S28 || Abraham, Isaac, And the Question of God’s Goodness || Hebrews 11:17-29 || Session 28

What do you do when God’s command seems to collide with your moral intuition? We take on the Abraham-and-Isaac dilemma head-on and trace how Hebrews chapter 11 reframes the story: not as an ethical nightmare, but as a window into resurrection hope and God’s unwavering goodness. Abraham believed the God who gave Isaac could raise him, and that single conviction transforms a scandal into a portrait of trust.

From there, we widen the lens. We unpack why “only begotten” (monogenes) means unique rather than created, connecting Isaac’s role as the son of promise to Jesus, the one and only Son. We explore how “God will provide the lamb” echoes forward to the cross, where provision culminates in the Lamb of God. Jacob’s surprising place in the faith hall reminds us that grace works through flawed lives, and Joseph’s request about his bones shows how hope can be carried across centuries when God makes a promise.

Moses brings the theme into sharp relief. Raised in Pharaoh’s court, he walks away from power, status, and privilege for a people with nothing but a promise. We dive into why Hebrews calls Egypt’s riches “passing pleasures,” how Moses kept the Passover by faith, and why the midwives and his parents model courageous civil disobedience when human law demands what God forbids. Along the way, we set guardrails: Abraham’s command was a one-time test, and Scripture never licenses us to violate God’s moral law under the banner of private revelation.

If you’ve wrestled with God’s goodness, the nature of faith, or the cost of obedience, this conversation offers clarity, context, and courage. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves deep Bible study, and leave a review to tell us what challenged you most.

Chapters

• 0:00 Framing The Moral Dilemma
• 0:46 Hebrews 11 And Abraham’s Test
• 3:20 Can God Command The Unthinkable
• 6:40 Creator’s Rights And Moral Authority
• 10:25 Faith, Trust, And God’s Character
• 13:21 God Will Provide The Lamb
• 17:02 Only Begotten And Monogenes Explained
• 21:52 A One-Time Command And Wise Counsel
• 24:31 Isaac, Jacob, Joseph And Future Hope
• 29:12 Jacob’s Flaws And Grace
• 33:20 Joseph’s Bones And Resurrection Faith

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:20

When God makes a promise to us, it's relatively easy to believe it when it's something good that's going to come. The question comes in is when God asks us to do something that's very difficult. What do we do if God asks us to do something that puts us into what appears to be a moral dilemma? Is God good or can we question the morality of God? Today we're going to deal with this question here on Reasoning Through the Bible, because we're going to deal with the passage where God commanded Abraham to kill his son. If you have your Bibles open to the book of Hebrews, chapter 11, and we're here dealing with God's examples of people with faith and how they trusted him. Well, as we said, it's easy to trust God when times are good or when the promises are good. But what happens when God commands us or asks us to do something that's very, very difficult, yet still ask us to believe him and trust him? We'll find out today. Steve, can you read verses 17, 18, and 19? And we'll find out what Abraham did when God commanded him to sacrifice his son.

SPEAKER_01: 1:39

By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son. It was he to whom it was said, in Isaac, your descendants shall be called. He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type.

