Why God Tests the People He Loves The Most (Gen. 22)

One of the things unbelievers tell me is that the Old and New Testaments are disconnected from one another. They'll use this logic to justify why they don't follow the Bible or why they don't live by what it says. But I'm going to show you today how a text in Genesis is a direct line to the cross of Christ on Calvary. There is one text in the Old Testament, think about this, that foreshadows Jesus going to the cross more than any other text. Do you know what it is? Genesis 22. But if you don't examine this text through a Hebraic lens, the way Jesus and his apostles or even the Old Testament saints would have read it, you're going to miss all the connections. I'm going to show you today how 2,000 years before Jesus went to the cross and died, God gave us an outline of how it would happen through Abraham going to a mountain to offer his son Isaac in obedience to God. It's the same mountain that Jesus would ascend 2,000 years later. You heard that right. The same mountain Abraham ascended to sacrifice Isaac will be the one Jesus goes up to die for the sin of the world. And before we're done today, I'm going to show you why God tests those he loves the most. And I'll give you a hint. It's not to break you down, but to build you up. It's not to destroy you, but to develop you in the image of his son. Welcome back to Get Into the Word. My name is Robbie Gallaty. Here's our roadmap for today. We're going to look at Abraham's obedience through the test to sacrifice his son Isaac, then at God's faithfulness to provide a substitute for the sacrifice. And then finally, the question that I think applies to everyone who's watching, what does God actually want from us when he tests us? And the answer to the last is going to surprise you. To understand what God is saying to Abraham, we have to go back to Genesis 22. And we need to understand where Abraham is in this point of his life. This is not a young man stepping out in a naive faith. God had enrolled Abraham in what we might call today the University of Faith and Trust. And it started at the ripe age of 75 years old. When some people are enjoying retirement, collecting seashells, or looking at the water, Abraham is about to face his greatest test. And now, at 130 plus years old, God is handing him the final exam. Warren Wearsby helps us here. He cataloged all of the tests that Abraham had already faced up to this point. There are nine tests in a 10-test examination. I want to show them to you. The first one was the family test, leaving his homeland and everyone he knew. The second was the famine test, which he actually failed, believe it or not, running to Egypt instead of trusting God. The fellowship test came next, giving his nephew Lot first choice of the land. The fight test came after that, going to war to rescue Lot. Then there was the fortune test,

refusing the wealth of Sodom that it had been offered or offered to him. The fatherhood test comes after that, the disaster of Hagar and Ishmael. And then the farewell test, the day he had to send his son Ishmael away, which actually broke his heart. So listen, nine tests, nine rounds of God squeezing Abraham to bring out what was actually inside of him already. Remember this, God always tests someone he knows can pass the test. See, God knows what's in Abraham. He wants Abraham to know it as well. And then comes the final exam. Genesis 22 will pick up in verse 1. After these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham, here I am, he answered. Take your son, he said, your only son, Isaac. Now that's interesting. He already has a son. What does this mean? Whom you love. Go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about. Now what's interesting here is God is going to speak to Abraham something we need to feel before we go on in the text. At this point in the story, Abraham has just said goodbye to his son Ishmael. Ishmael is gone and it has broken the heart of Abraham. Isaac, the miraculous child who came from a barren wound and a body as good as dead, Isaac is all he has left. And God uses the phrase your only son. He does that deliberately. Three times in this chapter God calls him that. He's not being careless with the language. He's making sure Abraham understands exactly what is being asked of him. The weight of this is almost unbearable. If Abraham goes through with it and God doesn't intervene, he will be known as a man who murdered his son after already sending his other son away. His reputation, his family, the promise of God all seem to hang on this. on request, and so what does Abraham do in response? Not a question, not a negotiation, not the kind of pushback that we would expect to see from a man who was bargaining not long ago in Genesis 18 over people who were righteous in Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham's only words, if you remember, are here I am. It's the same words Moses will say, here I am, Lord. It's the same words Isaiah will say, here I am, Lord. He's learning something. Abraham couldn't have done this 50 years earlier. The most important skill a person of faith can develop, don't miss this, is learning to hear the word of God

and obey it in their lives. Now watch what happens next. I wanna go back to verse three and show you. It says, so Abraham got up early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and he took with him two of his young men and his son Isaac. Put a note in that, three total. He split the wood for a burnt offering and set out to go to the place God had told him about. On the third day, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. Abraham rose early in the morning. He didn't spend days fasting or weeks in extended prayer before responding to God. He didn't get Sarah's take on the situation. He didn't call his friends. He simply obeyed the Lord. Now I want you to think about that three-day journey. It's a 50-mile journey from Beersheba, where he was, to Mount Moriah, where he will sacrifice his son. Three days of walking with the wood for the sacrifice on the back of a donkey and his son at his side. I don't know for certain, but I suspect that the reason he rose early in the morning that first day is because he couldn't sleep that night. You wouldn't either. He probably tossed and turned, staring at the ceiling of his tent, wrestling with what he had been told. And then, instead of delaying, he got up and went.

