Written by: Captain Gordon Banks - Church Army

Genesis 22 v 1-2
After these things God tested Abraham’s faith. God said to him, “Abraham!”
And he answered, “Here I am.”
Then God said, “Take your only son, Isaac, the son you love, and go to the land of Moriah. Kill him there and offer him as a whole burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”

Notes
Have you ever received news that has made your heart miss a beat and your head spin in unbelief? News that made you shout out in agony or quietly groan inwardly?

God’s terse command to Abraham must have been one of those moments. How can Abraham have been so sure? Did he talk to anyone about it?

On a scale of 1-10 - 10 being what Abraham was asked to do - I was once asked a similar question, but in my case I was probably nudging in at number 1.

On the 1st January 1975, I made a New Year’s resolution to become a Christian. A year on from that date my wife asked me to make a stark choice. She had found she could not accept me as a Christian. The choice she gave me was between God and her. If I chose God she would begin divorce proceedings. I couldn’t deny the truth I had found in the Christian faith. So eighteen months on from making that decision on the 1st January, I had been squeezed out of my job, was divorced and was living in a small bedsit. 

What would have happened had Abraham not heeded the command of God? What would have happened if I had decided to back down and denied the Christian faith? 

It has been reported that on average, somewhere in the world a Christian dies every ten minutes rather than deny their faith. Following God has never been an easy option.

The decisions you have to make may not have as far reaching consequences as Abraham’s, but they are nonetheless very important.

The question is whether we are willing to live out a lie or stand for the truth, no matter where that leads us.

Genesis 22 v 3-5
Abraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey. He took Isaac and two servants with him. After he cut the wood for the sacrifice, they went to the place God had told them to go. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey. My son and I will go over there and worship, and then we will come back to you.”

Notes
In countless films, from The Lone Ranger through to The Matrix, from Harry Potter through to A Fistful of Dollars, “a man has to do what a man has to do”. And in these gender equal days we could also say the same for women. The hero or heroine prepares for the final showdown, quietly getting “tooled up”.

Abraham has a task in hand, to go and offer a sacrifice to God. Only this time it is his own son he is being asked to sacrifice. (Genesis 22 v 1-2) 

Throughout the ages there have been many brave men and woman who have stood against what seemed impossible odds, or have done incredible deeds.

In living memory are Mother Theresa and her Sisters of Mercy. On one occasion, an American journalist was visiting and watching while a Sister tenderly washed and dressed an emaciated woman who would die within 24 hours. The journalist said she could not do that for a million dollars a week, to which the Sister gently replied, “Nor could I.”

What is God asking of you? Have you the quiet determined resolve to do what needs to be done? It may be something of the magnitude of Abraham, or Mother Theresa, or something much simpler but nonetheless important. It may be that you need to say you’re sorry to someone for something you have said or done. Perhaps you should be giving some of your time, talents and energy to a particular campaign, relief of world poverty, or the environment, to name just a few examples.

May God grant us that quiet resolve to know that we are following the path God asks us to follow, to enable His Kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Genesis 22 v 6-10
Abraham took the wood for the sacrifice and gave it to his son to carry, but he himself took the knife and the fire. So he and his son went on together.
Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!”
Abraham answered, “Yes, my son.”
Isaac said, “We have the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb we will burn as a sacrifice?”
Abraham answered, “God will give us the lamb for the sacrifice, my son.”
So Abraham and his son went on together and came to the place God had told him about. Abraham built an altar there. He laid the wood on it and then tied up his son Isaac and laid him on the wood on the altar. Then Abraham took his knife and was about to kill his son.

Notes
An old black and white film has a scene in which a father is trying to teach his young son a lesson in trust. He tells the lad to climb up on a step-ladder in a library. Then the father asks the young boy to trust him, close his eyes and jump off, assuring the boy that Dad will catch him. The boy climbs up, closes his eyes and jumps off, but Dad doesn’t catch him. Mum comes as she hears the boy cry. The father simply explains he was teaching a lesson in trust, and not even his father is to be trusted.

We don’t know how old Isaac was in the story, but he was old enough to carry wood and hold a conversation with his father. He wanted to know where the lamb was for the sacrifice, which is a fair question. But no lamb appeared, and Isaac was tied up and laid out on the wood. Did Isaac simply accept what his father was doing? Did he simply lie down? Like many children before and since, Isaac trusted his father and it looked very much like his trust had been misplaced. How sad when trust between parents and children breaks down. 

We are asked to put our trust in people, and they may sometimes let us down - even our own parents, family or friends. But a good question to ask is, “Where does this person I am trusting put their own trust?”

Abraham had faith in God, Isaac trusted his father, and both were severely tested, just as our trust and faith will come under severe testing. But if we do not trust, we will become stilted and unable to grow, develop or do anything.

Where do you place your trust and faith?

Genesis 22 v 11-13
But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham! Abraham!”
Abraham answered, “Yes.”
The angel said, “Don’t kill your son or hurt him in any way. Now I can see that you trust God and that you have not kept your son, your only son, from me.”
Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in a bush by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and killed it. He offered it as a whole burnt offering to God, and his son was saved. 

Notes
In Star Trek, there is always someone who can give the precise nature of their situation, be it a Vulcan like Spock in the original series, Data in the Next Generation, or Seven of Nine in Voyager. “One minute and three-point nine seconds to impact, ” they announce in a precise manner. The Captain of the Enterprise steadies their nerve as they wait for the critical moment to take evasive action. You know that it is going to be all right, but the tension is very exciting.

