Received Back by Resurrection
Devotions for Growing Christians
Received Back by Resurrection
Hebrews 11:17-19 - By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac; and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; 18it was he to whom it was said, "In Isaac your descendants shall be called." 19He considered that God is able to raise men even from the dead; from which he also received him back as a type.
Read Genesis 22.
One of the greatest stories of faith and obedience in the Bible is found in Genesis 22. Incredibly, God asked Abraham to "take your only son with you - yes, Isaac whom you love so much - and go to the land of Moriah and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering..." (v2).
It's difficult to even imagine the emotions of shock, horror and grief that must have filled Abraham’s heart! God was asking him to give up his son - the very son that God had promised to him and his wife Sarah years before. It would have been hard enough for Abraham to give up Isaac if he knew the reason why - but it was quite another matter to give him up for no good reason. In fact, for no apparent reason at all! Not only that, God asked Abraham himself to put his beloved son to death! Why would God ask such a thing? Does the Lord enjoy building up a person's hopes and dreams only to dash them to pieces?
But Abraham obeyed God! He didn’t argue, and he didn’t hesitate. "The next morning Abraham got up early, chopped wood for the fire upon the altar, saddled his donkey, took with him Isaac...and started off to the place where God had called him to go" (v3). Abraham's distress during that long journey to Mount Moriah, his last journey and final hours with his son, was an experience which most of us cannot comprehend. What unimaginable emotional pain Abraham must have experienced as he sharpened the knife for the sacrifice and placed the wood for the fire that would consume the body of the son he loved so dearly.
Yes, Abraham obeyed God, even though he did not completely understand why. As he traveled to Mount Moriah his thoughts must have ranged from dread at the thought of what he must do there, to hope that somehow God would deliver Isaac back to him - alive! Because he had walked with God for many years, Abraham knew that God always keeps His promises. And God had promised that Abraham's descendants would come through Isaac. Although raisings from the dead were as yet unknown in human history, Abraham reasoned that the Lord was able to raise people from the dead (Hebrews 11:19). Therefore, if Isaac was to be sacrificed, God would have to raise him from the dead in order to keep His promise. Yet another line of reasoning may have led Abraham to the thought that he expressed to Isaac, that God would "provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering” (v8).
In any case, Abraham was convinced that "the Judge of all the earth would do right" (Genesis 18:25). When the father and son parted from their servants Abraham said, "We will worship and return to you" from Mount Moriah. Abraham would obey the Lord - and leave the solution up to God. What a demonstration of faith! What a model of faith for us to follow! We frequently fall so far short of complete obedience. Most of us exhibit only partial obedience in matters far less demanding than the test that Abraham faced! God is looking for complete obedience, even when He doesn't reveal all the "why's" in our circumstances.
We don’t know how much Abraham understood of this picture or the full implications of his test of faith. In fact, we may not even know some of the aspects of Abraham's test. Is it possible, for example, that behind the scenes Abraham's test was something like the testing of Job? As the curtain is drawn aside in the early chapters of the book of Job, we see that God was not only testing Job's faith, but He was also using Job as "Exhibit A" in His case against Satan. Perhaps God drew Satan’s attention to Abraham’s faith and obedience, and Satan may have responded, “Well, Abraham is faithful because You have been so good to him.” Perhaps Satan told God that he was able to gain followers without rewarding them. And he could even get people to sacrifice their own children to pagan “gods”! Were the followers of the Lord as committed to their God as the pagans were to their satanic gods?
The scenario above, of course, is only speculation, but it's helpful for us to remember that when God tests our faith there may be more going on behind the scenes than we realize. We too may be one of God's "Exhibits” before the rulers and powers of wickedness in heavenly places! (See Eph. 6:12.) We do know that Abraham's great faith would have been obvious to Satan and the world of demonic spirits. We also know that Satan would not have hesitated to taunt God in this way, just as he did in the early chapters of Job. Perhaps this is one reason why God chose to test Abraham's faith in this manner. At least it’s an answer worth mentioning to the critic who asks “How could a good God ask Abraham to sacrifice his own child?”
