Faith Love

Parental love.
Love of the long waited for.
Love of a dream come true.
Have you ever had a goal in life one you had to work towards? The goal coming into sight is an amazing thing isn't it? Something ordinary often isn't as cherished as much as something out of the ordinary. By nature the unexpected happiness, the unexpected reward, the dream come true after feeling that it never would and yet always hoping, is something remarkable and treated as such. A man working all his life to own a brand new car finally able to buy it years and years later will generally cherish it above a man who gets a new car every year.
For parents wishing and hoping for a child only to never have it happen brings a certain resignation after the nature of life takes the chance of it happening away from them.
Then suddenly having that child, just how cherished do you imagine that child would be? Come on we can imagine it.
Talk about being loved.
Gen. {22:1} And it came to pass after these things, that God didtempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said,Behold, [here] I [am. ]{22:2} And he said, Take now thyson, thine only [son] Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get theeinto the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burntoffering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.
'Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest'
Our brains want to cease to comprehend this request from a loving God.
Sure we know the story, we know the outcome already before we continue but tell the story to one who doesn't and see what they think of a God that would ask someone to make a human sacrifice of their beloved son, heck, even if they'd been asked to sacrifice an unloved son just think how outrageous it is to our sense of right and wrong.
In some cultures human sacrifice was the norm, but this wasn't one of them.
Yes, since the beginning of man's sin God required a living sacrifice because the wages of sinning can be nothing other than death. Animals were sacrificed animals we had to recognize were dying in place of us so that our sinfulness didn't keep us from God. So if animals were always sacrificed and acceptable to God, why would he now ask for a child to be sacrificed?
We have so many questions we don't hesitate to cry out to God asking him why this, why that, or why not this and that. We question God at every turn. We get to a situation where something is just too hard for us to do and we tell God it's too hard and we expect Him to understand our weakness, to forgive us our inability to rise to the task. We can't comprehend all that God may want of us and we tell ourselves a *loving* God wouldn't ask anything too hard for us to do- and that's true. So if God asks us to do something we know it's not too hard, we are choosing not to do it for whatever weakness exists in us. I suppose the fact that God doesn't *talk* with us as He did with Abraham might be a good thing if we realize just how weak we really are, how faithless.
What made Abraham so faithful? He trusted God without doubt. There wasn't any great discourse of doubt, no pleading to God to change things, to ask something else. Abraham trusted God implicitly.
Hebrews {11:17} By faith Abraham,when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that hadreceived the promises offered up his only begotten [son,]{11:18} Of whom it was said, That in Isaac shall thy seedbe called: {11:19} Accounting that God [was] able to raise[him] up, even from the dead; from whence also he receivedhim in a figure
To Abraham God's asking him to do this thing wasn't crazy. Abraham instantly looked beyond the act and held fast to the promises of God. He held fast to God's greatness. He'd walked with God for many, many years and God had never steered Him wrong. God may have said things that confused him, but just because Abraham's timeline wasn't the same as God's didn't make God's words to be lying words. It would have been easy to assume such because the natural order of things needed to be suspended for God's promise to come true. Who more apt to suspend the natural order than God though? The Creator of all things has all things in His hands to do with as He pleases.
Abraham witnessed the miracle of Isaac's birth. An old dried up womb was brought back to life to birth Isaac. A miracle and nothing short of it. For a man who witnessed such a thing by the promise of God, being asked to sacrifice that same miracle child by God could only mean one thing- God had different plans, His ways were past understanding and yet to be followed regardless. Abraham by faith knew God promised an innumerable amount of offspring through Isaac and that if Isaac's death was required to accomplish this then God knew what He was doing. There was no doubt. Abraham didn't have to understand. He hadn't understood God's waiting to give Sarah the promise child so why should he understand this next thing? Some how, some way God would do as He promised and Abraham knew it wasn't for him to have to comprehend or question, just believe.
Faith.
Pure faith.
Loving a child and being asked to kill that child- we call crazy, insane, ludicrous and with good reason when we live in a world of insanity, with child murderers often claiming God told them to do this same thing.
The difference here being, God asked Abraham to do so and God ONLY did so as a test. God would NEVER demand the life of a child, God does not find the sacrificing of humans acceptable. The ONLY sacrifice He finds pleasing is a contrite spirit...
Psalms {51:17} The sacrifices of God [are] a broken spirit: a broken and acontrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
Isaiah {66:2}For all those [things] hath mine hand made, and all those[things] have been, saith the LORD: but to this [man] will Ilook, [even] to [him that is] poor and of a contrite spirit, andtrembleth at my word. {66:3} He that killeth an ox [is as if]he slew a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, [as if] he cut off adog's neck; he that offereth an oblation, [as if he offered]swine's blood; he that burneth incense, [as if] he blessed anidol. Yea, they have chosen their own ways, and their souldelighteth in their abominations. {66:4} I also will choosetheir delusions, and will bring their fears upon them;because when I called, none did answer; when I spake, theydid not hear: but they did evil before mine eyes, and chose[that] in which I delighted not.
Death was never something God enjoyed, never something He wanted to happen. Yes, it was necessary, but it was not in and of itself pleasing to God. What was pleasing to God was the spirit in which a sacrifice was made and any spirit that delights in the killing for the killing's sake wasn't pleasing to Him at all.
Abraham's faith enabled him to please God.
Faith can be tested in ways we can't imagine.
It is my prayer that God strengthen me, strengthens us, to pass any test of faith we might come up against. My faith is weak. I believe and yet I need help with my unbelief. May the Lord's grace and mercy be mine as promised by faith through no strength of my own, but through my Lord and my Savior, Jesus Christ.
Amen.