Rachel Held Evans says if she’d been Abraham, she’d have sooner been struck dead than obeyed; what made Abraham different?

In The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sir Henry Baskerville fumes at a hotel waiter over losing two boots a maid was to have polished: a new brown boot the night before and now an old black boot. Sir Henry returns to his room and finds the first, never-worn boot beneath a cabinet under which he is sure he already looked.

Most see the hotel’s ineptness as annoying, but certainly not connected to the Baskervilles’ larger worries about the curse of a deadly, demonic hound that locals claimed to have seen and heard about the time Sir Henry’s uncle died. Only Sherlock Holmes grasps the boots’ significance and concludes the uncle was murdered and Sir Henry himself is now in danger. Later when all is resolved, Holmes explains to Watson about the missing boots:

… a most instructive incident, since it proved conclusively to my mind that we were dealing with a real hound, as no other supposition could explain this anxiety to obtain an old boot and this indifference to a new one. The more outré and grotesque an incident is the more carefully it deserves to be examined, and the very point which appears to complicate a case is, when duly considered and scientifically handled, the one which is most likely to elucidate it.

In many mystery stories, the key to the solution is found in some odd fact that is overlooked by unskilled observers.

The story of God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac is like such mystery stories. The key to understanding Abraham’s response is in a fact whose significance is often missed: God’s miraculous, unmistakable revelation of himself, his trustworthiness, and his power to Abraham. Indeed, it’s a fact that Rachel Held Evans’s post, “I would fail Abraham’s test (and I bet you would too),” overlooks.

Recap. In Part 1 of this series, we looked at Evans’s main argument about the Bible story of Abraham’s near sacrifice of Isaac: Either God’s “real test is in whether you refuse,” or “stories” such as these are not “historical realities,” or the “deity you were taught to worship does evil things” so people should “question the deity’s very existence.” This is a faulty dilemma because missing facts make everything clear. Part 2 of this series looked at the missing fact that Abraham’s culture considered ritual human sacrifice to be morally good. Today we’ll look at a second missing fact, one that’s there in the story but which is easily overlooked as significant: miraculous revelation.

About God asking Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Evans says:

I’d like to think that even if those demands thundered from the heavens in a voice that sounded like God’s, I’d have sooner been struck dead than obeyed them. 

So what made Abraham different?

Abraham different in how God prepared him

The significant fact leading up to Abraham’s test is God’s revelation of himself to Abraham. God prepared Abraham for the test by giving Abraham and his family unmistakable evidence of himself and his character.

• God revealed his Person: For seventy-five years, Abraham and his family worshiped the moon god Sin and various idols of wood and gold (Joshua 24:2). Then one day God spoke to Abraham and said, “Go … to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). Think of the significance of this: God spoke. This was a God whom Abraham didn’t know, but this God knew him. When Abraham obeyed and went to the land, God appeared to him in a theophany (12:7). In fact, the story tells us God appeared to him in visions and theophanies multiple times (15:1, 17:1, 18:1). He also appeared to Abraham’s wife (18:9-15). In one theophany, the Lord and two angels ate food Abraham and Sarah prepared (Genesis 18:8). This was unmistakable evidence of God’s presence—in other words, it wasn’t a dream or a vision but a physical encounter.

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theophany: A manifestation to humankind of God that is tangible to human senses

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• God revealed he sees, hears, and helps: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield,” the Lord told Abraham. Abraham and at least five family members—Hagar, Sarah, Lot, Lot’s wife, Lot’s daughters—spoke with angels in ways that communicated that God hears when people cry out and he watches over those who are his (Genesis 16:7, 18:20-21, 19:15-16, 21:17). Additionally, God protected Sarah twice when powerful men tried to take her as wife (12:17-20, 20:3), and he helped Abraham defeat four armies with just 318 men (Genesis 14:1, 14-15).
• God revealed his justice: The Lord told Abraham that the “outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great,” and he was investigating whether they were as bad as the outcry said (Genesis 18:20-21). Abraham knew the evil of the city so he interceded, asking if the Lord would destroy entire cities if “ten are found there” who are righteous. The Lord said, “For the sake of ten I will not destroy it” (18:32). But ten righteous people could not be found. Two angels rescued Abraham’s nephew and his nephew’s daughters, and fire from heaven destroyed the cities. When Abraham saw the smoke rising from the cities, he knew that God investigates when people cry to him about injustice, and there is a point at which he will destroy those intent on harming others.
• God revealed his grace: From all we know, Abraham hadn’t lived the first seventy-five years of life honoring God or following his ways. But when God appeared to Abraham in a vision and promised him a son and future offspring as numerous as the stars (Gen. 15), Abraham “believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.” God showed He cared for Abraham.
• God revealed his trustworthiness: When God first called Abraham to move to Canaan, he said that he would make of him a great nation. But twenty-four years later, his wife Sarah was ninety, past menopause (“the way of women had ceased to be with Sarah,” Genesis 18:11), and still childless. Yet the Lord appeared and told Abraham and Sarah that Sarah would bear a child by that time the following year. Impossible? Humanly speaking, yes. But God was true to his word, and Sarah conceived and bore Isaac (21:1-2).
• God revealed his miraculous power: Through all these revelations, theophanies, destruction of evil, extraordinary helps, fulfilled promises, and the miraculous birth of the child of promise—Isaac—Abraham saw God’s unmistakable power and God’s willingness to use it.

It’s important not to miss the significance of all this: Abraham knew God. By the time God asked him to sacrifice his son Isaac, Abraham knew God well enough to believe he could trust God even when he didn’t know all the answers. God had promised to make a nation from his son Isaac, and God had asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. To Abraham, both must be true. Thus, as Hebrews 11:19 says, Abraham reasoned that God would raise Isaac from the dead.

Abraham different in calling

The harder the call, the more evidence God gives. God gave Abraham unmistakable evidence of himself not only because he was establishing a covenant—involving God revealing himself to the world through a nation descended through Isaac that could teach his ways—but because he was going to call Abraham to do something exceedingly difficult: the sacrifice of Isaac. For that Abraham needed complete faith in God’s character and promise. Over the 40-55 years between God’s call to Abraham to go to Canaan and his call to sacrifice Isaac, God gave him the evidence he needed to complete the task.

Abraham different in faith

Rachel Held Evans says that if she had been in Abraham’s place, “I’d have sooner been struck dead than obeyed.” What made Abraham different? Abraham saw the evidence of God’s power and goodness; Abraham heard God’s promises about Isaac; and Abraham believed God.

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Why was this test so important that God carefully prepared Abraham for it? The next post reveals the third missing fact: motive.

Related Posts

• Was Abraham Wrong? Answering Rachel Held Evans, Part 1: Does conscience require us to stamp the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac as false or Abraham a moral failure?
• Abraham & Human Sacrifice: Answering Rachel Held Evans, Part 2: Did Rachel Held Evans miss cultural facts?
• Do God’s Motives Matter? Answering Rachel Held Evans, Part 4: If God’s defining characteristic is supposed to be love, why would he ask Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?
• Conscience says Abraham Wrong? Answering Rachel Held Evans, Part 5: Does God expect us to deny conscience by accepting the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac?
• Abraham, Isaac & Child Sacrifice: A short version of this series
• Jesus in the Old Testament

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