Hebrews Lesson 181 December 3, 2009
NKJ Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
Tuesday night (for most of you who weren't here on Tuesday tonight), we're continuing our study in Revelation, in Revelation 17-18. Something just went passed me as significant on that particular day because Revelation 17 and 18, of course, focus on the end time kingdom, the world kingdom that the Antichrist pulls together that is really a one world (a universal) government that pulls together under his leadership. He is also the leader of the ten-nation Revived Roman Empire, but he seeks to control the whole world. We keep seeing trends today that push us more and more into the direction of the kinds of things that we'll see taking place during the Tribulation period. What we're seeing today are not signs that we are necessarily near; but the increasing number of things (we see almost on a monthly basis) certainly gives us pause for consideration. On Tuesday night Great Britain and other nations in Europe under the Lisbon Treaty lost their national sovereignties because of the new EU treaty where they voted on the Lisbon treaty, which creates a president, basically a president of Europe. We continue to see the breakdown of nations and nationalism in this world. So that's just another indicator that people are moving towards that one world globalism that we keep hearing about.
That's going to have tremendous implications. They went to the euro whenever it was, ten or fifteen years ago. All of these things just keep moving in that direction. So it's just kind of interesting to watch God set the stage for the end times.
Okay, we're in Hebrews 11. We're continuing our study here on these examples of Old Testament saints, examples of Old Testament saints who by virtue of their faith in the promise of God provide evidence of the reality of what they believed in, the reality of their faith and the hope which is a future orientation, their hope in the eventual fulfillment of the promise of God.
Now the reason this is here, this lies in the structure of Hebrews between the arguments in chapters 7 through 10 that focus on the sufficient work and the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross so that the Old Testament sacrificial system is null and void and cannot provide that which only Jesus Christ can provide. It ended with a warning to these Jewish background believers in Israel that were on the verge. They were feeling the pressure, the adversity, the persecution, the rejection. So they're on the verge of just giving up on their faith in Jesus as the Messiah and folding back into Judaism.
The purpose for chapter 11 is to go back into the Old Testament and to use of examples from all of these different Old Testament individuals of how they encountered testing. They encountered adversity and persecution and rejection; and they never saw the ultimate fulfillment of God's promise in their lives. Nevertheless their faith was not shaken. They continued to trust God. They continued to grow and they didn't give up. They didn't bail out - that when things got tough in life, they didn't give up. They didn't start and have a pity party. They did at times, but they always came back. And they always focused on the Lord and they grew through it and they grew because of the testing. James says that when we apply doctrine and trust the Lord in the midst of those tests (no matter what they are) that that's when we grow. We hate going through those kinds of growing pains; but that's exactly how the Lord teaches us and matures us and stretches us so that we too can have a life that is a testimony of faith.
In verse 13 we studied:
NKJ Hebrews 11:13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them, embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
That meant that at the time that they died, they were still living according to the standards of what they believed. They didn't bail out. They didn't give up.
They didn't say, "Well OK, I trusted in God for the last twenty or thirty years and He still hasn't given me the land. He hasn't done what He said He would do. I guess He's just not going to do it."
They persevered. They endured. That's the real meaning of perseverance is to continue to hang in there and not grow weary. So this chapter is set here between the challenge at the end of verse 10 and the challenge that will come in chapter 12 especially beginning in verse 3 of chapter 12.
NKJ Hebrews 12:3 For consider Him
That is, Jesus Christ.
who endured
There's our word for perseverance or endurance.
such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.
NKJ Hebrews 12:4 You have not yet resisted to bloodshed, striving against sin.
His point there is you just think it's bad for you; but you haven't really taken a hard look at how all the adversity that these others have gone through and they've gone through much worse. And Jesus Christ went through what was much worse; and He didn't grow weary because the same thing that strengthened Him (the Holy Spirit and the Word God) is what you have available to you. So don't give up. Don't bail out. Don't start blaming God for your problems. It's just a test. It's only a test so keep your focus on the end game, which is what God is preparing us for in the future.
