God promised Abraham a son in his old age. Abraham waited decades before that promise was fulfilled, and then, horrifyingly, he heard God tell him to sacrifice that very promise – his son Isaac – as a burnt offering. You probably know the story (found in Genesis 22); just as Abraham was raising the knife to kill his son, the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven:
“Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”
Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided” (Genesis 22:12-14).
Abraham trusted God, even when it seemed that God had betrayed him and was about to take away the very thing he had promised. And that faith was justified, but it was not until he reached the point of action, of full commitment to obey regardless of the cost, that he saw that.
But the part of this story that I want to examine more closely is that God himself provided the sacrifice. The sacrifice was a test for Abraham. So once the test was over and Abraham’s faith had been proven, what was the point of the ram? Why did God still require a sacrifice? In hindsight, of course, we can clearly see how this event points to Jesus, but that would not have been understandable to Moses, who wrote this account, or to the Israelites who first read it. Centuries before the time of Christ, what was God teaching his people?
What they would definitely have seen is that “the LORD will provide.” This is stated twice in just a few verses, so Moses clearly intended to make that point. And what is it that God provided? The ram that he required as a sacrifice. This seems like it’s going in a circle: God gave Abraham the very thing he asked Abraham to give him. But how better to teach the lesson that everything God requires from us, he first provides to us?
Like Isaac, that ram was given to Abraham by God; he did not obtain it on his own. And if there had been no ram, if Isaac had died, it would still have been true that the sacrifice was provided by God. That’s a lesson for my generation as well. And for me personally. God does not ask me to give him anything that I’ve obtained on my own, but only to return that which I got from him in the first place. My money, my possessions, my house, my time, my very life; I didn’t obtain any of they by myself; they all came from God, so that I could use them in his service. I can’t give God anything that didn’t first come from him, because I don’t have anything that didn’t come from him.
God gives me resources – money, time, skills, etc. – so that I can do cool things with them. Things that help build his kingdom. Things that build others up. Things that matter for eternity. When I actually do those cool things, I’ll get more resources. As much more as I need to do whatever cool things I’m supposed to do next. And turning that thought over, if I really believe that God will provide me with everything I need (Philippians 4:19), then I must also believe that anything I don’t receive from God, I didn’t actually need.
Of course, this is easy to say. What I actually do with the resources I have will show whether or not I really believe it. Abraham passed his test; now it’s time for me to take mine.