Day 20

Charles Price

“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.”  —GENESIS 22:12


After ten years of waiting for the son God had promised him in his old age, Abraham became impatient, and fathered a son through their Egyptian maid, Hagar, and named him Ishmael.  No doubt he was delighted, and felt he had produced the son God had promised him.


Fourteen years later, God gave him the promised son, Isaac, who was born to Abraham’s wife, Sarah, also in her very old age! During the twenty five years that had passed, waiting for the promised son, Abraham’s initial trust in God had wavered. He felt obligated to ‘do something’ to help God’s promise be fulfilled, and ended up with Ishmael who became a constant thorn in Isaac’s side. Substitutes for a genuine work of God always become a thorn in the side of a real work of God.


With Isaac now growing up, God tests Abraham again. He tells him to offer his son, Isaac, in sacrifice on Mount Moriah. Every promise God had made to Abraham was to be fulfilled through Isaac, and now he is to slay him! This time, Abraham did not panic or look for a way out. Hebrews 11:17-19 says, “By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice … even though God had said to him, ‘It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned’. Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.” 


When Abraham lifted the knife to slay his son, bound on the altar they had built together, God intervened before the deadly blow would fall. “Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” (Genesis 22:12) It is God’s prerogative to promise us - but then to test us. What we do in the testing period may be crucial, but to ‘fear God’ is to live in such dependence on Him, and abandonment of our own ideas to His full and complete sovereignty, so that God can then do anything with us He wants – for we will trust Him to work out His good purpose according to His timetable, and His alone.  


This gives long sightedness beyond the immediate barriers, and enabled Jesus to say of Abraham, “Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.” (John 8:56) This was a man living in the fear of God – being able to see beyond his own life, through centuries and millenniums to the outworking of God’s purpose, of which his own role was such a small part.