ZT:Faith on Trial(Gen22:1–12) |
送交者: 从上而生 2019年09月20日17:11:11 于 [彩虹之约] 发送悄悄话 |
Faith on Trial Genesis 22:1–12 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. Then God said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.” Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together. When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. “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.” Everybody likes to tell and hear stories. So, much of the world’s literature consists of stories: love stories, war stories, stories of adventure. Most of these are very much alike, though they are told about different people and are set in different places and circumstances: boy meets girl, a problem arises, boy loses girl, the problem is overcome, boy gets girl again, they live happily ever after. Only occasionally does a story come along that is so unique that it captures the imagination of people, not merely in one age, but in all ages. The historical record of Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac is one of these stories. As F. B. Meyer wrote, “So long as men live in the world, they will turn to this story with unwaning interest. There is only one scene in history by which it is surpassed: that where the Great Father gave his Isaac to a death from which there was no deliverance.” It is our privilege to study this great passage, written thousands of years ago. But before we do, we need to dispose of a base charge that has been brought against God because of it. For thousands of years, people viewed this passage with awesome respect and wonder. But in the nineteenth century, the charge was made that since the passage tells how God told Abraham to offer up his son Isaac, and since human sacrifice is a detestable thing, Abraham saw God as essentially a pagan deity who demanded blood-sacrifices. Or, to put it even more strongly, the God Abraham worshiped was a sacrifice-demanding God. One modern novelist has a character in one of his stories say, “I don’t believe in sacrifice. If the story of Abraham and Isaac is true, Abraham was insane, not religious.” Are these charges well founded? Is this the way we should evaluate the last great drama of Abraham’s life? When we hear people talk like this, we can understand the darkness of minds alienated from God. For the truth of the matter is that Abraham’s near sacrifice of his son Isaac is pageant and prophecy of the actual sacrifice by God of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, on Calvary. It shows the love, not the cruelty, of God. Indeed, Genesis 22 is the first passage since Genesis 3:15 in which we are pointed to the love and provision of God for guilty sinners through Christ’s crucifixion. Faith in Crisis It is necessary to review briefly the background of this incident in Abraham’s life. From the beginning, when God had called Abraham out of Ur of the Chaldees, God had promised that he would make him into a great nation. This promise was repeated and enlarged many times during the years of Abraham’s pilgrimage. But in all these years—from Abraham’s early seventies to when he was ninety-nine years old—Abraham had only one son (Ishmael), and the small company of his immediate family seemed to shrink, if anything. Terah died. Lot abandoned him to live near Sodom. When Abraham was ninety-nine, God appeared to him again and changed his name from Abram (“father of many”) to Abraham (“father of a great multitude”). Though it seems foolish from a human point of view for Abraham to have believed God—he was now long past the age at which he could still engender children, and Sarah was past the age of conceiving and bearing them—Abraham did believe God and did receive his son. His name was Isaac, and he was born when Abraham was one hundred years old. God specifically confirmed this son as the son of his promise: “I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him” (Gen. 17:19). Abraham loved Isaac and was extremely proud of him, but even more important, all of Abraham’s spiritual hopes were centered in him. “Isaac was Abraham’s link with Christ.… he knew that his own hope of heaven was centered in God’s promise of the redeemer that was to come out of the line of Isaac.” To judge from the time references at the end of Genesis 21 and the beginning of Genesis 22, Abraham must have rested quietly in this hope for many years. Suddenly this peaceful world was shattered. God put Abraham to a great test, probably the greatest test any of God’s servants have ever endured. God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about” (Gen. 22:2). At first glance it would seem that God was mocking Abraham. “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love” (italics mine). Why did God have to put it that way? It was perfectly evident whom he meant. The single word “Isaac” was enough. Yet God emphasizes that this is Abraham’s son, indeed, his only son. (Although Abraham had also engendered Ishmael—of Hagar, Sarah’s slave—Hagar and Ishmael had since been sent away.) It is Isaac, “whom you love.” These words seem cruel, but they should have reassured Abraham that God was fully aware of what he