April 19, 2000

And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am.  And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee in to the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.  And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. Genesis 22:1-3

God told Abraham to offer up his son as a sacrifice to Him.   Which meant Abraham was going to have to kill Isaac.  After all the years he waited for Isaac to be born.

After God did a miracle which allowed Sarah to conceive.  After God promised to make a nation out of Isaac.  Here was God telling Abraham to kill him.  But Abraham didn’t flinch. He got up early the next morning and went to the place God told him to.

They traveled for three days before Abraham saw the place far off where they were to go.  Then he and Isaac traveled to the place and Abraham built an altar.  Now even though Abraham believed God would provide a lamb for the offering, (verse 8), he still was going to follow through and kill Isaac because the Lord had told him to.  Until he heard otherwise from God he was following through with the original instructions he had gotten.  He believed God would raise him from the dead if necessary, because he was sure of the promise God gave to make him a father of many nations, (Hebrews 11:19).

But here is the point:

And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.  And the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.  And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me. Genesis 22:10-12

So Abraham did not kill his son.  But what if he hadn’t heard the voice of God the second time?  Or what if he didn’t obey the second voice?  What if he would have been dead-set on obeying those original instructions to kill Isaac and didn’t pay attention to the second voice which contradicted the original instructions?  He would have killed his promise.  Now I know, and Abraham knew, that God could have raised Isaac from the dead, or he could have provided some other way to fulfill his promise to Abraham.  But at what expense?  Abraham would have been disobedient if he would have, for whatever reason, went ahead and killed Isaac, so would God have been able to do a miracle right there for him and raise Isaac up?   The point is, it could have been disastrous consequences.

We need to stay tuned to the voice of God.  God may speak to us to do something and we run with it and then never check back with Him to find out if we’re still on course.  We go on and on thinking we’re pleasing God but way back there somewhere we killed our promise and He’s trying to get our attention so He can get us back on course.

Make it a practice to seek the Lord daily.  Seek the Lord often.  God has great things He wants to do for us and through us but we need to keep the lines of communication open and be willing to obey instantly.   Abraham already had the knife raised when God told him to stop.  Be willing to instantly obey the voice of the Lord and your promise will live and fulfill what it was meant to.