The Exchange of a Lifetime

            Jeff waited in the hallway, watching the scurry of the medical professionals as they rushed me into the operating room.  One of the doctors, dressed in scrubs, her latex gloves already on, approached him with an air of seriousness. 
            We had been told at the outset of our pregnancy that I had a serious medical condition with the pregnancy.  I had started bleeding early on: repeatedly.  Many times we had thought we had miscarried, only to find the baby still living.  Unfortunately, though, this problem would not go away for us.  In fact, I would need to remain on strict bedrest for the last trimester of pregnancy and there was absolutely no way that we could have a normal birth. 
            As we had sat months earlier in the doctor’s office, taking in and processing the grim reality, the doctor informed us that as the baby increased in size, I would certainly have increased hemorrhaging.  I could expect that toward the end, one of those times would become a near-death experience.  Without warning, I could hemorrhage and within 15 minutes both our son and I would die if we didn’t receive an immediate emergency cesarean.  We listened to their advice and scheduled a very early c-section surgery—just barely long enough into the pregnancy that our son could breathe but would still need NICU assistance to survive.  That was if we were “lucky.”  If my hemorrhaging started sooner, it would all be in God’s hands. 
            We waited through those months, very carefully working together as a family to enable me not to walk anywhere.  Joy changed diapers, Melody made meals, and our church supplied us with freezer dinners to last for months.  We were blessed. 
         But that morning, it had begun.  I woke up with more blood loss than I had ever experienced.  I called our families, and they jumped into action—picking up kids, taking me to the hospital.  We had still hoped that day for a planned surgery, hoped that the bleeding would slow enough to give our son a little more time to develop.  But once at the hospital, settled, the major hemorrhage had begun.  Within seconds I had lost half my blood.  As the medical team wheeled me to the prepared surgical room, the peace of God filled my spirit and I gave my family to God, asking Him to care for them, no matter what happened. 
            Jeff waited in the hall, watching helplessly, listening to the doctor.  For the first time, he got to hear the full gravity of the situation.  If they didn’t operate within five minutes, we would both die.  If they operated quickly, the drugs they would give me would kill our son.  There was no way that his small, premature body could handle that many chemicals. There was no other way to save me.  
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The Lord Sees and Tests Us
“After these things God tested Abraham….” Gen 22:1a
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            Abraham had been called by God to leave his home and travel with God on a journey of a lifetime, one where he would not have a permanent home, but rather only a temporary dwelling.  By faith, Abraham was called to live as though God would one day give his descendants the Promised Land in which he was currently wandering as a foreigner.  While there, God revealed Himself again to Abraham, letting Him know that because he had walked in obedience by faith, God would multiply his descendants like the stars in the sky, like the sand of the seashore.
            Sometimes we make assumptions about how God’s promises to us will be fulfilled.  Just like we might have, Abraham assumed that because Sarah was barren, she was not a part of the promise. He assumed that because there was an impossible situation-his legitimate wife’s barrenness and old age--that the promise must only apply between him and God, forgetting or being ignorant of the fact that God had already declared that husbands and wives are “one flesh.”

            He believed God--but only in the realm of the possible.

            Sarah desperately wanted to be a part of that promise with God.  She rightly believed that because she was Abraham’s first and legitimate wife she had a right to the promise as well.  But she too believed that because it was an “impossible” situation, she would have to “fix it.” So she tried a common, legal practice among the pagan nations among which they were traveling: that of giving a slave to your husband and claiming the offspring as your own.
          This majorly backfired for Sarah when Hagar, the Egyptian slave, did conceive by Abraham and began to despise Sarah.  This is understandable to us, and just plain predictable, but for them, it was a tumultuous upheaval of their relationship and family life.
            Meanwhile, in their extreme old age, God came again to Abraham and Sarah and corrected Abraham’s misinterpretation: Sarah, his legitimate wife, was the one who would share in the promise.  Her participation should have been assumed from the beginning; Abraham was not the only one who was loved and chosen by God to carry His promise!  God miraculously allowed Sarah to conceive and give birth to the long-awaited, promised child who would inherit the Promised Land for their succeeding generations.
         But painful consequences of their previous, selfish errors were about to come to the surface: Ishmael, Abraham’s son by the slave woman, Hagar, mocked Isaac, the Promised Child. Sarah’s place as wife and participation in the Promise of God was threatened by the potential sharing of the inheritance of the Promise.  She demanded that Abraham send the slave woman and Abraham’s child, Ishmael, away.
           Though Abraham was heartbroken and reluctant to send his son away, God’s plan had never been to give the promise through Hagar-that was a broken and dysfunctional plan made out of human desperation.  Sarah was to be a part of the Promise.  God assumed responsibility for Hagar and Ishmael and directed Abraham to release them into His plan for them.  Isaac’s position was secured.

