My wife and I were becoming very tired of visiting doctors and specialists to figure out why our son, Tommy, had become weak in his legs and muscles; barely able to walk. We were instructed by a doctor who was very concerned about Tommy’s condition and wanted to get to the bottom of it right away, to go overnight to the hospital and have him get an MRI. Then we were informed that this MRI was going to require temporarily putting Tommy to sleep. When the moment finally came for me to take Tommy into the room where the team was preparing for his MRI, he began to cry loudly in anticipation of me leaving him alone with these strangers from the medical profession. I stood in the room holding him close to me and gently swaying him. I also began wiping away his tears and reassuring him, while they encircled us and gave him the injection to put him to sleep. As a parent, nothing could have prepared me for that moment. Because my only, first-born son, whom I love deeply, and who was just crying out for me, just immediately fell back limb, as if lifeless, in my arms. I just stood there in shock, not wanting to leave. As they laid him there on the machine, with his mouth partly open, they kindly, but firmly invited me to leave the room. A man from their team started to escort me to the waiting area. As we walked he talked about what they do and the MRI procedure, which to me was seemingly indifferent to my emotional state. I twice interrupted him, asking if he saw how Tommy just quickly fell out in my arms. It was only after the second time that his humanity kicked back in and he began to empathize with me.
This experience of mine is just a small glimpse into the thoughts and emotions Abraham must have felt as he imagined holding his son’s lifeless body. His old heart was racing as he’d just gotten through hearing the voice of the God he loved and who had faithfully kept His promises to him thus far. As God first began to talk, He spoke to him of taking Isaac, his only son whom he loved, to the land of Moriah. Well, if Abraham was anything like me, he’d love a good road trip, especially when he’d have the good company of his beloved son Isaac. He was familiar with the area since that was where he met and gave tithe to the priest-king Melchizedek of Salem, a city which would later be known as Jerusalem. But then came the bombshell that rocked his world! God asked him to offer up his son as a burnt offering on a mountain He’d specify to him. Wait a minute! Is this really the voice of Yahweh or the lamb chops he had the night before? Only the false pagan gods demanded the sacrifice of children. Isaac was the miracle child Abraham had waited so long for. Plus, Isaac was the son of the promise, with the birthright of the “firstborn.” Author & pastor, Ty Gibson explains this well, in his ground breaking book “The Sonship of Christ”, when he says, “The firstborn son is the channel through which the covenant promise is to be passed on from generation to generation. But… in a narrative twist that emphasizes the spiritual nature of the plan, we soon see that the genetic firstborn isn’t always the covenant firstborn. Isaac is the second born son of Abraham, after Ishmael, but Isaac is the firstborn son of promise.” Abraham not only loves his son, but also knows that Isaac is the son of the covenant promise through whom “all nations of the earth would be blessed” by the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. Through him and his descendants the salvation of the nations was at stake and he could not fathom loosing him.
So what was this, some kind of sick joke? Was Abraham’s love for his son going to superseded his love for God? As a parent, what would you do? I had to wrestle with this question myself. What could God possibly be trying to teach us as parents through the experience of this journey with Abraham and Isaac, by a request that seems so cruel? Let’s see what we discover as we take the journey with them beginning in Genesis 22:3…