Before you read this post, I encourage you to read Genesis 22.
This is the sixth installment to our Old Testament Story series. You can read the other installments here.
God made a remarkable promise to Abraham in Genesis 15:5, promising 85 year old Abram that he would have a son and that his family tree would be like trying to number the stars. When Abram was 99 God reminded him of that promise and changed Abram’s name to Abraham (“father of a multitude”) and promised nations and kings would be among his descendants (Gen 17:1-8). Finally, with Abraham 100 and Sarah 90, their son Isaac was born (Gen 21:5).
So now we get to Genesis 22 and something very strange happens. God demands that Abraham give Isaac back to him as a burnt offering (Gen 22:1-2.) Isaac is older at this point – maybe 10? – and God is basically calling Abraham to slit his son’s throat and burn his body to ashes. This is practically impossible to imagine for any parent or reader. The pagan nations all practiced child sacrifice. (As a matter of fact, almost every culture on earth except Israel has child sacrifice in its history.) But this is a practice that YHWH detests.1 What is going on here?
How much do you trust me?
It says in Gen 22:1 that YHWH was testing Abraham in this. But what is this test? Part of the challenge of faith is to believe God even when we don’t understand his ways. Abraham knew that God had made many promises of the posterity that would come through this child. What about the promises of nations and kings? What about descendants like the stars of the sky? Did God intend to keep any of His promises?
And honestly, don’t you have moments where you wonder about God’s ways? When you lose a baby to miscarriage. When you can’t find a job. When your car is totaled by an uninsured driver. When you get a disastrous medical test result. And a sinful voice whispers in your ear, “I told you not to trust God. He’s just going to let you down.”
God is asking Abraham to demonstrate how much he trusts God. Do you trust that my promises are true even when there seems to be no possible way? This is the angle that Hebrews takes:
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. (Hebrews 11:17-19)
The point being that Abraham so trusted God that he was willing to go through the agony of sacrificing his son if God asked him to do it.
Do you love me more?
Tim Keller (1950-2023) had an important insight into this test. He suggests that perhaps Isaac had become an idol in Abraham’s life.
This was the ultimate test. Isaac was now everything to Abraham, as God’s call makes clear. He does not refer to the boy as “Isaac” but as “your son, your only son, whom you love.” Abraham’s affection had become adoration. Previously, Abraham’s meaning in life had been dependent on God’s word. Now it was becoming dependent on Isaac’s love and well-being. The center of Abraham’s life was shifting. God was not saying you cannot love your son, but that you must not turn a loved one into a counterfeit god. If anyone puts a child in the place of the true God, it creates an idolatrous love that will smother the child and strangle the relationship.2
How easy it is to reach the point where we love the gift more than the giver. As Abraham saw all of God’s promises wrapped up in this boy, did he find himself loving the boy more than God? Keller is certainly reaching beyond what the text tells us, but as we try to understand why God would put Abraham through such a text, this seems plausible. YHWH asks Abraham, “Do you love me more than my gift?”
The fate of a nation
As Israel, the original audience of Genesis, read this they perhaps would focus on a different aspect than we do. We think of this story from Abraham’s perspective: could I obey if God asked this of me. But for Israel, that is them on the altar. Their existence hangs on the knife at Isaac’s throat. The resolution of this story is why they exist at all.
At the last moment, Abraham discovers a lamb caught by its horns. This is a remarkable providence by God. You realize that God didn’t beam down the ram in Star Trek fashion. God had been directing the lamb up the mountain at the same time Abraham was going. God already knew how this story was going to end. There would be a sacrifice, but it would not be Isaac. God already had a plan for the substitute he would provide so that his promises would come true and his people would live.
A picture of the gospel
We don’t have to dig very deep to see the gospel pictured in this story. We see the ram laid on the altar, dying as a substitute in Isaac’s place. The whole family tree of Abraham delivered by the blood of this sheep. Almost 2000 years later, another sheep would die as a substitute. The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29) dies in place of his people. He died that we might live. He died that God’s promises would come true. This time though, it wasn’t God demanding a son of one of his people. This time it was God’s own Son who became the offering.
Once again God is asking, “Do you trust me?”
- Some verses about child sacrifice: Lev 18:21; Lev 20:2-5; Deut 12:31; Deut 18:10; 2 Kings 16:3; 2 Kings 17:17; 2 Kings 21:6; 2 Kings 23:10; 2 Chr 28:3; 2 Chr 33:6; Jer 7:31; Jer 32:35; Psalm 106:37-38. ↩︎
- Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters (New York: Penguin; 2009), 7. Emphasis in the original. ↩︎
