The Offering of Isaac Part 2

Genesis 22 as the Background to Hebrews 11

We continue this evening in our study in the book of Hebrews, not in the book of Hebrews. We will continue in our study of Genesis chapter 22 as the background to our section in Hebrews chapter 11. So, this evening only in Genesis chapter 22.

So, once again, let us ask the Lord to bless our time together. Our gracious and merciful Heavenly Father, we ask that as we finish looking at this tremendous story, Lord, that you would open our hearts and our minds, that we would once again be able to enter in, that we would be able to consider this great picture you have presented to us of redemption.

From long ago, that we might understand Abraham's great faith, and yet at the same time, the role that he played in providing to us a great picture, and that your purpose is being accomplished in all these things.

May we submit to your word, and may we rejoice in it. We pray in Christ's name. You know the story. We began this morning looking at Genesis chapter 22, and I will read the first 14 verses in our hearing once again, utilizing my own translation of this particular text, Genesis chapter 22.

It happened after these things that God tested Abraham. He said to him, Abraham, and Abraham said, Here I am. And God said to him, Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him up as a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, which I will indicate to you.

Rising early in the morning, Abraham prepared his donkey and took two servants along with Isaac his son. He prepared wood for the burnt offering and set out to the place which God indicated to him. On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off.

Abraham said to his servants, Stay here with the donkey. I and the lad will go there and worship and will return again to you. Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and laid it upon Isaac his son, and took in his hand the fire and the knife, and the two of them walked together.

Isaac said to Abraham, Father, and he said, Here I am, my son. He said, See the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the offering? Abraham said to him, God will provide for himself the lamb for the offering, my son.

They walked on together. They came to the place that God had indicated. Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood and bound Isaac his son and placed him on top of the wood upon the altar. Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.

But the angel of Yahweh called from heaven and said, Abraham. Abraham said, Here I am. He said, Do not lay your hand upon the lad or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, since you have not held back your son, your only son, from me.

Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and behind him there is a ram caught in the thicket by his horns. He went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son. Abraham called the name of the place, Yahweh Hireh, Yahweh Sees, Yahweh Provides.

So it is said to this day, in the Mount of Yahweh, He will provide. We began looking at this story in light of our studies from Hebrews chapter 11. And we specifically did so in light of the fact that in Hebrews 11 we are told that Abraham acted in faith in this situation and specifically he had faith that God could raise the dead.

Abraham's Faith in the Resurrection and God's Promise

God could raise the dead. The writer of Hebrews looks back upon this situation and he recognizes that Abraham, as he goes to that mountain, as he saddles his donkey, as he prepares the wood, as he picks the servants, as they travel for three days, as he tells the servants to stay there and we are going to go and worship and I and the lad will return to you.

All of this is done within the context of Abraham believing that God can raise the dead. And we know why this is in essence because of the fact that God had promised this son, this child, laughter, whom Abraham laughed when the promise was made to him.

Sarah laughed when she heard the promise and then they both laughed when the promise was fulfilled. This child of laughter, this son whom Abraham loves, was the one that God said through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

That he would have progeny unnumbered as the sand of the sea through this one Isaac. And so if in that miracle child God says, offer him to me as a burnt sacrifice, Abraham says, I know this God. I know he's God.

He is the one who has done all these things for me. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. He has fulfilled the promise of Isaac. He has cared for me. He called me out of the Ur of the Chaldees. I know this God and if he says, give me your son, the one that I gave to you, I have no right to hold him back.

And so if you have the major premise, Isaac is the child of promise and all this is going to happen through him and now you have the assertion, give him to me as a burnt offering, Abraham says, this is the giver of life and he will give life again.

And so we have seen that as they left the servants behind, they go toward the mount, most probably the very mount upon which the temple itself was built. And as they go there, dialogue takes place. We're only told about one dialogue.

Were there others? We don't know. But one dialogue takes place and Isaac recognizes that he has the wood and his father has the fire and the sacrificial knife, but they don't have the offering. Where is the lamb?

And Abraham responds in verse 8, God will provide for himself the lamb for the offering, my son. And they walked on together. Isaac accepts what Abraham has to say. He doesn't see how it's going to be.

He doesn't know how God is going to provide the lamb, but he also didn't know how it was that God pointed out this one particular mountain that probably they had never been to before. Why here? Why three days journey they had sacrificed at home before?

And so they walked on. Verse 9, they came to the place that God had indicated. We aren't told how God indicated it. Any more that we're told exactly how it was that God called Abraham out of the Chaldees, but God indicated this is the place.

And so they get to the place, Abraham, an old man, gets busy. He builds an altar. He had said we were going to go worship. So he builds an altar and he arranges the wood. There would be a particular way.

