Reading 1 - Gen 22
"Some time later God tested Abraham" (Gen 22:1).
"Tested" is "tempted" in AV, and "try" in RV and Heb 11:8,17. See Jam 1:12,13; 1Pe 1:6,7. God must have considered Abraham very righteous to put such a severe test on him.
"When a man contemplates buying a car he takes it out on the road to see how it behaves under normal conditions. He does not try driving it across a rough mountain side, nor does he deliberately crash it into a stone wall. By contrast, when an engineer wishes to know the quality of some metal, he subjects samples of it to various extreme tests, twisting or loading them to the point of destruction. It was the first kind of 'temptation' ['testing': NIV] which God now brought to bear on Abraham. But 'Lead us not into temptation' [Mat 6:13] means the second kind of experience: 'Lord, do not bring us into such temptations as may prove too much for us.' And James's emphatic 'neither tempteth he any man' [Jam 1:13] clearly means: 'God never tempts any man with the intention of working his downfall.' 'He will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape (as for Israel at the Red Sea), that ye may be able to bear it' [1Co 10:13]" (HAW, Abraham 95).
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" 'Do not lay a hand on the boy,' he said. 'Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son' " (v 12).
"He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all -- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" (Rom 8:32). We see here that Abraham, by his willingness to devote his well-beloved son in a supreme act of love, actually typified God Himself!
"Now I know that you fear God": The doubt expressed here may be in remembrance of the incident in Gen 20 where Abraham for the second time said that Sarah was his sister, because he was afraid of what would happen to him. Or the angel might have meant simply, 'You (Abraham) passed the test! I wasn't sure whether or not you would, but you did!' A number of verses indicate that even the angels had incomplete knowledge of future events (examples: Mar 13:32; 1Pe 1:12; etc).
"Because you have not withheld from me your son": "Me" = God, although it is an angel who is speaking (vv 11,15). Cp Gen 32:24-30.
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"Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son" (v 13).
The ram entangled (Aramaic "sabachtani") in the thicket (Hebrew "sebach") may be the basis for the words of Jesus when citing Psa 22:1: "My God... why have You forsaken (azavtani) -- or entangled (sabachtani) me?" In quoting Psa 22, Jesus seems to have switched from the Hebrew azavtani (which means "forsaken me") to the Aramaic sabachtani (which may mean "entangled me": the same word occurs in Gen 22:13 for the "thicket" ("sebach") in which the sacrificial ram was found). So perhaps this should be read: 'My God, my God, thou hast [an assertion, not a question!] ensnared and provided ME as the sacrificial victim!'
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"So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, 'On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided' " (v 14).
THE LORD WILL PROVIDE: In AV, this is "Yahweh-jireh". That is, "God will provide a sacrifice -- ie Jesus". Or, "in the mountain Yahweh will be seen", as a Redeemer, in Christ, the perfect sacrifice -- God manifest in the flesh (2Co 5:19-21; Joh 1:14; Heb 8:3; Gal 4:4) for the redemption of mankind.
"Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of SEEING my day; he saw it and was glad" (Joh 8:56). Cp also Jam 2:22: "You SEE that his faith and his actions were working together, and his faith was made complete by what he did."
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"And thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies" (v 17).
In the East, even great cities had only one large gate; to possess this gate was to possess full power over the city. Christ was dead, now lives, and has power -- the "keys" -- of hell (the grave) and death (Rev 1:18; cp Rev 20:6; 1Co 15:26,55,56).
In Bible times cities were surrounded by walls with, of course, a gate to enter. Whoever conquered a city would have control over the gate and would therefore have the authority to let in or keep out whomever he wanted. Jesus, the seed of Abraham (Gal 3:16), through his death and resurrection gained the authority to possess the gate of his enemies -- hell (the grave) and death (Rev 1:18). Therefore he alone can say who will stay in the grave for eternity or who will come forth to eternal life (Joh 5:22, 28,29; Act 17:31). Also, in the process of establishing the kingdom, Jesus will rule in the midst of his enemies (Psa 110:2). The seat of judgment also was in the city gate (Gen 19:1,9; Rth 4:1; etc).
