Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #15 of Genesis, chapter 22, and we are reading Genesis 22:1-12:

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. And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you. And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.  And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here am I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.  And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.  And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of JEHOVAH called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

I will stop reading there.  In our last study, we were looking at Hebrews, chapter 11 because Hebrews 11 describes the events that we are reading about here in Genesis 22.  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.

We spent some time discussing this in our last study, and we can see its spiritual meaning.  Even many theologians who profess to just read the Bible literally and to seek no other meaning except the plain literal meaning, will go off course of their hermeneutic and they recognize Isaac is a type of Christ, and Abraham is a type of God as God slew His only begotten Son. And they even recognize the Gospel in the deeper spiritual meaning of the historical narrative we just read in the book of Genesis. Of course, they go off course from their own Biblical hermeneutic, the historical, grammatical and literal method of interpretation that they profess. 

But we do not go off course, as God’s elect people who understand that Christ spoke in parables and without a parable He did not speak.   We read the history and we can glean some moral application, if we so desire to do so.  We abide by the grammar; we recognize the grammar that is used, especially when God speaks of “seed,” singular, as He does in in connection with Abraham and Isaac. Yes – we are very attentive to the grammar, so there is nothing wrong with looking at the history.  There is nothing wrong with looking at the grammar.  There is nothing wrong with understanding that these things did happen literally in time past. But the problem comes when the churches and their theologians “clamp down,” and they try to prevent God's people from going any further.  You see, for them that is as far as they need to advance.  It is understandable to their natural minds. The history is understandable.  The grammatical information is understandable, and they want to take it literally or naturally, plainly just as it is written.  And that is where they fail because Christ spoke in parables and without a parable He did not speak.  So God is helping us here by using the word “parable” in Hebrews 11:19 where it is translated as “figure.”  It says, “…from whence also he received him in a figure.” And it's the Greek word “par-ab-ol-ay” that is usually translated as “parable,” as it is in Matthew 13 where Christ spoke in parables. So Abraham received Isaac in a parable. He received him when he got up off the altar and he stood upon the ground as though he had died and risen from the dead. And it was as though Abraham slew him as when the Father slew his only begotten Son. And now he has risen.  Abraham trusted God would be faithful to his Word and to the promise that He given.

Can you imagine trusting God to that degree, trusting the fact that God speaks the truth and cannot lie?  And not only laying your life upon it, but laying the life of your precious son on that fact.  You just know, deep down within in an unflinching way, that God's Word is true and when He promises, He will do what He said, and He will bring it to pass.

You know, some theologians have spoken so highly of him that it is almost embarrassing sometimes to read what the theologians say about the great faith of Abraham.  Oh, what tremendous faith and, of course, it is an excellent demonstration of faith, but it is the faith of Christ.  It is God's faith, the faith that God gave him, which is the faith of the Lord Jesus Himself moving in him too will and to do of His good pleasure.  That is what is really in view.  It is not Abraham's faith, and I am sure he would be the first one to admit it or recognize it, although in a secondary way – because he was obedient in his life – it was a display of his faith as well,  but to God be the glory.  God is the one who accomplishes these things within His people and the faith Abraham showed I would say (based on what we read in the Bible) is no exception to the rule, but it is the standard operating procedure of God's true elect people in this world as God works in us to do these things; that is, God’s elect live by the faith of Christ, and  Christ lives in us and through us to accomplish His purposes and to carry out His will.  And there are many examples in the Bible of similar faith displayed.

There are even examples we have heard in church history, although we cannot trust it like the Bible, but I believe it is true that God’s elect people who were doing the will of God and sharing the newly printed Bibles, but there was an evil church at that time that did not want the Word of God shared in that way, and they did grab hold of these men and kill them.  Of course, this can be seen in history that there was a time during the Reformation when men and women were being seized, put in jail and tortured and persecuted. All kinds of force was being applied to them to get them to recant  and  renounce the true faith that they followed, and they would go to the death rather than renounce the Word of God or renounce the Lord Jesus Christ, and they were burned at the stake.  We do have records of individuals who stood honorably and who stood faithfully at the burning pile and they were literally consumed by the flames.  And they gave God the glory.  Was that not similar faith to Abraham?  God's people have this characteristic where they trust God and they believe God.  They will be steadfast and immovable, always abounding in the work of God, and doing His will.

