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| Photo by G Lilly |
This
is one of the deepest and darkest pools in the ocean of Scripture.
The Test.
Temptation is not a good word: God doesn't tempt anyone!
Question:
Who needed to know what was in Abraham's heart?
It looks like God
tests Abraham so that God will know what is in Abraham's heart. But
the Hebrew word to Know (v 12) is yāḏa — “I know by
experience”, or “I observe, take
note”,
so God doesn't need
to find out what is happening
in Abraham's heart. He isn't filling
in the gaps in his knowledge – but maybe he is filling
in the gaps in Abraham's knowledge... He is “proving”
to Abraham where his faith and fear of God have taken him.
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| Photo by DAVID ILIFF. Used under creative Commons License |
When
Jonas Bjorkman is training
Andy Murray, maybe having
him repeat his serve over and over, the point is not just to satisfy
Bjorkman, but to satisfy Murray, that he can do that serve. What
Jonas Bjorkman knows about Murray's ability isn't going to win points
on Centre
Court: but what Murray knows may well win points.
And
we all need to move towards that point of “proven” faith, where
we know what our faith can do.
What is God trying
to “prove” or test? Not just that Abraham loves God more than
he loves Isaac – but “To
prove his faith”
(John
Kennedy) and his
fear of God (v. 12). These
two things: faith and fear; reliance and reverence.
Faith...
... in two
specific things: God's Person and God's Power. Who God is and what
God can do.
Who
God is. This
experience goes right to the character
of God himself.
Abraham had lived
a lifetime in the belief that his God was not the same
as the gods of the other people in Canaan. That his God was “the
One True God” and was holy, pure, the Judge
of all the earth, and One who would do what was right. Abraham's God
was pure,
not a fertility god represented by some nude statue; he
is a God who gives,
not
some vile deity
demanding
infant sacrifices. The sacrificing
of children was known in the ancient world, and God outlawed
them as an abomination when he gave Moses the law. Was this –
something Abraham
may have heard of – what his God was now asking
of him? Had he been wrong in his understanding
of the character of his God? Was he worshipping
a monster?
We will encounter things in our
world, and in God's word, that cut across and challenge what we know
of God's character.
How can a God of
love flood the world, or command the destruction of Jericho? How can
a God
of
love
allow the suffering that is taking place throughout the Arab world
because of the so-called Islamic State? How can a God of love allow
earthquakes and
tsunamis? How can a
God of love allow us
to experience our own personal payload of suffering?
Sometimes our answers – or the answers of other – sound cheap and
trite, and add to our pain. It
is a test of our faith, to encounter these things, and still believe
that God's character is good. It's the ability to say “I know him:
I have walked with him. And even though this is not consistent with
what I know of Him, I will love him and trust him.” Abraham
managed to hold all that together. That's faith!
Job in the midst of
incredible suffering made worse by people’s fumbling attempts to
sort him out, said “I know that my Redeemer lives, and
at last he will stand upon the earth”; and Paul says “I know whom
I have believed, and I am sure that he is able to guard until that
Day what has been entrusted to me. ”
What
God can do. Humanly
speaking, if Abraham sacrificed Isaac, that was the end of all hope
of
becoming the father of a great nation. It was the end of God's
promise.
But
as
Abraham gets up in the morning to do what God had said, he does so in
the confidence that God has made a promise and that God
will still fulfil that promise. No
delays. No discussions. No excuses. He simply makes the
preparations he needs to – including taking firewood
so that nothing will deflect him from this task.
Twice he hints at his confidence in what God can do. In v. 5 he says
to his servants “My
son and I will go over there and worship, and then we will come back
to you.” Then father
and son haver a wee conversation that is full of affection; the boy
asks “Where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” and Abraham says “God
will provide himself a lamb.” There is a confidence that God knows
what he is doing and will provide the guidance and the material
things that were needed at just the right moment.
But that moment is a long time in
coming. Isaac is eventually tied, laid on the altar, and Abraham
picks up the knife. What is going through his head at that moment.
The writer to the Hebrews tells us, two thousand years later: 'It
was by faith that Abraham, when God tested him, offered his son Isaac
as a sacrifice. God made the promises to Abraham, but Abraham was
ready to offer his own son as a sacrifice. God had said, “The
descendants I promised you will be from Isaac.” Abraham
believed that God could raise the dead, and really, it was as if
Abraham got Isaac back from death.' Hebrews
11. 17-19. That's
a really remarkable level of faith.
Fear.
Don't
imagine that Abraham did this easily, without emotion. The emotion
was there: the writer simply doesn't mention it. This is an epic
story from two millennia before Christ, not somebody's Facebook page:
“Got to sacrifice Isaac today. So gutted...” The
storytelling style is interested in events not emotions. But that
doesn't mean Abraham was a cold fish, a kind of psychopathic type who
was incapable of feeling.
This
took faith and courage at every level. It
cost Abraham; but he goes with faith.
Abraham
has shown a level of faith in the reality of God, that fears Him. The
fear of God is reverence for Him. It is a sense of respect for Who
He is. “Lord you are who you are, you are good; you are able to
raise up Isaac from the dead; I cannot disobey your word. What can I
do but obey you! I lay my life down at your feet. No more striving
to hold on to what you have promised. No more conniving and scheming
to bring your future by my own efforts. Everything, everything, is
yours.” That's the fear of God. It is a place of utter
surrender, utter yieldedness to Him. The great preacher C H Spurgeon
says that what Abraham did was “As
much to sacrifice himself as to sacrifice his child”.
Fear
of God is an outworking of Faith in God. It is related to a
confidence in who God is and what God can do. It's not anxiety or
terror. We are not saying “I wonder what he's going to get up to
next!” It's not something that
paralyses us; it's something that motivates us. Paul said “knowing
the fear of the Lord, we persuade men”, (2
Cor 5. 11)
Blessings:
It
is to that place of relinquishment, faith, and fear, that God wants
to take us. And it's not about whether
we love
Isaac, or our home, our ambitions
or our families
more than we love God. It's about surrender; it's about control.
It's about taking
our hands off the steering wheel.
In relinquishment,
Abraham prophetically models the surrender of God who gave
his son for the salvation of mankind. In letting go we model the
character of our Heavenly Father – who “did not spare his own son
but gave him up for us.
And in
relinquishment, Abraham received the promise of God: see
verses 15 and
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| Lewis Beach: Photo by G Lilly |
© Gilmour Lilly July 2015
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