Faith, Dialogue, and Obedience — Lessons from Abraham

What We Can Learn From Parashat Vayera

What can we learn from this Torah portion? First, God can put on flesh and appear without doubt as a normal man, who needs to have his feet washed and take food. Second, God takes into consideration His righteous servants and shares with them His plans, the plans that would affect them personally and affect the community of the saints. Third, God appreciates and sometimes even hears (listens) to His righteous servants, and takes their comments seriously. At times God actually modifies His actions. This happened twice with Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, and it happened with Elijah and the widow from Lebanon, and it happened in this case with Abraham.

What we need to learn and appropriate from this story is that we, too, as children of God who have the acquired righteousness that comes from Yeshua's life and sacrifice, can and ought to be able to talk to God and argue with Him respectfully, but in the end accept and receive His wise judgment. This ought to change drastically the way Messianic Jews, and some Christians, pray, and make our prayers and our requests from the Almighty a meaningful conversation and an honest dialogue between ourselves, His creatures, His children, and our Heavenly Father.

Blind Faith vs. Mindful Faith

But, because Abraham argued with God about Sodom, but didn't argue with God concerning the sacrifice of his son Isaac, but just went on with God's command without putting up a fight to save his son Isaac, the rabbis think that God just ignored Abraham completely after Genesis 22. Abraham was too obedient, too compliant, too religious, and just followed instruction and took his son of promise Isaac, tied him on the altar, and lifted up his knife, ready to carry out God's command. Yes, God sent the ram and saved Isaac, but Abraham had this blind, trusting faith in God, and unlike in the situation with Sodom, he just took God's command blind and obedient. God just stopped communication with Abraham from chapter 22, until Abraham's death. I realize that this is a rabbinical idea of why God stopped His communication with Abraham after the sacrifice of Isaac, but it is an interesting observation that communication between Abraham and the Lord, the Master of the Universe, just stopped.

Fourth, faith and faithfulness are of great importance, and Abraham proved this when he took his son Isaac up to Mount Moriah to sacrifice him. But, blind faith that is held and sometimes performed without the use of our minds and without thinking it through and without consideration for others around us, might not be appreciated and accepted by the Almighty God of Israel or by His Son, Yeshua. We are only faithful in our actions and faith when we do things mindfully with full awareness of what we are doing and why we are doing it. God doesn't need or want robots, He wants children who are able to think things through and make relational and purposeful decisions.

"Hineni" — Here I Am, Lord

About Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, the only thing that I would like to say is that we are all in need of the key word in this story in Hebrew — "hineni", which in English means, "here I am Lord, ready to obey and do your will." This word appears more than one time in Genesis 24:1,7,11. It is a key word that many of the servants of God have used — Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Samuel, and David.

Our father Abraham becomes the supreme example of faith and obedience to the Almighty God. The ultimate sacrifice — the son of God's promise — he was willing to offer, with a deep faith that even if he offered Isaac they would return home alive and safe. This is what Abraham said to his servants who were keeping the donkeys:

Notice that Abraham said to his servants: "and we will come back to you!" — realizing that even if he obeyed God with this impossible and outrageous command to sacrifice the one son of promise on whose shoulders all the promises of God depend, God would raise him back from the dead and keep His promises.

If I Am Not for Myself, What Am I?

The events around Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac are some of the more complicated to share and explain to the current TikTok generation. The way that I have discovered to share this event is through the stories of the superheroes, like Superman and Spider-Man, and the rest of the Hollywood myths. The long-term good of the world and the human race is something that we, as individuals and our families, ought to care about and even sacrifice ourselves for. For me personally it is not a question of religion at all, it is a question of being committed to do all that is in our power for the greater good.

The famous rabbinical statement from the Tractate Avot in the Mishnah is translated to English like this:

The idea behind Hillel's statement is that our life means nothing if we are selfish and live only for ourselves. Yes, we ought to take care of ourselves and our own, first and foremost, but if that is all that we are going to contribute in our lives, then what is the difference between us, as human beings, as children of God, as children of Abraham? We would be no better than an animal, and most of the animals would be better than us as human beings. Animals kill to eat and survive or to defend themselves, but we as human beings kill for money, jealousy, hate, pleasure.

So, yes, dear brothers and sisters, if we live only thinking of ourselves and ours, and don't have the heart of God to care and at least pray for our nations, and churches, and synagogues, and the larger family, and just the people of our cities, and the leadership of our countries, what are we? What kind of human animals would we be if we trusted God to redeem us and present us with an eternity where there is no illness or death, suffering, or hate, and then turn around here on God's good earth and care only for ourselves and our families?

God gave us the eyes to see through His Word in the text of the Bible, but much more through His living Word, Yeshua the Messiah, who became the Word of God in the flesh.