So in verse 13:
NKJ Hebrews 11:13 These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off were assured of them,
They were still confident that God would provide.
embraced them and
They embraced them, that is that they recognized that they were their own and that they made it part of their thinking so that the promise of God even though it was distant it wasn't empirically testable. Even now it has not been fulfilled. They do not have the land, all the land that was promised to them. But embracing has the idea of making it a part of their thinking so that that the promise was more real to them and more determinative in the way they thought and reacted (responded) to the issues of life than anything else that was more apparent to them in their timeframe.
confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.
…statements that Abraham made to the sons of Seth that he was just a sojourner in the land. Later Isaac made the same admission that he was just a traveler in the land. He was just a sojourner. That wasn't their home. They didn't own any real estate there other than the Cave of Machpelah, the burial ground for Abraham and Sarah.
We looked at that last time. As part of that study, I looked at the issue that every believer faces; and that is that a certain duality in our life that on the one hand we are different from everybody around us. We're not part of the cosmic system. We don't think like people around us. We don't respond to things like people around us. We do not perceive or evaluate things around us like the world does. We are not of the world as Jesus said in His prayer to the Father in John 17. Nevertheless we are in the world and throughout the history of Christianity there's always been this tension in believers in how to live in the world without being a part of the world.
One of the key passages I talked about last time in this verse in Philippians 3:20 where Paul said:
NKJ Philippians 3:20 For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,
Now this word that's translated citizenship is a Greek word polituema and the root poli from the word polus for city has to do with your citizenship to a colony. It really has an interesting background. I'm not going to go through all of the details, but it was particularly notable that Paul used this when he wrote to the Philippians because Philippi was a Roman colony. It had been established as a Roman colony after the victory that Marc Anthony and Augustus had over Cassius and Brutus at the two battles of Philippi that were fought during October of 42 BC. Because of their victory, Augustus established this Roman colony at Philippi (Phil-leep-pee, as it's pronounced in Greek) and that it was a colony. He attached his name to that colony. Now what that meant was that someone who was born as a citizen in a Roman colony had all of the citizen rights of someone who was born and who lived in Rome; but they were, as it were, an outpost of Rome.
Now I think that it's important to understand the historical background on this; and it has a predecessor in classical Greek times during the 6th century BC when the Athenians were establishing colonies in Calcas (spelling?). They would send out there citizens to Calcas and they had all of the rights and all the privileges of people who lived back in Athens. That's the idea. We, as believers, are an outpost of heaven. Though we are living in the world; we have all of the rights and privileges of a citizen of the home country. The concept of politeuma citizenship isn't one that emphasizes that we aren't involved in what goes on around us though we're living on the earth. It is an emphasis on the fact that even though we're not living in our homeland (which is heaven), we have all of the rights and privileges of that citizenship. There is nothing that is diminished by virtue of that.
If you look at that comparison, it focused on the fact that they had certain privileges because of the Roman citizenship. Paul did as well. But that did not mean that they ignored what was going on in the countries or in the cities or in the regions where they lived. They were still very much a part of the commerce, the activities, and the other things that went on in that world. But they had something extra about them and that was the privileges of their Roman citizenship
As we as believers live here in the world; we work, we operate, we interact with people. We have responsibilities as citizens under our form of government to be involved, to state our views and our opinions and to vote and all of those things. But yet there is something distinct about us. We have something special and that's all of our privileges that come with heavenly citizenship.
Things were a little different of course in the Old Testament because they don't have all of the same aspects that a Church Age believer has in terms of their position in Christ. But nevertheless they had a destiny that was promised by God that is related to the promise of the land as well as something that they understood that there was a heavenly city. Now this is alluded to here in this passage in verse 16, even though we don't have any more information given about it until we get over into the 12th chapter of Hebrews. There when we get to Hebrews 12:22, there is this statement made that "you have come to Mount Zion into the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." This city that they're looking for is related to the New Jerusalem. It's something that goes even beyond the literal giving of the land that is theirs that belongs to Israel during the Millennium Kingdom. But it goes beyond that to be heavenly city the New Heavens and New Earth and the New Jerusalem. They have a long distance perception here. It is their understanding of those concepts that drove (motivated) them during the adversities that they faced when they were living on earth.