was asking him to do. God was asking him to sacrifice Isaac. Not Eliezer, who was no son. Not Ishmael, a true son but not the son of God’s promise. Not even an Isaac about whom Abraham might conceivably have been indifferent. It was “your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love.” This was the one whom God was asking the aged patriarch to sacrifice. Abraham was to know this and also that God was fully aware of the struggle that obedience to the command would pose. Had Isaac grown perhaps too dear to Abraham? Had he begun to take God’s place in the patriarch’s thinking? We cannot be sure of this, but if it was the case, this should remind us of many things that become too precious for us. The Chinese evangelist Watchman Nee wrote that Isaac “represents many gifts of God’s grace. Before God gives them our hands are empty. Afterwards they are full. Sometimes God reaches out his hand to take ours in fellowship. Then we need an empty hand to put into his. But when we have received his gifts and are nursing them to ourselves, our hands are full, and when God puts out his hand we have no empty hand for him.” When that happens, we need to let go of the gift and take hold of God himself. Nee adds, “Isaac can be done without, but God is eternal.” Is God a Liar? As I say, Isaac may have begun to take God’s place in Abraham’s thinking. But although we cannot be certain that the test of Abraham was conducted at least in part on this more human level, we can know for sure that it was conducted on a spiritual level that involved Abraham’s perception of who God was and of whether or not he would continue to trust him as the only faithful and truthful God. The problem was not merely that Abraham loved Isaac. That was true enough. What was even more important was that God had promised that all future blessings, including the blessings of salvation, were to come through Isaac. God had told Abraham that Isaac was to live, marry, and have a family, and that from that family there would come one who would be the deliverer. Now God says that Isaac is to be sacrificed, and for the first time in all Abraham’s experience with God he is confronted by a conflict between God’s command and God’s promise. Earlier, Abraham had been tested as to whether he would believe that God could do the seemingly impossible task of giving Abraham and Sarah a son. That was a test, but it was not as hard as this one. This test involved a conflict apparently within the words of God himself. God had promised posterity through Isaac. But God had now also commanded Abraham to kill him. How could this problem be resolved? There were only two ways. Abraham could have concluded that God was erratic, wavering from one plan to another because he did not know his own mind. This had not been Abraham’s experience of God. The long wait for the son had taught him better than that. Or Abraham could have concluded that, although he—being finite and sinful—was unable to see the resolution of the difficulty, God could nevertheless be trusted to have a resolution, which he himself would certainly disclose in due time. This was the harder of the two solutions to accept, but Abraham’s experience of God led in this direction. Abraham acted in a manner consistent with his knowledge of God. That is, he trusted him, concluding that whatever God’s purposes may or may not have been in this situation, God had at least shown that he could not be his enemy. God was his friend. When the command to sacrifice Isaac was first given, Abraham did not understand how, if the command were carried out, the promise could be fulfilled. But that was all right. Abraham left the difficulty with God, which is the essence of true faith. What is faith? Faith is believing God and acting upon it. This is what Abraham did. God had shown that he could be trusted, so Abraham believed God and acted, even though he could not understand the solution to the difficulty. How promptly he acted! The text tells us, “Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about” (v. 3). Faith in Bloom Abraham was not only exercising faith, however. He was also working with it, pondering the situation, trying to figure out what was happening. I think this is the way to understand some of the details of the account. Some years ago I heard a sermon in which much was made of Abraham’s cutting the wood for the burnt offering. It was pointed out that this was a job Abraham did himself, even though he was well over a hundred years of age. He did not have a servant do it. This was the wood that Abraham was to use to burn his son. The preacher asked how Abraham could do such a thing. How was it possible for this old man calmly to go about the job of cutting wood for the fire on which in a short time his only son’s body would be burned? The preacher suggested that this was well-nigh impossible and marveled at the patriarch’s stern deliberation. I think the explanation is to be found in the working of Abraham’s mind. He was not brooding ghoulishly over the sacrifice, reflecting on the fact that Isaac was soon to be placed upon the very pieces of wood he was cutting. That might well