This weekly feature is dedicated to Adventists who are looking for biblical insights into the topics discussed in the Sabbath School lesson quarterly. We post articles which address each lesson as presented in the Sabbath School Bible Study Guide, including biblical commentary on them. We hope you find this material helpful and that you will come to know Jesus and His revelation of Himself in His word in profound biblical ways.
Lesson 8: “The Promise”
COLLEEN TINKER
Problems with this lesson:
- The author focusses on speculations and human insight as it deals with the story of Abraham’s call to sacrifice Isaac.
- The lesson never addresses Abraham’s faith that God could raise the dead.
- The story of finding Jacob’s wife is treated as a moral lesson promoting prayer and the supremacy of free will without addressing God’s sovereign oversight of Abraham’s bloodline.
The lesson addresses the story of Abraham obeying God and taking Isaac to be sacrificed on Mt. Moriah as a symbolic story that may have caused so much trauma in Sarah that she died from the fallout of it. The author is not wrong in saying the sacrifice of Isaac and the provision of a ram caught in the thicket pointed toward Jesus. Yet even with this obvious application, the lesson treats this story as a bit of a strange tale that seems unreasonable and unnecessarily cruel.
The lesson even refers to Hebrews 11:17 to make the point that Abraham obeyed God:
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son
Yet the lesson never mentioned Hebrews 11:19. This omission does not surprise me, however, because when I learned this story in Sabbath School and in Adventist elementary school, verse 17 was the focus. I don’t remember ever having anyone within Adventism point out to me verse 19. In order to get the full impact of verse 19, I will quote Hebrews 11:17–19 below:
By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
The lesson makes much of Abraham’s possible internal dilemma: why would God counter His commands against child sacrifice? The lesson even states this:
Whatever the deep spiritual lessons here, the family of Abraham, nevertheless, must have been shaken by it, and the future of Abraham is not clear. Sarah dies after the sacrifice at Moriah (Genesis 23), and Isaac remains single.
In other words, the lesson essentially acknowledges that the author can’t quite explain the “deep spiritual lessons” in this story. Moreover, he has a more concerning focus on the emotional impact on Abraham and Sarah. Significantly, this focus is not mentioned anywhere in Scripture. It is a projection of people who really do not know the gospel and who do not understand the true nature and need of humanity. They don’t know the God of Scripture, and they are left trying hard to make sense of an odd story which EGW did nothing to illuminate.
It’s revealing that the author stated that Abraham “must have been shaken” and that in this story “the future of Abraham is not clear”.
What?
The Bible never HINTS at such doubt or uncertainty. We have to see this story not only from the perspective of the Genesis account but also of ALL the verses in Hebrews (which fit neatly with the entire chapter of Romans 4 in which Paul explains the faith of Abraham). From what we read in Scripture, Abraham did not doubt. He did not wonder if if his future was threatened. These ideas reflect the underlying anti-gospel and unbelief implicit in Adventism’s white-washed piety.
According the Hebrews, which we can read with absolute certainty that it is the word of God, and the words mean exactly what they say because the author recorded God-breathed truth, as Abraham walked that wilderness road with Isaac, “he considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead.”
Abraham NEVER doubted either God or His promises to Him. He absolutely believed God—not a stupid, blind faith that refused to deal with reality, but with a belief that had grown and deepened through his life of listening to God. Abraham knew he had to obey God because God would not nullify His promise—and God had promised that His covenant to Abraham and to his descendants would be kept through ISAAC. Abraham never doubted nor bargained. He believed and trusted—even believing that God could raise Isaac from the dead.
In fact, as Hebrews 11:17 explains, Abraham did, figuratively, receive Isaac back from the dead. Isaac was on the altar, and Abraham was ready to plunge the knife into his only son when a ram appeared in the thicket, and “Abraham called the name of that place The Lord Will Provide, as it is said to this day, ‘In the mount of the LORD it will be provided’” (Gen. 22:14).
One other thing I did not learn in Adventism (although the lesson briefly mentions it) is that Mt. Moriah is the same mountain which David bought from the Jebusites on which to place the tabernacle, and that very mountain is where Solomon built the temple and where, in Jerusalem today, the Dome of the Rock resides on the Temple Mount.
I find it telling that Adventism has ignored the significance of Abraham’s absolute trust that God could raise Isaac from the dead and that the very mountain where God led him is the mountain God led David to purchase and on which Solomon built the temple where all the shadows of the Sacrifice for Sins, the Savior of the World would be carried out in Israel. Furthermore, this is the mountain where God has chosen to place His name and from which, according to the prophets, the Messiah will one day reign over the nations with a rod of iron, and all men will come to Jerusalem to worship Him.
