Abraham and Isaac
My community group read the book “Radical” by David Platt and one of the challenges in the book was to commit to read through the entire Bible in a year. It’s been awhile since I’ve done so, so I thought it would be good to accept the challenge and read the entire Bible again.
Reading the Bible this quickly is difficult for me as I always come across things I’d like to dig deeper into, but nonetheless must keep going. I’m way past this part in my reading but I cannot get Genesis 22 out of my head. I was always taught that God will never ask you to do anything that contradicts his Word in the Bible. If that is true, how do we reconcile that God told Abraham to kill his son? If I told anyone that I have heard directly from God that I was to harm my daughter, all of you would rush to tell me I had definitely not heard from God. Yet Abraham had heard from God. He didn’t tell anyone what he was going to do because everyone would have said he was delusional or crazy.
What an amazing example of “obedience”, “faith”, and “belief”. If Abraham had tried to kill Isaac simply because God told him to, that would only constitute obedience (this is what I see the church trying to accomplish and it doesn’t work). To have faith requires the possibility that you may be proven wrong. To believe something is to have an assurance that you are right. So if Abraham truly believed God would not have him kill Isaac - that would really not be a true test of his faith. Instead, he believes he must kill him (because God told him to) but at the same time have faith that Isaac will not die (or at least be brought back to life)!
This blows my mind – Abraham is the man.
Reading the Bible this quickly is difficult for me as I always come across things I’d like to dig deeper into, but nonetheless must keep going. I’m way past this part in my reading but I cannot get Genesis 22 out of my head. I was always taught that God will never ask you to do anything that contradicts his Word in the Bible. If that is true, how do we reconcile that God told Abraham to kill his son? If I told anyone that I have heard directly from God that I was to harm my daughter, all of you would rush to tell me I had definitely not heard from God. Yet Abraham had heard from God. He didn’t tell anyone what he was going to do because everyone would have said he was delusional or crazy.
What an amazing example of “obedience”, “faith”, and “belief”. If Abraham had tried to kill Isaac simply because God told him to, that would only constitute obedience (this is what I see the church trying to accomplish and it doesn’t work). To have faith requires the possibility that you may be proven wrong. To believe something is to have an assurance that you are right. So if Abraham truly believed God would not have him kill Isaac - that would really not be a true test of his faith. Instead, he believes he must kill him (because God told him to) but at the same time have faith that Isaac will not die (or at least be brought back to life)!
This blows my mind – Abraham is the man.
when he told his servant to wait and "we" will be back. I don't think he thought he would be sacrificing his son. Or at least he figured God would raise him if he did.
That's what I mean. It borders on absurd but it isn't. He had faith that Isaac would not die but he believed he had to kill him. That is incredible to me.
First of all....welcome back to the blog...2011 edition. I hope everyone's new year is shaping up in a way that glorifies GOD.
"I was always taught that God will never ask you to do anything that contradicts his Word in the Bible. If that is true, how do we reconcile that God told Abraham to kill his son?"
How do you see that God's directive to Abraham contradicts His word? Seems to me that God is God and we are not and whatever He asks us to do we should do. I don't see the contradiction. If He asked us to do the same then we would have to obey (now that is a little hypothetical because we would have to justify it from scripture and find other ways to prove that it was the God and not the devil, etc...but the point remains that we should do anything God asks us).
But we also have to keep in mind what God was doing at the time. How does this story fit into history? How does this story fit in with God sacrificing His own son? Then we might be able to understand what He was up to but maybe not since He is God and we are not.
Incredible Faith, definitely, amazing obedience, contradictory...I don't see it
Happy new year to you too Jim!
Quoting the 10 commandments
Exodus 20:13
13 “You shall not murder.
I realize the timetable and the command had not been given yet.
Let me know how you square it with that. (please don't assume I think it's a contradiction either)
How do we define murder? There are numerous places in the bible where God told His people to go and wipe out the other tribe or people and burn all of the possessions. So what I take away from that is that when the command comes from God it is not murder. When it comes from us it is murder. Everything in the 10 commandments relates to things we do that are disobedient to God. Killing because God told you to (and you better be right as Abraham was :)) does not fall into the category of murder.
I think we all agree that this is not murder, we can let that go unless someone wants to continue it.
My main focus was on the obedience, faith and belief aspect. Craig and I both work for companies in which we OBEY what they say but at times have no faith or belief that the directives we are given will work. Abraham however is completely different. He OBEYS God and BELIEVES that he must kill Isaac. At the same time, he has FAITH that Isaac will not die (or at least won't stay dead)! That paradox is amazing to me.
Obedience, Faith and Belief are all distinct things. Sometimes I think we confuse them and act like they are all the same.
This (near) human sacrifice is very troubling to me. What would this have accomplished? Certainly not ultimate forgiveness, or removing the need for Christ to come.
It is interesting about the "only son" refernce, the son carrying wood on his on back, ascending a hill. Clearly, there is foreshadowing for the sacrifice of Christ (possibly crucified on the exact same hill, but thousands of years later).
Like Larry said, if someone told me that God told them to sacrifice their child to him, I would guarantee that God did NOT say that.
-Kevin
Kevin – I agree it’s not easy to fathom this. Would you sacrifice one of your children if you KNEW that God told you to do so? Abraham had some form of direct communication. I have no idea if it was audible, or in person, or through revelation or whatever. He didn’t have to seek counsel of others or the Scriptures and pray for deeper understanding – he KNEW what he was supposed to do.
He also had the promise of Gen 17:19
19 Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son, and you will call him Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his descendants after him.
Which is where I go back to the whole obedience, faith, belief thing.
What about sacrificing your child for the sake of your country? People do that every day – is that comparable?
Good point. Its hard to make things black and white when “sacrifice” can come in many levels, from putting yourself at risk to save another, to literally sacrificing yourself like Samson. That ending is baffling to me.
-Kevin
Actually this whole Abraham/Isaac thing brings in the question, "Is an action morally good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is morally good?" The only reason we question it at all must be that we believe the latter to be true, but why might it not be the former?
Good questions. Can God even DO "evil", or is whatever God does the defition of "good"?
-Kevin
Can God make a rock so big He can't move it --- NO
Can God do evil. NO -
His attributes that make Him God are that He is All Knowing, All Powerful, Perfectly Holy, Perfectly Just. Evil cannot be in His presence, hence the reason Adam and Eve had to leave the garden. Sin cannot be in His presence. For me, that is the amazing thing about salvation (off topic maybe but...) we exchange our resume for Christ's resume and when we die God sees use through Jesus' perfect resume and we are therefore acceptable to Him. Wow!
To directly answer Larry's question:
If God commands an action to be done anything else but doing that action would be sin. If He commands it the action is therefore good.