But what's interesting is we don't have a clue that they knew any of this back then. That is one of the fascinating things about studying the Old Testament. You can't understand the New Testament unless you understand the Old Testament. But there are features of Old Testament spiritual life and what they knew that you don't even realize when you read the Old Testament until you get into the New Testament. That doesn't mean they did not know it just because it's not talked about. For example, understanding that the serpent in the garden is Satan. That's not clear if all you have is just Genesis. But when you get to Revelation, you know it's clear; and they understood it. And it's not really clear. People get into debates over as to how much Cain and Abel understood about sacrifices. But when you read Hebrew 11, you know that they must have understood a lot more about the importance of blood sacrificed than what is revealed. And, it's mostly because we don't take enough time to read the details such as what all would have been involved in what God did when He clothed Adam and Eve with the skins of animals. He didn't just kill a couple of animals and skin them and put clothes on them. He had to teach them how to skin, how to prepare the skin, all of these things, which aren't covered in the text. But it had to have been covered in that kind of a context. There was a lot information, obviously, based on these insights that we get in chapter 11. There was a lot of information that was available in the Old Testament to believers that is not necessarily recorded in Scripture. Nevertheless they knew it, and it motivated them.
So when we look at Hebrews 11:13f (like verse 14) we read:
NKJ Hebrews 11:14 For those who say such things
That is, those who confessed or admitted that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth, those who admit such things…
declare plainly that they seek a homeland.
This is their visible witness, their visible testimony of their faith as evidence of things not seen. So they declare plainly. It's obvious by their actions, which reflect their faith that they seek a homeland.
The word there for homeland is the Greek word patria, which (if you wanted to have a literal translation) would be a fatherland or homeland. But the idea is they're looking for their ultimate country of a destiny. They're looking for what will be their true eternal home. That is their focus. That is what they were seeking.
So they are living their lives in light of that eternal promise. As I say over and over again, living today in the light of eternity and the more we come to understand what our future destiny is, the more it should impact how we think, how we respond, how we evaluate the challenges that come into our lives every single day. It was because of the evidence in their life from their faith that they declared that they were living in light of eternity.
Then in verse 15:
NKJ Hebrews 11:15 And truly if they had called to mind that country from which they had come out, they would have had opportunity to return.
Now the country from which they had come was Ur of the Chaldees back over in the area of the land of the two rivers, the area that's in southern Iraq today that's between the Euphrates and Tigris. They knew where the family had come. They knew the stories. They knew how God had told Abraham and commanded Abraham to come out. They could go back. This verse emphasizes the fact that every single day they had the opportunity to bail out and go home. It was ultimately their volition, ultimately their faith in the promise of God that kept them in the Promised Land. Despite whatever challenges they had, whatever failures they had, ultimately this verse emphasizes that they had the opportunity to go back.
That plays in terms of application with this group of Jewish believers that the writer of Hebrews is addressing because they're on the verge of doing the same kind of thing spiritually. They're about to give up on Christianity and go back into first century Judaism just like many of us are tempted on a daily or weekly basis to maybe just give up on the Christian life and live as if we weren't a Christian, live according to the standards of the world and not to be viewed or seen as some kind of a religious radical nut case that thinks that the Bible is actually, literally true. I know many of you (and myself included) deal with people who were family members or close friends or associates who think that what you believe is just absolutely nuts. At times that really becomes a point of tension in your relationships because you just don't look at what's going on in the world around us today as they do. They can't even conceive of how you think. So sometimes it just gets a little tough. We have to realize that what we believe is the truth and they're the ones who are living on a false standard; and they're the ones who are living in a fantasy world, not us. But we have that opportunity to bail out every single day. It's a real option.
So the emphasis there is on the desire. That is a volitional term. It's the Greek word orego. It's a present middle indicative, which indicated a continuous action. It was something. The word has to do is seeking to accomplish a specific goal, aspiring to something, striving for something. It's more than just wanting something, it is an intentional movement and thought toward something. They aspire to something better. They were driven (motivated) by a vision of this better country (a heavenly country).
Now that phrase heavenly country - the country if you look in the translation is in italics. It's not there. The word that's translated heavenly is really in the genitive case, which has the idea of origin or possession of something like that. So it could be translated literally "they desire a better", i.e. something of heaven. So it doesn't really define it. But we get that idea brought into this context by the word homeland in the previous verse. They're looking for this homeland that is of heaven or has a heavenly origin.
