The Lord is awe-inspiring, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him in Genesis 22:2-11,
“Then God said, ‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.’ Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac… When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ ‘Here I am,’ he replied.
Abraham, “God’s friend” as James puts it in the New Testament, is an interesting mix. Rather than trusting God he resorts to a repeated deception about his wife, Sarah, which lands him in a pickle more than once. Rather that waiting on the Lord’s timing he joins Sarah in a scheme to produce the promised offspring through Sarah’s handmaiden. And yet Abraham is a man who left his homeland at once at the Lord’s asking. In many accounts he did what the Lord told him to do and went where the Lord told him to go. In fact, he is the very man that the Lord holds up in Scripture as an example of what a man of faith looks like.
In spite of his shortcomings and failures, Abraham is acknowledged as the prototype man of faith and is the very first one we read of that is credited as righteous because of his faith. He is held up as a great man of faith in Hebrews 11. Here in this account we are told that the Lord asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, “your only son, Isaac, whom you love”. As we read the account we find that Abraham promptly sets out to comply.
As I note, Abraham had his faults. But what can be said about Abraham is that he found the Lord to be such that Abraham was willing to subordinate even what he cherished most to the Lord he loved and feared. My thought this morning is that this speaks as much about the Lord as it does Abraham. Abraham knew the Lord and found him to be worthy of giving all he had.
I suspect when any of us gain a clear view of the Lord we find ourselves hopelessly drawn to him as we see him as the Lord of all mercy and compassion, a loving God who is majestic in his splendor and transcendent above all. I am certain that whatever it takes, we need to avail ourselves of the view of who the Lord is and what he is like so that we are drawn to him as Abraham was.
Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share your theme of worship with us from your Bible reading today. We’d love to hear from you!
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