Over the last couple of months we’ve been looking at the life of Abraham as recorded in Hebrews 11 and today we come to that part of his story which revealed a mature faith, a faith that believed God for the impossible without question or hesitation. Our passage today is Hebrews 11:17-19.
17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.
This presents briefly the greatest act of Abraham’s faith—his trusting in the absolutely unseen, and that at a time when he was bidden to do what seemed to conflict directly with God’s own promise. (R.C.H. Lenski, The Interpretation of the Epistle to the Hebrews & James, 400)
When the grizzled, old patriarch Abraham was just a year shy of a century, God came down and made himself known to Abraham in a way like never before. He used a name never before heard by a human being. He said, “I am El Shaddai, I am God Almighty” (Genesis 17:1).
When God reveals a new name it is usually because He has just performed or is about to perform some significant act that will reveal a vitally important aspect of His nature or purpose. So what is God about to do to justify this fresh revelation of Himself, that He is, in fact, the God of infinite might?
He says, “I want you to change your wife’s name. You’ve known here as Sarai, now I want you to call her Sarah, Princess, because she is going to be the mother of many nations. Kings of people will come from her.” Do you remember how Abraham responded? He fell to the ground in rip-roaring laughter!
At an earlier stage he had responded with more sobriety. He believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6). But here, at a later stage, he reckons himself “as good as dead” so that he can’t help but laugh. But why did he laugh? Because what God said was such a cause of joy, but also genuine amusement as he tries to wrap his head around how this might come to pass. “What will people think? They’ll know we’ve been watching those Viagra commercials!” he laughed (Genesis 17:17).
However, his incredulous laughter was only momentary, for when God explained that the birth would take place the following year, Abraham believed with all his heart, as 11:11 has made so clear: “By faith he [Abraham] also, together with Sarah, received power to beget a child when he was past age, since he counted him faithful who had promised” (literal translation).
A short time later, within a few weeks, three mysterious visitors appear on Abraham’s doorstep and promise him “a year from now Sarah will have a son.” She, listening in (having seen a lightness in Abraham’s step lately and wondering why he was now calling her “Princess,” but thinking that maybe it was just because he had read the last Dobson book on cultivating intimacy in marriage), she hears this message and she, too, responds with laughter. “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?” (Genesis 18:12).
She laughs. But it was El Shaddai who had the last laugh because He said, “Name this son Isaac,” which means laughter. God would make his covenant with Laughter. After his birth, Sarah would say, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” (Genesis 21:6). El Shaddai has displayed his power. He has kept His promise. The outcome: exuberant joy all around—Abraham laughs, Sarah laughs, everyone laughs, heaven laughs. We’re supposed to laugh too!
Kent Hughes explains:
Isaac’s name was a sure prophecy of what he brought to life. The old couple would take baby Isaac in their age-spotted hands and hold him close before their wrinkled visages, and their eyes would light as the smile lines drew taut—they would chuckle—and baby Isaac would laugh. If there ever were doting parents, Abraham and Sarah were surely prime examples. The boy was everything to them—the amalgam of their bodies and souls, the miraculous fulfillment of prophecy, the hope of the world. Isaac’s every move was lovingly chronicled—his first word, the first step, his likes and dislikes, his tendencies. And as he grew to boyhood and on toward manhood, Abraham and Sarah would see aspects of their younger selves in their son—perhaps Abraham’s height and carriage and Sarah’s stride and grace. (R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word: Hebrews, Vol. 2, p. 106).
But then one fateful day God came to Abraham again (Genesis 22) and called out “Abraham.” His immediate response was “Here I am, at your service, Lord.” But his enthusiasm immediately fades away when he heard God’s charge, “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” (Genesis 22:2).
“Surely not, Lord.” His soul would have been terrified and his heart broken. God was calling him to put his beloved Isaac, the son of the covenant, to death by his own hand and then incinerate his remains as a burnt offering to God.
“This divine command was contrary to everything in Abraham—his common sense, his natural affections, his lifelong dream. He had no natural interest and no natural sympathy for this word from God. The only thing natural was his utter revulsion!” (R. Kent Hughes, Preaching the Word: Hebrews, Vol. 2, p. 107)
To put his own son to death as an act of worship to his God was barbaric—the most unthinkable, repulsive thing Abraham could think of. Abraham was no backward, ignorant pagan. He was a man of education and financial means. More importantly, he had come to know a God that was different from all the pagan gods.
This puts the story into an entirely different light. It’s one thing for God to command Abraham to offer up a human sacrifice. But for God to command that he sacrifice Isaac, the one of whom God said “I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him” is something else altogether. How can this be?
The sentence of death pronounced on Isaac seemed also to be the sentence of death on God’s promise! There seem to be here two mutually exclusive declarations by God. On the one hand, God says: “I will establish my covenant with Isaac.” On the other hand, God says: “Kill Isaac.” Can you now appreciate the seemingly insurmountable and illogical predicament in which Abraham finds himself?
All of a sudden his world goes berserk. But one thing he knows: the originator of this word was the same Voice that had called him more than 35 years ago and the same Voice that had promised him a son.
So at the first gleam of dawn, without arguing or hesitating or questioning, without a word to poor old Sarah, Abraham saddled his donkey, summoned two trusted servants, split wood for the sacrificial pyre, roused Isaac, and began the three-day journey to Moriah.
When they draw close enough to see the mountains in the distance, he leaves his servants behind (likely knowing that they would oppose him as they saw his plan unfold). He and Isaac alone go to worship, but notice that he said they both “will return” (Genesis 22:5). He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
Abraham then straps the wood to the back of his son, hides the dagger and trudges on.
Thus lovable, talkative Isaac, happy to be alone with his father, and Abraham, preoccupied and wearier than he had ever felt, began the climb. “So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, ‘My father!’” (Genesis 22:6, 7a). Isaac used the patronymic “Abi (Abba),” which could well be translated, “Daddy” or “Dearest Father.” “Abi?” “[Abraham] said, ‘Here I am, my son.’ He said, ‘Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?’ Abraham said, ‘God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.’ So they went both of them together” (Genesis 22:7b, 8). (R. Kent Hughes Preaching the Word: Hebrews, Vol. 2, p. 107)
At this point Abraham felt older than any man who had ever lived. How he managed the ascent, only God knows!
After arriving at the top of the mountain, Mount Moriah (which would play such an important part in subsequent history), we can assume that Laughter begins to shudder. Of course, no one knows exactly how old Isaac was at this point. Given his naivety on the journey my guess is that he is a pre-teen.
He submits as his father begins to bind him to the altar. When the binding is finished, the pumping rhythm of Abraham’s heart begins to intensify in speed and force as he struggles to draw another breath. He finally closes his eyes, raises the dagger and readies it for the final plunge.
Finally, out of nowhere, the deafening silence is shattered by the voice of the Angel of the Lord, likely a Christophany, a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ. He calls out to Abraham from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” to which Abraham characteristically replies, “Here I am.”
And God says, “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son” (Gen. 22:12)
The text moves on to indicate that Abraham saw a ram caught in the thicket, captured it and offered it as a burnt offering to God.
So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided” (Genesis 22:14)
God reveals Himself here as Jehovah-Jireh, the “Lord who provides.” What a relief! Isaac is saved and the covenant is secure.
What a joy this must have been to Abraham, to find a substitute in place of his one and only Son Isaac! It reminds us that we have a Substitute who died in our place.
And it also reminds us that God never asks us to sacrifice something without promising us a much greater reward. Thus, A. W. Pink said, “The bounty of God should encourage us to surrender freely whatever He calls for, for none ever lose by giving up anything to God” (Arthur W. Pink, An Exposition of Hebrews, 745). And, of course, Jim Eliot taught us, “He is no fool who gives us what he cannot keep, to gain what he cannot lose.”
Now, this story terrifies us, then it leaves us with hope. But let’s be honest. It is not an easy story to live with. We could wish that it never appeared in the Bible. Yes, Abraham comes off as a man of faith, but it poses some extremely uncomfortable questions about God. It paints the picture of a God that is very difficult for such self-centered, self-important Americans to digest.
What kind of God would demand such obedience? What kind of God would put any father through such mind-numbing, heart-breaking pain, only to prove that that father loved God more than he loved his son?
And then we have to ask ourselves, “Could I have been as obedient as Abraham?” What if God had come to me with that request? Am I that strong in my faith? Would I have the same unhesitating, unquestioning obedience to a command that seemed so wrong?
But with Abraham there was no hesitation, no negotiation, no procrastination. He didn’t remind God how long he and Sarah had waited for a son or how God had promised that this son was the “son of promise.” He obeyed God to the letter, right away. In fact, notice what Hebrews 11:17 says, “By faith, Abraham…offered Isaac as a sacrifice.” God considered Abraham’s obedience complete, even though He stopped it from happening. He saw Abraham’s heart of faith-filled obedience. The perfect tense indicates that it was a completed action, in God’s eyes.
Abraham … offered Isaac as a sacrifice. The command was to “offer him as a burnt-offering,” which first had to be killed and then consumed by fire. So the apostle affirms that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice, whereas we know how he was delivered. But this means that Abraham fully obeyed God’s command here. He did it in his will, heart, and affections, although it was never eventually carried out. The will is accepted for the deed. The correct meaning is that Abraham fully obeyed God’s command. (John Owen, Hebrews, 227)
It shows that Abraham’s obedience was not only immediate and unquestioning, but that his resolve was firm to the end. Abraham obeyed immediately and completely. And we ask, “How does a father do such a thing?”
How can you exercise such faith in God that when confronted with a test that calls for the most extreme level of personal sacrifice, you do it without question or hesitation?
Your sacrifice may not be the sacrifice of a child, but it may involve the sacrifice of a distinguished career, a 4.0 grade point average, a starting spot on the basketball team, a long-standing relationship or a new relationship. It may be the sacrifice of a dream house.
Is God asking you to sacrifice anything right now? What is your response. “No, Lord, you can’t take that away from me.” Is that your response? It may be our natural response. It wasn’t Abraham’s.
So that brings up the question: How can you and I exercise faithful obedience to God when confronted with a test that calls for some kind of extreme sacrifice on our part?
The answer, in part, is by casting yourself upon two important truths:
The first is this: recognize that God Himself is the author of this test.
Here that reality is implied, “when he was tested.” “God” is not mentioned in the text, but this is what is called a “divine passive.” The ESV is right in assigning God as the author of this test, which is exactly how Genesis 22:1 reads, “Some time later…” or “after these things God tested Abraham.”
Now remember the distinction, God never tempts us to sin. James 1 is emphatic on this point: “When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone;” (James 1:13).
When God takes us through difficult and trying circumstances (trials), it is not for the purpose of causing us to sin. When God does test us, it is to prove that we can stand the test. Trials are not designed to induce us to sin, but to reveal our real character—not so much to God, but to ourselves and others.
You’ve seen this happen before, maybe in your own life or in the life of someone else. You see a woman who remains faithful to Jesus after being abandoned by her husband. You see a man who remains faithful to Jesus when his wife has just died from leukemia.
You have watched them go through a very trying situation and you see their trust, their hope, their loving responses, their compassion.
Here’s the thing. God and Satan can use the same situation but have different goals in mind. God brings difficult situations into our lives to build us up, while Satan uses those same situations to trip us up. As my beloved Bible College professor, Dr. Charles Willoughby used to say, “God sends trials into our lives as stepping stones; Satan sends trials into our lives as stumbling stones.”
God has a totally opposite purpose in our trials. As A. W. Tozer has said” The God we love may sometimes chasten us, it is true. But even this He does with a smile—the proud, tender smile of a Father who is bursting with pleasure over an imperfect but promising son who is coming every day to look more and more like the One whose child he is. (A. W. Tozer, Whatever Happened to Worship, 29)
We don’t have to stumble. Abraham didn’t. He grew stronger in his faith by showing faith-filled obedience when God tested him.
Grace Still Amazes 