COME AS A CHILD - LESSON 61 - I WILL BLESS YOU

^{(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)}

^{“After Abraham and Isaac together offered up the mysterious ram that was caught in the thicket, they again heard a voice calling out to Abraham.  The words that Abraham heard from God were: “I swear by myself, declares the LORD,  that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.  Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”}

                ^{Even with all the mistakes that Abraham had made in his life, he had passed this final and last test from God!  God was pleased and he gave Abraham the desires of his heart; the promise of many descendants to carry on his family line.  Abraham must have been very, very happy.  Do you think he tried to guess at how many stars were in the sky or how many grains of sand were on the seashore?  God might as well have said, I will make you into a multitude of uncountable people who will fill the earth.  This was all Abraham had ever hoped for.  Most of all he had wanted to please God, and his heart must have been singing as they parted and he left the mountain that day.}

                ^{Many think that Abraham left Isaac up on the mountain with Shem to learn more of the mysteries of God.  Isaac too had passed the test of total obedience and he had shown that he was willing to lay down his life if God so commanded him.  Isaac was now ready and prepared to receive more of the truth of God, and what better man to learn it from than Shem; who was the high family priest that had passed the Order of Melchizedek on to Abraham. Abraham too had learned the scriptures from Shem.   Abraham’s legacy would now  be safe with Isaac. One day Abraham would pass the family priesthood ordination on to Isaac.  He must be taught all he needed to know for this important position.    There was much for both men to celebrate!  So they left one another with joy, Isaac staying with Shem for schooling, and Abraham returning back down from The Mountain Of God to his servants.}

                ^{How much of the story do you think Abraham told Ishmael and Eliezer when he returned?  They must have been curious about what had happened on the mountain.  Do you think they asked questions?  They must have wondered where Isaac was.  Shem’s school was probably hidden from the rest of the world for safety and security.  Abraham might not have wanted to reveal its location to anyone else.  Do you think he let them think he had sacrificed Isaac?  There is much left to the imagination here and no one really knows.} 

                ^{At any rate, they would have known he was joyful and not sad.  I doubt there was a prouder father anywhere in the land.  Perhaps, with Isaac settled into such a good place for a while in order to learn more of the mysteries of God, it might be time for Abraham to spend some quality time with Ishmael.}  

^{The scriptures tell us that they set off together for Beersheba and Abraham stayed in Beersheba.}

COME AS A CHILD - LESSON 60 - THE LORD WILL PROVIDE THE LAMB

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

It was the third day of their journey and Abraham walked on in faith, straight up the mountain that God showed him with his son Isaac by his side. 

Abraham carried the knife and the fire and Isaac carried the wood.

Not a word was heard from Abraham.  It was Isaac who broke the silence.  Isaac called out to Abraham; “My Father.”  “Here I am, my son” Abraham answered. 

Isaac noted that he saw the fire and the wood but asked where is the lamb for the burnt offering?  Abraham answered:  “God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering my son.”  

We read in the midrash that when Abraham answered these words Isaac put his head between his hands and wept, then asked Abraham if this was from the Torah that he had heard Abraham discuss with Sarah.  The midrash speaks of Abraham weeping at this point and mentions that Isaac sought to comfort him and a conversation took place where Isaac gave his father permission to fulfill God’s will through him.  Isaac states that he wished for his blood to provide atonement for the Jewish people.  Both the Torah and the Midrash state that the father and son walked on together in agreement.  

It seems that Isaac, probably in his mid to late thirties now, understood and went willingly to a sacrificial death, Abraham leading him there and willingly giving him over to God.

Have you ever had to “walk on?”  Sometimes walking on is a very hard thing to do.  Sometimes we are asked to do very hard things, like carry wood and fire and a knife.  Everything feels like a struggle of the will.  Life is full of sacrifices that must be made.  They usually come through the things we cherish and the ones that we love the most.  

