Moriah means “chosen by God” and it was a holy place that was special to Him. God had his temple built there. He also sent King David there to offer sacrifices after David sinned by taking a census (1 Chronicles 21). Counting the people seemed like a minor offense, but David did it out of pride. This displeased the Lord and He punished Israel by sending a plague upon them.
Therefore, God sent David to atone for his sin. David had to do so in God’s way and at his chosen place—Mount Moriah. That’s when a loophole appeared for David. Loopholes often appear during the mountaintop experiences that God brings about.
God often interacts with His people often involve mountains and ‘mountaintop’ experiences. These are moments of epiphany when God reveals Himself and grants us deeper insight. They are times when He takes us deeper in our walk with Him. These experiences provide us with the strength to endure life’s valleys and its most challenging moments.
Moriah: a place of greater obedience
Moriah is where God leads us to a deeper level of trust and obedience. It’s where we learn life’s most difficult lessons. God teaches us there to give our best to Him rather than choosing the easy way out.
The Moriah loopholes
That’s when we must guard against loopholes. We must guard against all the rational and even logical choices that present themselves and try to take us off track. They can deter us from following through on what God has shown us.
Mount Moriah is the place where we learn that God wants us to give Him our best. There, David learned that giving him our best comes at a cost. God is not satisfied with half-hearted service or subpar offerings. We cannot take the easy way out.
The loophole presented to David was Ornan’s offering. “My king, I’ll give you everything you need. You can have my threshing floor, the wood, and all the animals you want to offer God.” What a gift! David could have thought, “God is providing everything. Hallelujah!”
Moriah: a place for giving our best
David paid for the threshing floor, the oxen, the wood, and the grain. “I can’t offer something that isn’t mine or that didn’t cost me anything,” he said. The Lord was pleased and the plague stopped.
Watch out for “Moriah loopholes”—those rational and logical choices that try to distract us from what God has shown us and prevent us from following through.
Moriah: a place of death
Moriah is also a place of death. The lesson Abraham learned on Mount Moriah was even deeper. “I don’t just want the best from you,” God told him. “I want everything.”
Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”
Genesis 22:2
On that mountain, Abraham learned that God doesn’t want easy offerings. He requires us to surrender everything to Him. At Mount Moriah we must be willing to relinquish our dreams, everything we hold dear—even God’s promises.
If I had been in Abraham’s place, I probably would have listened to my common sense. “This is ridiculous,” I would have said. “God doesn’t demand such heathenish things!” Then, proud of my keen discernment, I would not have budged an inch.
But Abraham had walked with God for many years. He knew the dangers of trusting common sense over faith. He knew that sensible choices don’t always come from God. Sometimes, they arise to distract us from God’s vision.
God wants everything from us
We’ll never know what was going through Abraham’s mind. But he knew that God wanted it all. Just as David didn’t offer an easy, free gift, Abraham didn’t take the easy way out, either.
In obedience, he was about to offer his son as a sacrifice to God. However, God stopped him and rewarded his obedience by providing a ram for the sacrifice instead of Isaac.
Neither David nor Abraham accepted any of the loopholes in logic. They had learned that walking with God comes at a cost — a high one. It’s an all-or-nothing proposition.
Our own Mount Moriah?
What will we do when we find ourselves on Mount Moriah? If we strive to follow the Lord, we will inevitably end up there. God wants to help us reach a higher level of trust and obedience. That’s why He takes us through the deeper lessons of Moriah. It is then that we must be most careful and guard against the loopholes that present themselves.
- Perhaps, like David, it’s because we’ve strayed from the Lord’s vision. When we trust in our own strength, we make hasty and wrong decisions. So, God brings us back to the path of obedience at Moriah.
- Or maybe, we think we’ve put God first and are striving to follow him faithfully, like Abraham. But God knows our hearts and tests us on Mount Moriah. “Have you really put me first?” he asks. “Will you give me everything?”
Sooner or later—and perhaps many times—on our Christian journey we will find ourselves on Mount Moriah. It is God’s chosen place of death. It is a place where we die to ourselves, to all that we have, and to all that we hold dear.
Moriah comes at a high cost. But it is also a path to endless blessings and a place of abundant provision. Even today, God provides us with everything we need to continue following Him. However, we must be vigilant for loopholes!
So Abraham called that place The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the LORD it will be provided.”
Genesis 22:14
📷 Image credits: Woman prays | Pink mountains | Yellow mountains.