Episode Details

If you want to take your Bibles and turn, we're going to be in Genesis chapter 22. There is nothing, nothing more precious to God in your life than your faith. There's nothing that matters in your life to God more than your trust and your confidence in him.

In the book of first Peter, the apostle writes these words in chapter one, verses six and seven in this, you rejoice though. Now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And so what Peter is saying there is that the thing that we consider most precious gold, it's, it's smelted, it's passed through the fire so that all the dross is taken away.

And it's this pure metal that has lasting value. Just ask all those commercials on TV. The gold has this lasting value in our perception in this life.

And, and Peter says it's worth nothing compared to the tested genuineness of your faith. Your faith passes through trials, which are like the smelting fire that God uses to get rid of the dross, to get rid of all of the things that hinder our faith. And at the end, what is left is something more precious in God's sight than anything else in this world.

One of the most common tests God uses, one of the most common fires, which he passes us through is for us to lose for him to remove something or someone that we love. Be that a job or a parent, a spouse or a child, your health. The question that comes to us in these moments, when we lose that which we love or which we depend on is, can you lose this thing or this person and still trust God? Abraham in Genesis 22 is going to face an extreme form of this test as he is called not only to be okay with losing, but to himself sacrifice literally that which is most beloved to him, his beloved son.

In verses one and two of Genesis 22, we see this test of faith. Genesis 22, beginning in verse one says, after these things, God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham. And he said, here I am.

He, God said, take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I shall tell you. There at the beginning of verse one, it says after these things, and we don't know what the time period is, but based on other things we see in this story, a number of years have passed since chapter 21. Isaac is no longer an infant.

He's at least a boy of enough age that he can carry the wood for a sacrifice up a mountain. So probably bare minimum, we're looking at an eight or nine-year-old kid, very likely a teenager. And in these years, remember Abraham, this is the child of his old age.

Isaac is a hundred years old, or Abraham is a hundred years old when Isaac is born. And Abraham, who thought he was never going to have a son by Sarah, has now been able to watch this young boy, this young man, grow and mature. And they assuredly have a deep and warm relationship.

He's been able to watch his wife, who I'm sure Abraham loved Sarah before, but to watch his wife become a mother, and that changes a relationship. And he's been able to watch this, and his family, it goes from the waiting expectation of, will God ever give us a son, to now they've had a decade plus of enjoying this good gift, this taste of the fulfillment of the promises that God made to Abraham to make him into a great nation. All of that hope is wrapped up in this boy.

All of the hope, not just for Abraham's own happiness, but for the fulfillment of God's promises to him, is tied up in Isaac's life. And here, God speaks to Abraham and he says, take your son, your only son, whom you love, and sacrifice him. Now, a question that often arises when people read this verse, especially in the last 200 years, has been, is God doing some