YOU FEAR ME!
"Give instruction to a wise man and he will be still wiser, teach a righteous man and he will increase his learning. The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." Proverbs 9:9-10.
When Abram took Hagar to be his concubine and she bore him a son, Abram loved that boy, Ishamael. He heaped his love and all he had on that son of his old age.
Ishmael was a product of rationalization. Years before his birth, God had promised a son to Abram and his barren wife, Sarai. As days added up to years and yet they had no child or heir, it was Sarai who came up with the idea of giving her handmaiden, Hagar, to Abram to bear a child in her stead. It seemed such a correct solution to a long-standing, unanswered promise. So, for 12 years Ishmael was heir apparent to Abram and all his wealth.
God says of Himself that He never changes. Nor do His promises. It was Abram who changed. He altered his trust in God's promise. His aging physical decline and his wife's insistence that he sire a son by Hagar seemed a logical solution both to Abram and to Sarai. They needed to help God out. However, God does not change. What He said He will do, He will do---in His timing!
So, after Abram and Sarai were REALLY old and unable to conceive the promised son, God worked a miracle. First, He established a covenant with Abram of his producing a multitude of offspring. He also changed their names to Abraham and Sarah, elevating their status to royalty. Abraham laughed and later so did Sarah at the promise of a son. Yet, in time Sarah bore Isaac...a brother to Ishmael...competition for first place in Abraham's heart...rivalry between Sarah and Hagai for whose son was to be the heir!
While both boys were sons of Abraham, only one was THE child of promise: God's promise. Thus, Abraham forced Hagar and Ishmael to leave the family compound and fare for theselves. Isaac was number one!
Abraham staked his all in Isaac. It was Isaac who would inherit all the promises from God that He gave to Abraham in his walk of faith. Through Isaac, Abraham's progeny would become like the sands on the shore in number. Isaac's offspring would bless the world, because Jesus would come from them one day as the world's redeemer from sin.
Fulfilling His promise of a son to Abraham wasn't the last test of Abraham's faith. God had one more in store of much greater probing. It didn't come until Isaac was around 16 or 17 years of age, when one day God met with Abraham and gave him instructions. He was to take Isaac to Moriah miles away and offer him on an altar Abraham would build. Isaac would be a blood sacrifice to God.
All God's other promises to Abraham hinged on Isaac and his offspring. Now God was telling Abraham that he must kill the young man he loved so much as an offering to God. How could that be? Was that a contradiction of God's will?
Abraham might have been startled at the hearing of God's command, but he had walked with God a good while by then. He knew God well, for they had a familiar, intimate relationsip. Abraham knew he had heard God correctly. That wasn't the issue. What did matter was that Ishamael was not to be the inheritor of God's promises to Abraham.
So great was his trust in God that Abraham reasoned this way: Abraham would offer Isaac in death, but God would work a miracle and raise the boy back to life from the dead! Hard as it would be to drive the blade into his son's chest, he would do it! He could not, he would not disobey God!
Early in the morning Abraham took servants who loaded firewood on a donkey's back, some rope, and food and drink for the journey that would take a few days. Off they went.
All Abrahan told anyone was that he and Isaac were going to worship God. Nothing more. He didn't look for pity or an argument. He probably didn't even tell Sarah what he was going to do. The only thing the servants knew was that they were to wait at the base of the mountain while Abraham and Isaac began their climb to the designated spot where the altar was to be built.
Having completed the erection of unhewn stones, Isaac asked his father, "But where is the sacrifice?" Don't you believe his question was like a knife piercing Abraham's heart? The boy who knew his father loved him more than life itself now voiced his honest dilemma: they had not brought an animal with them to sacrifice.
What exactly Abraham told Isaac next we're not told, but the boy must have fully agreed to submit to his father's hand. He had to climb up onto the stones---his father could not have lifted him there nor could he have won a fight if Isaac had rebelled. Isaac cooperated with God's command to his father willingly.
Before disciplining their children, parents have been known to say, "This hurts me more than it's going to hurt you." Is that what Abraham said to Isaac? We're not told in God's word, but there must have been some dialogue betwen them as Isaac lay there submissively.
Abraham picked up the knife, ready to plunge it into Isaac's heart when God stayed the motion:
"Abraham! Abraham!"
And Abraham said, "Here I am."
God said, "Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him;"
Abraham looked and saw a ram caught in the thicket by his horns and sacrificed the animal instead of his son.
But he HAD sacrificed Isaac. Listen to what God said next:
"...for now I know that you fear God since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me."
As far as Abraham was concerned, Isaac was as good as dead. His heart and will had cut all ties to the lad in terms of possession. Live or die, Isaac belonged to God and God alone!
And God accepted that submission to Him. He said to Abraham:
"By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice."
We're not told what Abraham told his servants who had waited faithfully for the man and boy to return to their camp. We don't know what he told Sarah, but his drastic obedience changed Abraham and certainly changed Isaac, as well.
God's declaration to Abraham applies to us as believers today. God wants absolute control of our life. He wants our submission to Him to be so complete that we surrender everything we are, have, and hope to be to Him. Surrender involves death to our will, our pride, our desire to be in control. All must go onto the altar and we must let God plunge the knife into our heart.
God can't use us any other way. Christians in the book of Acts lived in a society that hated Jesus and the Gospel. When anyone converted to Jesus from paganism, they knew they faced certain persecution and probable death. They died to all they were and had been, and chose instead a life utterly submitted to Jesus and the Holy Spirit. When they were baptized in the Holy Spirit, He became their power to be witnesses of Jesus to the whole world! We must do the same. Be dead to ourself and our ambitions and alive to God through His infilling of the Holy Spirit.
The quote above from Proverbs says the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. God said He knew Abraham feared Him because he obeyed Him. Abraham obeyed God immediately, completely, and willingly. Obedience to God and His Spirit today is the road to fearing God. If we don't obey Him, we don't deem Him worthy of our complete reverence and awe. And if we don't fear Him, we cannot serve Him. It's that clear. It's that simple. It's that exactly. If you fear God, you obey Him, no matter what.
Abraham's obedience brought new and fresh promises from God, new blessings on his life and opened the door to the rest of the history of Israel. Your obedience will bring new and profound blessings to you, as well. Do not hesitate to obey God. Begin right now! Obey, obey. obey. Then you will know the fear of God, and that opens the door to wisdom, the narrow way that leads to life eternal!