Abraham and Isaac - Let's dig in

In this podcast episode, the host is discussing the story of Abraham and the significance of circumcision in the Jewish faith. Abraham had multiple tests of faith, and the host believes that these tests were meant to reveal his faith rather than produce it. The host also explains the promises made to Abraham and the importance of his name change. The episode then delves into the story of Abraham being tested by God to sacrifice his son Isaac, highlighting the use of the word "love" for the first time in the Bible and the location of the sacrifice, which is later where the temple in Jerusalem is built. The episode concludes with a mention of David purchasing the land for the temple. Good day, everybody. I'm so excited today. This is our 10th podcast on the Biblically Wired podcast. It has been a mountain that I feel like God has helped me climb. I love to teach, but I'm not techie. And it has been a learning curve in many, many ways. I am so grateful you are here with me. It seems like every single podcast, I want to tell people, if you're going to listen to one podcast, listen to this one. But this time, I really, really mean it. This is so foundational to our faith. It will blow your mind. We are focusing on Abraham. We're going to diddle daddle along a little bit prior to Genesis 22, the offering of Isaac. But we're going to go verse by verse through that offering. And wow, wow, wow. If I could do an emoji right now, I don't know if I would choose the mind blown, the bowing down, or the excited emoji. Because God has brought so much to my attention regarding this text, I could just go on for days. So this might be a little bit longer than our other podcasts. But I want to tell you that digging into Genesis will absolutely tenfold magnify the foundation you have in Jesus Christ. I promise you, you are doing a good work today. So it is believed by the Jewish rabbis and faith that Abraham had 10 tests of his faith, very monumental tests that helped to build his faith. But from my perspective, these tests were not to produce faith. But they helped reveal the faith of Abraham to himself and to people around him. Whether he fails them or not, it ends up revealing his faith in the person of God. So I'm going to do the quickest review here in chapter 12. Abraham is asked to leave his city of Ur and go to the promised land. He is promised seven things. Remember, seven is the word for complete, or a vow or an oath. So this would be more a vow or oath. So what was he promised? He was promised to be a great nation, which number one, he has no kids, that God would bless him, make his name great, that he will be a blessing, God will bless those who bless him, curse those that curse you, and all the families of the earth will be blessed through you. Okay, so chapter 15, in a nugget here. Remember, the Lord is the sole signer of the covenant with Abraham. So this is an unconditional new covenant root, that God will do the work to make sure these promises come true. It is not about the actions of the person. It is 100% a grace gift, just like Jesus on the cross. You can listen to my prior podcasts on Genesis and get more information around all of that. So chapter 17 is something we haven't hit yet. And that is the chapter where, as a sign of the covenant, God asks them to circumcise as a sign of the covenant. God asks Abraham to circumcise him and his descendants, and also servants and sojourners are meant to be circumcised. So circumcision, as a sign of a covenant, is something that's hard for us to wrap around. But one, it is a sign of belonging to God. Once you are circumcised, you can't go back. It's another sign of what we have in God. And that is, we are guaranteed our salvation when we are born again. Our hearts are circumcised as a sign of our deliverance from our old self. Also, circumcision, if you dig into the bones of it, we see it's mostly a sign of a covenant, but it deals with the organ of procreation. So it reminds the Jewish people of the seed, the special seed of Abraham. And this seed is going to be their Messiah, our Messiah. This is the seed that's predicted in Genesis 3.15 that we've been following. So Abraham is now the next person chosen to bring this seed through his descendants. So why does God ask them to circumcise their infants on the eighth day? That is the question of the hour. Nothing God does is without wisdom and layers of meaning. So the number eight, you guys, in the culture of the Jewish people, is the number for a new beginning. It is the number used for us being born again. So the circumcision of an infant on the eighth day is now represented as the circumcision of our heart when we're born again. You can't make this stuff up. It's just crazy. Also, the way God made infants, the eighth day, scientifically and medically, is the safest day for infants to be circumcised. On the eighth day, prothrombin, which is a blood clotting agent in our blood, is at its highest level. So these infants being circumcised on the eighth day were protected by God for their obedience with this prothrombin. So cool. Also, circumcision was a way to keep the Jewish people more hygienic. There's medical evidence and studies. There was a few studies back in the 40s and 50s that revealed a few facts. One, circumcision increases the vigor of the Jewish race. It is helpful for the woman. Women in the Jewish faith have the lowest risk of cervical cancer. And so preserving the women preserves the seed that is to go out so that the Messiah eventually will come. There's probably many other uncovered