Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #17 of Genesis, chapter 22, and we are continuing to read Genesis 22:1-8:

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. 

I will stop reading there.  Now we have been spending a great deal of time in this passage, discussing things related to this passage.  That is fine – there is no rush.  We are not hurrying.  We are going to continue to look at the Word of God and this historical parable to see where it leads.

Before we move on, we should discuss the reference to the land of Moriah in verse 2.  Abraham was told, “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.”  Moriah is only found two times in the Old Testament, once here, and once in 2Chronicles 3:1:

Then Solomon began to build the house of JEHOVAH at Jerusalem in mount Moriah, where JEHOVAH appeared unto David his father, in the place that David had prepared in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.

Here, it is not referring back to Abraham, but it is referring back to David.  We know it is significant that Solomon began to build the house of JEHOVAH upon the death of David, a great type of Christ.  When David died, the foundation of the temple was laid in mount Moriah.  And that ties in with Abraham taking his only son Isaac to one of the mountains of Moriah and offering him for a burnt offering as God had commanded him.  It would relate back to the same figure of David dying, and upon the death of David, the temple could be built, because God had stipulated that the temple was not to be built when David was alive.

But even before that, we find that Moriah was associated with the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite.  Turn to 1Chronicles 21:18-27:

Then the angel of JEHOVAH commanded Gad to say to David, that David should go up, and set up an altar unto JEHOVAH in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite. And David went up at the saying of Gad, which he spake in the name of JEHOVAH. And Ornan turned back, and saw the angel; and his four sons with him hid themselves. Now Ornan was threshing wheat. And as David came to Ornan, Ornan looked and saw David, and went out of the threshingfloor, and bowed himself to David with his face to the ground. Then David said to Ornan, Grant me the place of this threshingfloor, that I may build an altar therein unto JEHOVAH: thou shalt grant it me for the full price: that the plague may be stayed from the people. And Ornan said unto David, Take it to thee, and let my lord the king do that which is good in his eyes: lo, I give thee the oxen also for burnt offerings, and the threshing instruments for wood, and the wheat for the meat offering; I give it all. And king David said to Ornan, Nay; but I will verily buy it for the full price: for I will not take that which is thine for JEHOVAH, nor offer burnt offerings without cost. So David gave to Ornan for the place six hundred shekels of gold by weight. And David built there an altar unto JEHOVAH, and offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and called upon JEHOVAH; and he answered him from heaven by fire upon the altar of burnt offering. And JEHOVAH commanded the angel; and he put up his sword again into the sheath thereof.

Then it goes on to say in the next chapter in 1Chronicles 22:1:

Then David said, This is the house of JEHOVAH God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel.

This was the spot where Solomon did lay the foundation to build the house of God upon.  The historical situation was that David had commanded that the people be numbered, and Joab went about to number them.  Joab did wrongly in numbering them, as he numbered those under the age of twenty, so wrath fell from God.  There was a great plague, and I believe it was seventy thousand people that died.  Actually, David had been given options, and he felt it was the best option to fall into the hand of God rather than the hand of man.  So in that plague seventy thousand fell, and it was at this site where Ornan had his threshingfloor that the angel put up His sword, once again, and stopped the slaughter.  The picture is that David, as Christ, at that location interceded on behalf of the people of Jerusalem so they would not die along with the seventy thousand.  In that case, the number “70,000” would represent perfect completeness of the wrath of God, and it would picture God’s elect that were spared by Christ, whom David typifies.  So, again, even in this instance, this site of Moriah (the land or the mount) points to the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ, just as how David dying and then the temple being built points to the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Of course, this is the spiritual picture in this historical parable of Abraham and Isaac.  They are demonstrating the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now let us go on to Genesis 22:3:

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.

Everything in the Bible has a point.  Everything has a purpose.  Every detail has depths of meaning and we are not normally equipped to go into the fulness of meaning for every detail God gives in each verse.  We tend to search or seek out the “highlights,” and sometimes that is all we can handle in our understanding, but we should always ask the question, in this case: “Why were there two young men?  Why did Abraham not simply take Isaac and go?”  After all, this is something we have already discussed, but Abraham is a picture of God the Father and Isaac is a picture of Christ.  Did not the Lord Jesus Christ die alone?  Remember what we are told in Isaiah 63:3:

I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me…

This is a Messianic reference to the Lord Jesus, and we know He was alone.  Yes – He was alone at the foundation of the world when He made payment (for sin), and He was alone in the Garden of Gethsemane when He went to pray.  Or, was he alone?  Well, there were Peter, James and John that went with Him to a certain point.  That would make four, would it not?  Peter, James, John and Jesus are four.  They went to a certain point together, but then the Lord went off a distance about a stone’s throw by Himself, and Peter, James and John stayed behind and ended up falling asleep.  I think we have a similar situation with the two young men that went with Abraham and Isaac.  We know that Abraham is a picture of God, but, historically, these were four people that traveled by God’s commandment to the place where Isaac was to be offered.  When the Lord Jesus began to suffer in the Garden of Gethsemane, that is when He began to, once again, offer up Himself in sacrifice and suffering, which eventually led to the cross.  But, again, He was not making payment (for sin) at that time.  And just a little way off were the disciples, so the number “four” is in view in both places, pointing to the universal aspect of the atonement; that is, Christ made payment at the foundation of the world for the sins of all His elect people that would ever be born into the world.  You know, as far as salvation goes and as far as the atonement for sin goes, Jesus paid for everyone who would receive it – each one God had chosen to salvation by laying their sins upon Him.  He paid for their sins, so there is a universal aspect to the atonement that can be seen in there being “four” people.

