Genesis 22: Bible Storying for Muslims: Dr. Cashin Lecture
Dr. David Cashin delivered a series of lectures on chronological Bible Storying for Muslims during a CIU course. Here, Cashin presents the fourth lesson on the chronological bible storying of Genesis 22 with Muslims.
Here starts the auto-generated transcription of Dr. David Cashin Lecture:
We now come to lesson 9 in chronological Bible storying for Muslims, And we’re looking today in this PowerPoint presentation, at the chapter, 22 of at the chapter 22 of Genesis verses 1 to 19. This is a very well known passage dealing with Abraham’s sacrifice of his son Isaac to, in obedience to the Lord’s command. And we want to look at this particular passage through the lens of Muslims and how Muslims tend to look at this. Now, please keep in mind that this particular sacrifice that is mentioned in Genesis 22 is also mentioned in several places in the Quran, and it is a a ritual of sacrifice that Muslims imitate to this day in the Eid al Adha. In fact, the Eid al Adha is taking place today, the very day that I’m recording this, is the day when Muslims around the world will sacrifice animals in in remembrance and in imitation of the sacrifice which Abraham was about to carry out on his son and for whom, the Lord provided a substitute.
So you might say that the sacrifice of the son is a type of what was to come And, this is the connection that we want to make with our Muslim friends is what does God mean by this command and by this story in the Old Testament? Now, I’m not gonna read the whole story. You should be pretty familiar with this, how Abraham, has waited so many years to receive this son of promise, Isaac, and, he has received the son. Now the boy has grown up and suddenly, on this particular day, God gives him an almost unthinkable command to take his son to a certain place and to sacrifice him there. God, in a sense, puts Abraham to the test.
And so in verse 2, it’s almost as if God wants to emphasize the special love he has for his son. He says, take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love and sacrifice him. It’s an incredible picture, one that has astonished people down through the ages and you can read through this passage. I know the Muslims will have a certain disagreement, particularly that Isaac is the son of sacrifice. They want to say that it’s Ishmael.
We’ll come back to that because we’re gonna deal with some apologetic issues that relate to that, but let’s just for the time being read the story and understand it, as it’s presented here in the scriptures. In many ways, it is reminiscent of John 316, and you might at the end of your study want to bring that in, but, you might start this study by asking your Muslim friend what he thinks about the Eid al Adha and what it means. Now I realize that in modern Islamic thinking, the Ida Laddha is simply imitation of Abraham and obedience to a command that God has given the Muslim community to sacrifice. And there are many Muslims, particularly orthodox, who would not see any concept of atonement in this. This is largely because Islam is constantly reacting to Christianity and, things that were much more obviously in keeping with Christian teaching a 1000 years ago have tended to be dropped out of Islamic thinking to ensure that there’d be as little attraction to the Christian faith as possible.
Now you don’t have to take that up with your Muslim friend, but it’s interesting to hear what they have to say and there are many Muslim groups to this day who will see the Eid al Adza as something relating to atonement and how an animal is provided in place of the son. So ask them. Talk to them about what this means before you go into the passage itself. And then go into the passage reading it, reflecting on what it means for a father to offer his son. What an incredible thing it is that Abraham was trusting God to such a degree that he was ready to carry out this sacrifice.
And when the boy asks, father here’s is the wood and here is the fire, where is the lamb for the sacrifice? And, I, Abraham makes the amazing statement, God will himself provide the lamb. It’s an amazing picture that God is ultimately the one who provides and what is it that he provides? This is a point that you can make as you go through with your Muslim friend. Hebrews 11 verses 40 to 12:2 talk about the fact that the sacrifices in the old covenant were not enough to cleanse us from our sins and of course that’s why, the sacrifices were offered year after year and Muslims imitate that every year. Genesis 22
They offer the Eid al Adha sacrifice and yet they have to offer it the following year as well because it has no power ultimately to cleanse us from sin. It is merely a reminder of the cost of sin, and the need for cleansing and it points also to something else, the reality that God deals with sin by means of sacrifice. One of the points that you might make at this point is to talk a little bit about what forgiveness means because we pray on a regular basis, God forgive my sins. Forgive me for all that I have done wrong in my life. Have you ever asked your Muslim friend, what does forgiveness really mean?
