Yesterday a friend was sharing how puzzling it is to him that God despises child-sacrifice (such as the kind recorded in the Bible, to the idol Molech) but God still asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac to Him, and even that God Himself practiced human sacrifice in the form of His Son, Jesus.
Sacrifices to idols and to Molech are an effort for man to please god by giving him a thing most valuable. Our most valuable offerings cannot appease God. Only a perfect sacrifice could satisfy the requirement that remission must come by the shedding of blood. Only God Himself was good enough.
God, even more than life, is the highest priority. Faith in Him is more important than anyone’s life, and disobedience is not justified even in a situation where a life is at stake.
The child sacrifices to Molech had more to do with bartering with god than with repentance for sins or faith. Abraham, in contrast, was the patriarch of faith, and the Bible implicitly says that the command to sacrifice Isaac was about Abraham’s faith (interesting since Isaac was old enough to have resisted Abraham, but he didn’t).
Abraham’s faith was tested when God asked Him to sacrifice Isaac. But what does child sacrifice really have to do with faith?
Hebrews 11 explains why he got so much credit for his faith in the story of sacrificing Isaac:
Hebrews 11:17-19, “By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son, Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.”
Abraham believed God would make his son live, no matter what. God also knew when Jesus gave His life that there would be a resurrection. Jesus knew about it, and told His disciples to expect Him to come back on the third day.
Even if Abraham just believed Isaac would not stay dead, we might think that he was self-deluded and irrationally hopeful rather than a man of great faith, unless God gave Abraham a strong reason to believe this. Did He?
Abraham had some difficulties believing God’s plan for him. Years into the covenant and promises, Abraham and Sarah still hadn’t born any children. So Abraham tried things his own way, siring Ishmael through Hagar, his wife’s slavewoman. God made it quite clear that He had promised a son through Sarah, and that Ishmael was not the heir.
Then Abraham believed God, but Sarah doubted until she conceived Isaac. God reiterated that the promise to make Abraham many nations, to bless the world through his Seed, (the Covenant) was through Isaac:
Genesis 17:15-16, 19, “And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her. And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.”
They gave birth to a son. So Abraham had learned his lesson about doubts. He knew that either God would intervene, or God would raise Isaac back to life.
Abraham knew that God’s command (to sacrifice Isaac) could not supercede God’s promise (to make Isaac into many nations). This point is made in Galatians:
Galatians 3:17, “And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul, that it should make the promise of none effect.”
The just always lived by faith.
In Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, I see a vivid example of God’s plan for salvation depicted in the story of the Sacrifice of Isaac.
- The promise was from God, and He would keep it.
- The son was miraculously given by God.
- The command was God’s.
- The faith was in God.
- And the substitute sacrifice was God’s.
To God be all glory,
Lisa of Longbourn
Lisa of Longbourn 