Abraham was about to make the ultimate sacrifice of his only son, following God’s command. Isaac was tied up and laid on the altar, the knife was raised, the glint of the sun caught the blue-silver blade, Abraham closed his eyes and steadied his nerve – then a voice came from heaven: “Don’t kill your son or hurt him in any way.” 

Rescued at the very last milli-second. And there, caught in the bushes, was a substitute.

As Christians, we look back to this story and see it through the cross on which Jesus was crucified. 

We see God who gave up his only Son as a sacrifice for us so that we can be rescued from danger - the danger of not knowing God, and of living out our lives without ever discovering God’s plans and purposes for us.

You may be at a point in your life where you are about to make a momentous decision. The clock is ticking away, and you cannot ignore it any longer. You may be in some sort of danger and need to take evasive action. If you are, then look to God and place your trust in the One whom always offers a way through whatever we come up against.

Genesis 22 v 14-16
So Abraham named that place The LORD Provides. Even today people say, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”
The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, “The LORD says, ‘Because you did not keep back your son, your only son, from me, I make you this promise by my own name: …’”

Notes
Covenants, a testament, a bond, a tryst – all are words to do with making an arrangement or agreement, or an appointment to meet.

We can never bargain with God, but throughout history God has always sought to work by agreement and offers free will to human kind. We can chose to go our own way or to seek after God’s way.

And if we follow God’s way we know that God will provide, though not necessarily in a way we always understand. Sometimes the path God calls us to follow is a hard and difficult one. But God is faithful and will always provide us with the things we need.

Someone once said that “we are rich either because of the amount of our possessions or by the fewness of our wants.”

Let me take a big problem and give one simple answer: every eight seconds a child dies of hunger somewhere in the world. Yet God has provided us with the capability of producing enough food to eradicate hunger from our planet. It is because we have chosen not to and hedge the problem around with all sorts of complications that children quietly starve to death in their thousands every day.

It has also been said that if we are not part of the answer we are part of the problem. We have a God who supplies our every need – the answer is for us to work for that to become a reality; the problem is that we so often refuse or neglect to do that.

Genesis 22 v 17-19
“’I will surely bless you and give you many descendants. They will be as many as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore, and they will capture the cities of their enemies. Through your descendants all the nations on the earth will be blessed, because you obeyed me.’”
Then Abraham returned to his servants. They all travelled back to Beersheba and Abraham stayed there.

Notes
The number of stars in our galaxy alone runs into trillions. As for the sands on the seashore...

It is a well-documented fact that where there have been difficulties in families, they will often be repeated in the next generation and continue in a kind of repeated spiral. This isn’t so hard to understand if you consider the background that some people may experience as they grow and develop through their childhood.

How can we break that cycle? How can we restore broken families so that they do not pass on the disease they have been infected with to the next generation?

One way is for a family member to embrace the claims of the Christian faith and seek healing and wholeness, not only for themselves but also for any future generations.

A reformed alcoholic who had become a Christian was once asked if he believed in miracles. His reply was, “Come to my home and I will show you where Jesus has turned beer into tables and furniture and bread and food for my family.”

There is, of course, no guarantee that any members of the next generation will want to embrace the Christian faith for themselves. We each must make that decision for ourselves. But that should not stop us from wanting to pass on to the next generation the greatest gift and inheritance we can possibly offer them: God’s blessing.

What are you planning to leave to the next generation?

Genesis 22 v 20-24
After these things happened, someone told Abraham: “Your brother Nahor and his wife Milcah have children now. The first son is Uz, and the second is Buz. The third son is Kemuel (the father of Aram). Then there are Kesed, Hazo, Pildash, Jidlaph and Bethuel.” Bethuel became the father of Rebekah. Milcah was the mother of these eight sons, and Nahor, Abraham’s brother, was the father. Also Nahor had four other sons by his slave woman, Reumah. Their names were Tebah, Gaham, Tahash and Maacah.

Notes
Anyone who has tried to read the Bible from cover to cover has probably struggled over that bit where there is so much “begetting”. On numerous occasions in the Bible we could be forgiven for thinking we are watching the screen credits at the end of a movie.

And in some ways that is exactly what we are doing.

Sometimes we are told a great deal about these people, like Abraham. Others we know very little about apart from their name and whom they are related to.

Although we may have a struggle getting our tongues around the complicated names of some of these characters, each and every name represents a person.

In the cult TV series The Prisoner, Patrick MacGoohan is always refusing to accept he is merely a number: “I am a person, not a number.” Giving someone a name personifies and brings home the reality of that person as someone made in the image of God.

In the haunting film Schindler’s List, we have one little girl picked out by her red coat who symbolises the gross unspeakable inhumanity being inflicted upon God’s ancient people. 

Someone once said the death of a person is a tragedy but the death of thousands merely a statistic.

A few years ago I went to Normandy and visited the war graves: row upon row of neat white headstones, or more somber black ones for the German soldiers; millions killed in two of the world’s bloodiest conflicts, the wars of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945. 

As I looked, I pondered on each name being someone who was loved and cared for, a brother, husband, son. Many of course are simply inscribed: “known unto God”.

And that is perhaps the best epitaph we could ever wish for: our name known unto God.


word-on-the-web uses the Scripture text taken from the Youth Bible, New Century Version (Anglicised Edition) copyright 1993 by Word Publishing Milton Keynes