Hearing God’s Voice
Genesis 22:1–19
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Opening – Recognizing a Voice in a World of Noise
Have you noticed how loud life has become?
Before I even finish my first cup of tea, a dozen sounds compete for attention—phone notifications, breaking news, podcasts, and opinions flying in from every corner of the internet.
Each one shouts, “Listen to me first. Trust me. Obey me.”
I remember a day when our family was traveling through Amsterdam’s massive airport.
Announcements blared in multiple languages, gate changes echoed from every direction, people hurried shoulder to shoulder.
Suddenly we realized our son Eric was missing.
We called, we searched, and panic began to rise.
Then, through all the noise, I heard it—a single sound that cut through everything else.
A voice I knew.
I didn’t have to see him to know it was Eric.
I recognized it instantly.
Friends, that is what it means to know the voice of God.
When Genesis 22 says God spoke to Abraham and he answered, “Here I am,” it wasn’t a guess or a hunch.
It was recognition born of years of friendship.
In a world where every message is amplified, the question for us is:
How can we cultivate that kind of relationship, so we recognize the Shepherd’s voice when He calls?
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A Lifetime of Listening (Genesis 22:1–2)
“After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’
He said, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’”
Abraham had heard this voice before.
He left Ur at God’s call (Genesis 12).
He trusted through decades of promises.
He welcomed Isaac when he was 100 and Sarah 90—a miracle only God could accomplish.
Think of a dear friend’s phone call—you know their voice before they give their name.
Abraham had that kind of history with God.
Recognition grows from relationship.
But now the voice says,
“Take your son, your only son, whom you love…”
Every phrase tightens the knot: your son… your only son… whom you love.
This command seems to unravel every promise God has ever made.
If I heard something like that, I’d be arguing immediately:
Lord, You gave a commandment against murder—this cannot be You.
But Abraham doesn’t argue.
He simply answers, “Here I am.”
Parents today sometimes face decisions that feel impossible—a sudden diagnosis, a call to relocate and leave familiar support.
We know the tightening in the chest when God’s leading seems to contradict what we expected.
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Setting Out Before Dawn
“So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac.
And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.”
Picture it.
The desert air is cool before sunrise.
A thin mist clings to the low ground while stars still sparkle overhead.
Leather straps creak as Abraham tightens the packs.
The scent of freshly cut wood mixes with the earthy smell of donkey and dust.
The only light comes from a flickering torch and the first faint stripe of dawn on the horizon.
Isaac stirs beside the coals of last night’s fire, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
This isn’t the first time father and son have set out to build an altar.
For years they’ve traveled together to offer sacrifices, so nothing seems unusual—yet there is a quiet tension in Abraham’s face that even a young man can sense.
They move out before the camp awakes.
Sand crunches under sandals.
The rhythmic clop of donkey hooves marks the miles as the cool of night slowly gives way to the first heat of day.
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The Long Walk
On the first day, the talk is ordinary.
Abraham asks about the flock Isaac tended yesterday.
Isaac tells of a stubborn goat and laughs when he remembers how it leapt the fence.
They speak of where they might camp that night, how much bread and water remain.
The easy talk of a father and son who enjoy each other’s company fills the morning.
But beneath the small talk, Abraham’s mind runs deep.
Lord, You gave this boy as a miracle. How can You now ask for his life?
What will I tell Sarah if I return alone?
Again and again he clings to the promise: Through Isaac your descendants will be named.
He begins to reason—just as Hebrews 11 later records—that God could even raise the dead.
Night falls.
They make a small fire.
The air smells of smoke and dry sage.
Isaac lies close, his breathing slow and steady.
Abraham watches the stars wheel overhead—the same stars under which God once promised descendants beyond counting.
He whispers a prayer only heaven hears.
Day two dawns.
The routine continues: striking camp, leading the donkey, keeping a steady pace.
Sometimes they walk in silence so deep that the only sounds are the crunch of gravel and the soft sigh of wind through thorn bushes.
