Jan 12: Gen 22, 23 | Psa 26-28 | Matt 14

Reading 1 - Gen 22

"Some time later God tested Abraham" (Gen 22:1).

"Tested" is "tempted" in AV, and "try" in RV and Heb 11:8,17. See Jam 1:12,13; 1Pe 1:6,7. God must have considered Abraham very righteous to put such a severe test on him.

"When a man contemplates buying a car he takes it out on the road to see how it behaves under normal conditions. He does not try driving it across a rough mountain side, nor does he deliberately crash it into a stone wall. By contrast, when an engineer wishes to know the quality of some metal, he subjects samples of it to various extreme tests, twisting or loading them to the point of destruction. It was the first kind of 'temptation' ['testing': NIV] which God now brought to bear on Abraham. But 'Lead us not into temptation' [Mat 6:13] means the second kind of experience: 'Lord, do not bring us into such temptations as may prove too much for us.' And James's emphatic 'neither tempteth he any man' [Jam 1:13] clearly means: 'God never tempts any man with the intention of working his downfall.' 'He will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape (as for Israel at the Red Sea), that ye may be able to bear it' [1Co 10:13]" (HAW, Abraham 95).

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" 'Do not lay a hand on the boy,' he said. 'Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son' " (v 12).

"He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all -- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?" (Rom 8:32). We see here that Abraham, by his willingness to devote his well-beloved son in a supreme act of love, actually typified God Himself!