A little more is going to be added at the end of the verse because there in the last sentence we read:
NKJ Hebrews 11:16 But now they desire a better, that is, a heavenly country. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them.
What city would that be? Well the only city that we know of in the future is the New Jerusalem that is revealed when we get into the book of Revelation.
As we come to just the conclusion of this little section, what we've seen so far is that the patriarchs that is these early Old Testament saints all lived their lives by means of faith and according to the standard of faith. Those two different phrases are used. The "according to faith" is only used one time in verse 13 which meant that all the way up to the point of their physical death they were living according to faith and they didn't give up.
They did not receive the promise in their lifetime. In many cases they didn't see even a hint of it. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob never owned anything in the land other than the graveyard. They saw the future fulfillment, but only as something in the distant future but they believed that God would bring it to pass.
Now that indicates something. This is an inference from text, one that (unfortunately, I think) that a lot of Bible students today are afraid to make. They weren't afraid to make this in earlier generations. When I was young what I was taught about this is often even smirked at today by some of the Bible teachers that we have today because they're almost afraid to make these kinds of inferences. It really does become clear in the next couple of verses, but the reason that they were able to live as if those promises were going to come to pass because they understood resurrection.
Now go back into Genesis and tell me one place that even talks about resurrection. There's not one. But the writer of Hebrews under the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit understood this very fact. He's going to bring it out in the illustration with Abraham and the next section talking about Abraham test when he offered up Isaac. He moves directly into that. That's what it is inferred there in verse 16: that they could desire something better because they knew that when they died physically it didn't end their lives, that there would be a resurrection. There would be a future beyond the grave. They understood that. But it's never talked about in Genesis. You won't find it there.
The reason I make this point is because there's just a real trend that I've seen for over 20 years now in the academic circles and commentaries that you just can't say that somebody in the Old Testament believed something if it's not there in the original context of Genesis or Exodus or whatever.
"It doesn't matter what the New Testament says. If it didn't say that in the original, you can't come in there and make those statements."
It gets rather silly. It really shows a breakdown in an understanding of the unity of Scripture and the totality of God's revelation that even though we have to interpret Scripture in light of the time it was given in light of the context; there are some things that are clear; but we don't find out that they knew them until maybe the end of the story – like Revelation or Hebrews.
They obviously did have an understanding of resurrection, which gave a concrete strength to their ability to encounter of the day-to-day trials and vicissitudes of life. They embraced these promises. They made them part of their life (their thinking), and they became more real to them than their day-to-day experiences. So they focused on the future and that made a difference for their present reality.
That's why eschatology is so important for us is that we can get wrapped up in some of the details related to end time events, but they're part of Scripture. But all that fits a picture for us that should drive us (should motivate us) in the difficult times that we face on a day-to-day basis.
Well, that brings us to the next example in Abraham. We started with Abraham in verse 8 and we've had a little interlude here in verses 13 to 16 to focus on the real issue. Then we returned back to another example of Abraham in verse 17.
NKJ Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,
NKJ Hebrews 11:18 of whom it was said, "In Isaac your seed shall be called,"
NKJ Hebrews 11:19 concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead, from which he also received him in a figurative sense.
There's a doctrine of resurrection - clearly. The writer of Hebrews is saying Abraham was so convinced of the reality of resurrection and the truthfulness of God's promise that was more real to him than anything that he was willing to sacrifice his son (to kill him dead) on the altar because he was so convinced of God's promise that his seed would come through Isaac that he knew that that if God actually let him go through with it; He would just raise Isaac from the dead and go on as if nothing happened. That's how real his faith was for him.
So back to verse 17 just to talk about some of the elements or components here.
NKJ Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,
This is a present active participle here that's a temporal participle talking about giving us more information about offering up Isaac. It indicates that testing here happens in the offering up of Isaac.
Now we're all tested, not in this way. I pointed out in our study of Abraham a few weeks ago and in my study of Genesis that there were 13 clear tests that Abraham went through. He probably went through many more, but 13 are highlighted by God the Holy Spirit in Genesis. Some he passed; some he failed. They're all related to those three promises that were given in the Abrahamic Covenant: the land, the seed, and the blessing. God was going to give Abraham a specific piece of real estate; and he was to go live there. He was commended initially to come out, to go, to leave his family behind in Ur of the Chaldees to go to land that God was going to give to him. So he had to believe God at that point that God was going to give him that land and he had to believe Him to the point that he packed his bags and he loaded up everything on the camels and the donkeys and they took off. Of course he didn't fully obey because he took his dad with him and he took his nephew with him. But in terms of the core issue, he's trusting God to go to the land.
