- 2011 Latin American Bible Conference, April 23, 2011Let’s turn to Genesis chapter 22 and read from verse 1.   Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” Then He said, “Take 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.” 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, “Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and we will come back to you.” 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, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” Then he said, “Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” And Abraham said, “My son, God will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering.” So the two of them went together. Then they came to the place of which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, upon the wood. And Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the Angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” So he said, “Here I am.” And He said, “Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me.” Then Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son.  verses 1-13Earlier, we discussed how God showed us, through the life of Abraham, how He intended to manage the history of Israel. Also, through Abraham’s life we were able to reflect upon ourselves. When Abraham said that his heir was one of his servants since he himself did not have any children, God said, “This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.” Abraham believed these words and God was pleased by the fact that Abraham believed. Then, as promised, Isaac was born to Abraham as the son of promise.After that, God commanded Abraham to do something inconceivable. He said, “Take 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”. God commanded Abraham to kill this son who had been born to him in his old age. The Bible says that God tested Abraham. Abraham was tested in this way as the father of faith. This would not have been an easy task at all for him. He must have been in tremendous anguish. We cannot even imagine how hard this test must have been for him or the depths of the anguish he went through. Nevertheless, Abraham obeyed God without a word. God said, “Your son, your only son …, whom you love.” How many sons does God have? He has only one Son. Here, the Bible is showing us in advance the words that would later be addressed to God’s own Son. Through the history of Israel, we can come to know our own situation. As we read in the Bible how the Israelites worshipped foreign gods and idols, strayed from God’s word and violated His laws, we come to realize that this is an image of the state of our own hearts and the faults in our own actions. Why did God show us such a course of events? It is because our forefather Adam disobeyed God’s word and ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.After that, Adam sewed fig leaves together to make coverings to hide his shame, but as soon as God appeared in front of him he said, “I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself” (Genesis 3:10). First he disobeyed God, and then he tried to cover up his shame by making himself coverings. This is the path of life that all mankind, born as descendants of Adam, has taken and continues to take. Such is the image that the history of Israel presents for us. Also, in the book of Jeremiah, God says, “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water” (2:13). Just as it says here, man is born and lives his life in this world not knowing God, yet claiming to know what is right in his own way. When we come across these words from the Bible after living in such a manner, they teach us the kind of people we are, but we cannot escape this since we are born into this world with this sinful nature in our blood. We commit sins because we were born into this world as sinners. It is because we cannot escape from this fate that God has decided upon a particular course of history. God said, “I will put enmity … between your [the serpent’s] seed and her [the woman’s] Seed,” and He said, “He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel” (see Genesis 3:15). The image of this woman is revealed to us as the nation by the name of Israel. In the Old Testament, Israel appears as a woman, who is a partner to God, but then we find this woman going astray and becoming corrupt, sexually immoral, and sinful.About sixty years before Jesus was born, Israel came under the rule

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