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What follows is an extended commentary by the Christian (non-Christadelphian) writer, AW Tozer, on the spiritual meaning of Abraham's offering of his son Isaac. It is reproduced here because, in my opinion, he has some powerful points to make, and he makes them very eloquently....
As is frequently true, this NT principle of spiritual life [Mat 16:24,25] finds its best illustration in the OT. In the story of Abraham and Isaac [Gen 22] we have a dramatic picture of the surrendered life as well as an excellent commentary on the first Beatitude [Mat 5:3].
Abraham was old when Isaac was born, old enough indeed to have been his grandfather, and the child became at once the delight and idol of his heart. From that moment when he first stooped to take the tiny form awkwardly in his arms he was an eager love slave of his son. God went out of His way to comment on the strength of this affection. And it is not hard to understand. The baby represented everything sacred to his father's heart: the promises of God, the covenants, the hopes of the years and the long messianic dream. As he watched him grow from babyhood to young manhood the heart of the old man was knit closer and closer with the life of his son, till at last the relationship bordered upon the perilous. It was then that God stepped in to save both father and son from the consequences of an uncleansed love.
'Take now thy son,' said God to Abraham, 'thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt-offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of' (Gen 22:2). The sacred writer spares us a close-up of the agony that night on the slopes near Beersheba when the aged man had it out with his God, but respectful imagination may view in awe the bent form and convulsive wrestling alone under the stars. Possibly not again until a Greater than Abraham wrestled in the Garden of Gethsemane did such mortal pain visit a human soul. If only the man himself might have been allowed to die. That would have been easier a thousand times, for he was old now, and to die would have been no great ordeal for one who had walked so long with God. Besides, it would have been a last sweet pleasure to let his dimming vision rest upon the figure of his stalwart son who would live to carry on the Abrahamic line and fulfill in himself the promises of God made long before in Ur of the Chaldees.
How should he slay the lad! Even if he could get the consent of his wounded and protesting heart, how could he reconcile the act with the promise, 'In Isaac shall thy seed be called'? This was Abraham's trial by fire, and he did not fail in the crucible. While the stars still shone like sharp white points above the tent where the sleeping Isaac lay, and long before the gray dawn had begun to lighten the east, the old saint had made up his mind. He would offer his son as God had directed him to do, and then trust God to raise him from the dead [Heb 11:19]. This, says the writer to the Hebrews, was the solution his aching heart found sometime in the dark night, and he rose 'early in the morning' to carry out the plan. It is beautiful to see that, while he erred as to God's method, he had correctly sensed the secret of His great heart. And the solution accords well with the NT Scripture, 'Whosoever will lose... for my sake shall find...'
God let the suffering old man go through with it up to the point where He knew there would be no retreat, and then forbade him to lay a hand upon the boy. To the wondering patriarch He now says in effect, 'It's all right, Abraham. I never intended that you should actually slay the lad. I only wanted to remove him from the temple of your heart that I might reign unchallenged there. I wanted to correct the perversion that existed in your love. Now you may have the boy, sound and well. Take him and go back to your tent. Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing that thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me' [cp Rom 8:32].
Then heaven opened and a voice was heard saying to him, 'By myself I have sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice.'
The old man of God lifted his head to respond to the Voice, and stood there on the mount strong and pure and grand, a man marked out by the Lord for special treatment, a friend and favorite of the Most High. Now he was a man wholly surrendered, a man utterly obedient, a man who possessed nothing. He had concentrated his all in the person of his dear son, and God had taken it from him. God could have begun out on the margin of Abraham's life and worked inward to the center; He chose rather to cut quickly to the heart and have it over in one sharp act of separation. In dealing thus He practiced an economy of means and time. It hurt cruelly, but it was effective.
I have said that Abraham possessed nothing. Yet was not this poor man rich? Everything he had owned before was still his to enjoy: sheep, camels, herds, and goods of every sort. He had also his wife and his friends, and best of all he had his son Isaac safe by his side. He had everything, but he POSSESSED nothing. There is the spiritual secret. There is the sweet theology of the heart which can be learned only in the school of renunciation. The books on systematic theology overlook this, but the wise will understand.
