Could I sacrifice my child? Hebrews 11:6

Amber and I have tried to read a Bible story to our girls nightly for some time now. We've used different children's Bibles to do so and have recently started using one that Amber's parents read to her when she was little. The story last night was the story of Abraham being asked by God to sacrifice Isaac. Now that's a pretty difficult story for us adults to handle. Needless to say, we were a little anxious once we got into the story about how 4 year olds would receive it!

Just in case you are unfamiliar or need a review, here's the gist of it:

God had previously promised Abraham that he would have descendants so numerous that they would make a great nation...so numerous in fact that they would be compared to the stars of the sky. The problem with the promise, however, was that it wasn't fulfilled until after Abraham was a very old man, and his wife Sarah was not far behind. We're talking to the tune of 100 years old and 90 years old respectively. I'm sure you can feel for them when they tried to take matters into their own hands to make the promise come true (Genesis 16)!

Of course, they are told that their human schemes to help out God's plans are not God's plans and the promise is reiterated. And finally, they have a son whom they name Isaac. Fast forward a few years and God tells Abraham to take Isaac up on a mountain and sacrifice him. Now for those of us who have grown up hearing the story, we have gotten comfortable with it because we know the end of the story. God stops the process mid-knife swing and provides a ram for the sacrifice after all.

But if you really stop to think about it, it's a difficult story. How could a loving God even ask him to sacrifice his only unique son in the first place!??

Without dwelling on it, I am starting to think that maybe the story with Abraham and Isaac was really more about God the Father and Jesus, whom God did follow through with sacrificing. But that's another story. What I want you to think about as we start the year is the faith that allowed Abraham to obey this command of God to the point of tying up his son and raising the knife to stab it through Isaac's heart! Could you do that as a dad or as a mom!!?? Could I?

Maybe you don't honestly know the answer to that question. I very seriously doubt we will be asked to find out (And, Lord, do I pray I won't!). But what we can know is why Abraham was able to obey what must have seemed an absolutely absurd order from the God he had learned to trust. The Hebrews writer holds the key:

By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death.       - Hebrews 11:17-19

Why did Abraham take his son up on a mountain and prepare him as a burnt offering? Because he trusted God's promise!

He had doubted God in the past and had tried to act on his own understanding of the way things work when he consented to sire a child with Sarah's maidservant. But then he had seen God's miraculous power at work. He reasoned that if God could bring forth a son from a dead and barren womb, then God could also bring back a son from the dead itself!

The reason I point to this story is because it displays so powerfully the power to change the behavior of a man when he really and truly accepted and trusted in the promises of God. Do we accept the promises of God in the same way? God has never asked me to sacrifice one of my children. He has asked me to sacrifice my time. God has never asked me to kill my son. He has asked me to kill my selfishness. God has never asked me to do the hardest thing a parent could ever possibly do. He has asked me to live in response to the truth that He actually did follow through with the hardest thing a parent could possibly do- He sacrificed His only begotten Son.

Over the coming year, we are going to be looking at some of the promises of God. The Hebrews writer tells us that without faith, it is impossible to please Him. It's interesting to me that he points out that it's not just faith that God exists...it's faith that He rewards those who seek him. In other words...He keeps His promises!!!

Paul wrote to Titus that the "knowledge of the truth that leads to Godliness" is "in the hope of eternal life, which God, who does not lie, promised before the beginning of time." (Titus 1:1-2)

God cannot lie. God has made promises. All of those promises in one way or another lead to eternal life. Will we believe them? Will we trust them? Will we please God with our faith that culminates in our obeying even the instructions that our sinful natures rebel against as we selfishly and desperately try to hold onto our lives out of fear of death? (see Hebrews 2:14-15)

Without that type of faith...it is impossible to please God.

May 2015 be a year that we learn to trust. And therefore may it be a year that we please God.
  

The Believers Who Wouldn't Even Trust Paul- Acts 17:11-12a

Have you ever been absolutely chock full of yourself about something only to find out later that you were actually dead wrong? Amber makes fun of me all the time for this about celebrities. Apparently I have a complete inability to recognize actors/actresses in different roles. We'll be trying to figure out who was in such and such a movie and I will be absolutely sure that it was the same person who played in the other such and such a movie. And I will argue until I'm blue in the face that it is this person...until I finally actually look it up and have to crawl back to her and admit again that I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to pop culture!

But what about when it's something a little more serious that someone tells you is different than what you've always believed to be true? What if someone tells you something about God or God's will for man and it is completely different than what you and your parents and your grandparents and your preacher have always believed and known to be true?

When that happens...how do you respond?

I know my natural inclination is to argue. I set out to prove that I'm right. I've believed this all my life and a lot of other people that I really really respect have believed this all of theirs. It must be right and whatever you say that contradicts it must be wrong!

You know, I kind of think that was part of the hang up with the Jews about Christianity. Paul came into town and completely contradicted everything they had always believed about the Messiah. He contradicted their preachers and their parents. He boldly proclaimed that the path to the Father was not through the Law, it was by grace through faith in Jesus the Christ.

This upset some of the religious leaders so badly that they chased Paul out of towns and even followed him to the next town to make sure they didn't buy into the "heresy" that Paul was preaching. But Luke records an incredible- and sadly a relatively rare- characteristic about the people of Berea. They were of "noble character"- I read that "honest enough"- to consider that maybe they didn't have all the answers...but they knew exactly where to look. In the word of God.

Not only did they not take what they had always believed to be true to be God's absolute truth, they didn't take what the Jewish leaders had always told them. And they didn't take what Paul was telling them either! They went to the scriptures for themselves to see what was true and what wasn't! What a beautiful and freeing attitude toward seeking truth! And do you know what the glorious result was?

As a result, many of them believed!

I said earlier, that Luke's description of them being noble enough to search the scriptures for themselves was a rare thing. And I'm sad to say that I believe it still is. I beg my teens in class on a regular basis to study the scriptures for themselves. I beg them to not even take what I'm telling them as truth until they search it and decide whether what I'm teaching is valid. Why? Because I'm trying to deceive them and I have some cockimamey scheme up my sleeve to lead them into falsehood? NO! I want to see them all in heaven....but I've been wrong every once in a while about my Bible facts and my Bible interpretation!

I know for a fact that there are some things that I see differently today than I did a decade ago because of studying some of my previous beliefs in a little more detail. I feel pretty confident that in another decade, there will likely be a thing or two more that I have come to understand more fully or more correctly because I have continued to study.

But here's the deal....

what if someone tells you the absolute truth and you accept it. What if everything I teach about and I write about is 100% accurate and my students and readers accept it blindly. Have they accepted truth? Yes they have. But has it changed their life???? Not likely.

Paul told the truth when he went to Thessalonica. Some accepted it but most did not because they wanted to keep believing what they already believed. He also told the truth in Berea.  More eagerly received the message in Berea because it was great news! But great news can sometimes be incorrect news. So they searched it for themselves.

and as a result, many of them believed.

I think that line is significant. Because biblical belief is more than just acknowledgment of the truth. It's trust that the truth should guide every aspect of my life...trust to the point of radical obedience to it. 

May we be believers...not because of the convenience or comfort of the message...not because of the persuasiveness of the speaker...not because of the compulsions of tradition and history. May we be believers who truly live the gospel because we have searched it for ourselves and become true believers.

May we be noble.