SPEAKER_00: 2:05

In this story, if you remember, back in Genesis chapter 22, God had given Isaac to Abraham as a child of promise. Abraham and Sarah had Isaac when they were well past childbearing age. As the child Isaac grew to be a little older, God came to him in Genesis 22 and says, I want you to take him and sacrifice him. Now, today, in our day, skeptics and atheists kind of have a field day with this. People that are looking for things to criticize. This is one of the places where they do this. I remember seeing a debate once a few years back between a Christian and an atheist, and the atheist brought up this exact story and accused the Bible of commanding something that was immoral. The Christian in the debate really didn't have a very good answer, in my opinion. He sort of hemmed and hauled and didn't really give a very clear, decisive answer. Well, we're going to deal with it. We come to difficult passages. We don't duck around it or avoid it. We plow right through. I think there's quite a good, clear answer if we just look at the rest of scripture. The command to kill Isaac would have come from Abraham. It would indeed have been immoral because we of our own do not have the power to kill innocent life. But the first answer to this question, again, we have to really deal with the morality here. God commanded Abraham to do something that normally would be immoral. We could take possibly capital punishment, a guilty person's life. That's quite different. But this was an innocent person that had done nothing wrong, Isaac. How do we answer this? The first is that God has the power to create life and did indeed create life. He has the power to take it back again. Verse 19 here in Hebrews says that Abraham knew God could raise Isaac from the dead. We have here God commanding Abraham. Abraham knew that Isaac had been given as a miracle, that God had given him this life. Therefore, since God gave the life, he has the right to take it back again. Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham believed that God could resurrect Isaac again. That's what it says in verse 19. We also have a clue to that back in Genesis. Abraham went with Isaac and a servant to the sacrifice place. Abraham turned to the servant and said that he and Isaac were going off to sacrifice. It says, quote, we will come back, Genesis 22, 5. From Hebrews and Genesis, we find that Abraham believed God had given him Isaac as a miracle child. Again, he and Sarah were way past any ability to have a child, yet God delivered it miraculously. Since God gave the life in the first place, then God could take it back again. Second answer to this question is that God is not held to the same standards that we are simply because he is God. Do we trust him or do we not? I find this to be quite clear if we just understand the position that God is in. The easiest explanation I found to explain this is in modern days we have computer video games, and the creators of the games will create a game where there's a contest in the game, and there maybe there's 10 or 12 levels of the game, and the game creator has to create and program all these levels, but the game player has to play the game. They have to start out at level one and work their way up. Well, the game creator, if they want to, can zip up to level seven or eight or nine and play around in there without actually having to play the game. If you or I or any other game player was to zip up to level seven, we'd say, well, wait a minute, that's cheating. You're not, you're not playing the game. You're supposed to start at level one and work your way up. Just zipping up to level 10, that's cheating. Well, it is cheating for the game player, but it's not cheating for the game creator. He made the game. He doesn't have to follow the rules of the game because he made the game. If he wants to go in and change the rules of the game as the creator, he has the right to do so. He made the game and he can do whatever he wants inside the game. It's not cheating. Same with God. He made the rules here. He had the right to give life of Isaac. He has the right to take it back again. He gave us the moral standards. These are consistent with his nature. God is not held to the same moral standards that we are simply because he is God and He is transcendent and He is above and beyond all that we ask or think. Thirdly, is that do we trust Him or not? He has shown Himself everywhere else to be good and moral and have a point to things. If we start questioning Him, then the weakness is in us. God built Abraham's faith when he gave Isaac to Sarah when she was 90 and he was a hundred. Abraham's faith was strong. The command to sacrifice Isaac was one more piece of evidence to Abraham that God is faithful. Steve, what do you think of when you hear this story? Was it a challenge to Abraham's faith? How should we view it today?

SPEAKER_01: 8:11

It was a challenge to his faith, Glenn, in a way that it puts here that it was Isaac was the son of promise, that the promise was going to come through the offspring of him and Sarah. But the other thing I think we get out of this, Glenn, is as we go through the story back in Genesis chapter 22, Abraham receives this command from God. He gathers Isaac together along with the material to make in the fire and et cetera. He has some attendants that go with him. And as they approach the mountain, he tells his attendants, you stay here and will be back. Even when he tells them that, you have the picture there that both of them are going to be coming back, even though Abraham is going up. You get a glimpse into what Abraham is thinking, even when we read the story in chapter 22. But then there's two particular verses in chapter 22. As they're going up, chapter 22, verse 7 says this Isaac spoke to Abraham his father, and said, My father, he said, Here I am, son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood. But where is the lamb for the burnt offering? In verse 8 it says, Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. The two of them walk together. And of course, as the story continues, God stays Abraham's hand, and over in the thicket, there's a ram that is provided there. That ram is what is actually sacrificed. What I think that we get out of this is that verse there in verse 8 of 22, when Abraham says, God will provide for himself the Lamb. We get from that a picture and a type of God providing himself the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, who died for our sins. He came and he is the satisfactory sacrifice, as we're told in Romans chapter three, the propitiation. I think one of the main things I get out of that story is just that God is going to provide the sacrifice himself. And we see that he does that through Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_00: 10:36

That's a very good point. The story of Abraham putting Isaac on the sacrifice is a type of Jesus Christ. The Heavenly Father sacrificed his son for our benefit. So Abraham sacrificing his son was a picture of that. As you well mentioned, God stayed the hand of Abraham, provided the animal for the sacrifice, and he did not kill him. There was a point to the whole exercise. Again, even if he had carried it through, God had the ability to resurrect him. There's no moral issue at all simply because God is transcendent, and it's a type of Jesus Christ. With that, I want to bring out one more thing in this passage in Hebrews. At the end of verse 17, it talks about Abraham's son Isaac being his only begotten son. The father Abraham offered up his only begotten son. Now, with that, that reminds us of Christ because Christ is called the only begotten son. Some people have mistakenly taken that phrase only begotten son to mean something false, which is that Jesus had a beginning point, that he was created being. He had a start to his life, and that there was a time when Jesus did not exist, and therefore he was begotten. That's not really what the word means, right? Only begotten. Steve, help us out. What's the original word there mean when it says only begotten?

