{"id":6708,"date":"2013-12-16T15:55:42","date_gmt":"2013-12-16T15:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/?page_id=6708"},"modified":"2013-12-16T16:15:51","modified_gmt":"2013-12-16T16:15:51","slug":"2005jun","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/2005jun\/","title":{"rendered":"ABRAHAM AND CHILD SACRIFICE"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By Stephen Green<\/p>\n

(first published in\u00a0Christian Voice<\/i>: June 2005)<\/b><\/p>\n

Genesis 22:1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold,\u00a0here I am.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only\u00a0son<\/i>\u00a0Isaac, 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.<\/b><\/p>\n

3 And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son, and clave the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went unto the place of which God had told him.<\/b><\/p>\n

4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off.<\/b><\/p>\n

5 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.<\/b><\/p>\n

6 And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid\u00a0it<\/i>\u00a0upon Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife; and they went both of them together.<\/b><\/p>\n

7 And Isaac spake unto Abraham his father, and said, My father: and he said, Here\u00a0am<\/i>\u00a0I, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood: but where\u00a0is<\/i>\u00a0the lamb for a burnt offering?<\/b><\/p>\n

8 And Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together.<\/b><\/p>\n

9 And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood.<\/b><\/p>\n

10 And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.<\/b><\/p>\n

11 And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here\u00a0am\u00a0<\/i>I.<\/b><\/p>\n

12 And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only\u00a0son<\/i>\u00a0from me.<\/b><\/p>\n

13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes, and looked, and behold behind\u00a0him\u00a0<\/i>a ram caught in a thicket by his horns: and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in the stead of his son.<\/b><\/p>\n

14 And Abraham called the name of that place Jehovah jireh: as it is said\u00a0to\u00a0<\/i>this day, In the mount of the LORD it shall be seen.<\/b><\/p>\n

I want to take on some of the apparent problems with this passage and then see what we might learn from it.\u00a0\u00a0 Firstly, the Hebrew word translated ‘tempt’ in verse 1 means ‘test’.\u00a0 The little word ‘eth’ which comes after and before ‘Abraham’ means ‘even’ as if to intensify the name ‘Abraham’ or to express surprise.\u00a0 Secondly, God knows all things from the beginning, so why did He need to ‘know’ the Abraham feared Him?\u00a0 Of course God knew, in one sense, that Abraham would not withhold Isaac, but God wanted to see that fact, experience it, and ‘know’ it in another sense. \u00a0And of course Abraham needed to know that God knew. \u00a0So we see Abraham’s faith expressed in his deeds or ‘works’.\u00a0 We see his trust in God, the core of his being, expressed in what he does, in his doing.<\/b><\/p>\n

A third question is, “Why did God ask Abraham to do such a dreadful act, and then stop him at the last minute?”\u00a0 We know that God Himself regards human sacrifice as an abominable evil.\u00a0\u00a0 We read that God values obedience higher than sacrifice (1Sam 15:22) and yet here is God requiring the obedience of a sacrifice which He would later tell Jeremiah never came into His mind.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And they built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Molech; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my mind, that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin.\u00a0 (Jer. 32:35)<\/b><\/p>\n

WHY DID ABRAHAM NOT JUST SAY ‘NO’?<\/b><\/p>\n

Why did God ask this of Abraham?\u00a0 After all, when God made His covenant with Abram, as he then was, “he believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteousness” (Gen 15:6)\u00a0 Was this simply to test Abraham, and to see if he would really put obedience to God above everything he held dear?\u00a0 We never read that Abraham had fears of losing his possessions, family and health as did Job (Job 3:25). \u00a0 Abraham put God first in faith and obedience, as the Lord knew.<\/p>\n

There is a further disturbing question for me: ‘Why on earth did Abraham agree to do such a wicked deed as to kill his only son, the son of the promise?’ \u00a0When a soldier is asked to carry out an unlawful order, he can legally tell his superior, “No, Sir, I shall not do such wickedness.”\u00a0 The fact that Abraham’s faith was so strong that he knew God would restore Isaac to him even if he did sacrifice the boy is not quite the point, for me, and that is not to disparage the word in Hebrews in any way (Heb 11:19).<\/p>\n

Despite Abraham’s faith in God’s ability to raise Isaac from the dead, I am still puzzled that Abraham agreed to doing something which we in our day and, we should hope he in his, would never consider.\u00a0 It is not even as if Abraham was unused to arguing with God.\u00a0 Why did Abraham not say to God, as he did when pleading for Sodom in Gen 18:25, “Be it far from thee to do … shall not the judge of all the earth do right?”\u00a0\u00a0 Why did Abraham go along with it?<\/p>\n

