Faith that Trusts God's Promise

Our scripture reading tonight is one passage from the Old Testament and one passage from the New Testament.

! We're in a series on Hebrews 11.

!

God tested Abraham and said to him,

Abraham!

And he said,

Here I am.

He said,

Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, of which I shall tell you.

So Abraham rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him and his son Isaac.

And he cut the wood for the burnt offering and arose, and he went to the place of which God had told him.

On the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes, and he saw the place from afar.

Then Abraham said to his young men,

Stay here with the donkey.

I and the boy will go over there and worship and come again to you.

And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac, his son.

And he took in his hand the fire and the knife.

So they went, both of them together.

And Isaac said to his father Abraham,

My father!

And he said, Here I am, my son.

And he said, Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?

Abraham said,

God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering, my son.

So they went, both of them, together.

Then, when they came to the place of which God had told him,

Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac, his son,

and laid him on the altar on top of the wood.

Then Abraham reached out his hand, and he took the knife to slaughter his son.

But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said,

Abraham, Abraham.

And he said, Here I am.

And he said, Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him.

For now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.

And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked.

And behold, behind him was a ram caught in a thicket by his horns.

And Abraham went, and he took the ram, and he offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son.

So Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide.

As it is said to this day, On the mountain of the Lord it shall be provided.

And the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said,

By myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son.

I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of the heaven

and as the sand that is on the seashore.

And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies.

And in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.

So Abraham returned to his young men, and they arose and went together to Beersheba.

And Abraham lived at Beersheba.

And from Hebrews 11, verses 17 to 19.

Hebrews 11:17–19

By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son,

of whom it was said, Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead,

from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.

By faith, Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau.

By faith, Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff.

This is God's holy word.

I feel like Corey's nearly preached this passage in his prayer,

but we'll endeavor to talk a little bit more for 20 minutes or so about Hebrews 11, verses 17 to 19.

Hebrews 11:17–19

We've been in Hebrews for a few weeks.

And in this letter, the writer is writing to his Hebrew audience,

and he's saying that although times are hard, don't turn back.

Don't go back to the way things were before you knew Jesus,

because Jesus is better than anything else.

And in chapter 11, the one that we've been looking at specifically for the last few weeks,

the writer is saying, Don't turn back, but look back.

Look back at these great men and women of faith and how they were blessed by God,

not because of the strength of their performance, their moral character, or their sheer determination,

but because of their faith.

Abraham gets quite a lot of coverage in this chapter.

So we started talking about Abraham back in verse 8.

That's unsurprising because Abraham in the Bible is called the man of faith.

Well, tonight we're going to look at one of the tests.

Abraham went through several tests, different challenges in his life.

Today we're going to look at, I think, the most significant of those.

And despite going through these tests, Abraham remained faithful to God.

Before we dive into it, I just want to say,

if this is the first time that you've read this passage,

these words are quite difficult to read.

If you've come to church for the first time and you've read about Isaac being put onto a pile of wood,

these are difficult things for us to read.

But as we consider it together,

I think we'll see that what we actually have here is an example of the extraordinary faithfulness of God.

A faithfulness that taught Abraham that he could rely on God

with even the most precious things in his life.

And it shows us that our God goes to extraordinary lengths to save his people.

And it shows us why we can put our faith in God,

holding nothing back, not even our most precious possessions,

and come before him certain that he will fulfill the promises he's made to his people.

I've got three points.

The unthinkable test, the unbreakable promise, the incomparable provision.

So first, the unthinkable test.

So the test that we've read, that we've referred to,

Hebrews 11 verse 17,

Hebrews 11:17

says that when Abraham was tested.

And in the chapter that Corey read for us, chapter 22 of Genesis,

it tells us this is a test that stands above all the other tests

because it says God tested Abraham.

That's a pretty big clue.

But also when we consider the nature of the test,

God spoke to Abraham and he said,

Here I am.

And God said,

Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love.

And notice here the preciseness of the language.

God says,

Take your son, your only son, Isaac, the one that you love.

There's no ambiguity to who God's referring to, what God's commanding.

Father Abraham had many sons.

We all know that from the song.

But here he calls Isaac Abraham's only son.

Well, we know already from Genesis,

if we'd been reading through,

that he's got a half-brother called Ishmael.

So Isaac wasn't literally Abraham's only son.