reasons, but circumcision is a frequent, frequent conversation in the New Testament to the Jewish population. Circumcision, as a sign of the covenant you make with God, absolutely needed to be performed by the Gentile converts. As the Gentile converts were grafted into their family. It went without saying that for thousands of years, we've been circumcising our servants, aliens that come to join our community, new believers. And we're going to stop now. It didn't make any sense why God would stop that as it was a sign of our covenant relationship with God in their minds. It's truly unbelievable how much circumcision comes up in the New Testament. So in this portion in chapter 17, I also want to point out that Abraham got the name Abraham here. He was Abram up to this point, which means the father of many. But right here, God gives him a new name, Abraham, and makes him the father of nations. Okay, so Abraham and Sarah received new names. And it is of note here that these names seemed impossible. These promises of God were not something we could ever imagine. But it is something that God will accomplish. So notice the first God gives Abraham his new name. He is giving his new name as a promise, right? He is renaming him because this is something that God will accomplish. In our own life as Christians, we get new names from God. We are now saints. We are now righteous or made right with God. We are legally justified. We are blameless. Blameless means whole. W-h-o-l-e, in case my microphone didn't do a good job there. Blameless means whole. So we are made whole through the sacrifice of Christ. But it is so hard to picture this when we are first born again. When we're first born again, this is grace exploded. This is a Christmas gift that keeps on giving. It feels impossible. But we begin to wear that new name slowly but surely, and it starts to resonate with us as truth eventually. But it was God who accomplished that name on our behalf. This is the same thing with Abraham. A name in this culture meant a promise from God, as we see here, the essence of who you are, a name that declares what your ministry is. And that happens with every prophet. Or you're named to declare to the Israelite nation something they're doing wrong. That's what happens to the children of Isaiah. I mean, it's pretty crazy. So a name is much bigger than anything we can imagine today. Okay, so we did a lot of review, and we are going to jump into Genesis 22. I'm going to start with the first verse here. Now, it came about after these things, or after some time, that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham. And Abraham says back, here I am. So testing of Abraham. I said earlier, the Jewish said he had 10 tests. There is a belief in Christianity, I've heard people say this, that God doesn't test us. But that's not true. God tests people all throughout the Word of God. It is true that God does not tempt us. But he does test us. Proverbs 17.3 says, fire tests the purity of silver and gold, but the Lord tests the heart. Luke 6.45 talks about the heart, out of the abundance of the heart, his mouth speaks. Or what I always say to people is, what's on your heart comes out your lips. So what you say is actually a great test for where your heart is in that season. Okay, so verse two, God says to Abraham, take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you. So a few things on this verse. A really amazing thing is love. This is the first time love is used in the Bible. This is the first time we see that word. This is always an imperative, eye-opening thing when you're studying through the Old Testament. Moses purposely, by the power of the Holy Spirit, uses the word love here as the first example of love, being a father and son relationship, and in the context of sacrifice. Guys, this is huge. This is huge. So he's telling him to go to where? The land of Moriah, and we have to investigate this. So guys, Moriah is modern-day Jerusalem. There are three mounts there. If you're coming from the south where Abraham came from, he would have walked about 50 miles, and from a distance, he would have seen three mounts. Mount Zion in his left, Mount Moriah in the middle, and the Mount of Olives on the right. All of these are very important mounts. So this Mount Moriah, Abraham is bringing Isaac 2,000 years before Christ, okay? At this same place, 1,000 years before Christ, King David purchases a threshing floor so that right there, the temple will be built for God. On the same place that Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac is where the temple is built, and the Israelite people will be bringing their sacrifices to God. Okay, I know, I know. So when David purchased this land, it was a threshing floor for the Jebusites. David had let the Jebusites remain peacefully in the land, and at this point, David asked a Jebusite if he could purchase this threshing floor. And the deal goes down, and I have to describe to you what a threshing floor is. A threshing floor was used during the harvest of wheat. It was a flat place as high on the mountain as you can get for a big, flat place. This was a place that people would thresh their wheat. So the wind would come across this flat place as they threw their wheat they freshly harvest into the air, and the chaff will separate from the wheat. So they would end up filling their baskets with the straight up wheat grain. Okay, Jesus is described as one that divides the wheat and the chaff, the righteous and the unrighteous. Did I tell you guys this has lots of layers? It's unreal. Okay, so Solomon builds his temple