After it says in verse 3 that he took two of his young men and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him, on the third day it goes on to say in Genesis 22:5:

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.

So these two young men did stay behind.  In this case, two could point to the elect because the elect are the caretakers of the Word of God.  The elect have a vested interest in the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ, of course.  And we see Peter, James and John at a distance in the garden, and here we see two young men that remained at a distance while Abraham, the father, took his only son and they go a little way from them to perform the atonement.  I think that is how we can understand it.

Okay, going back to verse 3, he 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.”  Abraham clave the wood himself, from everything we can read here.  It does not say that he had any of his servants do it, although he had a large number of servants that he could have commanded to do it, but that is not the way it reads: “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 Abraham was a very old man of, perhaps, 110 or 111 or 113.  We do not know exactly how old he was at this point, but he was well over 100 years old, although it is true that he would live to be about 175, so he had many years of life left and, therefore, he had some vitality left in him.  However, it was a menial task and we wonder why he would clave the wood.

By the way, the word “clave” is the same word translated as “divide” in a few places having to do with the Red Sea.  It says in Psalm 78:12-15:

Marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt, in the field of Zoan. He divided the sea, and caused them to pass through; and he made the waters to stand as an heap. In the daytime also he led them with a cloud, and all the night with a light of fire. He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths.

The word “clave” in verse 15 is the same Hebrew word that was translated as “divided” in Psalm 78:13.  He divided or clave the sea – the sea was one and then the Lord divided it.  He commanded Moses to go forward and He caused the sea to go back and it divided in the midst, and Israel went through the midst of the sea as on dry ground, with a wall of water on the left and a wall of water on the right.  We have discussed that a little bit, and how it can relate to the division God is causing in the Day of Judgment among the kingdom of Satan.  That is the way into the kingdom of heaven is found as God divides the kingdom of Satan and it is “parted.”  Remember, “waters” or “seas” can represent people in the Bible: “The wicked are like the troubled sea.”  The woman (the harlot) in Revelation 17 was sitting upon the seas, and the seas were said to be nations, and tongues and tribes.  So God divides the sea – He divides the people of the kingdom of Satan at the time of the end.  But God’s people are very careful not to “take a side,” because if you pick a side you are either in one part of the sea or the other.  No – we do not take the side of “leftists” or “rightists,” and we do not take the side of anyone else.  We go right down the narrow path.  Do not turn your eyes to the left or the right, or you may become distracted.  Keep walking straight ahead, following the pathway that the Word of God, the Bible, is opening up, and soon enough we will get to the other side.  This is one way we can look at this, spiritually, considering how the Lord is bringing this truth to the surface regarding the division of Satan’s kingdom at the time of the end.

It is also interesting that he “clave” the rocks; that is, God commanded Moses to smite the rock and it says the rocks clave, as it said in Psalm 78:15:

He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths.

One interesting thing here is that it says “rocks,” plural, but elsewhere it speaks of the rock, singular, and we know that rock was Christ, as we read in 1Corinthians 10.  But when there is one great rock and it divides or splits, then you would have two rocks.  So I think that is pictured because it does use the word “divide” regarding the rocks in the wilderness.  God commanded Moses to speak to the rock, but he smote it, according to the will of God, and when he smote the rock, it must have divided and broken apart, and out gushed a river of water.  And the Lord provided Israel drink for quite a while with that water.  The way the Bible speaks of it, it was as though that water was their drink throughout the entire 40-year wilderness sojourn.  Of course, that was not the case, but that is the way it was described.  It could be that they took as much water as they could carry, and they never really wandered very far in the wilderness, so I suppose they could always have sent people back to get more water.

Anyway, it goes on to say in Psalm 78:16:

He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.

Of course, this is a great picture of the Gospel, the Word of God, that provides “living water” to the people of God.  It is a great source of life for the people of God, and it resulted from this “cleaving” or “dividing” of the rock.  And, of course, there is eternal life that results from the dividing of the Red Sea.  At least, that is the spiritual picture, because when they crossed it was a picture of entering into eternal salvation and the eternal dwelling place where there is salvation of the soul and body for evermore. 

I think this is all in view here, as Abraham clave or divided the wood for the burnt offering.  God caused Abraham to divide the wood because God had made all the necessary preparation.  God has provided everything needful regarding the atonement in choosing who would be saved as pictured by bringing the two young men along; God predestinated everyone whose names were recorded in the Lamb’s Book of Life and He laid their sins upon Christ.  We see that in Genesis 22:6:

And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Isaac his son…

Here, the word “wood” is a word that is also translated as “tree.”  He laid the tree upon him, just as the cross was laid upon the Lord Jesus Christ and He bear the cross.  So, too, the Father had made all necessary preparation for the atonement and the sins of His people were laid upon Him and the Son was bearing the sins of His people at the foundation of the world.  Of course, here, it is just a demonstration, but it is demonstrating the fact that the sins were laid upon Christ at the foundation of the world.

Okay, I think we can see the general direction these statements lead us in, and it is forming a beautiful picture of the great, magnificent saving work of the Lord Jesus Christ performed on behalf of His people.