{"id":7388,"date":"2016-02-18T00:05:57","date_gmt":"2016-02-18T08:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=7388"},"modified":"2016-02-17T11:11:21","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T19:11:21","slug":"will-that-be-on-the-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2016\/02\/18\/will-that-be-on-the-test\/","title":{"rendered":"Will That Be On The Test?"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, \u201cAbraham!\u201d <\/p>\n<p>And he said, \u201cHere I am.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Then He said, \u201cTake now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>So Abraham rose early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him.  Then on the third day Abraham lifted his eyes and saw the place afar off.  And Abraham said to his young men, \u201cStay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and a knife, and the two of them went together.  But Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, \u201cMy father!\u201d<br \/>\nAnd he said, \u201cHere I am, my son.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Then he said, \u201cLook, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?\u201d <\/p>\n<p>And Abraham said, \u201cMy son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.\u201d So the two of them went together. (Genesis 22:1-8)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Abraham should have gotten the willies.  God asked Abraham to do something outrageous that contradicts all that we know about God (see Jeremiah 7:31).  In the end, God prevented Abraham from killing his son and heir.  But why would God ask Abraham to do something so evil in the first place?<\/p>\n<p>It was a test.  In the time of Abraham, particularly among the people Abraham was living with, the sacrifice of children to the gods was commonplace (see Leviticus 18:21, 20:2-5).  God wanted to see if Abraham understood yet that his God was different.  Although Abraham\u2019s faith that God could restore Isaac was commendable (see Hebrews 11:17-19 and James 2:21), it was obviously never God\u2019s will that Isaac should be sacrificed.  Abraham should have responded to God\u2019s request as Moses did when God told him to stand aside so he could wipe out all the Israelites and start over with just Moses (see Exodus 32:9-14).  What we see in this test is that Abraham still didn\u2019t understand who God was or how much he differed from the false gods he\u2019d grown up with and that surrounded him in his culture.  Moses understood God better than Abraham did.  But Abraham learned from this experience.<\/p>\n<div class='kindleWidget kindleLight' ><img src=\"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-content\/plugins\/send-to-kindle\/media\/white-15.png\" \/><span>Send to Kindle<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, \u201cAbraham!\u201d And he said, \u201cHere I am.\u201d Then He said, \u201cTake now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2016\/02\/18\/will-that-be-on-the-test\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7388"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7390,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7388\/revisions\/7390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}