“I Trust You, Lord, Even In Moments of Seeming Madness”
The story of the high school shootings in Littleton, CO began to unfold on Tuesday evening in the news. The horror of what happened there only deepened as the week went on. Two boys -- who were intelligent, healthy, and from advantaged middle class families – moved through the halls of their schools picking out athletes and scholars... and devout Christians... for execution. By the end of their rampage, they had killed 12 students and 1 teacher and then they took their own lives. One of these boys told a friend that since he was graduating in 19 days he had nothing more to live for. Madness...
Parallel to this we are treated to pictures and stories from a place far away called the Balkan states where hatred rules. A million Kosovar people are living in constant fear, hunger, and deprivation because of the so-called ‘ethnic cleansing’ being ordered by Slobodan Milosevec. Millions more in Serbia live in increasing terror and deprivation as we ran down death and destruction from our war machines in the sky. Hatred met with hatred... Madness...
Life doesn’t come wrapped in neat packages with easy assembly instructions! Hard trials, difficult decisions, encounters with evil spirits and evil people, moments when God doesn’t make sense – all these come our way. In these moments of seeming madness there is a question we must all answer – can I, will I trust God?
Faith has been the subject as we work our way through the great chapter of Scripture, Hebrews 11. In week one we defined faith as being a sure hope, a certainty of the unseen world of the Spirit. Such a perspective moves those full of faith to seek God and to serve Him in obedience. In week two we considered the power of faith to connect us to eternity and the promises of God. Abraham was our model and we took note of his willingness to leave behind his culture and his comfort to seek God’s presence. His faith to trust God for an heir even as he approached 100 years of age is a model for us in trusting God to keep His promises.
Today we will see evidence of the tremendous faith of Abraham as he trusted God through a time of testing that had to seem like madness to him as he passed through it. It tested the depth of this man’s faith like no other test in his life. The great news? HE PASSED THE TEST! His example for us is flawless.
The text for this morning – Hebrews 11:17-19
The fuller account is found in Genesis 22:1-4
1 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied.
2 Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”
3 Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance.
About 15 years into his promised son’s life, after years of delight and raised expectations in this true son, God speaks once again to Abraham. This time the words are not words of comfort or promise. They are words that seem, at first hearing, to be madness.... sheer insanity –
Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.
Mt. Moriah is a significant place to this day. Today it is the site at the heart of the old city of Jerusalem where the Dome of the Rock Mosque stands. It was from the time of David to Jesus, the site of the Jews temple, the center of their religion. But in Abraham’s time it was just another mountain in the desolate region of Canaan.
Can you imagine what a blow this was to Abraham? Nothing in the Scripture tells us what is in his mind, what emotions he struggled with. But it is not hard to imagine. First in his mind would have been shocked bewilderment –
“God, I know Your voice. I have walked with You, worshiped You, listened to You for years now. How could You ask this?”
We know the whole story. We know that God never had any intent to take this test to its ultimate end... but Abraham did not have that advantage. He only knew that he was faced with the most difficult test of his entire life!
∙ Whom did he love most... God or Isaac?
∙ Which demand would he satisfy, the need for a son or the need to obey the command of His God?
Jesus tells us that the greatest command is this: Matthew 22:37 ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ Abraham had to answer a question about the depth of his love that was stunning, that was irrational by all human logic; that flew in the face of every promise he had received from God up to this time. During that night, he must have cried out... “God, what about those promises of descendants that will be too numerous to count? What about that promise that my heirs will bless the whole earth? Why, what, how?” In asking these questions, he would have been only human. His must have been a tortured night for nothing made sense.
∙ Have you ever been there in a similar situation?
∙ Have you ever wrestled with options that demanded a choice, a place of no compromise and less common sense?
Everyone one of us has found ourselves crying out at some time...
“WHY? WHY is this happening to me? What do you want from me, God?
There is no logic, no reason, no sense... this is madness!”
In reality, these moments where God’s reason is hidden, are the hardest moments of faith. It is not so hard to endure when we can see a reason. But when suffering comes to us that has no immediate explanation, which does not yield itself to reason; then we are tested. It is in those moments we discover the depth of our faith.
Ill.- A person suffering from cancer will allow the doctors to cut them, to administer chemotherapy that nearly kills them, will suffer terrible indignities because they can understand that there is a reason for their suffering. There is hope of the cure.
What a faith Abraham has cultivated! That is an important part of this story. This kind of test came to a man well advanced in his spiritual maturity. God knew what he could stand up to and He knew how this man trusted Him, but now Abraham was going to find out yet another truth about himself and His God.
Take another look at v. 3. (READ)
He didn’t dawdle, delay, or ask for further clarification. He OBEYED immediately. I am impressed by this obedience. Indeed, it is the secret of his blessed life. God spoke and he obeyed.
