As you study Genesis 22 on your own, please remember that this is just one example of the gospel being presented in the Old Testament. This was not only a test for Abraham and Isaac but was also God giving the gospel to them. If you are a new Christian, please don't neglect the Old Testament. Study it as much as you do the New Testament and never make the mistake of thinking that the Old Testament has little to say about Jesus or the gospel. In fact, the Old Testament if full of the gospel message and is primarily about Jesus! Please also remember that one can have only a very shallow understanding of the New Testament, if one does not understand the Old Testament. Please contact us, if we can be of any assistance to you! (Do so by leaving comments, which then come to us by email - we will NOT post them or make them public, of course).
Abraham’s Final Test/God Presents The Gospel
Genesis 22
As we have progressed through the book of Genesis we have seen many themes.
As touching God, we have seen the incredible long suffering of God, His great love, His great kindnesses, His great faithfulness and many other wonderful things about Him.
As touching man, we have seen our incredible wickedness, our total depravity, our inability to repent (stop sinning), our absolute refusal to obey God or listen to His counsel and many other awful things about mankind.
We have seen the beginnings of God’s plan to provide a way to be saved, after the fall of Adam and Eve doomed us all to eternal separation from Him.
We have seen that His plan was to set aside a chosen people and that eventually, Jesus would be born from the lineage of those chosen people (Jews/Hebrews/Israelites).
We have seen that God chose Abraham to be the Father of the chosen people and thus, the Messiah (Jesus).
Last week as we studied the birth of Isaac, I pointed out that some Bible scholars believe that God would not allow Abraham and Sarah to have His blessing (the child of promise – Isaac) until the sin in their lives had been addressed.
Although we didn’t spend a lot of time talking about it, God also tested Abraham 4 times. They were:
Leaving the land of his relatives (obeying God, not knowing where he was going).
Having to separate from his Nephew Lot.
Losing his son Ishmael (Isaac was the chosen line).
Being obedient to the point of having to give up his son Isaac…the subject of today’s message, found in chapter 22.
First, we should define what is meant by “test” here. The Bible does not seem to mean the kind of test in which God doesn’t know the outcome (impossible, because God is omniscient, although His immutability could perhaps come into play).
Rather, it seems what God is doing is refining and proving Abraham. Perhaps a good way to understand more about it, is the way in which gold is “tested”. In refining gold, the smelter (?) will often refine the gold by melting it many times, in order to rid it of impurities…in other words, he “tests” it. He isn’t trying to find anything out about the gold; he’s simply refining it and proving its purity.
Today, we are going to see Abraham’s final test by God. God will not be testing Abraham to see how he will react but as part of His refining of Abraham. We should also remember that Isaac, too, had a test (trust and obedience).
Not only is chapter 22 the account of Abraham’s final test but it is also a presentation of the gospel!
Even having read the material many times, having had Sunday School lessons, Bible stories and sermons about this account, many folks don’t notice this.
Many also don’t notice Isaac’s age when this occurred. Bible stories and Sunday School lessons often have pictures of Isaac portrayed as a young boy but we can tell by comparing Abraham’s ages listed in other chapters, that Isaac is at least 30, perhaps as old as 33.
As the chapter opens, we see God ordering Abraham to take Isaac to the land of Moriah and to offer him there as a burnt offering.
It is very, VERY important that we pause here to point out that God would never order you or I to kill anyone as a sacrifice. God had no intention of having Abraham actually carry out the act of killing and sacrificing Isaac. God knew what the outcome would be.
Abraham simply obeyed God.
The Bible does not tell us what was going through Abraham’s mind but it must have crushed him to have to lose his beloved son Isaac, the child of promise. After having been through all the things he had to suffer, to be blessed with such an important son – only to have to see his life given up!
Note in verse 4, that it took 3 days for Abraham, Isaac and their servants to reach Moriah. That means that Abraham had to think about all this for 3 days! That was plenty of time for Abraham to try to come up with a way to save Isaac’s life or to simply choose not to obey God.
We must note that God had matured Abraham’s faith, obedience and belief to the point that Abraham was willing to obey Him.
Perhaps it is better if I simply summarize Abraham’s actions briefly, then spend the remainder of our time together to point out how all this presented the gospel. We need not go into the genealogies given in the final verses of this chapter.
We see from the rest of the chapter that Abraham, knife in hand, was about to kill Isaac; God told him not to do it and provided a ram for the sacrifice.
In verse 12, we see that Abraham had been willing to not even hold back his beloved son. He loved God so much that he would have obeyed by killing his own son and offering him up as a sacrifice, in order to please God!
This shows us how much spiritual maturity that God had given to Abraham over the years. There was no righteousness in Abraham that was of his own doing. Only God could grant him that kind of righteousness. It is the same with Christians. Only God can give us righteousness.
At this point, I’d like to talk about how God presented the gospel here. He did this by using types and ways of pointing forward to Christ.
Abraham is a type of God the Father here, in not holding back even his beloved son and being willing to offer him up as a sacrifice.
God the Father did not hold back His only son Jesus but allowed Him to be killed and offered up as a sacrifice for the sins of the world.
Isaac is a type of Christ here, in that:
a) He was the only and beloved son (as Ishmael was not the child of promise and was not born of Sarah).
b) He was innocent and it would have not been just, had he been killed.
c) He nonetheless obeyed his Father, and was willing to be sacrificed.
· Jesus is the only and beloved son of God the Father.
· Jesus was totally innocent and it was not just that he was crucified.
· He nonetheless obeyed His Father and was actually killed and sacrificed, that anyone who would come to Him could be saved.
Some things that also pointed forward:
Isaac had to carry the wood to the place where he would have been killed and sacrificed.
· Jesus had to carry his cross to the place where He was actually killed and sacrificed.
The ram that God provided was a substitutionary sacrifice (substituted for Isaac).
· Jesus was a substitutionary sacrifice for all sinners who would come to Him.
Abraham got his son back on the third day. This was a type of the resurrection.
· Jesus was resurrected on the third day.
Isaac was approximately the same age as Jesus, when He was crucified.
The place where Isaac was to be sacrificed was near the place where Jesus was crucified. Many Bible scholars believe it to have been in the same place.
So what have we learned?
We learned that God builds and matures Christians into what He wants them to be.
· Abraham and Sarah were not given their blessing (Isaac) until the sin in their lives had been dealt with.
· God put Abraham through 4 tests as He matured Abraham spiritually.
We learned that only God can cause spiritual growth.
Abraham could never have brought himself into spiritual maturity. He would never have been able to make himself willing to sacrifice his own son!
This is proof that we cannot help ourselves spiritually. Only God can help us.
We learned that God was preparing mankind for the eventual coming of the Messiah (Jesus). He presented the gospel to Abraham and the world in the example of Abraham being called upon to offer his only son for sacrifice.
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