“Abraham said to his servants, ‘Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you’” (Genesis 22:5).

 

If you are familiar with the story of Abraham and Isaac, you will remember that God called Abraham to do the unimaginable . . . the indescribable . . . the inconceivable . . . the unthinkable: To sacrifice his son Isaac on a mountain in Moriah.

Blind faith or believe?

Here’s a question for you: Did Abraham simply head out and blindly do what God commanded? Not at all! Abraham knew God. He knew God’s person, His promise, and His power, and he trusted that God would do what was right and true (Genesis 18:25), even in issuing this heart-wrenching, inexplicable command to offer his beloved son Isaac as a sacrifice.

God had promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation (Genesis 12:2) and that his wife Sarah would bear him a son. Both Abraham and Sarah were childless at the time and Sarah was well beyond child-bearing age, but Genesis 15:6 tells us that Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. And when Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90, Sarah did give birth to the child of the promise: Isaac.

What might seem at first glance like blind faith in obeying God’s command wasn’t blind faith at all, and Abraham’s assertion in Genesis 22:5 makes that clear. He told his servants that “We [that is, Abraham and Isaac] will come back to you.” The testimony given in what has come to be known as the “Hall of Faith” chapter in the book of Hebrews explains Abraham’s confidence:“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)

 

Wisdom, reason and logic

Abraham acted on reason, not blind faith. He remembered God’s promise regarding his son Isaac, and because Abraham knew that God can be taken at His Word, he acted accordingly. All throughout the Scriptures, we are instructed to operate by faith, a faith that is rooted in wisdom, reason and logic, and founded on the promises of God. God gave us the ability to think and reason, which means our faith is not blind, but a firm reliance on the One who can be trusted no matter what, even when we do not fully understand His plan. As Hebrews 11:1 tells us, “Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” 

 

Experience

Where does this message find you today? Whether the sun is shining brightly or storm winds are rocking your world, let me encourage you to act in faith on all of the promises of God. I have been a pastor for many years, and experience has taught me that growing and maturing in our faith is marked by growing in our ability to trust God in all things . . . even those things that really hurt.

Abraham followed God faithfully, holding fast to God’s gracious promise, and we are to do the same. You’ve probably already thought of this divine instruction from Proverbs:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

 

Foreshadowing

We don’t need to know the future. We just need to know the One who holds all eternity in His nail-scarred hands. And those scars are there to give you the faith—the confident assurance—to trust God even when you cannot trace Him. You see, the story of Abraham and Isaac is a divine foreshadowing of an event that would take place some 2,000 years later, when God the Father willingly sacrificed His beloved Son for the atonement of sin for all those who will believe in Jesus by grace through faith.

Jesus Christ is a descendent of Abraham. God spared Isaac and kept His promise that Abraham was clinging to as he and Isaac walked toward the place of sacrifice: “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son” (Genesis 22:8) God did provide the substitute lamb to take the place of Isaac, but He did not spare His one and only Son, who died on a cruel cross as an atoning sacrifice for your sins and mine: “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?” (Romans 8:32).

Regardless of where this message finds you today, you can live with the confident expectation of a brighter tomorrow. God spared Abraham from the pain and grief of sacrificing his son, but when the moment of truth came, God the Father turned His face away from God the Son so that He would become the sacrificial Lamb who bore the full wrath of the Father’s just judgment against sin. Abraham had it right: God Himself provided the Lamb . . . for you and for me.

Are you trusting in that truth today? Your sin debt – all of your sins, past, present, and still to come – were paid for in full at Calvary’s cross. Believe that truth, and it will be credited to you as righteousness.

“We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:20-21).

 

This is the Gospel. This is grace for your race. NEVER FORGET THAT . . . AMEN!

 

Dr. Tommy Boland is senior pastor of Cross Community Church in Deerfield Beach (www.thecrosscc.org). He blogs regularly at tommyboland.com.

For more articles by Dr. Tommy Boland, visit goodnewsfl.org/tommy-boland.