God Himself Will Provide the Lamb

There is an interesting dialogue going on in the comments of my post of 12/19/07, The Heart of a Son. I want to direct you there for I have written a decent amount in those comments.

I decided to include my latest response to a question here as a post since my response was so long. Here it is:

In the comments, CCS said, “Tom B./Jeff Cavin’s question is whether Abraham could have known that he wouldn’t go through with killing Isaac. Hebrews 11:17-19 doesn’t seem to make sense if you read it with the perspective of Abraham knowing he wouldn’t be going through with it.”

I agree, for I do not think that Abraham knew that he would not have to go through with it. He wouldn’t and couldn’t know that. I do think he could have thought that or wondered whether it was a possibility; although, I do not think it was that likely that he thought that.

CCS, you said, “God could have come up with additional choices for Himself. John the Baptist said that God could raise children of Abraham from stones. He could have let Abraham kill Isaac and have Isaac remain dead and yet still produce heirs. Why not?” Of course God could have done as you say, in a certain sense. Because God had said that it was through Isaac that Abraham’s descendants should come, for God to let Isaac die never to rise again would have been the breaking of His word. God, in that sense, had to make sure Isaac lived to father children.

It had to be Isaac and no one else to give Abraham descendants. Abraham’s fall was seeking a son on his own strength with Hagar. Abraham had Ishmael with her, but God told him to send Ishmael away. Genesis 21:8-12 says: “And the child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, ‘Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not be heir with my son Isaac.’ And the thing was very displeasing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, ‘Be not displeased because of the lad and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for through Isaac shall your descendants be named’.”

God promised Abraham a son, and that son was Isaac. He promised that it was this son who would give Abraham many descendants. Paul talks at length about the importance of it being Isaac who gives Abraham children: “For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through promise” (Galatians 4:22-23).

An enormous amount of the Abraham story revolves around this point of his two sons.
“But what does the scripture say? ‘Cast out the slave and her son; for the son of the slave shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.’ So, brethren, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman” (Galatians 4: 30). Everyone knows that Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Everyone seems to know that except God.

“He [God] said, ‘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 upon one of the mountains of which I shall tell you’” (Genesis 22:2). In God’s eyes, Isaac is Abraham’s only son. He is the son God promised to give Abraham when he was seventy-five and then finally did give him when he was 100. Abraham slipped up when he was eighty-five fathering Ishmael, and it is because Abraham fails this test of waiting for God to provide him the promised son that Abraham needs to be tested once again. It is because Abraham has two sons, which indicates that he did not trust in God fully, that God has to re-test him by asking him to sacrifice his only remaining son. God could have certainly given Abraham descendants through Ishmael, and He did, but Ishmael was not considered to be his son. Isaac is the only way.

CCS, you also said, “Abraham could have meant that, after he kills his son, he will come back bringing with him his son’s dead body.” From the quote from Genesis in the previous paragraph, Isaac was going to be a burnt offering. Burnt offerings are entirely consumed by fire; that is why Isaac was carrying all the wood; the wood is needed to have a burnt offering.

I still only see two good options of what God could do here: raise Isaac from the dead (and even ash heap), or stop Abraham before he sacrifices his son. The letter to the Hebrews indicates that it was the former, so I would go with that. That still does not entirely rule out the possibility that it crossed Abraham’s mind that God would stop him beforehand. Abraham did have three days to think it all over. Either way, Abraham was prepared and ready and willing to offer up the son of the promise; and he did offer him up; God only stopped him at the last moment. Here Abraham passes the test, and God swears an oath to bless Abraham:

“By myself I have sworn, says the LORD, because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will indeed bless you, and I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore. And your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies, and by your descendants shall all the nations of the earth bless themselves, because you have obeyed my voice” (Genesis 22:16-18). All the world will be blessed because of Abraham and Isaac’s faithfulness when Jesus comes to fulfill the self offering, when God provides the lamb.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

The Quest for a Baby Part Two

Abraham receives the patriarchal blessing and so requests a baby from God. After Abraham asks God for a child saying that if he doesn’t get one, the blessing will go to someone from Damascus, God responds to Abraham. “And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, ‘This man shall not be your heir; your own son shall be your heir.’ And he brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed the LORD; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:4-6).

Abraham asks for a baby of his own, and God promises to give him one. God goes much further, for He not only promises him a child, He also promises to give Abraham a vast multitude of descendants through the promised baby. His descendants will be innumerable. Abraham, seventy-five years old married to a sixty-five year-old barren woman, believes God; he believes that God will be faithful and give them a child. God is pleased with Abraham’s belief in Him.

So nine months later God sends a son to Abraham and Sarah. Actually, the child came two years later. No, on further thought, God didn’t send the child for five whole years. Can you image that? God promised a baby, but then He did not send the little one for five more years, and these are elderly people already. I hate to say it, but God did not send that promised baby even after five years; ten years later and guess what? They are eighty-five and seventy-five, and still the promised bundle of joy has not been sent.

They might have been wondering, “Does God really know what He is doing?” “Is He really able to give us old and as good-as-dead childless hopefuls a baby?” Sarah may have asked her husband, “Are you sure that God said He would give us a baby? Are you sure that He promised to give you one?” She may have carried on asking, “Did God promise that the baby would be from you or from us?” Whatever questions went on, and we all know well enough how much and often we question what God is doing or not doing, whatever the actual questions were, Sarah talked Abraham into having relations with Sarah’s maid Hagar.

“ Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian maid whose name was Hagar; and Sarai said to Abram, ‘Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my maid; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.’ And wrong with what God had promised since it had already been ten years and no baby had been born. The promised little one had not been given. Sarah thought that God would give them the promised one in some other way. She did not trust the promise as given; Abraham, too, did not trust, after ten long, long years of waiting for the promise to be fulfilled. So he listened to the voice and the wisdom of his wife, for she did have some good points you’ll have to admit.

Adam, the first human made, had done basically the same thing. After his fall, God said to him, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife… (Genesis 3:17) the ground will bear thorns and thistles. Both men listened to the voice of their wife; both were seeking the God-promised child; both accomplished God’s promise on their own strength in their own way; both failed in their trust in God when the test became fierce; both bore a child who was a thorn and thistle: Cain and Ishmael; both had a change of heart and bore a righteous second child: Abel and Isaac; both sons were sacrificed, although Isaac was passed over.

For Adam and Eve, we don’t know how long they patiently waited for the promised baby of their own. Abraham and Sarah ended up waiting twenty-five years before God sent the promised little one. Abraham was 100 when God fulfilled the promise He gave a quarter century earlier. God waits and tests us. He is not about immediate gratification; we would have gone directly to heaven, entirely bypassing earth. Love requires testing, and testing requires time, and time tries our patience and trust. It is only by trust, only by living our daily life with a believing and hopeful heart that we pass the test.

That is why God placed us on earth. He wants to make self-sacrificing lovers out of us; He wants to make us into true lovers of Himself; if we daily give Him our entire self, He makes us into His spouse. Earth is the place for this transformation and growth. Earth is a time of testing and waiting; it is a place of sorrows and I-hope-it-happens-tomorrows; it is a valley of tears; it is our training ground to learn how to trust, and hope and love; in a similar manner, infants learn how to sit-up and crawl and walk under the watchful eyes and close to the loving arms of their parents.

“Now they were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them; and when the disciples saw it, they rebuked them. But Jesus called them to him, saying, ‘Let the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it’ ” (Luke 18:15-17). There is nothing but trust in the heart of an infant learning to walk and crawl; they are our example, according to Our Lord, of how we are to walk by faith.

Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.

The Quest for the Son Begins Again

Last night we discussed how Abraham was called back to his ancestral home to reclaim the family’s rightful inheritance; once he established a peace from his enemies round about, the undisputed head of the family, Shem/Melchizedek, comes out to bless Abraham. Shem is also the King of Salem and priest of God Most High who celebrates using bread and wine. It is possible that Salem, which means peace, later becomes Jerusalem when the Hebrew word for “it will be provided” is added as a prefix. It was added later in Abraham’s story when he offers up his only son in chapter twenty-two and says that God Himself will provide the lamb.

Shem was one of a handful of righteous first-born sons, and he is the king of peace in (Jeru)salem who offers bread and wine. Later, in this same location, Abraham/Isaac offer up Isaac, and God provides the lamb. This provision is all fulfilled when the true King of Kings and King of Peace, the true King of Jerusalem comes offering bread and wine; Jesus is the Lamb that God provided on Calvary in the same general location as Mount Moriah where Isaac offered himself up. Isaac was passed over, becoming the reason God provides the Passover to the Israelites in Egypt, and Jesus fulfills all of these prefigurements when He remakes the Passover at the Last Supper which ends with His own self-offering as the Lamb of God upon the cross.

Abraham is blessed by Shem when Abraham retakes the Promised Land, which solidifies the constant quest for the Promised Land by his descendants. The other primary quest now comes to fruition: the quest for a son. The very first thing that is mentioned after the blessing sequence is completed, is that God speaks to Abraham who immediately asks for a son. Blessings/the inheritance are meant to be passed on to one’s son. This is no ordinary blessing but a powerful, life-changing reality, and it is meant for one’s son. Abraham was quite wealthy before, but now that Abraham has been endowed with such a blessing from the patriarch, Shem, he knows he needs a son and so asks for one the first chance he gets. Thus begins anew the quest for the son.

God does not take long to respond: “And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, ‘This man shall not be your heir; your own son shall be your heir.’ And he brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed the LORD; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness” (Genesis 15:4-6). God wants to give Abraham a son; that was His plan from the beginning and why He called Him to come to his homeland. Abraham trusts God and believes that God will provide him a son, even though he is at the age of 75 and his wife is 65 and has been barren her whole life.

Ten years later, Abraham and Sarah still have not been given a son. There are key parallels to this story and the Adam and Eve story. Here Abraham and Sarah, with the God-given promise of a son, have been given something like the command to be fruitful and multiply. They have not been given the command to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but they are tempted to have a child outside of the ordinary way children come to couples. In both stories, the husband listens to the voice of his wife and sins. Both tried to fulfill God’s will by their own strength instead of allowing God to provide the son. Eve conceived Cain, and Hagar conceived Ishmael. Neither was the son God promised.


Thanks for reading and your prayers.
Copyright 2007.
All rights reserved.