Abraham, Part 21 - Sacrifice Your Son
Genesis 22v1-3
5th February 2011
Of all the stories about Abraham, the best known and the most difficult is the one in which God commands him to sacrifice Isaac. It begins like this:
Genesis 22v1-3
Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied.
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 he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him
about.
How could God ask Abraham to do such a thing? We know that this was only a test (verse 1) and that, in the end, God allowed Abraham to sacrifice a ram instead (verses 11-13). But does that make it OK? According to human wisdom, wasn't God guilty at least of incitement to murder? Suppose someone was in a position to demand that you kill someone. If they changed their mind before you did the killing, would they be innocent? I'm not a lawyer, so I don't really know, but it's hard to say that they'd done no wrong. Isn't it?
But God - of course - does no wrong.
Some 500 years later, God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, the sixth of which is "do not commit murder" (Exodus 20v13). So how could he now insist that Abraham break that law?
The answer to these questions is not easy, but we have to think about them, don't we? I think the answer is this:
Whatever God says is moral, is moral
God is the creator of the universe, and He set the universe up in such a way that certain laws are in force. For example, God invented gravity, and He decided that gravity moves things downwards (or, for the scientists, towards whatever has the strongest gravitational pull - which, for us, is the earth). He could have done it differently; He could have designed gravity to move things up instead of down (though I'm glad he didn't). When God created the universe, He said "Let there be light" and there was light. That's how creation works; when God speaks, things become true. If God says "black is white" tomorrow, then black will be white tomorrow because He says so. Similarly, whatever God says about moral law is correct because He says so. Murder is wrong because He says so.
But God sometimes suspends what we think of as the laws of nature, when He performs a miracle, or heals someone. And if God said murder was moral, then it would be because He said so.
This seems unacceptable to us, but it's true.
We don't like to think about God in these terms - as the absolute ruler of everything - because we still have more respect for our own moral precepts than we do for God, or for the Bible. We still try to conform our idea of who he is, and what He's like, to our ideas of right and wrong. This is just a subtle form of idolatry - fashioning God in our own image. We have our own ideas about justice, and we want a God who agrees with us. But here's the truth about justice: justice is whatever God says it is. What God declares to be just, is just. Whatever God declares to be unjust, is unjust.
Abraham knew better.
Abraham said "Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (Genesis 18v25). He understood that:
- God is the judge of all the earth
- Whatever God does is right
So Abraham obeyed God.
For us, the point at which we find out if we truly respect God is when our ideas conflict with the Bible. When we're faced with a choice between doing what we think is right, and doing what God says is right, as revealed in scripture, what choice will we make?
(Just in case any mad people are reading this, I need to say: THIS DOES NOT GIVE ANYONE THE RIGHT TO KILL PEOPLE AND BLAME GOD FOR IT).