Gen 35: Chapter 22
Book of Genesis #35
In this talk, we go over the most dramatic events in the life of Abraham: the sacrifice of Isaac and the Great Covenant.
We might be tempted to dwell on the sacrifice as though it was the main event.
It wasn't.
Many folks sacrifice their children. Some to ambition, others to freedom, others to live their life the way they want to so much so that many today turn their wombs into an altar of sacrifice for themselves.
Abraham was faced with two difficulties: on the one hand, the sacrifice of his son whom he loved must have wrenched his heart and tormented him. Yet he was a man of faith who struggled to understand how God could keep the covenant he made with him in Isaac: By your seed shall all nations be blessed.
If that is to be so, then God must raise Isaac from the dead ...
And his hope in the Lord was reckoned to him because he believed.
To believe requires an extraordinary amount of work on our part. The thought that faith is a static statement we do like a signature at the bottom of a bank statement or on a check. Faith is like electricity on a wire; the wire must be always able to pass it on and although electricity is natural to a wire it will kill us.
Grace enables us to pass it on.
But we must work to do so and this means to believe day in day out that God will raise us from the dead.
What is truly amazing in this chapter and constantly overlooked is the fact that God after saving Isaac placed himself under a curse when he said "By my name I will..."
A curse he bore all the way to the Cross.
