Heroes of Faith: Abraham
The Test of Faith
Genesis 12:1-14
Introduction
We want to close this series of sermons on the life of Abraham with the most famous story arising from his life—that of the sacrifice of his son, Isaac. I need to remind you that Abraham had been promised a son through his wife Sarah, and after 99 years of waiting, God gives them Isaac. Now Isaac means laughter, and he was so named by Abraham and Sarah because when the angel of the Lord appeared to them and told them they would have a son, they both laughed. The angel said it’s true, and you will name him laughter.
Almost twenty years have elapsed since we last encountered Abraham when God renewed his promise. So Isaac is born, and for those twenty years, Isaac brings so much more than laughter to the home of Abraham and Sarah. He brings life, and the promise of more life as the words of God are recounted over and over around the family table. Twenty years of living in the promise of God. Life is good, and blessings are abundant. The domestic problems caused by the presence of Hagar and Ishmael have been addressed as Hagar and Ishmael were removed from the home, and they were safely in God’s care. Abraham has struck a treaty with King Abimelech, and they were living in peace in the land of the Philistines. Life was good. For the hell life had been the previous thirteen years, they were pure blessedness now. Abraham and Sarah were comfortable in their new life living in the blessing of God.
Then God shows up again. But this time, God doesn’t come to renew the promise but rather God comes to test the faith of Abraham, and it is the most difficult test Abraham, or anyone could ever face—the offering of his son in sacrifice. I think we would be seriously remiss if we didn’t make note of the fact that this test of Abraham’s faith is a magnificent foreshadowing of the work of God in Jesus Christ in the New Testament. No one who watches as Abraham binds Isaac to the altar of burnt offering can help but catch the image of God sending Jesus Christ to the cross of Calvary centuries later.
The history surrounding this event in the life of Abraham is tremendous. Abraham is told by God to go to the land of Moriah, to the mountain that God will show him. Mount Moriah, in later years, would be the place King David would purchase the threshing floor of Ornan as the place to build the Temple. Solomon would later build his magnificent temple on that location. We could travel to Jerusalem today and find there the Dome of the Rock Mosque—the third most holy place in all Islam. Inside that Dome of the Rock Mosque is the very stone upon which Abraham was prepared to offer Isaac. It is an historical place indeed.
But we digress from the purpose of this message—to see the test of faith that life inevitably brings. It was so for Abraham, and will be for us if we are long for life in this world. I want us to look at this event in Abraham’s life and discover the source of the test, the purpose in the test, the object of the test, and most importantly, the response to the test.
The Source of the Test
The writer is terribly direct in the matter of the source of Abraham’s test. God is identified as the source. That first seems strange to us that God would test Abraham, or that he would test us. Our first inclination is to find some deeper meaning behind the word, or speculate that it is not really God who is doing it, that it was accepted in those ancient times that God worked that way. But we in our enlightened minds know that God doesn’t test us. Hebrews 11:18 confirms that God was the source of the test. Notice this is not a temptation because God never tempts anyone. The Apostle James reminds us “And remember, no one who wants to do wrong should ever say, ‘God is tempting me.’ God is never tempted to do wrong, and he never tempts anyone else either (James 1:13). But God does try us. The Hebrew word that is used here as test is translated 22 other times in the Old Testament as “prove.” So what does God have to “prove” in the test of faith? Ah! There we find the purpose of the test.
The Purpose of the Test
I can’t imagine the night Abraham spent after God came to him with this request. The questions that must have rushed through his mind sound strangely like our own when we are facing the difficulty of the test of faith. “But Lord, how can this be your plan? What about the promise of Isaac? Why now, Lord? Why me, Lord? What will I tell Sarah, Lord?” We’ve voiced those same questions in our own lives. When God tests us, tries us, what is it God has to prove? Well, actually, nothing. He already knows, but I think we need to prove our faith to ourselves, and God helps us do that. Malcolm Muggeridge says “if it were possible to eliminate affliction from our earthly existence by means of some drug or other medical mumbo jumbo,…, the result would not be to make life delectable, but to make it too banal and trivial to be endurable.” In other words, life would be too boring to survive without trials. Muggeridge would go on to say that everything he ever learned in life that was meaningful and enhanced his existence was learned in a time of trial or testing and not through happiness. God uses the test of faith to prove our faith to ourselves.
God also uses the test of faith to develop character in our lives. Only when our faith is tested do we grow in Christ-like character. The Apostle Paul knew this, and tried to communicate this to the Christians at Rome:
We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they are good for us—they help us learn to endure. [4] And endurance develops strength of character in us, and character strengthens our confident expectation of salvation. [5] And this expectation will not disappoint us. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. Romans 5:3-5
Character matters in our lives. Philosopher Herbert Spencer wrote, “Not education but character is man’s greatest need and man’s greatest safeguard.” Chuck Swindoll wrote, “Character is the moral, ethical, and spiritual undergirding that rests on truth, that reinforces a life in stressful times, and resists all temptations to compromise.” That is the kind of character God wants to develop. Why? Because our character determines how we interpret God’s will.
God wants to develop character in us that will stand the storms of life. The character God desires in us is the character of Christ that set its face resolutely toward the cross, not because the cross was wanted or was pretty, but because the cross was the Father’s will, and the Father’s way of redemption.
The Object of the Test
We know the source of the test, and we begin to understand the purpose of the test, but any answers we might find in the source and the purpose are rendered meaningless as we wrestle with the object of the test. The object of Abraham’s test was his son, his only son the passage says, Isaac. Isaac was Abraham’s most precious, cherished possession. God could have asked Abraham for almost anything else, and we, in our understanding of the story would have said, “Sure, Abraham, go ahead.” And we would have even been comfortable with Abraham offering almost anything else to God. But how could God ask Abraham for his only son? I mean, after all, this was what pagans did with their children. God had commanded that no human blood should be shed. This is totally wrong. Guess what? That is exactly what Abraham would have thought too.
