I set the stage for digging deeper into the story of Abraham and Isaac in The Story of Abraham and Isaac Revisited: Introduction. Abraham’s faith is the lesson we learned in Sunday. Faith is the basic place we start, but Abraham’s faith is only scratching the surface of the story.
This story is not simply about Abraham’s faith. We often view this story as simply a test of Abraham’s faith, which it is, but it’s much more than that.
Think about it: God does not need to test Abraham to know who he is. God already knows what kind of man Abraham is. Many decades before this story, we are told that Abraham believed God, and his faith was credited to him as righteousness.
When God called Abraham to leave his country, his people, his father’s household – which was his legacy – and God would make a great nation of his descendants, Abraham left, not even knowing where he was going. Though he was 75, Abraham responded with faith and went. (Gen. 12:1-4)
Many years and adventures later, Abraham was still childless, living in the land God showed him, and Abraham still believed the promise God made to him, though he had nothing to show for it. His faith was already counted to Abraham as righteousness. (Gen. 15:1-6)
Isaac was not born to Abraham and Sarah until Abraham was 100 years old, a quarter century after the initial promise. (Gen. 21:1-7) All the while, Abraham had faith. The story of Abraham and Isaac is not primarily a story about Abraham’s faith.
Isaac was not born to Abraham and Sarah until Abraham was 100 years old, a quarter century after the initial promise. (Gen. 21:1-7) All the while, Abraham had faith. The story of Abraham and Isaac is not primarily a story about Abraham’s faith.
Though the story begins with the statement that God was testing Abraham, it doesn’t say God was testing Abraham’s faith. (Gen. 22:1) Perhaps, God tested Abraham to show Abraham who God is!
I will explain, but first we need to understand something of the Ancient Near East culture Abraham lived in. A key factor in this story is that child sacrifice was a universal and ubiquitous practice in the Ancient Near East.
Abraham was intimately familiar the gods of his culture who were unpredictable, arbitrary and capricious, requiring allegiance and sometimes even child sacrifice to be appeased. What Abraham may have sensed, but didn’t fully understand, was that his God is not like the other Ancient Near East gods.
In our western mindset, we might expect God to announce who He is: we might expect Him simply to tell us. In the eastern mindset, we discover who God is through our lived experience and the lived experience (stories) of other people.
God doesn’t simply tell us who He is; God shows us. To “know” God is not simply an intellectual exercise; it is a lived experience. Thus, all of Abraham’s life is an example for us, and here we learn who God is through Abraham’s lived experience.
God reveals Himself to Abraham experientially through Abraham’s faith, and He reveals Himself to us through Abraham’s story. If you haven’t read the introductory article yet, I encourage you to do it now at the link above.
With this basic understanding, I encourage you to read Genesis 22:1-14 now. Following we get into the details of the story.
Sacrifice began with Cain and Abel. Able gave an acceptable sacrifice, giving to God from the best of what he had. God accepted Abel’s sacrifice and Cain became jealous of Abel’s favor with God and took his life.
The sacrifices offered by Cain and Abel were outward expressions of their hearts toward God. Abel offered to God a sacrifice from among the best that he had; Can did not. Cain’s reaction of taking Abel’s life was also an expression of his heart, being self-absorbed and jealous and unable to countenance the favor Abel obtained from God. This only shows, however, there is more to the offering of a sacrifice than meets the eye.
Christians read the OT through the lens of the interpretation of Jesus. Jesus told the Pharisees, “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.”[1] On the road to Emmaus, Jesus came along side two disciples after He had risen from the dead and interpreted the Scriptures for them, showing them “all the things concerning himself”.[2]
Jesus tells us that the OT is a precursor to the NT. The OT laid the groundwork for the NT and prepared the way for the revelation of Jesus. A Christian can’t read the OT divorced from the NT. It makes little sense by itself.
When it comes to sacrifice, the entirety of the OT points to the ultimate sacrifice that was to come – the sacrifice of God who became man and gave Himself up for us. God turned everything on its head in that culminating moment, and we learn (looking back) that this was the plan all along. God intended from the beginning to do this, and He prepared the stage for it through His working with Abraham and Abraham’s descendants, stubborn and rebellious though they were.
They were exactly like us. But that means there is hope for us!