Other times Abraham tells again the stories of God’s faithfulness—how God called him from Ur, how a mysterious visitor once promised that Sarah would bear a son, how every promise has stood firm.
Isaac listens, questions, laughs.
Companionship itself becomes the conversation.
The Third Day – Nearing Moriah
On the third morning Abraham rises before the others.
The air is cool and very still; dew beads the edges of every thorn.
He stands for a long time, eyes fixed on a range of blue-gray hills to the east.
That is the place God has told him about.
Today the journey ends.
He wakes Isaac and the young servants.
They eat a simple breakfast of flatbread and dried figs.
Then Abraham speaks with deliberate calm:
“Stay here with the donkey; the boy and I will go over there.
We will worship, and we will come back to you.”
We will come back.
The words hang in the morning air.
Was it a slip of the tongue, a hopeful wish, or a quiet declaration of faith that God would somehow give Isaac back?
Scripture doesn’t explain, but Hebrews 11 tells us Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead.
Either way, those few words glimmer with trust.
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Isaac’s Question
Now father and son walk alone.
Isaac shoulders the bundle of wood—heavy, scratchy against his back.
Abraham carries the flint, the fire pot, and the knife.
The trail grows steeper, switch-backing through scrub oak and rock.
Cicadas buzz in the rising heat.
They walk for a long while in companionable silence.
Then Isaac breaks it with the question that has been forming for miles:
“Father?”
Abraham turns.
“Yes, my son?”
“Here is the fire and the wood,” Isaac says, eyes steady, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
Abraham’s answer is both a father’s assurance and a prophet’s vision:
“My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering.”
It is all he can say.
It is enough.
They climb higher.
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Building the Altar
“When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order.”
Every verb slows the story to a heartbeat:
built… laid… bound… reached… took.
Abraham gathers stones and fits them carefully.
He arranges the wood with the precision of long practice.
The smell of sun-warmed cedar rises in the thin mountain air.
Then, with a trembling yet deliberate hand, he tells Isaac what must happen next.
Isaac listens.
This strong young man could easily break free—his father is more than a hundred years old—yet he does not resist.
Instead he stretches out on the wood he himself has carried.
What could make a vigorous young man accept what looks like the whim of an aged fanatic?
Only trust—trust forged through years of watching his father walk with God, and trust in the God his father worships.
Somewhere on that climb Isaac decided, If my father believes this is God’s will, then I will trust the God of my father.
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The Knife Raised
Abraham steadies himself.
He reaches for the knife.
The mountain is silent except for his own heartbeat.
This is faith at full stretch.
Sometimes the deepest conversations with God are wordless.
Abraham and Isaac hardly speak here, but their trust thunders louder than any words.
Have you stood in a place where all that remains is silent obedience—when you have prayed every prayer and the next step still hurts?
That is where faith shows its true color.
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A Pause for the Heart
Here, before heaven breaks its silence, the story leans close to us.
This is where the message presses into our own lives:
First, we must learn to recognize His voice.
Abraham could set out at dawn because he knew exactly who was speaking.
You and I live in a swirl of sounds, but only one voice leads to life.
Second, sometimes God asks of us something we may not fully understand.
To trust Jesus in those moments, you must already know Him—know His heart and His goodness—so that even when the command feels heavy, the heart can still say, “Here I am.”
Heaven’s Urgent Call (vv. 11–12) – Linked to Genesis 18
The mountain holds its breath.
“But the Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, ‘Abraham, Abraham!’
And he said, ‘Here I am.’
He said, ‘Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him,
for now I know that you fear God,
seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.’”
The double call—Abraham, Abraham!—breaks the silence like a thunderclap of mercy.
God never intended Isaac’s death.
The test was never about taking life but about revealing a heart fully yielded and about pointing forward to His own provision.
And this is not the first time Abraham has heard that voice.
Back in Genesis 18 the LORD Himself came to the tents of Mamre and promised a miracle child to a barren couple.
