Hank Smith: 00:00 Hello, everyone. Welcome to followHIM Favorites. My name is Hank Smith. I’m the host of a podcast called followHIM. I’m here with my amazing co-host John Bytheway. Hello, John.

John Bytheway: 00:09 Hi, Hank.

Hank Smith: 00:10 John and I love to discuss the gospel. And we are using a question per week for followHIM Favorites this year. And the question this week, John, is a pretty common question. As we’re studying Genesis 18 through 23, people might look at the story of Abraham going to sacrifice Isaac and think, “What is going on? Why would God command Abraham to sacrifice Isaac?” So if someone approached that question with you, how would you help them?

John Bytheway: 00:42 It is a great question because we all know that Abraham was almost a victim of human sacrifice himself, knew the evils of it, and then just the irony of it. And he must have been really having a hard time. The one answer that I heard, I was listening to Truman G. Madsen’s Joseph Smith the Prophet. I guess he was in the company of President Hugh B. Brown, who was a member of the first presidency many years ago. And he asked him that question, “Hey, if God knew Abraham would be willing, God knew Abraham would be willing to do that. Why did he put him through the torture of making him do that, travel three days to Mount Moriah, everything, and put him through that whole torture of doing it?”

John Bytheway: 01:25 And President Hugh B. Brown’s answer was fascinating. He just said, “Abraham needed to learn something about Abraham.” And I’ve thought about the whole idea of the gospel. Our chance here in mortality is to become something. And Abraham now knows something about himself because he went through

  that. And I guess God could just stick us where we’re going to end up, but that would violate the process of us becoming something. And I don’t know if that’s a good answer or not, but I love that idea that Abraham learned something about Abraham. And we all learned something about Abraham, and that we might have difficult tests as a result of reading that story.

Hank Smith: 02:04 Excellent. Yeah. I think so, too. I like that idea. God already knew, but Abraham didn’t know. So let’s find out about Abraham. I would include Isaac in there as well, that Isaac needed to find something-

John Bytheway: 02:16 Willing to sacrifice.

Hank Smith: 02:17 Yeah. Isaac needed to find something out about Isaac. They both needed to know that they would go to the ultimate test for God. And I would say too, John, this is pretty uncommon. I wouldn’t have any expectation whatsoever that any of our listeners or anyone would think, “Okay. God is asking me to kill this person.” This is…

John Bytheway: 02:42 I’m really glad you said that.

Hank Smith: 02:43 Yeah. This would be very unique. So I wouldn’t think that, “Oh, this is what God does with everyone. This is all the time.” One, I think it’s Abraham’s unique experience, like you mentioned, from Abraham, the Book of Abraham, that this is something his father attempted to do to him. And he probably had some serious trauma from that. And so the irony of it, the bitter irony of it is going to be something that’s not lost on Abraham, right? He’s going to know, “God, come on. This is the one thing that maybe he still needs to face from his earlier life.” The second is, I think the story is unique because the Savior’s mission is unique. We see that Isaac carries the wood up the mountain, right? Just like the Savior carried his cross, that Isaac was willing to give his own life. Right? I don’t think it ever says that Isaac went after his dad and they wrestled and he’s like, “Dad, you’re crazy.”

John Bytheway: 03:45 [crosstalk 00:03:45] He said, “I’m getting out of here.” Yeah.

Hank Smith: 03:45 Right? No, he willingly was offering his life. So this unique story of the Old Testament should point us to the Savior’s atoning sacrifice, his willingness to lay down his own life for all of us. I don’t know. To me, John, I would say let this story teach you about Christ’s willingness to sacrifice. Not necessarily that God is some sort of bloodthirsty person. I mean, this is the same God who’s going to sacrifice Himself, who’s asking Abraham to do this. So let that story point you to Jesus, wouldn’t you say?

John Bytheway: 04:24 Yeah. And that’s an aha moment for all of us when we read it. When the angel of the Lord stops him and says, “Because you have not withheld your son, your only son,” and we all go, “Oh.”

Hank Smith: 04:35 Right.

John Bytheway: 04:36 “Oh, because God was not going to withhold. God so loved the world, He gave His only begotten son.” And we connect the dots and go, “Oh.” And so just for that teaching moment, Abraham learned it. But all of us, we maybe relate to Abraham, and then through Abraham can relate to Heavenly Father giving His only begotten son. And that’s a big aha moment for all of us, I guess.

Hank Smith: 04:58 This story reminds me of something President Monson used to say all the time. He used to say, “The greatest lesson we can learn in mortality is when God speaks and we obey, we will always be right.” So no matter what it is, right John? We obey. That’s a recipe for success in our book.

John Bytheway: 05:19 His motive is always our good, what’s best for us. And it helps just to know that, that we have a loving, personal God. “He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world.”

Hank Smith: 05:31 We hope this has been helpful for you, answering this difficult question. You can send us more questions. Come over to followhim.co, followhim.co. You can use our contact page. Shoot us a question and we’ll see if we can answer it here. And we hope that you will join us next week for followHIM Favorites.