            Or so they thought. 
 
            Abraham and Sarah had spent a lifetime trying to see through their own problems and provide their own solutions: Trying to “fix things” through manipulation, lies and even what we would consider abuse was their typical, go-to solution. 

            God was about to surprise them.

         ​Finally, they had experienced God’s provision in a son.  They were home clear.  It was only one boy-yet because of the miraculous way in which God had given Isaac, they truly believed that God could fulfill his promise of extreme multiplication just through him.  They were good to go; clear sailing. 
         Do you ever suppose that God is done with you?  That perhaps His greatest purpose and most significant promise to you has already been fulfilled? Perhaps we think that after the many instances of God’s powerful work in our lives, that we have “made it.”  We’ve arrived.
           Praise God, that couldn’t be further from the truth!  
           So in this moment of content, of feeling like they had finished their journey with God, there is another test. 
            In Psalm 11:4-5, we are given a picture of God, in His ultimately wise perspective above all our circumstances, observing us:

            The LORD is in His holy temple;
            the LORD is on His heavenly throne.
            His eyes are watching closely;
            they examine the sons of men.
            The LORD tests the righteous and the wicked.
            Psalm 11:4-5a BLB
 
            God often brings us into a test---not to find out what is inside of us, He already has observed our soul and is “intimately acquainted with all our ways,” the Psalmist wrote.  Rather, when He sees and observes that there are hidden impurities, selfish motivations for doing good things, idolatrous attachments to the created things and the good gifts beyond our love for the Him as the Giver and Creator--desires that would lead to our damage eternally--in love He arranges “tests.” 
            These tests involve painful suffering at times and are designed to help us to bring up and out of us the actual, hidden motivations and desires that may be in conflict with a pure love of God and others.  Under pressure, our underlying focuses and motivations come to the surface where they are apparent to both us and everyone who is observing.  God then has an opportunity to allow us to see what He already clearly has identified.

            When we find that our inner motivations are not pure, that we are placing our desires above God’s desires for us, we then have a choice to make. 

            ​This is exactly what God had in mind for Abraham:

After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.” So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and his son Isaac. And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Gen 22:1-4

​            Here, God is calling to Abraham with the Promise.  God Himself had named Abraham, and it means “Exalted Father.”  So, when God is calling Abraham, He is simultaneously reminding him of His Promise.  He would be a father of many nations. While He is asking Him to give up his only son.    
            What do you do when God asks you to give up your promise? To undo everything that you have worked for, everything you thought was the culmination of a lifetime of building with God? 
Sometimes we even make an idol out of the very gift of God.  Isn’t that what idols really are?  In the book of James, the Bible tells us that “Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of Lights…”  He is the Giver of all good things! The idols that people make, that are formed by human humans, we build out of materials that God provided so graciously, created by hands that He fashioned to give Him worship.
 
            The greater the gift of God, the more powerful the idol it can become in our lives.
 
