40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 31

Episode Date: November 24, 2015

The guys finish up Genesis 21 and then get into 22 where God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. The Gospel is everywhere in this narrative.

Thank you. somebody to help us manage it, to get it out on time, and to keep the quality high. If these resources have been helpful to you, please consider going to Christ Hold Fast and clicking on the support page. There you can make a one-time donation or a reoccurring donation of any size. This will help us meet our goals of being able to bring someone on staff. Everyone at Christ Hold Fast would greatly appreciate your support. Enjoy the show. Welcome to episode 31 of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. I'm Daniel Emery Price, and I am joined by Brandon Hanson.

Good morning, everybody. And, as always, Chad Bird. Good morning. Glad everybody's joined us. yes uh chad where are we at in the in the genesis narrative we are uh about halfway through chapter 21 but we're not going to be there very long so fasten your seat belts we're going to be we're going to be speeding through this last part of uh chapter 21 i'm going to surprise everybody by that and uh then we're gonna then we're going to shift back down to first gear and uh work our way through what is what is likely the most well-known chapter of of genesis and and rightly

so chapter 22 which talks about the sacrifice of the promised son isaac okay well speed speed us on to it all right very good i will uh i will give like a 15 30 second recap of where we were because it's significant in leading up to what chapter 22 talks about what we just finished talking about was when Abraham forced Hagar and Ishmael, so his concubine or his co-wife, and his first son to leave. So keep that in mind as we work our way toward chapter 22, that Abraham has just lost his firstborn son, the one not, of course, with Sarah, but with Hagar, because what we're going to see in chapter 22 is that he's now told to lose in the sense of sacrifice his other son. But the rest of chapter 21 records an encounter that we have between a

guy that we know from a previous story, Abimelech. You recall that in chapter 20, Abimelech was this king that took 90-year-old Sarah away to his harem. And so it's like Egypt all over again, except this time it turns out a little bit better uh abraham said that she was his sister and we had this whole mess once more but anyway that was the story of abimelech from back in chapter 20 he shows up again in chapter 21 because he's he's more or less worried because of abraham's growing power uh in verse 22 it says that they know that god is with abraham and everything that he does And so more or less, they're wanting Abraham to swear, swear by God that he will not deal falsely with them or his offspring or his posterity. But according to the kindness that Abimelech has shown to Abraham, that Abraham's basically going to do the same with Abimelech.

And so they make this treaty between between the two parties. And then we have, after that, a dispute that occurs over a well of water that Abraham has dug. It's a dispute over who owns it and who can use it. So we have another covenant made between Abimelech and Abraham. And it says they call this place Beersheba. And that's really the main point that I want to make about that section at the end of chapter 21. Because Beersheba ends up being a very significant location in the rest of the Old Testament. Beersheba means the well of the oath, something like that.

Because when I taught Hebrew, there were always two Hebrew words that the students never forgot. One was ohel, because ohel means tent. If you ever try to set up a tent, like when the wind is blowing, you would understand why ohel is an easy word to remember. And the second one is beer, or as we would say in Hebrew, be'er. And beer sheba or be'er sheba means well. So a beer is a well, a place where you get a drink. So beer is an easy Hebrew word to remember as well. so this is the well or the drinking place of the oath that abraham and abimelech make with each

other so that's where we wrap up at the end of chapter 21 uh ishmael has just been sent away along with his mother hagar abraham has made this this uh covenant with abimelech and he has planted a tamarisk tree at beersheba and so that's where he's that's where he's living then we transition to what happens next so we're we're moving now out of chapter 21 and into 22 and i just want to go on record for noting that those 12 verses we covered in the shortest amount of time to date chad is a man on a mission i'm a man on a mission i can't wait to get to chapter 22, and here we are. Here we are at the beginning of what you, well, I guess you could call this many things. You could call it the final test of Abraham. If you look at it from the broader

