The Greatest Test of Faith

Genesis 22:1-19
Gregory Broderick | Sunday, July 31, 2022
Copyright © 2022, Gregory Broderick

Our hero Abraham experienced many tests of faith in his life.  Called out of a prominent family in a civilized city to go and live in an underdeveloped backwater with no family, no connections, and no help.  Indeed, he did not even know the destination when he set out.  Then he faced a severe famine and a threat from a powerful king, family separation, and a sudden and heroic rescue of his nephew Lot.  An unfulfilled longing for a son and an heir.  Another run-in with a powerful king.  Then sending away his firstborn son Ishmael.  Some of these tests he passed, and some of these tests he failed.  He was a man of faith, but like many of us, he sometimes let his fear interfere with his faith and cause him to convulsively sin.

In our text this morning, well past 100 years of age, Abraham faces the greatest test:   “Take your son, your only son, your son Isaac, the son you love, and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.”  In other words, “Kill him and burn him up.”  This is a difficult test, the most difficult test ever encountered by a mere mortal, in my opinion.  And the great man of God Abraham passes the test.  Not by the skin of his teeth, but in glory, resolutely showing remarkable, incredible, humbling, God-glorifying and inspiring faith.  Abraham’s response is somewhat unbelievable, a pinnacle of faith among all recorded in God’s word.  It is probably the greatest demonstrative act of faith by any man or woman who ever lived.  So let us take a look at it this morning with joy.

1. The Great Test

God is always testing His people and molding them.  It is not to gain new information, for He knows all.  But it is to build up our faith, to inspire and encourage others, and to mold or conform our character from its mixed state so that we become more and more like Christ.  God’s ultimate purpose is not our ease and comfort.  He is not the false God of health and wealth that so much of the evangelical world  has invented and enjoys.  No, God has greater and better things in store for us than money or houses or whatever else it is that we may think we want.  Caesar may have bought the masses off cheaply with bread and circuses, but God is better than Caesar.  God is interested in our eternal good, not in our temporary or earthly comfort.  So God puts us through the tough stuff like a football coach who knows that the sweat and suffering in July and August practices will result in championships in January.  God burns away the dross and the impurities with uncomfortable heat and flame and  pressure, knowing that, when he has tried and purified us, we shall come forth as gold.

Even our good is not God’s ultimate purpose.  His ultimate purpose is the greater manifestation of His own infinite glory.  We are quite fortunate that He chooses to display His glory, in part, to us and through us.  So we may not like these difficulties and tests when they come, but they are in service of the greatest good—His glory—and of our personal good.

In our text this morning, Abraham is put to the greatest test:  “Kill your son and burn him up.  Do it because I, the Lord, said so.”  No explanation, no preparation.  Just a clear assignment:  “Here is what you are to do.”

Now, this, of course, would be a challenging assignment for anyone.  Just imagine yourself in this position.  “Go and risk your own life” is a tough assignment.  But virtually any parent would quickly choose that assignment over “Watch your child die,” much less “Kill him yourself.”  It seems too much to bear.  And then, on top of “Kill him yourself” it is “Burn him up.”  It is too horrible even for most of us to consider.  Remember Hagar in Genesis 21 went about a bowshot away from her son and sobbed because she could not stand to sit there and watch him die.  Imagine if you had to do it with your own hand.

As bad as this would be for anyone, it was even worse for faithful Abraham.  He had waited a long time, many, many years, for the birth of Isaac.  We are told back in Genesis 11 that Sarai was barren.  This was a long time.  They were married.  So he had probably come to terms with it:   “I won’t have children.  I won’t have a son and an heir.  It will be okay.”  Yet in Genesis 12, God promises to make Abraham into a great nation.  He said, “To your offspring I will give this land” in Genesis 12:7.  It must have seemed almost too good to be true even at that advanced age—offspring.  And then God reiterates the promise in Genesis 13, to make Abraham’s offspring like the dust.  And again in Genesis 15 in the covenant, God speaks of “your descendants.”  So again this promise keeps coming.