But Isaac was the one through whom God promised

he would deliver the blessings that were coming to Abraham

and through Isaac to the whole world.

So we can think of Isaac that only maybe as a unique.

Isaac was a unique son.

And Abraham takes Isaac, two of his servants,

along with the woods and a couple of servants,

and they head off for Mount Moriah.

And it takes them three days to get there.

And I can't help but put myself in Abraham's sandals

in three days thinking about what's going to take place.

Because God tells Abraham to offer Isaac as a burnt offering.

And I don't want to be overly detailed and gory,

but that would involve killing the sacrifice with a knife,

letting out its blood, and then burning it.

This is truly horrific, what he's walking towards.

You've maybe seen children's storybook stories of Isaac and Abraham.

And Isaac's a little toddler on his back.

But Isaac's old enough to carry the wood up the mountain.

So he's at least a teenager.

And Isaac knows something of the plan of what's going to happen.

Because he says, you've got the fire, I've got the wood.

Where's the animal for the burnt offering?

And Abraham says to Isaac,

God will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.

So they go up the mountain until they arrive at the place.

And Abraham builds the altar.

And he ties up Isaac.

And he places Isaac onto the woods.

Isaac's been strong enough to carry this wood up the mountain.

He's not a helpless child.

Abraham, when Isaac was born, was 100 years old.

So it's not as if Isaac couldn't fight him off.

Or at least run away.

But he doesn't.

Isaac willingly allows himself to be put onto the sacrificial altar.

Isaac's been raised to know the God that his father knows.

Isaac goes willingly onto the wood.

And then we arrive at the climactic moment.

And Abraham's hand is stretching for the knife.

He's going to kill his son.

And a voice comes from heaven and says,

Abraham, Abraham, don't harm the boy or do anything to him.

Because I know that you fear God.

Seeing you've not withheld your special, unique son.

Your pride and joy.

Your most precious thing from me.

This is hard to hear.

What could have, in our minds at least, have happened.

We've got lots of children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews.

And friends.

And little lives that we love.

And just to be clear,

God is not going to command any of us to do anything like that.

The culture that Abraham lived in was pagan.

He lived in a pagan land among pagan people before God called him.

Sacrificing children to lowercase gods was not an uncommon practice.

That's not saying it's okay.

That it's okay then and it's not now.

Not at all.

It was wrong then.

But it existed.

And Abraham knew about it.

Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah, though, was a very different situation.

Because the real God.

The big G God.

Abraham's God.

The Israelite God.

Our God.

He intervenes to stop child sacrifice.

And this is a massive departure from the peoples around them.

And later, the people of ancient Israel.

They were defined.

They were different among their neighbors.

Because they were not allowed to practice human sacrifice.

In fact, when they mixed with people who did.

And they defiled their own way of life that God had set for them.

They were condemned for that.

God strictly forbids murder.

And in the New Testament, Jesus takes that murder commandment and extends it to being angry.

God loves children.

And wants them to come in to a saving relationship with him.

God loves them.

He's never going to ask you to do something like this in a literal sense.

But there is a sense in which what Abraham was asked to do does apply to us, I think.

Because what Abraham was asked to do was give over the thing that he loved most to God.

God, the son of his old age.

And the son through whom Abraham's blessings and the blessing of the whole world was going to come.

Abraham being able to hand over his one and only son.

It has to make us stop and think.

What are the things that we do, that we love tonight, that we refuse to give up for God?

What possessions do you have?

Or I think what's more likely is what habits, what ways of living do we know that God doesn't want for us?

And yet we cling to them.

We hold on to them.

We let them become between ourselves and our God.

And these don't have to be inherently sinful things.

Putting anything before God is idolatry.

And often our idols are good things that we make our first things.

So hard work's good.

But refusing to fight against overworking at the sacrifice of other things that we know God wants us to do.

Because we need to prove our worth is not good.

Maybe you refuse to Sabbath, to take rest.

Because you think that getting a first in your degree is the thing that is going to prove your worth.

Or maybe you love your children so much that you allow them to dictate their own screen time, home time, bed time, Bible time.

Because you're afraid that they're going to resent you for making them do otherwise.

What are the things that you love tonight that you refuse to stop for God?

Because we're in a chapter that's all about living by faith.

And Tim Keller says, you've never known true faith until you've given up something that you love.

