Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #14 of Genesis, chapter 22, and we are reading the first two verses, in Genesis 22:1-2:

And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.

We have been taking our time, very slowly looking at the word “temptation” or “tempt,” and the Lord's testing programs that He has established from the very beginning.  And we know that it has to do with obedience to His commandments.  God is always testing people, especially those that profess to be His people, in the area of love. “Do you love me?”  If so, then the proper response will be obedience, because Jesus said, “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” A failure to obey means you do not love; a failure to keep God's commandments is an indicator: “You did not keep my commandments because you do not love me.”  

We can take that a step further back because we know the Bible tells us we love Him; that is, we keep His commandments to show forth that love because He first loved us. So if we are not loving Him by showing forth that love through the keeping of God's commandments, the Bible, then it becomes obvious concerning the reason why: He did not love us first.  If He did love us first, it means God has shown His love to His people from the point of the foundation of the world when he died for us, and it is an everlasting love towards us. It has to do with the fact that He saved His elect, and because he did that there will be salvation that comes to them as they receive a new resurrected soul in which they have an ongoing desire to do the will of God.  The Lord’s Spirit is placed within them, helping and assisting them to do His will, more and more, and to obey Him, more and more.  As God comes to them concerning a particular area in their life where they have been failing to obey and the Lord highlights that sin, they will turn from that sin that has troubled them and they will begin to obey by the grace, by the strength, and by the spirit of God within. And then they will show forth love to Him.

But those that fail, especially when it comes to doctrinal matters, to obey and to humble themselves before the mighty hand or will of God as He reveals His will on the pages of the Bible through the comparison of Scripture and the harmonizing of all conclusions with everything the Word of God says, then the question must be asked: Why are you not loving Christ?  At the least, someone should be concerned about that and say, “Could it be that God did not first love me and this is why I am not obeying him?

We see from Abraham's response (and we talked about this a little bit), that he immediately set about to do it. We do not read of any disputing or arguing with God, nor of his searching the Scriptures to find out how it could not be so. You know, Abraham could have searched all the information he knew about God and he could have said,  “O, Lord,  never in the past have you asked of any of your people to offer up a human sacrifice. And so this is unheard of.”  But he did not approach it that way.  He recognized the voice of God.  He heard the voice of Christ, and that is because, as Christ said in John chapter 10, “My sheep hear my voice.” God gives His people the ability to perceive and to recognize His voice over other voices. And this is the same voice that had been coming to Abraham since he was in the land of the Chaldees and told him to get out of that land, and he obeyed that voice at that time.  It was the same voice he encountered in in his previous time of sojourning in in the land of Canaan when God would come to him at various times.  For example, when God came to tell him about His plan to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham interceded on behalf of the righteous. He has had a  relationship with God and he  had experience with the voice of God which helped him to recognize and to understand that this was the same voice. “It is the same voice.  I am not hearing a different voice.  This is not another God.  It is not another gospel.  It is very much in keeping with everything else that this voice has told me.   “I recognize it and, therefore, after that recognition is given there must be obedience.  There must be an obeying of the command.” 

And that is exactly how it should have been with so-called true believers in our time who claim they  are true believers.  For all intents and purposes, they gave every indication of  understanding how God wrote the Bible, how doctrine was derived comparing Scripture with scripture and allowing the Holy Ghost to teach, and then receiving these doctrines as they claim to have done over the course of the Great Tribulation and then into this time period. There should be a recognition of the voice; that is, the same process and methodology is being used today as was used in the past.  It is the same looking at a word here and seeing how it is used over there, and searching everywhere that it is found in the Bible to make sure that we are allowing God to define His own terms.  And, as we do so, we come to doctrinal conclusions that God the Holy Spirit would take responsibility for, because as we compare spiritual with spiritual, the Holy Ghost teaches. And, yet, these so-called true believers in our time cannot say anything against the methodology; they cannot deny it; they cannot deny that we are following the same thing that the elect children of God have been following for quite some time; we are following the same methodology.  We are just using the Bible.  There are no dreams or visions our tongues.  There is no referring to theologians.  It is just the Bible and there is no going outside the Bible.  It is only the Bible and allowing the Bible, through the comparison of Scripture, to do the teaching.