So why did God ask for the sacrifice of Isaac? It’s all about what we hold dear. Remember, for twenty years, Abraham and Sarah have enjoyed the vitality of their relationship with their son. He had brought laughter to their home. He was the centerpiece of their joy. The sacrifice in the test of faith is never a sacrifice of our own choosing. Things we choose to sacrifice are often not sacrifices at all. I agree with Oswald Chambers who said, “Never chose the scene of your own martyrdom.” Choosing our own sacrifices looks a bit self-righteous, and we will always choose those things that we could rather live without anyway. The sacrifice that is most meaningful is the sacrifice of God’s own choosing. The cross of Jesus was not the sacrifice he chose. His father chose it for him.
When God asks us to make a sacrifice, he asks us to make a true sacrifice. Only by making the sacrifice is our faith in him proven. Can we relinquish that most precious, cherished possession into the hands of God? Are we willing to give up the thing we hold most dear? It is God’s simple way of asking, “Do you love me, or do you love the things I give you?” When we are faced with the test of faith, and with making the sacrifice of God’s own choosing, we are confronted with the reality of what is more special to us, the gift or the giver. Confronting this reality, we are left only to make a response.
The Response to the Test
Abraham’s response was fast and sure. Verse three says, “The next morning Abraham got up early.” He was not going to waste time. He heard God’s voice, and he moved quickly to carry out what he had heard. I know it was a long, sleepless night, but with the dawning of the morning sun, Abraham set about to complete what God commanded. And he did it in faith. “God, you said it. I don’t understand it, but at your request I will do it. I don’t know how you are going to fulfill your promise, but I believe you will.”
Again, the writer to the Hebrews sheds light on Abraham’s faith that allowed him to respond in obedience: “[18] though God had promised him, ‘Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted.’ [19] Abraham assumed that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again.” We see Abraham’s faith throughout this event. His quick response is the first evidence, but we also see his faith in the words he speaks to his servants. Look again at verse five: “‘Stay here with the donkey,’ Abraham told the young men. ‘The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.’” Trust spoken in the word “we.”
But also, look at verses seven and eight:
[7] Isaac said, "Father?"
"Yes, my son," Abraham replied.
"We have the wood and the fire," said the boy, "but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?"
[8] "God will provide a lamb, my son," Abraham answered. And they both went on together.
Abraham knew in his heart that God was going to do something, and if it was necessary for him to raise Isaac from the dead that God was able to do that too.
Abraham’s response of obedience was the result of a sacrifice of his will long before the test came. The beginning of an active faith is the surrender of our wills to the will of God. Only when the will is surrendered, and when the sacrifice is made in the will, will we carry the sacrifice out in actuality.
Hum? Sounds a lot like Jesus to me. Facing the shadow of the cross, Jesus knelt in the Garden of Gethsemane and prayed, “Father, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not what I will, but what you will.” Jesus knew that if necessary, God was able to raise him from the dead. And it was necessary, and it was done. But through it all, Jesus remained obedient. Just like Abraham was obedient, and his faith was proven as God provided the lamb at just the right time. Never too early, but never too late. At just the right time, Abraham experiences Jehovah Jireh—“the God who provides.” The response to the test of faith is always obedience.
A. W. Tozer in his priceless book The Root of the Righteous shares the story of Rutherford who could shout in the midst of serious and painful trials, “Praise God for the hammer, the file, and the furnace.”
The hammer is a useful tool, but the nail, if it had feeling and intelligence, could present another side of the story. For the nail knows the hammer only as an opponent, a brutal, merciless enemy who lives to pound it into submission, to beat it down out of sight and clinch it into place. That’s the nails view of the hammer, and it is accurate except for one thing: The nail forgets that both it and the hammer are servants of the same workman. Let the nail but remember that the hammer is held by the workman and all resentment toward it will disappear. The carpenter decides whose head shall be beaten next and what hammer shall be used in the beating. That is his sovereign right. When the nail has surrendered to the will of the workman and has gotten a little glimpse of his benign plans for its future it will yield itself to the hammer without complaint.
The file is more painful still, for its business is to bite into the soft metal, scraping and eating away the edges till it has shaped the metal to its will. Yet the file has, in truth, no real will in the matter, but serves another master as the metal also does. It is the master and not the file that decides how much shall be eaten away, what shape the metal shall take, and how long the painful filing shall continue. Let the metal accept the will of the master and it will not try to dictate when or how it shall be filed.
As for the furnace, it is the worst of all. Ruthless and savage, it leaps at every combustible thing that enters it and never relaxes its fury till it has reduced it all to shapeless ashes. All that refused to burn is melted to a mass of helpless matter, without will or purpose of its own. When everything is melted that will melt and all is burned that will burn, then and not till then the furnace calms down and rests from its destructive fury.
There is the certainty that we who live in faith will one day be tested by the test of faith. It may come in a myriad of ways—through death, through a financial crisis, through a broken relationship, through a job loss, through a tragedy—but it will certainly come. The source will be God, the purpose will be to prove our faith to ourselves, and to prove God’s character in us. The object will be something most precious to us. When we respond with obedience, then in the moment of our greatest need, in the moment of our greatest struggle, in the moment of our greatest test, we will discover, like Abraham, the God who provides.
Jesus Christ is the lamb God has provided for us in our great time of need. When we were lost in sin, wandering far from God, God provided the precious lamb of Jesus to shed his blood and forgive our sins. Will we respond in obedience to his call for us to be saved?
