Have you ever had something tested? Perhaps you needed to have your water tested, or your blood tested, certainly if you’ve been through any length of education you’ve had your knowledge tested. In a test, generally what’s being looked for is some kind of quantifiable evidence that something is present, or perhaps not present. With the example of water, they’re testing to make sure that they don’t find any harmful bacteria. With the example of blood they’re making sure that there’s nothing funky going on inside you, and that you’ve got everything in the right ratios. Cholesterol not too high, iron not too low, you know how it is. And with education they’re testing to make sure that you’ve retained what’s been taught to you. But with faith, the test is more like the testing of a bridge. Perhaps you’ve seen it or perhaps you’ve not, but when a bridge is tested, they place more and more weight on it, until they get to what is really by all standards beyond reasonable for a bridge to hold on any normal occasion, to make sure that it can withstand the normal traffic load, and then some. The testing of faith is like this. When our faith is tested we are asked to trust that God will be true to His promises in utterly impossible circumstances, circumstances that truly put His creative power on display. Even, circumstances where our faith, if it weren’t put there by God and kept there secure, would surely fail.
Abraham in Genesis 22 has his faith tested. But in what way? In testing whether or not he would kill and burn his own son in obedience to God so that then, finally God would accomplish the gospel of Christ Jesus for Abraham and for the whole world? No, but in faith that even against all impossibility, against the power of death and the ripping away of life, and of promise, that even in the midst of all of that, that God would keep His promises.
The chapter begins with God speaking to Abraham and asking him to go and to do the unspeakable. To go out to the land of Moriah and take his son Isaac, his son that was long promised to him as the promised son, who would come by impossible means to 100 year old Abraham and 90 year old Sarah who was barren her whole life. Remember also, that the promising of this son wasn’t just important because Abraham and Sarah really wanted a son but weren’t able to have one. If we go back to Genesis 3:15, we are reminded that the salvation from our captivity to sin, death, and the devil was to come from a son, a promised seed who would finally crush the head of the serpent. And throughout the Scriptures, and even in extra biblical writings what we find is that not only did all of the Israelite people look in hope toward the arrival of this promised son, but every woman at the arrival of every child was living in hopeful expectation that they might just so be the one to give birth to the Messiah. So, when God starts talking about promised offspring, promised seed language Abraham of course knows exactly what the Lord is talking about, this is a matter not of sentimentality alone, but of Abraham’s salvation, of the salvation of the whole world.
And on this morning, God is asking Abraham to test his faith. The promised seed will come through Abraham, and not just Abraham but it will, it must come through Abraham and Sarah together. Abraham already tested that theory with Ishmael, and it didn’t exactly go to well. Abraham learned from this that God’s promises can not be helped along by our efforts. Not by a movement of will, or right action can we create or make for ourselves or bring unto ourselves the promised seed. This is a matter of relying on and receiving from the Lord who alone will provide all that is needed to fulfill His promises to us.
But the question today that the text in Genesis is implicitly asking is what happens when God pulls back those promises toward Himself. What happens when after out of utterly impossible God brings forth a promised seed, and then demands that you go and put him to death, this promised seed. Isn’t the promised seed supposed to defeat Satan and free us from bondage? How can he do this if we sacrifice him as a lamb on the sacrificial altar? And that’s not even to make mention of the ethical mess that this is. This is the question of faith. The very question that the apostles so many times had to wrestle with. This is the very question that caused Peter to go from “blessed” to “Satan” in the course of less than 10 verses in Matthew 16, when, after confessing the Divinity of Jesus, Peter then said, NO, far be it from you to suffer, die, and rise again! Peter’s response was a bold cry, perhaps he thought that it showed a strong faith. No! Don’t take away our promise, redeem us, end our captivity! But what Peter did not understand, where his faith needed to grow, was in its reliance upon God to fulfill His promises in the midst of utter impossibility.
But Abraham, Abraham has already seen God work promises out of utterly impossibility. So when God says, “Abraham, take your son, your only son, whom you love, and sacrifice him,” instead of protesting, no far be it from you to command that of me Lord, he wakes up earlier than usual to allow God to welcome more impossibility into the mix. Which is quite odd considering that when God said He would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for being exceedingly wicked, he pleaded with God, saying, “Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” Something else was at work here in Abraham’s response. That something was a faith in the promise of God. God would grant this promised seed, and this promised seed would bring about the redemption of Abraham and the whole world, even in death. If Isaac were to die, then he would be resurrected, there was no other possibility. And so, in like step with this faith Abraham placed the wood for the sacrifice upon Isaac’s shoulders and took the knife for the sacrifice, he wasn’t banking on God to change his mind and not go through with the sacrifice, yet also, he assured his two servants that both he and Isaac would return.
As Abraham offers up his only beloved son and has him carry his own wood to the mount where he’ll be sacrificed, so too God sends His only beloved Son, who is also Abraham’s seed, the promised seed and has Him carry His own wood to the mount where he would be sacrificed. Truly, “the Lord will provide a lamb for the sacrifice: my son.” And indeed it was so, that when Abraham said to Isaac, God will provide a lamb, my son, that indeed the seed of Abraham, the offspring of Abraham who was not Isaac but would come from Isaac, would be that singular promised seed, that lamb, that son, prophesied about in Genesis 3, promised in Genesis 15, and proclaimed as having come in Galatians 3. That singular seed is Jesus Christ the Son of God, the only Son of God, the beloved Son of God. For such a reason, the genealogy at the beginning of Matthew, reads, “the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, Son of David, Son of Abraham. Why is that important? Son of Abraham? This is why. Because God promised to Abraham that through Him would come a seed for his salvation, for the salvation of all people, and indeed that seed has come and His name is Jesus of Nazareth, the one of whom the Father says in Mark 1:11, you are my Son, with you I am well pleased. And so with a strong faith like Abraham’s we shall say also, if Christ our Messiah is to die, then He is to be resurrected, there is no other way. And indeed, the promised seed, the only beloved Son of God came to earth, died, and was resurrected, not as an obstacle for our salvation, but in this very coming, living, dying, and rising for us the promised seed though wounded, crushed the head of the Serpent, redeeming all those under his dominion, ushering in through His death, our eternal life.
So often we marvel at the tests of faith that people go through. When they suffer great loss or have that dreaded fear come true. We think to ourselves, wow, if that happened to me I don’t know if my faith would endure. But let me assure you of this one thing. The gospel itself is an obstacle to plain sense. Faith looks beyond what can be understood and what makes sense. Faith even, we could say, believes against impossibility itself. Faith believes that you, yes, even you, sinner that you are, are a child of God. Even the weakest faith, is one that has nothing to fear from external pressures. It already by its own definition is beyond reason, sense, and our personal abilities. Your faith will be tested, it will be stretched, it will strengthened, and by God’s grace is will grow. Not by your own strength of will, but by the power of the Holy Spirit who, without us, plants faith in our hearts, and keeps us in it, so that no sin, no struggle, no impossibility, will keep us from trusting in the promises of God, amen.