Now follow me here. Partial obedience to the Lord is also disobedience. What does that mean? God, I'll go, but not now. I'll serve, but not today. Abraham knew God demanded obedience. Abraham understood that by this point in his life. Look at verse five. Then Abraham said to the young men with him, stay here with the donkey. The boy and I will go over there to worship, and then what? We will come back to you. Notice what he says. We'll go to worship, and then we'll come back to you. Let's stop for a moment. He doesn't say, I'm gonna come back. He says, we will come back, both of us. Abraham says this before Isaac is spared, before the ram even appears, before he knows how this is going to end. He says, we will come back, which means that by this point in his life, Abraham's faith has matured to the point where he absolutely trusts God. He's gonna give his son Isaac to God. He knows God is capable of bringing him back to him, even if he has to raise him from the dead. Now, how do I know this? If you go to the book of Hebrews, Hebrews confirms this unwavering faith from Abraham.

By faith, verse 17 of Hebrews 11. By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. He received the promises, and yet he was offering his one and only son, the one to whom it had been said, your offspring will be traced through Isaac. He considered God, here it is, to be able to even raise someone from the dead. Therefore, he received him back, figuratively speaking. Now, this is amazing. This is not the faith of a man who had just started walking with God or following God. This is the faith of a man who's been battle-tested. He's been proven. He's been refined to follow God. Now, they're walking up the mountain, and Isaac speaks to his father. Let's go back to the book of Genesis and see what happens in verse seven. He says to his dad, father, father, we have a problem here. He says, my father, and he replied, here I am, son. Isaac said, the fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? Now, a pre-Christian Jewish commentary, which is called a midrash, noted that Isaac, you're gonna love this, walking up the mountain with the wood on his back looked like a condemned man carrying a cross on his shoulders. Did you catch that?

That observation was made centuries before Jesus by rabbis who didn't even believe Jesus was the Messiah, and yet the Apostle John, when he's writing about the crucifixion, describes Jesus in these words. Jesus was bearing his own cross on his shoulders to the place called Golgotha, or the skull. The image, in a sense, is prophetic. The connection is not by accident, but I'm getting ahead of myself because the connections are about to become even more staggering. Let's go back to verse eight and watch how Abraham answers him. Abraham says, God himself, son, will. bide the lamb for the burnt offering. Then the two of them walked on together. It means to be in unison with one another. The two of them were in harmony, in union. And there is a picture here of the kind of relationship God desires with us today, walking together, even when we fully don't understand what lies ahead. Somebody needs to hear this. Now they arrive, Abraham builds the altar, he arranges the wood, after he binds his son to the place on top of the mountain where he's going to sacrifice him. I want you to see what happens. Because by this time, Abraham is offering up Isaac. Abraham is probably 130 years old. Isaac is not a teenager, as you've been taught

in Sunday school for years past. He's actually a grown man. One of the commentaries from the Mishnah says, he was probably in his 30s. So this is not an old man wrestling a young child. Isaac could have responded, he could have pushed back. There's no way Abraham could have physically restrained his son without Isaac's, get this, willing cooperation. Isaac submitted himself to his father. And it reminds us of someone else. When Jesus says, no one takes my life from me, I give my life willingly in obedience to the father. Look at verse 10. Then Abraham reached out and took the knife to slaughter his son. This is where it gets good. But the angel of the Lord came to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. He replied, here I am, three times here. Then he said, do not lay a hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your only son from me. Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in the thicket. By the way, a ram is a male lamb. Some people miss that. I had somebody recently say, I didn't know that was a lamb. I thought it was a goat or, no, it's a male lamb. This is the lamb of God about to take away the sin

in place for Isaac. So Abraham went up and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son. And Abraham named the place the Lord will provide. So today it is said it will be provided on the Lord's mountain. A substitute dies in place of the son. And now I need to show you something about this location that most people completely miss because this is what happens when you understand it from a Hebraic perspective. Why didn't Abraham sacrifice Isaac in Beersheba where they started? Why not just go up to a hill where he lives? Why did God specifically direct him to the land of Moriah on an uninhabited mountain range three days away? We have to understand what happens in 2 Chronicles chapter three, verse one. The Bible says, then Solomon began to build the house of the Lord in Jerusalem. You ready for this? On Mount Moriah where the Lord had appeared to David his father, but what it leaves out is where Abraham sacrificed Isaac or attempted to. You see, the mountain where Abraham bound Isaac and a ram died in his place is the exact same mountain where Solomon will later build the temple. It is the same ridge, the same grounds. It is where thousands and thousands of crucif-, or sacrificial lambs, not crucified,

