What Abraham Knew

By Jeannie Pace

Guaranteed, your life will make a change. This change may cause mild distress or may feel like a thunderbolt. What can be learned from an ancient patriarch about leveraging faith through a crisis?

This patriarch’s narrative can produce visceral reactions. Is a faith that can potentially divide relationships at home and with family actually something worth emulating? How is faith helpful if it forces me to make an impossible choice between doing what is ethically right between family members or doing what is morally correct between me and God?

The Fascinating History of Abraham

Early in Bible history we are introduced to a man named Abraham. God launches a plan with Abraham that will rescue and bless the world.  At the age of 75, Abraham is told to leave his native country, his relatives, and his father’s family and go to a land God would show him. God makes a covenant with Abraham and promises that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the heavens. Blessings through these descendants will extend to all families on earth (Genesis 12:1-7).

After many years of nomadic living God reminds Abraham that his descendants will be a great nation.  Although Abraham has great wealth and years of God’s protection, there is a significant obstacle: he does not have an heir. Abraham spells out his reason for skepticism when he asks, “What good are all your blessings when I die without a son?”  To answer this question, God conducts a covenant ceremony with Abraham and reiterates the promise under the night sky, an eloquent index to the many descendants promised. During this ceremony, God stresses the concrete idea that Abraham and Sarah will be the biological parents of a son (Genesis 15).

More time elapses. As the passage of time seems to diminish the likelihood of God’s promise being fulfilled, the couple devises a plan to have an heir with their Egyptian slave girl named Hagar. A son, Ishmael, is born from this union. Abraham loves this son and God states he will make Ishmael great, but he is not the promised son.

When Abraham is 99 years old, God appears to him with a reminder of the covenant guaranteeing Abraham would be the father of a multitude of nations. There will even be kings in his lineage. God restates, “I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you.”  Even though Sarah is barren, God extends the promise to her: “Yes, I will bless her richly and she will become the mother of many nations. Kings of nations will be among her descendants”. (Genesis 17)

Abraham laughs, wondering about a promise of fertility as he and Sarah approach a fabulous old age. “How can I become a father at the age of 100? And how can Sarah have a baby when she is 99 years old?” God replies that about the same time the next year, “Sarah, your wife, will give birth to a son for you. You will name him Isaac and I will confirm my covenant with him and his descendants as an everlasting covenant.”

God kept his word and did for Sarah exactly what he had promised. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son. This happened in just the time God had said it would. At 100 years of age, Abraham named their son Isaac (Genesis 21).

Abraham is Called to Do the Unthinkable

About a decade later, in Genesis 22, we encounter an abrupt and emotion-filled development in their story. God tells Abraham to take his son, his long-awaited, promised son, whom he loves, and offer him up as a burnt offering.

This is an unexpected and disturbing request. This command collides with the promise of many descendants that God had stated multiple times. It seems to contradict the values of God. In fact, the request seems unbearable and goes beyond reasonable and intellectual limits of compliance. The request is not rational.

Our initial reaction seems warranted but could be a surface comprehension. As experience has taught us, situations are often not what they seem at first. Appearances can be deceiving. Perhaps this response is exactly what the ancient author intended in order to cause the hearer to question the story.

What is it that Abraham already knows that allows him to accept this anguishing command in a seemingly undisturbed manner? Abraham’s response is to rise early in the morning, split wood for the offering, saddle his donkey then he and Isaac walk 3 days to the place God had said to him. There is no recorded dialogue, no arguing, and no discussion about the covenantal promise.

Three Things Abraham Knew:

God is True to His Character

There are three truths about God that Abraham has internalized that allows his faith to be successful in this latest test. One, God is true to His character.  Second, God is a covenant keeper and third, God works in ways that are non-natural. These beliefs can be employed as strategies by modern believers.

From the very beginning of Abraham’s story, he accepts God’s leadership to build a nation.  God calls Abraham to leave his native country of Ur, leave his birthplace and his father’s house.  But through this obedience, God will build a new nation in which all the families on earth will be blessed. At the age of 75 Abraham leaves all things familiar and does this solely predicated on God’s promise, “To your seed I will give this land.”

This trust and obedience in God’s promise is emphasized further because Abraham is promised progeny, but his wife, Sarah, is unable to bear children. Abraham’s confidence in God’s provision is also revealed after his nephew and the people of Sodom are taken as captives from the conquered king of Sodom. Abraham and his men rescue them and the king bargains with Abraham. (Gen. 14:24) The king requests for all his people to be returned but Abraham can have the plunder. Abraham refuses the resources as he states, “I raise my hand in oath to the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take a single thread or sandal strap of all that is yours, lest you say, “I have made Abraham rich.” If Abraham gains possessions, it will come through the hand of God.

