The God Who Keeps His Promises (III)

Read: Genesis 22

But all of a sudden, when we’ve talked about how God keeps his promises, God presents Abraham with a troubling command: to take Isaac and sacrifice him - his only son, by the way - as an offering to God. Nobody can read this passage and think that Abraham completely went along with that command without any thoughts whatsoever. Make no mistake, this was a frightening test for Abraham and Sarai (who presumably knows what’s going on).

What was God thinking? It seems God’s trying to screw Himself over! I’m sure that was what was going through Abraham’s head: “Didn’t God promise me many descendants through Isaac? Why is he doing this now? Was all this a joke? No - it can’t be - but what if? But didn’t God tell me...” The questions keep going. Today’s modern readers might think of that as terrible. Many liberal theologians find this passage troubling. How can a good God let this happen? You can’t possibly expect Isaac to leave without his mind being scarred from all this. How would you like it if your dad took you to church to be sacrificed as an offering to God?

The writer of Hebrews had some insight into this. In chapter 11, the author listed and described the members of the so-called Hall of Faith, in which Abraham was a member. We need to understand that in the Old Testament, faith does NOT mean belief. Faith meant trusting in God because He is amazingly reliable. So, from this definition, Abraham was a faithful person. God has saved his skin in the past. And God has given him a son even though he was 90+. Why can’t God somehow save Isaac from this? There has to be a way out. And I’d imagine Abraham was puzzling and just agonizing through how it’s all going to play out as he slowly bound Isaac, and drew his knife...

All of a sudden, the great relief from God came: DO NOT LAY A HAND on the boy, said the Angel. Now, I know that you fear God. Can you imagine Abraham just filled, overflowing with absolute joy and happiness that this grisly act of sacrifice is spared! The rest of Genesis 22 talks about how Abraham “return to his servants”, but I think he just fell down and just kissed the feet of the angel over and over again for sparing him from this. But more importantly, God continued to uphold his promise to Abraham.

But that was not the last time God demanded such a frightful test. On Passion Week, God’s own Son was taken up the mountain. You can’t miss the strange irony. Where Abraham took his son to the mountain, in Jesus’ case, the Creator was dragged up the mountain by those he created! And no, there was nobody to comfort Jesus - they’ve fled already. And no, not a single angel delivered the great relief that Abraham experienced. But God always kept His promises. He rose again on the third day! And now he has left a promise to us - that he will return one day. How, then, shall we live if we truly believe that God is the one who keeps His promises?