40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 40 Minutes In The Old Testament: Episode 32

Episode Date: December 2, 2015

Chad and Daniel finish looking at the almost sacrifice of Isaac which spurs conversations about the sacrificial system, dark hymns and storming the gates of hell. Enjoy.

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 32 of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. I am Daniel Emery Price, and I am joined solo by Chad Bird.

How are you doing, Chad? Hey, I'm great. I'm great. yep just you and me today brandon's taking the day off but uh i'm sure he's with us in spirit always always with us in spirit or he's asleep one of the two and that means that means he's that he's we're with him in his dreams i think yeah maybe that's what it is i'm sure he's dreaming of uh of genesis 22 even as we speak oh yeah i'm sure he is speaking of that that that would be where we are yep that is it we uh we started uh genesis 22 last time actually wrapped up genesis 21 very rapidly and then we uh we jumped into chapter 22 and and as

i told you last time it's gonna this is a definitely a an 80 minute segment it's gonna take us at least a couple couple episodes to get through this so no need to rush because this really is uh it's to be like rushing through a a sumptuous feast just gorging it down well there's no reason we'll we'll take our time because this is really a feast in uh in genesis it's one of the most important chapters that we have in in this first book of moses because really you have here the whole passion of christ laid out before us in a in a prefiguring kind of way we've gotten to some of that already we're going to get to more of it as we as we go along today but really if you if you read chapter 22 of genesis through the perspective of the rest of the scriptures

and take it word by word phrase by phrase verse by verse then you can see embedded within this when this is when the within this account a prophecy of all that christ is to is to accomplish for us so without further ado i guess we'll get back into it let's do it all right so we made it through uh i believe just about verse seven or eight last time uh just a very brief recap god test abraham tells him to take his son his only son whom he loves isaac and offer him as a sacrifice on a mountain that he will will show him and abraham does what the lord commands They get up early in the morning. He, Isaac, two servants head toward that mountain. Three days later, they get there. Abraham leaves the two servants behind, says that his son Isaac and he

will go worship and will return. And Abraham takes the wood of the burnt offering, puts it on Isaac, his son. He takes the knife in his hand and the fire, and the two of them walk on together. And then at the close of the last episode, we had this brief conversation where Isaac says, Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? And Abraham says, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. As I pointed out last time, this really is a literary masterpiece, the way this is all put together. It proceeds at just the right pace. So we have Abraham and Isaac walking along together toward the mountain.

And picking up at verse 9, it says, Then they came to the place of which God had told him. This is Mount Moriah that we talked about last time. Mount Moriah being the mountain where this sacrifice is offered. The mountain where David will offer the sacrifice, which stops the plague that is passing over Israel. the mountain where the exact spot then where his son Solomon will build the altar for the temple. So you've got these three main narratives that pull together what Moriah is and what it symbolizes.

And that's why Christ says that he can't die outside Jerusalem. He has to die there where Moriah is, because that is the place of sacrifice. so they come to this place of which god had told him and abraham takes over at this point you know isaac has carried the wood they've walked together but it says that abraham built the altar there and he arranged the wood and bound his son isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood i don't know if i pointed this out before or not but uh uh altar in the hebrew is mizveach which literally means the place of sacrifice so that's what an altar is for it is for sacrifice and for and really for for nothing else so he abraham himself builds this place of sacrifice he builds

an altar he arranges the wood that isaac has carried to the place of sacrifice and then he binds his son isaac and he lays him on the altar on top of the wood now there's every time i read this account i have more questions and it's one of the frustrating things or maybe it's one of the uh fascinating things about this is all the questions that are not answered one of the things that i've always wondered about is uh well first of all how old is isaac because we don't know uh there's an it's kind of strange too because in some of the uh most in fact of the previous episodes we're given a kind of a timetable you know this is how old the ishmael was when he was circumcised and this is how old ishmael was when isaac was born this how old

