Living Out Our Radical Faith

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.

Good Evening Church I am Minister Nick Smith! I first want to thank you for the opportunity to speak in front as we ring in the new year and as we discuss Living Out Our Radical Faith. So the question is what does it look like to Live Out Our Radical Faith? Hebrews 11:17-19 gives us some great insight as to how we live out radical faith.

Let set the stage. Here we have God asking Abraham to go and make a sacrifice out of his son Isaac. See God was testing Abraham to see where his faith really lied. Isaac was not just any other child, he was the promised child. He was going to be the catalyst to bring Abraham the generations that God promised he was going to give Abraham. So he we are Abraham and Isaac going up to the mountain, Isaac is carrying the wood for the sacrifice and is asking his dad where is the sacrifice, see he was old enough to understand what is going on and what is about to happen. But don’t forget what Abraham tells him, he tells him God will provide a sacrifice.

In vs 17 is states “by faith,” The Greek word for this is pistis trust; strong confidence in and reliance upon, someone or something; often with the object of trust understood. The faith they are talking about can be translated to “that which evokes trust and faith” or meaning Abraham faith evoked the trust that he had that God would not fall back on his promises. The faith that Abraham had in God was a confidence that he knew he could have his faith placed in. He trusted in what God had promised. In the Expositor’s Bible Commentary gives this insight to what the author is describing. The significance of the greatest trial that that great man had to endure: God demanded that he sacrifice his son Isaac. We are apt to see this as a conflict between Abraham’s love for his son and his duty to God. But for the author the problem was Abraham’s difficulty in reconciling the different revelations made to him. God had promised him a numerous posterity through Isaac; yet now he called on him to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. How then could the promise be fulfilled?

Though he did not understand, Abraham knew how to obey. His faith told him that God would work out his purpose, even if he himself could not see how that could be. So he “offered Isaac as a sacrifice.” The perfect tense of the Greek verb prospherō (“offered”) indicates that as far as Abraham was concerned the sacrifice was complete. In will and purpose he did offer his son. He held nothing back. But immediately the same verb is used in the imperfect tense, which means that the action was not in fact completed. Abraham did not fail in his obedience, for God did not require him to slay his son.

“Morris, L. (1981). Hebrews. In F. E. Gaebelein (Ed.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Hebrews through Revelation (Vol. 12, pp. 121–122). Zondervan Publishing House.”

So what does this mean for us? What does Abraham have to living out a radical faith? Faith is not just what we see in Heb. 11: 1 “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” This faith that we are seeing with Abraham it is more about trust. See trusting in someone or something has a deeper meaning then just believing in someone. How does this look practically? When the girls were smaller, Naomi and Ananda are way to big for me to do this, but I can do it with Kiyomi, I would and still throw Kiyomi up in the air. See they believed that I would not drop them. Even though that might have apprehension when I would pick them up, but there wasn't just a belief, but they actually trusted me not to drop them. Pastor Perkins for years has been using the quote “You cannot have deeper faith standing in shallow water” by E.K. Bailey. This statement has a stronger meaning when you look at through the lens that living out our faith is done not just by believing in God, but we must trust that God will be taking care of us and moving us to where he has called us to go. In order to grow we have to have the the trust and faith that Abraham in God when he called his to sacrifice his son Isaac, the promised son, the promise to the future generations, the promise that God was not going back on his word. For us to live out radical faith we must first trust that God has what is best for us. We must have go into the deeper waters. We must actually walk out what God has called us to do. Living out our radical faith means we take the action to go into the deeper water, even if we don’t know how God is going to work it out. Just like Abraham had to walk out sacrificing Isaac for God. We have to be willing to live out our faith in a radical way. Thank You!