The significance of God’s directing this event in Abraham and Isaac’s lives cannot be missed. God was showing Israel and all of us that His promises cannot be broken, and that He is the One who is fulfilling them through Abraham’s son of promise.
God has consistently revealed Himself and has given us details so that as things happen, we look back and KNOW that we are seeing Him do what He said He would do.
And one more thing: there is absolutely no hint that this event sent shock waves through the family. There is no hint that Sarah was angry or hurt or traumatized. Sarah was part of this miraculous birth and the fulfillment of God’s covenant promises, and she also trusted God. In fact, Galatians 4 will show us that Sarah is revealed as the mother of all who believe—the mother of the free children, the children of promise, and when we believe in the Lord Jesus, she is our mother also.
No, Sarah was not afflicted with resentment or trauma as far as we know. Such a response does not fit what we know about Sarah’s trust in God and her own recognition of God’s faithfulness to her and of His inclusion in His covenant promises.
Isaac’s wife
The lesson takes a speculative look at Abraham’s servant Eleazer going off to find a wife for Isaac. The author camps on this as a story of answered prayer and of God’s honoring of Rebekah’s free will: allowance was made for the possibility that she might not go with Eleazer. Nevertheless, in Scripture, this is not a focus at all.
Genesis 24 gives many details of this story that the lesson doesn’t address—and indeed, I never heard them addressed when in Adventism.
Abraham asked Eleazer to go to his country and kindred to find a wife for Isaac. “You will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites, among whom I dwell,” he said. Yet when Eleazer asked if he should take Isaac to that country if the girl didn’t want to come back, Abraham was adamant.
Abraham said to him, “See to it that you do not take my son back there. The LORD, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from the land of my kindred, and who spoke to me and swore to me, ‘To your offspring I will give this land,’ he will send his angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there. But if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be free from this oath of mine; only you must not take my son back there.” (Genesis 24:6–8).
Abraham knew that Canaan was the land God promised to him and to Isaac and his descendants, and he would not allow Isaac to return to the land from which Abraham had come. So Eleazer went to Mesopotamia to the city of Abraham’s brother Nahor.
Nahor and his wife Milcah had eight children together, the last one being Bethuel. Bethuel, it turned out, had a daughter named Rebekah—the one who would become Isaac’s wife.
A detail I did not know in the past is that Nahor had eight children with his wife Milcah and four with his concubine. These twelve sons would become the ancestors of 12 Aramean tribes. The Arameans are the Syrians. In fact, whenever the Old Testament refers to Aramea, that can also be read Syria. (Some translations use the name Syria instead of Aramea.) So the twelve tribes of Syria were descended from Abraham’s brother, a fact which makes the Syrians cousins of the Israelites as well as of the Arabs who descended from Ishmael.
This fact explains to me why God frequently included His intervention in the dealings of the Syrians. For example, when Elijah fled to Mt. Horeb and God met him there, He sent Elijah back to anoint the next king of Israel and also to anoint the next king of Syria!
All to say—Abraham would not tolerate a Canaanite wife for Isaac. The Canaanites had dark, violent religions including child sacrifices, and their iniquity had reached its limit. God was going to overcome the Canaanites and move Israel into the land. Isaac could not marry a daughter of the condemned pagans whose evil had reached its fulness. (See Genesis 15:16.)
Also interesting is the fact that Abraham’s lineage was protected. He insisted that Isaac have a wife from his own family line, and God contained the seed of the patriarchs within the parameters of Abraham’s family. Even Jacob’s wife would be the nephew of Rebekah, Isaac’s wife.
In conclusion, God’s intervention in the life of Abraham was unique and unrepeatable. We learn throughout Scripture, especially in the epistles, that Abraham was called by God for a unique, unrepeatable “job”. He became the father of all who believe (see Romans 4), whether Jew or gentile, and God’s unconditional promises were made to him and to his descendants forever.
We who trust the Lord Jesus are grafted into Abraham’s seed, and we become co-heirs with Christ and adopted sons and daughters of God. Abraham’s life is not so much an example as an archetype, a foreshadowing of God’s faithfulness and promise-keeping.
It is a mistake to look at these stories to see moral lessons. Rather, we look to these stories to see God’s sovereignty and unerring accomplishment of His plans. †
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