Genesis 22:1-2
“Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, ‘Abraham!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ Then He said, ‘Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you.’” NKJV
This passage talks about God commissioning Abraham to give to Him a burnt offering. A burnt offering is an offering of great sacrifice. With this, God demonstrates one of the two most common ways He will ask us to give sacrificially to Him. The first way is when we sacrifice to Him our “only.” This refers to when we offer unto Him the one thing God is wanting to multiply in our life and at the moment it is our only. This could be our only car, our only house, our only investment account, our family, and in essence, anything He claims ownership of and requires of us.
As verse one reveals, God does this to test our willingness to part with what He’s asking of us to make sure we have not turned it into an idol. Especially if it’s something that costs us a long wait, energy, effort, many sleepless nights, and the sweat of our brow to obtain it. This is raising the bar and stretching us in our trust in Him. In Abraham’s case, he and his wife Sarah waited 25 long years to finally have their promised child. They even made some costly mistakes while trying to conjure up this son out of their own determination to bring a child into the world. But little did they know that later on in life, God was going to require that very promise from them.
This should hopefully help us look to the God who makes the promise to us and is able to fulfill it. But He also reserves the right to require the promise fulfilled from us no matter how much it cost us. In the end, the promise still belongs to Him. You may be sweating and swallowing thick by now, but don’t fear. This is only a test. Our obedience like Abraham’s, will give us access to a higher dimension in proportion to the sacrifice we gave to God. The level of the multiplication of revelations, wisdom, knowledge, understanding, anointing, mantles, and more from God will then be exponential. Genesis 22:15-17 says,
“Then the Angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time out of heaven, and said: “By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son — blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.” NKJV
For this, like Abraham, we should place our faith in God alone no matter what. This steadfast trust is what made Abraham righteous in God’s eyes. Romans 4:16,22 tells us, 16 “That’s why the inheritance comes through faith, so that it will be on the basis of God’s grace. In that way, the promise is secure for all of Abraham’s descendants, not just for those who are related by Law but also for those who are related by the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all of us. 22 “Therefore, it was credited to him as righteousness.” CEB
Every promise is a gift from God and our sacrificial offerings to Him make a huge deposit in our heavenly account that makes us known in the spirit realm because those sacrifices cause great damage in the camp of the enemy more than when we give from our surplus of whatever it is we’re giving to God.
This doesn’t mean that our times on the mountain top are unfruitful for us.
But there is something about the sacrifices we give to God in our everyday life that create a sweet aroma that reaches heaven and leave a powerful and permanent imprint in the spirit realm. This helps us have a voice and be recognized as children of God. The Father Himself proved that to us when He gave us His one and only Son to die for us. His great sacrifice was a seed for Him to have many more sons of righteousness in the earth and also gave us a great example of this principle of what our sacrifices produce not only in the natural, but also in the spiritual realm.
The other type of sacrifice that speaks with a loud voice on our behalf is when we give to God our “last.” The widow who gave her last two copper coins is an example of this. Mark 12:41-44 shows,
“And He sat down opposite the [temple] treasury, and began watching how the people were putting money into the treasury. And many rich people were putting in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a mite. Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, ‘I assure you and most solemnly say to you, this poor widow put in [proportionally] more than all the contributors to the treasury. 44 For they all contributed from their surplus, but she, from her poverty, put in all she had, all she had to live on.’’” AMP
This is another example of the law of exchange we have learned which, even though the Bible doesn’t mention the results in this particular passage, we know it creates multiplication in our life. Likewise, we learned of the exchange between the widow of Zarephath and the prophet Elijah during a time of famine. The widow sacrificed the last of her flour and oil to feed first the prophet, and then she and her son ate. The result was a multiplication of her last until the rain came that ended the famine. God’s intervention through the prophet kept them fed and secured in His promise of provision until the end of the famine. We find this in 1 Kings 17:8-16.
This principle not only applies to our finances, but it works with everything we’re believing God to bring His supernatural increase which multiplies the last of whatever we’re giving to Him sacrificially. The last of our strength and hope, the last step we can take when we don’t know what else to do, the last morsel of wisdom we have in a given moment, or our last prayer or cry for help to God to intervene in our situation.
Our giving has greater impact when it is attached to sacrifice. But why is this? Bringing the opposite of what the world offers gives us a voice in the spirit realm that is recognized and heaven even applauds. This is because when the world says to find the easiest way out of our circumstances, God is asking us to endure the test and go through the valleys of our life instead of trying to climb our way out without considering the effect of our obedience when it has cost us something.
Jesus’s death on the Cross had greater impact than had he been crowned King of the Jews while sitting on a throne wearing a golden crown and a linen cape. His death on the Cross gave Him the level of authority necessary to overcome he enemy and take the keys of hell and Hades that set many captives free. This would have never happened with Him sitting on an earthly throne. In the same way, when we carry our personal cross during our time of process, we’re growing in our authority and power to deploy the weapons of our warfare that make irreparable damage in the camp of the enemy.
In 2 Samuel 24:21-25 King David shows his understanding of a sacrificial offering. He had made a costly mistake of counting the amount of citizens in his kingdom that had fighting power, instead of trusting God to give him the victory in his battles. This aroused the anger of God. But King David was filled with grieve in his heart for what he had done and the consequences this brought to the people under his care. For this, He followed the wisdom of the prophet Gad in order to stop the plague that was released in the land. The Scripture says,
“‘Why have you come, my lord the king?’ Araunah asked. David replied, ‘I have come to buy your threshing floor and to build an altar to the Lord there, so that he will stop the plague.’ ‘Take it, my lord the king, and use it as you wish,’ Araunah said to David. ‘Here are oxen for the burnt offering, and you can use the threshing boards and ox yokes for wood to build a fire on the altar. I will give it all to you, Your Majesty, and may the Lord your God accept your sacrifice.’ But the king replied to Araunah, ‘No, I insist on buying it, for I will not present burnt offerings to the Lord my God that have cost me nothing.’ So David paid him fifty pieces of silver for the threshing floor and the oxen. David built an altar there to the Lord and sacrificed burnt offerings and peace offerings. And the Lord answered his prayer for the land, and the plague on Israel was stopped.” NLT
We can see that through David’s sacrificial giving and his prayer for the land, he was able to see the plague stop. Therefore, as we have learned here, our sacrificial giving to God is a currency that gives us multiplication of that which He required of us and also gives us access to His overcoming power over our circumstances and the costly consequences of our mistakes can be reversed according to God’s will. In the same way, we can reach higher dimensions where we will discover greater things about God and His Kingdom that were hidden to us before as well as give us the authority to set many captives free.
To God alone be all the glory.**
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