You might take a little illustration. Something like this. You might say, suppose a criminal stole a $100 for me, from me and he was caught and I had the opportunity to deal with this criminal who’d stolen a $100 from me. Now, I could take him to court to have him punished. That would be one way of dealing with it.
I could force him to pay me the $100 back. That would be gaining back what I’ve lost. So I could do the way of law of retribution or I could go by way of getting paid back. But supposing I forgave the criminal, supposing he had no means to pay back and he was desperate for his family and I I took compassion on him and I said, well I forgive you. If I do that, who has lost a $100? Genesis 22
Well clearly, I have. In other words, forgiveness is not the same as retribution and it’s not the same as getting paid back. It means that when I forgive someone, I take the consequences of their evil action upon myself and that’s really what’s happening here in the sacrificial system that when God provides a substitute in the ram or the lamb or the camel or whatever other animal, that animal as it were is providing us for forgiveness because it’s taking the punishment in our place. Now God in Hebrews 11 talks about the fact that there is a better sacrifice, one that does not have to be repeated over and over and over again, and you might want to reflect on that a little bit. Why is it that we have to offer the Eid al Adza sacrifices year after year after year?
They don’t seem to have the ability to ultimately cleanse us from sin because they’re a sign of forgiveness of that sin being paid for, but how is that sin paid for? And generally speaking, our Muslim friends don’t know. They have no idea really, how the transaction is carried out that leads to our forgiveness. And of course many passages in the scripture talk about this. We won’t go into to this, John 12936.
1st Peter 1 verses 18 to 21. You could find other passages on your own, but the reality here is that in place of the son, an animal takes the punishment. So verse 9, it says that Abraham bound his son and laid him on the altar, prepared to sacrifice his only son and here we see the picture then, as God says, I lay your hand, Abraham. Now I know that you love me more than anything else because you’ve not withheld your son from me. And so God provides at that moment a ram, to take the place of the son, to bear as it were the punishment in the son’s place. Genesis 22
Now some Muslims may say, well, this is just an a matter of obedience. Abraham is not taking a sacrifice for sins either for himself or for the son. He’s just doing what Allah has told him to do. At that point, I might point out that the sacrificial system is all throughout the Old Testament. It’s not just concerning Abraham and Isaac, but there are sin there are sacrifices for the forgiveness of sins all throughout the Old Testament.
So whether you see it just as obedience or a sacrifice for sin, clearly the idea of sacrifice does illustrate the punishment that falls because of sin and, therefore, there’s a need for continuing sacrifices. James 221 also talks about this fact that Abraham was justified by his works because he was prepared to be obedient to God, but God spared him the loss of his son by providing another in his place, a substitute in his place. So that substitutionary What is that substitute? Or perhaps more better put, who is that substitute? Let’s take a look at a few key questions for this text.
First of all, what was God’s purpose in testing Abraham? Ask your Muslim friend this question, and in many ways it relates back to this idea of loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength so that you love him more than anything else in the world, but it’s also because God does things as a sign. He doesn’t necessity of sacrifice, of suffering for the sake of sins. And if we are delivered from suffering, it’s because someone else has borne the punishment for us. Secondly, why was the ram a suitable substitute for the sun? Genesis 22
Well, if you look at all the Old Testament passages, it talks about the fact that the ram must be blemish free. It must be free from any kind of spot or infirmity, like a lamb, unblemished and spotless. And this substitute is a picture of the perfection of that which is sacrificed. In other words, if something dirty is offered for something else that’s dirty, well that thing that’s offered dies for its own sins, not for someone else’s. That’s why no normal human being can die for the sins of another, because we’re all sinners.
We all have sinned. Therefore, we all because we’re all sinners. We all have sinned. Therefore, we all have to pay for our own sins. For one to be able to take our sins or to pay for them, that one would need to be just as spotless, as this lamb is without guilt and therefore able to bear the sins of others.
You might ask your Muslim friend at this point the meaning of the word kafara if he knows Arabic. Kafara is actually the Arabic word for atonement and, you might wanna talk more about this area of atonement and what it means. Atonement really means to gain forgiveness by paying the price for another. So what is the meaning of forgiveness? We’ve already discussed that, but this is the key point here. Genesis 22
Forgiveness means I take the consequences of someone else’s actions on myself. Were Abraham and Isaac sinless? This is one of the interesting questions. Muslims will often say that prophets were sinless. They didn’t do any sin, but in fact the Quran only teaches one prophet to be sinless and that’s Jesus.
