God Told Me To Kill My Son

Well, actually, he didn't.

If I meant what I said, however, the police, mental health officials, and a host of media hounds would converge on my house — hopefully before I accomplished the deed.

And yet this is our account from Abraham, the father of three faiths. Genesis 22 records the whole incident. God told Abraham to kill his son.

Those inclined to treat such scriptures as proof that they are not holy... well, they can do and say as they like. I, however, must grapple with why a holy God would put any man to a test like this, because I take these scriptures as holy.

One of the reasons I put so much trust in the Bible as God's story revealed among men is that the men are revealed so clearly to be.... men. Broken, ordinary humans. With rare exceptions, most everyone in the Bible is shown to be weak and frail, burdened with sin. Abraham. Isaac. Noah. Jacob. The twelve disciples. King David. Solomon. These are no whitewashed stories! These people screw up big time! David kills a man so as to cover up his adultery with the man's wife. The author of our Psalms?? Yes.

As for Abraham? He lies. He throws his wife under a bus. Serially. He abdicates responsibility. He is called the father of faith, but some of the accounts in Genesis show him very much lacking in faith. He doubts God repeatedly, as revealed in both words and deeds. But Abraham shows trust beyond measure at the moment of true reckoning. When God tells him to kill Isaac, he obeys.

Why did God ask him to do that? If the story had only to do with Abraham, I think the answer would be incomplete. By more than half. I'm out on my own limb here, with only my gut to justify this claim, but I think this incident has far more to do with Jesus than it has to do with either Abraham or Isaac. God was using this story to foreshadow the most glorious event in human history: the moment God did not withhold his son as a sacrifice for us.

God makes the foreshadowing painfully obvious. For starters, note this telling phrase, from the moment the boy Isaac and his father Abraham head up the mountain...

So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders...

Jesus carried his wooden cross on his own shoulders too, and possibly up the same exact mountain. The two stories take place in close physical proximity. A few thousand years separate these stories, but not a whole lot of distance.

Returning to this Genesis account, we note that Isaac of course gets a bit perplexed.

“We have the fire and the wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”

Abraham answers with perhaps the most heart-wrenching words a man can force from his mouth...

“God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham answered. And they both walked on together.

I have tears in my eyes as I read that second sentence. I think of my own son Andrew and imagine such a walk with him. That would be the darkest day of my life. Times ten.

The walk comes to an end however, and Abraham takes his son Isaac and ties him up. He raises the knife...

And God steps in.

“Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.”
Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son. Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the Lord will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

And yes, on the mountain God provided a sheep indeed. A ram for Abraham, and Jesus for us. As we wander back and forth between the two mountains, the two sons carrying wood, the two sacrifices... it seems quite clear that God was, through Abraham, giving the entire world a sneak preview of the most glorious event in human history which was yet to come.

As much as we feel for Abraham, let's stop for a moment and think about what his experience tells us about God and his sacrifice.

We grieve with Abraham that he should have to think for only a few days that his son would be taken from him. But God knew from eternity past that his son, Jesus, would be taken from him, brutalized, and killed.

We grieve for Isaac that he lay, panic stricken, bound on an altar, waiting for the knife to fall. But Jesus, the perfect son, went willingly. And Jesus knew the knife would not be held back, because (unlike Isaac) Jesus knew all along that he was the sheep. John the Baptist knew it too.

John 1:29
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

Jesus knew all along that he was to be the lamb. And he went through with it.

The atheist sneers that only a sick religion would tell such stories. A simple google search of the words Dawkins Abraham and Isaac will show this to be true.

That brings us to the rub. Either God is not here, and our suffering is meaningless.... or God is here, and we are allowed to suffer for reasons which will eventually make sense. Richard Dawkins can have the former. I choose the latter.

Abraham surely never had a really good idea why God put him to such a test. In the glorious afterglow of Jesus' death and resurrection, I have a much better idea. But we'll all know better one day when the whole story of God is revealed.

Until then, I trust God with my rough days, my seemingly meaningless and pointless sorrows. All will make sense one day. God's story always makes sense, but as with every good book, some chapters end on a rough note.

1 Corinthians 13:12
Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.