It is a deep and longing desire that Abraham had for a son and an heir, and Sarai too.  Remember Genesis 16—they try out the Hagar solution.  It was a bad move, but it shows the depth of their desire for a son and an heir.  In Genesis 15, when God comes to Abraham and makes many promises to him, what is Abraham’s response?  “What can you give me, since I remain childless?  You have given me no children.”  And in Genesis 17, when God reiterates the promise again, Abraham says, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old?  Will Sarai bear a child at the age of ninety?”  It was really, in a way, too much to hope for.

Then it happened.  What joy!  The child is born—Isaac, the child, in Genesis 21, is born.  A true son of both Sarah and Abraham, a son of the promise, through whom the Messiah would come—the covenant son, with whom God would establish His everlasting covenant (Gen. 17:19) and through whom God would reconcile His chosen people in Christ (Gen. 21:12).  So this great son comes and there is great joy.

But not only that, Ishmael, who we might call the Plan B son, is sent off, so “Isaac is all that I have left.”  It was probably a comfort to Abraham in his sorrow over sending Ishmael away:  “At least I have Isaac.”  And Isaac is now growing into a young man.  He is growing.  He is learning.  We are living in the way that God intended.  Abraham and Sarah with Isaac only.  There is no messy Hagar the half-wife or Ishmael, lurking about to bring a cloud over this time.  In this sense, Isaac was the only son, the only son that they had left.  And they seemed to have lived like this for some lengthy period.  It is not totally clear.  The text just says, “Some time later.”  But from the context, it looks like it might have been ten years or so that they lived in this sort of golden era of Sarah, Abraham, and Isaac.  He is old enough at this point to carry the wood.  He is old enough to ask logical questions of his father.

This ten years or so must have been a joyful and wonderful time.  The promise had been fulfilled.  The problems have been dealt with, or at least are out of sight and out of mind.  Peace and prosperity have come to us, and a son, a hope, and a future (Gen. 21:22–34).  And probably they thought to themselves:  “All those tough times are behind us now, and none of the fears and uncertainties are ahead of us now.  So we can enjoy our lives.  We can enjoy our promised son and our golden years.”  Then this: “Take your son, your only son, your son Isaac, the son you love, and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.”  This must have come as a terrible blow.  If there is a harder task or a harder circumstance, I truly do not know of it.

This is a reminder to us that our tests and our trials will last all of life.  Most of us can deal with difficulty for a season.  But an ongoing test, a lifelong test or a challenge, is difficult.  You cannot “be done.”  Yet we are called to just such a life in Christ.  Matthew 24:13 says, “He who stands firm to the end will be saved.”  Not “He who stands firm at the start”; not “He who stands firm in the middle”; but “to the end.”  We are to be, as Pastor Mathew constantly reminds us, TULIP Christians.  The “P” stands for perseverance—to the end.  Without the P, we are false.  We are third-soil people.  We are TULI people, not TULIP.  And God’s garden in glory has only TULIPs.  We must constantly examine ourselves and pass these tests of faith to mold us, to encourage us, and to be built up, lest we prove to be third-soil, lest we prove to be false.

There are so many examples of these TULI-type people in the Bible.  Think of Judas.  Think of Demas.  Think of Gehazi.  Think of King Asa, with a good beginning and a bad end.  We, of course, have personal experience with that in the life of the church as well.  People who seem to be alive, or even on fire for Christ, suddenly turn or slowly fade away.  While we live, we will constantly face trials and temptations and tests.  We cannot retire from life in Christ, or from our progressive sanctification.  We will never have “arrived” in this life; but must continue to seek grace to meet and pass every test of faith until we go to God in glory.

You may be asking at this point, “How many tests do I have to pass?”  The answer is, “All of them,” no matter how many God has for you.  “How many trials and temptations will I have to face?”  The answer is, “All of them,” all those that God has for you.  You see, it won’t be the same for everyone.  God has a custom plan, tailor-made to shape you and to perfect you until you go to glory.  It will be different for everyone.  The quality, the quantity, the duration of God’s tests will fit your need for your life.  But if you are in Christ, the tests and trials will be tailor-made for your eternal good.  For God works all things for the good of those who love Him and whom He has called for His purposes.