Then later not long afterward there's a famine. There's a drought that occurs so he has to go make a decision.
"Am I going to go where God told me to go and handle it by trusting in God or am I going to try to handle it my own way and go down to Egypt?"
He failed the test; and he went down to Egypt, created some problems and finally came back to the land. We went through all of those and we saw that there were various tests that were also related to the seed.
God said, "I'm going to bless the world through your seed, your physical descendants."
Later on Abraham tries to say, "Okay. Well, I'm too old. The seed must be Eleazar," because you could adopt an heir.
God says, "No. It's not going to be Eleazar. It's going to be a son from your own body. It's going to be a son from your own loins. Not only that from Sarah also."
So Sarah comes along and she's got her alternate plan B, which is Hagar, and that causes other problems because there wasn't a consistent obedience there. He didn't endure, persevere in obedience even though it looked like: "We're getting pretty old here. It just can't happen anymore." He didn't believe that God would do the impossible; and God is still the God of the impossible. So God was testing him.
Finally it got through to Abraham that God really meant what He said and when He said He was going to provide a son through his loins, a son through him and Sarah even though they were way beyond child bearing age even though it was biologically physically impossible for them to become parents and for Sarah to have a child; God is in the process of bringing death where there's life. When that happened it finally started getting through Abraham's head that God was really able to do that which He promised. He would fulfill it and so Abraham began to realize that if God could give life where there was death in the womb; then that would mean that nothing was going to happen to Isaac. God said that Abraham would become the father of many nations through Isaac and that the seed would be blessed through Isaac. He finally realized, nothing can happen to Isaac that would cause those promises not to be fulfilled. That's the test. Do you really believe the promise of God when he said that in your seed all nations will be blessed? Or have you given up? That's the issue. The test is related to the seed.
Then there were other tests that Abraham faced that were related to the blessing issues because the statement "you will be a blessing to those around you" was a command. It wasn't a declarative statement. It wasn't a descriptive statement. It was a command that Abraham was to be a blessing to others around him. He was to provide for them. There were the instances where after the Chedorlaomer alliance came in and defeated, had a conquest over the cities of the plains, abducted a number of people, took a lot of plunder and booty and headed back home that Abraham then took his servants to go rescue his nephew Lot and to defeat the enemy and to bring all of the plunder and booty back to its original owners.
So he learned to pass tests in every one of those categories. Now we're tested in many other categories but the tests that are in Genesis are designed to focus on the three-fold promise of the Abrahamic Covenant, the most central of which is the one related to the seed. So when Abraham was tested, God commanded him to offer up Isaac.
he who had received the promises
It's focusing on Abraham as the one to whom these promises were made.
offered up his only begotten son,
Twice you have the use of that word in the Greek prosphero, which is a standard word for offering up an offering; not any kind of offering but primarily it would focus on the sacrificial types of offerings. So it's not just a dedication like you see parents sometimes dedicate their children to the Lord or something of that nature. It is a sacrifice that is in view.
offered up his only begotten son,
This is a critical word here, which is going to show us the connection that God is making. He's making a picture. He's giving us a visual aid in the Old Testament of Isaac that there's something about this offering of Isaac that foreshadows and depicts something about the Lord Jesus Christ.
The writer of Hebrews uses the word monogenes here for only begotten. It's a compound word, mono from mono, just like we used to have records that were mono instead of stereo, meaning single. You have wear glasses or monocle, just one lens over one eye. So the word mono indicates one only. Then the word genes comes from the Greek word genos, meaning kind. It means literally one of a kind only or unique. That's the idea there. Something about this person is unique. The word is actually used 9 times in the New Testament. Sometimes it's used to refer to an only child. They are a monogenes child. They are unique because they're the only offspring of their parents. But when it's applied to the Lord, which is unique to John's writings: John is the only author who uses this word to apply the unique relationship of Jesus to the Father. It's emphasizing the fact that Jesus is a one-of-a-kind or unique Son of God. There's something distinct and unique about Him because of the hypostatic union, that He is the God man. He is eternal deity who then takes on humanity.