abraham was when isaac was born so we're given a lot of dates a lot of ages up to this point and Now we get to Genesis 22, and we're given no specifics. And I don't know if because that means it's just not important to this narrative or something else. But we don't know how old Isaac is. Jewish tradition places him as a young man, like in his 20s. He certainly is old enough to carry on an intelligent conversation with his father, and he's old enough to carry the wood up the mountain. and so then that that prompts the question what what's going on in isaac's mind as this is

happening all the only conversation we've had recorded is where isaac asked about the lamb for the burnt offering and god abraham says god will will provide that so they get here and what is isaac told besides what he's what has been recorded he sees his father building the altar he sees his father laying the wood out on top of the altar for the offering and then the next thing we're told we're told is that he binds his son isaac so at what point does it become clear to isaac that he is the one to be sacrificed and when this becomes clear to him what is his reaction is he like his father simply obedient to what god himself has commanded is there some sort of struggle is there some sort of questioning but we don't know uh and perhaps uh the reason we

don't know or perhaps the reason none of that no sort of objection is recorded is because of the prophetic nature of this yeah if you if you think forward to to what is to come yeah and i think that you know isaac being old enough to to carry the wood up himself um you know and if tradition has him you know being a young man but probably not you know not not like uh you know 10 or something like that you know old enough to climb a mountain wood on your back it would seem i mean abraham is old old at this point um and so it's it's it does seem that it's doubtful that there's like a struggle i mean if if isaac wanted to get away he could probably escape a a very very very old man yeah he's at least you know 100 over 110 for sure yeah it would probably be difficult for

for him to wrestle you know if you had to wrestle him down and tie him up it's hard it's hard to imagine that happening so there's i think that there's without it saying it that there's still there's reason to believe that that isaac was pretty submissive yeah yeah that's where i would uh would come down to that as well uh and you think about this in light of the rest of scripture and in in light of how this the sacrifice is a prefigurement of of the sacrifice of christ uh you know christ was obedient to the point of death even death on the cross so he he did not fight his captors he did not fight the sacrifice instead like a lamb is led to the slaughter so he did not open his mouth uh he he himself christ himself was

following the word word of his father just as isaac was following the word of his of his father too. Yeah. I will point out that if you're reading about Genesis 22, sometimes you'll have your head referred to as the Akedah, A-K-E-D-A-H. And that is based on the verb that's used here for bind, the Hebrew word for bind, where he bound his son Isaac is Akad. And so especially when the Jews refer to Genesis 22, they don't call it the sacrifice of Isaac. Usually they call it the Akedah, or the binding of Isaac. And that's the only place, interestingly, where this Hebrew verb occurs in the rest of the Old Testament. It's used later to describe how the legs of sacrificial victims are bound, like the front leg to the back leg, something like that. But

yeah, this is the Akedah for the Jews. So we're really at the climactic moment here. uh the altar is built the woods arranged the sun is bound and now laid on the altar on top of the wood and uh the the climactic verse is the one that follows this verse 10 abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son and when i read that uh it drives home the fact that abraham was not play acting you know this was there was there was there was nothing there was no hint given whatsoever by god that this was a test this was for him nothing but the the bare word of god telling him what he was to do and abraham is prepared to follow that seemingly foolish contradictory word all the way to the end even if it means taking the

life of the promised son, the one in whom all of the promises were located. So that is the high point. And it's at this point then when you have this beautiful transition that happens in the narrative. So here is Isaac bound on top of the altar. Abraham, you can picture his hand in the air. He's holding the knife, ready to plunge it into his son. And then without a moment to spare, God intervenes. Verse 11. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here I am. And he said, do not stretch out your hand against the lad and do nothing to him for now i know that you fear god since you have not withheld your son your only son from me well what i love most about about uh this particular part of the story

is the identity of the one who intervenes in the sacrifice yeah yeah it's uh i mean it could have said and the lord called from heaven or god spoke to him from heaven but it's specifically the angel of the lord and i i think we've talked about this on previous episodes uh but just as uh if we have bear with me because it's important first of all the hebrew word for angel malak doesn't just mean angel as we think of angels a malak is a messenger just like in greek the word angelos, which we use to translate as angel, simply means a messenger. So the Moloch of the Lord is the messenger of the Lord. And that does not mean that every Moloch is a created being that we call an angel. It's simply one who bears the word of God to others.