SPEAKER_01: 12:10

The Greek word that is used there, the only begotten son, is monogenes. It means unique, one of a kind, the one and only. We're told there what that one and only is in verse 18. It says, it was he to whom it was said, in Isaac, your descendants shall be called. In other words, Isaac wasn't Abraham's only son at this particular time. Ishmael had been born. In fact, Ishmael was Abraham's firstborn son. And later on, Abraham even has six other sons. But Isaac was the son of promise. He was the son that was promised to come from him and Sarah. He was Sarah and Abraham's only son. In that way, he was the unique one and only son. As it's talking about here, that's what he means is his only begotten son. Not his only biological son, it's the one unique son that the promises were going to come through.

SPEAKER_00: 13:15

This whole story here, the writer of Hebrews in Hebrews 11 is making the point that Abraham had faith. And to the point where he even was about to do something that would be very, very difficult, which was to sacrifice his son. So as the our program here at Reasoning Through the Bible goes out across the world into different people, I always have to qualify this a little bit. This was a unique one-time thing where Abraham was asked to do something quite unusual. God does not, as a commonplace thing, ask us to do things that would normally be immoral. If you are feeling or thinking that God has asked you to do something that the rest of scripture would condemn, then you need to be quite careful and go talk to a pastor and have some wise counsel. And do not go and follow through on something by yourself that the scripture would elsewhere condemn based on a message that you think you've gotten from God. Could be a lying spirit. So therefore, this was a unique one-time thing with Abraham only. The rest of us are not asked to go and do things that God would otherwise condemn. Let's pick back up in Hebrews 11, starting in verse 20, says this. By faith, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even regarding things to come. By faith, Jacob, as he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph and worshiped, leaning on the top of his staff. By faith, Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the exodus of the sons of Israel and gave orders concerning his bones. It says here, Isaac blessed his sons, Jacob and Esau. Isaac was one of the descendants of Abraham that believed the promises for God for their descendants. Isaac's blessings for the sons involved a future for not only the sons, but it was a future that Isaac could not see. He had faith that the predictions that he gave them would come true at some point. And the sons here that were mentioned were Ephraim and Manasseh, Jacob's grandsons, through his son Joseph. Jacob had faith that God would carry the promises of God and that God had made previously to Abraham and Isaac. Steve, it mentions here Jacob as in this list of faithful people. Why is it surprising that Jacob of all people would be mentioned in the list of people with faith? What did Jacob do in his lifetime?

SPEAKER_01: 16:00

Well, the name of Jacob on its own means deceiver. Through that story, we see that he is the secondborn of a set of twins. Esau was his older brother. It says as they were being born, he was holding on to the heel of Esau. But of course, his mother had been told that they were two nations that were in him. We have that full story. We went through that in Genesis. But through this story of Jacob and Esau, we see them going back and forth. We see a little bit of deception of Jacob. We also see Esau who despises his birthright and sells it. We're going to talk about that a little bit more in chapter 12 when it mentions Esau specifically. We have the story of Jacob whenever he went off to find himself a wife. He works for Laban and he is deceived by Laban, but then later on he deceives Laban whenever he is breeding the livestock. Through that different story of Jacob, we see a little bit of the deception that's there in his makeup of his character. But at the same time, like we mentioned with Abraham in our previous session, that gives us hope, I think, because it shows that Jacob was a person just like us, and that he had character flaws just like we do. Yet through those character flaws, God is able to work with Jacob and through Jacob. And it gives us hope that God is able to work with us and through us, even though the character flaws that we might display in different ways.

SPEAKER_00: 17:42

That's exactly the point I make. If if Jacob of all people can be mentioned on this list, then maybe there's a chance for me, and maybe there's a chance for you. Jacob, if you remember, dressed up like his brother when his father was dying and was blind and pretended to be his brother so he could get a blessing. And so he was a deceiver. Jacob was saved by the grace of God. Jacob did nothing on his own that was worthy of God's blessing. Note that the first thing that the writer of the Hebrews mentions here about Jacob is on his deathbed. There wasn't a whole lot of faithful things through his life, but on his deathbed, it mentions here that he was faithful. We should not wait until our deathbed to act on what God tells us. But if Jacob can make it, then maybe I could make it. Maybe you can too. Verse 22 of Hebrews 11 mentions Joseph, and it makes mention of the exodus from Egypt and instructions about his bones. What instructions did Joseph give about his bones after at the point when he died?

