By Jack Wyman

The sky was clear. The stars were bright. The air was still.

It was a beautiful, serene night in the desert.

His wife was asleep. His servants were asleep. The animals were asleep. Only he was awake, stirred by a voice clear, resonant, gentle, and yet authoritative.

“Abraham!”

Was that Him who called the old man by name? His eyes grew big. Yes, this was Jehovah calling. Abraham didn’t run. He didn’t try and hide. He didn’t put his head down and pretend to be asleep.

God called. Abraham answered. Genesis 22, in the very first verse, says, “Some time later, God tested Abraham.” It would be the first significant test of faith and obedience found in the Bible.

Abraham answered. Immediately.

“Here I am,” he told God.

God calls some and they put their hands over their ears. They quickly close and bolt the doors to their heart and mind. They deny they heard him. They fear the call. They fear more to answer. God speaks in a variety of ways. He calls us to himself each differently. The important thing is, he calls us. He speaks. He is not silent, as Francis Shaeffer reminded us in his classic book.

He calls us for a reason. We are often perplexed by his strange and mysterious ways.

I find no argument of the skeptic more difficult to answer than to explain why a loving God would call a devout and holy man, who had already shown his faith and obedience, to kill his own son.

Loving God is prerequisite to trusting him. Trusting God is prerequisite to obeying him. Difficulty is the challenge of it all. It’s usually easier to say no to God. At least it often seems that way. Jonah thought so. As soon as he heard God’s voice, he caught the first boat to Tarshish—in the opposite direction from God’s command. He “ran away from God” (Jonah 1:3).

Abraham didn’t run away from God. Even when God told him to “take your son, yes, your only son, yes, Isaac, whom you love so much.” When God called him by the name God had given him, Abraham heard God’s voice. He recognized God’s voice. He responded to God’s voice.

Then he obeyed.

Many have disobeyed for a lot less. They’ve kicked and screamed. They’ve asked questions, they’ve made excuses, and they’ve demanded answers. They’ve stubbornly defied the voice of God, his will, his law, his commands, his purpose, and his leading. Is this not the human record throughout the sad chronicle of man’s existence on the planet?

The abandonment of God and the rationalization of sin? They are the twin rails of human degradation and cultural death.

Humankind’s march through time and civilization has been a headlong, arrogant, and sad pursuit of self. The more we have repudiated God’s righteous word and law, the more desperate, unhappy, and agitated we’ve become. God loves the world still, but it is an unrequited love.

The world has gone its own rebellious way.

In the first chapter of Romans, Paul describes the consequence of disobedience. He says that people would “think up foolish ideas” about God. Their minds would become “dark and confused. Claiming to be wise, they instead became utter fools” (Romans 1:21-22).

In their hearts, they know there is a God. Yet, they refuse to worship him, or even to give him thanks. Instead, they worship at their own altars of perversion, violence, narcissism, power, and corruption. This is the sad and spent reality of the human condition.

Malcolm Muggeridge, British author and philosopher, wrote:

“Thus, did western man decide to abolish himself, creating his own boredom out of his own affluence, his own vulnerability out of his own strength, his own impotence out of his own erotomania, himself blowing the trumpet that brought the walls of his own city tumbling down…”

God preserved Abraham’s story to inspire and comfort us; and to remind us that there is greatness in holiness, protection in difficulty, deliverance in desperation, and blessing in obedience. The old man had waited long for God’s promise of a son he could love and call his own. Now he uttered not a word of complaint or resistance as he followed God’s orders to carefully prepare for this unimaginable sacrifice.

God understood the heartbreaking difficulty of this ordeal. As he told Abraham what preparations he must make and where he must go, he reminded the father that God knew this boy was his only son, and how much Abraham loved him.

Isaac, too, was obedient. He only asked his father once about the sacrifice. “Where is the lamb?” Through his weary glistening eyes, Abraham said simply, “God will provide a lamb.”

What thoughts ran through the father’s mind? Through the son’s?

As Mount Moriah loomed in the distance at sunrise, Abraham told his servants, “Stay here, we will come back to you.” Faith, always faith. God delivered them both, but not until the very moment Abraham raised the knife, ready to plunge it into his only son

“Abraham! Abraham!”

 “Here I am!”

“Do not lay your hand on the lad.”

God spoke to the patriarch: “Now I know that you truly fear God, for you have not withheld from me even your son, your only son” (Genesis 22:12).

Abraham saw a ram caught in a thicket. He gathered Isaac in his arms and named the place, “The Lord Will Provide.”

Abraham reminds us there is joy in loving God. There is hope in trusting God. There is reward in obeying God. Through this man of faith—this hero of trust and obedience—God founded a great people, “beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore” (Genesis 22:17).

In the midst of this present darkness, trust God. Obey him. Place your life into his safe keeping.

He will be as faithful to you as he was to Abraham. God does not change. He will guide and protect you. He will deliver you.

Say only, “Here I am.”

To order Jack Wyman’s book, “Everything Else: Stories of Life, Faith and Our World”, go to amazon.com, Christian Book Distributors or barnesandnoble.com. It is also available on Kindle and eBooks.

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