Y'all are missing the point I was trying to make. I understand all the nuances and significance and foreshadowing etc etc.

But I have a hard time figuring out why God would command Abraham to do something that He (God) found detestable when practiced by pagan Baal worshippers.

If God told you to sacrifice your child on an altar, would you do it or might you expect you were actually hearing someone else's voice, because of what you know about the character of God?

What if God had told Abraham to commit adultery, then stopped him right before he consummated the act. Isn't it strange that God would have commanded him to sin in the first place?

Because telling Abraham to sacrifice (murder) his son was commanding him to sin, no matter how you slice it.

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Todd

•••As the incarnate Son of God, He was the only man who could ever be that sacrifice. No other man who ever did or who ever will live could have been that sacrifice. That is, I think, a point that we will all agree upon.•••

Agreed.

Bro Blaine

Yet it had already been determined that the coming Deliverer of Gen 3:15 who would bruise the serpent's head and reverse the curse would be a human who would be sacrificed. Maybe a prefiguring in Isaac of the coming human to be sacrificed was not as wrong as it appears to us.In Isaiah 53, after a prophetic portrait of the suffering human servant pouring out His soul into death it says, "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him." God's altars of sacrifices are holier than our ways of thinking no matter if they contain bulls and goats or humans. The same with Isaac.

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David Winter

Tmk I don't know if we are missing the point , it just doesn't bother us or me , for the king of creation , to command his most upright creature in Abraham to prove his obedience,

To prove obedience christ basically command his apostal to preach the gosple , in doing so they would be killed , This was basically suicide, but he actually didn't stop them in this case .....

To offer his son under the knife , was letting Abraham prove obedience and faith in gods promise to Abraham , what a position to be in ,

Gods ways are above our ways , why would we question his ways , or accuse god of unrighteousness

Maybe that why we have this account in scripture , to let us all either accuse god , or admit he ways are beoned finding out , this side of heaven ..........

Blessings

The whole gosple , can become a reason to accuse god ,,

It pleased the lord to crush his own son and bruise him ,

I want to throw something out there. At what point was it made known that our God is a God who does not delight in human sacrifices? This is just food for thought, I am not trying to make a point. It was widely practiced in the day and Abraham did not have the revelation of God we do. I would even go so far as to say his vision of God was most likely blurred by his up bringing to an extent (making his faith truly remarkable).

Without law there is no sin and the law against child sacrifice had not been given yet so Gods command was not sin? There is a question mark there because I do not know I am just thinking out loud.

So perhaps the commandment to us is sinful because we have the law (written and in our hearts) but putting yourself in Abraham's shoes and in that time it was not "sinful.

Continuing to think aloud God is unchanging so to him it would have been sin however God spoke to the ancients where they were, according to the times and the weakness of the flesh. I think this story illustrates also the abolition of human sacrifice as well as it's deeper meanings. To support this thought I would like to point out that God commanded much killing yet Jesus preached to turn the other cheek and to love your neighbor. God then, in the Old Testament, went against His true nature revealed in Jesus. Why? Because he dealt with those men according to the time (historical and spiritual) and catered to their weakness until the time when we could be made free from the flesh.

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Tyler

God condemned men sacrificing their children to false Gods such as Baal and Molek. God did not condemn Abraham offering his son to God and trusting God to take care of his son in the process. The first is abominable to God, the second is faith and is set forth as an example to us by God. The issue is not the physical act, but the motive of the heart.

I don't think we can compare this to adultery. The analogy would break down pretty quickly. Marriage is the picture or the figure of the intimacy that we are to have with God through Christ, and the intimacy that we have as Christ's bride and His body with Him as our groom and head. Sexual purity and the sanctity of marriage is the picture, and a powerful one, of that relationship. Even the act of consummating the marriage that continues in the relationship is such a powerful picture of this spiritual intimacy that we have. People pervert the picture because they do not understand the reality. They do not honor the human relationship, which is the picture of that with Christ, because they do not have, nor do they understand the spiritual intimacy that accompanies real relationship with God through Christ.

So the issue is not that we should not be unfaithful because God condemned it under the law. The issue is that human unfaithfulness demonstrates the fact that we do not understand, nor walk in, sanctification. We do not understand what it means to be in love with our God and what it means to be totally sold out to Him as a result. We do not understand the life of intimacy with God.

In the same way, we cannot think that simply because God condemned men for sacrificing their children to idols, that somehow God broke His own rules in this case.

God never intended for Abraham to kill Isaac in an act of human sacrifice. God intended for Abraham to keep covenant in a way that opened the door, if you will, for God to do the same.

When God created man, He gave man authority to rule and reign in this earth. Man was given a degree of autonomy in that he was given dominion over creation, and was given the power of choice. When man chose to sin, God would have been breaking His own word to intervene to stop it. Remember, since by man came sin, by man came also forgiveness of sin. Abraham's covenant and his willingness to sacrifice Isaac opened the door for God to do the same. It opened the door, through covenant, for God to keep covenant through the incarnation and sacrifice of Christ for our redemption.

God did not ask Abraham to perform a pagan rite of child sacrifice. God asked Abraham, through covenant, to open the door for incarnation. And if we study the scriptures carefully, we find that Abraham knew this before he ever started up the hill with the wood, and the fire. Thank you markuskiwi for reminding me of that scripture.

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Travis

Faith comes into play here because Abraham did not know that God would stop him before the actual physical death of Isaac. He just knew that since God's son was going to be raised from the dead, and since he was in covenant with God, then God would have to raise Isaac from the dead as well. That is a huge act of faith. The consequence if God does not come through is devastating to the human mind. Yet God told Abraham that his seed that would be so numerous that trying to count them would be as pointless as trying to count the stars or the sand grains would come through this child of promise, Isaac. And he and Sarah were now absolutely too old to manufacture a replacement. It is no wonder that Abraham is called the father of faith.

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Travis

I appreciate all your thoughts. Martyr- I think you are very likely correct in your thinking.

Just to be clear I am not accusing God of anything. I just laid out the facts and most folks probably just accept them at face value without consideration and I consider them too much- which is a fault of mine.

I also wanted to point out that this episode is probably my second favorite episode in scripture, for the reasons that have all been mentioned.

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Todd

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Sreeram