The Mountains of God – Week 2 Guide

The Mountain of Obedience – Genesis 22:1-14

To download the guide for this week, use the link below.

Connecting

If your house were on fire and you could only save one non-living item, what would you take and why?

The Mountain of Obedience, Genesis 22:1-14

Genesis 22:1-14 (NIV)

1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!”
“Here I am,” he replied.
2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”
3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.”
6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”
8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.
9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

12 “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.”

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

Overview of Genesis 22:1-14 (read aloud in the group after reading the passage)

This is one of the most viscerally disturbing and challenging passages in all of Scripture. It is simultaneously one of the most important passages in the entire Hebrew Bible, and one of the most controversial and difficult to understand. As Pastor Nate said in his sermon, this passage “profoundly shakes us to our very core. It forces us to question our very assumptions of who God is: Is he loving? Is he just? Is he who he says he is?”

Important for understanding the background of this story is the covenantal promise God gave to Abraham. In Genesis 12, God tells Abraham to leave his home country and journey to a new land he will show him. This land will one day be the dwelling place of a new nation that will consist of Abraham’s descendants. God promises Abraham that one day his name will be great, and “all peoples on earth will be blessed through [him]” (Genesis 12:2-3).

Part of this covenantal promise is the gift of an heir, a son, born of Abraham and his wife, Sarah. Abraham and Sarah were well past childbearing age and remained barren throughout their marriage. Isaac is born as the fulfillment of God’s promise. It is through Isaac’s line that the great nation of the Israelite people will one day be born. So, Isaac is more than simply just the long-awaited son of parents desperate for a child; he’s the embodiment of God’s covenantal faithfulness in Abraham’s life, the proof that God is real and a God who keeps his promises.

This is what makes God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice Isaac all the more scandalous. In addition to being asked to murder his son, an inconceivable proposition for any parent to consider, God is also challenging Abraham to trust that the God who made the promise will not abandon it – even when his command seems to undo it.

Questions

• First Reaction to the Passage: When you hear Genesis 22:1-14 read, what is your honest emotional reaction to this story? What parts of the story do you think are the hardest to sit with?
• The Silence of Abraham: What do you make of the fact that Abraham shows no emotion in the text – no questions, no hesitation, no protest? Why do you think the text is written this way? What do you think the author is intending?
• Promise vs. Command: God has promised that his covenant would come through Isaac – yet he commands Abraham to sacrifice him. How do you understand this tension? What does it reveal about faith?
• Faith When God Doesn’t Make Sense: Have you ever experienced a situation where following God didn’t make sense, or where you struggled to reconcile what you believed about God with what you were going through? How did you resolve this?
• “The Lord Will Provide”: Abraham tells Isaac, as they’re walking up the mountain, that “the Lord will provide the sacrifice,” and, after God provides the ram, he names the mountain “The Lord will provide.” What do you think that statement reveals about Abraham’s trust in God? How have you experienced God’s provision in your own life?
• God’s Character: What do you think this story ultimately reveals about God’s character? How does the fact that God provides the sacrifice shape the way we understand him?
• Optional Closing Reflection: Pastor Nate writes the following: “We cannot know God simply from our human intellect’s conception of what we think the ‘perfect’ God might look like. We cannot make God in our own image. We can only know God through who he’s revealed himself to be in the Scriptures, in creation, and in the history of his people.” What do you think of this idea? Do you agree or disagree? Spend a few minutes making a list of the god you want, and then prayerfully reflect on how this god compares to the God who is revealed in the Scriptures.

Praying for Each Other

Are there any joys to celebrate, any burdens we can share?

Closing prayer

We pray to the Lord who provides. We thank you that you’ve shown yourself to be a God who ultimately does not take, but provides out of the abundance of your love for the world. We pray that you instill in us an obedience like Abraham’s, which does not hesitate or ask questions, but only trusts in who we know you to be. You are a God who keeps his promises. Even when we don’t know your intentions, and we don’t understand your ways, may we trust that you always have our best good in mind, and may it lead us to obey.

Amen.