[AI translation] Those of you who go to Bible study know very well that this story was discussed in the last Thursday class. Rather, then, how this, the greatest experience of faith in Abraham's life, fits into the totality of the story of divine revelation. So we were looking at the big picture, the context of the divine revelation story. I would like to talk about this story again today, but now about the implications of this story for the faith life of every believer. Because this poignant experience was the greatest faith experience of Abraham's life. It was in this event that Abraham's faith reached its highest peak. It was in this experience that God's providence, his love that surpasses all understanding, became real to him in an almost tangible way. The wonderful thing is that Abraham's faith reached this highest peak precisely through a trial. So Abraham's faith was not at its strongest when he was living in undisturbed peace and tranquillity, when he was rejoicing so much at the birth of Isaac, the promise that had arrived. He was not strongest in his faith when all was going well and when his life was so trouble-free, when the abundance of God's blessings radiated around his life, but he was and became strongest in his faith when God required of him the greatest sacrifice. It was when doubts of the greatest sorrow imaginable gripped his heart. His faith had reached such a peak, height, or depth that it can only be spoken of with fear and trembling. So let us try to listen with great humility to what God is telling us through this story about the test of faith. For here it is about the greatest test of faith in God.This is how the story begins. I feel that there is an emphasis even on this word: after these things. The question immediately arises: after what? For this "after these things" refers to something after which this thing happened, this great trial. After what things? People who read the Bible know very well what Abraham went through to get to this point. His life was really not a very peaceful, trouble-free, struggle-free one. In fact, it has been a life of many struggles, many difficulties and trials. And especially since he came under the Lord's guidance: how much trouble and struggle he has had to go through! He had to break away from his homeland, from his old familiar surroundings. At God's call, he set out for a foreign land, a pagan territory, where he did not know what was waiting for him, where he had never been. Indeed, if a man did not know that God was leading him by faith, he might think that this man's life was drifting like a flake picked up by the wind and carried whimsically to and fro. At last he arrives at the land the Lord is showing him. But no sooner does he settle down than he must flee from the great famine. He wanders on to Egypt, where he gets into trouble and his wife is taken from him. She is returned to him, but as a moral castaway, a condemned and shamed man, he returns blushing to the land he has only the promise of. There, however, he is again beset by new troubles and sorrows. Again more struggles with his own heart, with the heathen princes, with his wife, with his family circumstances, with his illegitimate son. Again another setbacks, another trial. Never a pause, never a moment's rest, never a moment's quiet. Always new obstacles, new struggles for his faith to overcome.
After these, after all these struggles, there comes for him at last not a serene, peaceful, happy old age, not a time when a weary warrior can at last rest, and when a soldier who has fought valiantly through the many struggles of a long life can at last receive his obscure reward: Sacrifice your son, your only son, in the place which I will show you." So after all this struggle, there comes a far greater trial than ever before in Abraham's life.
This is not written by the Holy Spirit of God in the Bible to make us wonder: oh, how terrible, oh, how wonderful faith this man has to endure and fight through all this! What an excellent man he must have been!", but to show us that this is the narrow way that God says leads to eternal life. It is like the way of Abraham. Here is a long human life ahead of us. And it is the life of a truly believing man led by the Spirit of God, the life of God's chosen one, God's friend. And yet, in spite of all this, how much trouble and trial! Despite this? No! Because of this! Because it is precisely these many troubles, these many struggles, that are the testimony that God has truly taken this man into His hands and is shaping and moulding his life. And that he really cares for him, that he really cares for him in a very special way.
