Join Mark Call of Shabbat Shalom Mesa fellowship for a two-part look at parsha (Vayera, Gen/Bereshiet chapters 18 through 22) where some of the arguably most important events in the Torah play out, and then prefigure events that will again play out, even in the same place.
First, the Erev Shabbat overview of the entire portion:
The Sabbath Day teaching focuses on Abraham the prophet, and not only the man of faith.
Mark begins with a ‘quandry.’ Abraham’s “Binding of Isaac,” aka ‘the Akieda’ is often cited as the ultimate ‘proof text’ of faith. “Now I know,” said YHVH, that you fear Yah, and, “have not withheld your son, your only son from Me.” (Gen. 22:12) And yet, he can argue, it’s completely logical for Abraham to KNOW, with complete certainty, that the ‘son of promise’ is NOT going to die on that mountain – one way or another! – because the things Abraham by this point KNOWS of a CERTAINTY WILL HAPPEN, will come through him. In other words, what some call “human sacrifice” was never even a remote possibility; Abraham just didn’t know how He would accomplish the miracle he was certain would happen.
So, no wonder Abraham spoke with such certainty to his servants: “Ya’ll stay here a while; the lad and I are gonna go up yonder to worship, we’ll be back…”
Which leads to the central question for this week:
Yes, Abraham was certainly a consummate ‘man of faith’. He showed that many times. But after all, he had SPECIFIC PROMISES, right from the very mouth of Yahuah Almighty Himself.
But how ’bout us?
We certainly have specific promises, albeit conditional, in His Word. And they clearly apply to each of us. But NOT in the same sense that Abraham was able to KNOW that his son Yitzak – he just didn’t know exactly HOW! – was going to come back with him. After all, he had multitudes to father through the line of his seed.
We don’t have THOSE kind of ‘specifics’.
The answer, Mark suggests, has a lot to do with something ELSE we know about Abraham, but tend to overlook.
And it may even help us to move mountains. Or deal with what’s coming. After all, how else could we possibly do even “greater works than these”?
“Vayera: Abraham’s logic, our faith, and ‘speaking into reality'”
The combined two-part podcast is here, via Hebrew Nation Radio.