Focus: Radical Nature Of Faith

Text: Gen.22:2

"And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou LOVEST, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of."

In Hebrews 11 we see faith defined and demonstrated. The writer tells us that "faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." By this definition we can see that faith deals with the future and the unseen. It deals with the invisible realities and eternal verities of God. Faith is both capacity and faculty. Faith is given to us by God to believe the incredible, see the invisible, hear the inaudible, touch the intangible, do the impossible, comprehend the incomprehensible, and perceive the imperceptible. Faith moves us from man's realm to God's realm, and it brings us into God's world where we are exposed to his realities.

Faith is the divine lens which enables us to see things in the far distant horizon and things beyond the realm of physical vision. Faith enables us to see the whole of life from God's vantage point. The worldview of a believer in Christ is entirely different from that of the nonbeliever. People of faith hear and dance to a different drumbeat.

Faith doesn't function in a vacuum or within the confines of a comfort zone. Indeed, as someone has aptly said, "God comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable." The point I am making is that real faith stretches us and demands that we come to the end of ourselves. It is not pleasing to the flesh to please God. Anything that has to do with God displeases the flesh. As a matter of fact, the flesh is God's enemy. This brings us to our text. God is making a demand on Abraham's faith, and that demand involves the sacrifice of his only son, the son of his love. This is the verse where love is mentioned for the first time in the Bible, and it is connected to sacrifice. God places his finger on what Abraham loves most. It is through Isaac that God's promises to Abraham would be fulfilled, but now God wants him sacrificed. Things of sacrifice belong totally to God. He owns it all. It is holy to the Lord. Don't forget that according to the law of Moses, whoever opens the womb is holy to the Lord. That means that he belongs to the Lord. And loving God means giving to God what rightfully belongs to Him. God goes to where our love is, and makes demands of things we love most. Sacrificing Isaac is like doing the impossible. Faith is tasking and involves risk-taking.

Abraham waited for 25 years to have Isaac, and now God is asking him to sacrifice the son of his old age. From the human perspective, the death of Isaac is the end of all that God had promised Abraham. Truly, God's ways are beyond our tiny and puny minds. Real faith not only believes; it obeys. It pleases God when we believe and obey Him.

The flesh is never comfortable with God's demands. God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on one of the mountains of God's choosing. Faith stretches us extremely. Just imagine a man of well over 100 years of age climbing a tall mountain in the name of radical worship, which actually involves the sacrifice of the son he loves so deeply and dearly. The way of faith is beyond human logic. We suffer paralysis when we try to pull God down to the point of human analysis. Faith connects us to a higher order of things that is above the human species. It links us to something bigger than us, and that something cannot be defined or confined, and it is something that if we could simplify, quantify, identify or catalog it, its value would be gone. Our most holy faith is indeed a mystery - "the mystery of the faith" (1Tim.3:9).

I am glad to tell you that Abraham followed God fully and obeyed God completely. God proved his faith and rewarded his obedience. Convenience and comfortability are not found in the dictionary of faith.

Whenever you think of faith's meaning, understand that it is more than positive confession or convenient religiosity. Faith doesn't belong to the armchair or the comfort zone. It trespasses the conventions and bypasses routines or the usual. Faith always has a track record of awesome feats.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter