Abraham’s Test of Faith: Why God Asked for Isaac – Bible Study

Welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a 30-minute walk through the Scriptures, teaching in-depth Bible truths that change people's lives. Now, here's your host, Les Feldick. Okay, good to have you all back again, and let's turn back to Genesis now. I think we've spent enough time between law and grace for the time being. It'll be coming up as we come down the pipe. Genesis chapter 22. Of course, years have gone by, and Isaac is now probably a late teenager, maybe even 20, and God is going to put poor old Abraham to another tremendous test. Now, as a rule, when I deal with new believers, the first thing I warn them is that God is going to test their faith. I mean, it's typical all through Scripture, and Abraham is no exception. Now, you want to remember that after waiting all those years, when Ishmael finally comes on the scene, and he's now a lad of 18 or so, how do you suppose Abraham felt when God said, send him away? Abraham loved Ishmael, and it was an excruciating experience for the man. I know it was, because he loved him. All right, now he's gotten attached to the other young man, Isaac, and now what does God tell him to do? Kill him. Imagine what the man Abraham must have gone through. Well, anyway, verse 1, and it came to pass after these things that God did. The King James used the word tempt, and I prefer a marginal definition, which is test. You don't tempt God, or God doesn't tempt, but God does test. So God did test Abraham and said unto him, Abraham, and he said, behold, here I am. And God said, take now thy son, thy, what's that next word, only. Now the reason I emphasize is because so far as God is concerned, Ishmael doesn't even count as a son. God is only concerned with Isaac, because you see it's through Isaac that the nation of Israel and the Messiah will come. And so I want you to make special note of that, where he says, take now thy only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest. Now God knew the heart of Abraham, and he said, get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, which I will tell thee of. Now again, we've got some in here that are going to Israel before too long on a tour, and you're going to get to this very place that God told Abraham to go, and in Scripture we call it what? Mount Moriah. But on Mount Moriah tonight stands, well, I always used to call it the Mosque of Omar, and then I read here a while back that that's not a correct term, that it's not a mosque, it is a shrine, but whatever. You know what I'm talking about. On Mount Moriah, and when you get inside that mosque, coming up out of what we would call the basement is this huge rock, and the mosque has been built around it. Well that is supposedly the rock where Abraham was to offer Isaac, but the point I'm making is that Mount Moriah is the very same place in Scripture where Solomon's temple rested. So all of these things, like I said a few programs back, everything when you're dealing in Israel is specific in time, in prophecy, everything. And so it is of tremendous import. And so verse 3, Abraham rose up early in the morning, saddled the ass, and took two of his young men with him, Isaac his son, and claimed or carried the wood for the burnt offering, rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him, and then verse 4, I'd like to have you underline another little important two words, on the third day, the third day. So that immediately should tell us something. What is this going to be a picture of? Well, Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. So on the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes, and he saw the place afar off. And Abraham said to his young men, Abide ye here with the ass, and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, underline again, and come again unto you. What did Abraham know? That even if Isaac's life had to be taken, he would go and believe. And this again is the total picture now of what Christ would accomplish on the cross. Typically, I think we're perfectly correct in saying that Isaac is a type here of Christ, Abraham is a type of God the Father, and you have that same love relationship, you have that same sacrifice situation in both instances. And so Abraham, verse 6, took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it upon Isaac his son, took the fire in his hand and knife, and they went both of them together. And Isaac, now remember, he's a lad of 18 or 20, and he has certainly been witness to more than one sacrifice and order of worship for the ancients. And so Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and he said, Now my father, behold the fire and the wood, but where's the what? Where's the lamb? What are you going to sacrifice? And now the amazing thing is, Abraham doesn't say at this point in time, well Isaac, it's going to be you. But what does Abraham say? God will provide, see? God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering. So they went both of them together. And they came to the place which God had told him of, and Abraham built an altar there, laid the wood and altar, and said, O you trapping 18 or 20 year old, what could you have expected about now? I think there's been one good instance where the son could have really whipped his father. But does he? No. Complete obedience. Now again, take this 2,000 years into the future. When it came time for those Romans to begin scourging him and whipping him and pulling out his beard and slapping that crown of thorns on his head, what could Christ have done? He could have done the same thing. He could have rebelled, and he could have thrown it all aside. The Scripture says he could have called down 10 legions of angels. He wouldn't have had to go. But what did he do? In complete obedience, he suffered at the hands of all these infidels and of the raging religionists of his day, and he went to the cross. So Isaac. And he obediently lets Abraham bind him and lay him upon the altar. Verse 10, And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And here we have that term again, and the angel of the Lord. Who is it? It's God the Son. I don't want to call him Jesus in the Old Testament because the Bible does it. But it's God the Son. It's God the Son. God the Son called unto him out of heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And Abraham said, Here am I. Lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do anything unto him. And for now, God says, I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy Son, thy only Son, from me. Now let's bring it into the life of a believer. Do believers suffer? Oh, some of them have gone through tremendous suffering. But you know, if they're a true believer, and I've had several of them in my classes. I've got one young lady I can't help but think of every time I come to something like this, totally paralyzed, and yet has the best attitude, the happiest disposition of anybody I've ever known. And to her, her suffering has just proven to God what? That she loves him. And it's the same way in every believer's life. The reason God brings times of testing and tribulation is to test our mettle. Because what will a lot of people do? Oh, they get bitter. They get bitter, and they get angry, and they get rebellious. But you see, the true heart, the true believing heart, when hard times come, God becomes all the more precious. And this is what we all have to learn. We've been through some trying times, and God brought us through it. I'm sure most of you have been through trying times, and you know what I'm talking about. God is not going to let us escape problems. He's simply going to be our host as we go through them. And so here even with Abraham, oh, Abraham says, I know now that you love me because you are ready to sacrifice even your well-loved son. And it's the same way again with God the Father. How do we know that God loves us? Oh, when he sent Christ to the cross. The only thing that put Christ on the cross was the love of God and the sin of mankind. All right, Abraham, now then. Verse 12, Now I know that thou, fierce God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thy only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him a ram. Now you almost have to wonder if he wasn't expecting something like this way up there in verse 8 when he said, God will provide. I think he must have known, but whatever. He turns behind and there is that ram caught in the thicket. But you know, God has never changed. Those of you who were with us and many out on television I know are just now beginning to watch our program, but go back with me, if you will, to Genesis chapter 4. You know, as we had our timeline on the last few weeks, I showed you how that over and over the situation changed from man's point of view. His responsibilities changed. But did God ever change? Never. Never. In fact, I like to, and I'll make no apology, I believe in the dispensational approach to Bible study, and only from that approach is the easiest way to understand Scripture. And the best illustration I've run across, and I think it's of my own making, is our own presidential administrations. We can have a presidential administration, and I always like to use Carter and Reagan because they are probably the best two for comparison that you can think of. Here you had four years of President Carter, and his administration, of course, reflected his own political ideologies. Then comes Reagan, almost totally opposite in his approach to politics and so forth, and we experienced the Reagan administration. But they were both laboring under what? The same Constitution. The Constitution didn't change, but the administrations did. And every time we get a new president, we've got a new administration. For all practical purposes, things are going to change, but the Constitution never. And the same way here in Scripture, all things may change. It was drastically different coming out of the garden than in the garden. It was drastically different coming out of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and going under the law. And it was far different coming out of the law and going under grace, see? But God never changed. All right, now if you're back in Genesis chapter 4, here God is dealing with Cain, you remember? God had told him that if they sinned, and remember they didn't have law, they had conscience, but God had instructed them that when conscience convicted them of having committed a wrong, that if they would bring a blood sacrifice, God would accept them. Abel did, and Hebrews again tells us, the faith chapter, that by faith Abel brought the more excellent sacrifice. But Cain rationalized, remember? And Cain said, well now why should I go someplace and barter for a lamb if I can just make a sacrifice of the things that I have grown, and if I make it beautiful, and if I take the trouble to go and approach God with it, Cain said, surely I'll be accepted. But he wasn't, because you see, he didn't do what God said. He was destitute of faith, you remember? All right, so now if you pick up the context in chapter 4 of Genesis, verse 5, But unto Cain and his offering God had no respect, and Cain was very wroth, or angry, and his countenance fell. Have you ever seen somebody get angry? And I mean, you can just see it all over them. Well, this was Cain, and God saw it. And so in verse 6, the Lord, or Jehovah now again, said unto Cain, why are you angry? Why is thy countenance fallen? Cain, can't you comprehend how much I want you to get right with me? You see, God is always anxious for the sinner to make a reconciliation by just simply doing what God has said. Now verse 7, God tells Cain, if thou doest well, in other words, if you bring me a blood sacrifice like Abel did, shall you not be accepted? Of course he would. But like I told you, Cain was evidently a farmer and had no access to sacrificial animals unless he'd go and maybe barter with his brother Abel. And you see, pride comes into the picture, and he wasn't about to do that. So God goes one step further. God, knowing that Cain doesn't want to have to go through that kind of a rigmarole, he says, all right, Cain, I'll tell you what I've done. I have provided a sacrifice for you, just like he does Abraham back here in Genesis 22. Now look what it says. If thou doest not well, in other words, if you can't bring a lamb on your own, a sin offering, now I'm putting that in there because the word here in the Hebrew is the same identical word for both sin and sin offering. Now again, I think it's unfortunate that our translators have not made that clear. But the Hebrew word here is, if you do not well, in other words, if you don't do it on your own, a sacrificial sin offering lieth at your tent door, and unto thee shall be his desire. Now in plain English, what is God saying? That lamb isn't going to fight with you. That lamb is going to be perfectly willing to let you pick him up and bring him to me as a sacrifice. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him. In other words, all you got to do is pick him up and bring him. Well, God has never changed. And so now if you'll come back to where we were in Genesis, in chapter 22, it was the same thing. God now providentially provides that ram caught in the thicket, and evidently Abraham had no problem taking that ram from the thicket to the altar. He has no help except maybe Isaac. And then in verse 14, you remember we made mention of this several weeks ago when we were going through the various names of Jehovah. And Abraham calls this Jehovah Jireh, the Lord who provides, or Jehovah the provider. Now then, let's move on. We want to keep moving or we'll never get through Revelation in the next five or ten years at the rate we've been going. But anyhow, in verse 15, the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time and said, verse 16, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and you have not withheld thy son, thy only son, now watch verse 17 and be reminded, you've seen this before, you've heard it before, that in blessing I will bless thee, in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is upon the seashore, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. And then verse 18, here is a repetition of the Abrahamic covenant again back in chapter 12, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice. Now here's covenant ground. Told all my classes the other night, I just keep hammering away at these covenants because unless you can understand the covenants, back in the Old Testament it's awfully hard to comprehend what we talk about even in the New. Verse 19, So Abraham returned unto his young men, you remember they were waiting, and they rose up and went together to Beersheba, and Abraham dwelt at Beersheba. And it came past after these things that it was told Abraham, saying, Behold, Milchoth she hath also born children unto thy brother Nahor. Now remember where Nahor is, he's up there in Syria, north of present-day Damascus. And verse 21, Hud's his firstborn and Buz's brother and so on and so forth, and it's merely to let us know, I think in verse 23, that Bethuel begot Rebekah. Now remember, she's going to be coming on the scene ere long as Isaac's wife, and these eight, Milchoth, did bear to Nahor Abraham's brother. Now we go into chapter 23 in the few moments that we have left, and there's an interesting little tidbit here in verse 1, And Sarah was a hundred and twenty-seven years old. These were the years of the life of Sarah. Now you just read over that casually and think, well, so what? But you know what's interesting about that? Sarah is the only woman in this book from cover to cover whose age is given, the only one. Now we've got ages of a lot of the men, but she is the only woman whose age is ever given. I just ran across that not too long ago, and I thought, you know, that's just one of those interesting tidbits that we like to pass on. Well, Sarah dies, and here Abraham has had the whole Middle East already deeded to him, remember, back there in chapter 15. But in spite of that, what does he still have to do here? Well, he still has to negotiate and buy a tract of land in order to bury his own wife, Sarah. And so you'll come through the chapter, and again, I'm not going to take time to read it all verse by verse, but I want you to just come with me to, oh, come down to verse 11 of chapter 23. Now, this is the field from Heth, no, it's Ephron the Hittite who is dealing with Abraham now, but of the children of Heth. And so Ephron says, Now, I think it's interesting here that Abraham is not satisfied with accepting a certain amount of acres free for nothing, although he could have, but he insists on paying for it. Now, I don't know how much we can connect to this, but I think you'll pick it up even in present-day Jewry, in the activity and the behavior of a Jew in our own day. When it comes to the burial of their dead, they are particular, aren't they? You remember here a few years ago, they made a big furor about some things being built over or next to one of the Jewish cemeteries of the Holocaust. I mean, they have a thing about the burial places for their dead. And where I picked this up was an article in the Jerusalem Post a while back, and this rabbi pointed it out, and he uses this as an example. He said, Even today, we Jews are particular about where we bury our loved ones. And I thought it was just rather interesting that so much of the Old Testament, even though it's way back in the ancients, it still carries through in our own present time. So anyway, they barter, which, of course, the Middle Easterners are all good at, Arabs as well as the Jews, and so they begin to barter. Verse 15, Ephraim says, My Lord hearken unto me, the land is worth 400 shekels of silver. Now, I think this is almost amusing. I told somebody the other night, if you look for it, there's humor in Scripture, and this is almost a humorous situation. He said, It's worth 400 shekels of silver. What is that between me and thee? Go ahead and bury your dead. But Abraham hearkened unto Ephraim, and he weighed him the silver which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth, what, 400 shekels of silver. So what Ephraim is really saying is, Well, Abraham, I really should have 400 shekels of silver, and Abraham pays it, see? And then verse 17, In the field of Ephron, which was in Mephila, which before Mamre in the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure. In other words, they surveyed it, Abraham bought it, and it became the burial place. Now then, it isn't going to be just Sarah that's going to be buried there. Abraham will be buried there, Isaac will be buried there, and I think Rebekah as well. Now verse 18, Unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth before all that went in at the gate of his city. And after this Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of Mephila, there it is before Mamre. The same is Hebron. Now that also is a tourist attraction now. You'll be going to Hebron, I'm sure, although it is now commercialized, and it is so packed with people. But at this time, of course, it was still out there in the countryside. Verse 20, In the field and the cave that is therein were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a burying place by the sons of Heth. Now I wish I had yet another half hour where we could just go right on into chapter 24 when we are going to go for a bride for Isaac. Now again, just in the moment that we've got left, I'm going to put a little makeshift map up here if I can. Here's our Mediterranean Sea again, and here's Jerusalem, and here we have the Sea of Galilee coming down to the Dead Sea. And remember up here is Haran, and this is the place where the offspring of Terah, after he died, they continued to live, and then Abraham, of course, came down into Canaan. Now when it gets time to go into the next chapter and Abraham is going to send a servant, he's going to send that servant back up to the land of his relatives, which now we know as Syrians, in order to get a bride for Isaac. Now, why go clear back up there into a far country? Man, there were all kinds of women here in Canaan. What was the reason? Thou shalt not take a Canaanite for a wife for Isaac. And then you'll find as you go on a little further that when Esau comes on the scene, you remember Jacob and Esau? Esau married two Canaanite women. And what does the Scripture say? They were a grief of mind to Isaac and Rebekah because Esau had married Canaanite women. So keep all these things in your perspective of Scripture because now, you see, God is preparing everything for the covenant people of Israel, and He's just got them under His thumb. And that's the way I like to look at the nation of Israel today. They're there in unbelief. They're there contrary to everything that we think they should be, but they're still under the sovereign thumb of their God because God is watching for Israel. They're still the covenant people. And even back here, God had to make sure who they married. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick. 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