In Genesis 22 God tried Abraham by asking him to offer his son Isaac as a burnt offering. Abraham was obedient to God’s desire, and he was charged to offer Isaac on Mount Moriah (v. 2). Mount Moriah eventually became Mount Zion, the place where the temple was built in Jerusalem (2 Chron. 3:1). When Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, God intervened. Then Abraham saw a ram caught in a thicket, and he offered that ram up for a burnt offering instead of his son (Gen. 22:13). God prepared this ram as a substitute for Isaac. This ram typifies Christ. Before Christ was crucified, He was typified as the crucified One on Mount Moriah. Because Abraham did not withhold his only son in obeying God, God promised him that He would multiply his seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand on the seashore and that in his seed all the nations of the earth would be blessed (vv. 16-18).

In Genesis 22:17 Abraham’s seed is likened to the stars and the sand, not the dust. We have to consider why the Bible likens Abraham’s earthly descendants to dust and then sand. Actually, the sand comes from the dust. When the dust on the seashore is scoured, washed, with water, what is left is the sand. The children of Israel first were dust. Then the “waves of the Great Sea” came upon them again and again. What are these waves? We saw in our life-study of the book of Joel that four kinds of locusts came to devastate Israel (1:4; 2:25). All those locusts were like the waves from the Mediterranean Sea. They came up like waves to scour Israel as the dust again and again. Eventually, what was left was the sand on the seashore of the Mediterranean. Thus, the dust and the sand are eventually one. This fits the historical record. Throughout the centuries the waves of Babylon, of Medo-Persia, of Greece, and of Rome came upon Israel again and again. The issue of this was the sand. Thus, Abraham had only two kinds of descendants: one is the New Testament believers, who are likened to the heavenly stars, and the other is the Jews, who are likened to both the dust and the sand.

Now we need to consider the significance of Abraham in the divine revelation. What does he signify? The Bible begins to speak of Abraham from the second part of Genesis 11 through Genesis 24. Then Genesis 25 begins to speak about Abraham’s son Isaac. There are many persons, matters, and things in Genesis that signify something. Abraham is a sign, but what does he signify?

Abraham is a sign of God’s chosen people. We are God’s chosen people, but how can we know what kind of people we should be? God prepared a sign in Genesis 11—24 to show us, and this sign is Abraham. Abraham is a sign prepared and provided by God for us to see. As God’s chosen people, we all need to be Abrahams. In a sense, our name should be Abraham. All of us keep the name of our father and forefathers. Lee is my forefathers’ name, so my name is Lee today. In this sense, all of us are Abrahams, since he is our forefather (Rom. 4:12). Abraham is a sign signifying what kind of people we should be. In other words, he is a model, a sign, of the Christian life. What is the Christian life? The Christian life is the life that Abraham lived.

This life of Abraham, which became a sign, was altogether motivated and initiated by God. It was not anything of Abraham by and in himself. Nearly everything he did in a positive way was motivated by God. One thing he did, however, which was absolutely not motivated by God, was his taking of Hagar as his concubine. That was proposed, motivated, and stirred up altogether by his wife (Gen. 16:2-3). The issue of Hagar was a son named Ishmael, but Ishmael was rejected by God (17:18-19; 21:10-12a).

The sign of Abraham shows us that in the Christian life nothing should be of us. Instead, everything should be motivated, stirred up, and initiated by God. Our being saved surely was not motivated by us. We became Christians and entered into the church life because God motivated us. God is the Motivator in our Christian life. In the church life there are people of every color from many different countries. Who collected us together? It was God who motivated us and gathered us together into the church life. We need to realize that whatever is motivated by us will be a calamity. If you motivate your marriage life, be assured that your marriage will sooner or later be a calamity. We Christians should not motivate anything. God should be the Motivator of everything in our lives. Whatever we motivate will be a calamity, a suffering.