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,
of whom was said,
"Through Isaac shall your offspring be named."
He considered that God was able
even to raise him from the dead,
from which, figuratively speaking,
he did receive him back.
Now, you know the story.
Abraham had staked his entire existence,
his entire life,
on one single promise of God.
That out of him would come a son;
and out of that son would come a nation;
and out of that nation,
all the nations on earth would be blessed.
God had made a covenant with Abraham,
and that covenant had become the basis of everything
that Abraham did, thought, desired, and held onto.
Well, the son didn't come.
He didn't come for decade after decade.
After decade after decade, he finally came.
Finally,
it looked like God
was going to fulfill His promise,
like there would be a great nation
and maybe the nations of the earth would be blessed.
Maybe God had come through.
And that God comes to Abraham,
and He asked this single unthinkable thing.
"I want you to take that son
on whose shoulders rest everything you've lived for.
I want you to take him out and I want you to sacrifice him."
Now, I want you to ask this question.
What would you be doing at that point?
What would you be thinking?
What would your response be?
That's the story that these verses capture.
It is one of the most unthinkable moments
in scripture.
It's that moment
where the call of God,
the plan of God,
seems to make no sense whatsoever.
If you look at those verses, it says this:
"By faith Abraham, when he was tested."
I would argue that in these verses,
that's the most important word.
Because it tells you what was going on.
Abraham wasn't being forsaken.
Abraham wasn't being ignored.
Abraham wasn't being cruelly treated.
Abraham wasn't having God turn His back on him.
Abraham was being tested.
Now it doesn't mean "tested"
in terms of "pass/fail" like an exam.
It's actually a word picture.
And the word picture is of metallurgy.
Stay with me here.
When you mine a metal out of the ground,
you find it in an ore state.
Ore isn't very attractive and ore isn't very usable
because it's got imperfections in it.
So that metal needs to be tested.
And what happens is a catalytic agent is added,
and white hot heat,
so that metal is liquified
and it reaches its highest state of beauty
and its highest state of usability.
That's the picture here.
So what it tells you is,
although from a human standpoint,
what God is asking of Abraham is unthinkable.
What God is doing is not against Abraham;
it's for Abraham.
God is doing something for Abraham's good.
It doesn't seem good.
But what he's doing is for Abraham's good.
He wants to strengthen this man.
He wants to beautify this man.
He wants to make this man more usable.
And the way God does that
is by bringing the unexpected,
the unwanted,
the difficult,
the hard into your life.