lift his son’s weight, some 50–100 pounds, and God gives him emotional strength to take knife in hand.
Isaac’s trust
Isaac is surprisingly passive. He did not resist as Abraham bound his hands and feet. He did not object. Isaac did not struggle to make it impossible for Abraham to place him on the altar. He does not twist and kick to roll off the altar, as he certainly could have. Why not? Did he have the same confidence as his father? Did he believe what his father had assured him, that God would provide a lamb? Had he surrendered himself to God in the same trusting way his father had surrendered him? Did he trust Abraham the way Abraham trusted God?
The story repeats an important sentence two times: in verse 6 it says, “So they went both of them together.” Again in verse 8 the identical words: “So they went both of them together.” This repetition is wrapped around the crucial interchange in verses 7–8, where Isaac said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” and Abraham replied, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” Father and son are in this “together.” They both choose to trust and obey God.
Now that the knife is in Abraham’s hand, God has seen enough. He knows everything he wanted to know from this test. The Angel of the Lord cries out, “Abraham, Abraham!”—a twofold repetition, which conveyed intimacy.
Here am I
This interruption Abraham was expecting. Slowly, firmly, with reverence for the God he loves more than Isaac, Abraham replies. “Here am I.” This is the third time in the narrative that Abraham says, “Here am I.” The first was when the test began. God broke the silence by calling his name, and Abraham replied, “Here am I.” The second time Abraham said this was at the pivotal moment when he and Isaac were climbing the mountain. Isaac broke the silence: “My father.” And Abraham replied, “Here am I, my son.” And Isaac asked the million-dollar question: “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” The third time Abraham said these words is now, at the moment of salvation as God intervenes to answer Abraham’s faith and spare Isaac. “Here am I” reveals Abraham’s heart, that he is available to God his Father and Isaac his son, responsive not withdrawing, near not far, open not closed, listening not ignoring. Through the threefold repetition of “Here am I” the author of this narrative calls quiet attention to Abraham’s intimacy with God and Isaac, a closeness that withstood the sternest trial.
A heart of love
In the midst of this test Abraham could have closed his heart toward either God or Isaac in an attempt to maintain emotional consistency. One might think Abraham had to choose between them. But in his holy heart that was not so. Abraham did not close his heart toward either. His wholehearted love for and trust in God were so great that he was able to maintain wholehearted love toward Isaac even as he surrendered him. In relation to God, perfect love, trust, and surrender integrate one’s heart.
Although we know little in a divine test, we do know God can be trusted.
In the previous post we saw in Genesis 22 that God tested Abraham by commanding him to journey to a distant mountain and there sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham acted without delay to collect the necessary supplies and depart with Isaac and several servants on the journey.
What Abraham knows
All the while Abraham is thinking. As he rides his donkey for three days to the mount in Moriah, as he lay each night under the stars—reminding him, no doubt, of God’s promise to give him offspring as countless as the stars—he tries to understand what is happening. He pieces together clues from what God has revealed about himself. Abraham knows that the Lord wants committed relationships, for God had made a covenant with him. That means he is a faithful God who would not revoke his promises. Abraham never forgot his vision in which God appeared in the form of a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch and followed the human practice of covenant-making by passing between the sundered halves of slaughtered animals (see Genesis 15:17). By this God said that if he breaks the covenant, let the same happen to him that happened to the slaughtered animals. Abraham knows beyond doubt that the Lord is not betraying him.
God understands your situation
He also knows that his other son Ishmael, who is the offspring of his union with Sarah’s servant Hagar, is not the son through whom the chosen people would come. God told him years before, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named” (Gen. 21:12). So Abraham knew God had chosen Isaac alone as the line of descent through which he would fulfill his promises to Abraham. When God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, he even called attention to Isaac’s crucial role by calling him “your son, your only son Isaac” (Gen. 22:2, italics added), although Abraham also had Ishmael.
This was God’s subtle reminder that he had not forgotten what he said about Isaac. As Abraham rode his donkey for three days to the mountain in Moriah, perhaps God’s words repeated in his mind, like a clue to a puzzle, “your only son Isaac…your only son Isaac…your only son Isaac.” By these words Abraham knows that somehow, despite this sacrifice, Isaac must live.
God can do anything
He knows more. He knows nothing is impossible for the one who enabled him and Sarah to have a child in old age. God told him that when he appeared to Abraham one year before Isaac’s birth and announced that the promised child was soon to come. Sarah overheard the announcement and laughed, and the Lord took issue with her. “The LORD said to Abraham, ‘Why did Sarah laugh and say, “Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?” Is anything too hard for the LORD?’” (Gen. 18:13–14, italics added). Abraham now reasons that the one who can do anything can raise the dead.
