We’re continuing the series on Second Chances by evaluating another of the times the Bible uses the phrase "second time." Our focus today is on Abraham.
Abraham waited until he was 100 years old for Isaac to be born but he never gave up on God’s promise of a son. Remarkable. That’s why we still read about Abraham today. That’s why he is the father of a nation. He learned to trust God.
Then, in Genesis 22, when Isaac was probably a teenager, God told Abraham to go on top of Mt. Moriah and offer up Isaac, his promised son, as a sacrifice. Abraham didn’t flinch. He was willing to trust God with his son’s life and God provided an alternate sacrifice. After Abe passed the test the Amplified Bible says:
15The Angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven A SECOND TIME.
16And said, I" have sworn by Myself, says the Lord, that since you have done this and have not withheld [from Me] or begrudged [giving Me] your son, your only son,
17In blessing I will bless you and in multiplying I will multiply your descendants like the stars of the heavens and like the sand on the seashore. And your Seed (Heir) will possess the gate of His enemies,
18And in your Seed [Christ] shall all the nations of the earth be blessed and [by Him] bless themselves, because you have heard and obeyed My voice.
What prompted God to call to Abraham the second time?
It was because his life was focused on God.
Let’s take Abraham’s life and learn how to fine tune our focus on God.
1. FOCUS ON GOD’S PROMISES, NOT EXPLANATIONS.
God didn’t explain to Abraham how such a bizarre request could possibly lead to a rewarding conclusion. Abraham had learned he could trust God so he obeyed without explanation. That’s mature faith - when you have grown so close to God in your relationship with Him that you trust Him in spite of what you don’t yet understand.
Our sinful selves and the culture around us are programmed for explanations while a relationship with God is founded on focusing on God in faith. If you want to hear from God don’t press Him for explanations. Instead, look for His directives and then follow them. Find out what He asks you to do and then do it.
The first time God called Abraham it was to invite him to worship. And Abraham answered the call.
Gen. 22:5 (Amp) And Abraham said to his servants, "Settle down and stay here with the donkey, and I and the young man will go yonder and worship and come again to you."
By this statement you not only see Abraham’s willingness to worship but you see his faith that he will return with his son! Abraham knew that if God could give him a son long past human reproductive abilities then God could also raise his son from the dead once he had been sacrificed!
The second time God called to Abraham it was to invest in him the blessings of faith.
When you invest in God He invests in you! I like knowing that don’t you? What I don’t like is that I often have to wait for the investment God is making in me to reach maturity.
I remember the first time I put money in a savings account. I was a teenager and I knew very little about earning interest. I started putting my paychecks from McDonald’s in a savings account for college. When I got my bank statement after several months I expected to be a real financial mogul.
But was I in for a surprise to see the interest accrue very slowly. I got really discouraged about this investing stuff. I didn’t know you had to wait a long time to see real results - especially when you were working with the small amounts I was working with.
It is the waiting for the return on our investments in the things of God that is difficult. The question is, Will you trust God while you wait and without being told why you are waiting? Will you give in to God’s will even though you aren’t given consent forms and timetables? Will you follow God even when you are tired of waiting for tangible results?
It’s a tough call in our culture today.
I like what Eugene Peterson said over 25 years ago in his book, "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction."
"One aspect of the world that I have been able to identify as harmful to Christians is the assumption that anything worthwhile can be acquired at once. We assume that if something can be done at all, it can be done quickly and efficiently. Our attention spans have been conditioned by thirty-second commercials. Our sense of reality has been flattened by thirty-page abridgements."
He continues, "It is not difficult in such a world to get a person interested in the message of the gospel; it is terrifically difficult to sustain the interest. Millions of people in our culture make decisions for Christ, but there is a dreadful attrition rate. Many claim to have been born again, but the evidence for mature Christian discipleship is slim. In our kind of culture anything, even new about God, can be sold if it is packaged freshly; but when it loses its novelty, it goes on the garbage heap. There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness."
We simply don’t want to do the waiting. But investing requires waiting.
Have you ever invested in another person? You love them in spite of their behavior; you give them your time and understanding, your forgiveness and patience. And you wait for them to change but it seems like they’re never going to catch on? They don’t seem to be making any positive progress.
If you’re a parent you know what waiting for an investment to mature is all about. You bring your baby home from the hospital and long for the night when they sleep over four hours in a row. You wait for them to learn to eat solid food, to crawl, to stand up, to walk, to be able to feed themselves, to be potty trained, to talk, (to quit talking) and on and on.
When they’re teens you wait for them learn the value of a dollar, to learn how to have the right kind of friends, to be responsible drivers, etc.
Even after they become adults you wait. You wait for grandkids. Deb and I are anxiously waiting. I know we look way too young but we’re ready.
Investing in people means waiting. Investing in spiritual things demands waiting.
Have you ever invested in God’s work and you waited and waited and then waited some more and the investment just seemed to sit there?
You invest in the church, or a children’s ministry, a small group, a youth group, a missionary, and wait and wait and wait, and even while you’re waiting you keep investing your time and your labor and your prayers, and the investment just seems to sit there.
This can be very frustrating.
You want to hear from God that your investment is multiplying. You want to see indications that your investment is paying off.
Abraham could have been very frustrated. For many long years he waited to receive the promise of a son from God. But he never gave up on God’s promise.
Now that he has the son, God puts him to another, even more unusual test: offer that son in sacrificial worship. Instead of asking Abe to give up an animal from amidst his flocks and herds, something Abraham could have done at some small expense, God calls for human sacrifice.
God was calling for Abraham to tie his son up like an animal, bind him to the firewood, slit his throat and set him on fire! Can you believe that?
