"Don't Tell It"

"And Abraham said unto his young men, Abide ye here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and worship, and come again to you." Genesis 22:5 

The Lord had spoken to Abraham to take his son Isaac and offer him as a sacrifice. Abraham obeyed the Lord. The next morning Abraham got up early, saddled his donkey, took two of his servants, his son Isaac, and the wood for the burnt offering and went to the place where God had showed him to go.

 

The Bible never says that Abraham told anyone of his intent-- not his wife, not these two servants, not even Isaac. You can't always tell everything that God tells you to everybody. You have to learn to be quiet and keep it to yourself. We have a tendency to want to "tell all". We want to tell everyone what God has told us- we can't wait to tell. You can't do that. 

 

I can picture it now had Abraham said to those two servants-- Isaac and I are going up to the mountain and when we get to the top God has told me to sacrifice him-- and what their response would have been. I can hear them trying to talk him out of it. I can hear them reasoning with Abraham-- surely, master, you didn't hear this from God, Isaac is your only son, he is the one that God promised you, he is the one in whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, you waited so long for him. They would have thought Abraham was crazy. They would have done anything to convenience him not to do it. They may have even tried to forcefully take Isaac away from him. Had reasoning with Abraham not worked, they may have threatened to go tell Sarah-- surely, she would stop this madness. 

 

This happened to Jesus. When it was nearing His time to go to the cross, He begin to prepare His disciples by telling them He would be delivered up and killed. Peter rebuked Jesus telling Him that this wasn't going to happen. I can only imagine what Peter was thinking when he heard Jesus' words about being killed. "But you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. How can that happen? What do you mean? You are greater than to allow Yourself to be killed. You are our King, You have to set up a kingdom and deliver us from Roman oppression." 

 

The point is this, when the Lord tells us something and we know that there is no doubt that we have heard from Him, we can't tell everyone. They won't understand and they will try to talk us out of it. They will try to detour us from God's plan. Yes, there is a time to "write the vision and make it plain" and we tell what the Lord is saying. But there is also a time when we are to keep it to ourselves and do as Mary did-- ponder it in our hearts. 

 

Have a great day. When God tells you something, you don't have to go and tell everyone else. Some things you are to keep to yourself. 

 

For further reading:

Luke 2:19

Matthew 16:20-23

Genesis 22

Habakkuk 2:2