Faith that Looks Beyond What is seen

English Standard Version Chapter 11

17 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, 18 of whom it was said, “Through Isaac shall your offspring be named.” 19 He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back. 20 By faith Isaac invoked future blessings on Jacob and Esau. 21 By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the head of his staff. 22 By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones.

23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.

Introduction

Introduction

I was sitting with my father in his room at the nursing home when the coronavirus started to turn heads in the minds of the nation’s leader to take action. The day before he passed away the nursing home had put up signs prohibiting people who had been out of the country in the past 30 days to enter. My dad’s brother was flying in from Mexico that day. He didn’t get to see him. Two days after he passed away, they locked down the nursing home so no visitors could enter. And the night before the funeral service the government was requesting groups no larger than 50 meet together. We went ahead with the service as some family and friends had flown in from out of town. Later we learned there was a family at the funeral who tested positive for the virus and several of those family members are now suffering. Some young, some a bit older.

In a radio interview afterwards Gordon Wilson said

"We were both thrown forward, rubble and stones and whatever in and around and over us and under us. I was aware of a pain in my right shoulder. I shouted to Marie was she all right and she said yes, she found my hand and said, "Is that your hand, dad?" Now remember we were under six foot of rubble. I said "Are you all right?" and she said yes, but she was shouting in between. Three of four times I asked her, and she always said yes, she was all right. When I asked her the fifth time, "Are you all right, Marie?" she said, "Daddy, I love you very much." Those were the last words she spoke to me. She still held my hand quite firmly and I kept shouting at her, "Marie, are you all right?" but there wasn't a reply. We were there about five minutes. Someone came and pulled me out. I said, "I'm all right but for God's sake my daughter is lying right beside me and I don't think she is too well." She's dead. She didn't die there. She died later.[1]

As we tune in to the news we find that people of all ages are dying. New York has particularly been hit hard. Some of you may know someone suffering. Where is God? Is God behind it? Is God in it at all? I know of no prophets interpreting God’s intention behind this and so we are left without answers. Even if you haven’t been sick, many of you are high risk, some of you have lost jobs, and all of us will feel the impact on the world’s economy if you haven’t already. It can certainly leave you with little peace and perhaps a bit of anger toward God.

I can easily imagine Mr. Wilson growing bitter over this. Why would God allow such a tragedy to happen? Which is what makes his actions later all the more remarkable. Mr. Wilson went public with a statement to his daughter’s murderers,

“I have lost my daughter, and we shall miss her. But I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life." He said he forgave her killers and added: "I shall pray for those people tonight and every night."

So many people would like to have the kind of peace this man had in the wake of tragedy. Instead, many wrestle with anger and bitterness, angry at God for allowing their life to turn out as it is.

Anger toward God over life’s setbacks is said to be one of the primary reasons people don’t trust God. Maybe you know someone right now who is angry with God. Maybe you’re angry with God. There are other reasons beyond the virus. A loved one dies young. A prayer goes unanswered. Wrongs go unpunished. Someone steals credit for something you did and is rewarded for it. He is never found out. Your reputation is questioned or even attacked and you can’t identify the source. Friends abandon you. You can’t find a job and you just seem to sink deeper in your hole. Why does God fail to see? Why does God refuse to hear?

Why does God allow such despair? Suffering takes many forms. Your circumstances are unique so it often seems like you’re the only one suffering, which makes it seem all the more unfair. Anger can be exacerbated when you feel like you’ve opened up to God and he has abandoned you. Anger can turn to bitterness and bitterness into hardness. That’s not a place you want to be. What can you do about it? How do you live a life of faith that doesn’t let you down?

Your view of God plays a big role in that. If you have a faulty view of God, then you’re likely to grow bitter when difficulties come. Hebrews shapes our faith – gives us a faith that can survive difficulties – by shaping our view of God. If you are to retain your faith, then you must see God above your circumstances.

Because God is truer than circumstances, we must obey in faith.

There are several misconceptions that we will look at this morning that the writer helps us to see in the life of Abraham and some other Old Testament characters: “test vs. punish,” “could vs. would,” and “real vs. figurative.”

I. Test vs. Punish (17-23)

The first has to do with how we view difficulties. When tragedies and setbacks hit you, there is a great temptation to think that either God has abandoned you or is angry with you. Either way, we see it as punishment. “God must hate me to allow such things to happen.”