SPEAKER_01: 18:55

He gave them orders to take his bones back to the land, which shows that he had faith that God was going to bring about the land promise that had been made to Abraham and the expectation was there. It also shows that Joseph believed in resurrection, that his body was going to be resurrected, and therefore he wanted his bones to be carried back to the land. It also showed that he had faith that God was going to deliver them from Egypt and take them back to the land. All three of those things are just represented there in Joseph simply saying, Carry my bones back to the land of promise. I want to make one mention there in verse 21 that caught my eye. Sons of Joseph, in his mind, he's thinking that it's going to be carried on. The promises that God has given to us are going to be carried on through the sons of Joseph. Joseph was his favorite child born of Rachel, the one who he loved. I just get this picture there of him standing there and giving those blessings out to them. It says through that act of blessing them, he was worshiping God. He was acknowledging that God was going to come through with the promises. Even though Jacob was going to die in Egypt, he was still believing in God and worshiping God was going to carry through on those promises Jacob worshiped while he gave those blessings to Joseph's sons.

SPEAKER_00: 20:47

As you well pointed out, Steve, they were in Egypt at the time and were rather established in Egypt. Isaac and Jacob had, and Joseph had this faith that this future kingdom was going to come. But especially the ones that were in Egypt, they couldn't see it at the time. They believed God. They believed the promises that had been made earlier. And even though they couldn't see it, they had, as it the chapter said earlier, same as with Sarah, she had faith in the Lord. He was the one that could bring it about. They didn't have faith in their circumstances that somehow our strength or through military power or something like that. No, no, it was God who would bring these things about. He says, when you go back, he knew they weren't going to stay in Egypt. Why? Because God had promised him the land. When you go back, not if you go back, when you go back, take my bones and bury my bones in the land. The kingdom will be there, it says. Moving on, verse 23 says this. By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents because they saw he was a beautiful child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to endure ill treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, considering the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is unseen. By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, so that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them. By faith they passed through the Red Sea as though they were passing through dry land, and the Egyptians, when they attempted it, were drowned. Back in verse 23, Steve, what is the situation at the time of Moses' birth? What did Moses' parents do?

SPEAKER_01: 22:54

Well, there was a decree that had been given by Pharaoh to kill all of the Israelite male children of two years and below, because he was in fear that the Israelites were growing in such great numbers that they would at some point rise up against him. That was what was going on at the time that Moses was born. But his parents defied that order and they took him and they hid him away. Then whenever they were ready to give him up, they arranged for him to be floated downstream at a place where Pharaoh's daughter went to bathe on a regular basis. They knew what they were doing in order to protect their son Moses from that decree that Pharaoh had been given.

SPEAKER_00: 23:42

To me, one of the notable things here is that they trusted God, Moses' parents trusted God, not the government. When the government law is against God's law, God rewards disobedience to the civil government and obedience to his government. Now, that only occurs whenever the civil law violates God's law, not when it's just inconvenient for us. Just because things are inconvenient for me and you, we need to follow the civil law. But in this case, the civil law of Egypt was to kill all the male child. And Moses' parents and the midwives back in Exodus violated the civil law. Why? Because they had faith in God. They had more faith in the Lord than they did in the civil government. This is not an excuse to obey laws at any time, in any place. It's only when the civil law forces us to do something that goes against God's law. Then in verse 24, it gives a hint at what Moses' upbringing was like. Steve, where did Moses grow up? What would it have been like?

SPEAKER_01: 24:55

Well, he grew up in the king's court, the king's family, Pharaoh's family, because Pharaoh's daughter is the one that had drawn him out of the water and took him in. He was given all of the education, the training of an heir to the throne. He was in the king's family. It was much different than his Hebrew counterparts of where they were. And it was much different than even the common Egyptian citizen. He was in the king's court and raised with the best food, given the best education, probably many languages, because Egypt had control over other countries and nations outside of their borders there along the Nile. They had negotiations with these different nations. His education was one that was greater than the common Egyptian, and his lifestyle, his living was one that was greater and opulent, it might say, one that was fit for a king. He was being groomed in one way or another to be a part of the reign of the Egyptian people.

SPEAKER_00: 26:11

Verses 24 and 25 contrast where Moses started out, which was in Pharaoh's household, and where he ended up, which was leading the people of Israel. Verse 24, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to endure ill treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. How is it that refusing to be considered Pharaoh's daughter shows Moses' faith?