So this is a word bearer, a messenger from the Father. And in this particular story, and in many other stories, most notably Exodus chapter three, the account of the burning bush and Moses, the Moloch Yahweh, or the angel of the Lord, as it's usually translated, acts as God, speaks as God, identifies himself as God. So you have a couple of things going on here. You've got this Moloch identifying himself with God, and yet there's a distinction as well, because he is the malak, the messenger of the Lord, or the messenger of God. So he acts as God, he identifies as God, he speaks as God, and yet there's a distinction as well. And that's why, from the earliest writings of the Christian fathers,

already beginning in the second century with Justin Martyr, the angel of the Lord has been identified as the second person of the Trinity, as the Son of God. as Christ appearing before his incarnation, before he becomes man, in some sort of created form. In this case, it's as an angel. Sometimes he appears as a man. So this is the Son of God appearing in some kind of visible way, either as an angel or as a man, in order that he might speak with people, be seen by people, be heard by people. And all of this is a sort of a preview of his coming incarnation when he will finally, for all time, take on our human nature. So getting back to the story, think about this.

Here's the father about to sacrifice his son. The knife is in the air. The moment has come. And the very one who calls out to heaven and stops Abraham, he is the very one who will one day take the place of Isaac upon the altar of sacrifice. So it's Christ himself, the angel of the Lord. It is Christ himself who stops this sacrifice. he who will then one day become the sacrifice to spare isaac and and all of us along with him you know yeah one of the reasons you you know that this is this is god and and because of that

it's christ is that you know he doesn't say uh now i know that you won't withhold your son from god yeah somebody says yeah somebody says this is for me right me and uh and there's always a difference between like an angel and the definite article angel uh so the messenger is quite literally the word this is this this is uh the one who it's the messenger so it's the the word of god which we know is is christ and so uh yeah when when the word says you haven't withheld your son from me it leaves look there's little doubt what's going on here yeah yeah so he he doesn't uh he that's what i meant earlier when i talked about him identifying with god he's he's the spokes he's the word of god he's the spokesman of god and yet he is also

he is also a god and it's just fantastic that he is the one who speaks here because he is the one who is uh one day going to become the sacrifice in fact i i was thinking about this this morning as i was looking over looking over these verses here christ says abraham abraham and it is christ who on the cross will cry out my god my god yeah in one case he stops the sacrifice in the other case having become the sacrifice he cries out to to his father what's what's also fascinating about this address of the angel is that he he says abraham's name twice abraham Abraham. And if you remember a couple of chapters back, we had the name changed from Abram to Abraham, and God said, I'm changing your name because you will be the father of many nations,

which is what Avraham means. So Abraham's name is a reflection of the promise that God has made to him, the promise that seemed in jeopardy when he was about to sacrifice his son. So it's as if the angel is saying, father of many nations, father of many nations. So he's, by calling out Abraham's name, reaffirming his promise that Abraham will, in fact, be the father of many nations, that by stopping this sacrifice, the seed, the promise of the seed will be perpetuated from isaac on down to his to his descendants and i love abraham i love abraham's response both times all he says is in hebrew it's one word it's hineni which we have translated here i am that's all he says in the beginning of the account when god well uh back at verse two