But is this really the way God treats His dearest children?", the unbeliever might ask. Again, with fear and trembling, let me say. This is how God treats His dearest children! It is precisely those whom He has called to something great, precisely those whom He wants to show His grace to the utmost. It is precisely this Word that warns us not to be so over-sensitive and not to overestimate the burdens that He is placing on us. And if He should see fit to put us through another trial, let us try very humbly to say what Abraham said: "Here I am, Lord. So we are offering ourselves to the Lord. Let us not think that it is something unheard of and something crazy impossible that God is testing us again. No sooner have we fought the last battle than we are faced with another trial. Let us not demand that he release us from his ministry, that he stop caring so much about us. Loosen the reins a bit. We're tired of fighting, let's get a bit of our own back. Let's not think about it, because perhaps God wants to bring us back to ourselves and strengthen us by putting our faith to the test. I dare say that the more one progresses on the path of faith, the more severely God tests one's faith. After all, even an old soldier can take more than a new recruit who does not even know what service consists of. So, when God wants to lead one further on the path of faith to higher experiences of faith, and when He requires of one a heavier sacrifice than before, and He requires such sacrifices that one thinks, like Abraham, that one's heart is breaking, then let us not say so: Lord, is it not enough? What more do you want of me? Because God knows what He wants with us. Even when he has a seemingly terrible wish, as here with Abraham: "Bless your son, your only son, whom you love, for my sake."
Abraham, when he set out on this journey, had absolutely no idea where it would lead. He didn't even know what God's purpose for this journey was. But in the end, he knew. It was only when he had walked this three-day, terribly torturous journey on Mount Moriah that the secret of why it was all for was revealed, from this word of God, "Now I know that you are godly, Abraham, because you have not favored your only one, for my sake." That's what it was all about. God was testing his heart.
Someone once said that the most honorable situation a believer can find himself in is when God Himself tests his faith. Because there can be other trials. Satan can test you. The circumstances of our lives can also present us with many trials. And because of our sins, our disobedience, but many times we are put in a problematic situation, we are put to great trials! But the highest trial is that which comes directly from the hand of God. When God puts His child into a furnace to test the faith, the genuineness of His faith. It is so very easy to say: Lord, Lord! Brothers and sisters, it is not enough to say: Lord, but God wants to test what it means in practice. Not that He needs it, because He is the Examiner of hearts and kidneys and He knows very well what is in the heart. He wants to put before our eyes what is deep down in our hearts. It is in such trials that we usually find out how much unbelief, or how much little faith, how much hypocrisy, how much rebellion, how much distrust, how much fear, lurks in the very depths of the heart of the believer. It is at such times, during the rehearsals, that this is revealed.
In the Old Testament there is such a verse: "Give me your heart." This is the greatest thing God can ask of man. He doesn't say, "Give me your head, your intellect, your talents, your money. That would be much simpler. He says, "Give me your heart. The most complete devotion is when one gives his heart to God. That's so easy to say too: Here is my heart, I give it to you! You may remember, about 15 years ago, at the time of the revivals, we had a hymn like this, "Here is my heart, I give it to you..." We sang this song so heartily, so happily, we loved to sing this song. It's so easy to say, but the Lord sometimes tries the sincerity of that devotion by laying His hand on something closest to one's heart. He says, "Take your only one whom you love and offer him to me." God wants to ask man sometimes for a testimony of his real love for God. For it is very easy to love God when it costs nothing in sacrifice. But can we love God when he asks, when he asks for sacrifice, and not only when he gives and blesses. So when God says, "Now place on my altar the one you love most, from the center of your heart offer him to me. Put there in the center of my altar your child, or your spouse, or your lover, or your home, your cherished desire and hope. When you say: Do not cling to my blessings, but to me! Do not put your trust in what I have already given you, but in what I am. For it is one thing to rest in God's gifts, and quite another to rest in God himself. This is what God is asking us now: can you trust in me even when everything else that could support your trust is lost to you, and I alone remain, the invisible God? Is God himself a solid enough point? And is this God Himself sufficient, a truly living reality, when all that He may have given is taken away and He alone remains? This is what such trials see, coming from the hand of God. And this is what God wants to know, whether we truly love Him as Jesus said: with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength - or whether we love only what He gives. Because that is very weak love. Isn't our profession of faith a lie, isn't our whole faith an illusion, and isn't it self-deception to say so easily and so often: 'I trust in God'? Have you not come to the conclusion, in the course of a trial, that it is not true that I trust in God?