The New Testament actually provides an inspired glimpse into Abraham’s mind during this test:
“By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, ‘Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.’ He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.” (Heb. 11:17–19, italics added)
God only does what is right
He knows more. He knows the Judge of all the earth does only what is right. Abraham himself had said that to God many years earlier when the Angel of the Lord came to him and revealed his intention to investigate the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham interceded for the cities in order that his nephew Lot and his family would not perish with them. He asked God to spare the cities if 50 righteous people could be found in them and appealed to God’s nature: “Far be it from you to do such a thing, to put the righteous to death with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?” (Genesis 18:25)
Knowing that God only does right, Abraham knows that in this current test God is doing right. Abraham is not suspicious of his purposes. He does not entertain the preposterous notion that maybe God is not entirely good, for that would mean we humans are the standard of goodness, knowing better than God what is moral. No, the fallen creature of Adam’s race is not morally superior to the perfect and unchanging Creator. There is much Abraham does not know in this test, but what he does know with certainty is he does not need to question the goodness of God.
In a test, things turn upside down
Abraham knows one more crucial thing that enables him to navigate this situation. Knowing all the above, he had to realize this is a test. He knew God had tested him before. If we know God is testing us, then we understand why the situation is upside down, and we do not lose our bearings. In a test, the Lord’s normal ways with us are temporarily suspended in some way, though not in every way. Instead of peace, there is trouble. Instead of full provision, there is lack. Or instead of health, there is sickness. What the Bible says is the normal portion of God’s people suddenly departs. Though God does not change, his way of working in us might change for a season.
In Abraham’s current test, God certainly suspended what was normal. With God, normal is not death, but life; not taking, but giving; not losing what God has promised, but keeping what God has promised. Above all, normal is not sacrificing one’s beloved son. So Abraham knew this was a test, and he was determined not to fail. To pass, he knew he had to trust God with childlike simplicity and do precisely as commanded. Obedience and trust are always the keys to passing a test, especially the daunting, once-in-a-lifetime sort of trial Abraham was navigating.
God supplies what we lack
All things considered, Abraham reaches a conclusion. If God wants him to go through with the slaughter and fiery offering of Isaac, God will raise him from the dead, even raise him from ashes. God the Creator will resurrect the one and only son.
But by faith Abraham also foresees another way, for he knows something else about God. Abraham knows God accepts a substitute. Abraham had offered animal sacrifices before, and he knows what they represent. The lamb was a substitute for the one making the offering. Burning a lamb on an altar was a way of saying, Lord, I give my life to you. Abraham reasoned that God could give a substitute for Isaac that made his death unnecessary. God could provide a lamb for the offering.
In Genesis 22, God tests Abraham to see if he has truly surrendered.
Looking on the world from a great height does wonders for your soul. Living for years on the 20th floor of a Chicago high-rise, I get to watch massive cloud formations come and go, to marvel at pulsing bolts of lightning and fierce storms near and far, to gaze thirty miles on a sunny day, to enjoy colorful sunsets of endless variety. To see far and wide even on a normal day feels epic.
In this new series of posts on divine testing we will see far and wide, for we come now to one of the great tests of every soul. We see the shape of this test in the paradigmatic story of God’s testing Abraham by commanding him to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering.
God tests Abraham
The writer of Genesis leaves no doubt about God’s purpose in the event, beginning the narrative, “After these things God tested Abraham” (22:1). The test begins with one short command. Abraham suddenly, unmistakably, hears God call his name and say, “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” (v. 2).
The Lord does not tell Abraham why to do this or much about how. Instead he makes clear he knows how precious Isaac is to Abraham, tenderly describing Isaac as “your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love.” God knows what he is asking of Abraham. He understands emotion, relationship, love. He is not an impersonal force making heartless demands. The Lord understands the bond between father and son, for God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is love, and as we will see, because he is love he gives this command.
Abraham responds promptly. He awakes early the next morning to do what God said. He does not delay a few days to think over whether he will obey.
Abraham is hands-on. Instead of delegating preparations to servants, the old man (approximately age 110–115) does them himself. He saddles the donkey. He cuts wood for the sacrifice, for this is not ordinary wood but sacred wood on which he will offer to God his precious son. Five times this short narrative calls attention to the wood.
Abraham acts decisively. Five times the narrative uses some form of the word take to describe his actions. He is not suffering from shock at God’s request, not bewildered or immobilized. He knows and trusts the Lord and thus acts with forceful resolution. So he takes the wood, two servants, fire, knife, and Isaac—the son whom God promised to him, whom God called Abraham’s “only son” (v. 2)—and they depart.
