I appreciate this series that Jon has entitled “Wrestling with God” in which he is highlighting Biblical accounts of people who for various reasons wrestled with God. Sometimes it is hard to identify with the heroes of the faith in the Bible whose walk with God seems like a 24-karat pure gold, perfect walk. When you dig deeper into some of these stories, you will discover that most of these individuals are revered and honored in spite of their flaws and failures which they overcame through faith. That is certainly true for the characters we are focusing on today, Abraham and Sarah in their search for prosperity.
This couple are held up as examples of people who obeyed God, and in many ways, they did but at other times rather than trust God, they took matters into their own hands and tried to accomplish spiritual purposes and fulfill divine promises by human means.
We first met Abram and Sarai (as they were first called) in Genesis 11 but it is in Genesis 12 when God admitted them to what some have called the “School of Faith.” Among the lessons I have learned from their story is that we never stop learning and growing. There are always new challenges to be faced, new battles to be fought, and new truths to be discovered.
As early as Habakkuk 2:4 in the sixth century BC then in Romans 1:17, Galatians 3:11, and Hebrews 10:38 in the New Testament in the first century then Martin Luther’s declaration in the 16th century AD, the mantra for believers is “the righteous will live by faith.” And Abraham and Sarah are extolled as examples.
In his Hall of Faith chapter Hebrews 11 the writer of Hebrews provides three windows into Abraham and Sarah’s walk of faith of. Here’s the first one in Hebrews 11:8-10:
8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
Abram was about my age when he faces this first test recorded in Genesis 12:1-4:
1 The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. 2 “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” 4 So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran.
I confess that I cannot imagine doing that—leaving your land and your family to embark upon a journey to an unknown land and an uncertain future all based on a promise of prosperity or blessing.
But I can identify with much of what follows as Abraham wrestles with God, choosing to take matters into his own hands to accomplish the desired ends rather than to trust that God will fulfill this promise without his help.
Here is an example of that in the very next test that Abraham faced once he has settled in the land recorded in Genesis 12:10-13:
10 Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. 11 As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. 12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”
Having passed the family test in his willingness to leave his family to follow God’s command, he failed the famine test to trust that God would provide in the face of dire circumstances. In the Old Testament, going down to Egypt is an often preferred alternative to trusting God. That may have been a natural choice but not a wise one because what this story really reveals is a character flaw that reappears in Genesis 20:2 when Abraham again lied about Sarah being his sister rather than his wife to protect his life and in doing so placing her as well as his future in a compromising, jeopardizing situation.
We are told while they were in Egypt, Abraham got rich, so now they face the risk that earthly prosperity could tamper with God’s plan. Once they are back in the land, Abraham made some right choices when he gave Lot his choice of pastureland (13:5–18), when he defeated the surrounding kings (14:1–16) and when he said no to the wealth of Sodom (14:17–24).
Before we are too critical of Abraham, let me ask, How much do we trust God when we wonder, “What if this were to happen?” Or “What if things don’t work out?” Or perhaps “What if I lose my job for telling the truth?”
The faith lesson for all of us to learn is that God’s promise of blessing is of greater value than searching for or settling for any other expression of prosperity. But the story doesn’t end here.
There is a second window of insight found in Hebrews 11 that focuses on another incident with which I cannot identify.
Can you imagine the conversation between this nearly 100-year-old man and his wife who is approaching 90? The Lord has promised that within the year we will have a son so we’ve got to keep trying. Sarah’s initial response was to laugh thinking to herself—Sure. Wink. Wink.
Here’s what the writer says in Hebrews 11:11-12:
11 By faith Abraham, even though he was past age—and Sarah herself was barren—was enabled to become a father because he considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
The actual event is recorded in Genesis 21:1–7:
1 Now the LORD was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what he had promised. 2 Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. 3 Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. 4 When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God commanded him. 5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. 6 Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” 7 And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”
But do you remember how they took matters into their own hands before trusting that God would do what seemed to be impossible? That part of their story is recorded in Genesis 16. When Sarah was unable to bear a child for Abraham, she offers her maidservant Hagar to her husband. He sleeps with her and she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son Ishmael. Once again taking matters into their own hands had long-term consequences. The conflict between Hagar and Sarah has been a generational conflict still present to this very day as the nation of Israel is still at war with other middle eastern tribes who are the descendants of Ishmael.