SPEAKER_01: 26:44

He had faith that God had a blessing on those Hebrew people. They had been given the land. They had been given the promises of God. These were things that were passed down amongst the Hebrews over the hundreds of years that they were there. There was an expectation at some point that they were going to go back to the land because God had promised them this land and they weren't living in the land. We see that Moses is identifying with the Israelite people and saying that I'm going to go with them. I am a Hebrew. I am an Israelite, and therefore I'm going to go with them. I'm going to believe in the promises that God gave to them. I'm not going to stay here in Egypt and reign with the Egyptian princes and kings here. I'm going to go and live with my identify with my fellow Hebrew Israelites.

SPEAKER_00: 27:40

We have to remember the contrast here. You mentioned a while ago, Steve, the opulence and the wealth of Pharaoh's household. The Israelites were just the opposite. They were just slaves. They were dirt poor slaves that were literally in poverty. When Moses left Pharaoh's household to become a leader of the Israelites, that was only done by faith. He believed God had made promises to Israel. Therefore, God was going to follow through. Moses showed faith by believing Israel would eventually be blessed by God and return to the promised land. When Moses decided to walk away from his high position in Egypt and join Israel, the only evidence he had was God's promise. On that promise, he said, I'm going to follow through and I'm going to go where God promised, not where it seems to feel good to me. Moses chose to be treated badly as an Israelite rather than be a wealthy Egyptian. These verses tell us that the wealthy lifestyle that Moses had walked away from was considered, the language that uses here is the passing pleasures of sin. The sin was not living in wealth. I don't think that was the sin. The sin was avoiding God's call to lead the Jewish people. And nothing inherently sinful about wealth necessarily, but there is a sin about not following God's call to go do something else. Moses was looking for the eternal reward in heaven, not the temporary pleasures on earth. Moses had enough faith to realize that he should trust God about what's important here on earth and trust God about what's important later when he rewards his followers. Remember at the burning bush, Moses tried to talk God out of choosing him. But nevertheless, here he was in Pharaoh's household and he left that to follow God's call to Israel. It also tells us here, Steve, about what Moses did to follow through with this. Once Moses started following God, did he ever go back to the old life?

SPEAKER_01: 30:06

No, he didn't go back to the old life. In verse 26, it says that he considered the reproach of the Messiah, Christ is the same as the Messiah, greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking to the reward. Again, we see that there is other information that Moses has that is outside of what's recorded in Scripture. And he realizes that the promises that were given to the Hebrew people, and that he is looking past the pleasures of growing up as an Egyptian, of that sin of missing the mark, and that there's something greater that's out there that's been promised by God to the people of Israel, and that there's a Messiah, the anointed one that is coming, and that there's greater reward that's coming further on down the road, and that he sees that, yet at the same time, as we go through the life of his story, he never really realizes that in his lifetime. In fact, he never actually gets to go into the promised land proper. He is outside of that because of a decision that he had made during their journeys. But nevertheless, he, like Abraham and the other patriarchs, are looking forward to a greater reward that is much further down the road than his own lifetime.

SPEAKER_00: 31:36

With this, I think we can also carry this to our day. In our day, we are also often faced with doing something that's comfortable to us or living some of us in a lavish lifestyle versus following God's call. We should always follow God's call. We, or at least some of us, will be faced with the same dilemma. Do I keep doing what is comfortable to me, or do I follow in God's call and act on his promises, even though I might not see evidence of it today? I know that God is faithful and I know what he has called me to do. It also speaks in here, verse 28, that Moses kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood. Steve, the very first Passover, what act of faith was required there?

SPEAKER_01: 32:29

It was for them to take in a lamb, make sure that it was clean, didn't have any blemishes. Then they sacrificed it, and then they put the blood over the doorposts and the lentil. Through that act, it showed that they had faith that the death angel that God said was going to come through and take the firstborn male child of every family and household in the land, that the death angel would pass over the place where he saw the blood on the doorpost. He was faithful in that he sprinkled the blood because he was believing in the promise that God said the death angel will pass over for those people that have done this act of sprinkling the blood on their door.

SPEAKER_00: 33:13

All of these were acts of faith that again required some self-sacrifice, some steps on the people involved there where they would step out on God's promises, knowing that God is faithful, not that I could see the results of it immediately. That's why these are all heroes, is because we are encouraged to do the very same thing. We're still into this wonderful list of heroes of faith here, but we'll wrap up chapter 11 next time.

SPEAKER_01: 33:45

Thank you so much for watching and listening. And as always, may God bless you.