Walking on takes great courage, but more than that; walking on takes great love.  Abraham and Isaac walked on completely submitted to God’s will because of the great love they both shared for God and each other.  The story of the Akadah is the first place in the bible where we hear of the Hebrew word for love.  There is no greater love than this, that a man would lay down his life for his brothers or that a father would give his son in exchange for other people’s lives. 

So they came to the designated place that God showed them.  Most believe this was the very same place that Adam had offered sacrifices to God, a place that had been destroyed during the great flood.  After the flood Noah had rebuilt the place of the altar and offered up offerings to God there with his family.  Nimrod had destroyed this place after the fall of the tower of Babel, and now Abraham rebuilt the altar in this exact same spot.  He laid the wood in order.  As Abraham built, Isaac had every opportunity to escape and run away.  He stayed, submitted and humble, ready to do his Father’s will, believing that God would save them both through this offering. 

Abraham bound a submitted and willing Isaac who laid himself down on top of the wood.  It is very significant that Isaac laid himself down on top of the wood.  We know of many years later when another Son would come from another Father and willingly lay himself down on top of the wood of a tree,  just as Isaac laid atop this altar of wood that his  father built.

In offering the sacrifice it was important for the throat of the sacrifice to be slit quickly.  The scriptures say Isaac set his face like a flint to fulfill God’s will.  Isaac lay with his eyes directed toward heaven.   Abraham stretched out his hand to make the cut.  For a few seconds Abraham examined the knife to be sure it was ritually fit for the cut.  It was in that very moment that The Angel of the LORD called his name from heaven!  “Abraham! Abraham!” 

The Angel of The LORD told Abraham not to lay a hand on the boy and not to harm him.  “For now I know that you fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.”

With joy Abraham immediately released Isaac and recited the prayer of blessing:  “Blessed are You LORD, who revives the dead!”

Abraham lifted his eyes from the prayer and beheld a ram caught by the horns in the thicket.    Abraham took the ram and offered it up on the altar in the place of his son.  With the thought in mind of a substitute offering, Abraham prayed while sacrificing the ram that God would regard the offering as though it were his son.  God accepted Abraham’s offering in place of Isaac. 

It is said in the midrash that Abraham, after making the sacrifice, prayed to God and mentioned that he had not questioned or argued when God had made the request of him, but that he had willingly offered up his son until God stopped the action.  Abraham requested that God remember this each time one of the sons of his later generations sinned and Abraham requested that God would have mercy on their sins because of this and always forgive them.  Many of Abraham’s descendants can be very thankful for that prayer. 

The Talmud mentions that God asked Abraham to sound the sound of the rams horn before him each year so that He would remember the binding of Isaac and count it as mercy toward the children of Abraham forever.  This is why we blow the shofar at Rosh Hashanah, to remind God to be merciful to His children who are doing their best to be faithful.  Each year at the sound of the shofar, God is reminded of the prayer of blessing from Abraham.

This place where God had called for the sacrifice of Isaac is a very sacred place.  Abraham called it Adonai Yireh which means “The LORD will provide” because God had provided a ram in place of Isaac.    

Moriah comes from the verb “ra’ah,” which means “to see.”  It was said on Mt. Moriah that the LORD saw the need of the people and made provision for a substitute sacrifice that would save them. 

Mt. Moriah, which is called Zion has been the place for many, many sacred events ever since.  Many years later Jacob,  the son of Isaac dreamed here of a ladder that reached up to heaven.  Years after that, the Temple was built on the very spot where Isaac was bound and Jacob dreamed of Heaven. 

It was in this very place where another Son, the true Son of God, the perfect lamb, was eventually sacrificed on a cross of wood for all of the sins of mankind.  Isaac, as brave and courageous as he was, is only a shadow of the great and awesome love of Jesus Christ for His people.  He died for us all right in this very same spot on Mt. Moriah. 

On The Mountain of The Lord God truly provided a lamb.