biblical perspective, especially from the perspective of what all the Old Testament points to, Christ himself, then this is sort of an Old Testament passion narrative. We have the Passion Narrative of Christ, which records everything that happened during Holy Week, his arrest, his trial, his crucifixion, his rest in the tomb, and his resurrection. Well, this is Abraham's Passion Week, if you will. And if you take the entirety of the Scriptures and you kind of view them as a prism through which you can read chapter 22, then this chapter has so much packed into it that it really is almost the entire scriptures reduced into one chapter. Because here you have

the life of faith, the theology of the cross, the promised son or the promised seed. you have this waiting period as the time of sacrifice approaches you have the sacrifice you have the word of promise from god and you have as hebrews 11 points out a type of resurrection that takes place when isaac is spared so if you if you look at this chapter from the perspective of everything else that the scriptures have to say that it really does become kind of the bible reduced to 24 verses because everything is packed into it so let's uh let's dive in see uh see where it uh where it takes us bring it the uh yeah uh one of the first things i want to point out is uh is the parallels that this chapter has with the way that we were introduced

to abraham remember back in chapter 12 when we we first met abraham well i guess in chapter 11 he's mentioned his his a little bit about his his family tree but really chapter 12 was where is where it all begins and uh and it's really i don't think that we can understand fully what chapter 22 is about unless we view it in in the perspective of chapter 12. so it's like these are bookends of abraham's life you have chapter 12 beginning with abraham being called out of his country, out of his kindred, out of his father's house to go to a land that God is going to give to him. And so by faith, Abraham goes, not really knowing where he's going. All he knows is that God has called him out, and here he is to go. So he begins really with

nothing with nothing but god's word of promise and then you get here to chapter 22 and it's the same thing again in fact as i'll point out just a minute there's a parallel even even in the language issues because here abraham once more is called to go to go forth to leave behind his house And this time he's taking Isaac and all that he has to go with is the word of promise from God. So these two, this beginning and this end, these bookends of Abraham's trials or his his his life of faith are presented by these two chapters. in fact if uh if you look back at chapter 12 there's sort of a uh you can imagine sort of a conversation that goes on between when god is speaking and what's being said in abraham's mind because in chapter 12 god says to abraham go and you can imagine abraham thinking okay i'll travel

to another part of my country. But then God goes on and he says, from your country. And so Abraham thinks, okay, well then I'll take my kindred with me. But then God goes on and he says, and your kindred. And so Abraham thinks, well, at least I can take my father's house. But then God goes on and says, and your father's house. So it's like he's separating Abraham from everything that he knew before. He's calling him forth into a new existence where he lives solely by God's word of promise. And keeping all that in mind, that's the same thing that we have here at the beginning of chapter 22. It came about after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham. And he said, here I am. And listen to what God tells him. He says,

Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on the water of the mountains of which I will tell you. The Jewish interpretation of this verse is pretty fascinating because I was really stealing from their ideas when I was talking about this interior dialogue that goes on in Abraham's mind back in chapter 12. because that's what happens according to this kind of Jewish way of thinking at the beginning of chapter 22. They imagine this dialogue, an actual dialogue that takes place between God and Abraham. So God starts out and he says, take your son. And Abraham says to God, but I have two sons. I have Isaac and I have Ishmael. And God continues and says, your only son. And Abraham says, but Ishmael is the only son of Hagar, and Isaac is the only son of Sarah. And then God continues, whom you love.

And Abraham says to God, but I love both my sons. And so finally God says, Isaac. He narrows it down until there is no possibility except this one son, the one that God is designating. so chapter 12 chapter 22 both begin in the same way with god narrowing it down to what he wants of abraham and there's even a parallel in the hebrew there too when uh when god says go forth from your country and in chapter 12 and then in chapter 22 when he says uh go to the land of Moriah, the Hebrew that's used there is Lek Lekah. It's like, go for yourself, get yourself going.

And this phrase occurs both in chapter 12 and in chapter 22 and nowhere else in the rest of the scriptures. So it glues these two narratives together. So we have the command, And we also have, I didn't point out, we also have a different perspective. And this actually ties in with something we were talking about before everybody else joined us, before we started recording, about how we have a perspective on the biblical story that the people who were involved in the biblical story don't have.