here, and the dome of the rock sits in this very spot on this mount. So this spot for centuries received the blood sacrifice of the Israelites on the Day of Atonement. Scholars scholars understand Jesus died on the cross, either right near Mount Moriah or on the summit. Calvary and Golgotha were just outside the gates of Jerusalem, and Jesus dies there. The Messianic Jews believe where Jesus died is on the same Mount Moriah. So in 2nd Chronicles 3, we see Solomon builds the temple there. So it is completed. Now, in verse 9, it says they come to the place that God had told them to go to. And it's obvious that God had a real actual spot in mind. He had marked a place for his future self to reside in the Holy of Holies of that temple and receive the sacrifice of his people, the blood. This place was marked by God and the meaning of the word marked is the name Zion. Okay, so now we've got the command of God that came to Abraham, and we know the place where Abraham is going to bring Isaac. So a burnt offering was not burned alive in this time. Sacrificial offerings started at the gate of the Garden of Eden, where God placed Adam and Eve outside the Garden of Eden, and Cain and Abel would have brought a sacrifice to that gate. Sacrifice is not new to Abraham, and he understands it. So this test of bringing Isaac and sacrificing him on Mount Moriah, it was in total opposite of the promise that God gave Abraham. It's not making sense. Abraham knew, and it says in Genesis 21, 12, the chapter before this, that in Isaac, your seed will be called. And sacrifice of humans was a pagan practice. This was not in congruency with anything Abraham believed about God. So look at Abraham's faith here. We don't see him saying, I, me or my. We see him rising early in the morning, chopping the wood, saddling the donkey, gathering his servants, and taking off by foot, the 50-mile walk. Abraham is a man of steely faith here, ironclad. But Abe's faith was also so prepared and strong by this point, and his knowledge of God was very vast. In Hebrews 11, it sheds a great light on what was going on in Abraham's head. So Abraham had to have his faith, not in the promises of God, but in the promise keeper. We can have faith in promises sometimes, which is so limited. But to have faith in the promise keeper grounds us, and we can have peace and joy with the understanding that God is going to bring about this promise. According to Hebrews 11, and it's crazy, you guys, in verses Hebrews 11, 17 through 19, it says, by faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises, was offering up his only son. It was he, Abraham, to whom it was said, in Isaac, your descendants shall be called. So Abraham considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type. So this is what's going on in Abraham's head. I know the promises of God. Better yet, I know the promisor, God himself. And this is a pagan practice that's against the heart of God, and would go against the promise. So the only thing Abraham could picture is that he would sacrifice Isaac, and God would raise him from the dead. And we see this because in verse five, it says, Abraham said to his young men, the servants, stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there, and we will worship and return to you. So we've got to take a break in this spot. It's crazy, guys. Okay, so do you hear what he says? We will worship and return to you. That word we is included in both statements. So this is also the first chapter where worship is used as a word. It's called shakah, S-H-A-C-H-A-H, shakah. And it means to bow down. Abraham is saying that we are going to go to that place, we are going to bow down and worship God through sacrifice, through sacrifice. So this is what the Israelites do for generations to come. They worship through sacrifice. Also, we worship when we lay down our lives for Jesus Christ. It is an act of worship to shed our ego, to relent to his ways and his plans, and be obedient. It's an incredible act of worship. But here, Abraham is saying that we will return to you. So Abraham believes that God's going to raise Isaac from the dead. Crazy stuff. Okay, so there hadn't been a resurrection or that we know of a healing where someone who died came back and was resuscitated to life. But Abraham, it's the only thing his human reasoning can come up with here. Now, in this verse five, there's another thing we have to go over. I have to almost apologize for how many things I need to emphasize in these chapters. But it's also important. So how old was Isaac when this happened? This has been a big question for theologians over the years. And I wanted to go over what I believe is the age of Isaac at this point, because it's cool. So when we look at this picture of Isaac, he is called here in verse five, a lad by Abraham. That's how we translated it in my New American Standard Bible, lad, L A D, which to us in English, describes a young boy. But the Hebrew word here for lad has a wide, wide range of uses. And it goes from a young baby to a young man, which is much older. So the term encompasses a lot of meanings. In Exodus 2 and 2 Samuel 12, it's used as a baby. And in 2 Samuel 14, it's used as a man. It can also be used as servant. And that's in 2 Samuel 16. And right here for Abraham's servants, which in my translation, calls it young men, but definitely men. So the word servant is precisely the same term that is used here in verse five, and 12 to refer to Isaac. So were the servants that came here, were they young boys? Were they eight years old? No. So we know that the word is opening us up