After that bitter and blessed experience I think the words 'my and 'mine' never had again the same meaning for Abraham. The sense of possession which they connote was gone from his heart. Things had been cast out forever. They had now become external to the man. His inner heart was free from them. The world said, 'Abraham is rich,' but the aged patriarch only smiled. He could not explain it to them, but he knew that he owned nothing, that his real treasures were inward and eternal...
The Christian who is alive enough to know himself even slightly will recognize the symptoms of this possession malady, and will grieve to find them in his own heart. If the longing after God is strong enough within him he will want to do something about the matter. Now, what should he do?
First of all he should put away all defense and make no attempt to excuse himself either in his own eyes or before the Lord. Whoever defends himself will have himself for his defense, and he will have no other; but let him come defenseless before the Lord and he will have for his defender no less than God Himself. Let the inquiring Christian trample under foot every slippery trick of his deceitful heart and insist upon frank and open relations with the Lord.
Then he should remember that this is holy business. No careless or casual dealings will suffice. Let him come to God in full determination to be heard. Let him insist that God accept his all, that He take things out of his heart and Himself reign there in power. It may be he will need to become specific, to name things and people by their names one by one. If he will become drastic enough he can shorten the time of his travail from years to minutes and enter the good land long before his slower brethren who coddle their feelings and insist upon caution in their dealings with God.
Let us never forget that such a truth as this cannot be learned by rote as one would learn the facts of physical science. They must be experienced before we can really know them. We must in our hearts live through Abraham's harsh and bitter experiences if we would know the blessedness which follows them. The ancient curse will not go out painlessly; the tough old miser within us will not lie down and die obedient to our command. He must be torn out of our heart like a plant from the soil; he must be extracted in agony and blood like a tooth from the jaw. He must be expelled from our soul by violence as Christ expelled the money changers from the temple. And we shall need to steel ourselves against his piteous begging, and to recognize it as springing out of self-pity, one of the most reprehensible sins of the human heart.
If we would indeed know God in growing intimacy we must go this way of renunciation. And if we are set upon the pursuit of God He will sooner or later bring us to this test. Abraham's testing was, at the time, not known to him as such, yet if he had taken some course other than the one he did, the whole history of the Old Testament would have been different. God would have found His man, no doubt, but the loss to Abraham would have been tragic beyond the telling. So we will be brought one by one to the testing place, and we may never know when we are there. At that testing place there will be no dozen possible choices for us; just one and an alternative, but our whole future will be conditioned by the choice we make. (AWT)
Reading 2 - Psa 27:5
"For in the day of trouble he will keep me safe in his dwelling; he will hide me in the shelter of his tabernacle and set me high upon a rock" (Psa 27:5).
And when he faced his greatest trouble, and the waves of death overflowed and engulfed him, then his prayer was truly answered. The Son of God was hidden in the special "shelter" hewn out of a rock (Mar 16:4,6), wherein man had never been laid (Joh 19:41). That special resting place became the secret "tabernacle" of God Himself, where His Son reclined upon a bed of rock (Song 2:14). And there he rested "until the day break, and the shadows flee away" (Song 2:17). "There is a place by me," God told Moses, where "I will put thee in a cleft of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand" (Exo 33:21,22). Now a greater than Moses rested in the crevice of a rock, until the glory of his Father would pass before him.
Reading 3 - Mat 14:23,24,29
"After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it... Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus" (Mat 14:23,24,29).
"Life can present a picture of a dark and turbulent sea with Jesus afar off. It is the slow triumph of faith to see him on the heights above in communion and intercession with his Father. Sometimes he comes to us in the midst of the storms and darkness, in unfamiliar form which we must learn to recognize. We are quick to appreciate, if we are slow to learn, that when we walk over the waters to meet him, we must not be dismayed by the darkness, the wind or the waves; we must believe that his power is greater far; that he can save even unto the uttermost: that faith can only be sustained by keeping our eyes fixed lovingly and obediently upon him" (Melva Purkis, Life of Jesus 193).
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