MARCH 15, 2025
Topic: “Abraham: Growing in faithful obedience in the fire of testing”
Text: Genesis 22:1-18
Memory Verse: Hebrews 11:17-19 -“It was by faith that Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice when God was testing him. Abraham, who had received God’s promises, was ready to sacrifice his only son, Isaac, even though God had told him, “Isaac is the son through whom your descendants will be counted.” Abraham reasoned that if Isaac died, God was able to bring him back to life again….
Thank God for God and His word! His ways are totally inexplicable. Only God could have known the depth of Abraham’s confidence in God by the time he got to this stage in his journey of faith. Clearly, God’s instruction was extra-ordinary, even humanly unreasonable, and Abraham’s response is almost a puzzle. It is obvious that by this stage in his faith, he was so intimate with God that he just knew that He would somehow fulfil the original promise, which depended on Isaac being alive to have at least a child.
Did he have some doubt or fear? Was it mixed feelings of anxiety and excitement that drove him as he rose up so early in the morning and left for the region of Moriah, knowing they would walk for three days while he watched the son he was about to sacrifice? Abraham’s actions and conversations along the entire journey (vs 3, 5-10) do not indicate that he had any doubt. It was like he knew that God would do something that Abraham knew nothing about and had no business worrying about, but which was the best for Abraham and his son Isaac.
The three Hebrews boys, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, had a very similar faith and intimacy with God. They knew He could deliver in a literal sense, but whatever the outcome, it would be the best they could expect.
A believer’s intimacy with God needs to grow but it will only grow to the extent that he/she obeys God’s word at the level that God has already brought him or her.
PRAYER: O LORD, I am sorry that I sometimes sabotage my own development by failing to obey your instructions promptly. Thank you for showing me through Abraham’s life the level to which You can take my relationship with you. Give me grace to submit to you always in Jesus’ name. Amen.