And that is the problem. God can be nothing other than who He is. He is (in Himself) the standard to which all things are compared. If we want to have a relationship with God, it must be on God’s own terms because God is who is He is.[3]
God did create us in His own image[4], but that doesn’t mean that we are exactly like Him. He gave us agency, the ability to choose, including the ability to choose to reject Him and go our own ways.
If God is the standard of goodness, a choice to embrace anything other than the goodness of God is evil. Evil doesn’t exist without good. Good is the benchmark against which anything other than good is measured, and anything other than good is evil.
In giving us this choice, God gave us the gift of love, because love can’t exist without choice. If we have no choice but to reflect God’s character, we would not be able to know and reciprocate love, because love is a choice. Hold that thought.
When we think of the sacrifices in the OT, we think of the animal sacrifices that became the central activity in the Temple. Why did God require them? What was the purpose of the system of ritual sacrifices that God instructed?
The surrounding nations and religious activity from time immemorial to the present day included sacrifices to appease angry gods and gain favor with them. Was this simply more of the same?
Actually, no. This was a paradigm shift. For one thing the surrounding nations engaged in child sacrifice, but God forbid the practice by the Israelites.[5] When the Israelites engaged in the practice anyway, God judged them for it.[6] Instead, God instructed them to sacrifice animals.
In doing this, God began to condition His people for something other than what the rest of their known world did. God began to lead them in a different direction. The switch from child sacrifice to sacrifice of animals was only one step in the process, and it wasn’t the destination, but only part of the journey.
The sacrificial system God gave His people pointed beyond it to something else. When God gave the instruction to Moses in regard to the sacrificial system, He explained, “For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one’s life.”[7]
The sacrifices were intended to provide the atonement for the sins of the people. God provided an “out” – a way for a sinful people to be restored to relationship with God. It is a necessary corollary to the ability to choose evil instead of God, but the animal sacrifices weren’t mean to be a permanent fix.
After many generations of failure to walk in the ways that God established for His people, continually returning to the gods of their neighbors and the evils that God warned them to leave behind, God began to send them prophets. At the height of their failings and continual wandering after the evils God warned them against, God spoke these words through the prophet Isaiah:
“11 What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?
says the Lord;
I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of well-fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of goats.
12 “When you come to appear before me,
who has required of you
this trampling of my courts? 13 Bring no more vain offerings;
incense is an abomination to me.
Likewise, God spoke through the prophet Hosea:
For I desire steadfast love[8] and not sacrifice,
the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
It wasn’t the sacrifices that God wanted; it was relationship. The sacrifices God instructed His people to make were not the permanent fix, as stated above. It was only a temporal means to a more permanent end. The permanent fix was not to come from man, but from God.
As stated in Hebrews, the sacrificial system was only an illustration.[9] The sacrificial system was merely a temporal, external regulation pointing to an eternal, internal reality that was to be revealed in Christ.
“But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!
For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.”[10]
This is why, when Jesus was dying on the cross, as His death approached, He said, “It is finished!”[11] In that moment Jesus fulfilled the law and all that the law demanded. Just as Jesus told His followers when He was alive, He became the ransom for us all.[12] His sacrifice was once for all; it was the perfect sacrifice; it was the sacrifice that bought us eternal life. It was the ultimate sacrifice that God planned from the beginning.
When God made us in His image, giving us agency, He allowed us the gift of love, which we could not have obtained any other way. But it came with a huge risk – the risk that we could and would reject God. In fact, God knew we would reject Him and go our own way. But he provided a way out.
Just as God provided a way out for Abraham when Abraham dutifully went to sacrifice his so, Isaac, in the tradition all the surrounding nations, God provided a way out for all of us. For Abraham, God provided a goat to be sacrificed instead of his son. For Israel, God provided for animals to be sacrificed instead of their children.
But all of this was only a stop gap, a bridge to a different, new and ultimate reality in which God intended to provide the ultimate sacrifice, one for all. This is was a sacrifice to be made by God Himself, taking on the form of a man, and being found in human form, He proceeded to be obedient to the plan, even to the point of sacrificing Himself in death for our sake.
In doing this, God also showed us the way we should reflect His love:
“So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant,[c] being born in the likeness of men.8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name….”[13]
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[1] John 5:39-47 (“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. 41 I do not receive glory from people. 42 But I know that you do not have the love of God within you. 43 I have come in my Father’s name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. 44 How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God? 45 Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you: Moses, on whom you have set your hope. 46 For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?”)