have driven the father mad. I think Abraham was puzzling over the problem. “How can God be true to his promise if I sacrifice Isaac?” he was asking. “What is God going to do to remain a God of honor?” I also think this was what Abraham was doing during the three days it took to reach the region of Moriah. Three days are an eternity when embarked on such a task. What was Abraham thinking about during that “eternity”? I do not think he was imagining the sacrifice itself. I do not think he was asking whether at the crucial moment he would have the strength to go through with his assignment. Abraham was continuing to work on the problem of God’s promise. The reason I think this is that the passage may suggest that he solved it on the way to Moriah. We are told that when Abraham finally saw the place in the distance, he said to his accompanying servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you” (v. 5). “We will come back.” Abraham intended to sacrifice Isaac, as God had commanded him. But by this time he was sure that the outcome would not be the end of Isaac, since he says that after they had worshiped, both he and the lad would return and join the two servants. What had Abraham come to believe? The author of Hebrews tells us: “By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.’ Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death” (Heb. 11:17–19). Abraham had faith to expect a resurrection. I quote from a study of this text by Donald Grey Barnhouse. “Abraham was surpassing Aristotle in the workings of his mind at this point. The fact that we are told that Abraham accounted that God was able to raise Isaac from the dead is the key to the story. Accounting is a mathematical logical procedure. As Abraham and Isaac had walked for three days through country growing more and more desolate, and at the slow, measured pace of the burdened mule, his mind went around and around the matter, and he ultimately came to the calm conclusion that he was going to see a miracle. The method of his thought was as follows. God is not a liar. He cannot be mistaken. He told me, beyond question, that I should have a son, and there he walks before me. God has said that this son would be the one through whom he would fulfill all of his promises. Therefore, the son must live or God would be found false. And yet God commands that this son be put to death. Here, humanly speaking, is contradiction. But there is no contradiction in God. That is the foundation fact. There is power in God; there is wisdom in God; there is majesty and glory in God; but there is no contradiction in God. But what is to be done with God’s command to sacrifice my son? Since there is no contradiction in God, there is only one answer that my mind can fathom. God is going to perform a miracle and raise Isaac from the dead. Doubt may say that this is foolish, that there has never been a resurrection in the history of the world. That doesn’t make any difference. A resurrection is compatible with the nature of God, but a contradiction is not compatible with the nature of God. God is life and the author of life. It would be a small matter for the God who created the universe, including the first man, to bring life back into a dead body. So the one, clear, logical conclusion is that God is going to raise Isaac from the dead.” Faith Rewarded God did provide a resurrection, figuratively speaking (Heb. 11:19). But it was not until the last minute, and not before Abraham had demonstrated his total willingness to offer up his son. Scripture is mercifully silent at this point, though we can imagine what took place: Abraham’s announcement of his mission, the sobs, the kisses, wet with tears, Isaac’s willing submission—for he was old enough and strong enough to have resisted if he had chosen to do so—the building of the altar, the binding of the boy, the raising of the knife. Then …, “Abraham! Abraham!” It was God’s angel. “Here I am,” Abraham replied. The angelic voice continued, “Do not lay a hand on the boy. 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” (vv. 11–12). Here was proof of how much a mere man would do for love of God. But although we must stop at this point and continue in our next chapter, I am sure you have seen how this incident is also a pageant of how much more God would do as an expression of his love for fallen men and women. Abraham was only asked to sacrifice his son; he did not actually have to do it. Even if he had, there was only a physical death involved. But when the time came for God, the heavenly Father, to sacrifice his Son, it was not a mere physical death; it was a spiritual death, one that achieved redemption for sinners. When God’s hand was raised at Calvary, there was no one to call out, “Stay your hand. Do not harm the boy.” When God offered up his sacrifice, the hand that was poised above Christ fell. Jesus died. Through that death, God brought life to all who trust in Christ’s sacrifice. Hallelujah! Boice, J. M. (1998). Genesis: an expositional commentary (pp. 682–688). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books. |
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