Because we are told at the beginning of this chapter that God tested Abraham. but Abraham was never told that this was a test all God God didn't preface everything he said Abraham by by saying okay Abraham I'm I'm about to test you I want you to take your son your only son whom you love it's it's a lot like Job when you read the book of Job we know that God was God was testing Job we knew we know about the whole thing with with Satan and God and and Satan and putting forth Job as one that God was, is like his pet. Well, we have that perspective. Job did not. All Job knew was what was happening to him.

All Abraham knew was what was happening to him. We're the ones who have this perspective that this is actually a test. And it's like that still today. you know we we might be going through something and we we have no idea why this is happening we don't even know it's a test all we know is that you know all this stuff is is happening that's not good and uh the end does not look good whatsoever and all we have to go on is the word of god which is enough but uh it what that word speaks to us is contrary to everything that we experience you know everything that we experience seems irrational and full of despair and death

and hopelessness and then we have this word of god on the other hand which speaks life and hope and and and forgiveness and divine mercy so what are we going to go with well that's the test that's the test that abraham faced dude yeah i've been doing all the talking to you guys yeah no i am i have an agreement with you it's uh tests are are easier to endure when they come with the uh you know with the note that they are a test yeah yeah god god doesn't say a lot of bad stuff's about to happen but i just want you to know ahead of time this is a test it doesn't work that way no no god does a ton in the old testament i mean he uh it's it's interesting because it's not it's not as if the promises of god

go away? And this is, I think, you know, that's part of the test is that he's going to tell Abraham to do this thing that will put a close to, you know, to, to the, the promises that he's made. These promises can't happen through Isaac if he does what God asked him. And so there, there is a test to um to to believe like like is is god the kind of guy that reneges on his on his promise uh you know if you're abraham and we've talked a lot about abraham if you if you are abraham and you've like blown it as many times as he has and if you've tried to take the promise into your own hands and done this thing with your servant and you're like pawning your wife off as your sister and like all these different things you gotta you gotta think that abraham's thinking

like well i he's about he's just gonna take this take this away from me this is this is gonna be punishment like that's probably what i got coming like he's not gonna he's gonna use somebody else you know uh this is he's just been waiting to to really punish me like this is gonna really hurt man uh you have we think like that yeah and keep in mind too he's he's just lost ishmael god god had him send ishmael away so that probably only uh makes matters worse you know it's like god's on a roll okay he took one son now he's about to take the other yeah consequences have come home to roost man and he's thinking i'm about i'm about to about to pay for all that and that is the way we think i mean that's that's certainly the way that i think you know any anytime anytime something

really bad happens my mind immediately goes to what have i done what what have i done that's made god mad that now he's after me yeah because you know i'm i'm in i'm an inveterate theologian of glory that's that's the old adam that's that's the way that i think i i it's this got it's a quid pro quo kind of deal if i do this then god will do this if i do something good god will bless me if i do something bad god will god will punish me that's that's the way the old adam thinks and so that's like my you know my default position when bad things happen i immediately think that something bad must have been done by me to deserve what's what's going on yeah and that's And we obviously think that, well, God was going to use me in this way, but no more because, you know, I messed it up.

So now that's not going to happen. And this is like just the story over and over and over again throughout Scripture. I'm sure Peter felt that way. I'm sure all the saints, you know, I'm sure they're like, well, God was, I was going to be sort of like a pillar of the New Testament church. But, you know, probably flushed that down the toilet whenever, you know, once that cock crowed, that was probably the end of that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's, I mean, that is the story of the saints in the scriptures. That's the story of the saints today.

That is the struggle that we face. That is, Abraham's test is our test. It's almost, our test may not be as catastrophic as Abraham's was. but nevertheless, they are there. That is, the ultimate test is to believe in God's word of promise in the face of everything that we experience, which seems to give that promise the lie, that seems to say it cannot be true. You know, to believe that Christ will come forth from that tomb as he promised, to believe that hope will arise from the tomb of our despair, to believe that even though it seems as if everything is against us, that nevertheless, God is still for us.

That is the test of of the Christian. All right. Getting back to get back to the story here. Notice where they're going. This is a this is a favorite geographical point that I like to make. They're going to the land of Moriah. Moriah is one of those mountains that you can see the entire scriptures from, because it really joins together so many crucial sacrifice narratives that once you understand Moriah, you almost understand the whole intent of sacrifice. Know what I mean?

Well, they're going to the land of Moriah, and this is where the sacrifice is going to take place. Well, where is Moriah? Well, Moriah comes up at extremely important narratives in the rest of the Scriptures. One of those, besides this one, one of those is in the life of David. you may recall that at one point david david uh disobeyed god he uh he inducted a census of israel and the result was that this plague was going through israel hold on did you just say david

disobeyed god i just want to make this i just want to be remarkably okay i just i'm just checking i thought that's what you said yeah you know once of course yeah otherwise his life was spick and span but yeah one time there is this one there is this one incident okay yeah this one occasion otherwise yeah it was all good mother teresa okay good go ahead continue yeah so this this uh this plague is uh wiping out israelites left and right and uh it's really a remarkable story everybody listening should read it uh it's in it's second samuel 24 and first chronicles uh 20 uh 21 but anyway at one point david looks up and there's just like this behemoth of an angel this giant angel and he's got his sword raised like a like a sickle over grain like he's ready

to thresh uh to thrash jerusalem and what david does is uh he prays of course always a good thing to do when you see a giant angel about ready to destroy the city but more than that he uh he goes up onto this mountain and he builds an altar and he sacrifices oxen there and as a result of the sacrifice the plague is stopped and god shows mercy and the punishment ends now this this mountain where david offers a sacrifice and builds the altar is none other than mariah so you got abraham building an altar almost sacrificing isaac on mariah david building an altar offering sacrifices to stop the plague then this same location this exact spot is where david's son solomon builds the temple if you look at second chronicles chapter three verse one it uh

it says it's at that exact location where the altar the temple is built and solomon builds the temple and its complex around it. So keep in mind, you got Abraham, you got David, you got Solomon all linked together with sacrifice, with altars, and with Moriah. That tells you why Jesus is so insistent that he must die at Jerusalem, because Jerusalem is where Mount Moriah is located. So when Jesus says that he cannot die outside Jerusalem, well, of course he can't because he's the promised seed he is the second isaac he is the one who actually will be sacrificed he's the one who stops the plague of the father's wrath he's the one whose body is the temple that is destroyed and rebuilt in in three days so there is no other

place where christ can give the ultimate sacrifice than there uh where jerusalem is where mount Moriah is located, because this brings the whole biblical narrative to its conclusion when Christ is sacrificed there where Moriah is at. So, they go there. God says, offer him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will tell you. Now, question. if uh if you were abraham what would you do okay god tells you to do this i mean he's pretty he's very clear it's all in black and white he narrows it down i mean you you know what he has told you

to do what would how would you respond at the very least i might delay right yeah well maybe next month yeah this is not a good this is not a good time of year to travel yeah i mean really it is it isn't it's hot and uh you know i've heard that there's you know these uh these bands of of uh thieves that are kind of roaming around and you know we got uh we got travel plans coming up we're going to visit relatives it's just not a good time so and you know i'm looking here and god doesn't say anywhere like do it now do it tomorrow he doesn't give any kind of timetable and yet this is this is astonishing verse three begins so abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey and took two of his young men and isaac he cut some firewood and they headed

toward the place that God had told him about. So there's no hesitation with Abraham. We've talked about Abraham's failings, and there are plenty of them, especially in his marriage. But it is rather remarkable that on both occasions, when it was time to say goodbye to his sons, he rises early in the morning and acts.