You don't just throw the wood on top of something and expect it to burn right or to completely consume the sacrifice. There's a specific way in which this is to be done. And so I'm sure that Isaac assists.

And they arrange the stones. And that would be hard work. And then the wood, which Isaac himself has brought there, is arranged in a particular fashion. And certainly going through the mind of Isaac is, how is God going to provide this?

And he arranged the wood. And then, as just a part of a sentence, a transition takes place. Ya 'akod, the Akedah, he finds Isaac. Now, we don't know exactly the ages involved here. We've got some pretty good idea.

But Isaac is a lad. And have you noticed these young ones, after the service, they have much more energy than we do. That's older folks. We look at them and wish we could have the energy that they have.

And they move fast. And they're very limber. And sometimes they help us with cleaning the floors by crawling underneath the pews. It's very great. I'm not sure the parents appreciate that when they get home.

But, you know, it probably helps with the cleaning of the floors a bit. And something tells me that if Isaac wanted to get away, Isaac couldn't have gotten away. Something tells me he could outrun old Abraham.

So I love when the Scriptures do not pander to our desire to necessarily know every single little detail. Have you ever noticed, I know I've mentioned it before, each of the Gospel accounts, when they talk about the crucifixion of our Lord, they do not dwell upon it.

In fact, it's a sub-clause in a sentence. And there they crucified him. It's not even the main clause of the sentence. Unlike the movies that focus in upon the nails and do all the stuff, that's not what Scripture does.

And here, Scripture does not give us any answer to the question, how did Abraham do this? Did he just say, son, turn around? We don't know. But I cannot imagine what was going through either Abraham's mind or his at this point.

I think, at least in light of what Hebrews says, we know that there is confidence in God's provision in Abraham's mind. But Isaac, Isaac's a young man. He binds Isaac, his son, and places him on top of the wood upon the altar.

He places him exactly where he would place the lamb, the ram, whatever it was, whatever offering was going to be consumed by the fire. Here, this old man picks up the son of promise. He picks up laughter and places him on top of the wood.

The smoldering fire is nearby. But of course, he's going to kill his son first. Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. That specific term is used only one other time. And it's specifically of the slaughtering of the sacrifice.

As I mentioned, I read a book this week that a friend of mine who is an expert in Jewish studies recommended to me as a compilation of all of the Jewish lore and the Jewish interpretation of this text.

And I mentioned this morning briefly that some actually came to the conclusion that despite what the Torah says, that Abraham actually did kill Isaac. Either by plunging the knife into his chest or by slicing his throat.

Certainly, there can be no question that that was the intention of taking the knife. And if there had not been intervention, the clear indication of the text is that's what Abraham would have done. I cannot explain to you, because the text does not tell us, how Abraham steeled himself to do this.

But the only thing that I can suggest to you is that the very same faith that had been born out of seeing the promises of God fulfilled over and over and over and over again for more years than most of us ever lived, was the only thing that can explain how it is he could have confidence in the very resurrection of the dead.

Not just in a time to come. Remember, Abraham said to his servants, we will return to you. This is a miracle child. And Abraham was expecting a miracle. Literally, from heaven, the angel of Yahweh called out, Abraham.

Abraham's response is, well, what was his response? It's the same word that we've seen a couple of times in the text. Hineni. But was it Hineni? Expecting it? Hineni. No, but Abraham recognized the voice.

Recognized the voice. The angel of Yahweh says to him, do not lay your hand upon the lad. Or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God since you have not held back your son, your only son, from me.

The Meaning of God's Test and Abraham's Obedience

The process. But only when the demonstration has been made in the certainty of the action and intentions of Abraham that he was willing to give his son, his only son, to God because God had said to do so.

Now, as I mentioned this morning, there are some who look at that text and they use it to say, see, God didn't know. He didn't know until Abraham did this. God sort of, you know, he only knows certain things about the future.

But what free creature is going to do? He doesn't know. He was wondering the whole time. Well, I bet you he was nervous. There's a lot of nerves up there in heaven. Is he going to do it? Is he not going to?

We don't know. There are people who teach that today who call themselves evangelicals. They say, you're short-circuiting all of this if you don't see that God didn't know. And yet, I don't think we're short-circuiting any of this to recognize that.

Even when Jesus bowed in such great agony in the garden, it wasn't a situation where God didn't know what was going to happen. The Bible tells us without question that from eternity past it had been the decision.

This is what is going to take place. This is how it's going to take place. These are the people that are going to be involved. God's purposes were absolutely certain. That doesn't in any way lessen or diminish the reality of either the trial of Abraham or the reality of Jesus' suffering or the sin of the people that were involved in the crucifixion of Jesus.

