Good evening and welcome to EBible Fellowship’s Bible study in the book of Genesis.  Tonight is study #18 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.  We have been looking at this historical event, and as we do so we are also seeing how it relates to the spiritual teaching of the Word of God, the Bible; that is, we are noticing the deeper spiritual meaning.  It bears repeating that you will find many pastors, church leaders and theologians today that say you cannot look at the Bible for deeper spiritual meaning – you have to understand the Bible plainly and literally, using the historical/grammatical method of interpretation.  And, yet, these same pastors highly esteem Reformers and others in history who did interpret passages like these and said, “Abraham is a picture of God the Father.  Isaac is a picture of Christ, and Abraham offering up Isaac is a picture of God the Father offering up His Son.”  So they have a “double standard.”  They do not adhere faithfully to their own methodology and Biblical hermeneutic which they would have everyone else adhere to.  They prevent others from understanding the Bible in that way.  And, yet, this is just one example of a (spiritual) picture where Abraham offered up his son Isaac.  There are numerous examples like this, which means their methodology cannot be followed consistently through the whole Bible.  So they have inconsistencies because it is not a correct and faithful methodology.

But God’s elect people can follow, consistently and faithfully, the methodology the Lord lays out by comparing Scripture with Scripture and harmonizing all conclusions.  And we look for parables because Christ spoke in parables, and without a parable He did not speak.  From the beginning to the end of the Bible, there is this consistent hermeneutic.  This is how God requires people to search the Scriptures. 

We follow the hermeneutic of Christ because He is the one who spoke in parables, and He is the one who taught the disciples the meaning of the parables.  Why did He do this?  Why did He speak in parables, and without a parable He did not speak?  It is very obvious.  It is because He is the Word made flesh, and He is teaching everyone how to understand the Word, the Bible.

But following this methodology, they cannot acknowledge that Abraham represents the Father and Isaac represents the Son and the attempt to offer Isaac is a picture of the atonement, and then just stop there.  What about all the other details?  What about the two young men?  What about the wood?  What about the reference to the third day?  Why did Abraham say, “Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you”?   

You see, we must be consistent.  Even if these people understood how the Bible was written and how we must search for the spiritual meaning, they would be inconsistent if they just “hit the highlights” or the main points.  If you are going to follow the correct methodology, it must not be just occasionally; that is, you have to look at everything in a passage.

I admit that years and years ago when I first started listening to Mr. Camping’s Bible studies, he would mention some obscure thing (or so I thought at the time) in a verse, and he would go into a long talk to explain what it meant.  You know, the Bible talks of “people, places and things.”  Some of these things are trees and rock and dirt, both big and little things we find in the world, and Mr. Camping would go into detail concerning a (seemingly) minor thing in a verse.   And I used to wonder, at first, if he was going a little overboard.  But, no, he was not going overboard.  He was being consistent.  He was simply being consistent with the Biblical methodology.

You know, people give lip service to every Word of God being important, because no “jot or tittle” will fail and everything will come to pass.  That indicates there is an “equality” about all Scriptures.  We might be drawn or attracted to something we think of as a major event (like the crossing of the Red Sea), but we are not so much attracted to genealogies that say that someone begat someone else, or that the ass or donkey was tied up and then loosed.  We tend to overlook those things, but all Scripture is important.  It is equally the Word of God and it carries the same weight as any other Scripture; that is, one specific word is equally God’s Word as another word.  Who are we to look at a passage and say, “Well, I am interested in this part, but I am not interested in those other things”? 

To tell the truth, we all do this, and I do, too, even as I am saying this, because I might spend more time talking about certain things because I do feel they are more important.  I guess if we are ever going to get through the Bible, we do have to make certain decisions on what to focus on, or we could spend the rest of our lives on just a few chapters of the Bible.  Legitimately, we could look deeper and deeper into things, but we do need to move on.  And the Lord does tend to open up specific things at certain times, so we want to follow that.   But I am saying this just to encourage all of us not to overlook certain verses and certain words in a verse because when we read it, it just does not strike us as being all that significant.  We should be asking, “Why is this here?  What is the spiritual meaning of this, too?” 

Well, okay, that was what we were doing in Genesis 22:3 when we saw that Abraham took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son.  We related that to the Lord Jesus taking Peter, James and John when He went into the Garden of Gethsemane.  Then Peter, James and John waited while He went deeper and prayed and began to suffer the wrath of God.

And, here, we see Abraham, Isaac and two lads.  There were four individuals, pointing to the universal aspect of the atoning work of Christ, as it applied to the whole company of the elect that Jesus died for, and there is also an interest in this on the part of the elect, as represented by the two lads and as represented by the three disciples in the Garden. 

Abraham clave the wood himself, and we discussed how that points to God making preparation, as the wood would be put on the altar to burn Isaac. 

Then it goes on to say in Genesis 22:4:

Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.

God picked the place.  The Lord told him to go into the land of Moriah.  We looked at that in our last study.  Moriah was the place where the plague was stayed in the threshingfloor of Ornan.  Because God stayed the plague at that location, He elected that spot for the house of JEHOVAH and that is where Solomon laid the foundation to build the temple, upon the death of David.  So it was hand-picked by God Himself.  The Lord could have caused Abraham to sojourn a little closer to that place, but the Lord also caused Abraham to establish his tent so that it was a distance of a few days journey.  It was not just a few days.  God could have said, “After a few days, Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.”   The Lord specifically said, “Then on the third day,” and when we check in the Bible for references to the “third day,” we find these kinds of statements again, and again.  I will read a few of them, but we could read many more than these.  It says in Matthew 20:18-19:

Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, And shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him: and the third day he shall rise again.

