Sacrificing Your Past so you can Have a Future

Genesis 22:1-2

¹ “Now after these things, God tested [the faith and commitment of] Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” And he answered, “Here I am.” ² God said, “Take now your son, your only son [of ^[promise], whom you love, Isaac, and go to the region of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.”

After Isaac, the only son of promise was born to Abraham and Sarah, some things had taken place. One of them was that Hagar and Ishmael (Abraham’s son with Hagar the maid servant of Sarah) were asked to leave the family that God had chosen to be conformed to Him and formed by Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac only. Those who were not part of the original plan were removed. But why did they have to do this? They did this because they had succumbed to their old ways of obtaining the things they sought after, before Abraham had a committed relationship with God.

Abraham and Sara, (Abram and Sarai before God transformed them), had a background linked to sorcery (witchcraft), manipulation, and control. Genesis 11:28-31 talks about his native land, Ur of the Chaldeans. The Chaldeans were people known for their idolatry. Their religious system was sorcery/the occult (worship to other gods of astrology and magic). God wanted to remove Abraham from that type of background in that territory, but He also wanted to help him renew his mind by teaching him to trust Him completely as the source that could supply every need he could ever have.

The spirit behind the Chaldean religious system is the Antichrist spirit that God swore He would fight in Exodus 17:14-16 and utterly wipe out its memory from under heaven in every generation. Amalek was the king that represented the Antichrist spirit—a violent spirit that sets itself against everything that is of God and Christ, and of His Kingdom because it seeks to steal His worship in the hearts of the people, and replace it with worship of idols (all types of man-made things/created things) and uses a religious system where all kinds of abominations take place and where the people that are ruled by it seek to manifest this replacement in the earth. It says,

¹⁴ “Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Write this in the book as a memorial and recite it to Joshua, that I will utterly wipe out the memory of Amalek [and his people] from under heaven.’ ¹⁵ And Moses built an altar and named it The Lord Is My Banner; ¹⁶ saying, ‘The Lord has sworn [an oath]; the Lord will have war against [the people of] Amalek from generation to generation.’”

We will see one example in Isaiah 47:1, 11-13 of how God is determined to do away with the idolatry, sorcery, and demonic doctrine of the Antichrist spirit (Babylonian system) that has even permeated His Church. It says,

¹“’Come down and sit in the dust,
O virgin daughter of Babylon;
Sit on the ground [in abject humiliation]; there is no throne for you,
O daughter of the Chaldeans,
For you will no longer be called tender and delicate.

¹¹ 
“’Therefore disaster will come on you;
You will not know how to make it disappear [with your magic].
And disaster will fall on you
For which you cannot atone [with all your offerings to your gods];
And destruction about which you do not know
Will come on you suddenly.

¹² 
“’Persist, then, [Babylon] in your enchantments
And your many sorceries
With which you have labored from your youth;
Perhaps you will be able to profit [from them],
Perhaps you may prevail and cause trembling.
¹³ 
“’You are wearied by your many counsels.
Just let the astrologers,
The stargazers,
Those who predict by the new moons [each month]
Stand up and save you from the things that will come upon you [Babylon].”

Because of Abraham’s former background of idolatry, God sought to test him to see if he would treat his promised son as an idol. Remember that Abraham and Sarah tried to come up with their own way of producing this son of promise. Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to sleep with him. From this sexual union that was not what God had planned for them, Hagar became pregnant and had Ishmael.

Many of us know the consequences that today still manifests among some Middle Eastern nations of violence and persecution against Israel and other nations due to the entrance to the Antichrist spirit that Abraham and Sarah opened themselves to through his union with Hagar. This entrance came when they moved ahead of God and tried to make something happened, that although it was promised to them, they tried to achieve it by the same system of control and manipulation they had known in their upbringing.

To make matters worse, Hagar also had the same type of background. But God wanted to remove all of that wrong thinking from Abraham and Sarah and sought to eliminate idolatry from them and replace it with complete trust and confidence in Him alone to give them the son they had waited for so long, even years after Isaac was born, free from any trace of idolatry. That is why the Lord asked Abraham to kill Isaac. Thankfully, Abraham had learned to trust the Lord, God of all the earth, who had made many wonderful promises to him. Some of those promises are highlighted in Genesis 12:2-3 which tells us,

² 
“And I will make you a great nation,
And I will bless you [abundantly],
And make your name great (exalted, distinguished);
And you shall be a blessing [a source of great good to others];
³ 
And I will bless (do good for, benefit) those who bless you,
And I will curse [that is, subject to My wrath and judgment] the one who curses (despises, dishonors, has contempt for) you.
And in you all the families (nations) of the earth will be blessed.’”

Abraham had learned to deny and renounce all allegiance with his former background of idolatry and instead, chose to trust and have confidence in the Lord that if He told him to lift his knife against his son, He had the answer to how he would get his son back. In the same way, God the Father, gave up His only begotten Son, Jesus (John 3:16), who took the sins of the world upon Him (Isaiah 53:5). He also took the place of the Antichrist spirit the people were guilty of worshiping, and paid the penalty of being cursed He did not deserve, for the Bible says that cursed is he who is hung on a tree. Galatians 3:13-14 explains,

¹³ “Christ purchased our freedom and redeemed us from the curse of the Law and its condemnation by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs [crucified] on a tree (cross)’— ¹⁴ in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might also come to the Gentiles, so that we would all receive [the realization of] the promise of the [Holy] Spirit through faith.”

So would you trust Him, instead of trying to control and manipulate your way out of our circumstances with idolatry of any kind, and allow Him to transform you by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:1-2) so you are not conformed to this world and its system of wicked idolatry? You can start this process by asking Jesus to become your Savior and Lord, and confess that you have sinned against Him and His Kingdom, and choose to renounce any allegiance with idolatry and the occult.

Next, seek to go to a church and be baptized in water. Also, ask the Lord to baptize you with His Spirit so it is by His Spirit that you are led to live a life filled with Him. Study the Word of God with people that can help you understand it and teach you to know Him through His Word.

You can go to my Facebook page “Live as Citizens of Heaven” or “24/7 Prayer Warriors and Intercessors” and leave a message. We will direct you where you could go to learn more about God, His Son Jesus, following the leading of His Holy Spirit, and that way not only get to know Him, but also know the purpose for which you have been placed on earth and called by Him.

To God alone be all the Glory. ▪

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Scriptures taken form the Amplified “AMP” version unless otherwise noted.