It's only when you reduce God's sovereignty to some kind of mechanical puppet string type thing that you can come up with that idea. Abraham certainly was changed by this experience. His relationship with God was changed by this experience.

Interestingly enough, the Scriptures never tell us what the effect on Isaac was. But I can guarantee you Isaac never forgot. Was there a conversation between Isaac and Abraham afterwards? Maybe as they're walking back after the offering of the ram to the stewards, the servants.

Was there a conversation maybe shortly thereafter sometime in the following years before Abraham's death? Was there a rift for a while and then a get-together? Dad, we need to talk about this. I need to know.

I don't know. We certainly wonder, don't we? I just can't help but believe the repetition of the, your only son, your only son, the one whom you love, your only son. I cannot help but see in that a picture, a prefigurement of the repetitious use of the phrase in the New Testament, the unique Son of God, the only begotten Son of God.

There is something unique about the relationship between Abraham and Isaac, partly why Ishmael must be sent away. And there is something absolutely unique about the relationship of the Father and the Son.

Those who try to diminish that phrase, Son of God, by saying, well, Israel's called the Son of God and Adam's called the Son of God, and there's tons by the tons, don't seem to understand the emphasis that is found in the New Testament and the uniqueness of the relationship between the Father and the Son.

And certainly in this prefigurement, you have the exact same thing. You have not held back your son, your only son from being. When we think of this, we recognize the importance of what Abraham did in picturing the love that God himself was going to demonstrate in his own self-giving.

His own self-giving. God didn't give a mere creature. The only way this could be a prefigurement that does not overshadow the fulfillment would be if the same intimate relationship of love exists between the one given on the cross that existed between Abraham and Isaac.

And whenever a church or denomination has gone off into apostasy, always because it starts with a distrust of the Word of God, eventually you have a denigration of the person of Christ, the one who is there on the cross is not really the incarnate Son of God, and the result always is the utter collapse of the gospel into a mere social program without power and without offense to the world.

We see it all around us. So the angel stops him, says, I know you fear God. We hear a lot about the fear of God because we read all the scriptures, but we don't hear a lot about the fear of God in our society, our world, even in the church any longer.

You don't teach people to fear God. He's our buddy. He's our pal. He punches us in the shoulder. We sing love songs to him. We can even take secular love songs and make them about God, and it just makes everybody feel good.

I don't know about you, but this story doesn't make me feel good. It shouldn't make any parent feel good. It's not its intention. It's not its purpose. It speaks to us about the fear of God. I know that you fear God.

And yes, that included an intimate relationship between God and Abraham. He's called the friend of God. But there is a respect. There is a fear. There is a reverence. There is a worship. That if it is not the first element of one's view of God, and you try to put on top of it some type of intimate love relationship, will always degrade into some kind of man-centered idolatry.

You have to listen to all of what scripture says. You're talking about your Creator. Abraham proved his fear of God. James is going to pick up on this. In James chapter 2, we hardly have time to even begin to touch upon it, but there are going to be those who say, see, this is where Abraham is justified.

No, his faith is proven to be real here upon Mount Moriah. That doesn't mean it wasn't real back in Genesis 15. It was. That's where he received the promise of God. That's where he received justification.

His faith is shown to be real right here. I know that you fear God. What a demonstration. You say, but it was only God and Isaac and all the rest of us. All the rest of us have seen the demonstration of Abram's.

Yahweh Provides the Ram and Names the Place

So God provides. Abraham lifted his eyes in verse 13 and looked, and behind him there is a ram caught in the thicket by his horns. He went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son.

Did Isaac hear the voice? I don't know. Had Abraham covered his eyes? I don't know. One of the sermons I listened to in preparation for this made a really good point. One of the reasons you don't hear a lot about this story, you don't hear it preached a whole lot, at least the whole counsel of God that's found therein, not only does it not make us feel warm and fuzzy, it's not a part of the precious moments theology either.

You know the precious moments, those little figurines of the little babies, and there's all those little precious moments figurines. I don't think Pastor Frye has any of these, but I really would be surprised, but they have all the little scenes of the little lambs and all that kind of stuff.

I don't think that there is a precious moments figurine of Abraham with a knife in his hand. I just don't think they've gone there. I think they missed that part. It doesn't fit into what makes us feel warm and cozy.

How did Abraham get there? God put it there for a specific reason. He provided. He saw. And remember this morning I said to you, that term, Yarei, means to see. Jehovah Jireh, which is a really bad pronunciation, Yahweh Yarei, he sees, and then he sees to it, and by extension provides.

He provided because he saw, and he intervened at the exact right moment. God's timing is always spot on. So there's a ram caught in the thicket by his horns, and he takes the ram, and he takes that knife, and he kills that ram.