How could God be so cruel, so heartless, so uncaring? How could God call for something to be done that He in His word condemns idolaters for doing?
Before you answer that question remember that this same God one day gave His own Son in sacrifice, many believe on this very same mountain. But the roles are reversed. Instead of God, the One who deserves worship, being the recipient of the sacrificial offering – He is the giver! Instead of the people who ought to offer the sacrifices, we sinners, having to make the effort – we are required to give nothing at all to receive the blessing of salvation!
Do you know what God was doing by calling on Abraham to offer up Isaac? For one thing, God was painting one of His many Old Testament pictures of the cross!
God was explaining salvation on Mt. Moriah that day! Our salvation was purchased at a great price!
We identify with Abraham and we also ought to be identifying with God the Father in heaven. We protest of the unfairness of God calling upon a human father to offer up his precious son and forget that that is precisely what the heavenly Father did.
God was also teaching us to trust in His promises, no just search for explanations. He’s the potter. We’re the clay.
Romans 9:20 (GNT) But who are you, my friend, to talk back to God? A clay pot does not ask the man who made it, "Why did you make me like this?"
If you want to hear from God you must FOCUS ON GOD’S PROMISES, NOT EXPLANATIONS.
The second thing Abraham did that we can do to fine tune our focus on God is to...
2. LOOK FOR GOD TO CHANGE YOU WHILE YOU WAIT.
Earlier in his life Abraham made a big mistake. He thought he could hasten the plan of God for his life by devising his own plot to have a son. Since his wife Sarah was childless, he fathered a child with her Egyptian servant Hagar. But this son, Ishmael, wasn’t the child of promise.
So do you know what God did? He gave up on Abraham and looked somewhere else for a faithful follower? No, you and I know that’s not what God did.
What God did is what God does all the time and what this series is all about! God gave Abraham a second chance!
God does not cast you away after you fail. He does not turn His back on you. People are often like that but not God. God wants you to see in this story of Abraham that He is the God of a second chance!
But God also wants this story of Abraham to teach you a very important lesson about second chances. Second chances aren’t about changing God – they’re about God changing us!
Abraham had to learn from his mistake. Before God could proceed with His plan for Abe’s life he had to make progress as a pilgrim. Here’s how it happened.
The day came that Isaac and Ishmael weren’t compatible.
Gen. 21:9 (Amp) Now Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, mocking [Isaac]. 10Therefore she said to Abraham, Cast out this bondwoman and her son, for the son of this bondwoman shall not be an heir with my son Isaac.
The Bible says this turn of events upset Abraham, as it would have any father. But do you know what God said to Abraham?
Gen. 21:12 (Amp) God said to Abraham, Do not let it seem grievous and evil to you because of the youth and your bondwoman; in all that Sarah has said to you, do what she asks, for in Isaac shall your posterity be called.
God could not keep His promises to Abraham through the child Ishmael because that was Abraham’s plan - not God’s. Abraham had to change. He had to change his thinking. He had to change his behavior. He had to go back to waiting on and working within God’s plan. God had more work to do in molding his character.
You say, but pastor I’m suffering while I’m waiting on God. Sure you are. Suffering is one of the greatest change agents that God has! If you were comfortable all of the time why would you want to change?
God never wastes suffering. He refines you with it. Look at Job for instance.
Perhaps no one suffered more than Job and look at what he said about suffering.
Job 23:10 (Amp) But He knows the way that I take [He has concern for it, appreciates, and pays attention to it]. When He has tried me, I shall come forth as refined gold [pure and luminous].
A visitor to a gold processing plant asked the chemist in charge of quality control how he knew when the gold was ready to be cast into rings and jewelry and other items. The refiner said to the visitor, "I know that the gold is ready for use when I look down into the molten vat and I can see my image in it."
When God can see His image in your life He knows that you’re ready to go to the next level. He knows you can handle the blessings of which He needs you to become steward.
If you want to fine tune your focus on God let Him change you into the likeness of His Son Jesus Christ.
And the third thing this story teaches us about fine tuning our focus on God is this.
3. ENJOY FRIENDSHIP WITH GOD.
What did Abraham do all of those years that he was waiting on a son?
He enjoyed a friendship with God!
James 2:23 (CEV) This is what the Scriptures mean by saying, "Abraham had faith in God, and God was pleased with him." That’s how Abraham became God’s friend.
One of the greatest problems of our results-oriented culture is that we often lose sight of the value of relationships. We look so much for success in tangible things that we overlook success in the intangibles.
Ironically it is the success in the intangibles that is the most important. Our relationships are always more important than our material blessings.
Spouses and parents often dedicate themselves to being successful on the job, which is admirable, but they often go overboard, investing so much time and energy in their work that they have little left for their family.
One man told the story about his son’s sixth birthday. He asked his son what present he would like. The boy replied that he’d like to have a football or soccer ball. The dad inquired which one he wanted most and the son said, "If you have some time to play ball with me this year I’d really like a football so we can throw it back and forth in the back yard. But if you’re gonna be real busy this year, maybe you better just get me a soccer ball, because I can play soccer with the rest of the kids."
The son wasn’t interested in the gift. He was interested in the giver.
God wasn’t interested in having Abraham’s son Isaac as a sacrifice. He was interested in having Abraham as a friend.
God is interested in your friendship. He wants a personal relationship with you that is vital and ongoing every day. Just like you call your friends up on the phone and send them emails God wants you to communicate with Him every day by reading His Word and talking to Him in prayer.
Hearing from God is not like understanding the mystery of some black hole in outer space. It’s doable. It’s simple. It’s obtainable.
James 4:8a (NLT) Draw close to God, and God will draw close to you.
