God Will Provide (part 1), Genesis 22:1-3

The trial of Abraham’s faith

The last time we looked at Genesis together, we noted that Abraham was experiencing a nearly continuous trial of his faith. God put him through one test after another to see if he would always believe God’s promise in the face of what appeared to be a lack of fulfillment on God’s part.

The testings are not all bad. There are rewards for Abraham as he continues to exercise faith, namely that God reveals himself more and more to Abraham as the trials continue. In the last chapter, following a struggle with the Philistines over the well at Beer-sheba, and Abraham’s planting of a tree there that symbolized his tenuous grasp on the permanency of his inheritance, you may remember that God revealed himself to Abraham with a new name. The name was “the everlasting God” (El-olam), a reassurance of God’s permanency and steadfastness in contrast with Abraham’s outwardly uncertain state.

A New Test

Tonight we consider a new phase in this testing of Abraham’s faith. That’s exactly how this chapter begins: “God did tempt (or test) Abraham.” You might think that after years of Abraham’s waiting on God, God would be satisfied with Abraham’s faith. You would be wrong. For one thing, along with Abraham’s faith, we have seen in Abraham’s life multiple instances of failure to trust God, and that God is not finished working in Abraham’s life. This is true now, even at his advanced age of 115 years old or so.

We can easily succumb to that mistake regarding ourselves. Haven’t I been a Christian most of my life? Why is God putting me through such difficult times? I have already had a lot of trouble in my life. I’m still a Christian, still trusting God, what more does he want from me? Do these questions ever occur to you? They probably occured to Abraham.

More than whatever effect God’s testing has on us personally, however, there is something more important going on. Modern, non-Reformed treatments of God’s providence are largely focused on how God’s providence affects us personally. It’s all intended to teach us some lesson, they imply. The trial is mainly for our benefit. We only need to learn the lesson, and the providence will have accomplished its goal. Here is a summary given in one popular book for why God allows suffering:

Why Would a Good, All-Powerful God Allow Suffering?

— He allows suffering to expose our sin.

— He allows suffering to build our character.

— He allows suffering to produce much good [e.g., the conversion of other people].

— He allows suffering to change our perspective.

— He allows suffering to bless our future.

(Hope for the Heart, Evil & Suffering … Why? Is God Fair?, p. 8)

Now, of course, these things are all true. And we’re told by such authors that we just need to continue to trust God, even if it isn’t very clear to us why hard providences are affecting us, which is also true.

But that’s not all that scripture reveals to us about God’s purpose in bringing about trials of suffering or difficulty or confusion into our lives. The more important and overarching reason for God’s testing is so that God himself is worshiped and glorified in our obedience and trust. Just why our steadfastness under trial should be so important to God’s glory is not perfectly clear, but we find it to be so as demonstrated in the life of Job (Job 1:8). It was so with the Apostle Paul (Acts 9:16, “For I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake”). It is so with us (Philippians 1:29, “For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake”).

This aspect of trial and temptation is related to the idea that Jon brought up in his prayer meeting meditation a few weeks ago, when he pointed out that the worship of God in this fallen world is especially valuable to him. That God’s people should trust and worship him in the midst of disappointment brings him much glory.

The Call: “Abraham.”

We first look at God’s call in verse 1. God calls Abraham by his name. That’s all he says: “Abraham.”

In the case of Abraham, that name had a covenant meaning—God had renamed Abram, and said to him that he would be, not just an “exalted father” (Abram), but a father of many nations, Abraham (Gen 17:4-6). God uses Abraham’s covenant name. He doesn’t revert to the old name, or an impersonal reference to Abraham. In Islam, for instance, the personal encounter between God and man is completely missing. God is too high above man to give him personal notice. But the true God is not only a God who recognizes each person he has created, he enters into covenant with men. The example we are about to witness of what this covenant means to God is striking, and we will get to that next time, but for now we simply notice that God calls us and encounters us by our individual, personal names and remembers his covenant with us as he leads us into sometimes painful providential circumstances. These are not random accidents. They are perfectly tailored to bring God glory through us as unique, individual persons.

The Answer

Abraham’s answer is “Behold, here I am.”

This is not always the way people answer God. By the Holy Spirit he may convicts us of some principle in his word, and our response might be to ignore it, or to deny it, or to bury it in other duties we are performing, pretending that we’re actually obeying God when we really aren’t.

This is the way that Saul responded to God’s call. God called him to be king of Israel. He goes along with the idea for a while, but when the day comes for Saul to be presented to the people as their king, he can’t be found. At last, he’s discovered hiding among the supplies (1 Sam 10:20-22). When Jonah receives God’s call, he adds layers of innovation to avoid God’s call. He runs away, he gets into a ship, he hides in the decks below, he ignores God’s providence in the storm, he even goes to sleep. God has to use a man from a heathen nation to wake him up (Jon 1:3-6). God’s response to Jonah is, ironically, to push Jonah even farther away. God has him swallowed by a fish, which is as much as to say, “So, you want to get away from me? How far away might I put you?” And Jonah finally knows it. He says, “I went down to the bottom of the mountains” (Jon 2:6).

Abraham’s faith shines here in verse 1 of Genesis 22: “Behold, here I am,” he says. I’m not hiding. I’m ready to hear whatever God might say.

Sometimes, it’s true, the call of God is easy and comforting. He calls to remind us of a promise, as he did with Abraham from time to time.

But, when God calls, it isn’t always easy. Earlier God had called Abraham to leave his family and home in Mesopotamia. He called him to endure the separation of Lot from the church. He called him to take his servants and attack five kings to save Lot’s family. God has been making Abraham wait until Sarah is past the age of bearing children before he gives him a son. He has been bumping Abraham around by his providence in the land of Canaan, of which he is supposed to be the master. Now he calls again.

The Details

When we think about being called by God in the abstract, apart from any given instance of it, we like to think of ourselves as ready for anything. We form an idea of what it will be like, and we suppose we’re up to the task, just like Peter and the other disciples did when they told Jesus they were ready to die with him.

Years ago, I used to walk up and down the road in front of our house in the mornings before I went to work. I would walk, and pray, and try to memorize and think about Bible verses. One morning, I remember saying, “Lord, I really want to do something to serve you. Let me serve you in some way.” It was a Friday. That very afternoon, just the way controversial policies of leftist presidential administrations are announced so that they will be obscured by the weekend, the company I worked for announced that they would begin recognizing homosexual unions and providing health insurance for these couples as if they were married. I’m fairly sure if I had known what that would mean for our lives over the next several months and years, I would have been much more careful about the way I phrased my prayer that morning. I might have said, “Tell me how much money I can give to let someone else do this job.”

The real difficulty is in the details and the reality, not the romantic idea we have of ourselves. Abraham could hardly have conceived of what God would be asking. And yet, it wasn’t outside of what he was willing to do. We will see this as we continue to study the passage in coming weeks. One thing we can take away here, though, is that it isn’t always good for us to know what God has in mind when he calls. He supplies our strength and courage as soon as it’s needed.

Summary

For now, let’s try and remember that we are God’s servants. We are the servants of a loving God, to be sure, the servants of a God who will not let us fall. But we need to be ready for him to dispose of us as he wishes, and to answer his call the way Abraham answers this one: “Behold, here I am.”