Yet they are denying the things that are taught when it comes to the shut door of heaven.  How did we come to the understanding that on May 21,2011 God shut the door?  It was through 2Peter 3 where it says,  “one day is as a thousand years,” tied with Genesis 7 where it says, “and yet seven days.”  Seven days later, historically, on the seventeenth day of the second month of Noah’s calendar, God shut Noah in.  He shut Noah’s family within the ark. And 7,000 years later, on the seventeenth day of the second Hebrew month, which was the day underlying May 21, 2011, God shut the door.  And it is the Bible's teaching.  Then we found there was no literal physical destruction, so there must be a spiritual judgment in which God has ended salvation, and so forth.   When we search the Bible, we do learn of spiritual judgments, definitely.  We see what we should have seen all along, but we never recognized it – all the major judgments in the Bible have been spiritual:  in the garden of Eden upon mankind; in the Garden of Gethsemane upon the Lord Jesus Christ; and against the corporate church.  And if the judgment on the world would follow that pattern, it too would be spiritual.  Then we saw in the Bible that God took the cup of His wrath and gave it first to the city called by His name, the corporate church.   Then He took the identical cup and gave it to the nations of the world. There was no change in the cup – it was all a spiritual judgment.  And these things are coming forth from the Bible.

I'm sorry to say this, but this is the truth. Just because people do not like the conclusion… Oh, sure, many would like it if it were just speaking of the corporate church over there and they could point their finger in that direction and away from themselves.  Yes – they would understand the conclusion and they would agree: “Sure, the judgment is over there, and it is not on me and my house; it is not on my family where I am located outside the church, but it is over there.” 

And we know this is the case because these same people had followed the same methodology to agree with the judgment that was upon the churches and congregations, and they did recognize there was no more salvation taking place within any church in the world. But you see, now it comes to where they are and to their family.  And, again, they cannot condemn the methodology, so they just either run away from it entirely or they do not want to talk about it anymore: “You were wrong.  You were wrong back on May 21; the world did not end.  On October 21, you were wrong, so do not talk to me.”  And their fingers go in the ears, and that is just an avoidance tactic to dismiss the things of God, so they can go merrily about their way, fooling themselves and deceiving themselves into thinking, “Well, there is still salvation for me and my family and for my love ones.”   But it is just self-deception, just as much self-deception as those in the churches who refused to listen when God opened up the Scriptures to reveal the judgment upon them.  They did everything in their power to revile, to label it as heresy and to just dismiss it with a wave of the hand: “You are crazy.  We are not going to listen to you .”  And then they ignored all of the information from the Bible and turned their heads and their attention to their theologians, their pastors, and their church business:  “Let us get busy.  You know, we have this show to put on.  We have this picnic coming up.” 

Ok, go about your social business.  It is certainly not the business of the true God.  It is not the business of the true kingdom of heaven.  It is just an earthly business you are involved in.  It is just as empty and just as vain as  those in other religions like Buddhism or the Muslim religion.  It is vain in the sense that none become save through their efforts and their involvement and their time spent in their religions and their understanding of God.  It all comes to naught.  Likewise, that is how it is with all in the churches today. There is no blessing of God and no salvation taking place.  God has separated Himself from them; they are not His people.  They do not represent Him.  They have no further association with Him.

So these are the testings or temptations that God has set up for the time of the end.  Well, okay, let us read Genesis 22:2.  The first part of the verse says, “Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac,” and then he is told to go to one of the mountains in the land of Moriah and offer Isaac for a burnt offering. And here we see what the Bible is laying out.  This is a historical parable. And it is obvious, even to many within the churches and to many theologians who would (normally) “pounce” if they hear the term “spiritual meaning” or if they hear anyone “spiritualizing.” Normally, they would jump on anyone doing so. Yet even their forefathers, the ancient theologians, that established the Reformed Church and even some theologians today would recognize that this is a picture of Abraham as God the Father and Isaac as the only son of God, Jesus Christ. They recognize that in violation of their own historical, grammatical, literal method of interpretation.  They recognize that, but they will not admit that it violates their own rule. But it does; it does.

