Sacrificial Worship


Gen 22:5
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."

If you grew up in the church then you know the story of Abraham and Isaac. Abraham, an old man, was promised by God that he would be the father of nations and that his descendants would be as innumerable as the stars in the sky. He and Sarah, well beyond child-bearing age, conceive and Isaac is born. As a test, unknown to him at the time, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son. Out of obedience, Abraham set out to do just that.

In the midst of all of this drama is the passage that I have quoted that often gets lost in the larger story of obedience. Lost in all of this is the first record of anyone worshipping God in the Bible.  Now, we know that God was worshipped before this, but this is the first time that the word appears in Scripture.

Anyone who has been to Bible College knows the law of first occurrences.  We need to pay attention the first time a topic appears in the Bible, as it tends to set the tone for how it is viewed thereafter. So, it is not coincidental that the first time that the word “worship” appears in Scripture it is in conjunction with the idea of sacrifice.

In this context the Hebrew word is for worship is shachah (shaw-khaw') i.e. prostrate (especially reflexive, in homage to royalty or God). Literally translated it means to bow down before.

When we bow down before the Lord our God, we are acknowledging that He is indeed master of our lives; that nothing we are or have belongs to us. He is sovereign even when He asks us to give up our most prized possession.  We cannot stand in His presence and complain. We cannot stand in His presence and make demands. We cannot stand in his presence and accuse Him of being unjust. We can only bow down with our faces in the dust and remember that we are but dust.  Our worship must acknowledge that “… in him we live and move and have our being”( Acts 17:28)

Our worship says that we trust in Him and believe that He has our best interests in mind and that no matter what it looks like in the moment, He is a good God, a loving God.

Abraham knew that the only reason he had a son in the first place is because God had desired and willed it. Therefore, if God desired to take Isaac from him, he had no reason to complain as his child belonged to God in the first place.

That is true worship. Not to sing nice songs and get warm fuzzies as we gather with other believers. True worship is to acknowledge that He is master and Lord, regardless of the circumstances and the sacrifices we may endure and may be called on to make. True worship is to bow down before him, figuratively and literally and trust that, “God will provide”.

The final piece in the kind of worship that bows down before God and trusts Him is the knowledge that He won’t ask of us anything that He is not willing to do Himself. While he spared Isaac’s life, He did not spare His own Son’s life, even unto death on a cross. 

The next time that you find yourself in that impossible situation and you wonder why God is allowing this to happen; stop and bow down before Him to worship Him. In the words of Jesus, "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God ; trust also in me. “ (John 14:1)

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