Every other prophet has sins and when you go through the New Testament and the Old Testament, this is universally affirmed. So Isaac was not dying for Abraham’s sins. Isaac needed a substitute who could bear his sins for him, just as Abraham did and that’s the sign that God provided, in this lamb or in this ram. By the way, this is a good point for us to discuss the controversial point that Muslims will often make that the person sacrificed was Ishmael not Isaac. And I would tend, if this is raised by your Muslim friend, I would have a Quran handy and I would point out that everywhere that this sacrifice is described in the Quran, it’s clear that it’s referring to Isaac and not Ishmael.
Let me give you some examples. If you go to chapter 37 and you go, verses 100 to 113, It describes the, story, first of all, of the sacrifice and how, the how, God, called him to, go through this great sacrifice. And, we ransomed him, it says in verse 107, with a momentous sacrifice. And ransom, that’s also the word kafara there, that that there was a an atonement which took place that ransomed, Abraham himself as well as the son. And it’s interesting having talked about this, trial and this, sacrifice, then you come to verse 113 or actually 112 and it says and we gave him the good news of Isaac, a prophet. Genesis 22
We blessed him and Isaac. Now this is this is an interesting thing. In the very story of the sacrifice of Abraham, the only person mentioned is Isaac. Ishmael isn’t mentioned anywhere here. And if you want further proof, go on then to chapter 51 verses 24 to 30 which talks about the promise of this son who would, you know, be the son of promise that was offered on that altar.
And it’s interesting that as the promise is given, you get to verse 29 and it says, but his wife, and that’s talking about Sarah, came forward laughing aloud. She smote her forehead and said, how barren old woman? This is almost a direct quote from the Genesis Genesis account of the promise of the birth of Isaac and what’s interesting is that her laughing, the word laughter, is the root word for the name Isaac. Isaac means laughter and you might point that out to your Muslim friend that the child of promise, the child that God gave, for this ransom to take place through was Isaac and that’s what the Quran says. Now later Islamic teaching teaches that it’s Ishmael and this is mostly done because, they want to downplay the connection to Jewish and Christian, ideas in the Quran.
But the Quran itself is fairly clear on the subject and I would argue that strenuously because it helps them to realize that a lot of things are in the Quran that are not taught to Muslims today. Many things that the Quran emphasizes that modern Islamic teachers, frankly, avoid, such as the sinlessness of Jesus. He is the only prophet who is sinless. Therefore, he’s the only one who could be the perfect lamb of God. And again, we see verses 13 and 14, and Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and went out and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering instead of his son. Genesis 22
So Abraham called the name of that place the Lord will provide. And we believe, from John 12 verses 32 to 34, Jesus says, if I be lifted up, I will draw all men to myself. What does he mean by that? He means that he will be that perfect sacrifice that covers the sins of many. And here again, you could also bring in John 3 16 that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
Now you you may find that that will lead to a big discussion about whether Jesus is the son of God and frankly this is gonna be on your Muslim friend’s mind anyway, so I wouldn’t mind taking it up at this point and pointing out that the God of the Bible is a complex god. He’s not 3 gods. He’s one god and if you say, oh that’s illogical. How can 1+1+1 equal 3? Well frankly, this isn’t anything about logic at all.
Whether you say God is 1 or God is 3, these are not logical statements. They’re statements of faith and not one is more logical than the other. They’re simply statements of faith. However, they have consequences. If God is an absolute unity, then you cannot know him, but the God of the Bible has relationship built into his very nature. Genesis 22
He is father, son, and holy spirit and therefore we can know him. We can experience him. Your Muslim friend will have to accept that Jesus is the son of God at some point if there’s going to be any chance for salvation, because there’s salvation in no other name and no one who does not have the son has the father. So, you will need to deal with this and I would not be afraid or abashed about speaking of Jesus as the Son of God because Muslims have to accept this if they want to receive salvation. Well, thanks so much.
I think that’ll be enough for this lesson 9 and you can stop at this point if you like.