The use of that word by the writer of Hebrews is intentional in order to draw for us the connection that we will automatically make between Abraham's offering of his son, as a picture of the offering of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Then in verse 18 what we have is the phrase "in Isaac your seed shall be called."
NKJ Hebrews 11:18 of whom it was said, "In Isaac your seed shall be called,"
That's a direct quote from Genesis 21:12.
NKJ Genesis 21:12 But God said to Abraham, "Do not let it be displeasing in your sight because of the lad or because of your bondwoman. Whatever Sarah has said to you, listen to her voice; for in Isaac your seed shall be called.
…God's direct promise that the seed would come through Isaac. That's the promise that is in mind when we read of him who had received the promises, that in Isaac your seed shall be called.
Then in verse 19, Abraham reaches a conclusion.
NKJ Hebrews 11:19 concluding that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead,
The word that is translated in the New King James "concluding", but it's the Greek word logizomai. Now you can hear it. It's related to the noun logos, which is where we get our English word logic. So here is a great example of how a believer is to use to the logic machine that God gave him under the authority of God's revelation to think through what God has said and to draw conclusions that aren't necessarily part of the direct revelation.
God didn't tell Abraham, "Well, I'm going to take you up there and going to have you sacrifice Isaac; and then if you do I'm going to raise him from the dead."
But Abraham's learned enough doctrine; and we don't see where he learned of this. He's learned enough doctrine to understand and believe in the Doctrine of Resurrection. So he's putting two and two together and coming up with the conclusion, with a logically derived conclusion that if God promised the seed would come through Isaac and Isaac hasn't produced any seed yet then God is not going to break His Word so either He's going to stop me and I'm not going to end up killing Isaac. Or if I actually do kill Isaac then God's going to have to bring him back from the dead; but no matter what happens God is going to be true to His promise. So the promise of God was more real to Abraham than taking the life of his own son.
Then at the end of the verse we read:
from which he also received him in a figurative sense.
It's really not a good translation. The Greek word there is parabole where we get our English word parable. So what the writer is saying is that he also received him in a parabolic sense or in a sense that he understood that this was a picture, a type of something, that he recognized that the reason God was having him do this was to picture something or to depict something about God's grace and about salvation.
To understand that we need to go back to Genesis 22. Let's turn to and spend the rest of this evening going back. This is one of my favorite episodes and stories in the Old Testament. It is such a great visual aid. We see how God can take some of the most abstract doctrines that theologians can wrangle about left and right for hours and hours and God just pulls it down into a very simple picture that even a child can understand.
I used to love to tell the story when I was a camp counselor and working with little kids because the lights would go off when you would then talk about Jesus dying for their sins. It just made it so clear.
NKJ Genesis 22:1 Now it came to pass after these things
That is after all of these previous tests, promises of God.
that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he said, "Here I am."
After the birth of Isaac, after he has grown. We're not sure how old Isaac was. I think he was over twenty. I think he was all old enough to have had offspring, but he wasn't old enough to have done it yet. He had not become a father, been married. But he's not just a little child. Usually the picture that we have is that people always as David was a little boy. Isaac was a little boy. But I think in both cases they were at least 15 to 20, something like that. Isaac could have even been older. But there's nothing in the text to really give us a good handle on that.
So God tested Abraham.
that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!"
Abraham responds.
And he said, "Here I am."
He says hinneh, which is Hebrew for "Here I am. I'm ready to go."
"Yes Lord, I'm ready to do whatever You tell me to do."
NKJ Genesis 22:2 Then He said,
That is God said.
"Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you."
Now this really emphasizes the close emotional connection that Abraham had with Isaac. The Septuagint translates it in this manner.
Your son, your only son whom you love.
It really sets it apart in terms of the structure to emphasize the deep, profound intimate connection that Abraham had with this son. He deeply loved his son. His son is the embodiment of the promise of God. For all those years and all those tests finally came the promised seed. So everything that he hopes for is focused on Isaac.
Now we're going to see a test that's going to cause Abraham to decide who he loves more, God or Isaac. Is the promise of God going to be more real to him or the immediate experience of the presence of Isaac?
"Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you."
Moriah is applied to the same area as where the Temple Mount is today. It would include more than just where the Temple Mount is; but if you look at the geography of Jerusalem it could even include the whole area there: the Temple Mount across the entire Pean Valley, the Valley of the Cheese Makers on to the area of Golgotha where Christ was sacrificed. So it's in that general area that Abraham was commanded to go. It is believed by the Jews that it is the very rock that is at the center that is under the Dome of the Rock that is where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac and that that same rock is where the Ark of the Covenant sat when the Temple was built there and that is the centerpiece of this story.
Now nothing in the Bible states that specifically, but it is generally that area of Jerusalem. That is the Mountain of Moriah.
NKJ Genesis 22:3 So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.
He doesn't cry about it. He doesn't argue with God about it. He doesn't resist. He gets up early in the morning indicating a certain measure of enthusiasm. He gets early in the morning, saddles his donkey and took two of his young men (two of his servants) with him along with Isaac his son. He splits the wood for the burnt offering. So it's not going to be just a sacrifice. It is an olah, which involves cutting the throat of the sacrificial victim and then building a fire under him and completely burning all of the carcass in a burnt offering. He puts together everything necessary to offer a burn offering.
This is always challenged by liberals who see the God of the Old Testament as a terrible old God that believed in human sacrifice. But He doesn't. He never allows it to happen. It was always wrong in the Old Testament. This is just expressed as a test.
So Abraham takes off. On the third day he sees the place afar off. He comes within eyesight of the mountains of Moriah. Those of you who've been to Jerusalem know what that's like as you come through those mountains and suddenly you see where the Temple Mount is. It's a low ridge. It's not high. Many mountains around Jerusalem are much higher in elevation than the Mountain of Moriah or the Temple Mount. He sees the place. He tells his young men (the servants) to stay there with the donkey.
He says that he and Isaac will go forward to worship. So he is focused on the fact that this is going to be worship and the core meaning of worship is the idea of obedience and submission to the will of God. The literal meaning in the Hebrew is to bow the knee. It has to do with obedience.
So he takes the wood of the burnt offering and he gives it to Isaac.
"Isaac, you're going to become the beast of burden."
Isaac's carrying all of this wood. Those of you who've been camping know that to build any kind of decent fire takes a certain amount of firewood. You can imagine how much firewood you would need if you were going to create a fire that was hot enough to cremate a body. That's a lot of wood. I don't think Isaac as a five or six year old could carry a load of wood like that. He might carry a couple of logs, but that's it. It is going to take a lot more than that in order to have a burnt offering. That's one reason I think that Isaac was much older and stronger. So he takes Isaac his son. He took the fire in his hands so that they're carrying some sort of a censer that has holes in it in order to be able to start the fire, a knife for the sacrifices. The two of them went on together.
Isaac's perceptive. He says to his father:
NKJ Genesis 22:7 But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, "My father!" And he said, "Here I am, my son." Then he said, "Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?"
So he's been instructed as to the proper procedures for the sacrifices of what they should be. Abraham simply responds and says:
NKJ Genesis 22:8 And Abraham said, "My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering." So the two of them went together.
Now that expresses another dimension to this test. Hebrews says he knew that he could raise Isaac up from the grave. Here the focus is that he understood that ultimately God would be the one to provide the sacrifice.
So they went on and when they came to the place where God indicated, Abraham built an altar there, placed the wood, set everything up. Then he bound Isaac.
Notice nowhere in here does it tell us when he informed Isaac that he was the sacrifice. That must have been an interesting conversation. But he ties his hands together, tries his feet together, binds him, places him on the wood and lays him out. Then he stretched out his hand to take the sacrificial knife ready to cut his son's throat through the very point where I think where it would have been clear that he was going to go through with it. It was at the last possible moment (I believe) that God stopped him and called to him and said, "Abraham, stop," which is in verse 11.
NKJ Genesis 22:11 But the Angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" So he said, "Here I am."
The angel of the Lord which is the pre-incarnate Lord Jesus Christ called to him and says:
NKJ Genesis 22:12 And He said, "Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. The fear of the Lord is a respect for God where God is more real to us and His commandments and His word are more real to us than anything else. Abraham finally reached that point. It was evident that he feared God.
since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me."