The One who said, “I will surely return to you and Sarah will have a son,” now calls from heaven, “Do not lay a hand on the boy… I will surely bless you.”
Same authority. Same first-person speech. Same God.
The very voice that brought Isaac into existence now protects his life, foreshadowing the day when God would give His own Son as the ultimate substitute for us.
This double echo—promise and provision—shows that the Angel of the Lord is no ordinary messenger.
It is the Lord Himself, very possibly the pre-incarnate Christ, stepping personally into Abraham’s story to give life and to save.
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The Ram in the Thicket (vv. 13–14)
“And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram,
caught in a thicket by his horns.
And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.
So Abraham called the name of that place, The Lord Will Provide.”
Jehovah Jireh.
On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.
The substitute is the heart of the story.
Isaac lives because another takes his place.
And generations later another Son will carry wood up another hill, where God will indeed give His only Son as the Lamb for the world.
Take this in personally:
Whatever fear or guilt you carry, God has already provided the Lamb—Jesus Christ—so you can live.
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Covenant Reaffirmed (vv. 15–19)
The angel speaks again:
“By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord,
because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son,
I will surely bless you,
and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.
And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”
Paul later explains that this “offspring” points to Christ Himself (Galatians 3:16).
From Eve’s first hope of a Deliverer to this mountain moment, every birth in the covenant line carried the question, Is he the One?
In Jesus, God’s answer is yes.
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Walking into Today’s Noise
Abraham didn’t have a smartphone, but he knew what it was to sort through competing voices—his own fears, memories of God’s promises, the imagined grief of Sarah.
Yet when God spoke, he recognized the voice.
We live with our own barrage:
the anxious ping of news alerts,
endless social media chatter,
career and family demands.
How do we tune our hearts to that single true Voice?
Scripture before screens. Begin the day letting God’s Word set the key for the day’s music.
Prayerful silence. Not just requests, but space to listen.
Community discernment. Trusted believers who can help test impressions (1 John 4:1).
Character alignment. God’s voice will never contradict His revealed Word or His character of love.
Sometimes trusting that Voice means placing your dearest treasure on the altar:
a long-cherished dream, a career path, a relationship, a child.
It’s the place where you whisper, “God will provide,” even when you cannot see how.
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A Living Testimony of God’s Provision
For years I carried a quiet burden for one of my sons who was caught in depression and alcohol.
More than once we ended up in the emergency room.
I tried everything a father can try, but finally the Lord led me to lay this child fully in His hands.
I remember the prayer:
“Lord, only Your intervention can change the course of his life.”
Months passed.
He moved to Tennessee; I moved to Southern California.
Two weeks ago I spoke with a completely different son.
My boy was back.
I can only say, in Abraham’s words, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
All glory to God.
This isn’t to draw attention to me—it wasn’t me.
It was entirely the Lord who provides.
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The Heart of the Gospel
The mountain of Moriah points forward to Calvary.
Abraham did not have to sacrifice his son, but God did not spare His.
Jesus is the Lamb who takes our place, the ultimate substitute.
Because of Him we can face the unknown with confidence.
Romans 8:32 says,
“He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all—how will He not also with Him graciously give us all things?”
That is God’s voice to you today:
I have provided the sacrifice. The debt is paid. The Lamb has come.
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Final Appeal – Walking with the God Who Speaks
Abraham could climb Moriah because he wasn’t alone. The God who had walked with him through decades of ordinary days was beside him on that mountain.
Can you and I really venture into the unknown of tomorrow without the companionship of Jesus?
We can make plans, but we cannot know what tomorrow holds.
What we can know is the One who holds tomorrow and promises,
“Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
The old hymn says it well:
He walks with me and He talks with me,
and He tells me I am His own;
and the joy we share as we tarry there
none other has ever known.
That simple confession captures the heart of Genesis 22:
a life so close to God that when the great test comes, His voice is clear and His presence sure.
Let’s bow in prayer and ask Him to tune our hearts so that, like Abraham, we can recognize His voice and follow wherever He leads.
