8. God, the God of Resurrection.
THE record of Abraham’s offering up of Isaac contains in it an allegory of the sacrifice of our Lord on Calvary, while the special blessing given to Abraham upon his act of obedience indicates the blessings which ensue upon our Lord’s resurrection.
Isaac, we know, was the willing subject in his father’s hands, and, as they ascended the mount, “they went both of them together,” for he figured our Lord, who was the obedient and the voluntary Sacrifice, and whose every act was done in union and communion with God the Father. The promises of God to Abraham were bound up in Isaac―in none other was it possible that they should be fulfilled, for “it was said, In Isaac shall thy seed be called.” When the hour of testing came Abraham believed God, and trusted Him in His power, which is beyond death, “accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.” (Heb. 11:18, 19.)
Thus shines a light to us, from the earliest days, on faith in God as the God of resurrection. And when “the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time,” on that great day of faith, it was to bless him beyond all former blessings, and all these blessings were bound up in Isaac, whom he had received back, as it were, in resurrection. “In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.” (Gen. 22:15-18.)
The stars of heaven lead up our eyes above this earth, and we have presented a heavenly people shining before our gaze. The sand upon the sea shore directs our attention downwards, and we behold an earthly people in their unnumbered hosts. How brightly is thus before us the countless number of those whose favors are all secured in their Lord risen from the dead!
The gate of his enemies possessed, teaches of the stronghold won and kept—of victory maintained. He has vanquished death, and taken the power from him, who, by the fear of death, once held thousands in bondage (Heb. 15). “Peace unto you,” were His words of victorious greeting on the resurrection day, as He showed unto His disciples His hands and His side. (John 20:19, 20.) “Fear not... I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death”―of hades and of death―(Rev. 1:17, 18), are His words to us from heaven, where He now is. Our hopes are built upon His resurrection, or rather, should we say, our hopes are built upon Christ, who is risen from the dead. “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” (1 Cor. 15:17.)
Skepticism does not entertain the thought of resurrection―death is the boundary of its ideas, but Christianity is built up on the foundation of Christ risen from among the dead. Our Isaac, our Laughter, is known to us as alive to die no more, and remembered in His death once undergone on our behalf.
In the flood the same great truth of life out of death is apparent. The flood fell upon the old world, and the new arose out of that death. God peopled the new world with life which He had brought through death. “Saved by water,” saved by the very water which was destruction to the unbelievers, Noah and his company found at length their resting-place on the solid earth risen up out of the flood― “the like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us.... by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God.” (1 Peter 3:21, 22.)
In the book of Genesis are recorded the beginnings of God’s ways with man, and in that book we find the same principles which in the New Testament we learn, of the end of His ways with men― “The law made nothing perfect” (Heb. 7:19); “It was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made” (Gal. 3:19), and we shall not find God’s ways of grace with man in the law, but rather before or after it. The truth of resurrection is of moral necessity after the law, for the law slays its disobedient hearers, but God, who raises the dead, and who has raised His Son from among the dead, gives life in the power of Christ’s resurrection to all who believe.
Abraham knew in himself what it was to trust in God, who raises the dead. God promised him a son contrary to nature, and he believed in God― “He considered not his own body now dead, when he was above an hundred years old” (Rom. 4:19), but believing, he gave glory to God, and what God promised, God performed. Now so it is this day. God is the God of resurrection; He brings in life where nature is powerless. To begin with, He gives the sinner life, who is dead in his trespasses and sins, and then He teaches him, in the daily life on earth, that He is the God of resurrection. So long as we strive to do and to accomplish, we deny by our efforts that spirituality―we have no strength―that we are dead. But we cease to strive, and we believe God, and, lo, we partake of the power God loves to give!
Over and over again are God’s people allowed to come to a point in their experiences when the case is utterly hopeless, and at such times, as a rule, the light arises! It is at these crises of our history that we give up trying, and, instead, cast ourselves in our weakness on God, and such a state being before God, He comes in, in His grace, with His delivering power. And then it is that we learn, in our degree, what the father of the faithful learned, when he trusted in God who raises the dead.