            But God loves us too much to leave us in that place of idolatry.  The Holy Spirit searches our hearts and finds any place not fully surrendered to Him. 
Abraham and Sarah thought they had it all.  They were rich, had a great reputation, lived in freedom, walked in righteousness, had a beautiful family, and continued in the protection of God. But God wanted to blow their minds.  He wanted all of their hearts, and He wanted to do something through them that would manifest the incredible plan and purpose He had for the entirety of the world. 
            The Psalmist wrote, “Search me O God, and test me and see if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.” He is praying to God, Lord, see if there is anything at all in my heart, small or big, that would keep me from being in relationship with you!  Put me through a test-heat up the furnace and melt the gold, bring up any impurities in my heart that need to be pulled off so that I can be more like you! 
            What emotions come up inside of you when we pray that God would put us through a test? Fear? Anxiety? Do we wonder if something that is precious to us is really holding first place in our heart, God’s place, instead of Him?  Are we scared that God will take us up on that prayer and that it will be painful?  I know for me, that is a sure indication that I am having trouble believing that God is good and that He has a good plan.
            If we truly believe that God is both good and completely able, the question then becomes: what is our response when God calls us to us?
           
            For Abraham, it was “hineni:”             

​            Here I am. 
 

When We Hear God Calling,
​We Must Obey and Look Expectantly to Him
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הִנֵּֽנִי

​​Hineni
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      Hineni.  The Hebrew word, plainly translated, means, “Here I am.”  It comes from a few root words: “Hinneh,” which means “here,” “behold,” or “Look!” and is often an exclamation of surprise.  It is combined with the second word, “ani,” which gives it a possessive, first person, singular quality: me, I, my.  Combined, it can mean, “Look at me! Here I am!”
    Jewish Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin explains Hineni as a “stunning response:”
       

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“…a pure astonished, unguarded affirmation given before all the facts are known.  It is a spontaneous, unequivocal commitment promising: ‘I am here,’ where and as you find me, fully attentive, focused, all in.  And even more, ‘I am here’- all of me, with all that I am and all that I can be.1​
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      Avital Snow, a Jewish believer in Christ, references the Hebrew word regarding its importance in setting up the narrative:
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With reference to the past or present, it points generally to some truth either newly asserted, or newly recognized…. With reference to the future, it serves to introduce a solemn or important declaration….It is an offer of complete availability, of total readiness to serve.  When we utter, ’hineni,’ we make ourselves fully available to whatever it is God might ask of us.  Even without knowing what that might be. The answer of ‘hineni’ is one of faith….We see ‘hineni’ appear at pivotal moments throughout Scripture.  Moments when profound change is about to take place in the lives of those responding to God.

        
     To us, God’s command to Abraham sounds terrifying and horrible.  I’m sure it did to Abraham.  With our current knowledge about God’s nature, how He detests child sacrifice, our souls are deeply affronted by this demand.  Knowing that a good God would never actually require this kind of worship, it can be difficult to understand why Abraham didn’t question the authenticity of the voice he was hearing.  However, just as they had followed the surrounding nation’s legal system in giving Hagar to Abraham—which also went just as antithically against God’s nature and set order in the Garden at Creation—so now Abraham was simply following a normal, cultural custom of idol worship: child sacrifice. Without the knowledge of God’s actual feelings about this heinous practice, the only part that God was testing was Abraham’s heart love.
 
        And we find that it was real.
     
     Abraham offered to God Himself, in every capacity.  He didn’t argue or make excuses.  He didn’t procrastinate or put it off.  He got up early, made all the necessary arrangements for a successful trip.  Anything that was necessary to walk in obedience, Abraham prepared for.  He got the wood, the servants, the donkey.  He placed upon his precious and only son the very wood to carry. 
        Our response, as believers who truly believe that God is trustworthy and good, should be immediate. We must completely relinquish everything, nothing withheld. No foot out the door. All in. This kind of pre-commitment is foolish if it is an unabandoned response to just anybody. Instead, it is reserved only for the One who is completely, utterly trustworthy in all circumstances: Yahweh, the Great I Am. 
         The Scriptures tell us in Hebrews 11:17 that Abraham not only loved God, he had another assumption about what God would do, one based, this time, upon the true nature of God:  
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By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. HEB 11:17
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     He believed that God, who created all out of nothing, could certainly give life back to His creation.  It’s my opinion that the text is trying to tell us that Abraham believed, logically, that if God promised to use Isaac to give him grandkids, then resurrection must be God’s plan.  This time, however, he did not deviate from God’s plan in his assumptions, but continued exactly as God had told him.  He was learning to follow God’s instructions carefully, to believe that God is faithful to His Promise even in the impossible: 
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On the third day Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place from afar. Then Abraham said to his young men, “Stay here with the donkey; I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.” And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife. So they went both of them together. And Isaac said to his father Abraham, “My father!” And he said, “Here I am, my son.” He said, “Behold, the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?” Abraham said, “God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.” So they went both of them together.
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When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son.
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The Lord Sees to the Exchange
מוֹרִיָּה