You know, we can read of this because God speaks of this in Hebrews, chapter 11, which has a lot to say about Abraham and what a great man of faith (or of Christ) he was. It says in Hebrews 11:17:

 By faith Abraham when he was tried…

And this word “tried” would identify with the word “tempt” used in Genesis 22:1.  This would be the New Testament equivalent of that word.

Again, it says in Hebrews 11:17-19:

By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,  Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seed be called: Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.

By the way, the Greek word translated “figure” is “par-ab-ol-ay” which is often translated “parable.” So Abraham received Isaac in a parable.  This is another verse we can add to just numerous verses that would teach us how to understand the Bible, parabolically, as Jesus said (and He is the Word made flesh) that without a parable He did not speak. The whole Bible from beginning to end is to be understood parabolically, looking for the deeper spiritual meaning or the hidden information or the hidden truth.  A parable could be defined as that which serves to hide truth. And God was hiding truth.  We see it very clearly with the account of the Lord coming to Abraham and commanding him to go take his only son Isaac and offer him for a burnt offering.  We see that very clearly.

You know, all the this was written in the Old Testament for quite a long time.  Moses would have recorded it and Moses would have written up until 1407 B. C., so it was in the Old Testament Scriptures for about 1,400 years before Christ would be born in 7 B. C., without any explanation and without filling in additional information.  The New Testament does comment on this in Hebrews 11, so not until after 33 A. D. after Christ had gone to the cross would there be further commentary to help the reader of the Bible understand why God commanded Abraham to do this to his son Isaac.  But, of course, God’s saints in the Old Testament, the elect, would have already been aware of these things (to some degree) and they would have been looking for them.  The Lord would have opened up the eyes of His people to some degree concerning these things.  But, again, we will come back to that statement that Abraham received him in a figure or in a parable, and this had to do with the understanding that God would raise him up, which helps us understand Abraham's mindset, since he immediately went about the task of obeying God and doing what He told him to do.

Abraham had received two apparently contradictory statements.  God had told him back to Genesis 17:7-8:

And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.

Well, that was one statement, and the seed was said to be Isaac. God rejected Ishmael.   He told Abraham that his seed would come of Sarah, historically. (We know the seed, ultimately, points to Christ.) So it would have to go through Isaac, and it says further on in Genesis 17:19:

And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.

God indicated that Isaac was the one He would establish the covenant through.  So what if Abraham followed through with this commandment, which he had every intention of doing and he killed Isaac and offered him for a burnt offering. How is Isaac going to have any seed?  He is a young lad.  He is a young man.  He was not married, and he had no children. You see, Abraham was aware of God's earlier statement and he realized that God cannot lie. First, God  told him he would have the promised son and through him the promised seed would come.   He was the one with whom God would establish the covenant. The Lord had also added that the seed would be as the stars of heaven for multitude.  But in order for there to be another child in the line of Isaac, Isaac must live.   He must marry.  He must have children.  He must have a son.

Then Abraham would have thought, “But now God is telling me to go take him and kill him to offer him as a burnt offering.  And if I do so, then he cannot marry.  He cannot have children, so the promises of God cannot take place.  But then we read in Hebrews 11:19:

Accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.

Abraham knew the voice of God and he heard God say two seemingly contradictory things, but knowing that God cannot lie, then both statements must be true. He reasoned, “I will follow through with what God has commanded me.  I will get my knife; I will get some wood. I will slay my son Isaac.  I will burn him as a burnt offering and then I'll wait for God to raise him up, because God will raise him from the dead to fulfill His Word that He had told me earlier.” We read this of Abraham in Hebrews 6:13-18:

For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, Saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to shew unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath: That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us:

You see, God swore to Abraham.  Abraham believed God.  He knew God would not lie and break His oath. He will do what He said and, therefore, just looking at his limited understanding of the situation he concluded, “I will kill Isaac and God will raise him up.”   In doing so, he lifted up the knife, ready to bring it down in in obedience to the commandment to kill his son to offer him as a burnt offering. God realized that he would follow through and, therefore, he received him in a figure; that is, instead of going through with it, God just established it as a demonstration.  I was like a little mini-historical parable of what Christ would do later in time in history.  And when Isaac was untied and rose up off the altar and stood there with his father, it was like Christ rising from the dead.