We must be very careful never to think that we have done enough for God, that we deserve to be finished.  There is a time to be finished, but it is not in this life.  He and He alone will determine where to stop, but for your best.  These tests and trials are nothing to fear.  They might not be enjoyable, but they are nothing to fear.  They are for our best.

Just look at Abraham, our hero of the faith.  He is maybe 110 or 120 years old by this time in our passage.  It has been decades since God called him out of Ur.  He has passed those many tests—I listed them at the beginning—and very challenging tests.  He passed them.  He had just passed one of the roughest:  “Send off your son Ishmael.”  And now, after that, instead of getting a break, he gets the toughest test at the end.  We look at Abraham and think, “Abraham deserves a break by this point.”  But God said, “No, I have something better for Abraham.”  Indeed, it seems that all those earlier tests, those progressively more difficult tests, were meant to build up Abraham’s spiritual muscles for this Herculean test that he would face at the end.  Abraham had had decades of preparation.

I have anecdotally observed that the toughest tests are often reserved for the most spiritual  and spiritually developed people.  God gives more, it seems, only to those who can handle it.  As the Scripture tells us, you will not be tested beyond what you can bear.  So if you are facing a difficult, difficult test, it means you can bear it with God’s help and with the power of the Holy Spirit.  Just look at your godly senior Pastor.  His whole life has been one test after the other, and  he is passing Olympic-level tests every day today, to continue to fight the good fight, to finish the race, and to keep the faith as an example for us, prepared by decades of trusting in God and living for God and living by God.  And may we follow that example and the example of Abraham and build up our spiritual muscles for the tests that are ahead, rather than looking for rest and retirement in this life.

Brothers and sisters, let us never think that we have done enough for God, that we have gone on long enough for God, that we have earned a retirement or a period of rest and ease from God.  Let us never think that God owes us anything.  After all, He has done everything for us.  He gave us life.  He gave us reasonable minds.  He gave us intelligence.  He gives us health in one degree and another.  He gives us food and water and much, much more.   And, of course, He gives us life in Christ.  We deserved death.  We deserved wrath.  We deserved judgment for our rebellious sin against Him.  And yet He paid it all in Christ.  He paid it all in Christ who died the death that we deserved and suffered the punishment in our behalf in His glorious act of substitutionary atonement on the cross.

Let us never say, “Too far.”  Let us never look and say, “Too much.”  Christ never said, “Too far.”  Christ never said, “Too much.”  He went all the way for us and for the greater glory of God.  So when we hear God calling to us, let us not say, “Not again,” or “Not right now.”  But let us say, like the man of faith, Abraham, “Here I am, ready and joyful to hear God’s commands and to do them, not out of grudging obligation but out of thanksgiving to God and in the joyful expectation that they will result in my good.”

Now we have to ask ourselves:  Why this great test to Abraham?  We are not explicitly told.  Verse 12 says, “Now I know that you fear God because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”  So we get some indication here of the reason.  As I said, this was not for God to find out what would happen or to gain new information.  God already knew the outcome.  He knows the end from the beginning (Isa. 46:10).  So God was not waiting on pins and needles suspensefully, hoping to see how it would all turn out, rooting for Abraham but unable to know what would happen.

So why the test, then?  My view is so that Isaac would not become an idol to destroy Abraham and Sarah and the household of faith.  We know that anything can become an idol.  Anyone, any human being, is subject to the temptation of idolatry.  John Calvin is reported to have said, “The human heart is an idol factory.”  The devil wants to push us into idolatry to win a battle against God and destroy us.  So he tries various tactics to push us toward idolatry.  Remember in Luke 4, he takes Jesus into the desert and he tempts Him with earthly needs, like food and so on.  He tempts Jesus—it was a lie—he tempts Him with all the kingdoms of the world.  “I can give them to you.”  He tempts Jesus to test God in an improper way.

So he will try these various tactics—hunger or need, money or power, assurance or certainty.  He will try and he will keep on trying.  He perseveres in his own way.  It did not work on the Lord Jesus, God-and-man, but the reality is, it can work on us, mere men and women.  While we live, we are a mix of the old and the new nature.  The old man is still there.  Sin is still crouching at the door, waiting to pounce on us and dominate us.  The embers of our old sinful nature still smolder, waiting for the right gust of wind or the right fuel to burst into flames.