Moriah

      I want to take us back to the first few verses.  In the beginning of the narrative, we are told that God instructs Abraham to go to the “land of Moriah, to a mountain I will show you.”  God carefully picks His places when He is trying to make a point. 
     Moriah (מוֹרִיָּה) comes from a few Hebrew words as well:  ra’ah: “to see;” yah, which is short for Yahweh, or God; and mur, which means “to exchange.”  It also includes a possessive letter, the yod.
Combined, these words mean, “The Lord will see to my exchange.”            
      While we are Abraham, we are also Isaac.  We are the “bound ones.” 

​     The Bible tells us that the result of sin is death.  That there is no forgiveness of sin without blood being poured out.  It tells us that we all have sinned, that there is no one righteous enough to be in God’s holy presence.  In our sin, we remain under a curse: the curse of eternal separation from the presence of God and everything He is.  Every good attribute of God’s nature is removed for eternity. 
       The Bible tells that in sin we are “bound,” as with chains, in captivity and enslaved. Sin must be paid for in death.  We cannot go back, eat from the tree of life, and live forever in a state of darkness, pain and sin.  Death must come.
     It was this place of “exchange” in verse 4 that the narrator poignantly lets us know that Abraham also lifted up his eyes and sees from a distance, preshadowing God's vision into the future. It is here that blood must be shed to redeem the Bound One from his sin:
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But the angel of the LORD called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place, (Yahweh Yireh) “The LORD will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the LORD it shall be provided.”
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And the angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, “By myself I have sworn, declares the LORD, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.” So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beersheba. And Abraham lived at Beersheba.
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     When I woke up, I couldn’t remember what was happening.  The pain was excruciating, and everything was hazy.  My baby was nowhere to be seen. When I asked about him, I was told I could not hold him—I must stay in my room and recover.  When Jeff got there, I asked him what had happened.  He said our baby was in the NICU and when I was strong enough to go down and see him, I could meet him. 
     He said that as soon as they had removed Winston from my womb, he was already dead.  Jeff had watched them rush him down the hall to the resuscitating room that had already been prepared in advance for this exact outcome.  Their team of eight doctors had surrounded him, revived him and intubated him so that he could breathe.  Winston was down in the NICU, more than five weeks premature.  The doctors, in their wisdom and experience, had seen ahead to what would happen and had already prepared everything necessary for Winston’s death and renewed life. 
     Our thinking is so limited.   God’s ways are higher than our ways, His thoughts are higher than our thoughts! As high as the heavens are above the earth, God says, so are his ways higher than our ways! (Is. 55:9) He tells us in the Scriptures that “no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has imagined what God has prepared for His people!”  (1 Cor. 2:9)
     

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God’s Provision Is Far Greater: God Gives Himself
יְהוָ֣ה יִרְאֶ֑ה 

Yahweh Yireh
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​    Jehovah Jireh.  These words, Jehovah and Jireh, are Germanic alliterations of how the Hebrew words, YhWh and Yireh were previously assumed to have been pronounced. 
     YhWh is God’s name for Himself, given to Moses. L. Grant Luton, in his book, “In His Own Words,” explains the following:

“Most scholars believe that YHVH The combination of letters combine the verbs into a compound word: I was, I am, and I will be:

          חיה, Ha’yah= He was
          יהיה, Yi’yeh = He will be
          הוה, Ha’vah = He is"
          יהוה, YHWH = The Great I Am

     He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end, the One who see, knows, and is sovereign over all. He is the Great I Am.

