The Lord Will Provide Series

Good Morning! I am really excited that we can be here today, to be completely honest, for a while I did not have my hopes up that we would be able too! But here we are, and I am really excited to be continuing this series of messages of prophecies of Jesus throughout the Old Testament, as we approach the Easter season. The first week we were in Genesis 3, and we saw that from the moment that the curses were given as a result of our sin, God had a plan to send Jesus to defeat Satan’s power once and for all, and to redeem us to himself. “He shall crush your head, and you shall strike his heel.” Last week we looked at the fulfillment of a rule regarding the passover lamb, that not a bone of the Passover Lamb could be broken. We saw that John and the apostles all identified Jesus as the passover lamb, the Lamb of God, and a lamb without blemish or defect. And we learned about the importance of this prophetic role, that like the original Passover sacrifice, his death atones for the sin of the people, his blood purifies and cleanses, and his body sanctifies those who partake in his kingdom. Because this sacrifice was made by God himself, in the form of his sinless son, it is the ultimate sacrifice.

Today we are going to look at a story that is not directly identified as prophetic, but that still contains a significant amount of foreshadowing and that is prophetic in nature, that looks forward to Jesus, and to God’s plans for humanity. I spoke for a moment last week of how God sometimes would have people act out the prophetic message he wished to share with his audience. The prophet Hosea was asked to marry a prostitute, and his marriage was to symbolize God’s relationship with Israel. (and Just a hint: Hosea didn’t represent Israel in that relationship). Today we are going to see another example of this, in Genesis 22. Genesis 22 is the story of when God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. And while the main purpose of this event was not to foretell the coming of Jesus and his sacrifice, the foreshadowing and allusion in this story does just that. Today we will see and feel the immensity of the sacrifice of God’s one and only Son, through the sacrifice asked of Abraham.

As always, The first thing we are going to do is examine the context and background of this passage, to help us further develop our understanding of what takes place. This week I want to do a bit of that before we even read the passage, just to give us an idea of where this story falls in the greater context around it. So let’s start with the book of Genesis itself. We believe that Moses wrote the first five books of the bible, which are called the Pentateuch, and this is based on church tradition and statements by Jesus. John 5:46, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.” Just a Fun fact: Jewish boys had to memorize the Pentateuch during their childhood, that’s Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They had to memorize all of it, just a fun fact. So we believe that Moses wrote Genesis, and his intended audience was of course the Israelites. There is no listed purpose of writing in Genesis, but it seems to operate as a foundation for the rest of scripture. It is meant to give us a foundational understanding of why the world is the way that it is, and is meant to operate as a lens through which to see the world around us.

When you are studying anything in the Bible, but especially the Old Testament, it is really important to identify the literary type of the passage. And Genesis 22 is identified as the literary type called Legend. Now when we are talking about scripture, Legend does not mean an old story that is probably not true, as is usually meant when someone uses the word legend today. In regards to studying scripture, a Legend is a traditional story, with a historical element, that has an important role in a people’s understanding of their past. In scripture they ARE considered to be true, but by identifying it as a legend, it is identified as one of those cultural traditional stories that everyone knows, and that everyone was taught as a child. To understand this story is to understand an important piece of Israel’s past.

Ok, so here is some of the context and background of Genesis 22, and Abraham himself. Abraham was called out of a land called Ur by God, with the promise that he would be made into a great nation. Ur was most likely somewhere in modern day Iraq. At a very old age, he was promised a son. And God promised him that through this son, he would bless him and make him a nation, and give him land and blessing for all generations to come. Now the only problem was that Abraham and his wife Sarah were extremely old. Sarah actually laughed when she first heard this promise, that they would have a child. They did not believe God, and Sarah made Abraham sleep with her servant Hagar, so that she could have a son through her instead. Hagar had a son named Ishmael, but God said no, you are still going to have a son through Sarah. And then they finally believed him, Sarah became pregnant, and had Isaac. And scripture says that Abraham was 100 years old when this happened! This son is born, through whom God will create a great nation, and give land and blessing too. And then after this, Abraham sends Hagar and his son Ishmael away, and I don’t want to talk too much about that for the sake of time, but essentially Sarah became jealous and was treating them badly, so she asks Abraham to send them away. He was very upset and did not want to do it, but God told him that it would be ok, and that he would bless Ishmael's descendants as well, so he conceded and sent them away, leaving Isaac as his only son. After this incident they settled in the Beersheba region for a period, and we know that they were there for quite some time. We know by dating the events before and after this story, that by the time this story takes place, Isaac had grown into adolescence or possible manhood, contrary to popular belief. And you will notice in english translation and as we read that Isaac is referred too as the “boy” often, but that is actually a mistranslation. The hebrew word here is a flexible term that is used in scripture to describe anything from infancy to young adulthood, and sometimes even to servants. In our passage, Abraham uses the same word to describe the servants who came with them, but we translate it as “young men”. So we don’t know exactly how old Isaac is at this point, but based on the chronology of events in Genesis, he was likely between 15-25 years old.