So we must remain diligent against idolatry in our own lives.  And surely that must have been a risk with Isaac.  It is sort of an obvious risk.  They waited a really long time for him.  They were barren.   Even after the promise, they had to wait another twenty or twenty-five years for Isaac to come along.  And they were 100 years old and 90 years old by the time he was born.  That is a long time to wait.   And, of course, they had sent the other son off.  So their thinking was, “This is all I have left.”  He was their only son.  And it is very difficult to long for something for a period of time and not to get it.  The Bible tells us in Proverbs 13:12, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.”  But sometimes it can be harder to let go of that long-held hope which finally seems to have come through.  We perhaps see shades of it in Genesis 21:10, when Ishmael is sent off.  Remember, Sarah said, “That slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son.”  You can hear the fear behind it perhaps.  Perhaps they had begun to idolize Isaac in that decade or so after Ishmael was sent off, or perhaps it was just a risk in the offing, sort of a natural risk.  “We will put anything on the altar except for Isaac.  If you want all the bulls and all the sheep and all the goats, fine.  But Isaac is a lot to ask.”

Rev. Perry often said, “God is not interested in the ninety-nine things that you placed on the altar, but in the one thing you kept in your pocket.”  That one thing is the idol.  Now, an idol is, just so we are on the same page, anything we put before or over or beside God.  Anything can be an idol.  Money can be an idol.  Husband can be an idol.  Children or grandchildren can be an idol.  Fame or power or property or reputation or ease or position or title—anything can become an idol.  Even good things—most of those things I mentioned are good things—even good things, like a promised son, can become an idol.  And this issue is somewhat implied in Genesis 22:12:  “You have not withheld from me your only son.”  If we are withholding something from God, that is an idol.  It does not mean they did it, but it means it was part of the issue.

Remember from Genesis 15:2–3 that this son, this promised son, was the thing that they wanted above all else.  After all, they had just about everything else.  Abraham had become a prominent, even powerful, man in the region.  They had a large household with servants.  They had many flocks and many herds.  (GTB)  So in an earthly sense, they had it all.  But this lack of a son rendered all of their political and material prosperity somewhat empty.  So God called them to put that thing on the altar.  It was a test and a reminder to seek first the kingdom of God, to put God first, to live for Him who died for us, and not to live for the things that He gives us.  So that was the great test.  And, of course, Abraham passed and he put Isaac on the altar.

2. The Greater Test

But there is an even greater test than that.  I said this was the greatest test ever faced by any mere man, and that is true.  But it is not the greatest test ever passed or the greatest thing ever done.  God did something even greater, and at an even greater cost.  He sent His Son, His only Son, His Son Jesus, the Son whom He loved, perfectly and from all eternity, to die as a sacrifice.

It is difficult to accurately state the infinite and unbelievable love of God in this act.  Before all time, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit met in the eternal council.  There would be a problem with this future creation.  Adam, made by God very good, and his wife Eve, also made very good, were also made with free will.  They were posse non peccare (possible not to sin).  Possible to sin and possible not to sin.  But they used their free will and freely chose to sin; deceived by the devil, a fallen angel who hates God and who wars against God and God’s people.

God had given His various laws in the garden, the paradise of His creation.  Man was to work it and to care for it, to be fruitful and to multiply.  Man was to rule that garden, the creation, as God’s delegate, with the woman as his expertly engineered help.  Among the things they were not to do was to eat of was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or, as God said, “You will surely die” (Gen. 2:17).  Man totally failed to keep God’s perfect and benevolent law.  Adam failed to be the head, sitting by dumb while the devil tempted Eve.  He should have protected her and bore the burden of the headship.  Eve failed by believing the devil’s lie:  “God is secretly against you.  He is actually holding you down.  You will not surely die, as God said.  In fact, you will be like God.  You can greater even than God made you.  Throw off God’s yoke and be free.  Be equal to or greater than God.”  She rejected God’s clear word and leaned on her own understanding.  She decided the fruit was good for her.  God said it was not good for her, but she decided it was good for her.  It was pleasing to the eye, she thought, and desirable for gaining wisdom, she concluded (Gen. 3:6).  So she took it, she ate it, and she gave some to her husband.  And he took it and he ate it, all in violation of God’s word.