sacrificial, I'm getting ahead. Sacrificial lambs were offered every day for generation after generation, and you ready for this? And it's the same mountain, thousands of years after Abraham where Jesus Christ of Nazareth will be crucified for the sin, not of a boy, but of the world. The connections between what happens here in Genesis 22 and what happens at Calvary 2,000 years later are not coincidences. I'm gonna show you a few of them. It's gonna blow your way. They are the architecture of God's redemptive plan. Walk through these with me and I want you to see them. Abraham rides a donkey to the mountain. Jesus rode what? A donkey into Jerusalem. Both of them involve accounts. Both of them involve a loving father and a one and only son. Isaac willingly submitted himself to the father. Jesus willingly gave his life up in obedience to the father. Both of them walked to their place of execution. Abraham ascends the mountain on the third day. This is a good one. Jesus rises from the dead on the third day. Isaac carried the wood for the sacrifice on his shoulders up the mountain of Moriah. Jesus carried a wooden cross on his shoulders up at the same mountain called Moriah.

The parallels are staggering. I could give you more, but I just wanted to give you a flavor, but here's the one difference that makes all the other parallels matter. Whereas Isaac's life was spared at the last moment, when Abraham, picture it, raised the knife, a voice called out from the distance. and said, stop, don't come down. But when God raised his hand over his son Jesus on Calvary, no one called out to stop that. James Montgomery Boyce put it best. He said, Abraham was only asked to sacrifice his son. He did not actually have to do it. Even if he had, there was only a physical death involved. But when the time came for God, the heavenly father, to sacrifice his son, was not a mere physical death, it was a spiritual one. One that achieved redemption for sinners. When God offered up his sacrifice, the hand that was poised above Christ fell and Jesus died. Through that death, God brought life to all who would trust in Christ's sacrifice. There's one more thing I wanna point out in verse eight before we move forward. Abraham told Isaac, if you remember, God will provide for himself the sacrifice of the offering. Scholars have noted that this phrase can actually be translated in two different ways. It can mean God will provide for himself an offering.

But another way is, get this, God will provide himself as the offering. Either translation is astonishing, I would admit. Either way, God is the one who furnishes the sacrifice for our sins. He doesn't point us to a system and leave us to figure it out. Aren't you glad God provides himself to be the sacrifice for our sin? In a sense, God steps into the story of humanity. Let me say it another way. For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in Jesus shall not perish, but have eternal life. Friends, the ram caught in the thicket in Genesis 22 is not a rescue for one boy on a mountain one day. It is a foreshadowing of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of everyone in the world who would confess and believe him as Savior. Now, I wanna deal with what I promised earlier, and that's been sitting in the back of your mind because it was sitting in my mind when I studied this for the first time. It's a legitimate question. If God already knew that Abraham would pass the test, then why did he give it? This is where we have to do something interesting, and it's the nature of testing. I need to go back and teach you how testing works because here's the thing.

We know Genesis 22 is a test because God told us in verse one. But Abraham doesn't know he's being tested. That's the problem with our life. When God is testing us, we wish God you would tell us, but he doesn't. Abraham has no idea. He's just a man. He's standing at the foot of a mountain. He's got a sword in his pocket. He's about to raise it above his head. He's just following the instructions that God gave him, and that's the first thing to understand in a test. A test from God is not the same as a temptation from the enemy. A temptation entices you toward evil. It originates in the desires of the flesh, as James says so well. No one undergoing a test or a trial should say I'm being tempted by God, for God does not tempt with evil, and God doesn't tempt anyone. We're drawn out by our own desires, he says, from within. So in a sense, Satan throws a fishing line into the desires of our flesh, and he pulls out temptations within us. But a test, don't miss this, different than a temptation, is given by God as an opportunity to strengthen us. It doesn't push us toward sin. It actually pulls us out from what's already there,

pulls us away from something that can harm us and hurt us if we trust in him during the test. Now, how do I know this? In Hebrew, the word for test is nisa, N-I-S-A, N-I-S-A. A nisa is related to the Hebrew word for raising up a banner or a standard to elevate something. You're gonna love this. A test from God is not designed to take you down. A test from God is created to raise you up. I still remember those moments in high school when a teacher would say to me, put your pencils down, take out a, you remember this, half sheet of paper. We have a pop quiz today. Some of you have a heart racing right now just thinking about it right back then. But here's the thing, tests aren't confined to schools. My son Ryder's favorite snack growing up was applesauce. He still eats it today, but it's one of those squeeze pouches that you squeeze the applesauce out of. Apple, grape, strawberry, cinnamon, different ones. But you can't know the flavor inside by just looking at the package. I mean, you can read it, but in order to experience it, in order to enjoy it, you have to squeeze it. In a sense, your life is the same way. God squeezes us with tests not to empty us but to manifest to us on the outside what he already knows to be on the inside. You don't know what's on the inside until you're put under pressure.