or verse one actually uh god tests abraham and it says to him abraham and abraham says hennady here i am and god tells him to go sacrifice his son there is nothing else said by abraham to god and we get down here abraham abraham and he says hennady and then he stops the sacrifice and in both cases that's all that abraham says here i am it reminds me of uh of uh what the virgin mary says when the angel gabriel appears to her and uh says you know you're gonna you're gonna be the child you're gonna be the mother of the messiah and uh she says i am the maidservant of the lord let me let it be done to me according to your word so more or less here i am yeah i what it sounds crazy to me but here i am this that's what your

word says and so i i'm your maidservant let it be done as you've spoken so uh getting back to verse 12 he said that is christ said the angel of the lord don't stretch out your hand against the lad do nothing to him for now i know that you fear god since you have not withheld your son your only son from me now we probably i'm thinking that many of our many of our our listeners here uh when they hear that verse their ears pick up an echo of another of another verse especially this last part since you have not withheld your son your only son from me because every time I see this verse in Genesis, I hear Romans 8, 32, which is the beginning of that famous section at the end of Romans 8, where he talks about nothing can separate us from the love

of God. Paul says, Romans 8, 32, he who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all. How will he not also with him freely give us all things? So you got a great parallel between these two stories. Abraham does not withhold his son, his only son from God as a testimony that he is living by nothing but the word of God. And then in Romans 8, Paul says that the father did the same thing. The father did not withhold his son, his only son from the cross, but delivered him up for us all. And we need no other testimony than that to the fact that God will freely give us all things. I mean, if I am willing to give you what is most precious to me, then I'm certainly not going to withhold all the other things from you. The testimony of God's favor toward us

is is summed up for all time in the giving of his son if he gives us his son then how will he not also with that son give us all other things so it's it is the testimony of god's favor toward us in the offering up of his son because in that offering even that giving up of that which is most precious to him we have the indication that god is graciously willing to give us and has given us all things in him and and along with him one of the one of the objections you know to to christianity and and and things that you hear a lot is i'm not why would i i'm not gonna i won't worship a god that demands that i love him like what kind of deity is that you know the demands that i love him and serve him and worship him that's narcissistic god that's you you're really

seeing like like part of it there because you you don't love and serve and worship him and yet he gives you something to show his great love for you that's the god that we're talking about here we're not talking about a god that says do this or else it's a it's a god that says you haven't done this you're not doing this you won't do this i'm gonna give you this it's not as if god gives his son for those who are his friends no it's uh while we were yet enemies christ died for us and that is that is the the clearest testimony of the love of the father is that he does not he does not wait for us to get ourselves right with him and then once we were right with him once we were his his allies and his friends by works of ours then he redeems us no while while

we could do nothing while we were in fact doing the very opposite of what we should do that is when christ dies we're we are so opposed to god we are such enemies of god that he uses us to take the life of his son we're the ones that do it you know he said he sends his son i mean it's like it's like the the parable the the vineyard he sends his son and we kill him yeah uh it's it's not it's not as though uh god even had to had to do this execution we did that we we do this and we don't have to be coerced into it or talked it it's not as though a messenger from heaven came to take came to all these people and said well you know you're gonna have to sacrifice this guy and they were like, I don't know, God, it's kind of weird.

No, they were more than, they are ready to go. They are ready to kill this guy. His blood be on us and on our children. That's it. Better that one man should die than the whole nation. Yeah. Yeah. Peter says that he was delivered up by the predetermined plan

of foreknowledge of God, but put to death by the hands of evil men. Yeah. So this was part of God's, this was God's plan, and yet it was executed by sinners. and in the very act of killing the messiah the messiah was winning salvation for them god's uh god's mysterious ways well speaking of substitution uh let's move on because we got we have uh another part of this beautiful story coming up here verse 13 it's because it's not over abraham so after the angel speaks abraham raised his eyes and looked and behold behind him