It was a frontal assault on God’s authority.  “You cannot tell me what to do.”  And it was a total rejection of God’s goodness and God’s sovereignty.  As a result, they were cursed (Gen. 3:16–19).  They became subject to death.  “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).  They warped the whole creation and their own relationships.  Where before there was peace and joy in God’s order between them, now there was striving and strife and enmity and againstness among them.  They became corrupted in their own nature.  They defaced the image and likeness of God in them.  They were no longer posse non peccare (maybe they will sin and maybe they will not).  They were no longer morally neutral or free to choose.  They were now non posse non peccare (not possible not to sin).  In other words, they became slaves to sin (Rom. 6:17; John 8:34).  They destroyed their relationship with one another.  They destroyed their relationship with God, and beyond their ability to repair.  They now owed an infinite debt due to their infinite sin against infinite God, and they could never repay it, for they, like us, were mere finite beings.  No longer would God come and fellowship with them in the cool of the day.  That relationship is ruined.  Instead, they would hide from Him, due to their shame for their sin.  He would cast them out of His perfect garden, His good creation, in righteous judgment.

In case you were wondering what this has to do with you, it is not just their problem.  It is our problem.  You see, they were the representatives of all mankind.  So when they fell, we fell with them (1 Cor. 15:22).  When we were born, we inherited their corrupt nature, even before birth (Rom. 5:12–19).  We are all born spiritually dead (Ps. 51:5), dead in our transgressions and sins, and like them, no way to repair this or solve this on our own.  Man became wicked through this Fall, with no way out.  Every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time, and still is (Gen. 6:5; 8:21).  So we are steeped in sin from birth.  We are born spiritually dead and under God’s just judgment due to our sin nature.

If that seems unjust to you—it is not—but if that seems to be unjust to you, know that we have compounded the matter.  Due to our sin nature, we actually sin.  It will not take a lot of self-examination for you to figure that out.  But due to our sin nature, we actually sin.  So it is not just a theoretical problem.  We sin in the real world, every day all the time.  Man sins all the time.  Just look around.  Theft, murder, genocide, adultery, sexual immorality, greed, lust, pride, idol worshiping, dishonoring of father and mother and every authority instituted by God, lying, coveting—every form of wickedness.  All mankind—every man, every woman, every child—does it all the time.  And the ultimate sin is when we contumaciously refuse to repent, rejecting the authority of God, who made us and who sustains us even now (Heb. 1:2–3), and we reject His free offer of mercy.

Now, if the story stopped there, man’s creation and existence might well be regarded as a cosmic tragedy or a farcical joke—made very good, made perfect  but threw it all away, trying to improve on God’s perfection.  A Shakespearean tragedy.  Fooled into trusting the devil, who is evil incarnate, and distrusting God, who is rich in mercy and great in love for us, trusting the one who hates you and distrusting the one who loves you and cares for you.  If the story stopped there, it would be a tragedy or a joke.

Praise the Lord, the story does not stop there.  Way back in that eternal council of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, God knew that all of this would come to pass.  So He made provision.  He did not shelve the creation project or leave mankind to his just deserts of eternal hell.  No, God made a way for man to be reconciled to Him.  Way back in that eternal council, God the Son, who is very God from all eternity, agreed that He would become a man, lowering Himself.  He would live a perfect life, the life that we were supposed to live.  He would obey God perfectly in thought, in word, in deed, in action and inaction.  And then, after that perfect life, that sinless life, uncorrupted by sin or the sinful nature, He would offer Himself as a sacrifice.  The full wrath of God, infinite and terrible, would be poured out on Him, and He would die the death that we deserve.  Remember, I said, “The wages of sin is death.”  Jesus Christ never sinned, so He was not subject to death.  And yet He would die the death we deserved, not for His sin but for ours.  And then God the Father raised Him up after three days to show that His payment in our behalf was effective.  It worked.  It was sufficient.  It was enough.  Our sin debt is no longer outstanding but marked “Paid in Full” by the blood of Jesus Christ.