May we be like Him. When we hear God speak, I pray that we will recognize His voice and PROMPTLY obey.
Let me caution you. We will be tempted to try to cut our own deal with God, to negotiate a better set of circumstances, to excuse ourselves from the hard decisions that faith requires of us. Even when we know what God is saying to us, there will be a temptation to resist. And in our stubbornness, many blessings are lost.
If we refuse His will, let’s not fall into yet another temptation. In rebellion, there is always the temptation to mask our true heart with insincere words of worship. Even as we resist His will sweetly we sing, “I love you, Lord.” How promptly we gush the right words in church company, but in our hearts we are stubbornly unyielding. God is not impressed with words. He looks for obedience.
A king of ancient Israel refused to obey God’s clear command, yet prepared elaborate sacrifices for Him. When Samuel the spokesman for the Lord showed up at the sacrificial assembly, he brought this stinging rebuke from God:
“Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD?
To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.
23 For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has rejected you as king.” – 1 Samuel 15
IF your heart is not yielded – save your worship. It rings hollow. In fact, Jesus reserves his strongest condemnations for those who play at religiosity, without giving their minds and hearts to the will of God in complete obedience.
To some who lived like this, Jesus said
First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.. . .you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. . . .You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? – Matthew 23
First, obey... then worship. That is the pattern of the Word, of Abraham. He obeyed God’s voice, left on the journey, and then worshiped. Let me read you the rest of this story. . .
Genesis 22:5-14
How did the man find the resolve to travel three days and remain steadfast in his task?
The Bible answers that for us -- Hebrews 11:19
Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.
He reasoned, “God gave me a son miraculously. God has kept His promises in the past. God is God and He can, if need be, raise my son from the dead.” Such faith builds its only rationale, sees reason in madness!
The Genesis account points to Abraham’s certainty in the face of this test. What did he tell his servants? “We will worship and WE will come back.” And Abraham in his obedience, found another truth about his God... He is Yahweh Yireh – The Lord who provides.
There on that mountaintop God substituted a ram for the sacrifice, sparing the life of Isaac. Those final moments when Isaac was bound and laid on the wood, readied for death had to have been moments of terror for both father and son. Yet, they moved forward.
To our sensibilities the story is so offensive, so difficult... YET wrapped up in its lines are eternal truths. Nothing must be allowed to stand in the way of our complete submission to the Lord. IF we obey Him, we will find that He is Yahweh Yireh, the Lord our Provider.
I have been in situations where I have protested to God... Obedience will kill me, Lord. And my protest is met with silence. No explanation comes. No reassurance is given. I have only to do what I know that He demands of me. But in obedience, what a discovery. That which I certainly knew would bring my death, actually opens the door to greater life. God provides in the moment when we radically abandon ourselves to His will by transforming the madness into something we could not have imagined.
St. Paul spoke of those moments when he prayed for the Believers in a church he had founded.
Ephesians 3:17-21
.... (May) Christ dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.
Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!
Do you love Him?
Will you TRUST Him?
The cost will be great, but what of merit or praiseworthiness is accomplished without cost?
Compared to the rich rewards of obedience, the cost is nil. Remember that.
In obedience there will be those who say you are insane, yes out of your mind. But they reason only from the obvious, the visible.... as those who are without faith. Let faith inform your actions. When it appears that God is asking you to throw away everything of worldly value– when your family and friends tell you that you’re crazy, listen once again.
It may be that you are hearing the wisdom that Jesus spoke when He said, Matthew 10:37-39
37 “Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38 and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
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A final word.... coming back to where we started this morning....
Sometimes the world seems mad, life is simply insanity. If you have given your life to Christ, stand firm in these moments by trusting in His power and His purpose. Tho’ evil seems to triumph, what Christ did on Calvary’s cross and the subsequent Resurrection is proof positive that His kingdom will prevail.
Lily Tomlin, the comedienne, is not usually quoted from pulpits, but she once quipped,
“why is it when we talk to God, we call it prayer... but when God talks to us, we call it schizophrenia?”
In our quest to be cool, to be 21st century sophisticates, we will stop listening for the voice of God in our souls... and how impoverished we will become. Listen for Him. Wait on His voice. He IS speaking.
And sometimes... what He says... by our estimation seems a little mad, a little crazy BUT His plans and purposes prevail and always for OUR good.
I do not understand why He permits such evil, such suffering, such human misery.... BUT I trust His hand to guide me safely home to His side. Have the faith of Abraham who said to his son, “God himself will provide.” He is Yahweh Yireh – The Lord, our Provider.
Take God at His word and discover Him as the One who Provides. AMEN