Okay, point number two.

The unbreakable promise.

So my old job was the kind of job where you'd spend weeks thinking about how you're going to express an idea in like three words.

And I know that sounds kind of worthless to lots of people in here.

But it means that I can't help but think about how things are expressed.

Especially in writing.

And to me, what we have here is such a straightforward, matter-of-fact account.

That there's no discussion of the circumstances, the setting, the mood.

And that feels surprising considering the task that Moses is describing here.

And Abraham's actions are kind of like that too.

God tells Abraham to go.

And Abraham immediately gets up the next morning and heads off.

And it takes him three days, as I said, to get where they're going by donkey.

Lots of time to back out.

But the narrative doesn't even give us a hint that he's considering it.

How can it be that Abraham's experience is recorded here as almost serene despite what he was facing?

Well, we know in our relatively comfortable lives that we're full of anxiety and stress and doubt and fear.

God's made promises to Abraham.

Promises to bless him with land and offspring.

And that through his seed, all the nations of the earth are going to be blessed.

And when Abraham asked God for assurance that he could trust those promises,

God didn't say, trust me.

He did.

But he didn't just say, trust me.

He entered into a covenant with Abraham.

So Presbyterian seminary students love talking about covenants,

but maybe everyone else doesn't love it as much.

So I'm going to be brief.

But this covenant is a solemn agreement between God and Abraham.

You can read about it in Genesis chapter 15.

Genesis 15 · chapter mention

When we were children and we didn't want somebody to tell our mums what we were doing,

we would say, cross your heart and hope to die.

And it's kind of like that.

In the ancient Near East, two parties, a powerful king and a less powerful king,

they would swear on terms of an agreement.

And they would also agree on the sanctions,

the consequences that would happen if he broke that agreement.

So it's a visceral, a really real sign of the solemnity of the agreement that God makes with Abraham.

God gets Abraham to gather some animals and to cut them up

and put them in two parts, two halves.

And what's interesting about the covenant that God makes with Abraham,

as opposed to other covenants that God makes in the Old Testament,

is that the covenant God makes with Abraham,

it's only God who takes on the consequences.

Abraham's in a deep sleep.

God is the all-powerful king here.

And yet, it's God, a representation of God that passes between the animals.

God's saying to Abraham,

may what's happened to these animals happen to me if I break this covenant.

If I don't deliver these promises to you, Abraham,

I'm going to be torn in two, just like these animals.

It's only God that says, cross my heart and hope to die.

If I don't do what I'm going to say.

Now, we know God can't be torn in two.

And Abraham knew that God can't be torn in two.

So does that mean that God's promise was worthless?

Well, no.

In fact, it's the exact opposite.

God's saying to Abraham,

just like it's absolutely impossible for me to be torn in two,

it's impossible for me to break the promises I've made to you.

You see, while this passage might be hard for us to read,

there was never any possibility of God not fulfilling

the promises that he'd made to bless Abraham through Isaac.

And Abraham was convinced

that he and Isaac were both going home again.

Look what he said to the young men.

Genesis chapter 22, verse 5.

Genesis 22:5

He said to his servants,

stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there.

We'll worship and then we will come back to you.

So these guys are not Abraham's peers

that he has to kind of like pretend

that everything's going to be okay

and nothing sinister is going to happen.

These are his servants.

They'll do what he says.

And yet he tells them,

Isaac and I are going

and Isaac and I are coming back.

Even as he reached for the knife,

Abraham knew that this wasn't the end of Isaac.

Even if, as Hebrews 11, 19 tells us,

God was going to raise Isaac from the dead.

There's already been a fair bit of life and death

talk language in the story of Abraham.

In verse 12 of Hebrews 11,

the writer calls Abraham as good as dead.

And that refers to the fact

that he was nearly 100 years old,

way past the age of having children

when God came to him and said,

your wife's going to have a baby.

And Sarah was 90.

She was well past her time of fertility.

There was no life left in Sarah's womb.

So when Isaac was born,

Abraham knew that God had already performed a miracle.

He brought life from a place of death.

And that's why when God told Abraham

to sacrifice Isaac,

Abraham could get up the next morning

and go and do it,

even although it contradicted

what God had promised him.

Maybe we could say

that Abraham could do what God told him

because it contradicted

what God had promised him.