Abraham obeyed. Not with a light heart. I don't know if anyone has ever had such a harrowing and heart-breaking journey as Abraham's up Mount Moriah with his son. Because it's not just a matter of God taking away the person he loves the most. It is more than that. It is about man himself sacrificing to God the one he loves. He himself puts the knife to his neck and he himself puts the life out of the life of the one who is most precious to him. It is a horror so terrible that it is hardly worth speaking of. How can God even wish such a thing? Imagine yourself in the position of having to take the life of someone you love the most with your own hands. Could you do that, would you be willing? Here, then, you could really protest, complain, cry: 'Lord, why? Really, how can you wish this of me? How can it be that the same God gives joy and sorrow to the same man? How can it be that with one hand he blesses us richly and abundantly, and with the other he takes away all that he has given? This is the point, brethren, where so many people's faith is and has been shattered. But there are many who have been shipwrecked in their faith in this way! The horrors they have experienced, the loss of a loved one or the annihilation of their family, they could not reconcile with the love of God. And they cowered under the weight of the adversity that fell on them, and said: I can no longer believe in God! But it is not worth believing if this is the way God wants and allows! Such doubts must have been in Abraham's heart when the two of them went together; and yet he went, yet he went, taking the most painful in faith. But we can imagine with what a terribly heavy heart. How many tears he must have shed inwardly, what a terrible struggle he must have had with himself. Her son, the one she loves most in the world, passed by her side. His straw tied to his back, which was about to become his bonfire. And in Abraham's hand was the knife with which he was about to take his life. And the dear son will say, "Father!" How his father's heart was not broken with pain at the sound of this call! "And the two shall go on together." And Abraham does not turn back, but goes on with his son.
One's heart trembles to see how terribly far God can go in the testing of a human heart. And yet not to fear! For he never tries above what his strength can bear, and step by step God always gives him the strength. Abraham went on, with his son, not knowing where this terrible journey would end. And it was only as he walked along, there at the very end, that he saw the unprecedented glory of God's love and care waiting for him at the end of the road. The seemingly insoluble problem is solved in an unexpected way. God gives back everything that Abraham thought he had already taken away. He will give it all back! Because that is always the case. At the end of every dark and painful journey of faith, man will experience the light of God's love that transcends all understanding and breaks through the darkness. So no one need fear such a journey, no one need fear the paths of Mount Moriah, for we have a gracious God. We have a God so powerful that He is most merciful when He seems most merciless. Who is most merciful where He shows Himself to be most merciless. Isn't it usually the great trials that bring us closest to God's fatherly heart? Is it not there that we most feel the warmth of his heart? How right the Apostle James is: "Blessed is the man who endures temptation." So he who goes all the way, who undertakes the journey in faith, does not stop, he goes all the way.
It is much easier for us to go on such a journey than it was for Abraham. For Abraham's journey on Mount Moriah is overcast by the darkness of Good Friday, like a thick storm cloud that is beginning to break through the dawn of the coming Easter. Like a banner through which the New Testament is already shining, these words resonate for us, the people of the New Testament: 'Take your son, the only one you love. Sacrifice him on a mountain. Abraham says to the servants, 'You stay here, and I and this child will go and pray. He took the tree and put it on his son. The boy said, "Father!" It is as if we were looking out of a window far and wide, and seeing the only-begotten, the One whom the Father loves, going along the path of suffering from the Mount of Olives, through the Garden of Gethsemane, to Golgotha. It is as if we see the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
For behold, we already know that the pain from which God spared Abraham's fatherly heart, He did not spare his own fatherly heart. We already know that there was another mountain, the mountain of Moriah in the New Testament, Golgotha. There too, two went together, Father and Son, to present some terrible, painful, bloody sacrifice. And there, too, the Son carried the tree on which he would be nailed, on which he would be crucified. What did he feel? And there, too, in the agony of hell, the Son cried out, "Father!" And the Father let Him, He did not loose His bonds, He Himself gave the most precious one to death. He sacrificed His own heart for us. He did not please His own Son, but gave Him up for us all. And do you know why? So that we might have the strength to walk our paths on Mount Moriah, and so that we might dare to believe that at the end of each of those paths we are greeted by the radiance of His love that surpasses all understanding!
My soul, full salvation is yours,
Leave all evil and care behind;
Be merry, if you feel it:
There is still work to be done, and endure.
Think: who lives by his Spirit,
What a Father's smile;
Your Savior died for you:
Why should you grieve, heavenly son?
(Canticle 426, verse 3)
Amen.
Date: 21 March 1965.
Lesson
Jak 1,2-4