Genesis 22 - What's Your One Thing? (A short Bible Study)

I’ve had the privilege of being present when people have committed their lives to Jesus, either for the first time or in renewal.  In some cases, they express something a lot like, “Jesus, everything I have and am is Yours.”  Honestly, it’s quite moving and in my experience, it’s been sincere.  A moment of surrender, though, gets tested through the course of life.  Sincerity meets reality when Jesus says, “thank you for trusting me with everything, now I want you to give me THIS thing.” And we realize that maybe we hadn’t quite thought of that.

We’re in Genesis 22, the part of the story when Abraham’s faith is forced to move from concept to concrete. Go ahead and open up your copy of the Scriptures and we’ll dive into this together. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:21

I've had the privilege of being present with people when they've committed their lives to Jesus, either for the very first time or in some sense of renewal. In some cases, they'll express something along these lines. Jesus, all I have and everything that I am is yours. Honestly, it's quite moving. And in my experience, it has been sincere. But even sincere surrender in a moment gets tested over the course of life. When that reality sinks in and Jesus says, Thank you for offering me everything. And what I really want is this thing. And we kind of realize that we hadn't thought about it in those terms. On that happy note, welcome to Meet Me in the Word. I am so glad that you've joined in with us today. We're in Genesis chapter 22, and it's the part of the story where Abraham is tested and his faith is forced to move from concept into something much more concrete. Go ahead and open up your copy of the scriptures and we'll dive into this together. But before we go any farther, let's pray. Jesus, thank you that you understand the depths of who we are, our intricacies, our quirks, all the different things. God, thank you that you receive us joyfully when we commit ourselves to you. And God, we also recognize that you want us to be all in with you. God, show us what that looks like. Be with us now. Amen. All right, we're in Genesis twenty two, and we're focusing our attention on the first nineteen verses, which is the majority of the chapter, uh, and it's the bulk of the narrative here. Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, Abraham, here I am, he replied. Then God said, Take your son, your only son whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you. Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship, and then we will come back to you. Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he carried, or he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father, Abraham, Father? Yes, my son, Abraham replied. The fire and wood are here, Isaac said, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Abraham answered, God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son, and the two of them went on together. When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, Abraham, Abraham, here I am, he replied. Do not lay a hand on the boy, he said. Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son. Abraham looked up, and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place, The Lord will provide. And to this day it is said, On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided. The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me. Then Abraham returned to his servants, and they set off together for Beersheba, and Abraham stayed in Beersheba. Let's go ahead and take a moment to pause and listen to God. You can pause this podcast if that's helpful. All right, let's uh let's talk about this, shall we? It's another one of those stories, another one of those accounts in the book of Genesis that definitely should make us feel uh a certain kind of way about what's going on. And and while there is all kinds of imagery here about uh what would happen with Jesus, there is also a sense of like, wow, did that did that really just happen? And and I think you know, if you are new to the scriptures, it probably did strike you that way. And for those of us who have been reading and perhaps have read this story several times, we kind of know what to expect. And we've maybe processed it in a little bit um more of a way, but but there's still this sense of like this is this is rather uh in incredible, all of what's happened and just the the fact that it did. So a couple of things for us to think about is um we'll begin with this. Uh Isaac was uh the fulfillment of a 25-year-old promise, right? He he really was, and and this is even beyond that now. This isn't 25 years after the fact, that's when he was born. So from promise to his birth, that's 25 years, and then and then we move on uh a length of time, quite a length of time, to the point where where he's um something of a young man, probably, and and this is all taking place. So when I'm saying that, I'm also meaning to say that Isaac was Abraham's entire world. Any of you who are parents have this innate feeling in you where you're like, yeah, I there is no harm that I'm ever going to like willfully inflict on my child, right? Like there's maybe the corrective and we can hurt their feelings a little bit, you know, those kinds of things happen, but the intent is never about hurting them or giving up on them, much less sacrificing them. Like that's it's just a wild thought. But for Abraham, I think it's even more intensified because A or because Isaac wasn't just his son, he was also, right, the fulfillment of that promise. He is is a living, breathing evidence that God kept his promise to Abraham, and so just really was his uh answer as to uh their entire world. Now I wanted to insert some personal opinion that I think is supported by the text. Uh so the opinion is this uh number one, there was zero chance that God was going to let Isaac die. God does, I don't think it's just like a light ruse either, or or just a ploy of some kind, but I don't think that there was any world in which God was like, oh, well, this is just gonna be the end if if, you know, yeah, he just wasn't in that. I don't think he was operating that way. The second part is that Abraham believed God would come through because he had, right? Abraham Abraham believed God and he had seen over the course of those 25 years and through the birth of his son that God did keep his promises and that he would come through. Now, did he understand how exactly that was going to take place? Did he believe in in the potential resurrection of the dead if if we're to get to that point? We don't know that part. We're not told any of that. But he actually expresses his belief that God would provide what was needed there in verse 8. God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. And again, we don't know uh the emotions that were flowing between the two of them. We don't know the rest of the dialogue or or what might have been going through both of their hearts and minds as as the um as Isaac is put on the altar and bound and all of those sorts of deals if there was like words of reassurance or we don't know that. But it seems to me that Abraham was convinced that one way or another, God really would provide and that it would be okay. And it is an example of of this deep trust in the fact that the Lord would come through and uh that this promise would be fulfilled and kept. Uh all that is there. Uh and then next I wanted to just appreciate that that God provided the exact right thing at the exact right time. Now, maybe that ram was stuck there in the thicket the whole time, and Abraham just didn't notice up to that point. Uh, but uh he does provide, and uh the opportunity to worship there is fulfilled. Uh all of that is there. And and then we see, as Jesus followers, people who believe in the in the birth and the life and the death and the resurrection of Jesus, we see all kinds of foreshadowing and imagery that that evokes that in us. And uh it's it really is um it becomes beautiful, this really angsty story, this this thing that makes us kind of like, oh, like how did that all work out? And what were they all going through? Then when we look at it through the lens of Jesus, it begins to build this idea that that God loves us, his people so much that he's willing to do whatever it takes uh to bring about not only justice and the forgiveness of sins, uh, but to bring life into our lives. So there's definitely some strong foreshadowing uh there. The the region of Moriah, the the kind of the mount that's there. Uh we learn kind of later on that that's where Solomon would build his temple. It's right there by by Jerusalem. And so there is just loaded uh imagery there for us. All right. I want to ask you something uh that I I think might compel you to to just kind of sort through and and and wrestle a little bit. We've been uh talking about wrestling here uh a fair bit. Uh why do you think God still acts asks us to exercise faith in connection with his promises? Remember, this this was a promise that was I don't want to say it was delayed, but it was a long time coming. It was then fulfilled, and yet God still asked for Abraham to not just speak faith, but to act on faith, to act on trust. And I feel like that still happens today in our own situations in a variety of different ways. Why do you think that is? Why do you think God still wants us to partner with him in that sense of exercising faith, even though he's made us these promises? What's that all about? Hang out with that question for a little bit, and hopefully it will draw you nearer to God in your connection with him. Let's go ahead and pray. Jesus, we praise you and we adore you. God, we thank you that you are truly the God who provides. Thank you, God, that we um we can trust you. Lord, help our hearts to to offer all that we are, and especially that one thing. God, that one thing that we think about maybe more than anything else. Help us to trust you with even that. We love you. Amen.