Integrity

"... and He valued it."

I WAS THINKIN’ about Isaac. Why would God who gave Abraham his son, with the promise of future generations, then ask him to offer him in sacrifice? I know what the New Testament revelations tell us about this event. But putting myself in Abraham’s shoes, why would I know that voice was God’s?

Would God who gave you the boat then sink it? Would He ask you to let go of what He supplied?

This has been a hard lesson for me, yet I see it throughout the Scriptures. Abraham knew God’s Voice. They had talked many times. Around him were cultures that sacrificed their children to idols, and in the future generations, God would judge them for this. Yet on that day, the instruction was clear, and Abraham obeyed.

We cling to our preferences. We won’t eat this. We won’t do that. We won’t go there or be around “those people”. Is God asking just our obedience, or is it that He wants us to see our own backbone? I think He wanted me to see my own strength in who I am in Him, that I can be me, and He knows me and doesn’t require me to change.

Abraham obeyed, but he told his servants he and Isaac would return. He told Isaac God would supply a ram. He still laid Isaac on the altar they built and raised his knife. He had to hear God speak and know it was God in order to be stopped from lowering it. And there’s Isaac now terrified of his dad? “Stupid old man.” Actually, Isaac and his brother, Ishmael, buried their father together (Genesis 25:9).

Obedience is but one facet of a larger diamond. Obedience may dig it out of the ground and determine its shape, but what makes it shine is that God gave it to us and allows us to determine the setting.

Thinking of this as Israel and Old Covenant Law, God did not allow them to set the rules because they’d goof them up. His worship would become just like the selfish, self-serving worship of false gods in Egypt. And the people proved this many times. So God told them what to build, how to fashion it, and what furnishings went inside. He told them how to worship Him and what was sin. The priest-line was chosen and their inheritance tied to their service in the tabernacle and later, the temple. They laid the sacrifice on the altar and slaughtered it at God’s instructions. Just like Abraham, doing what they were told. Yet, what they were supposed to see was who He’d made them to be. That they had a voice, an image among the nations, and He valued it.

What we give up, we think will not be what He has supplied, but it is in the knowing He gave it to us, and it is now ours, that we see the fullness of who He has made us to be.

The priests cried for Jesus’ death, shouting, “His blood be upon us and our children (Matthew 27:25),” and it had been since Abraham made that fated trek to the top of the mountain in obedience to the craziest “word from the Lord.” It had been since Aaron was anointed to the priesthood, the oil of anointing dripping from his beard onto the very hem of his garment (Psalm 133:2).

Jesus died as the Lamb of God, the Ram in the thicket. He died, taking the place of the Father, so we could inherit His Kingdom. He died because He was the Christ filled with the Anointing of God, filled with the Spirit without measure. He died as King of the Jews, the covenant people of God, as the King of Kings, and our High Priest. Knowing what God had given Him, He laid it down in order to prove He knew who He was, and God accepted it.

In our laying down what matters to us, we gain far more than we would by refusing obedience and clinging onto it. But we don’t see the laying down as loss, not even of what we laid there. Jesus did not stop becoming the Son of God. Abraham went home with Isaac. I still hold onto my personality, my sense of humor, and this gift of writing. Sacrifice has shown me strong and determined instead. Where, Moses disobeyed, striking the rock that is Christ (Numbers 20:11), and Elijah hid in a cave, afraid to speak out to a queen who he’d already spoken to loudly (1 Kings 19:9), I stuck my neck out and said “no.” And God honored it.

Genesis 22:1-14
“And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. (2) And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. (3) And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.”

(4) “Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. (5) And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you. (6) And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together. (7) And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? (8) And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.”

(9) And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. (10) And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. (11) And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. (12) And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. (13) And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind him a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son. (14) And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovahjireh: as it is said to this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.”


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com