Who is on Your Altar?

Genesis 22:9-19

I will never forget a young mother telling her two children in the back seat of the car, “That obedience is doing what you are told the first time you are told, any action other than that is not obedience.”  If we use that definition for obedience, then Abraham is being one hundred percent obedient to what God has told him to do with Isaac.  This question came to my mind, does obedience to God bring instance happiness, or can it be very painful at the point of you doing what you are told the first time you are told?

It is my opinion that Abraham is not having that much fun in verse 9, 10, “When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.  Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.”  If you call that fun your one sick person, in fact it had to be one of the hardest things God has ever ask a man to do.  I’ve always believed that a person over you or in a leadership position should not ask or expect anything more than he/she is willing to do or has done themselves.  Before the foundation of the world, God had already made the choice to let His Son, His only Son be our redeemer by becoming a man and going to a cross.  The Bible calls that “taking on flesh”, and Jesus came for only one reason to take your place, He who was without sin and became sin for you.  This is the account of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, “Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go over there and pray.”  And taking with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, he began to be sorrowful and troubled.  Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.  And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.”

The Bible does not give us the emotion of Isaac as he is being offered up by Abraham as an offering to God, but this we know, he was somewhere in his late teens and he made the choice to let Abraham tie him up and place him on the altar.  Many have a very wrong picture of Abraham taking a very small child and that is just not true, Isaac could have easily said no.  But we do have the account of Jesus, and unlike Isaac, he had been sent by His Father for this reason, before He created man, Jesus knew that he would take on human form and pay our price and still his emotions at the garden of Gethsemane were saying, is there any other way.

It is also important for each of us to remember God is all knowing, this test was not so God could find out what Abraham would do, but it was for Abraham to see what he would do.  Was his relationship with God the Father more important than his love for Isaac?  That is always the question, do I love God more than my husband/wife, do I love God more than my children, do I love God more than I love myself, it is easy to say yes, but is that the truth?  Abraham passed the test, he came to know Jehovah-jireh (the Lord will provide).

Jesus said in so many words, this is a test, in the book of Matthew 10:37-39, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.  And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.  Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice