Would I? Could I? I don’t know…
Would I have done what Abraham did, come within a whisker of killing my own son out of obedience to God?
Could I have done what Abraham did, tying up my son and laying him on the wood for an offering out of obedience to God? I don’t know.
More honestly, I don’t think that I could have or would have. What God was asking seems so repulsive to me… to kill and sacrifice an innocent child, my own child.
I struggle even to use my imagination to place myself in the story, so repugnant is the idea of killing a person in this cold-blooded manner.
God excoriates the Tophet in Jeremiah 19; Tophet was Baal worship of child sacrifice. And yet, this very heinous act is what God asks of Abraham. I shudder and cringe and squirm reading and meditating on this.
Despite all my distain, this is possibly the greatest moment of the OT. From Abraham’s obedience, God’s births a people. Through faith in Jesus Christ, I am grafted into God’s people. Many see in this account a prototype of God sacrificing Jesus, His only son, to be the redemption for the sins of humanity.
I sat this morning marveling at Abraham’s faith, a faith that raised his knife to slay his son, yet continuing to believe that somehow God would still bless him through this same son, Isaac (reread verses 5 & 8).
Oh, to have the faith of Abraham, David, Peter and Paul, such is my longing, my hope, my aspirations. Amen.
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