17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac
as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one
and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that
your offspring will be reckoned.”[c] 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even
raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from
death.
20 By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to
their future.
21 By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of
Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff.
22 By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about
the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the
burial of his bones.
Dig Deeper
We hear a lot about faith these days. The evangelical Christian world is almost
obsessed with faith in God and faith in Jesus.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that faith is a bad thing. Of course it is everything. The problem that I see, however, is how much
people talk about about faith but how little they seem to understand what
biblical faith actually is. What is
often called faith these days is really more something like belief and
intellectual agreement with something than it is genuine biblical faith. What’s the difference? I think an incident from the life of famed
acrobat Charles Blondin in the 19th century demonstrates the difference quite
well. Blondin gained great fame by
performing feats such as crossing Niagara Falls on a tightrope, often even
doing so blindfolded. After finishing a
tightrope trek while pushing across a bag of cement in a wheelbarrow while
blindfolded, a reporter came up to congratulate him. As the story goes, Blondin asked the man, “Do
you believe I can do anything on a tightrope?”
“Why, yes, Mr. Blondin,” the reporter answered. “After what I’ve
witnessed today, I believe you can do anything.” Blondin then inquired, “Do you believe that I
could put a man in this wheelbarrow, a man who has never been on a tightrope
before, and push him across Niagara Falls?” “Why, absolutely,” the reporter
replied. Blondin then looked at the
reporter and said, “Good, then why don’t you get in?” Evidently, the reporter decline the offer.
That, my friends, is the difference between belief and
faith. Belief is to agree that Blondin
could do something amazing when he claimed that he could push anything across a
great chasm on a tightrope. Faith is
actually living as though you believe.
The same goes with biblical faith.
It is not just believing that God did something great in the past. It is living today and tomorrow in complete
obedience based on God’s promises and his word.
Much of what passes for faith today focuses on the past, what God has
done. But true faith takes God’s word
and then focuses on the future. It is
laser-focused on God being faithful in the future to his promises.
That’s why God allows us to go through tests and
trials. It’s not about God not knowing
how Abraham would respond but belief cannot become faith without an opportunity
to act or not act on what God has said.
It comes down to whether we will believe what God has said, or if we
will believe what we think and see.
This is the quandary in which Abraham found
himself. God had given him great promises
about blessing him through his descendants.
He even made it quite clear throughout Abraham’s life that Abraham was
not to go out and engineer his own own path to fulfilling God’s promises of an
heir that would turn into a great nation-family that consisted of all nations
and through whom the whole world would be blessed. Everything that God had promised Abraham
rested on the shoulders of that young man, Isaac. So what was Abraham to think when God had
asked him to sacrifice the only son that would ever receive Abraham’s full
inheritance, and could thus rightly be called his “one and only son”? What God was asking Abraham to do was not
unheard of in the ancient world where sacrificing a son to the gods was a
regular occurrence. In fact, one could
say that God was asking Abraham to trust him as much as the pagans trusted
their gods. No matter of one’s beliefs
it could not have been easy to sacrifice your own child to a god, but for
Abraham it was even more difficult.
Every promise that God had given Abraham was dependant on the well-being
and long-life of Isaac. Without Isaac
how could God’s promises possibly be fulfilled?
And if God is not faithful to his promises then how can he truly be
considered God?
God’s test for Abraham was not some cruel joke on his
part but was an opportunity for Abraham to establish and strengthen his
faith. That’s the way it is with tests
like this. They not only reveal
weaknesses of our faith but they also serve as opportunities to strengthen
it. So why must our faith be
tested? Because it is based on the
future, and that is the whole point of this chapter. If faith is simply based on what God did in
the past, then it doesn’t really need to be tested. But our faith is based on the promises of
God’s family one day living with him in the resurrection age of the restored
heaven and earth. Because it is
future-based, that means that God’s promises for his people are something that
we cannot see. We must learn to cling to
God’s word and promises, and believe him despite the fact that we don’t see
them. Abraham’s test was certainly a
stiff one. He had lived a life of
trusting God rather than what he had experienced or seen in his life and now
this would really put that trust to the test.