Abraham walked with God for 50 years before God tested him in the hardest way to offer. up his son. He'd already passed nine tests prior to that. He failed some and passed some. But God is not the kind of teacher who gives pop quizzes on material he never covered. He's a gracious God who gives tests to people he knows can pass. Not because passing is easy, but because he's building you towards something greater for this moment right now. God wants to do something in the future that you were incapable of doing in the past without going through a season of testing. And why is this so critical for us to understand? Because after the ram is offered in the Genesis account, after Isaac is safe, God says to Abraham in verse 12, for now I know that you fear the Lord since you haven't withheld your only son Isaac from me. Now that's interesting. I thought God was omniscient, meaning he knew everything. So what is he saying here? Why would God say now I know? God didn't need to know the answer. God needed Abraham to know the answer. The tests in our lives are always given so that the individual being tested can see, they can confirm what's actually inside of them, what they're made of. God knows you'll respond before you do, but he wants you to know. He wants you to endure it. He wants you to come through it. He wants you to stand firm on it. Think of it this way. A nail sitting in a box has no idea how strong it is. It takes a hammer to find out. The nail might resent every blow. It might feel like the hammer is being cruel and feel like all of this pain is unnecessary. But what the nail doesn't see is that every blow is driving it deeper, giving it more holding power, giving it more effectiveness, more strength. Adrian Rogers used to say, a faith that can't be tested is a faith that can't be trusted. Now I want to ask you a deeper question, the one God was actually asking Abraham on the mountain. Look at what God said. For now I know that you fear me, since you have not withheld your only son from me. Basically, since you've given me everything, I will not withhold anything from you. God didn't want Isaac. Isaac was already given to, God gave him Isaac to begin with. It was already God's to begin with. What God wanted was Abraham. He wanted to know and he wanted Abraham to know that whether Abraham was following God for the gifts he gave or whether he was following the giver of the gifts himself. Was God his treasure or was Isaac his treasure? I like to say if you search God or follow God for his hands, what he can give and not his face, you may get neither. But if you search and seek God for his face, who he is, and not his hands, you'll probably get both. Another way to say it is this, are you following Jesus for a treasure or is Jesus Christ the treasure

you desire? A pastor once said to an overseas missionary who was filled with the Spirit of God and carried an inexplicable joy, I would give anything, he said, I'd give the world to have the joy that you have. And the missionary responded, that's just what it cost me. I had to give up the world. Let that sit in for a moment. Look at the men and women in the Bible who God used mightily. Noah had to endure the flood. Moses went through the plagues. Israel wandered in the wilderness for years. Joseph was in a prison. Daniel in a lion's den. Esther before the king. David went in a cave. John the Baptist had to go to jail. And Jesus went to the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights. Every single one of them passed through seasons that made no sense in the moment. Every one of them was called to let go of the branch they were holding onto and trust the Lord Jesus when there was no visible net below them to catch them. And every one of them learned what Hebrews 11 said about Abraham. By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac. Why? Because he considered God to be able to raise him even from the dead. He put his faith in the promise of God, not in the reality of his situation. And that's the question for us today. Not whether you've been tested like you have or whether you'll go through it again. The question is when God asked you to let go of the very thing you've been holding onto, the career, the relationship, the plan, the dream, the person, will you trust that the same God who stopped Abraham's hand is fully capable of providing what you need on this side of your life? Here's what Genesis 22 is telling us. God tests those whom he trusts. He tests those that he loves. He tests those that are following him. He tests us because he knows there is more capacity inside of you than you've ever experienced or even known. And the only way to see that coming close is to be put under pressure. And here's the miracle of Mount Moriah. God never asked us to do anything he wasn't willing to do. himself. He asked Abraham to offer his only son, and then he did it exactly the same way. Not on a practice run, not with a last-minute rescue effort, but all the way to the grave, enduring death and conquering it and coming out on the other side. You see, the ram caught in the thicket was just the preview, because the cross was the reality. So whatever you're holding onto right now, whatever it is God has been asking you to let go of, release. Let me remind you of something Abraham learned on the third day of the journey. The God who provides on the mountain is the same God who already proved himself at Calvary. So let go of the branch. God's got you.

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