Digging Deeper Days
Finding the original intent of Scripture and making good application to our everyday lives as we become equipped to correctly handle the Word of Truth!
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The Questions
1) Why would God ask Abraham to gruesomely slaughter his son? (verse 10)
2) How does the Lord provide for Abraham? (verse 14)
3) What was required from Abraham before God blessed him? (verses 17-18)
Genesis 22:10-18
Then Abraham reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son.
11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!”
He replied, “Here I am.”
12 Then he said, “Do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me.” 13 Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son. 14 And Abraham named that place The Lord Will Provide, so today it is said, “It will be provided on the Lord’s mountain.”
15 Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven 16 and said, “By myself I have sworn,” this is the Lord’s declaration: “Because you have done this thing and have not withheld your only son, 17 I will indeed bless you and make your offspring as numerous as the stars of the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your offspring will possess the city gates of their enemies. 18 And all the nations of the earth will be blessed by your offspring because you have obeyed my command.”
Original Intent
1) Why would God ask Abraham to gruesomely slaughter his son? (verse 10)
To be abundantly clear, God had zero interest in ever killing Abraham’s son. The Lord God has always been adamantly opposed to child sacrifice (Leviticus 20:2-5, Jeremiah 32:35) and protects life against all odds all throughout Scripture. (Genesis 21:15-18, Matthew 19:14-15) Even in this passage, an angel of the Lord was sent by God to ensure no harm came to Isaac. (verses 11-12) This recorded incident wasn’t really about Isaac at all, it was about Abraham. God knew Abraham cherished nothing more highly than his beloved only son, Isaac. God Himself had given Isaac to Abraham when both he and his wife, Sarah, were far too old to bear children. Sarah was around 90 and Abraham was 100 years old! (Genesis 21:5) Isaac was the son of God’s promise, the visible, tangible sign of God’s faithful promise to make Abraham into a great nation. God had given this promise when Abraham was only 75 years old (Genesis 12:1-4). For 15 long years, God taught Abraham to keep trusting Him, and Him alone to fulfill His promise that Abraham couldn’t see with his eyes and could only believe by faith. Abraham followed in obedience and humility, albeit not perfectly, but he did consistently choose to trust God over himself. Now that Isaac was here, and several years had passed, Abraham’s love priorities had begun shifting off the Almighty and onto his son, Isaac. (Genesis 22:2) As Abraham’s heart shifted, he became in danger of worshipping an idol, his son, instead of the Lord God who had given Isaac. For Abraham’s good, God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac as an offering to the Lord. Again, this wasn’t about Isaac, God would preserve Isaac’s life, this was about cutting out idol worship from Abraham’s heart.
2) How does the Lord provide for Abraham? (verse 14)
Abraham, with knife raised, was face to face with death, but it wasn’t death of his son, even though it obviously appeared that way. Abraham, by physically offering up his son, whom he dearly loved, to the Lord God, was slaying his pride on the altar that day. As the angel of God called aloud for Abraham to stay his knife, and both Abraham and Isaac gulped in oxygen in astonished gratefulness, Yahweh Jirah provided a ram for the physical sacrifice to take the place of Isaac. But even before Abraham caught sight of the ram’s horns caught in a thicket, the Lord God revealed the greater way He had provided for Abraham in that moment where life and death had hung in the balance. “Now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son from me.” (verse 12) For clarity, God already knew Abraham would choose to follow through in obedience to God’s command of sacrificing Isaac because He is the all-knowing God. This journey up the side of Mt. Moriah wasn’t commanded for God’s benefit, but for Abraham’s. Abraham’s love for Isaac was deep and all-consuming, threatening to overtake his love and devotion for God. As Abraham wrestled with his faith, as he took one more step up the mountain, as he prepared the alter, as he bound his beloved son and laid him on it, as he picked up his knife, each decision led him more firmly to worship the Lord God and release Isaac from the pedestal he had placed him on. God provided the ram for the physical sacrifice, but God provided humility in place of pride in Abraham’s heart.
3) What was required from Abraham before God blessed him? (verses 17-18)
Abraham decided to go all in for obeying God with absolutely no turning back, because, of course, once the knife pierced Isaac’s heart, there was no other choice Abraham could make. This was the point when God stopped Abraham. Total obedience. The Lord instantly spoke truth over Abraham, reassuring him that God saw his heart, and more so Abraham could know his own heart, that he really did fear and honor and love God more than anyone or anything else. But Abraham had to walk through all the wrestling before he could know for himself that yes, he did worship God more than his own pride. It was later, after the ram had been provided, after Isaac had been loosed, after the ram had gladly been slain instead of Isaac, perhaps it was after tears were shed and words of praise flowed freely from aged lips that God spoke again. “Because you have done this thing and have not withheld your only son, I will indeed bless you and make your offspring as numerous as the stars of the sky and the sand on the seashore.” (verses 16-17) Obedience. Total surrender. Faith. Then blessing. Suppose Abraham had never made the trek up the mountain, never wrestled through whether he trusted God more than his own heart, and had never crossed over into total surrender. How miserable would he have been? How distant God would been from him relationally!
