The Faith of Isaac

For more than a month, I've been savoring the story of Abraham and Sarah and God's faithfulness in their lives.  As one of the greatest figures in the Bible, there is so much to learn from Abraham's life.  But this morning I saw a sentence I'd never really paid attention to in all the times I've read this story.  Here's the story in full from Genesis 22: 

22 After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” 3 So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. 4 On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. 5 Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy[a] will go over there and worship and come again to you.” 6 And 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. So they went both of them together. 7 And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” 8 Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.

9 When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”;[b] as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”[c]

Did you notice the sentence I highlighted?  The sentence only has seven words, but four of them indicate BOTH Abraham and Isaac obeyed and went up the mountain to worship.  The author of Genesis did not want us to miss the fact that it wasn't just Abraham's faith that was being tested, it was Isaac's too.  Often, scholars and pastors focus on the faith of Abraham, and rightly so -- this is a pivotal moment in the history of the Christian faith.  But let's not breeze past the boy bound to the altar...

John MacArthur's ESV study bible notes that Isaac wasn't a boy in the sense that you and I picture a small child.  So often, I've pictured Isaac as a preschooler asking obvious questions and somewhat blindly following his dad on an adventure.  MacArthur argues Isaac could have been as old as 20 -- a college kid, a legal adult by today's American standards, yet still considered a "boy" because he was not yet married and the head of his own household.  This fits what we know about their journey -- Isaac carried the wood (enough to consume a human body = heavy!) for three days -- that's not something a little kid could do.  And Abraham was over 100 years old... 

This changes things -- go ahead and erase the image of a 4-yr-old being scooped up by a strong 30-something dad: these were two men on a hike of a lifetime.   So then, let's also reconsider the tone by which Isaac may have used to ask Abraham about the missing lamb.  He asks Abraham the equivalent of, "Wait, Dad.  Where's the lamb?  You brought all the other stuff -- how could you forget the lamb? We've been doing this forever, you never forget. What's going on? "  Abraham's response is one of the most famous and theologically poignant moments in all of Scripture: God will provide the lamb. 

Isaac accepts his dad's answer and follows him (verse 8: four indicators that both went willingly).  Moments later, I'm sure Isaac had just a few more questions for dear old Dad as Abraham built the altar and then bound him and laid him on the wood to be sacrificed...  It just does not compute!  He likely had been hearing all his life about how he was Dad's promised son, the heir to an incredible blessing from God, and God's chosen path forward for many nations... He was the "it" kid and he didn't have any back-up siblings.  This was the ultimate moment of truth for both men.  Isaac would've been very able-bodied to resist this.   Yet we read, "he laid Isaac on top of the altar."  There had to have been submission in Isaac's heart, or he could have just wiggled around and rolled his tied-up-young-adult-self right off that thing and kept rolling back down the mountain!

We know the rest of the story -- the angel of the Lord saves Isaac's bacon by interrupting Abraham's intent to kill and miraculously showing him where to find an actual ram.  Phew -- that was close!

But on a heart level, there's so much more to talk about.  

~~***~~

I think many of us who are living out our faith encounter situations like Abraham: we're pretty sure we know what God wants as an outcome and yet He sends us down instead of up, left instead of right, reduces our income when the bills pile high... It doesn't compute and it's really stressful.  It absolutely tests our faith to believe that God is still good when the circumstances of our lives are threatened and less-than-favorable.  If God had not sent the angel, it would have been the end of a promise of blessing to Abraham -- the worst possible outcome for this situation.  But for Abraham, the covenant and this test only ever threatened his circumstances.  It would've had theological ramifications, but Abraham's overall safety and life were still in-tact.

For Isaac, however, the stakes were much higher and his authority over it all was next to nothing if he wanted to still honor his father.  The promise of God and his father's obedience actually endangered his life, his whole future -- not just a situation or his bank account.  It tested his belief of his own father's love AND his view of God in this one act of "obedience" by Abraham.  When you're bound and laid on an altar and your dad is coming at you with a knife, it would be REALLY hard to calmly say to yourself, "God is good all the time and all the time God is good."  It would have been 100 times easier to think your dad lost some of his mental marbles on the way up the mountain than to stare that knife down and trust that it's all going to be okay because God is in control.

Maybe you can relate.  None of us seem to get through life without big questions, especially in close relationships with other people or in times of crisis.  For a few minutes, this looked like the ultimate betrayal to Isaac.  Bound up and laid on a pile of wood, he had to be thinking, "Dad, how could you!  What are you doing?!  I'm your promised son -- the heir to your inheritance!  YOU SAID YOU LOVED ME!"  

It's hard to keep the faith when the hits just keep coming.  It's hard to see Jesus as Lord over the wind and the waves when you're about to drown.  We often hear "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger," but in the darkest moments, we may be so far past wanting "strength" that the silent rest of death is a tish more appealing.  But this is exactly the intersection that reveals the bedrock of our faith.  In these moments where nothing adds up except the bills you can't pay and the pain of betrayal is as real as the death threat coming at you, there's a choice to be made: either God is sovereign or He's not.  (sovereign: the supreme authority, in-control, where the buck stops)

We know Abraham trusted God to be sovereign and faithful.  How do we know?  Look again at Abraham's response to Isaac's question: "God will provide FOR HIMSELF a lamb for the burnt offering, my son."  Not only did he state that God is capable of miraculous provision, but he gave us the "why it matters" -- for Himself.  For the sake of the covenant God made with Abraham, GOD will provide because He has to prove Himself faithful.  He cannot fail and He does not lie-- it's impossible because it would negate the entire story line of the Bible.

