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Intro:
Good morning Campus Church.
You guys doing alright this morning?
So we’re done with Philippians and so I thought I would share with you all something that is relevant to all of us.
So if you have your Bibles go ahead and grab those and turn them to Hebrews chapter 11.
Hebrews is toward the back of you Bibles.
We’re going to look at a passage from there and then we are going to look at a story in Genesis so don’t get too comfortable in Hebrews.
Have any of you ever heard of that monthly devotion called the Daily Bread?
If you have a grandma that goes to church you probably have seen it lying around in her house.
Listen to this one Daily Bread devotion that I think is good for all of us to hear...
God sometimes allows us to enter into discouraging situations for the primary purpose of testing our faith.
At such times we must refuse to give up in despair.
we must turn to the Lord when our soul is fainting within us, trusting Him completely.
James H. McConkey wrote, "What can you do when you are about to faint physically?
You can't DO anything!
In your weakness you just fall upon the shoulders of some strong loved one, lean hard, and rest until your strength returns.
The same is true when you are tempted to faint under adversity.
The Lord's message to us is “Be still, and know that I am God' ().
Hudson Taylor (who was a missionary in China for 51 years) was so feeble in the closing months of his life that he said to a dear friend, “I'm so weak that I can't work or read my Bible, and I can hardly pray.
I can only lie still in God's arms like a little child and trust.'
And that is all the Heavenly Father asks of you when you grow weary in the fierce fires of affliction."
Many of us who are believers know that being a believer is hard.
We go through trials, difficult times, we go through times of suffering and heart ache.
A lot of the time we are being attacked by the Enemy.
But something that we don’t talk about too often is that God himself puts our faith through trial to test it.
Not necessarily to prove to him that our faith is genuine but to prove to ourselves that the Lord is our rock.
So this morning I want to talk about this guy that is important to the narrative of the Bible.
His name is Abraham.
And in particular, an episode in Scripture where Abraham, the man who many people around the world see as the father of our faith, is put to the test.
Hebrews chapter 11 is known as the hall of faith.
There is a lot of Abraham in .
He was a great man that we can learn a lot from.
If you are in Hebrews look with me at chapter 11 and in verse 17...
17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was in the act of offering up his only son, 18 of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.”
19 He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.
This is the Word of the Lord.
Prayer
Background
Now turn back to .
And i’m going to give you a little bit of background to what is going on here.
First off, who is Abraham?
We are first introduced to Abraham in when God calls him out of his home and go into the unknown to become a great nation, which will be Israel.
What’s so crazy about this is that Abraham wasn’t looking to be used by God.
In fact, many commentators believe that Abraham was part of a people that didn’t worship God at all.
They worshipped the moon.
But God calls him out of that to leave his pagan family and to go to the unknown.
says,
8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance.
And he went out, not knowing where he was going.
9 By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
We could just stop and talk about that!
I mean, how many of us are willing to go to an unknown land to spread the kingdom of God? How many of us are willing to leave everything that is so familiar to us for the sake of the Kingdom?
God makes a covenant with Abraham.
He says,
“Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.
3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
God reestablishes this covenant with Abraham over and over throughout Genesis because there is one thing that remains at the forefront of Abraham’s mind:
He has no kids.
How in the world would he become a great nation?
And on top of all that he and his wife Sarah are getting old.
Like really old.
God tells Abraham in ,
16 I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her.
I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”
Listen to Abraham’s response,
17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?
Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”
He’s 100 years old!
And his wife in 90!
That would be like your great grandma having a kid.
Absolutely nuts!
But through a series of Abraham trying to take matters into his own hands, having a kid with Hagar who is not his wife, God comes through in .
The Bible says this,
21 The LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did to Sarah as he had promised.
2 And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him.
3 Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him, whom Sarah bore him, Isaac.
4 And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him.
5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
6 And Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.” 7 And she said, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children?
Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”
The promised son is born.
God has come through with his promises.
And this is where I want to kind of camp out this morning in Genesis chapter 22.
Some years have passed and Isaac is now a young man.
I want to share with you three observations from this morning.
And this is the first thing.
God Asks Hard Things of His People.
Look at starting at verse 1 with me.
22 After these things God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!”
And he said, “Here I am.” 2 He 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 of which I shall tell you.”
What?
After all of that God asks Abraham to sacrifice his promised son to him.
There’s no way that Abraham could have anticipated this happening.
One of the most valuable lessons that we can learn as someone who follows Jesus is to...
Expect trials from God, because the Christian life is not easy.
Have you ever experienced God asking you to do something that seems like it is just too hard?
Have you ever experienced God asking you to do something that seems like it is just too hard?
I have.
Me being here is a result of God asking me to do something hard.
I remember it was like three years ago now.
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