[2] Luke 24:27 (“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”)
[3] God told Moses, “I am who I am”. (Exodus 3:14)
[6] Jeremiah 32:35-36 (“They built the high places of Baal in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech, though I did not command them, nor did it enter into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.‘Now therefore thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning this city of which you say, ‘It is given into the hand of the king of Babylon by sword, by famine, and by pestilence.’’”)
[8]The Hebrew word, ese (etymology unknown), means covenant-loyalty. This term is used generally of loyalty to a friendship or agreement. Preeminently, it conveys the idea of God’s perfect loyalty to His own covenant. God desires His covenant to be reflected back by us; He desires His love for us to be reflected back by our love for Him.
We live in a specific cultural and historical time and view things through cultural, historical, social, political, and other contexts that are familiar to us. Things in the Bible often do not make sense to us immediately because the filter through which we see the world with modern eyes obscures the context in which the stories in the Bible were told. Whether one believes the Bible is God’s word, no one can understand it as it was written without understanding the context.
The story of Abraham and Isaac is particularly hard to understand in modern context. Why would anyone think to sacrifice a child? They very thought is barbaric! A God who would ask such a thing must be barbaric too! So, the thinking goes.
Let’s set that thinking aside for the moment before we come back to it. Let’s not jump to 21st Century conclusions. Let’s consider the historical and cultural context and give the story the benefit of the doubt to see what we might find.
First, Abraham clearly was doing what he thought God was asking of him. He was willing to do it, even if, perhaps, he didn’t understand it, and it would would be painful to him. Isaac was his only son. Not only that, he was the son God promised to give him and through whom God promised Abraham descendants as many as the stars in the sky.
According the written account, Isaac was a miracle. Abraham and Sarah were past child-bearing age, but God had promised them a child. Now, God seemed to be urging him to take that child’s life. Just as it makes no sense to us, it would not have made sense to Abraham. Even if there was no other reason, it would not make sense because it went against what God had promised.
Yet, Abraham was convinced that he must do it, or at least that he must follow through with this urging from God to wherever it would lead. This belief is central to story, and we need to understand the why before we can fully understand the story.
We have a hard time understanding this particular commitment by Abraham to God in our modern world. Why would Abraham think it was ok for God to ask this of him?
We would never believe that God would tell anyone to murder a child, let alone our child. We would call anyone who believed such a thing psychotic, delusional, or worse – downright wicked. We lock people like that up and throw away the key!
But, not so fast. Let’s take a step back into the Ancient Near East and consider Abraham’s world. We have thousands of years of human progress to thank for how we think, thousands of years of Christian influence by which we now judge the world.
We now live in a world in which an individual’s pursuit of happiness is a protected right, and people are free to follow their own dreams. We highly value individualism. “I did it my way” is an anthem in our modern society. Religion is largely frowned upon if it cuts against these modern grains.
In terms of morality, however, we are not really as different from the ancients as we think. You may know someone who has sacrificed a child. Maybe you have done it yourself. I am talking about abortion.
I don’t say this to condemn anyone. I simply point out that abortion is an accepted practice in our time. Some societies would view our acceptance of abortion with shock (including our own society 50 years ago). Others in the future may think the same.
Therefore, let’s put aside our modern prisms through which we tend to view the story of Abraham and Isaac. Let’s consider the story in it’s ancient context.
The pagans knew their place in the world, the utter separateness between them and the creative force of the world and the fearful sense of a being so much greater than us that might as soon squash us as let us live. That creative force it turns out, however, loves us and desires relationship with us.
Abraham, by Sufjan Stevens, ends with these words:
Abraham
Put off on your son
Take instead the ram
Until Jesus comes
Abraham lived around 2000 B.C.E. in Mesopotamia. (Answersingenesis) Child sacrifice was common practice in that time in that area of the world to appease the gods that people thought existed. It would not have been a foreign concept to Abraham for God to ask him to sacrifice his son. That practice was part of the life and culture of the time in which Abraham lived.
The request, however, would have been particularly difficult for Abraham to honor. God had promised him a son. God promised that Abraham’s child would populate the earth as the stars in the sky. Abraham was already old and past normal child rearing age when God made these promises.
The request by God for Abraham to sacrifice his son would have hit Abraham hard. It would have made no sense. It flew in the face of the promises Abraham thought God made to him. Continue reading “Abraham and the Love of God”→
Navigating by Faith 