The sacrifice of Isaac (2)

 

In order to understand what follows better, it is important to read last week’s article first: this is the 2nd part of the posting.

We continue with what walking in the steps of our father Abraham and doing his works mean in practice.

 

1) We must bring our Isaacs to the Lord:

We all have something that means the world to us: it is our only one, our beloved, our Isaac. We have something that represents God’s promise and the guarantee of our survival and survivorship. For Abraham, it was Isaac ; he represented the continuity of his name, the transmission of all that for which he had laboured so hard for. We have something that we have desired above everything else and that the Lord has finally given us after months or years of galley: it can be a spouse, a job, a career, a contract, a business, money, fame, a child, a house, a church, a car, an object, it can even be your faith! That’s what happened to Peter in Acts 10 when he was asked to kill and eat unclean beasts. In short, it is a passion. It is currently the biggest success of our lives (our values change and so do our Isaacs); but God wants to test us for us to know whether that thing has taken His place in our heart. If we were asked directly, we would all be offended and would all say no. But what would we do if He would ask us back what He has given us Himself? Would we still be able to keep on believing in His provision? If yes, then why is it so hard to give Him what is most precious to us? Why do we find all sorts of excuses not to sacrifice Isaac? We can sing our love and fear of God as hard as possible, even to the point of convincing ourselves; we can also drive all our Ishmaels away, but until we lay Isaac on the altar, we will not yet have passed the test of the fear (i.e. a holy reverence) and a sincere love of God. It is only then that we would have really offered ourselves unto the Lord and that we will be able to say: “Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things… that I may gain Christ… that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings…” (Phil 3:7-10)

 

2) We must be priests who offer their children as burnt offerings to the Lord.

If we truly love our children as Abraham loved Isaac, then we must take them with us to the land of Moriah –the land of visions- and climb individually with them (each of them is unique) on the mount of prayer in order to offer them bound –that is bound by the Spirit (Ac 20:22)- to the Lord of glory. We must offer them in sacrifice after having offered ourselves. How can we say that we love them and want their utmost good when we are sometimes incredibly tolerant vis-à-vis their behavior and sins? We find it normal when our young teenagers of sons go from one girlfriend to the other. Sometimes, we even encourage them to make sure that they are manly enough. We buy our daughters suggestive and ‘sexy’ fashionable clothes so that they will not feel awkward amongst their friends. We let them behave anyhow in the presence of God. We plunge them into the consumer society by buying them all sorts of gadgets or by offering them the constant spectacle of parents whose eyes are always bigger than their stomach; and then we wonder that the love of the world has so filled their hearts that there is no place left inside for the Lord. May God help us!

Abraham and Isaac went up together: we must be partners of our children in their spiritual growth and ascension. And once up there, at the place of convocation, we must bind them (by the Spirit), lay them on the altar and slaughter them: kill their old nature. They must get up from that altar changed, transformed by the blood of the replacement Lamb that God would have sent to be slaughtered at their place.

 

There are so many things I wish I could add; but this is enough. If you are thirsty, the Spirit of God will continue to deepen some of the revelations that I have barely grazed here.

I will simply end with this: Everything started in the land of Moriah, “the land of visions” and when Abraham died, the Bible says that God blessed Isaac who had settled at Beer-lahai-roi (Gen 25:11): the well of the Living One seeing me, “the well of the vision.” Think about it…

 

May God bless you and give you the grace to obey Him.