Daily Radio Bible - January 8th, 22

Unthinkable. something unthinkable is being asked of Abraham. He's being asked to offer his one and only Son that he loves as a sacrifice on this mountain. It's some kind of test of obedience, and it's unthinkable.

But then again, maybe it wasn't all together unthinkable, maybe it was entirely conceivable. This culture, and in many cultures throughout that time and through all time actually, have had the practice of offering the blood of a human, or animal to pacify or appease, or to court the favor of an angry or capricious God. Abraham knows this. He knows that this is what the gods of the culture in his world, so often require.

But Abraham also knows this - that God, the God, he serves, the God who called him to follow the God who promised him a son, the God who made good on that promise, even at the age of 100 years old, the God who takes him by the hand and says, Let's go outside and look at the stars. The blessing that's in store for you is beyond the number of stars in the sky. The God who meets him at his lowest at his darkest in that deepest point of, of barrenness. This God, he had learned to walk with and trust, was not like any other God in the world. Abraham knew that this is not a bloodthirsty God. This is a God of life. This God is not distant. No, HE comes to Abraham. And this God is not capricious, and he's not angry, and ready to pounce. This is what other people believe about God, but not Abraham. He believed that God is good, the God who's named on this mountain, Jehovah Jireh, he is the one who meets us in our need, in our shame in our barren places. He's not like other gods. He does not require that you provide for or spill out, or atone for or pacify with your own blood, or the blood of those that you love. No, God has another way. And this God doesn't kill his son. He's not like the other gods. The son instead offers himself and he's killed by humanity, not his father, and through this offering of his life, he overtakes the evil one.

He wins the victory for you and me and for the sins of the whole world. He defeats the powers of sin and darkness once and for all. Abraham reasoned that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again. Because this God is good. And Abraham believed it. Abraham was asked to do the unthinkable because he knew something that we all should know. The character of God. That God is good, that we can trust Him with our lives, that He comes to us in our darkest and most broken places. And he raises us up there into new life, right there he meets us. He has achieved this for us on Mount Moriah, on the cross, there he laid down his life for us. In there, he wins for us victory, the victory that our souls were made for, and the prayer of my heart today is that my eyes will be opened up to see what Abraham sees - the character of our God, that I will learn to walk with Him the way Abraham has, by walking with the Son, who has revealed to me the face of his father, that I will know the embrace of the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is the life that my soul longs for, has been provided for, on the mountain of the Lord. Jehovah Jireh.

The prayer my own heart is that I will know this well that I'll know the freedom of it, the life of it, the joy of it. And that's a prayer that I have for my family too for my wife, and my daughter's and my son. And that's a prayer that I have for you. Me it be so.

You are loved!