But did he take that knife first and release the bonds of Isaac? Did he lift him off of the wood himself and place him upon the ground? And then together they went and got the ram? We're not told. What was the life of worship like for both Abraham and Isaac?

What was it like for Abraham to smell that burning flesh? What was it like for Isaac to have seen the fulfillment of the promise of his father, the Lord God will provide an offering? We're not told because I think we're supposed to think about it.

I think we're supposed to wonder. Abraham called the name of the place Yahweh Jireh. Yahweh sees. Yahweh provides. So it is said to this day in the Mount of Yahweh, he will call it the Mount of Yahweh.

This is the mount that he pointed me to. This was the place he brought me to. When you have confidence that God has placed you in this situation, when you have confidence that you have followed his lead, that you are where he wants you to be, then you can say, Yahweh sees.

Yahweh will provide. It is an absolute abuse of this promise for us to go in our own way and do our own things and follow our own lusts and then get ourselves into a mess and say, oh, well, I have the promise.

Abraham didn't go off to some easier mountain close by. He went the three days journey. He didn't say, well, I know God really doesn't mean I'm supposed to offer Isaac. I'm just going to go ahead and bring a few animals along.

He didn't do any of that. Yahweh provided when Abraham believed and feared and obeyed. That's why he becomes to us a tremendous example. One of the most amazing prefigurements of the cross of Christ that we could ever see or experience.

And so it is in that context that we return back to our text in Hebrews 11. Hebrews 11, 17. By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son.

And it was he to whom it was said, In Isaac your descendants shall be called. He considered that God is able to raise even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type. You'll notice that the writer, in essence, says to us there was an offering.

There was in Abraham's experience, Isaac was resurrected because when God gave to Abraham that command, Isaac died. From Abraham's perspective, this was a certainty. He was going to do it. He was going to be obedient.

And in essence, he received him back in resurrection. And it's also interesting, that phrase, Your unique son, the writer of Hebrews, he catches that and he says, Tan managane. Managanes. Unique. Only begotten.

Same phrase used in John 3 .16 of Jesus. He was offering up his only begotten. He considered that God is able to raise even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type. So he not only sees the offering, but he even sees the fulfillment of resurrection as a prefigurement of what God was going to do when he gives himself in the Incarnate One upon the same hill, carries the wood and becomes the offering himself.

Faith as the Gift of God and the Inspiration of Scripture

I don't know about you, but when the writer brings Abraham's experience here and says, By faith, Abraham. I am awfully thankful that I recognize that faith is the gift of God. Because if this was something I had to work up within myself, if I thought it was up to me to somehow, when the great challenges of life, I'm going to have to somehow dig deep, work up that faith, I'd give up.

No, I couldn't do it. But you see, persevering faith, saving faith, that's what God works within us. And that's why anyone who sits here this evening and you've gone through the trials, you've gone through the difficulties, you've gone through the hard times, and you're still here.

You're still persevering. You don't pat yourself on the back. You don't go, I see all those apostates, they didn't make it because they couldn't dig as deep as I did. No. You recognize that this kind of faith, that's the work of the Holy Spirit of God.

That's the only reason any one of us persevere. It's Christ who's at work within us. He is the one who is conforming us to His image by His Spirit. Amazing story. As I said this morning, it confirms to me like almost nothing else.

Similar to Isaiah 53 with the specificity of its language. The inspiration of this text. When I see the skeptics scoffing, I think back on Abraham and Isaac. And I'm reminded in the end it's going to be God who laughs at the skeptic.

It's not that God has not given us clear evidence. He has. Thankfully, He's preserved that for us and by His Spirit He has made us to love His Word. I hope in reminding yourself, I know we all know this story, but in reminding yourself today of what happened upon Mount Moriah that you have asked God, Oh God, may I have the faith of Abraham.

May I fear you the way He feared you. May that be our prayer as we seek to serve Him in this coming week. Let us pray together. Oh God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the one who revealed Himself to Abraham and met Him there upon that mount so long ago, we thank You that You prefigured for us what You would do many generations later on Mount Calvary.

And as we have considered this picture You provided, Lord, help us once again to realize that You did not ask Abraham to do anything more than You Yourself did in the giving of Your beloved Son. May we recognize the great price that has been paid for our redemption.

And out of love for You, reverent awesome fear of Your purity, Your holiness and Your power, and a love born within our hearts by the work of the Spirit of God, may we in this coming week serve You. Serve You as servants who rejoice to have the opportunity to give back but a little of the great bounty You have poured out upon us.

But may we do so out of love, a love born in the heart of one who has received unmerited grace. Thank You for the Gospel. Thank You for resurrection. Thank You that You provide. We pray all these things in Christ's name.

Amen.