As our Senior Pastor, Pastor Mathew, lays it all out in chapter 10 of his exposition of Hebrews:  the Old Testament sacrificial system, those Old Testament priests, could never atone for our sins with the blood of bulls and goats and so on.[1]  They themselves were sinful men, number one, and number two, the blood of bulls and goats simply cannot pay the infinite price.  The most that they could do was to act as a temporary band-aid or a stand-in, really pointing to our true need for a perfect sacrifice of infinite value in Jesus Christ.  So in the fullness of time, God sent that perfect and sufficient sacrifice which would satisfy our debt, which would quench His wrath against us once and for all.  God the Son became man.  That was so that He could be our representative, just like Adam was our representative.

He suffered every temptation and trial just like us—actually worse than us, because He never gave in and He never sinned, so He felt the full force of temptation.  He was chosen by God the Father.  He suffered and He was perfect, never sinning.    It was not some theoretical temptation.  We see the temptations, the strong temptations, in His life.  He was especially tempted not to go the wonderful, awful cross, with its physical agony and infinite spiritual torment.  It was not an easy thing for Him to come and to suffer and to die.  Mark 14:34 said he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears.  Why?  Because it was hard.  He sweated blood.  He even said “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me.”  It was not a small thing.  It was not an easy thing.  But He also said, “Not my will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

As Pastor Mathew notes on pages 102–103 of Muscular Christianity, “Jesus was not asking God to save Him from physical death; many people had experienced the physical death of crucifixion.  But He was greatly troubled because of the eternal death He was about to die for the sin of the world. . . . He was about to suffer what the book of Revelation calls the second death, to be forsaken by His Father and cut off from His cherished communion with Him.  He was about to go to hell.”  He was about to go to hell and then He did.  Nailed to the cross, lifted up  and mocked, all prepared as a sacrifice.  And the hour came.  Like Isaac was bound on the wood, Jesus was bound on the wood, and the judgment was about to fall on Him, right over His head.  Not a knife in His Father’s hand, or even fire to burn Him up, but much worse—the infinite wrath of God against our sin.  And then down it came, in full force: all of God’s burning fury and intense wrath for millions and billions and trillions of sins.  All the wrath raining down without stoppage, without break, and without moderation.  All—until it was all poured out and finished and satisfied.  No angel intervened to say, “Do not lay a hand on the boy.  Do not do anything to him.”  Isaac, the only son of Abraham, was spared.  But Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was not.  He drank the whole cup of God’s wrath down to its dregs until the winepress of God’s wrath was drained and empty.  It was intense and terrible, and we see this on the cross.

He cried out in agony, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”  You hear the intensity and the agony.  Of course, He knew the answer:  for mercy, for justice, for the love of God, so that God could be both just and the one who justifies us, the one who justifies those who have put their faith in Jesus Christ (Rom. 3:26).  God is perfect in justice, perfect in mercy, and perfect in love.  And so to satisfy His justice and yet to show mercy in love, Jesus had to pay it all on our behalf because God loved us.  He loved us so much that He would do Himself what He would not require Abraham to do—sacrifice His own Son.  John 3:16 is a well-worn verse.  We see it all the time.  But stop and consider it for a moment:  “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  What great love!

Never, ever doubt that God loves you.  He loves you so much that He did the maximum.  He paid the highest possible price, the precious blood of Christ, the God-man.  And He paid it for you.  All you must do to receive it is to believe into Him.  In other words, to trust in Him, to put  your faith in Him alone for your salvation.  And you can do it today.  What wondrous love is this!  What amazing grace!  What a mighty God we serve!  We read in the psalms, and it is true in light of this:  “He is good and His love endures forever.”

He loved us and He continues to love us.  Romans 8:32 reminds us, “He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all—how will He not also, along with Him, graciously give us all things?”  Isaac was spared, but Jesus was not.  So trust in this God.  Put your faith in Jesus Christ.  Repent of your sins.  Be saved today, and then live a life of love for Him who died for us.

 

[1] P. G. Mathew, Muscular Christianity:  Learning Endurance from the Book of Hebrews (Davis, CA: Grace and Glory Ministries, 2010), 97–107.