A man was walking along a narrow path, not paying much attention to where he was going. Suddenly he slipped over the edge of a cliff. As he fell, he grabbed a branch growing from the side of the cliff. Realizing that he couldn’t hang on for long, he called for help. Man: "Is anybody up there?" A voice came: "Yes, I’m here!" Man: "Who’s that?" Voice: "This is God" Man: "God, help me!" Voice: "Do you trust me?" Man: "I trust you completely, Lord." Voice: "Good. Let go of the branch." Man: What? The voice came: I" said, let go of the branch." After a long pause, the man asked, "Is anybody else up there?"
Like this dangling cliff-hanger, we can fall off cliffs and get very afraid. Our daily lives are built around people and things we enjoy: spouse, children, friends, job, hobby, possessions, and future plans. These are the things that we consider as pillars of our support system. If one of them is removed, we sometimes feel as though the framework of our lives is collapsing around us.
Abraham was a man who had to live a life of stress ever since God called him to take a journey in faith. Faith takes a lot of determination and resilience in the face of uncertainty and ambiguity. We all face stress of various kinds in our daily lives. Meeting commitments, heavy burdens of health or family, loneliness, emotional pains and relationships, bad habits and closed roads, hostility, rejection, moral and ethical choices are some of the many causes of stress in our daily lives. No one is immune to stress and stress is a common denominator for every living being, including animals and plants. Jesus said, “ In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33). We are to trust in a God who can handle all our stresses for us. Peter says, “Cast all your cares on Him, for He cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:7).
Abraham started the journey taking with him his father, wife, brother’s son Lot, servants and a lot of cattle. They had to move to Egypt at one time because of famine. Then he got many possessions from Egypt that included Hagar, a maid for them. She eventually became the mother of his first son Ishmael. Sarah was upset because she could not bear children. When Hagar started despising Sarah, problems arose. When finally a son, Isaac was born to Sarah, Ishmael started mocking him. So Sarah wanted Hagar and her son out of the house. Abraham was put in the middle of all of this. He had to part with Hagar and son. Then came the issue with his nephew Lot, whose servants started quarrelling with Abraham’s servants over the land. Finally Abraham had to part with him too.
Tests are real and stressful and they are a necessary part of any curriculum. Classroom tests, admissions test, physical tests, medical tests, cognitive tests, psychological tests and many many others we all have to take. Doctors may stress your heart and body by putting you on a treadmill with dye injected and wires attached. There are stress tests conducted in businesses, like production plants, manufacturing plants etc. These are tests conducted to test the ability of the system and prepare for high volume demand or emergency situations. There are maximal stress tests and sub maximal. With a "maximal" stress test, the level of exercise is gradually increased until you cannot keep up any longer because of fatigue, or until you experience symptoms (chest pain, shortness of breath, or lightheadedness) that prevent further exercise, or until changes on your ECG indicate a cardiac problem. 'Maximal stress tests' should be performed when the goal is to look for any evidence of CAD (coronary artery disease). With a "submaximal" stress test, you will exercise only until a pre-determined level of exercise is attained. Submaximal tests are used in patients with known CAD in order to measure whether a specific level of exercise can be performed safely. This type of testing is useful to the doctor in recommending exactly how much exercise a person with CAD can safely perform. After the test, you will be monitored until any symptoms disappear, and until your pulse, blood pressure and ECG return to baseline. Abnormalities may become apparent only when the heart or body is subjected to perform at increased workloads.
Abraham took a test the 'maximal stress test of faith’. When compared to the baseline, he passed it with flying colors and the scripture calls him the "Father of all who believe (Romans 4:16)." Certain treadmills of life are very hard that we may find it hard to keep going. Abraham was quite human, like you and me. We read in verse Genesis 22:3 that Abraham rose early in the morning. There is a long night between Verse 2 and verse 3. This was arguably Abraham’s longest night ever. The night has its unique way of amplifying fears and anxieties. There in the long night, the shadows seem longer, the lights seem dimmer, and the enemy seems bigger. Someone has said, “I just saw the lights and the end of the tunnel, but it was a train.”
Faith is obeying when we don’t understand It. We read in Genesis Chapter 22, "On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in a distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Notice the plural he uses with a certain amount of assurance that he will get back his son somehow. Faith Is believing when we don’t see It. Isaac asks “The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together. Abraham trusted that God can provide a better option even if He takes his son and God did. God provided a lamb. God has a better plan than you can think or dream of. Abraham called that place "Jehova Jire", God provides.
When you are spending the long night with tears and sighs, remember that God has already provided a plan for you ahead. " By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death." (Hebrews 11:17-19).
This was a test of Isaac as well. He got some first hand knowledge of the walk of faith. We would have suggested that the boy needed counselling for post traumatic stress. But history shows that Isaac was confirmed on his faith by Abraham’s obedience. He became the father of Jacob, who later became “Israel”.
This passage is of great significance to the Christian faith because it points to the ultimate sacrifice that pointed to the sacrifice on the Hill of Calvary, where the sinless lamb of God was sacrificed for our sins. The Mount of Moriah where Abraham sacrificed a lamb, and the Mount of Calvary where God made the ultimate sacrifice of His Son. Scholars believe that Mount Moriah, the place of Isaac sacrifice and later the site of the Temple of Solomon, and Golgotha — are all the same place. All mark the place where God bound himself to fulfill the promises of the Abraham the covenant. The apostle John writes in 1:21, John the Baptist says, “ Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the world”. Late in John’s life, after walking with Jesus and witnessed the sacrifice on Calvary, he writes again in 1 John 2.1-2 “Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”
Dave and Jana at the Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena. Their pastor stood by helplessly as one doctor spoke. "Your baby has died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. We want to give you a chance to hold your child before we take her." All the pastoral training with PHD and experience seemed to fail the pastor. He just said, "Dave and Jana, I don’t know why this awful loss has to come to you. But I know God loves you as if you were the only ones in the whole world to love. If you accept his love…if you believe he does love you, you’ll make it. If you don’t, you won’t." Those sounded like empty words in that room at that time. Almost a year later, the pastor received a letter with a picture of Dave and Jana holding a beautiful baby. They wrote: Pastor, you probably don’t think we heard you when you encouraged us to cling to the love of God when our baby died. But we heard you clearly. So we have believed over and over that God loves us as if we were the only ones to love. We have learned to live in the love of God. We quote your words to each other often. The Lord is gracious. Notice in the picture we are holding a beautiful new baby—God’s special gift to us. We don’t understand why we lost our first child. We still hurt when we think about it, but we don’t question God anymore.
John MacArthur, in his commentary on this passage, says it this way: “No matter what our situation, our suffering, our pain, our lack of faith in those things, as well as in all other things may be, our heavenly Father will work to produce our ultimate victory and blessing. Any temporary harm we may suffer will be used by God for our benefit.” In such moments of ultimate stress tests, we do well to remember that the night may seem long, but it cannot be forever. Those long nights have a unique way of unraveling treasures from heaven. Even the longest night of agony must make way for a new morning of hope. God is aware of everything that happens even to the sparrows. No matter what we are going through, whether illness, loneliness, or separation, God has already made a better plan to bless the world through us.
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