The first time I took my driving test, my instructor said to me, ‘You’ll be all right, just so long as you don’t get Mr McRea as your examiner.’
You can imagine who I got. My left foot kept shaking on the clutch, I don’t know how many times I stalled, and my failure was a foregone conclusion from the first minute of the test.
On my second test, I didn’t fail. But neither did I pass. A quarter of a mile from the end of the test route, there was a nail in the road, and I sustained a puncture. Because I didn’t complete the route, I was given a ‘no result.’
I passed the third time. And on the basis of how that test went, I think I would have passed the second time, but for that pesky nail.
‘After these things God tested Abraham’ (verse 1a)
But what a test this was. When I became a father later in life than most (but nothing like as late as Abraham), this story changed from a Sunday School episode to a distressing narrative. How could you ask a parent to do this? What trauma did it leave in Isaac?
And those who hate our faith love to point to Bible stories like this one to say, look at what a cruel God your Scriptures describe. Do you really want us to believe in a God like this?
So come with me as we wrestle with this disturbing but profound passage. Abraham’s test of faith can illuminate our faith.
I’m going to divide this into three sections: speech, action, and provision.
Firstly, speech:
God speaks to Abraham and gives him this shattering assignment. Sacrifice Isaac, your son of the promise.
If somebody came to me today and said they believed God had called them to sacrifice one of their children, I would doubt whether they had heard God. Why would I say that now, and yet also maintain that Abraham did hear God?
The most important way in which we test whether a claim to hear God’s voice is true is by measuring it against what we know about the general will of God. Our basic plumbline for that is the Bible. Nothing beyond and outside the Bible has quite the same status, because it concludes where it does due to the supremacy of Christ.
In this case, we know from the story of Scripture that God is opposed to child sacrifice. Indeed, when the Israelites enter the Promised Land, one of the reasons he wants them to remove the existing people is that they practice child sacrifice, and it is an abomination to him.
So why not here? Because at this point, God has not yet revealed that. Abraham doesn’t have that particular yardstick to measure against. Now as we know with hindsight, God will ensure the child sacrifice doesn’t happen here, but at this juncture in history Abraham has no grounds to rule it out. He has heard God speak. Somehow, he gets himself together to respond.
There are many things we shall consider when we are wondering whether God has truly spoken to us, and especially if it is something surprising or unusual. There are some Christians who seem to think that the wackier it is, the more likely it is to be of God. And there are others who take the opposite view.
But we shall come back to the big ones. What is the advice and experience of wise Christians? Do the circumstances point us in a particular direction? What does careful reflection and thought tell us? Who does this promote: me or the kingdom of God?
And most of all, is this consistent with what we know about the character of God from Holy Scripture?
You have all heard a lot about scammers on the Internet. One way in which they try to trick people and exploit them is by seeking to make them panic and make rushed decisions. ‘You must phone this number now’ – but it takes you to more criminals. The standard advice is to take your time if you are not at all sure.
I think it is similar with discerning the speech of God. God will not pressurise you and panic you into a hasty decision that you will later regret. Because he is full of grace, he will not be worried if you seek to test whether you have heard him speak. It is only other forces that will aim to frighten you and unnerve you.
Secondly, action:
Abraham acts on what he has heard God say.
It’s easy to say that but think what is behind Abraham’s action. Think of the cost, and the possible confusion.
Isaac is the child or the promise. God had previously promised Abraham and Sarah in their old age that they, despite being decades past their fertile years, would have a son. And not only that, God was going to make their descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. So why would God now call for that same child, by now probably a teenager[1], to be killed? Doesn’t it go against all that God has revealed as his plan, not only for Abraham’s family but also for his purposes for the world?
And how would it hit him personally? As I said in the introduction, I became a father at a later age than many – although nothing like as late as Abraham! I am sure that most family and friends had thought it was seriously possible that I would neither marry nor become a parent. One of my nephews has David as a middle name, and I’ve always wondered if that was a kind gesture in case I never had children of my own. Were I to be asked to give up one or both of my children, I would become a human wreck. So what might Abraham have felt? We are not told.
But we are told he still acts in obedience to God’s voice. And that is the sign of faith: when God speaks, we respond with the appropriate action.
An awful lot of Christians seem to get worried about not knowing God’s will for their lives. Yet the truth is, he has already given all of us a lot to be getting on with. It’s just that we find some of it, such as much of the teaching of Jesus, too challenging for our liking!
It was Mark Twain who said, it’s not the parts of the Bible that I don’t understand that trouble me: it’s the parts that I do understand that worry me.
I wonder whether some of us ought to take seriously the fact that God has indeed spoken to us, and that we need to respond. It doesn’t have to be something dramatic and life-changing. It may simply be a challenge about how we conduct our daily lives.
We have read the Scriptures. We have heard them read and expounded on Sundays, and maybe in Bible studies too. I don’t think God is half as silent as we claim he is. I suspect he has already spoken quite a lot to us and has given us plenty to be getting on with. We now need to respond in faith by our actions.
Thirdly and finally, provision:
Here we get onto the question of the lamb. Isaac asks where the lamb for the burnt-offering is. Abraham replies that God will supply one – although at that point, he is thinking that Isaac is the lamb. Then, when the angel of the Lord calls a halt to the sacrifice, Abraham sees a lamb caught in a thicket by its thorns. God has indeed provided.
Christians of course give a further layer of meaning to this. God will supply his own Son as the Lamb of God to be the offering for the world. But even without that, this is an important truth to remember in the life of faith. When God speaks and calls us to action, he will provide what we need. Speech leads to action leads to provision. This is the natural sequence in the life of faith.
James Hudson Taylor was a pioneer Christian missionary to China in the nineteenth century. He faced many challenges and discouragements in such a huge task. He lost his first wife Maria to cholera. Several children died in infancy. He lived with chronic depression.
His work meant he endured persecution from local authorities, bandits, and warlords during both the Taiping Rebellion and the Boxer Rebellion. He faced language difficulties and a harsh climate. Established organisations criticised him for adopting traditional Chinese dress. Some workers deserted him, because progress was slow.
And with no guaranteed income, he and his colleagues had barely enough money to survive.
But in that context, he wrote these famous words:
Depend on it. God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supply. He is too wise a God to frustrate His purposes for lack of funds, and He can just as easily supply them ahead of time as afterwards, and He much prefers doing so.
Again, there is the pattern: speech leads to action leads to provision. And that’s the challenge. If we have heard God speak, we are called into action, while believing God will provide. That’s often the point at which we are most tested. Will we believe that God will provide for us, so that we can act in response to his challenging word?
I have seen it go both ways. I saw a youth ministry that needed to hire larger premises, which were outside its budget. But they believed God was stretching them, and that God would provide. When they said yes to hiring the new place, a Christian businessman in the town stepped forward with the funding.
But I have also seen a church that wanted to find new ways forward. It engaged a Christian architect. He presented exciting plans that would have given them new opportunities. The church was excited, too. Until it heard the cost. And then all the energy drained away. They acted as if the provision all depended on them, and not their Lord.
So which way will we go? Have we heard God speak? Are we preparing for action? Will we believe in his provision?
Conclusion
There’s a coda to this story. We shouldn’t really finish at verse 14, as the Lectionary dictates. The natural break is at verse 19. In the verses we didn’t read, God re-emphasises his purposes for Abraham and his descendants, and his settled will to bless them so that all the nations of the world will also be blessed.
God promises his blessing when in faith we hear him speak, launch into action, and trust him to provide.
Who would like to see God’s greater blessing on this church? Because this is the way.
[1] John Goldingay, Genesis (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament), p347.
Big Circumstance 