a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered him up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. I was looking this morning at some Christian art that depicts Genesis chapter 22, and it's pretty fascinating. I found an illustrated book of the Gospels from Armenia, of all places, in the 15th century. And what's fascinating about it is in the Armenian translation of Genesis chapter 22, it says that the ram was not caught in the thicket, but that he was hanging in the thicket. And so in this artwork that they have in this Armenian Gospel, there's a ram, and you can see its horns are wrapped around one of the limbs in this large bush or small tree, and the ram is hanging there off of the limbs. And the

reason that the artwork is depicting it that way is not only the Bible translation, but because this ram is seen as an embodiment or a foreshadowing of the Lamb of God who dies in our place so just as christ hung upon the tree so this ram is hanging by his horns by his horns from the tree but this ram this this is where it it gets both more complicated and and also more uh more full of grace because the scene that we've had so far is pointing us toward the sacrifice of christ But it's expanded here because what you see in the sacrifice that takes place in verse 13 is really Good Friday and Easter standing side by side in this one narrative. because both Isaac as the one who lives and the ram as the one who is sacrificed,

they're both in different ways are pointing to what Christ is going to accomplish for us. So Isaac lives just like Christ will live on the third day in his resurrection. And the ram is sacrificed just as Christ will be sacrificed in our place. So you've got Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday all pulled together in these two verses where Isaac lives, the promised son lives, and the ram caught in the thicket dies. and this was uh used by the church fathers in a multitude of ways to talk about how genesis 22 is

a foreshadowing of uh is a foreshadowing of the messiah how in in both of these in the ram and isaac we have the full message of the gospel revealed to us it's also significant at the end of verse 13 the language it's used it says that he offered him up as a burnt offering in the place of his son and it's here that you have this idea of of substitution i think this verse the closing words of verse of 13 really are at the at the foundation of the whole sacrificial system of israel so that just as this ram was sacrificed in the place of isaac so you have rams and bulls and goats and doves and pigeons, all of these are offered up in the place of the ones who are offering the sacrifice. So you already have here in verse 13 of chapter 22, the first

substitutionary sacrifice that's taking place. So that the ram is a stand-in for Isaac, just like The Passover lambs will be a stand-in for the people of Israel, and the goats that are sacrificed are a stand-in for the people of Israel, and the bulls, all of these, all of the blood of these beasts is shed instead of the blood of sinners being shed. And all of this is a prophecy built into the Old Testament worship of what takes place on the cross where God doesn't spare his own son, but delivers him up in the place of us all. Yeah, that reminds me of the old hymn, Not All the Blood of Beasts. Yeah, yeah, old Lent hymn, right? And then it says, not all the blood of beast on Jewish altars slain could give the guilty conscience peace. We're going to wash away the stain, but Christ the heavenly lamb takes all our sins away. The sacrifice of nobler name and richer blood than they.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. I think that third stanza goes on. It's got this great picture from the Old Testament. uh my faith would lay its hand on that dear head of thine as penitently here i stand confessing sin as mine or something like that anyway it's the it's the image of us standing over the crucifix over the cross with our hands on the head of christ confessing our sins just like uh in leviticus those who brought a sacrifice were to put their hands on the head of the sacrifice confess their sins over it transferring their sins by means of that

confession on to the animal who was sacrificed yeah i love that i love that hymn it's a dark yeah it's like but this is one of the things i like about it is you know it's talking about substitution and it's got the sacrificial system language in it the end of it last ends and then him is uh believe and it's dark i mean it's it's in uh i think we played in e minor so it's very dark and um but the last stanza is believing we rejoice but there's nothing there's nothing like rejoicing in like in the music like the music is like very is very uh it's very haunting yeah but you still sing this you say believing we rejoice to see the curse remove we bless the lamb with cheerful voice and sing his bleeding love yeah and and it's great because like there's

nothing like there's it's it's a haunting song and you're saying believing we rejoice and we bless the lamb with cheerful voice we sing his bleeding love and it's just like it's this grisly song that that has this cheerful language and this rejoicing language in it for those who don't have never sung that hymn you should uh you should check it out that hymn that hymn is yeah definitely look up the lyrics i i think of all the hymns that uh we have that use use the language of sacrifice especially from the old testament to talk about the sacrifice of christ i mean it's one of the top top three that do that so well because it it really does build on the image of of leviticus and hebrews to to talk about what christ has accomplished for us yeah all right we got to