But the writer of Hebrews directs us to Abraham and an alternative view in verse 17, “By faith Abraham, when he was tested…” Abraham’s challenges are “tests”, not punishment. Perhaps the simplest way to understand that is to think about the punishment that you deserve. The Bible explains quite plainly that the punishment for sin is death and that all have sinned. When suffering and setbacks hit you, no matter how bad they might be, as punishing as it might feel, it is not punishment.

The purpose of tests, NOT: weeding out in freshmen chemistry

So let’s think about the nature of tests for a minute. Tests can be given to accomplish certain things. When I was in college I sat in a freshmen chemistry class in which the professor told us on the first day of class to look at the person to our right and to our left and take note – one of them won’t be here next year. He used tests to weed people out. Many think about God’s testing in this way – “God is testing me to see if I deserve heaven.” While weeding out may sometimes be the purpose of tests today, lets leave that purpose to the freshmen chemistry professor. God’s tests are not to weed people out.

The purpose of tests: to train

We take tests in order to find out where we are in a particular area. Tests expose our weaknesses so that we might learn and grow. In the case of faith, tests are meant to build up our faith. This is God’s design for us – to bring us to perfection. The writer of Hebrews elaborates on this in chapter 12. He writes,

English Standard Version Chapter 12

he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. 11 For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

Tests challenge appearances

Tests challenge appearances

Tests challenge appearances

Let’s look at the test that Abraham faced. God told him to take his son, the one through whom God had promised to make into a great nation, and offer him up as a burnt offering. Clearly, this did not make sense. Abraham had waited 25 years to have the son God promised to give him. He had left his home and gone to a foreign land. He had faced famine and war and family strife. God reaffirmed his promise on multiple occasions. When he tried to help God out by having a child through Hagar, God said, “nope – this isn’t the one.” I will bring you a miracle baby through your old and barren wife, Sarah. And He did. 25 years of waiting and planning and preparing went into Isaac’s birth. And now God was requiring him to offer Isaac as a burnt offering. God was telling him to kill his son and burn his body on an altar. This didn’t make sense. It is the nature of a test, isn’t it?

Sometimes God requires of us obedience that would not seem to lead us toward a better life – the abundant life that He has promised. That was clearly Abraham’s case. In fact, sometimes obedience seems to take us away from what seems so right. “How can it be wrong when it feels so right!” is the thinking. You fall in love with someone and you give your heart. The most complete way you know to give your love is physically. In fact, you feel if you don’t sleep with your love then you risk losing him. To obey God about keeping the marriage bed pure seems the worse choice. It is the nature of a test.

I know a person who has a difficult time telling the truth. He is afraid that if he tells the truth, he will get into trouble. Circumstances seem to dictate that hiding his activity would be more profitable. He can see nothing good that can come from admitting his guilt. But parents know better. First of all, they know when their child is lying and every lie takes away credibility. Instead of gaining freedom, as the child thinks he’s doing by telling a lie, he is actually losing it. Just as a child cannot see what a parent can, isn’t it possible that God can see something we can’t?

Abraham’s “test”

Now let’s look specifically at Abraham’s test. In , God’s instruction is to take his son – his only son whom he loves – and offer him up as a burnt offering. Now that should cause us to pause because Isaac is not Abraham’s only son. He has an older son, Ishmael, born to Sarah’s servant, Hagar, after Sarah gave her to Abraham because of her own barrenness. What does this mean then? Tim Keller explains that this language is pointing to what Isaac had become in Abraham’s life – that he had become his “one and only;” that Isaac had become the thing that Abraham lived for. The “test” was to find out whether Isaac – whom God had given to Abraham – had become more important to Abraham than God himself.

People grow bitter toward God when they find good things that he has given them taken away – jobs, loved ones, wealth, good health – because these things subtly become looked to for life, which they cannot give. To settle into these is to lose life. Dickens’ Christmas Carol is a great example of that. Money and efficiency had become life to Scrooge. But as the ghosts of Christmas come and show him past, present, and future Christmases, he is shown how his path brought him to looking at his wealth for life and how it was actually stealing his life away.