Everyday Application
1) Why would God ask Abraham to gruesomely slaughter his son? (verse 10)
The Lord God was willing to make a big ask of Abraham because He knew Abraham could not experience the fullness of God’s blessing and love on his life if his heart was given over to an idol. God gave this strange command to Abraham because He loved Abraham too dearly to allow him to wreck his life without an alternate course of action provided. Yahweh Jirah is translated “The Lord Will Provide”, and of course, He provided the ram to be killed as an offering of worship instead of Isaac. But what a gift that the Lord provided the opportunity for Abraham to recognize the sin growing in his heart and surrender anew to the One True God, Yahweh! How kind of the Lord to offer renewal and repentance as He saw Abraham beginning to walk away from worshipping God alone; such good-hearted love! How tenderly and sweetly the Lord does the same for us! The Lord jealously guards the hearts of those who have trusted Him for life and salvation because of His great love for us. He wants all other idols violently torn down, not because He is ego-centric, but because He knows that only when our eyes are fixed solely on Him are we in a position to accept His gracious love and abundance in our lives and we are free to walk away from the entanglements of sin. Where is Yahweh Jirah providing opportunity for you to repent from your own idol worship?
2) How does the Lord provide for Abraham? (verse 14)
The dramatic scene that unfolded that day on Mt. Moriah deeply impacted Abraham. God had personally come to set his heart free from worship of any other, but the Lord God. I have no doubt Abraham came down that mountainside a changed man, forever looking at his son a little differently, a little more clearly, because he could see through Isaac to the God who lovingly made Isaac and provided for Abraham. Today, Mt. Moriah is covered by the Temple Dome and the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Why should we care? Because this is the location King David chose for the temple to be built where sacrifices would be offered to God for the forgiveness of sin. Again, why do we care? Because it was in this city of Jerusalem, built on the mountain where God had called out Abraham’s sin and provided a ram in place of killing Isaac, that God provided for all humanity by giving up His own dearly loved Son, Jesus. God would not lay a hand on Isaac, but He turned His back on Jesus as He took the punishment for the world’s sin on the cross. When Yahweh Jirah provided for Abraham on a hot, sticky day thousands of years ago, He knew He would one day pour out the lifeblood of His Son as means of providing you and me the pathway to return to right relationship with God. Sin marred Abraham’s worship of God, just as it does ours today. The same God who jealously loved Abraham’s heart also loves ours! How will we respond to such love?!
3) What was required from Abraham before God blessed him? (verses 17-18)
Disobedience always brings distance. Obedience, however, always brings blessing. We won’t all receive Abraham’s blessing for our obedience, because that was given specifically to him, but that doesn’t negate the surety of the blessing. If I could sit across from you, and you gave me permission to yammer on about how God has abundantly provided for me as I followed Him small step by small step in obedience, you’d be stuck at that coffee shop for hours and hours! In simple ways and in significant ones, Yahweh Jirah has oh so faithfully provided His blessing as I chose total surrender. In transparency, scattered all along the way, are plenty of examples of me choosing pride and self or fear and doubt over total trust. The results are always the same. When I push back against the Lord, it’s never a comfortable place of delight and satisfaction. Where does the Lord ask for total surrender in our lives? Here’s the whole truth, every part of it. He doesn’t want to bargain for a section of our lives, or ask for appearances on Sunday while we trash our relationships during the week. He wants the entirety of our selves. The more we surrender, the richer our delight in Him becomes!
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Digging Deeper is for Everyone!
1) Take this passage (or any other passage).
2) Read it, and the verses around it,
several times
3) Write down your questions
as you think of them.
4) Ask specific culture related questions and be ready to dig around for your answers. Google them, use www.studylight.org, or look them up in a study Bible and read the footnotes (click on the little letters next to a word and it will show you
other related verses!). (www.esvbible.org)
5) Check your applications with other trusted Christians that you are in community with and embrace the fullness of God
in your everyday!
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Why Dig Deeper?
Finding the original meaning is a huge deal when we study Scripture and can make all the difference in our understanding as we apply God’s truths to our everyday lives.
In our modern-day relationships, we want people to understand our original intention as we communicate; how much more so between God and humanity?!
Here’s a little bit more on why we take Digging Deeper so seriously.
Study Tools
We love getting help while we study and www.studylight.org is one of many excellent resources, providing the original Hebrew (Old Testament) or Greek (New Testament) with an English translation.
Want to know more about a specific word in a verse? Click on “Strong’s Interlinear Bible” then click the word you’d like to study. Discover “origin”, “definition” and hear the original pronunciation – That Is Awesome!
Want more background? Click “Study Tools”, then pick a few commentaries to read their scholarly approach, keeping in mind that just because a commentary says it, doesn’t mean it’s true. (just like the internet :-))
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