He could contemplate sacrificing Isaac

because he knew that that wasn't the end,

because he knew

that God would not break his promises.

Living in Edinburgh,

the 21st century,

these things are hard for us

to get our heads right.

You know, for a long time,

our society in general

has believed that the material

is all there is.

But Abraham lived in a culture

when that wasn't the case.

For Abraham,

there was this life

and there was an afterlife.

And Abraham believed that God

was the God of both.

Abraham's so utterly convinced

that if it came to it,

God was going to raise Isaac from the dead

because he was utterly convinced

that God would not fail

in delivering the promises,

the covenant promises

that he'd made.

Puritan Thomas Watson tells us

that there's an important lesson

for us here as well.

He says,

God's to be trusted

when his providences

run contrary to his promises.

When his providences

run contrary to his promises.

So when our faith is in Christ,

we can trust that God

is doing what is ultimately best for us,

even when it doesn't feel

anything like that at the time to us.

Christian, the circumstances

of your life at this moment

are not indicative

of your eternal life

with God in glory.

I wonder if you feel today

like God's taking his eye off you.

Maybe you're walking with the Lord

and you feel like,

this is not how my circumstances

should be.

Maybe you're up against the wall

financially.

Maybe you're dealing with a diagnosis

that you were not expecting.

Maybe the relationship

with your family

has hit an all-time low.

Maybe you've stepped out in faith

and you feel like things

are just getting harder

and harder.

What Abraham's teaching us

to keep trusting the Lord.

Don't compromise

on listening

to what he is saying

and obeying

the things

that he says.

Even when you feel like

the way he's shaping your life

is not what you expected.

Scottish minister Sinclair Ferguson,

he wrote that Abraham

had faith

that looks away from self

and rests on the faithfulness

of God.

Your circumstances,

no matter how difficult,

are not a reflection

on your faith,

as though the more faith you have,

the fewer struggles

you should have.

The Old Testament book of Job

makes that very clear for us.

And in the New Testament as well,

the Apostle Paul,

he says that

his faith in Christ

resulted in tremendous

trials and difficulties.

Yet Paul knew God's promises

and he knew

that the promises

that God made to his people

were unbreakable.

In Romans he writes,

for I'm sure that

neither death,

nor life,

nor angels,

nor rulers,

nor things present,

nor things to come,

nor powers,

nor heights,

nor depth,

nor anything else

in all creation

will be able to separate us

from the love of God

in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We can have faith

in the promises

God makes us

because nothing can separate

God's people

from God's love.

And it's worth

reminding ourselves as well

that this is not

a blind faith.

We're not being asked

to blindly follow

what God says.

We're being asked

to follow what God says,

but not blindly.

So Abraham

could follow

God's command

because he'd seen

God working

throughout his life.

He'd had evidence

of God's faithfulness.

When Abraham

left the land

of his fathers

and he went out,

he didn't know

where he was going

and yet God

was gracious to him.

When Abraham

was with his nephew Lot

and they were deciding

which land

to pick

for their people,

Abraham gave Lot

first choice

and Lot chose

the good land

and yet God

blessed Abraham

in the land

that wasn't meant

to be as good.

And when Abraham

pretended that Sarah,

his wife,

wasn't his wife

to save his own skin,

twice,

God was gracious

to him.

R.C. Spurl said,

faith isn't blind.

Faith is trusting

in what you have

good reason

to believe.

Abraham believed God

because,

was faithful

because Abraham

had seen

God's faithfulness.

In what ways

are we seeing

God's faithfulness

in our lives

today?

Have you failed

to see God's faithfulness?

If you're investigating

Christianity

and you've come

here tonight,

how did you even

end up here?

What was it

that brought you here?

Did you think

it was pure coincidence?

Or do you think

something,

someone,

was coordinating

events to bring you

here so you would

hear about Jesus?

God doesn't need

to speak to you

audibly like he did

to Abraham

to show you

that he's at work.

God's orchestrating

everything that happens

at all times

in the whole world

and in your life.

One way we see

God at work

every day

is when we see

people who were

unbelievers

that are now

believers.

How he changed

people who

once loved

the things

that God

disapproves of

and now long

to listen to

and obey

the commands

that God gives.

And the church

itself

across the world

for all the

imperfections

of its people

is evidence

that God

keeps his promises.