So Abraham was commanded by God: “This is what you are to do.  Take your son, your only son, and offer him for a burnt offering.  And he was busy carrying out the command.  He was busy obeying. And God intervened because God realized that he was going to do it.

You see, it was a demonstration God was putting forth.  Basically, He had Abraham live out what the Lord Jesus Christ would later do as He entered into history, and what God the Father would later do to the Son by putting him to death the second time, as He suffered as He demonstrated what He had done in paying for the sins of His people.  God the Father would work this out on the stage of the world in full view of principalities and powers, and He would demonstrate the atoning work accomplished and finished at the foundation of the world. So the Lord caused Abraham to go through these motions unbeknownst to Abraham that He would not have him follow through with the actual slaying of Isaac.  Abraham did not know that; he wasn't aware of that. So it was an excellent demonstration of the actual atonement and of the later demonstration the Lord Jesus Christ would perform when He would enter into world history.

Well, let us look here in Hebrews 11 and I will read the verse, again, in Hebrews 11:17:

By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,  

Notice how God mentions that he received the promises in the same sentence where he offered up his only begotten son because the promises were all through Isaac.  The promises could not have been fulfilled otherwise, and that is where the severe testing program came in.  There was also a severe test of obedience in the face of apparent contradiction; that is, two seemingly contradictory commands were issued forth, coming from the same God. Through Isaac would all the promises be fulfilled and through him the seed (Christ) would come, and Abraham's seed would be as the stars for multitude. It would be through Isaac, and no one else.  The Lord was very clear about this.  All the promises of the land would be tied and bound together with the promises to Isaac. How could he trust the promise of receiving the land for an everlasting habitation if the promise through Isaac failed? No – it was it was all bound together, and Abraham heard the promises from the mouth of God, and now he was hearing from the very same mouth: “Take Isaac thy son, thy only begotten son and offer him for a burnt offering.”

You know, this is helpful to us because, oftentimes this is how God tests us.  He will open up a Scripture over here and open up a Scripture over there and they seem to contradict and be in opposition to one another.  And how many people fail that test?  The readers of the Bible come to two seemingly contradictory statements and they either make a conclusion that the Bible is in error or they go in one direction, failing to uphold the other statement as well.  And they fail on both counts.

But God's people realize the whole Bible is true and faithful.  It is perfect, without error of any kind.  What Genesis says is true and faithful and what Deuteronomy says and what Hebrews says and what every other book of the Bible says, with all the contents of these books. And when we encounter two seemingly contradictory statements, the elect child of God understands that both are true. We may not understand for some time, and maybe never in a few rare cases, but most of the time these contradictions are able to be reconciled.  For a time we may not understand how both can be true, but we know both are true.  We wait on the Lord to harmonize these things and to reconcile the apparent contradiction, because there are no real contradictions in the Word of God, the Bible. The problem typically lies with the eyes of the beholder or the reader of the Scripture because we are finite, very limited creatures.   We are approaching the Bible with bodies of flesh, and we desperately need God's help and His spirit to guide us.  We need to diligently study, but we often fail to do so and, therefore,  we can come to a quick, casual or superficial conclusion that is not thoroughly researched.  Then we error, and theologians have done this throughout history. 