I want to suggest that sacrificing one’s first-born son because your God or god asked you to was not such a dreadful thing to do for the peoples among whom Abraham moved.\u00a0 Abraham had known all about Sodom and the cities of the plain, even though he chose to live outside them, unlike his cousin Lot.\u00a0 He knew all about the Canaanites.\u00a0 The culture of the Amorites, one of the Canaanite nation-states, was well known to Abraham, even if its iniquity was not yet full (Gen 15:16).\u00a0 Child sacrifice was a normal part of life for the Canaanites and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. \u00a0Let us ask why that was.<\/p>\n

PAGANS WORSHIP CREATION ITSELF<\/b><\/p>\n

In paganism, aspects of God’s creation which are important to the economy are elevated to divine status.\u00a0 There is no sense in paganism of a transcendent loving creator God who exists eternally outside His creation and sustains it by His power.\u00a0 Rather, the gods are all around, within creation itself, and they are fickle and cruel.\u00a0 We are fairly well aware of some of the myths of the Greeks, later borrowed by the Romans, and of the Norse.\u00a0 When myths are invented around the gods, the gods are cast in man’s image, with all our frailties, faults and petty jealousies.\u00a0 The god of thunder and lightning can and will send thunderbolts on a whim which can split the mast of the ship of someone with whom he has fallen out.<\/p>\n

At a day-to-day level, rain is important in its season, so the rain-god must be appeased, and the god of thunder too, in case heavy rain comes to ruin the crops.\u00a0 If fishing is important, as it was to the Philistines, there will be a fish-god, and that of the Phillistines was Dagon (Judg 16:23).\u00a0 Dagon, of course, was no match for the true God of heaven and earth (1 Sam 5:2-7).\u00a0 The plagues which Moses was commanded to pronounce against Egypt brought judgment one by one against the most important pagan gods of Egypt, but they also illustrate the lengths to which pagan people go in their deification of parts of creation.\u00a0 The Egyptian economy was highly sophisticated, and agriculture was so important that not only were cattle deified (Exod 9:6) but the scarab beetle, which breaks down and recycles cattle dung, became a god (Exod 8:16).\u00a0 There were frog gods, locust gods, river gods and gods of animal and human health, gods of war, gods of weather, goddesses of the earth, gods and goddesses in the stars.<\/p>\n

SUN AND MOON AFFECT FERTILITY
\n<\/b>Pagans will have tree gods (Deut 12:2) and they will plant groves (Deut 12:3).\u00a0 They will make images of their gods.\u00a0 The images are only wood and stone, gold and silver (Psalm 115:4-8; Acts 19:24) which are powerless in themselves, but they reflect the demonic entities behind them (1Cor 10:20).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Possibly the most important gods will be the sun and the moon.\u00a0 Ziggurat towers, such as that of Babel, had tiers to worship various gods, with the sun or moon honoured at the very top, the nearest point to heaven itself (Gen 11:4).\u00a0 Even today, the symbol of Islam is a star and crescent moon, a real giveaway of its demonic origin.\u00a0 Both the sun and the moon are seen in paganism as affecting fertility. \u00a0The moon is venerated because its cycles are closely related to the menstrual cycle of women. \u00a0The sun is woshipped because its heat sustains life and rituals arise because it appears to die at night and needs to be reborn in the morning.<\/p>\n

Pagan festivals grow up, especially away from the tropics, around equinoxes and solstices.\u00a0 Interestingly, the Israelites celebrated the new moon, whilst the pagans observed its polar opposite, the full moon.\u00a0 Festivals around the cycles of the sun are not present in the worship set out for the Israelites.<\/p>\n

Pagan fertility images inevitably become centred around sexuality, with representations of over-endowed women and giant phalluses.\u00a0 Pagan priests enact sexual intercourse, simulating that which the sun and the moon and other fertility gods are thought to do.\u00a0 The more they do that the better, as they see it, so temple prostitutes come into being in ancient times for the purpose.\u00a0 When God says “they committed adultery” with the pagan idols, it is more than a linkage of the betrayal of idolatry with that of adultery; it is also a reflection of the sexual nature of pagan worship.<\/p>\n

In pagan Ireland, the king was not crowned, he was married to the goddess Eire, thought to represent the land.\u00a0 The idea of ‘Gaia’ in New Age thought is similar today.\u00a0 Incredibly, despite its irrelevance to procreation, homosexuality is included in pagan worship.\u00a0 Semen is thought to have magical seed-planting properties, which explains the rituals with specially-consecrated women.\u00a0 However, a male is also thought to display power through ejaculation and to acquire potency and maleness through receiving semen.\u00a0 The presence of female and male prostitutes also becomes a way of raising money for the temple. \u00a0God condemns that practice along with all other aspects of paganism (Deut 23:18).<\/p>\n