When we hesitate to act on God’s promises or question unlikely outcomes accepting God’s leadership and accepting what God says about himself is able to scaffold our trust and obedience.

Three Things Abraham Knew:

God Keeps His Covenants

 The second notion Abraham internalizes is that God is a covenant keeper and will be the keeper of the covenant when humans fail their part. Abraham gathers decades of experience trusting God who revealed his faithfulness many times through relocation, famines, war, and through Abraham’s successes and failures. The test with Isaac is not Abraham’s first experience with God.

There is a revealing passage previous to this situation with Isaac that reveals what Abraham’s experiences have taught him about God’s character. In Genesis 18 Abraham engages in a bargaining exchange for the doomed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham is audacious in his pleas for the city because he knows, “the Judge of all the earth will do justice.”

Whatever God’s plan is with Isaac, Abraham knows it will be right. Faith is a developmental process, but we have the right to be confident in God’s Word.

Three Things Abraham Knew:

God Solves Problems Non-Naturally

Lastly, Abraham learns that God resolves problems by non-natural means. By unusual events God protects Abraham from the hazards of nomadic lifestyle, wars, and the extraordinary birth of Isaac.

A decade after Abraham and Sarah left Ur, she reminds her husband that she “has been kept from having children.”  The passage of time makes God’s promise of building a nation through their descendants seem very unlikely. The couple devises a plan to have a child through Sarah’s Egyptian handmaid.  When Abraham is 86 a son, Ishmael, is born from this natural-human encounter. Ishmael will have many descendants, but he is not the son God has promised.

When Abram is 99 years old, he receives a name change as God appears again to remind Abram of His covenant to make him the father to a multitude of nations. He is now called  Abraham – exalted father – and he is about to undertake the full burden of the covenant – a covenant sealed on the organ of generation – the ritual of circumcision.

As this visit concludes, God restates a son will be born to Sarah in a year and through God’s design the son will become nations and kings of peoples shall issue through her.

This is too much for Abraham. In disbelief he flings himself on his face and laughs. Is God playing a joke on a 100-year-old man and his 99-year-old wife? As incredible as it would be for an aged man to father a child, it will be even more incredible for a post-menopausal 99-year-old woman to become a mother. Later Sarah also has an incredulous laugh as she acknowledges her advanced years, a vanished menses and nothing even to act as an aphrodisiac “after being shriveled, shall I have pleasure, and my husband is old?”

Abraham, the beneficiary of God’s promises, is now seen as someone living within a human horizon of expectations. However, Sarah conceives and the promised son, Isaac, is born. Imagine Sarah’s delight as she says, “Who would have uttered to Abraham, ‘Sarah is suckling sons!’”

Isaac is a testimony that God solves situations with non-natural methods.

For the world there is a lot hinged on Isaac. For this reason, the narrative in Genesis 22 is problematic. A reversal of plot is recorded. God tells Abraham to take his son, his unique son, whom he loves, and offer him up as a burnt offering. This goes beyond our rational limit.  Refusing this command will be ethically responsible, reasonable and intelligent.

Now as the promised child, Isaac, asks about the animal for the offering as he treks up the mountain with his father, Abraham answers, “God will provide the lamb.” Abraham talks and walks in a manner that reflects his assessment of God. He is prepared to do what God asked, but he does not think Isaac will die. The book of Hebrews (11:19) reveals Abraham’s thoughts were that God would raise Isaac from the dead. The events of Isaac’s birth had already taught Abraham to think non-naturally.

How We Can Use What Abraham Learned

 As modern believers, we must talk and act as if we believe God can operate through non-natural means. Our behavior and language reflect our assessment of God. Through scripture we can know God’s thoughts because we have His own Spirit. Since this is true, we can evaluate our circumstances through the belief God can do anything (1 Corinthians 2:10-15).

In the 21st century, faith is still being challenged. There are still situations that force us to rational limits and conceal a resolution, but faith can be successful as we employ what Abraham knew.

First, rely on God and wait for Him to act on His promises. Accept what God says about his character as a resolution is reached.  God is still a covenant keeper.

God’s faithful character is revealed in the biblical narrative. Our first “experiences” trusting God are found in the Bible’s text. These scriptures provide an accessible and an ordinary means to help us be faithful to the things we have been taught. Scripture and our prior experiences with God’s faithfulness give us confidence in God’s promises to act on our behalf.

The biblical narrative demonstrates that the material world yields to its Creator. God still interjects Himself into history and into modern lives. God did something extraordinary by restoring Sarah’s aged body when He formed a womb fashioned for birth and a body that could nurse a newborn. Since He is a God with unchanging character,  we can still expect Him to act for our benefit in non-natural ways when we trust His faithfulness and are guided by His leadership.