Of course, that error is compounded if the person doing the searching is himself an unsaved individual.  If he is not born again and does not have the Spirit of God, he lacks a true spirit within because he  has no living soul.  He is dead in the spirit and the Bible is a spiritual book, and God is Spirit.  The things of the Bible are spiritual.  The Law, according to Romans 7:14, is spiritual, and we are to compare spiritual with spiritual.  Well, how does someone who is dead in their spiritual existence compare spiritual with spiritual in a right way?  It is an impossible task.  There is no way they can even perceive the spiritual dimension or the spiritual realm – it is dead to them.  And, of course they come up with methods of interpretation that follow the historical, grammatical and literal style that are natural-minded.  So how can they come up with a spiritual method of interpretation?  How can they recognize the Bible's method of spiritual interpretation when they have no life in their soul?  Their souls are dead and have not been restored, so, yes, it seems like gibberish to them and confusing to them when they hear a true elect child of God say, “Now this word here in Corinthians is used over here in James, and we also find it over here in Matthew.”  They immediately say, “You are jumping out of context!  You have to stay in the context.” They do not understand how God wrote the Bible, or how the Bible defines its own terms, and how spiritual must be compared with spiritual, here a little there a little, as it says in Isaiah.  It is not something new in the New Testament.  It is the same methodology from the Old Testament, here a little there a little.  I think it goes on to say in Isaiah 28 or 29 that this is how God teaches doctrine.  It is not an “unheard of” method.  It  is an ancient method.  It is the method of the kingdom of God.  It is the ABC's of the spiritual language of heaven.

And the real problem with the theologians and with the pastors and church leaders is that they do not understand the language of the kingdom of God.  Yes – they may recognize the earthly language of Hebrew, the earthly language of Greek and the earthly language of Aramaic that the Lord used to write the Bible, and they think because they refer to those earthly languages that they understand the deep things of God.  But that is not so. Whether it be Hebrew or Greek or English or Spanish or whatever the language the Bible has been translated into, it must be translated further into the heavenly language of God's kingdom, which is spiritual. 

Until the painstaking and tedious process of getting out the concordance and looking up words and seeing how they are used elsewhere (in the Bible) and then coming up with a definition for these words in a spiritual way is followed, they are not properly reading and understanding the Word of God, the Bible. They are reading an earthly language and they are applying earthly grammatical rules and principles, but, finally, it becomes necessary to have this earthly language translated into the language of God and His kingdom, which is a spiritual language.

Again, it says here in Hebrews 11:17:

By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,  

Now what we are going to do is look up the Greek word translated as “only begotten,” and it is a compound word. It is #3439 in Strong's Concordance, and the Greek could be pronounced “mon-og-en-ace,” although I do not trust my pronunciation of the Greek all that much.   When someone speaks in a monotone, it is one monotonous sound,  and that comes from the Greek word “mono.”  And “mon-og-en-ace,” is the “only begotten,” and there is not another.  But this particular Greek word is used about eight or 10 times in the New Testament.  We are going to take a look at them, but we will not have time to look at it all of them in this study, but let us start by turning to Luke 7:11-15:

And it came to pass the day after, that he went into a city called Nain; and many of his disciples went with him, and much people. Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. And he came and touched the bier: and they that bare him stood still. And he said, Young man, I say unto thee, Arise.  And he that was dead sat up, and began to speak. And he delivered him to his mother.

Here, we see that this word translated as “only begotten” is translated here as “only son” and it is used to refer to a dead young man the Lord Jesus raised to life, and then he was restored to his mother.  We can imagine how overjoyed she would have been. Can we imagine? I do not know – maybe not.   Here, they are in the midst of a funeral procession. Her young son had died, and he was going to be put in the ground.  We do not know how long he had been dead, but it was confirmed and, certainly, she had been pouring down tears and grieving.  She loved her son and he was her only son, which just would have made it worse because at that time sons would take care of their parents or their mother. And to go from the misery of the death of this young man, her only son, and in the next moment he was standing there alive before her, it had to be incredible - just incredible.  The Lord Jesus Christ did this as an example salvation, but, more than that, it was an example of an only child who died and was restored to life again.  He arose from the dead and, of course, that would point to Christ Himself.

We do not have time to go further in this study, but, Lord willing, in our next study we are going to continue looking at the Greek word “mon-og-en-ace.”