Have you ever had to give up a most cherished and beloved gift of God in your life?
Abraham did (Genesis 22).
Abraham waited his whole life for God to fulfill his promise for a naturally-born son (Abraham was 100 when Isaac was born, and God promised Abraham a son when he was 75).
A son was all Abraham (and Sarah) wanted. Abraham and Sarah were rich in every way except childbearing. In the time of Abraham, not having offspring was a death sentence. It meant your line/name ended forever. The absolute, most important thing in the ancient Near East was the continuation of progeny. God called Abraham to follow him, and in return, he would bless him with land and a family. This meant that all that wealth meant nothing if there was no child.
God didn’t fulfill the promise right away. There were a few times in the story of Abraham in which Abraham asked God, “So….when are you gonna give me that son you promised?” Every time Abraham ran out of patience, God renewed his promise. Finally, after twenty five years of waiting, God delivered on the promise and Isaac was born.
Then, when Isaac became a young man (we’re not sure how old Isaac was when God asked Abraham to sacrifice him, but we think he was somewhere between a teenager and early twenties), God told Abraham to do the unthinkable: sacrifice him. “Give Isaac back to me.”
God says to Abraham in Genesis 22:2, “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.”
It’s interesting to me that God includes the phrase, “whom you love”. It tells us that Abraham wasn’t relieved at the command because Isaac was nothing but a pain! Can you imagine raising a baby a 100 years old? It’s not unconceivable to think that perhaps Abraham could have had a sense of relief at this command.
We have all received gifts from God that have felt more like a burden than a gift. Serving as a missionary in Haiti was as gift, but most of the time, it felt like a burden. Many days I would have shouted “Hallelujah!” if God said, “Give Haiti back to me…head head back to the US.”
This wasn’t the case with Isaac. Abraham loved Isaac. He was the son—the one—he had always waited for. He was his whole world. Without Isaac, all that wealth and land meant nothing. Losing Isaac means going back to an empty, meaningless world.…and now God says, “Give him back.”
Could it be that this command gutted Abraham? This command doesn’t make any sense. It seems to fly in the face of God’s greater purposes for Abraham and Isaac to turn them into a mighty nation through whom God will bless the entire world.
“How could this possibly be the right decision?! It seems so unnatural! It doesn’t make any sense! Why!?”
Thankfully we have Hebrews 11:19 which tells us exactly what Abraham was thinking. It says:
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. By faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau.
Hebrews 11:17–20
Abraham obeyed because he trusted in the goodness of God. More specifically, Abraham knew that if he sacrificed Isaac, God would bring him back from the dead. Abraham knew God well enough after walking with him for many decades, that God was the giver of good gifts, and would give Isaac back to him.
It must be that one of the hardest things for a Christian is to give back to God the gifts that he’s bestowed upon us that we love. For Abraham, Isaac was the key to his future, a symbol of God’s faithfulness, the object of his love, the source of his inspiration, courage, and faith. Thankfully, the One who gave him Isaac is even better than all of those things, and he can be trusted.
What is God asking you to give up today? It may be something you love. It may be your whole world. It may be a relationship, a ministry, a job, a hobby…it could be anything. And, just because it’s good and from God, doesn’t mean that he won’t ask you to give it back to him. Trust him, for he’s trustworthy.
In the end, Isaac’s life was spared, and God gave him back to Abraham, and the rest of history
The reality is that God gave Isaac to Abraham with a perfect knowledge of his bigger plan. He gave Isaac to Abraham and Sarah for a purpose. He knew all the details, the ins-and-outs, he knew why they couldn’t have children to begin with, he knew what would happen in the lives of their grandkids, great grandchildren, etc. He knew in advance about Jacob and Esau, Jacob’s twelve sons, Joseph, David, Jesus, Peter, Paul, Saul, and even you and me.
He gave Abraham the gift of Isaac with a perfect plan. There are things he knows that we cannot know, and we have to trust him, for he is God, and we are not.
If he’s asking you to give something up, no matter how hard, trust him. He knows what he’s doing. His purposes are always good and redemptive.
