BULLETIN ARTICLE
2 June 2019
FAITH IN GOD
God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved son. Isaac was the heir that God had promised and Abraham had waited years for. We would expect Abraham to question God’s rather strange command. We would expect him to plead with God for Isaac as he pleaded for Sodom and Gomorrah, cities which God wanted to destroy. These cities were filled with wickedness yet Abraham pleaded with God to spare their destruction should some righteous people be found there. But Isaac was God’s fulfilment of his promise to Abraham to make him the father of many nations. Surely, pleading for Isaac, an innocent youth, to be spared would make a much stronger case.
Abraham was a man of great faith. However, even for this giant of faith, it must not have been easy to obey God’s command to sacrifice Isaac his precious son. He did not question or plead with God. He simply set off early in the morning with Isaac and two servants on their journey to Mount Moriah where the sacrifice was to take place.
Sometimes, God puts us in situations to test our faith and those situations would seem befuddling in human’s perspective. But faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance in what we do not see. Abraham did not seek to ‘see’, that is, to understand God’s command before he set his heart to obey God. His immediate actions showed his confidence in God. He brought wood and fire, rope and knife – demonstrating that he was prepared to sacrifice Isaac as God had commanded. Abraham obeyed despite not being told why because he trusted God to provide the needed sacrifice. What is sometimes beyond the grip of our understanding is within the grasp of our faith.
Abraham was already a very old man, probably about 120 years old when this event took place. By now, he had been tested many times, gone through many trials and hardships. His devotion to God would have been proven. Yet this test is by far the most severe and in the end, Abraham’s faith stood the test – “Now I know that you fear God” (Genesis 22:12).
Trials and tribulations visit us in all seasons of our lives. Our faith in God must hold fast until we breathe our last. In the words of Andrew Murray: “Faith is nothing but the receiving and committing of oneself to the word of the true God”. The writer of the Bible book of Hebrews wrote this about the faith of “ancients” like Abraham: “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him” (Hebrews 11:1,2,6). How is your faith in God?