The sheepdog and the sheep

Philip Yancey makes the point by showing us sheep that wander around the pasture with their head down seeing little besides the grass in front of them. Occasionally a dog comes along, barking and frightening them and they run in the opposite direction, often finding more good pasture. The sheep doesn’t understand the fright of the dog who just seems to be threatening his life. All along, however, the dog is saving the sheep by directing it to greener pastures and away from the wolves that may be lurking on the pastures’ edges.

As we look at other examples they are much the same: Isaac blesses Jacob and Esau even though they both have proven to be scoundrels. Circumstances certainly weren’t promising. Nonetheless Isaac blesses; Jacob blesses Joseph’s sons though they are half-Egyptian and raised as Egyptians; Moses’ parents hide him though it could mean death for them.

II. Could vs. Would (19a)

How do you gain this kind of faith that helps you see suffering and setback for your good – “tests” that may uncover false hopes and thus draw you closer to God?

We’ve got to see something about the nature of God himself. We often grow dismayed and disheartened when we find our prayers unanswered. We ask for healing and instead the one we pray for falls further ill, or even dies. We pray for a job and none comes. We pray for a ray of hope to get out of debt and we just seem to slide deeper. We begin to think that our obedience is fruitless. What becomes key for us is Abraham’s perspective in verse 19,

English Standard Version Chapter 11

19 He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead,

Abraham considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead. It is so important that we read this carefully. He considered that God was able to do it – that he could do it. It doesn’t say that Abraham considered that God would do it. That is where most people find their faith challenged. They want to believe; they think they should believe, but there remains this piece of doubt that wreaks havoc on their faith. Perhaps too many times you’ve felt burned by asking for something and not seen it answered they way you expected. We presume that God’s promise for life to us will look a particular way and when it doesn’t, we conclude that God has failed us – that he hasn’t answered. Was there a way for God to keep his promise to Abraham even if Abraham sacrificed his son? Abraham considered that God could answer in the only way that Abraham could conceive. But he doesn’t consider that God necessarily will. He doesn’t presume upon God to do things the way he thinks.

Abraham considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead. It is so important that we read this carefully. He considered that God was able to do it – that he could do it. It doesn’t say that Abraham considered that God would do it. That is where most people find their faith challenged. They want to believe; they think they should believe, but there remains this piece of doubt that wreaks havoc on their faith. Perhaps too many times you’ve felt burned by asking for something and not seeing it answered they way you expect. We presume that God’s promise for life to us will look a particular way and when it doesn’t, we conclude that God has failed us – that he hasn’t answered. Was there a way for God to keep his promise to Abraham even if Abraham sacrificed his son? Abraham considered that God could answer in the only way that Abraham could conceive. But he doesn’t consider that God necessarily will. He doesn’t presume upon God to do things the way he thinks.

Abraham considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead. It is so important that we read this carefully. He considered that God was able to do it – that he could do it. It doesn’t say that Abraham considered that God would do it. That is where most people find their faith challenged. They want to believe; they think they should believe, but there remains this piece of doubt that wreaks havoc on their faith. Perhaps too many times you’ve felt burned by asking for something and not seeing it answered they way you expect. We presume that God’s promise for life to us will look a particular way and when it doesn’t, we conclude that God has failed us – that he hasn’t answered. Was there a way for God to keep his promise to Abraham even if Abraham sacrificed his son? Abraham considered that God could answer in the only way that Abraham could conceive. But he doesn’t consider that God necessarily will. He doesn’t presume upon God to do things the way he thinks.

For us too, then, we must look at God this way – with full confidence that God can deliver us the way we expect, but without presuming that he will do it this way.

III. Real vs. Figurative (19b)

And yet even when God doesn’t answer or deliver us in the way we expect, perhaps even the only way that we can comprehend, like Abraham, what must drive us is the reality that God’s answer will always be the one that ultimately delivers us. It will never be less than we imagine or hope, though it may not look like we imagine or hope. Let’s look at the rest of verse 19,

English Standard Version Chapter 11

19 He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.

He considered that God was able even to raise him from the dead, from which, figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.

Abraham’s answer wasn’t what he expected. Figuratively, yes, Isaac was raised. But the figurative answer resulted from God’s real provision, which was the ram caught in the thicket. That ram pointed forward to God’s true provision – His own dear son that was offered up as a sacrifice on the cross. It would be Jesus death and real resurrection that would allow Isaac’s figurative resurrection to take place.