The joy that Abraham experienced after this test of his faith was over must have been overwhelming. What a joyous "reunion" with Isaac! What a wonderful time of fellowship with Isaac on the trip back home. Besides going over the incredible experience on Mount Moriah, they must have mentioned joyful memories from the past, and made plans for the future. What a difference from the mood of the trip to Mount Moriah! The whole return trip was a time of rejoicing. It was as though Isaac, the beloved son, had been dead, but was now reunited with his father Abraham through "resurrection!" In fact, Hebrews 11:19 informs us that Abraham received Isaac back as a type or picture of Christ, who was received back from the dead by resurrection.
So a primary reason for the test Abraham endured was to provide “picture truth” for God's people. Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac is one of the clearest types of the coming sacrificial death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. A simple definition of a type is "an Old Testament person, place, event or other item which illustrates New Testament truth in some way." Let's look more closely at this familiar type from Genesis 22.
In Abraham we have a picture of God the Father who was willing to sacrifice His beloved, one-and-only Son for our sins. "He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all..." (Romans 8:32). The heartache that Abraham experienced as he and Isaac journeyed toward Mount Moriah gives us only a small glimpse of the God the Father’s heartache as He walked with His perfect Son to Calvary. The depth of God's love for us is shown supremely in the heavy heart of a God who was still willing to give His beloved Son in sacrifice for us - with no strings attached. What a startling picture of God's great love for sinners!
In Isaac we see our Lord Jesus as the perfect Son, completely obedient to the Father's will. The fact that Isaac, who was at least a teen at the time, allowed his elderly father to bind him and put him on the altar enhances the picture of Christ, who willingly went to the cross for us. The type, of course, falls far short of the perfect obedience of the Son of God.
Isaac asked, " Father, the fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" And Abraham responded, "God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." Isaac was unaware of what lay ahead as "the two of them walked on together" on toward Mount Moriah. (See Genesis 22:7-8.) But our Lord was fully aware of what lay ahead as He walked together with the Father toward Calvary, and yet "He resolutely set His face to go to Jerusalem" (Luke 9:51). This was no spur-of-the-moment burst of emotional love. Never has there been such a determined love than that which was demonstrated in our Lord's steadfast walk to the death He knew lay before Him. He knew that there He would be painfully crucified and suffer the awful judgment of God for our sins. In Isaac we catch, in picture form, a tiny glimpse of the perfect Son, submissive to the known will of the Father.
We might have missed the fact that Christ's resurrection is part of the type were it not for the inspired commentary in Hebrews 11. It should be remembered that two extremes must always be avoided when studying the types of Old Testament Scripture. One extreme would be to completely miss the obvious broad brush strokes that God has sovereignly arranged in history, and recorded by inspiration. If we didn’t see Mount Moriah as a picture of Calvary, for example, we’d be ignoring the obvious verbal picture. (A ridge of Mount Moriah, by the way, may have been the very area in Jerusalem where our Lord was crucified!)
On the other hand, it’s possible to read too much into a type. This is the other extreme we must avoid. For example, the wood for the sacrifice that Abraham gave Isaac to carry may - or may not - be a picture of the cross which Christ carried to His place of crucifixion. But to say that the thicket in which the ram was caught is a picture of the crown of thorns is probably reading far too much into this type. However, we know we're on safe ground when we see the resurrection in this picture, because Hebrews 11:19 explicitly states that Abraham received Isaac back from the dead "as a type."
The joy of reunion that Abraham and Isaac experienced after the "sacrifice" was over is certainly part of the picture God intends us to see. In the very next chapter of Hebrews we read that "for the joy set before Him, Jesus endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:2). What was the joy that Jesus anticipated? Certainly a part of that joy was His return to Heaven! Imagine the joy of reunion shared by God the Father and God the Son as the Lord Jesus was received back from the dead through resurrection! That joy of that intimate relationship and communion between the Father and the Son is eternal and will never be interrupted - all because of the finished sacrifice that took place at Calvary!
The joy of being "received back through resurrection" certainly has its practical application for us today. Because of Christ's resurrection, we have the joy of knowing we are identified positionally with Him in that resurrection - right now! (See Romans 6:4-11.) We also know that one day we will enter the eternal joy of the Lord when we are "received back through resurrection" into Heaven. (See Matthew 25:21,23.) Think of the joy of reunion that some Christians, who have been tested like Abraham, will experience as they are reunited with their loved ones who were taken from them in death - perhaps for reasons they still don't completely understand. Read Jude 24, and imagine that unsurpassed joy we will all experience as we are "received… through resurrection" to enter Heaven and are made immortal - to be with our resurrected Lord forever!
- Dave Reid