Would he trust God when everything was on the line?
2 Corinthians 4:8-9 indicates that there are four levels
of testing. Paul says “We are hard
pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;
persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” The first level, hard pressed, is the normal
everyday type of pressure and irritating circumstances. The second level, perplexed, is when we don’t
quite know where to go or how to get out of our circumstances. The third level, persecuted, is a bit more intense
than the first two. You might feel hard
pressed and stressed if you are on a run and need to get back to your house in
10 minutes but are 12 minutes away. You
might feel perplexed if you realize that you are lost and don’t know how to get
back home. But being persecuted is like
turning around and realizing that while on your run, a lion is chasing you and
closing in fast. The fourth level,
struck down, is surely the type that Abraham was facing. It refers to being completely rejected or
torn down. The most precious thing he
had, his son of promise, was being seemingly taken away from and his response
would reveal everything about his trust in God and whether his faith would be
destroyed or stand strong.
But Paul’s conclusion in 2 Corinthians 4 demonstrates
truth faith. Despite all of the trials
and tests that he had experienced, he says, “We always carry around in our body
the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given
over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our
mortal body” (2 Corinthians 4:10-11a).
Paul went through both the mundane pressures of life and terrible trials
because he believed that the resurrection life of Christ would shine
through. He was willing to die to self
and live a life that made no sense from a worldly perspective because he
believed in God’s promises that those who die to themselves now and live by the
values of the resurrection will receive the inheritance of resurrection through
Jesus Christ. He learned to live as
though God’s promises were true despite the mounting evidence that living the
life of Christ brought nothing but more trials.
Paul lived a life of faith.
And so did Abraham.
He had learned to live as though God’s promises were true (Rom.
4:21). How strong had Abraham’s faith in
God’s promises become? He was so sure
that God would be faithful to his word that he reasoned that even if he did
sacrifice Isaac from the dead, God would just bring him back from the
dead. So Abraham was willing to obey God
and sacrifice his son because he was so willing to live his life as though
God’s promises were worthy of being trusted.
In the process he not only strengthened his faith but he learned that
God would never ask someone to sacrifice their own son as the other gods
supposedly do. It would be around two
thousand years before God fully revealed that not only does he not ask his
people to sacrifice their own sons, he would do what he would not ask Abraham to
do by sacrificing his one and only son so that the promises that he gave to his
people could be fully realized.
The other three examples given in this section are no
mere afterthoughts. They are evidence
that Abraham not only had true faith but that he passed on that faith through
the family that God had promised him.
None of them were perfect in their holiness, not by a long shot, but
they did demonstrate faith in God’s promises.
They lived for a future that they could not see based solely on God’s word. Isaac went against conventional wisdom and
blessed his younger son rather than the stronger, older son. And even when he realized that he had done so
by mistake, he trusted that God was at work and would not change his blessing
because of his faith in God’s will and promises. Jacob blessed Joseph’s sons and again
confirmed a life of living for the promises that God had given rather than the
immediate. Joseph demonstrated that too
had put his trust in the future based on God’s word. Rather than seeing himself as a permanent
resident of Egypt, a place where he had done quite well for himself, he looked
ahead and asked that his bones be carried along with God’s people when they
continued to be carried along by God’s promises. Joseph, in other words, valued God’s promises
more than he did the idea of being revered and buried as a great Egyptian
(something that was so venerated in their culture that we continue to be
fascinated today with the powerful and mighty Egyptians that were buried).
Faith is not some mental exercise that can be limited to
agreeing with God. It does not primarily
look back but ahead. It is not focused
on what God has done (although that does play an important part) but on what
God will do. Perhaps when God’s people
can truly grasp that and really live as though God’s promises of resurrection
are true, can we take our place alongside our forefathers that are listed in
this great hall of faith. Perhaps then,
and only then, can we achieve the full impact of being God’s people that he
intends for us.
Devotional Thought
Do you truly live by faith? Do you base the form an function of your life
on God’s promises of resurrection one day or do you still struggle mightily
with focusing on the things that you can see?
What can you do to take your gaze off of the things that you can see and
begin to order the aspects of your life according to what cannot be seen?
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