I doubt that the overwhelming odds or the seemingly impossible that we may face has nothing to do with bearing a child when you are nearly 100 years old. But we may face challenges in which it is easier to try to achieve our desired results on our own rather than trust God. The lesson to be learned is that God is able to fulfill his promises without anyone’s help.
Once the long-awaited promise is fulfilled and the son Isaac is born, the unthinkable happens. It is the third window into Abraham’s walk of faith recorded in Hebrews 11:17-19:
17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had received 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.” 19 Abraham reasoned that God could raise the dead, and figuratively speaking, he did receive Isaac back from death.
You will find that part of Abraham’s story in Genesis 22 where it is recorded that God tested Abraham by commanding him to take his beloved son Issac to Mt. Moriah and sacrifice him as a burnt offering. So, Abraham got up early the next morning and began the three-day journey with two of his servants and his son Isaac. As Abraham and Isaac went ahead to the place of sacrifice, he placed the wood on his son Isaac, and he carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac asked his father, “The fire and wood are here but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham assured him that, God would provide the lamb for the burnt offering.
After building the altar and placing the wood on it, he bound his son and laid him on the altar. Just as he raises the knife and is ready to sacrifice his son, the angel of the Lord stops him with the word he was hoping to hear—Genesis 22:12: “Do not lay a hand on the boy. Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” In that moment Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket which he took and sacrificed as a burnt offering instead of his son.
Abraham then called that place “The Lord Will Provide” and once again he received the promise of blessing with these words in Genesis 22:16-18: “I swear by myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”
God’s unthinkable test of commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son is matched by Abraham’s unimaginable faith. He heard God speak and chose to obey by faith knowing that God’s will never contradicts his promises. He held to the promise that through Isaac his offspring would become the blessing to the nations (Gen. 21:12) and according to the Hebrew writer he believed that even if God had allowed him to slay his son Isaac, God could raise him from the dead (Hebrews 11:17-19). Here’s the lesson to be learned from Abraham’s obedience—Faith does not require explanations, faith rests on promises.
What is most amazing about this story is how Abraham has learned to trust God totally. Because of his faith he had no expectation of losing his son. In Genesis 22:5 he said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” You cannot miss his confidence—“we will come back to you,”
This is the ultimate test. When he was called to go to an unknown land Abraham believed God and obeyed even when he did not know where. When he was promised a son when he and Sarah were both too old, he trusted God even when he did not know how. And here when asked to sacrifice that son of promise, he trusted God even when he did not know why. In our lives we may not know the where or the how or the why, but we can know the Who. Let me tell you Who the real hero of this story is. It is not Abraham but God.
Perhaps the reason this scene on Mt. Moriah unfolds as it does is because it provides a picture of another Father who was faced with the prospect of sacrificing His son. Twice in Genesis 22 (verses 6 and 8) it says, “the two of them went on together.” What this Father did when “he spared not his son be freely gave him up for us all” (Romans 8:29) was done with the willing consent of His Son who prayed “Not my will but yours be done.” Like Isaac this was the Son He loved, but in this instance, there is no substitute, no ram got in the thicket because this Son is the substitute. In response to Isaac’s question when he saw the fire and the wood, “Where is the lamb?” centuries later John the Baptist answered his question in John 1:29: “Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
Just as Abraham had placed on his son the wood for the sacrifice and provided the sheep as a substitute, Isaiah prophesied of this suffering servant in Isaiah 53:6: We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
The real point of this story is that you are Isaac, I am Isaac, we are all Isaac set free by the substitutionary sacrifice of God’s beloved Son. But let me remind you, also like Isaac for the duration of three days on their journey to the place of sacrifice the son was figuratively as good as dead to his father, this Son was literally raised to life on the third day.
That is what we remember today—the Lamb of God was sacrificed for our sins; the Son of God shed His blood and gave His body to atone for our sins; this resurrected Lord is loose in the world working to accomplish God’s grand purpose to bless all the peoples of the world until He comes again. Participating in this time of communion provides each of us with the opportunity to participate in His unifying body as we eat the bread and to share in His redeeming blood as we drink the cup.