NKJ Genesis 22:13 Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son.
What does he see? There is a ram that has been caught in the brush and God has provided the sacrifice. Rather than taking the life of his son, God has provided a ram that will be sacrificed as a substitute for Isaac. There's the picture of substitutionary atonement. It doesn't get into real complicated abstruse theology. You just have to understand that one thing is taken instead of another. Jesus died for us so we don't have to. He died in our place. That is the picture that you have all the way through the Old Testament with the sacrifices. Jesus died so that we would not have to die or pay the penalty for sin.
Abraham looks. He sees the ram and he takes the ram and offers it as a burnt offering instead of his son.
Now if burnt offering here means burnt offering; burn offering earlier had to mean burnt offering. So it's very clear that this was the kind of test that God had given him and he was willing to do it. He passed the test.
Then he gives the place a name, verse 14.
NKJ Genesis 22:14 And Abraham called the name of the place, The-LORD-Will-Provide;
Jehovah-Jireh, I think that's one of the great names of God in the Old Testament because it emphasizes His grace and His sufficiency that God is the one who is going to provide for us. His grace is sufficient for us and His power is made evident in our weakness.
as it is said to this day, "In the Mount of The LORD it shall be provided."
as it is said to this day, "In the Mount of The LORD it shall be provided."
Then what happens? What happens after that is God reaffirms the Abrahamic Covenant to him? Again he restates His promise,
NKJ Genesis 22:17 "blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.
Notice all of that emphasizes the seed: "In your seed all the nations shall be blessed because you have obeyed My voice". This is a tremendous Old Testament picture not just of faith but of substitutionary atonement and the fact God always provides for our every need. But at the core of this is Abraham's faith that no matter what happened he knew what God had promised. He knew God's Word. When he faced the challenges of life, he learned to use and claim God's promises and that's exactly what we have to do.
I think they we're living in difficult times. We're living in what may become very difficult times. There are things that potentially could happen in our nation and in the world related to the economy, things can happen related to military events and terrorism. We have had the incident with the shooter at Fort Hood several weeks ago. He's a self-motivated terrorist in my opinion. He's just a mass murder. Terrorism sort of masks the whole idea that it's just mass murder.
Then today I was sent an e-mail that was actually verified by a couple of different sources. It's a story about what happened just last week on an AirTran airplane that was coming out of Atlanta. According to an eyewitness report (and of course you never know with these e-mails are true or not). When I sent it out David Roseland actually tracked the guy's name down and called the individual who said he wrote this eyewitness report and said yes it was him and this happened to him and he wrote that and it happened to him last week. They were flying out of Atlanta. The news agencies did not report this. There were several Moslems on the plane that were causing a disturbance, talking on their cell phones. All that came out on the news was that there some one talking on his cell phone who wouldn't stop, so the plane had returned to the gate and they had to take him off. That was why it was delayed.
More information came out. There was a chaplain who was sitting in the waiting area. He just missed that flight. He was supposed to be on it. So when it came back to the gate he thought, "Boy, now I will get on my plane." All these people were coming off. He had interviewed this one man who wrote this one report up because the flight crew came off the airplane. Homeland security went through all the luggage and looked through what these guys had. They didn't have anything so they put them back on the airplane. The aircrew according to this report walked off the plane said they were not going to fly. They were returned to the plane.
But we live in a world today where people have created their own view of what religion is. Religion doesn't relate to reality. In the West, we can't understand how real this kind of thing is to Moslems and how real it is to the Quran.
This kind of thing is going to increase. We live in an extremely uncertain time, a time of chaos. It's a great opportunity to witness. It's a great opportunity to be a testimony that we don't panic. We don't give up. We're not going to let all of these things bother us and that we're going to be able to as Paul says be a light shining in the midst of a dark and perverse generation.
That is a great challenge for us. That's what Abraham did. That's what Isaac did. That's what all these Old Testament heroes did. They were lights in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation. So we need to grow. We need to mature as believers because who knows what's going happen. But if you don't get ready beforehand, it will be very difficult to get ready after these kinds of things do happen. So we need to remember that it's not just going to Bible class. It's preparation for the immediate future and preparation for eternity.
Let's bow our heads in closing prayer.
Illustrations