Thursday, May 16, 2019

Our Great High Priest: A Study Of The Book Of Hebrews. Day 35, The Hebrews Hall Of Faith, Part Three

For the past few days we've been looking at several Old Testament people who had great faith in God. We've looked at Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham and Sarah. All these people believed in a God they could not see. All of them believed He was going to keep His promises.

The author begins today by saying that, although none of these people we've studied so far lived to see Israel settled in the promised land, and although they didn't live to see the culmination of God's salvation plan in which a descendant of theirs (Christ) would give His life for the sins of man, they accepted on faith that these things were going to take place. "All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country---a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for He has prepared a city for them." (Hebrews 11:13-16)

Abraham left the prosperous city of Ur to live in temporary tents because God promised He would give the land of Canaan to his descendants. At any time he could have given up and gone back to Ur where the living was easy, but he obeyed the Lord because he believed God was going to do what He said He would do. When Abraham left Ur, he was a childless man. He lived for many decades in tents as a childless man. Finally though, at the time determined by God, Abraham became the father of Isaac, and because of this Abraham was encouraged that God was going to keep all His other promises too. He never lived to see his descendants become a great nation living in the promised land. He never lived to see the One from his line through whom the Lord promised him all the nations on earth would be blessed. But in faith he believed in the One who was coming, and because of his faith the Lord imputed righteousness to him. Since faith is the only way we can please God (Hebrews 11:6), God was pleased with the Old Testament saints like Abraham.

Imagine how puzzling it must have been when, having finally received the son God promised him, Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son. In modern times we find it difficult to accept that Abraham was willing to give his son to God in this way, but this was not an unusual occurrence in Abraham's day. There were a number of pagan cultures surrounding him that practiced child sacrifice. In those cultures, giving one's firstborn son was considered the ultimate gift to the gods. So although this idea is completely foreign and reprehensible to us, Abraham would have been well aware that these things were taking place all around him. He knew that the gods of the pagan cultures did not exist, but he also knew that the God he served did exist, and if the God who really did exist was asking such a thing of him, he was going to obey that God. In addition we have to keep in mind that Abraham expected God to immediately raise Isaac from the dead. This was the only thing that made sense to him, for God had promised that the great nation was going to come through Isaac. Therefore if Abraham sacrificed Isaac to the Lord, the Lord was going to have to bring him back to life in order to fulfill the promise. The proof that he believed this is found in both Genesis 22:5 (when Abraham tells his servants that he and Isaac will go and worship and will return to them), and in our passage below.

"By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, 'It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.' Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death." (Hebrews 11:17-19) Though Abraham didn't end up having to physically offer Isaac, in his heart he had already offered him. He had already accepted that his son was going to die that day and yet he was willing to give anything to the God he served. This is why the author says it was as if Abraham actually received Isaac back from the dead. Have you ever thought someone you love was going to die of an illness or injury but instead they recovered? Is there any greater relief than knowing everything is going to be okay? When we think someone is going to die but they pull through, it's almost as if they actually came back from the dead, because in our hearts we had already faced the likelihood that they were going to die. This is why the joy Abraham felt was almost as great as if Isaac really had been sacrificed and raised back to life.

The Lord never intended to allow Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. The Lord didn't test Abraham because He didn't know that Abraham would do whatever He asked; He tested Abraham so Abraham would know he was willing to do whatever the Lord asked. In order to become the father of a great nation like Israel, Abraham had to know that he loved the Lord enough not to question anything He said. In order to pass down such a great faith to his descendants, Abraham had to have this story to pass on to them. In order to prepare the nation for the coming Messiah, Abraham had to be able to say as he did on the day he intended to offer Isaac, "God Himself will provide the lamb." (Genesis 22:8) Just as God offered a substitutionary sacrifice in place of Isaac, God provided a substitutionary sacrifice for us all. He provided His Son, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.


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