Back in chapter 21, verse 14, So Abraham rose up early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar and put them on her shoulder and gave her Ishmael and sent her away. And it's the same here. We've had Abraham getting up early in the morning, getting everything together and heading out. so when you when you look at abraham's response i mean you understand why the author of hebrews in chapter 11 talks so much about how abraham acted by by faith because he is he's uh simply doing exactly what god told him to do in spite of the fact that it seems irrational that it seems contrary to what god has spoken before that of course it's against every paternal

uh concern that that that that he has and yet he gets up early and goes uh goes on his way i mean it's it's something that's really against who he knows god to be i mean we know that i mean god is not like really into child sacrifice that's not that's not uh something that he is about promoting uh we we know that he's uh not about murder uh he's so it's it's it's sort of just contrary to everything that uh that abraham knows of god like you're asking me to do this thing that is wildly outside your character yeah you know the only thing that that could be more wildly outside the character of God would be to, oh, I don't know, something like kill his own son for the sake of humanity. Yes. You know, it is like that. You know,

this doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem the way things should be. But that is the theology of the cross, that, you know, we say things the way they really are, not the way that we think that they that they should be because the ways of god are not are not our ways his ways are are contrary to what we think they should be indeed foolish and uh irrational to to our way of thinking yeah so uh that's what he does though he takes uh And he saddles his own donkey, gets his two young men, Isaac, makes sure he has everything that he needs. He even takes wood along for the burnt offering in case they get there and there's no trees around they can use as wood for the altar. And they head toward the place of which God had told him.

So they're on their way. Now, kind of put yourself in Abraham's shoes here. You know, everything that's happened so far would be would be bad enough. But they don't. It's not like Moriah is a is a 30 minute walk away or even a 10 hour walk away. It takes them three days to get there. Verse four, on the third day, Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place from a distance. for three days abraham has to think about what god had told him and you can imagine the uh the internal uh wrestling that was going on in his mind not to speak of the fact that uh satan would

have been walking alongside him you know whispering his own lies into abraham's abraham's ears But for three days, Abraham has these words of God to mull over about sacrificing his son. It's got to be, talk about a dark night of the soul. That's what Abraham is going through. And yet, they continue on. And just, I can't help but hear third day, of course, without thinking of the day of our Lord's resurrection, because there's so many parallels between what happens here with Abraham and Isaac and what happens between Good Friday and Easter.

Those three days of sacrifice and resurrection are about what Abraham is going to experience himself. And then we have verse five. Abraham said to the young men so he took these two servants with him these young men stay here with the donkey and I and the lad will go yonder

and we will worship and return to you did you pick up on that notice the notice the plural that's used there Abraham is talking to the young man he's about to take Isaac and he's the only one who knows what's about to happen

the young man don't know isaac doesn't know only abraham knows and he says stay here stay here with a donkey and isaac and i will go over there and we will worship and we will return to you yeah yeah there's dude like i mean it's just like the pic the picture is so clear um i'm preaching through john and i'm about to get to the triumphal entry you have so you have isaac as a picture of christ uh with abraham his father as a picture of god the father and they put him on a donkey headed toward the place that he must go let's grab a couple of other young men with us let's have them follow us in but when you at when the time actually comes it's off donkey

the other guys have can't go there and it's just isaac wood on his back and his father it's it's i mean this it couldn't be clearer yeah so like the picture is painted so vividly that like that there's a donkey and there's there's young men involved and you know i am of the personal opinion that the disciples were were much younger than we portray them in the in the paintings i think the disciples were younger than jesus uh but uh they have they they get they can't go to that place they they go right up to it but but then they're not there when when it comes time and uh this has to go down between isaac and his father and he's going to carry the the wood of his own the wood of the sacrifice he's going to carry

that himself yeah and uh yeah just vivid it is vivid it is this this very well may be the uh the highest literary art of the old testament in chapter 22 i mean just as far as just from a completely literary perspective as you as you read through this chapter and everybody's listening i encourage you to do that just read through the whole chapter and just the the cadence in which the story is told the the some of the details that are given and some of the details that are that are withheld i mean it's it's really it's a work of art uh beyond i think anything that we've we've seen so far in genesis and probably anything beyond it too it really and and and rightly so because of all the chapters it really need to be just this pristine this is the chapter because