      

COME AS A CHILD LESSON 59 ABRAHAM'S LAST LECH LECHA

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

After they had traveled for two days Abraham saw the place that God was showing him from a distance. 

You have to wonder as Abraham plodded down the road if he was considering that again God was asking him to “go to a place that I will show you.”  Abraham had heard those words in his first test of God.  He heard them first when he left the land of his birth and trusted God to lead him into a new place.  That test had taken a different type of courage than what Abraham was experiencing now.  This time took all of the courage that Abraham possessed.   Now he was taking his only begotten son, Isaac to another place, a place that God would show him.  Both times required much faith; this last time the most faith. 

Did the repetition of the same words he had heard from God in the past reassure Abraham that he was still on track? 

The long walk gave Abraham lots of time to think; to be sure that he was doing the right thing.  After all he was going to do a very unreasonable thing in the eyes of most men for God in a place that he did not yet know of.  This type of act is not ever easy; this going to a place that you do not know to do something that you do not totally understand. 

Rabbi Label Lam once said:  “It’s woefully impossible to describe to someone a thing that is qualitatively beyond what they have ever experienced.”  This was a fair definition for what Abraham was being asked to do. Have you ever known or been through such a situation in your own life?  Have you ever had to do a hard thing that you knew was right but you could not explain why to anyone?  It is impossible to describe the experience to others as you are going through it.

There are such experiences that are positive.  You can describe a sunrise in language to someone, but until you take them out in the wee hours of the morning and hike to the top of a mountain cliff and build a fire and brew coffee and wait with them to see their first glimpse of the indescribable art of God; you cannot explain this experience to them properly with words that they will understand.

There are also such unexplainable life experiences that are not positive experiences.  You can try to explain the death of a child to someone, but until they have had to hold their own child cold, dead and lifeless in their own arms, they can never fully understand the agony of this loss.  There are no proper words.  Words do no justice to such experiences.  Perhaps that is why Abraham trudged along is silence for two whole days.  You can tell someone about something, but until they experience it for themselves, they would not ever even begin to understand it. 

Perhaps that is why God did not say to Abraham, go exactly here or go exactly there, but God said “go to the place where I will show you.” God knew Abraham must be allowed to concentrate solely on this experience itself and not be concerned with the logistics or all the unexplainable details of the experience.  So God chose the place and God set up the place before them.

God would show Abraham all he needed to know.  Abraham just had to go.  Lech Lecha.   Abraham trusted and set off on the journey.  At the end of the second day, Abraham looked up and saw the place that God had told him to go in the distance.

Do you ever get a far away glimpse of the place where God is telling you to go, but know it is still in the distance?  Have you ever experienced one of those Isaac moments when the task at hand that lies before you in this place looks too hard from where you are presently standing?

Do you stop and reconsider what you are doing? 

Do you reassure yourself now that you finally see evidence of the place God is pointing to in your life that the experience He has been speaking to you about might just be right on track?  

People of lesser faith lose heart here, and they turn; listening to the voices that are of the enemy which always pop up in these places saying that your imagination is working overtime, or you have over-analyzed the situation, or you have had too much to drink, or you have just been to too many movies, etc.  Not Abraham.  Abraham’s faith had matured to the place of simply obeying God no matter what.

When you reach the place where you see God’s will in the distance it is a time to wake up and take notice, to be reassured that you are on track, and a time to keep on walking toward God’s next experience.  Should you detour here, you might never get back on the right road.  God does not make detours; all detours are made by humans.  Keep looking straight ahead, even if the road looks too rocky or the mountain looks too high.  Do not lose site of the place that God is showing you. Walk on.

The Hebrews have a term in their language for these types of situations, it is called Lech Lecha.  It literally means “Go!”  The implied meaning is to go on in faith and you will know it when you see it.  “It” being the will of God.  This is how Abraham found the mountain where God told him to take Isaac.  He knew it when he saw it.  At that point he asked the other two men to wait while he and Isaac went up the rest of the way.