we just have a few minutes left i think we can wrap this up abraham goes on to name the place where all this happens and he names it yahweh yireh yahweh of course is the divine name yireh means uh is from yara to see so he names it the the lord sees and the reason he names it that we've already we've already seen this even though we probably didn't pick up on it back in uh verse 8 verse 8 after isaac says hey hey father where is the lamb abraham says god himself will see to it god himself will we it's usually translated provide but in the hebrew it's god will see to the lamb for the burnt offering and so when abraham names the place he's reflecting back on his earlier conversation with his son the lord has seen to it the lord has taken care of it

because he has provided a substitute and so he says as it is said to this day in the mount of the Lord it will be seen. That is, we shall see that the Lord sees to it. The Lord is the one who provides that which we need. And indeed, he did. This was a place where the temple was built, and the temple itself was an architectural prophecy of who Christ is and what he was to accomplish. Then it goes on to have the second address by Christ, the angel of the Lord to abraham he says he called him a second time from heaven and he says by myself i have sworn declares the lord because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son your only son indeed i will greatly bless you and i will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand

which is on the seashore and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies and this is significant this is verse 18 in your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice now the reason that verse 18 is so significant is because that is the verse that paul will quote in galatians chapter 3 verse 16 to talk about the promised seed which is christ And as Paul says, it doesn't say seeds in the plural, but seed in the singular. So Genesis 22, 18, this seed, which in Hebrew is Zerah, this seed in which all the nations of the earth shall be blessed is not Isaac, and it's not Jacob, and it's not David,

and it's not any of the other physical descendants of Abraham. Instead, it is that seed of promise that we heard about already in Genesis 3, 15. that will be the one in whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed so the the the account wraps up by bringing us full circle back to the one that this account is is all about really from the beginning if you superimpose on genesis 22 the vision of the crucifixion of the resurrection then you will understand the chapter aright that's the only way that this chapter

really is brought to its completion and its full meaning is when you see this story super imposed over the story the story of Christ himself we have it all here the father sacrificing

the son the son's obedience the lamb that is to be provided by God the ram caught in the thicket isaac living even though a sacrifice is offered and then finally the promise of the seed in whom all the nations of the earth shall be shall be blessed yeah i love that he says that uh when he talks about the seed and he says that he will possess the gates of his enemies yeah this is not like talking about like entering the you know like canaan

or something you know like this is this is this is gates of hell stuff yeah this is when i hear that i i hear jesus telling peter you know about the church that the gates of hell will not fail he's going to die and he's going to take back the you have the keys to hell and the grave and this kind of thing death in the grave storms the gates of hell yeah yeah when you possess When you possess the gates, you possess the city. That's it. You have conquered the city. And so, yeah, it's really it ends on this triumphant note of conquest, even though the chapter has been about sacrifice and death and altars and all of this. It ends really with this note of resurrection triumph that we have in Christ as he possesses the gates of his enemies. First of all, you have to think of yourself as his enemy.

And when you think about gates and this thing, you can sort of get a picture of all of humanity locked within. It's almost as if Christ marches on the city where we're prisoners and don't even know it. And he conquers those gates and he opens those things wide. And we're all free. We're all free. and this is this is what he does it's uh it's great it's great yeah we're not we're not alongside him you know with with axes and and uh and hammers tearing down gates we're inside he's he's doing all the work he's liberating us he's freeing us from uh our own death and and

enslavement yeah good stuff well chad we're out of time but that seems like a good place to end it right there yeah that is that is great we've got just a few kind of wrap-up verses in that story but uh yeah that's that's it very good all right well thank you guys for joining us and uh we'll see you next week you