This is our clearest foreshadowing as far as an action goes in the Old Testament, clearest foreshadowing of what's going to happen on Good Friday. So, yeah, I think when Abraham says to the lads, to the young men, we will worship and return to you, that Abraham, that is our clue, that whatever else is going on in Abraham's mind, whatever struggles he's facing in this test that he knows that he knows that somehow isaac is going to come back with him you know he has he has two contradictory words here from god he has the word of god that says through isaac your offspring shall be named

and then he has this word in genesis 22 take isaac and sacrifice him well how's this going to happen how can isaac be the one my uh my offspring are going to be named through and then i sacrifice how can i reconcile how can i reconcile these two and i think this is the uh the basis uh for what the author hebrews says in chapter 11 when he's talking about this uh this is in verse 17 of hebrews 11 he says by faith abraham when he was tested offered up isaac and who he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son it was he to whom it was said in isaac your descendants shall be called so he set all this up he's saying you know abraham offers him up even though this is his only begotten son even though it was isaac

that god said it's through your descendants that that you will be called and then he and then he says this in verse 19 of Hebrews 11, Abraham considered that God is able to raise men even from the dead, from which he also received Isaac back as a type. So in Abraham's mind, he's thinking, okay, I have these two contradictory words. Isaac is going to be your descendant through whom your your descendant your son through whom your descendants will be named and i have this word that says sacrifice him well the only way that these two things can be reconciled is that god is going to in fact raise isaac from the dead that after the sacrifice isaac will be resurrected that's the only way that these two things can happen god cannot lie he

cannot speak a truth and an untruth so the only way that i can have isaac and sacrifice isaac is for god to bring isaac back from the dead to resurrect him yeah and so he says what he says he says uh the lad and i will go over there and we will worship and we will return to you all right uh we have just a few minutes left so let's uh let's uh at least cover another verse or so here. Abraham takes the wood of his burnt offering. He lays it on Isaac, his son. He took in his hand the fire and the knife, and the two of them walk on together. Dan, you've already mentioned the fact that he carried the wood upon which he himself was to be sacrificed, which the fathers of the church go crazy with. They love the fact that there's this clear parallel between

isaac and the second isaac christ and how they both bear upon their shoulders the wood that they are going to be sacrificed sacrificed on well it's interesting that the father also carries the instruments of death i mean so he's he's carrying he's carrying the the fire and the knife uh and so these are these are instruments of of death these are these are things that will be will be used to um to make the sacrifice and so it's it could have been opposite you know it could have had him carry a a torch and a knife and and abraham carry the wood you know maybe the but that's not that's not how there's a there's a or maybe you know maybe maybe isaac's young and abraham's old maybe isaac's you know carrying the wood and the and the knife and the fire but he's

he's not that's and that's intentional right right yeah it's like christ bearing his cross and and the father carrying the hammer and nails uh that's uh that's how it goes down and then we have this uh we have this dialogue uh between isaac and his father isaac said to to abraham his father my father and he said here i am my son and he said behold the fire in the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? And Abraham replied, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. So the two of them walked on together. We really don't have enough time to do justice to this, but I will point out that this is one of those verses where it all depends, the interpretation of the verse all depends upon

how you read it. You can read it like this, Abraham's response, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. You can read it like that, my son simply being a way that Abraham is addressing Isaac. Or you can read it this way, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. In other words, my son is the lamb for the burnt offering. now when you hear that depending upon how your your inflection your your tone of voice and everything else it can be and and in the hebrew it can go either way you know either it can be an apposition to to isaac or it can be you know actually him addressing uh who this lamb is going to be it just all depends on how you read it and i think maybe uh the ambiguity is is on purpose

because it can really go both ways. Abraham is speaking to Isaac, but unbeknownst to Isaac, he actually, the son is actually the lamb that will be the burnt offering. Either way, as well, when we look at this proleptically, God is going to provide through Abraham the son, who is his own son, the seed of Abraham. through whom all nations will be saved. Yeah, when you look at this proleptically,

when you look at it from the perspective of what is to come, then, yeah, God will. God will see to it. God will provide, ultimately, the lamb for the burnt offering and the lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, who is, as you say, the promised seed of Abraham. And we're going to have to wait until next week to get there. So it's too much

I didn't figure we'd get all the way through Abraham and Isaac in one week No, no, this is definitely A two week story It deserves every It deserves 80 minutes 80 minutes on that So next week we will continue talking about Abraham

And the ascent To sacrifice Isaac So thanks for Thanks for joining us And we will see you then © transcript Emily Beynon