If either Abraham or Isaac had relented their faith in God and had a world-class freak-out moment, this story would've ended very differently.  This is why I would argue Isaac's faith, though understated, is vital to our own faith walks.  He was willing to trust the faith and the actions of his human father, who was trusting and obeying by faith in the heavenly Father.  Yet, it meant (at least as far as they could see), his life line might stop right here.  And God would get the glory.  So he stayed and trusted and watched his dad prepare to do something they both never saw coming on the road to immense blessing.

Fast-forward a couple thousand years and another young man named Jesus, a promised child given as enormous blessing to all of humanity is betrayed, wounded, bound, and hung on a cross, forsaken by most people and lastly by His Father God. With His sacrifice, God is again proven faithful and humanity is given the opportunity to freely access the love and acceptance of God -- the ultimate blessing...  Isaac was a precursor to Jesus.  It's no mistake that Jesus comes out of Abraham and Isaac's heritage -- that was scripted.  But at that moment, there's likely no way Isaac could've known who it was he was foreshadowing.  His faith held him on the altar and the result was blessing beyond what he or his dad could've foreseen.  

You never know how God will use your life.  Your darkest hour could be the catalyst for hope.  Our faith is best placed in God's faithfulness.  And when we see His faithful answers in perfect timing like this ram in the thicket, it will cause your whole self to worship.  We love resolution our hearts long for the happy endings.

But what do we do when it looks like God failed?  In the words of Christian comedian John Crist: CHECK YOUR HEART!  I've been there -- there were situations that I was sure God was going to turn it around and land in one spot and instead the whole situation blew up and all that ensued was pain and suffering.  Is God not sovereign because He didn't land where I wanted him to?  If my life's circumstances don't go how I want them to, is God not good, faithful, loving, true, or worthy?  No.  Intellectually we know this.  But our hearts have a different cry: "If God really loved me, He'd stop all the bad things from coming my way and I'd get what I want.  Doesn't God just want me to be happy all the time?"  But is that true?  No -- Jeremiah 17:9 tells us our hearts are not the best compass -- they're deceitful and not trustworthy, so we don't even really know what we want.  We don't KNOW what makes us happy!  Think about it: over the course of the last 10-15 years of your life, what "things" did you tell yourself would bring happiness?  A college degree?  A great job?  An epic vacation?  Finally getting a date?  Getting married?  Buying a house?  "If I just had _____, I'd be happy, right?"  But that blank has probably changed more times than we care to count.  Also, what a mess this world would be if every human got every situation exactly as they wanted it.  No thank you to a world full of spoiled people who literally have never heard no -- yikes!  God was way ahead of us on this one and He orchestrated authorities and wisdom to keep the chaos to a minimum. 

It's also worth recognizing that God does allow human suffering because He allows free will (and we are wicked like Jeremiah said), but to try to understand the "why" behind seemingly innocent sufferings like mass poverty, disease, or severe oppression is perhaps one of the biggest and messiest topics of discussion.  There are no easy answers to why or solutions -- I'm not even going to attempt.  But our inability to understand why doesn't change God's character.  It may be raining where you are now, but if we could see above the clouds, we would be reminded that the sun is still shining, faithful as ever.  It's worth remembering that while our lives are barely a speck of dust in the cosmos of eternity, He's the one who sees and orchestrates the greater narrative of the entire place.  Is it possible He can see something we can't?  Yes.  And when we join Him in eternity through faith in Jesus, we will get to see what He already sees, and our speck of a life just won't matter in comparison to the joy of being with Him.

We need to be careful to keep the main thing the main thing in our faith walks.  Abraham had it figured out: God promised, God is faithful, God provides; I will obey God in order to honor Him.  His goal was always honoring God.  He allowed God's ideas and loving character to dictate his worldview.  And he had passed this down to Isaac.  Do we follow suit and take God at His word in an effort to honor Him?  Or are we sometimes people who have our own little ideal universe constructed and we're just turning it in for God to stamp His approval on and push the paperwork forward for funding and self-approval?   Who is really "god" of your life?  Him with all the altars and detours or your heart with all its dreams of happiness?

Pain, betrayal, and suffering push us to look inward -- it's a defense mechanism God gave us to survive physical and emotional injuries.  The hope of glory and eternal life with Jesus pushes us to keep looking for Him, even when it's difficult.  I don't mean to dismiss very real hurt.  Both are true: this hurts AND God is near, He knows, He sees, He loves, He cares, and He will not forsake you.  Let your pain point you to the Healer, the Redeemer, the Lamb of God, and the hope for our future.  It comes down to trusting God to be faithful and sovereign, or forsaking faith altogether.  If we try to freeze in the middle, the tension will simply be too much to bear.

Friends, He really does "work all things together for the GOOD of those who love Him" (Romans 8:28) even if we can't see it yet.  I am living proof and so is Isaac.  And if today's situation doesn't pan out how you hope, either it's not finished yet, or God will redeem the loss elsewhere.  He is faithful unto Himself.  Trust Him -- He cannot fail.