Abraham and Isaac

These are notes from our class of Sunday, November 4.

We had a brief discussion on Abraham as a prophet and noted that this concept of prophet was a Northern Kingdom position, where the prophet not the priest was accredited representative of the Lord.

We discussed the exile of Hagar and Ishmael and the treaty with Abimilech. Related issues included the role of women and the justification of slavery.

The heart of the lesson was the Abraham/Isaac sacrifice story. We discussed two aspects of the story:

1. God moves in mysterious ways and sometimes we cannot initially understand them. Ultimately God's will is found to be consistent with the purest emotions planted in the human soul.
2. Message is that only an all-out religion is supremely real. Sooner or later each of us will be challenged with a situation where one must decide whether he/she is willing to pay the utmost price for what conscience compells one to do. Small group discussions focused on this issue.

Notes by Harrell Guard