Abraham’s answer wasn’t what he expected. Figuratively, yes, Isaac was raised. But the figurative answer resulted from God’s real provision, which was the ram caught in the thicket. That ram pointed forward to God’s true provision – His own dear son that was offered up as a sacrifice on the cross. It would be Jesus death and real resurrection that would allow Isaac’s figurative resurrection to take place.

The obedience of the patriarchs showed their faith in the future son

It seems that offering up his son, the son of God’s promise, as a sacrifice is the sure way to see God’s promises fail. As it turns out, offering up the true son of God’s promise – Jesus – as a sacrifice is the only way to see God’s promises succeed.

We all owe a death. God is not being unjust when suffering and tragedy come our way. It is, in fact, his mercy that withholds the true punishment that we deserve. That punishment was carried out upon the one who was sacrificed for us so that those whose faith rests squarely in Him could be the true sons of God’s promise. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses’ parents all did what they did because they had faith that God would, in time, provide one that would remove the curse that resulted from Adam’s sin, that would lead them out of their bondage to sin, that would usher them into the promised land, that would rule over them in a time of unprecedented peace. God, through their faithful obedience, made them his sons.

Tests produce holiness for sons

The writer of Hebrews explains what it means to be sons now in the next chapter,

English Standard Version Chapter 12

5 And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?

“My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,

nor be weary when reproved by him.

6  For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,

and chastises every son whom he receives.”

7 It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?

And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. 6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” 7 It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? 8 If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. 9 Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live?

Real hope because of the real resurrection

Real hope because of the real resurrection

Real hope because of the real resurrection

What God teaches us through tests is that God’s answers are real, though they may not be as we expect. The resurrection that God brought about wasn’t, in reality, Isaac’s. It was Jesus’. While a real, rather than figurative, resurrection of Isaac would have been a boost to Abraham’s faith, certainly, the resurrection of Jesus established a real basis for Abraham’s faith. Because Jesus was resurrected, we have real hope of our own resurrection. As sons of God, the inheritance that Jesus’ earned becomes ours by faith. That could not have happened without Jesus’ resurrection.

Buzz Lightyear and Woody

God’s answers are always greater, though not always understandable at the time. There is a scene in Toy Story that illustrates this point well. Buzz Lightyear and Woody get left behind in the big move and their working desperately to get back. Through the course of events they find themselves gliding through the air and approaching the open-ended back of the moving van with the rest of the toys cheering them on. But they seem to miss the opening. Woody is dismayed and begins to panic, “Buzz, you missed the truck! You missed the truck!” Buzz responds, “we’re not aiming for the truck” and flies them into the car, where the little boy sits. This is the way God delivers. We hope and expect it to look a certain way – perhaps the only way we can imagine, as Woody did in getting back in the truck. While God’s answers are always greater – bringing us back into his arms.

Conclusion

Because God is truer than circumstances, we must obey in faith.

The hospital was magnificent, truly impressive, and our friends have been great, but I miss my daughter, and we shall miss her but I bear no ill will, I bear no grudge. She was a great wee lassie, she loved her profession. She was a pet and she's dead. She's in heaven, and we'll meet again. "Don't ask me please for a purpose. I don't have a purpose. I don't have an answer, but I know there has to be a plan. If I didn't think that, I would commit suicide, It's part of a greater plan, and God is good. And we shall meet again.

Suffering is inevitable in this world that sits under the curse of God amidst the sinful nature of man. But suffering isn’t punishment. Testing, perhaps, for the sake of training, but not punishment. Punishment for sin comes on the cross for those with faith and on the day of judgment for others. How do we get through our suffering? We know we have a God who certainly could get us out of it in ways that we can imagine. But that doesn’t mean he will or even should. We can’t see what God sees or know what God knows. And the great hope, of course, is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. His resurrection 2000 years ago helps us see figurative resurrections in our lives over and over as God rescues us time and again as he answers our prayers. His resurrection 2000 years ago is also the reason we know that even if our prayers aren’t answered and we see death, it isn’t the end. It isn’t God’s judgment. We too hope in the resurrection.

Mr. Wilson understood God’s tests and it caused him to cling all the more to God.

[1] http://www.iraatrocities.fsnet.co.uk/enniskillen.htm