Genesis 22:1-19: A Threat to the Promise
In Genesis 21 God gifts Sarah and Abraham with a son. He was a miracle child, the child they ceased to think they would have. He was the vessel through which they would realize God's promise to "make their descendants as numerous as the stars."In Genesis 22 God asks Abraham to return Isaac to him. How is it that in the span of one chapter God entrusts Isaac to the care of Abraham and Sarah, and in the next he is not so sure?I wonder, as we examine our own lives, whether or not we have gifts that we have received from God that soon became something that morphed into something of an idol. It is all to easy for us to lose sight of things, and escalate them to a level of importance that they were never intended to have. This is what I believe happened with Abraham.I think that Abraham began by seeing him as God's gift. But maybe as the years passed he began seeing Isaac, no longer as a vessel through which God's promise would be fulfilled, but as the key to realizing God's promise. Maybe Abraham began to place his confidence in Isaac and not the God who delivered Isaac.It happens with us all the time; does it not? For example, a person receives a job opportunity, and they receive it joyfully, as an opportunity from God. Soon thereafter the job has taken over their life. Rather than being an opportunity to serve with distinction they begin to view the success or failure of the job with their success or failure as a person. They have become enslaved by that which was meant to be a gift.
Examples of this sort abound, from parents who begin to allow the success or failure of their kids to define their existence, to the person who begins a journey towards health, but ends up enslaved to an unreachable body image, we show the tendency to let gifts become masters.When this happens a loving God will step in and say, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering.” In other words, God will ask that we relinquish control back to him, and be done with it.It is necessary to give sacrificially to God those things which are beginning to take a stronghold in our lives, because if we do not the only end will be deeper enslavement. But when we sacrifice to God, when we bind Isaac and lay him on the wood as an offering, that is when we will discover a loving God prepared to give us back that which we sacrificed to him. But he won't return the sacrifice as a burden, he will return it as a gift once he knows we are ready to receive it.My favorite illustration of this is found in Luke 18. It’s right after the story of the rich young ruler who went away sad because he refused to give up his wealth to follow Jesus. And as the man is walking away Peter says to Jesus, “Lord! We’ve left everything for you.” In other words, he is saying, “Jesus, we have sacrificed our family, we have sacrificed career endeavors, we have sacrificed relationships, we have sacrificed everything to be with you.”And Jesus says, “Yes, and I assure you that everyone who has given up their home or spouse or brothers or parents or children, for the sake of the Kingdom of God, will be repaid many times over in this life, and will have eternal life in the world to come.”