Abraham, my Friend 56

Moriah, both of them together

Abraham sojourned in the Abimelech’s territory for many days; this almost certainly means several years. The next dateable event will be the death of Sarah when we know Isaac must have been around 37 years of age. So how old was he during the recorded events of Genesis 22? Most Sunday School pictures show him as a child, or a boy at most. Josephus, the Jewish historian says categorically that Isaac was 21 in Genesis 22. How old do I think he was? He was 33 years old, and as we unpack this amazing story you will see that my answer is not really a calculation but a deduction.

The account begins with the innocuous word, ‘And it came to pass after these things…’ After what things? Well, the happenings in and around Beersheba certainly, but more than that. It is ‘after’ all the previous events in Abraham’s life. We are coming to the greatest test of Abraham’s faith, but it is good to notice that This test does not occur at the beginning of his story. It may have been around this same time that in another place a bewildered believer expressed his faith in God. This man’s theology had been wrecked by the events of his life, and with no more theories to support him he delivers this astonishing statement:

But he knoweth the way that I take;
When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold. (Job 23:10 ASV)

God knoweth the way that I take. Life is not scheduled according to some absolute pattern. Abraham did not drop from heaven into this moment of time and place; he walked here step by step.

Henry Ford was once asked what he thought of history and his answer was something like, ‘It’s just one darned thing after another.’ He saw no sense to it, nor purpose. To the believer in any age, there will be a sense that ‘God is in this’; history is truly His-story. This extreme of Abraham’s life did not fall out of the blue; he had been prepared for it. Every step he had taken had brought him closer to this moment when God could trust him to illustrate the deepest mystery of all.

The obedience of faith

God spoke to Abraham, calling him by name, his new name. Abraham’s response is simple; he is available — instantly. This is the true mark of greatness, that during the fallow years, probably almost 30 dating from the time he ‘settled’ in Beersheba, when the routine of life had settled into its predictable patterns, Abraham was immediately ‘at attention’. He had watched Sarah slipping into old age, and watched Isaac growing through childhood and adolescence and into full manhood; everything was set for the smooth transition into the next generation. To change the metaphor, this is just the right time for ‘cruise control’; just go through the motions, we’re home and dry. I recall reading as a young Christian of what God now commands Abraham, and being quietly outraged by it. It didn’t seem fair; he had been through so much. Surely he can be left to enjoy his retirement now? It is a sobering realisation for a young Christian that his Christianity is not a single momentous event, but a pilgrimage that has no earthly end.

The story is told with great brevity and the starkness of it is inescapable. ‘Take now…’ (Gen 22:1). We have to maintain the walk with God that makes it possible for him to say, ‘Do this thing now.’ Many generations later the people of Israel were poised to make their escape from slavery, and God instituted the celebration of the Passover. That first generation was to celebrate in a state of instant readiness:

And thus shall ye eat it: with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is Jehovah’s passover. (Exod 12:11 ASV)

Soon the word of God would release them; they must be ready for instant obedience. I wonder what God could say to us if we were ready? Are there things he has not said simply because we were not ready? Imagine if Pharaoh had said, ‘Rise up, and get you forth’ and the people had said, ‘Well we have to do some baking and packing first. We could probably be ready in a day or two…’

Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. (Matt 24:44 NKJV)

A carefully costed plan

Do you recall that the Lord said we ought not to undertake an enterprise without counting the cost? (Luke 14:28) God works on the same pattern. Before He created the world and mankind he knew what the cost would be. Calvary was not a reaction; it was the unfolding of a carefully costed plan. When God calls for sacrificial obedience in our lives too, he always knows the cost. He will never ask you to do what he has not done.

…Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac.., (Gen 22:2 ASV)

Can you see how carefully this sacrifice is costed? Thy son… thine only son… the one who fills your life with laughter… the one you love…the one in whom the promises were centred… God knows exactly how much this will cost; that is the whole point of the trial.

Are you tempted to protest in your times of testing? ‘God, what are you doing? Do you know what you’re asking?’ Yes, he knows. Before the foundations of the world he counted this cost; ‘Am I willing to take my Son… my only Son… whose presence fills Eternity with laughter… my beloved Son… and offer him…?’

If Abraham had not learned to recognise this voice he could never have believed that it was God speaking. He could not have believed this without all that had ‘come to pass’ previously. God knows the cost but he knows how to measure our pace too.

We know the story well. Abraham is instructed to take another journey to the hills of Moriah. He is to take Isaac to be a ‘burnt offering’. I don’t know how many times I have read this passage and it still sends a chill through my bones. Abraham had long turned his back on gods who demanded human sacrifices. He had come to know the true God; the possessor of heaven and earth, the God of all Sufficiency, his shield and reward; the Everlasting God. Was this God really asking for Isaac?

A willing giver

There is an extra poignancy in the command. Isaac was not to be a propitiation — a price paid to appease an offended deity — but a ‘burnt offering’. These were the ‘free-will’ offerings given with the choice and full-hearted consent of the giver. Abraham, as a figure of a heavenly Father, was to be a willing giver.

