QUESTIONS OF FAITH...

At the encouragement of a couple of friends, I am going to begin this week putting a sermon outline on the blog. I have preached all these, some more than a couple of times. Today’s sermon is, “”When God Questions Your Faith.", based on Abraham’s decision to sacrifice his son, Isaac. The idea for this sermon came from one that I heard Ralph Smith preach many years ago. As best as I can remember I will try to credit whomever inspired the messages I put on the blog.

WHEN GOD QUESTIONS YOUR FAITH

Text: Hebrews 11:17-19

You do realize, don’t you, that sometimes God arranges things so that it seems He is testing or questioning your faith? There is no way to get around feeling that way as you read this story about Abraham and Isaac. There are other stories that attest to this also, as can be seen in Hebrews eleven.

So, I am proposing that there are circumstances where God questions the quality of our faith. Now, He doesn’t doubt the degree of our faith, but He tests us so that we can find out for ourselves how strong our faith is.

This story is a part of our history. You cannot just extricate it from the Scriptures as though it does not exist. It is the story of a man’s faithful response to being told by God to take the life of his son, as an act of obedience.

It is for us ask, “What is God trying to teach us with this story?” It is reasonable to assume he felt this story was to teach us something about faith. But this is a lesson in faith from a dimension never before experienced.

Just what are the ramifications of this fantastic little story? What are the questions of faith raised by God’s asking one of His servants to take the life of his child? I believe there are three fundamental issues of faith which are posed by this event.

ISSUE I. ARE YOU WILLING TO DO FOR YOUR GOD WHAT OTHERS ARE WILLING TO DO FOR THEIRS?

If you know anything about the history of the ancient world you know that practically all the neighbors around Abraham practiced human sacrifice. It was common among the Moabites, the Hittites, the Jebuzites, and the Girtites.

It was not at all unusual for these heathen tribes to throw their babies into t-e fiery arms of Baal, Moloch and other heathen gods. It was how they showed their loyalty to their deity.

Is it not fair of God to ask, “Would you do for me what others are willing to do for their god.?”

ISSUE II. ARE YOU WILLING TO ACCEPT WHAT YOU CANNOT UNDERSTAND?

Abraham is the pattern of a man who accepts what he cannot understand.

The demand God made on Abraham was incomprehensible. It made no sense at all. God had promised Abraham that he would produce generations of descendants, so many that his seed would be like the sands of the desert. From him would come a nation which would bless all nations. The fulfillment of that promise depended on Isaac, and now God was asking him to take the life of Isaac.

How in the world could God keep his promise if Isaac was dead? You have to believe that question kept running through Abraham’s mind. I believe it is safe to assume he did not understand the reasons for God’s order, although the writer of Hebrews surmised that Abraham may have felt that God would bring his son back from the dead. Even so, what an act of faith!
He may not have understood it, but his actions showed that he accepted it.

ISSUE III. ARE YOU WILLING TO LET GOD DO FOR YOU WHAT YOU CANNOT DO FOR YOURSELF?

Abraham is the pattern of a man who had learned to let God minister to him. After all, God was able to bring a son into a barren marriage far later in life than anyone had a right to believe possible.

God had led Abraham from his home to a land he had never seen. God had many times met needs in Abraham’s life which he could not meet for himself. And now, here on a mountain top God was about to do it again.

Abraham figured, according to the writer of Hebrews, that when he killed his son, God would bring him back to life. How else could God keep the promise? Abraham knew that he couldn’t bring the boy back, and he was willing to obey God anyway because he believed God would do for him what he could not do for himself.

CONCLUSION:

So, you can see that a story many people refuse to acknowledge simply because it does not fit their concept of God is in reality a story which tests our faith in the most severe sort of way.

These are real questions of faith.