to more ideas of his age. So we got to look at evidence, evidence in the scripture. And look at Abraham in verse six, Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son. And he took in his hand, the fire and the knife. He took the matches and the knife, and he gave all the wood to Isaac to carry. The amount of wood needed for a human sacrifice is not just a couple boards, a couple logs, so to say what we would use when we're camping today. You need quite a bit of wood to sacrifice even a child. Now picture this, they got to walk uphill. They got to climb a mount. It is not a big mountain. If you go to Jerusalem, none of these mounts are mountains. But they are raised up with valleys in between. And they definitely could be determined as a mount. But either way, they're going uphill and good old Abe is old. And his son is young and healthy. So who's going to carry the wood? Right? Isaac. But what seven or eight year old could carry enough wood up a large hill on his own? It ain't happening. It ain't happening. Now we're going to refer to an early Jewish historian called Josephus Flavius. Josephus should be in the library of any pastor. And if you wanted to look some stuff up, I'm sure it's in his library. Josephus was a Jew. He was raised in a priestly family. And he became a Pharisee at age 19. But he was very impressed with Rome, and definitely was a traitor to the Jews. At one point, he kind of vacillates between helping the Jews and helping Rome. After Rome defeated and took the temple in AD 70, Josephus was arrested. But he predicted the rise of the Emperor Vespasian. And when that happened, two years later, Josephus was released from prison and took the Emperor's last name, Flavius. I mean, that's crazy for a Jewish Pharisee to change his name to that of an Emperor. It really is a mark of a traitor. But he then began to write the history of the Jews. Many think that Rome, who loves history, and wants to preserve it, asked him to write the history of the Jewish population. So the Jews were written about by this historian, and he wrote it in both Aramaic and Greek. And here, in the antiquities of the Jews, he gives the oral tradition on Abraham and Isaac, amongst a million other things. But Josephus says that Isaac was 25 years old. Theologians looking at the Old Testament, the timeline of Sarah dying, and dying when Isaac was 37, the evidence of where this was, and him carrying his wood and whatnot, is stacked against an early age. Adam Clark, who's a theologian who's done a lot of studies in Genesis, his age estimate is used a lot in sermons today, which is the age of 33. Very close to the same age that Jesus was sacrificed. So what is my conclusion? And this isn't the only things I referenced, but the things I'm bringing up here. Look through at Credible Resources if you want to expand the reasoning behind this. But my conclusion is he was between 25 and 33. That the evidence stands very strong for that age. So could Abraham have bound his son if his son was not being obedient to his father? Absolutely not. There's so much talk about the faith of Abraham, but look at the faith of Isaac in obedience to his father and his God. Josephus and the rabbis today also reflect this, that Abraham told Isaac, hey, you came to us as a gift from God. And God has chosen to not have you die in war by the sword or by disease. God has chosen that you die by sacrifice. And at this point, Isaac climbed on to the altar and was bound by Abraham. So Abraham then stretches out his hand, as we know in the story, he takes the knife to slay his son. Picturing that I'm going to go right into his heart and let him pass, burn up his body and believe that God will resurrect him. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And Abraham says again, here I am. And the angel says, 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. Unbelievable. So what an act of faith, what a story of faithfulness in the life of Abraham. So far from a perfect person, but look what he's demonstrating here. Faith that I can't even imagine. So I want to go on to what we have said before. One very key truth throughout scripture is that God always provides the sacrifice. Every sacrifice he asks anyone to bring to him, to the altar, to the church, to widows, to the poor, to the oppressed, anything we have is his in the first place. All our gifts, all our talents, everything we own, it is all his. He is the provider of the sacrifice. He wants us to be obedient in laying that sacrifice down. So here we go. This is providing the sacrifice in spades. Look it. Abraham then looks and behold, right behind him, a ram was caught in the thicket by its horns. It was stuck in the thicket, provided there for Abraham to be offered up for a burnt offering in the place of his son. Does that ring any bells? Substitutional sacrifice. That is a huge theology throughout scripture and describes Jesus as provided by God as a substitute for the death that we deserved, the punishment we deserved. So if you go deeper, and I have never seen anyone pick this out, but it feels solidified in my spirit. And I believe this to be true. God is the same yesterday, today and forever. So why the ram? Why not a goat? Why not a sheep? Why not a bird? If you look into this in Leviticus, which surprise, surprise is one of my favorite books of the Bible, of course, because it has so many details, so many rocks to uncover, as God declares his holiness. But in Leviticus, when it talks about the different types of sacrifice for the different times that the Lord commands, Leviticus 5.15 speaks of a ram to be sacrificed for what? For unintentional sin. This is probably what Job brought to his sacrifices as he prayed over his children and sacrificed for their good, even that they have sinned in their heart or mind. And how often will any of us human beings unintentionally sin? All the time, right? All the time. Many of our habits have not been cleaned up, because it hasn't been fully realized to us that what we're doing is a grave sin. So rams with their horns are used as a burnt offering when somebody is covering unintentional sin. That's what I think Abraham and Isaac needed to sacrifice on behalf of themselves and their family and their servants at this time. That was the sacrifice that God wanted them to bring. So he provided it. It only makes sense. God does not change. He has a very objective, detailed plan related especially to sacrifice. Now, it goes on to say that Abraham then names this place. He names it Jehovah Jireh. Jehovah Jireh. The Lord will provide. And tell this day, it says in Genesis, in the mount of the Lord, it will be provided. Unreal. So then the angel of the Lord calls to Abraham a second time from heaven and 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. In your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. Twice the angel of the Lord came to say something to Abraham. We see the angel of the Lord in verse 11, stopping him from slaying his son. And then we see the angel of the Lord in in verse 15. Whenever the Old Testament says the angel of the Lord, not an angel of the Lord, that is the person of Jesus Christ. Again, when it says in the Old Testament, the angel of the Lord, instead of an angel of the Lord, it is the person of Jesus Christ. This person they call Malak Yahweh. Malak, M-A-L-A-K, Yahweh. In Hebrew, it is the angel that carries the name Yahweh. And this is used with the title, the angel of the Lord. Now there is one place in my New American Standard Bible where it doesn't appear correctly used according to most students of the Bible. But that is nothing for you to worry about. It's not a major deal. But you can pretty much count on this being Malak Yahweh. Jesus has a ton of appearances throughout the Old Testament. A real big picture thing here, Abraham is demonstrating the love of a father over his only son in the making a picture of what's going to happen when Jesus dies on the cross. It's not only the same place or space. But look at this, Isaac carries his own wood. Isaac carries the wood for his own sacrifice. Now, in historical writings, Jesus carries the beam of the cross, not the whole cross. In the Roman crucifixions, the pole was there already. So the person that was beat almost to death could not possibly carry a 300-pound cross. The cross bar was more like 70 pounds, 50 to 70 pounds. And that is what they would carry going through the streets. I know we have seen a totally different picture and it's all in our head from the passion of Christ and all these places. But no, somebody beaten that much could have never dragged his whole cross through the streets of Jerusalem. He would have died prior to being crucified. And that is not what the Romans wanted. So outside the Roman cities, you would see piles of the cross bar, what his wrists were nailed to the bar that goes horizontal. You would see piles of these horizontal bars as a cautionary sign, like a major stop sign to all people who enter a Roman city. So Isaac carried the wood for his own sacrifice. Isaac was also obedient to his father to be sacrificed, just like Jesus. I swear there should be a lot more talk about the faith of Isaac than I have ever heard before. And guess how Isaac demonstrates this better than the two other forefathers. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as I said, all had wives that were barren. Abraham does the old Hagar thing, which is against God's planning, and agreed with his wife, Sarai, that they could speed up this process of God. And it didn't work. But what does Isaac do when his wife is barren? Isaac prays to God and waits on God. Isaac was the real deal, you guys. And then what does Jacob do? Jacob has the 12 sons of Israel through four different women, his two wives, and their two servants. So Jacob also takes it upon himself to go that direction. Very fascinating. So we will get into the story of Isaac, a few things to learn about him. We're going to get into Joseph, ultimately, as he is a typology of Jesus Christ. So typology is a word used by theologians. But we can all pick up that language, right? Typology, t-y-p-o-l-o-g-y, is used to describe people in the Old Testament that were a type of Christ. So their lives foreshadow or reveal and magnify the person of Jesus Christ. The life of Joseph is considered the greatest human story to ever be told outside the story of Jesus Christ. And that is not only by Christians or Jews. His story is absolutely crazy making. So we're going to get to that in a future episode. I do want to thank you again for listening. I realize this is longer than usual. I commend you for getting to the end. I hope this was edifying and that Holy Spirit revealed something to you so that you would grow in your faith and knowledge of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit's mission in all of this. So glory to God, our Most High God, who in his wisdom grants us understanding and knowledge in the text he created through the pens and hands of all these authors and scribes. Thank you, God, for your good word. Thank you for today. And for all of you listeners out there, your day may be tough, but keep your chin up in Jesus' name.