This still has not touched the crux of the matter. Whether Isaac represents a gift or an experience, this application merely touches our fleshly life. There is another important thing: Isaac represents God's will, which God had spoken to Abraham. If Isaac died, would that not mean that the will of God that was spoken to Abraham would be unfulfilled? Because Abraham cared so much about God's will, he had to use all his energy to hold on to Isaac. This is the situation with many Christians. We have to realize that we are related to God Himself; we are not related to the things which God is about to do. We are not related to the will which He has spoken. We have to be brought to the point where our self no longer exists. We have to be delivered to the point where we want God only, not the things that He wants us to do. We often use fleshly hands to uphold the things that God wants us to do. We think that because God wants us to do a certain thing, we have to try our best to accomplish it. But the lesson that God is really teaching us is to give up our own will so that we will do what God wants us to do and not do what He does not want us to do.

Isaac also represents our spiritual work. God may call us to participate in some kind of spiritual work. However, we may not want to do it. We want our Ishmael, and we have our own work. One day God will speak to us, and after He speaks again and again, we will find that we can no longer escape, and we will say, "All right. I am willing to drop my work to take up Your work." But a second danger follows: We may drop one work only to find ourselves caught up by another. Before we have Isaac, we hold on to Ishmael. After Isaac comes, we hold on to Isaac. We are no longer directly related to God, but related to the work instead. We insist on working and do not give up. We replace God with spiritual works. Therefore, God allows our works to die. We may argue with God, saying, "You asked me to do this. Why have I ended up with such failure?" We have to realize that God allows our work to fail miserably because He does not want us to have any direct relationship with the work. If we see this, our self will go away.

Formerly, the flesh begot Ishmael and not Isaac. Now the flesh holds on to Isaac. Both are the flesh. God was testing Abraham. He wanted to see if Abraham was directly related to Isaac or directly related to God. This is the test which Abraham faced on Mount Moriah.

Today we have to ask ourselves the same question. God has called us to the work and to serve Him. In the beginning we were unwilling, but later we became willing, and we engaged ourselves in His work. Do we love this work? Are we reluctant to let go of it? Are we holding on to this work with our own hands? If we are, God will come in to deal with us. God wants us to realize that we can sacrifice Isaac but we cannot sacrifice God, because only God is the Father! Yet many Christians only know that they need spiritual works. They do not know that they need God. May the Lord be gracious to us so that we would not be directly related to spiritual works, but directly related to God, because only God is our Father!