17 By faith
Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac:
and he that had received the
promises offered up his only begotten son,
18 Of whom it was said, That in
Isaac shall thy seed be called: 19
Accounting that God was able to raise him
up, even from the dead; from
whence also he received him in a figure. (Heb 11:17-19)
The
Ninth Sunday after Trinity.
The Collect.
|
G
|
RANT to us, Lord, we beseech thee, the spirit to think and do
always such things as are right; that we, who cannot do any thing that is good
without thee, may by thee be enabled to live according to thy will; through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
For the last few weeks, we have been
concentrating on
the parables of the Bible and words that have parabolic
meaning. We will
now turn to additional terms in Holy Scripture that reveal
meaning beyond
and above that which they possess in the natural use. Today we
will
examine a very real and significant TYPE of Christ represented in Isaac,
the son of Abraham. In traditional and biblical theology, a type is
interpreted
as events, things or persons whose meaning or lives bear
strong prophetic
meaning to those of a later time, but especially to that
of the life of
Christ. If we observe the signal events in the life of
Isaac, we cannot but
see many sterling similarities of his life to those
characteristics evidenced
in the life of Christ. Isaac, as a type of
Christ, is not the invention of
imaginative theologians, but presented by
God to aid in our understanding of
the grace and mercy with which God has
dealt with His people – Israel (the
Seed of Promise and not the
physical seed, necessarily, of Isaac). Abraham, in
type, represents in
human form the greater attributes of God. He was called
out to be
the founder of the Church of the Old Testament, having looked into
the
dimly-lit future to the coming of Christ as Redeemer and Savior. Your
father
Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad.
(John 8:56) He
was taught and believed, as well the Gospel. And the
scripture, foreseeing
that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel
unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all
nations be blessed. So then they which
be of faith are blessed with
faithful Abraham. (Gal 3:8-9) So Abraham was a
Christian! He is the
figurative father of God the Father.
The promise of a righteous Seed was
granted to Abraham and to
his spiritual posterity (the believers of that promise).
The promise
was not made of a NATURAL Seed, but a Spiritual Seed that would
issue by
faith and not by biological genetics. So Abraham, after receiving the
Call and Promise, was tried by God. God tries all who are called
according to
His purpose by various means, not to hinder, but to
strengthen the called as
well as to benefit those who will be awakened
through them to life.
So God commands Abraham to do something,
in type, that only
God the Father could truly do – to sacrifice His only Son (whom
he
loved)on the mountain which the Lord would show Abraham. (That mountain
was
Mount Moriah, the same range upon which, 2,000 years following, the
Lord Jesus
Christ would offer Himself up for us).
He promised Abraham and Sarah a great
number of descendents
– and those descendents would come through the Promise of
God.
When both Sarah and Abraham
grew very old (Sarah well beyond the
possibility of bearing a child), God
visited them with a son – Isaac.
Isaac
therefore came by miracle and not the strength of the flesh. As we
all know,
Jesus Christ, too, was born through the agency of a miracle
– the Virgin Birth.
Though Ishmael(the father of the Arab nations)
was Abraham's firstborn, he had
not come through God's will for a
bona fide child to be born through Abraham's
legitimate wife –
Sarah. Sarah was above ninety years of age when Isaac was
born. How
Abraham and Sarah must have loved this only child.(Jesus Christ
likewise
is the only Begotten Son of God) But, in the process of time, God
commanded
Abraham to take Isaac to the Mountains of Moriah and sacrifice
him. 1 And it
came to pass after these things, that God did tempt
Abraham, and said unto him,
Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. 2 And
he said, Take now thy son,
thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and
get thee into the land of Moriah;
and offer him there for a burnt
offering upon one of the mountains which I
will tell thee of. (Gen
22:1-2) Amazingly, Abraham uttered not a word of
objection, but arose the
very next day and embarked with Isaac on the three days
journey to the
place at which Abraham would receive his son as one as good as
dead back
into his hands. Through faith also Sara herself received strength
to
conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past
age, because
she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang
there even of one,
and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the
sky in multitude, and as
the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable.
These all died in faith, not having
received the promises, but having
seen them afar off, and were persuaded of
them, and embraced them, and
confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims
on the earth. (Heb
11:11-13)
Abraham may be considered our earthly
father through Isaac,
yet his Father, and our Father, are the same loving God
who gave His
own only Begotten Son to die and be in the tomb for three days
(just as
Isaac was literally considered dead for those three days'
journey).
Abraham had no doubt that Isaac would be sacrificed, but no doubt
either
that God would restore him to his father. Isaac had been harshly
treated
and abused by the earthly seed of Hagar the bond woman, Ishmael.
(Gal
4:24, 25) So was Christ abused and harshly treated by the seed of the
bond
woman (the Jews). Isaac was led, as was Christ, as a lamb to the
slaughter;
only Isaac did not die, and Christ did become the sacrifice in
his stead. And Isaac
spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father:
and he said, Here am I, my
son. And he said, Behold the fire and the
wood: but where is the lamb for a
burnt offering? And Abraham said, My
son, God will provide himself a lamb for
a burnt offering: so they went
both of them together. (Gen 22:7-8) If you
remember your grammar school
English, you will realize that regardless how you
diagram this sentence,
God and Lamb are synonymous. God will provide Himself
(Jesus Christ)as a
Lamb for the offering. Please note the subtle deception in
hiding
Christ's sacrifice offered by the corrupt NIV: "God himself will
provide
the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." This NIV corruption
of the original changes the subject to
God only with a direct object of
only a generic lamb. But the Received Text
gets it right! What will
God provide? Himself as a Lamb!
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tried,
offered up Isaac: and
he that had received the promises offered up his only
begotten son,
Truly, Abraham offered Isaac to God, for anything that s placed
on the
altar is dedicated to God – and so was Isaac and his Seed of
Promise.
To Abraham, Isaac for those three days journey was as good as
dead. How
amazing that he trusted so much in God that he told his young
men to wait a
distance from the mountain of sacrifice and he and the lad
would RETURN. And
Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the
ass; and I and the lad
will go yonder and worship, and come again to you.
(Gen 22:5) I hope you will
see in this account the sure and certain
fore ordained Will of God at work in
revealing His love and grace to us
through Isaac and Abraham.
Even in his marriage, the character of
Christ is
revealed through Isaac in base form. Isaac married one of his own
kindred
which Christ also did in taking of the same flesh of His Bride the
Church.
Rebekah, the bride of Isaac was wooed by his father's trusted
servant,
Eliezer, just as the Bride of Christ is wooed by the servants of
God – His
ministers. Rebekah forsook all – family, friends,
familiar home – to become
the bride of Isaac just as the Christian
must forsake all for Christ. She
adorned herself with fine silks
and jewels for her bride just as the Church
will be adorned for Christ.
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem,
coming down from God out of
heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband. (Rev 21:2) This is
not a stinky, hateful, worn-torn hovel in the
Middle East, but the
Heavenly, New Jerusalem. She went out to meet Isaac just
as the Church
shall meet Christ in the air.
Have you observed the amazing Finger of
God at work in the
lives of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, and Eliezer to bring the
beauty of
Christ into fuller light? God works through the father, the mother,
the
child, and the servant to accomplish His intended purposes for us. Has He
worked through YOU?