     Yireh means “it will be seen,” and by implication, the solution to the need that is seen will be provided.  The Great I Am sees your need and has already provided the answer to your need.  All that we need is found in Jesus, the Lamb of God, slain since the foundation of the world! All the promises of God are “yes” and “completed” in Him.  He is enough. 
     God is the creator of time and stands outside of and in mastery of time itself.  It is only in relation to our perspectives that He was or will be—from His eternal perspective, He is. 
      Because He is the One who was in our past, He sees clearly everything that has brought us to this place.  Because He is in our present, He experiences all our feelings and desires and needs in the moment.  And Because He is in our future, He supernaturally sees ahead to know what we will need and exactly when we will need it.  
     He is the Master Architect.  He is the greatest planner of all time!  He is never late, never messy, never caught off-guard.  He is all good, all-knowing, and all-powerful.  He can create everything out of nothing, and He can certainly provide in advance for all that our future holds! 
     While I never would have chosen myself over my son, the reality of which I was ignorant was that there was no way for me to live without him first giving his life—only to live to see his life given back fully to him by our God who sees ahead and provides.
      In the same way, there was no way for us, bound to sin, living in death and separation from God, to save ourselves.  The death of a guilty one only pays for the penalty of their own sin—it can never bring life.  It is only the death of an innocent one in our place that both pays for our sin and can still give resurrecting life back. 
     The Hebrew word for “burnt” means more literally, to “ascend” or to be “lifted up.”  Jesus said that if He was lifted up from the earth, referring to being lifted up on the cross, He would draw all people to Himself (John 12:32).  Abraham believed that God would raise up Isaac, his one and only beloved son, from the dead.  Mt. Moriah later became the site of the temple in which Jesus was condemned by the Jewish leaders to die.  God sent His only, beloved Son to walk up Golgotha next to the place of Moriah with the cross on his back, to die in exchange for us and to rise from the dead. Because of His sacrifice, we can participate with Him in every promise that God has ever given to Jesus.  We can participate in resurrected and eternal life in the presence of God forever!  Jesus is the one who makes the gates of hell, His enemies surrender!  Jesus is the One in whom all nations of the earth are blessed!  
     We often think that if we give something up, then we have a loss.  God’s plans through the sacrifice of what we think is the culmination and pinnacle of what God is going to do is really beyond, as He says, what we could possibly ask or imagine!
       In Isaiah 58 God tells us that if we repent from our sins, turn away from them and live by the grace of God in love to others in response to Him, then He has an astounding promise for us: 

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“Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and He will say: Here am I (hineni)” Isaiah 58:9
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​     Just as Isaac called out to His Father, Abi!” my father) and Abraham responded to His son, “Hineni,” and promised that the Lord would provide Himself a lamb, so God responds to us in our perplexed cries. The Lord's exchange is far greater than anything we had imagined! When we answer ‘hineni’ to God, God answers ‘hineni’ to our call to Him! He Himself will turn to us and, in a surprising and shocking reversal, will bless us with His presence and say, ‘hineni!’ Look at me! Here I am! He gives Himself entirely for us and sees ahead to all that we all ever need in order to provide for us everything that is of greater worth than anything we could hold back or imagine with our limited perspectives.
      In the very act of Abraham’s obedience, God calls him again, “Abraham, Abraham!”  The second calling is not merely to get his attention.  Rather, it is renewed emphasis on Abraham’s name, the promise of his fatherhood.  It is now doubled.  His name repeated for emphasis coincides with a double promise of God: “in blessing I will bless you, in multiplying I will multiply you.”  These promises are now underscored with the depth of the greatness with which Abraham would be blessed by God. 
     When we give to God every single part back of what He has given to us-our souls, our bodies, our homes, our assets, our businesses, our jobs, our retirements funds and plans, our children and grandchildren, our friends, our ministries, our hopes and dreams and personalities, watch and see God multiply His Promise to you abundantly, both now and into eternity!

     He gives Himself, and He is always enough!
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1https://firmisrael.org/learn/here-am-i-the-hebrew-meaning-of-hineni/
2Sefaria.org  the deepest meanings of hineni
3L. Grant Luton, In His Own Words, Pg 7