Then it says in Mark 10:34:

And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him: and the third day he shall rise again.

It says in Luke 13:31-32:

The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee. And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.

This will be the last references I will read in the book of Luke, starting with Luke 24:7:

Saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

It says in Luke 24:21:

But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done.

Then it says in Luke 24:46:

And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day:

This term “the third day” is used several more times, and in very place it shows that Christ will rise from the dead.  In the Bible the number “three” points to purpose, so the reference to “the third day” points to God’s purpose for the completion of the atonement and the accompanying resurrection.  The resurrection was proof.  It was the evidence of justification that Christ had made payment successfully.  If the Lord Jesus took upon Him the sins of His people and died for them, but He had stayed dead, then how would we know that the demands of God’s Law had been satisfied in a way that would provide salvation for His people?  It was through the resurrection that it was revealed that the wages of sin (on behalf of His people) were satisfied.  And then Christ rose from the dead in glory and in tremendous justification for His people – the payment had been made in full.  So, again, “the third day” indicates God’s purpose for the resurrection.  And we find here in Genesis 22 that on the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place afar off.  Then notice what it says next, 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.

He said, “I and the lad,” both together.  That word “together” is used a couple of times in this passage.  It says in verse 6, “…and they went both of them together.”  And at the end of verse 8, it says, “so they went both of them together.”  So Abraham is saying to the two young men, “I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.”   What did he mean by that?  What was the worship he was going to carry out?  He was going to obey the commandment of God.  He was going to do the will of God, which he 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 upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.”  To offer a burnt offering is to worship, and he was going to worship with the full intent of taking a knife and bringing it down on his son to kill him.  Then he was going to light the fire that he had with him.  He would light the wood upon the altar and Isaac was upon the wood to be offered as a burnt offering.  That was his full intention. 

If that was Abraham’s full intention, was he lying to the two young men?  Was he lying to them?  If the people of the world, being naturally deceitful, would view this, they would think, “Well, Abraham was having some kind of psychotic episode and he heard a voice he thought was from heaven, so he intended to murder his son.  He was keeping his intentions quiet by not telling the two young men what he planned to do, and he never had any intention of coming back with Isaac.”  That is how they would describe it.  But Abraham trusted in God.  He trusted the Word of God, and he knew God was faithful and true.  He knew that God cannot lie, and He always does what He says He will do, fulfilling His promises.  And he knew the Lord would fulfill the promises made to him earlier, and it would be through Isaac and not anyone else.  Abraham understood, and he would have thought, “I do not know why God is telling me to do this, but He is telling me to do this and, therefore, I must obey.”

You know, there is a saying that goes: “It is not for us to reason why, it is just for us to do or die.”  And that is really a statement that indicates that we will do what we are told to do.  (Of course, they are not normally speaking of what God has said.)  But that is the mindset of the people of God.  We have been bought with a price.  We are not our own.  God owns us, and we know that He is a good God.  He is loving, kind, gentle and merciful.  He is everything that “good” can possibly be, without any darkness or evil.  He is not “bad” in any part of His Being.  We know this, and we know He has saved us and delivered us and done good to us all the days of our lives. 

So, first of all, the elect child of God wants to make sure that it is from God and it is the Word of God as we check it out through comparison of Scriptures and harmonization of the Scriptures.  Then we see things the Bible is teaching, like the church age is over; or the Bible is teaching that there is no place called ‘Hell’ where people will suffer, but hell is the grave and God’s final judgment is annihilation; or, we see that the Bible is indicating that Christ made payment for sin at the foundation of the world and He was not paying for sin at the cross.  And then we say, “Very well, Lord,” and we obey – we keep His commandments. 

With each unveiling of a doctrine, there will be numerous enemies that will criticize and ridicule and revile, and they will find fault because we are obeying, but we obey.  And now God has shut the door of heaven and ended His salvation program.  This is grievous to us personally.  Who in this world does not have someone they care about and love who has not yet given any evidence of salvation?  Would we not want the door to be open to them for the possibility of salvation?  Of course, we would.  But obedience is the character and nature of the child of God.  We do not understand all the reasons that God does the things He does, but we do understand His voice.  We do recognize and know that voice, so when we hear the voice of God (as Abraham did when He tempted Abraham), and when we realize it is His voice, all we can do is obey.  The critics come, and they quickly assail us, saying, “Do you know what you are saying?  Do you understand what this means for anyone born after that date (of May 21, 2011)?  Do you not have a heart?”  Yes – we understand.  Yes – we understand, but we are not the One speaking and declaring these things.  It was not our idea, just as it was not Abraham’s idea to take his son Isaac and do this thing.  God is the One who orchestrated it.  God is the One who commanded it, and God is also the One who worked it all out.  Abraham was the one being tried and tested to see how he would react and respond.  And it is the same today.

In telling the young men, “I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you,” Abraham is including Isaac in the statement about returning; that is, Abraham is telling them that he and Isaac will go, and he and Isaac will return together.  And we know this is exactly what was in his heart.  He was not trying to hide what he was about to do.  He fully believed that Isaac would come back to him after he slew him, because 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.

 Abraham was “accounting” or “reckoning” an understanding.  This was in his heart and mind: “God will raise him up.  I fully believe that and, therefore, after the lad and I go and worship for a space, we will return to you once again.”