HUMAN SACRIFICE<\/b><\/p>\n

With all that being said, and there is more and worse that could be added, the worst expression of paganism has to be that of human sacrifice.\u00a0 If certain parts of God’s creation are exalted, others will be naturally debased, and in a pagan system, man is far from the summit of creation which he occupies in Hebrew thought.\u00a0 On the contrary, men and women in a pagan culture are expendable.\u00a0 If there were no other indication that Satan himself is behind pagan worship, this alone would do.\u00a0 God Almighty is satisfied with the perfect blood of the Lord Jesus, so satisfied that His blood only had to be shed once to cover the sins of many (Heb 9:28) for all time.\u00a0 Satan on the other hand is never satisfied no matter how much human blood is shed.\u00a0 There are well-known blood-thirsty goddesses such as Kali and Eire who demand blood, but in truth, wherever there are pagan fertility rites, there is human sacrifice.<\/p>\n

In the Inca and Aztec civilisations, human beings had their hearts ripped out.\u00a0 In some ritual magic, a ceremonial dagger reminds participants of this darkest of all magic rites.\u00a0 In Canaan, the dominant deity went by the name of ‘Molech’, (Lev 18:21 &c) and the sacrificial apparatus involved the representation of a huge mouth, inside which was built a fire.\u00a0 Parents actually considered it an honour to sacrifice their children by having them thrown into the giant mouth, while ritual chanting would have drowned out any screams and the anguished cries of second thoughts.\u00a0 Perhaps that society believed that the children would become gods themselves, or be reborn in some way.\u00a0 Perhaps they believed the children were only ‘passing through’ the fire.\u00a0 The Bible lends credence to this idea when it speaks of the wicked kings of Judah, Ahaz and Manasseh, leading that apostate\u00a0tribe into sin by sacrificing their own children, having them ‘pass through the fire’ (2Kgs 16:3, 21:6) along with other ritual magical rites.<\/p>\n

THE CURSE OF JERICHO<\/b><\/p>\n

When Israel destroyed Jericho, Joshua cursed it with a prophecy than whoever rebuilt it would do so with human sacrifice:\u00a0he shall lay the foundation thereof in his firstborn, and in his youngest son shall he set up the gates of it.\u00a0 (Josh 6:26)<\/b>\u00a0 The curse fell on Hiel the Bethelite in the early days of king Ahab (1Kgs 16:34).\u00a0 It was not unusual to dedicate cities and fortified courts by burying children alive in the foundations.<\/p>\n

I believe strongly that there is a spiritual side of life and that Satan derives enormous power from the shedding of innocent human blood.\u00a0 The sacrifice of the first-born is particularly powerful. We read in the books of the kings about a battle between Israel and the people of Moab. \u00a0It went well for Israel until the king of Moab sacrificed his eldest son upon the wall of his remaining city in a last-ditch attempt to turn the battle. \u00a0The Israelites were totally unprepared for this deed, which worked, as we read:\u00a0And there was great indignation against Israel; and they departed from him and returned to\u00a0their own<\/i>\u00a0land (2Kgs 3:27).<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This kind of culture, in which child sacrifice was taken for granted, was the one in which Abraham lived and worked. To offer one’s own eldest, and in this case only, son was par for the pagan course.\u00a0 Abraham seemed outwardly to see nothing unusual in it, whatever secret inner turmoil he may have been in.\u00a0 But before we become too self-righteous in our condemnation of that culture, let alone Abraham’s apparent acceptance of it, we should consider what we do in our civilisation today.<\/p>\n

OUR VERSION OF PAGANISM<\/b><\/p>\n

When we think for a moment, we will realise that we in Britain do exactly the same today as they did then.\u00a0 Firstly, we allow innocent blood to be shed by abortion.\u00a0 Chillingly, the child who is sacrificed in that way would normally have been the first-born, regarded by God as dedicated to Him (Exod 13:2,15; Luke 2:23), not sacrificed, but redeemed.\u00a0 If first-born children are so special to God, Satan must be delighted that so many are murdered in the womb.\u00a0 The hospitals and abortion clinics of Britain must truly be the engine-room of evil in our land.\u00a0 If Satan does indeed feed on human blood, six million lives in thirty-five years must have powered misery throughout our land, whilst at the same time being a judgment – and bringing judgment – on our land.<\/p>\n