The very abruptness of the narrative is striking. ‘And Abraham rose up early in the morning…’ Not a word about the night spent with this word in his heart; not a word to Sarah, the companion of his pilgrimage; not a word of explanation to Isaac at this point. Just obedience, willing obedience.

Four people were to make the journey; Abraham himself cut the wood for the sacrifice. Each stroke of his axe broke his heart. It says the ass was saddled. Perhaps this is an indication of the frailty of the old man now. The servants can carry the wood, and Isaac can walk, but Abraham must be carried to his appointment with God. For three days they journeyed and then Abraham lifted up his heavy eyes and saw Moriah; the moment was Abraham’s Gethsemene. Was ever a man tested like Abraham? Was ever a man trusted like Abraham? This frail old man is going to act out Calvary.

Abraham then dismissed his servants (Gen 22:5). This is a work to be done between ‘I and the lad’; no one else has any contribution to make. Only Abraham would have known that it was by faith he made the statement:

And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder; and we will worship, and come again to you. (Gen 22:5 ASV)

Only Abraham knew that for this assertion to come true, there would need to be a resurrection. In our English Bibles, this is the earliest use of the word ‘worship’ although the Hebrew word itself occurs earlier in the Scriptures. It is a word which means ‘to prostrate oneself, to submit in obeisance, to surrender to the will of another’. In our modern Christian culture perhaps we should ask again whether or not we really understand the concept of ‘worship’?

I have read that an average Hindu cremation requires 650 pounds of wood (292.5kgs). It seems likely that Isaac was carrying at least double his own body weight to his funeral, another indication that the Isaac of these verses is in the fullness of his manhood and not a child.

They went, both of them, together

Abraham will carry the knife and the fire. It is the father who will smite; it is the son who carries the wood. There is a lovely phrase here which is repeated again in verse 8:

They went, both of them, together.

Father and son, step by step, in perfect fellowship on their way to the place of offering and execution. It casts another light on the testimony of Christ coming into flesh:

Therefore, when He came into the world, He said:
“Sacrifice and offering You did not desire,
But a body You have prepared for Me.
In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin
You had no pleasure.
Then I said, ‘Behold, I have come—
In the volume of the book it is written of Me—
To do Your will, O God.’ ” (Heb 10:5–7 NKJV)

Calvary is not a merciful son placating an irate father, as is portrayed in some theologians’ ideas of the cross. Nor it is the will of the father imposed upon a reluctant son. Substitutionary penal substitution is not as one foolish Christian leader has asserted, ‘divine child abuse’. Calvary is the consequence of father and son, going, both of them, together.

At what point did the earthly Isaac understand the full implications of his father’s plan? We are not told. Isaac remarks on the provision of wood and fire, but asks, ‘Where is the lamb…?’ What inspiration caused Abraham to reply in the way he did?

And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold, the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering? And Abraham said, God will provide himself the lamb for a burnt-offering, my son: so they went both of them together. (Gen 22:7–8 ASV)

…And they continue their journey, both of them, together. Till they come to the place which God had told him of. Did Matthew have this phrase in mind 1800 years later?

And when they were come unto a place called Golgotha, that is to say, a place of a skull… (Mat 27:33 KJV))

Father and Son

Abraham builds an altar, Abraham lays the wood in order, Abraham, binds Isaac. Abraham, the father, lays Isaac, the son, on the altar: Abraham stretches forth his hand and takes the knife…

If Isaac was 33 and Abraham was 134 these events could only have taken place with Isaac’s cooperation. Into his father’s hands the son places his life, and the knife is raised…

The events were repeated 1800 years after Moriah, as the prophet Zechariah had predicted 500 years before their fulfillment:

And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones. (Zec 13:6-7 KJV)

For Abraham, the figure of the True, comes a restraining word from heaven:

And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of Jehovah called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him…  (Gen 22:10–12 ASV)

However, as we see in the Anti-type, the sword is in the Father’s hand. His victim is nail-pierced and as helpless as Isaac ever was, but there was no restraining word from Heaven. The sword fell, and…

…We did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. (Isaiah 53:4)

In his heart Abraham has already lived the final blow; only in the action was he restrained. On looking behind him Abraham discovers a ‘thorn-crowned lamb’ and offers it in substitution for Isaac, and names the place after this latest revelation of God —  Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord will provide.

God so loved the world that he gave…

Perhaps someone will stumble on these pages who has never glimpsed the greatness of God’s love; here is the Gospel ‘in a nutshell’.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (Joh 3:16 KJV)

God carried through, to its bitter conclusion, what Abraham was restrained from doing. Perhaps you have thought of Calvary and wondered what really happened here. Calvary is an eternal Jehovah-Jireh. It is where the Father provided a substitute for you. You have no contribution to make to this sacrifice; Father and Son have accomplished the work, together. You can walk free.

The letter of James holds this action of Abraham as the supreme act of faith. Abraham’s works authenticated his faith; his was no idle pretend faith of mental consent. James links together Abraham’s justifying faith and the inevitable outworking of that faith:

But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God. (Jas 2:20–23 NKJV)