The Bible

promises that

the church

is going to

exist until

Christ comes

back.

And from

12 disciples

2,000 years

ago

we've now got

2.26

billion people

who say

that they

follow the

Lord.

Our

promise-keeping

God

keeps keeping

his promises.

Finally

and briefly

the

incomparable

provision.

When God

stopped

Abraham

from sacrificing

Isaac

it wasn't

just an end

to the

sacrifice.

It didn't

just become

abandoned.

Abraham

looked up

and he saw

ram caught

in some

bushes

and Abraham

sacrificed

the ram

in place

of his

son.

God

substituted

one life

for another.

And this

transforms

this story

of a test

into a

revelation

of the

gospel.

The 18th

century

preacher

and theologian

Jonathan

Edwards

said,

this command

was a

great trial

of Abraham's

obedience

and faith

and also

a type

of what

God

the Father

was afterwards

to do

in his

son.

God

provided

a ram

as a

replacement

for Isaac.

But Abraham

told Isaac

in verse

8 that

God

will

provide

the

lamb.

Abraham

sacrificed

a ram

but a

lamb was

coming.

The first

readers of

this story,

the Israelites

who wandered

in the desert

with Moses,

they experienced

the saving

power through

a lamb.

When they

were in

Egypt and

they were

leaving,

they were

in slavery,

God sent

plagues on

Egypt and

he said

to the

Israelite

people,

kill a

lamb and

daub the

blood on

the frame

of your

door and

I will

pass over

your houses.

Those people

knew that

God,

through a

lamb,

saved the

life of

their

firstborn.

And in

subsequent

generations,

they would

bring lamb

to the

temple,

not far,

the temple

was built

not far

from where

this whole

incident took

place.

And those

lambs were

killed as

payment for

the sins

of the

people.

But all

those

sacrifices,

all those

lambs,

were mere

pictures of

the one who

was going to

be the

ultimate

lamb.

Jesus,

God's

only

unique

son,

who like

Isaac,

himself

carried the

wood up

the hill

where he

was going

to be

sacrificed.

Who like

Isaac,

went willingly

to the

altar to

give his

life.

But unlike

Isaac on

Mount

Moriah,

there was

no angelic

voice calling

halt on

Mount

Calvary.

Jesus died

for our

sin.

He was

the substitute

for us.

There could

be no

substitute for

the ultimate

substitute.

Jesus,

the one that

John the

Baptist called

the Lamb

of God

who takes

away the

sin of

the world,

died on

that cross.

And when

he died,

even his

best friends

were crestfallen.

The dreams

that they had

that this was

the promised

Messiah,

the long

prophesied

Savior,

had been

dashed in

the most

terrible way.

And while the

disciples didn't

get it yet,

generations

before,

Abraham knew

that death

wasn't the

end.

He had

faith that

death had

no power

to stop

God.

And he

was right.

On the

third day,

Jesus rose

again,

showing that

God provided

his son as

a true

and a

complete

atonement

for our

sin.

He took

on our

sin.

We,

through faith,

put on

his

righteousness.

The lesson

of the trial

of Abraham

is not,

like Abraham,

you can do

anything you

put your

mind to.

It's not,

no matter how

bad things you

get,

you can

overcome.

It's not,

climb that

mountain,

claim that

reward.

The real

lesson is

Jehovah

Jireh,

the Lord

will provide.

God the

Father

provided

dearly,

expensively,

for our

forgiveness

by bringing

the metaphorical

knife across

the throat

of his

pure,

innocent,

only begotten

son.

Paul writes

in Romans

8,

God

didn't

spare

his

only

son

to

fulfill

the

promises

that he

made to

Abraham

that through

his

seed

the whole

world

would be

blessed.

God's

love

what could

you

possibly

love

that you

let stop

you

coming

wholly

and

completely

to this

God?

Amen.

Let's pray.

Lord God,

we thank you

for your

holy word.

We thank you

for the

promises

that it

contains.

we thank

you that

you do

not call

us to

a blind

faith,

but to

have faith

in the

things that

we have

faithfully

recorded

for us

in the

Bible,

that our

God did

not spare

his only

son,

but gave

him up

for us.

Help us

put to

death in

our own

lives any

hard-heartedness

or habits

that are

keeping us

from putting

all our

faith in

your

promises.

We pray

in Jesus'

name.

Amen.