Secondly, we do not make restitution for the blood shed in murder.\u00a0 That too is innocent blood and without the matter being put right justly, as God commanded Noah (Gen 9:6), that blood defiles the land every bit as much as that of an innocent child.<\/p>\n

Our legislators played a macabre trick in the mid-1960s when they removed the death penalty from the guilty, by the State, where it belongs, and imposed it upon the innocent, in the family, where it does not.<\/p>\n

It must have given Satan great satisfaction that in the only part of the United Kingdom where abortion is still illegal, Northern Ireland, murderers have not even faced detention but have been released as part of a political deal.<\/p>\n

Can we regard our own civilisation as anything other than pagan?\u00a0 If the definition of a pagan culture is one in which one or more aspects of God’s creation are worshipped instead of the creator (Rom 1:25) then we qualify, on the grounds that we have elevated man himself – either as an autonomous individual or as ‘society’ – to be his own god.\u00a0 We can trace this concept back to the so-called ‘Enlightenment’ (2Cor 11:14) but its roots are in the fall of man (‘Ye shall be as gods’).\u00a0 Man is taken as the only measure.\u00a0 In short, we worship ourselves.<\/p>\n

So how does a society which worships man end up killing man himself?\u00a0 It is possibly by losing the fear of God and his laws, and especially the knowledge that man is made in the image of God (Gen 9:6) and that human life is therefore sacred.\u00a0 The Lord Jesus Himself taught that when the fear of God goes, there is no regard for man (Luke 18:2).\u00a0 In that line of thought, the right of the individual to enjoy whatever lifestyle he or she chooses, or make whatever decisions he or she wishes to make, or even, in a collectivist system, the assumed needs of society, all or any of those will trump the sanctity of one human life.\u00a0 In Britain today, human life is cheap and becoming of less value day by day.<\/p>\n

GOD WILL PROVIDE HIMSELF<\/b><\/p>\n

We have, as a civilisation, adopted the morality of ancient Canaan, with its sexual license, its injustice and its child sacrifice.\u00a0 But to return to Abraham, at the very moment when the knife was poised to fall, God intervened.\u00a0 The angel called out to him to stop, and he turned to see the ram caught in a thicket (vs 13).\u00a0 The ram made the perfect substitutionary sacrifice, fulfilling what Abraham himself had prophesied to his son: “God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering.” (vs 8)\u00a0 That prophecy is perhaps deliberately ambiguous, and Abraham might not even have realised it.\u00a0 God certainly did himself provide the lamb in the thicket, but in the person of the Lord Jesus, God would provide himself actually to be the ultimate sinless sacrificial victim.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

To ask again why God set up the whole incident, the purpose of testing Abraham no longer appears sufficient.\u00a0 The account is there for our benefit and that of all generations.\u00a0 I believe God was making a statement that He was different from the pagan gods.\u00a0 He was making the point that he does not desire human sacrifice in as graphic a way as possible.\u00a0 He was also using Abraham to prophesy that God Himself would, in due time, not spare to offer his only son for our sakes (Rom 5:8).<\/p>\n

FORGIVENESS OF SIN<\/b><\/p>\n

In our culture, just like that of Sodom and Canaan, killing one’s own children is now lawful and even expected.\u00a0 It is, however, still a grave sin in the eyes of God, both individually and collectively (Judg 10:10; Prov 24:11-12; Dan 9:5)\u00a0 The only good news is that even such sin as abortion can be atoned for individually and collectively by repenting and trusting in the holy One who took upon himself the punishment which our sin deserves.\u00a0 There is forgiveness in Jesus (Matt 9:2).\u00a0 Abortion is often done in an attempt to blank out the natural effects of fornication or adultery, but can one sin on top of another ever put anything right?\u00a0 In chilling words which echo down the ages, the prophet Micah asks and then answers the question:<\/p>\n

Micah 6:7 Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? \u00a0<\/b>8 He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?<\/b><\/p>\n

For anyone who has been involved in any sin, including the dreadful sin of abortion, Jesus Christ stands ready to forgive, by the power of the his own blood. \u00a0And having been forgiven, let us all determine to act with true justice and mercy and walk in the fear of God.<\/p>\n

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By Stephen Green (first published in\u00a0Christian Voice: June 2005) Genesis 22:1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold,\u00a0here I am. 2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only\u00a0son\u00a0Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-6708","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":null,"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"Stephen","author_link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/author\/stephen\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":null,"rttpg_excerpt":"By Stephen Green (first published in\u00a0Christian Voice: June 2005) Genesis 22:1 And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold,\u00a0here I am. 2 And he said, Take now thy son, thine only\u00a0son\u00a0Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6708"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6708\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}