And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you have obeyed me.” – Genesis 22:18

Tuesday morning at the men’s Bible study we enjoyed an excellent discussion around what for me is one of the more difficult Old Testament stories to come to grips with.

It’s the Genesis 22 passage where God apparently “tests” Abraham and the situation gets uncomfortably close to a human sacrifice.

This may be a hard passage for me but the reason we talked about it is that it also happens to be really important in my personal spiritual journey.

This fall I am introducing a series of texts that help me understand what I refer to as The great arc of the biblical narrative. I plan to take the group all the way from Genesis through Revelation via the vehicle of Bible stories I find to be essential.

• We started with the creation story as told in Genesis 3, where the relationship between humankind and God was broken.
• Then this week we skipped over to Genesis 22 so we could talk about how God forged a new people with a new perspective, out his longstanding relationship with Abraham.

God was consistently clear that these “Chosen People” were going to have to be out of the ordinary, set apart, nothing like “all the other nations.” Human sacrifice, for example, was a common pagan practice, and I am sure it grieved God’s heart to see how readily Abraham went along with what I believe was a flat out misunderstanding.

I am still not sure if this was a test of Abraham’s commitment to God or a test to see if Abraham had learned anything at all about the great love and compassion and faithfulness of Yahweh.

Regardless, this passage is important to me for two reasons. From the first time I learned this story I have been impressed at the fact that knowing God’s heart leads to anything but being ‘Just like all the other nations.” I love that about God.

The second “ahah” for me was/is God saying “all the nations will be blessed because of you.” And that of course meant – and still means – Jesus. And it means ALL the nations.

So this is a pivotal moment in history. It shows how the divine imperative begins to take root. It shows that the sacrifice God is really looking for is – “a broken spirit and a repentant heart…”

You don’t want sacrifices.
    If I gave an entirely burned offering,
    you wouldn’t be pleased.
A broken spirit is my sacrifice, God.
    You won’t despise a heart, God, that is broken and crushed.. – Psalm 51:16-17